Galway Confidential

21

Raftery left me a phone message, to get in touch urgently.

I did.

He said,

“Remember I told you about Galway Confidential?”

I said I did; I could detect mega excitement in his tone.

“Yeah, you were putting out the word on the homeless assailants on your podcast.”

I added,

“That case has been resolved and I do appreciate that you tried to help.”

There was a silence, then he said,

“I also asked our audience, to keep an eye out for a guy who was attacking nuns and I really expected nothing to come of that, but...”

I let him build the drama until he said,

“One of our listeners saw a guy behaving very oddly near the city center convent and, on a hunch, followed him. Nothing happened but he did stay on the guy’s trail and wrote down the number of the car the guy was driving. A source at traffic control provided a name and an address.”

I was stunned, said so.

I added,

“I owe you big time, drinks on me next time.”

He said nothing for a minute, then,

“You haven’t got the address from me yet.”

Uh-oh.

I asked,

“Well, when can I meet you?”

I knew he wasn’t giving me the data over the phone. He said,

“You intend to get the address and then deal with that on your own.”

He was right. I tried to kick shape the deal.

“This is what I do, you have to trust me on that.”

He gave a short, terse laugh.

“Jack, what you do is comas.”

Phew-oh.

I tried to rein in a building anger.

“That’s below the belt.”

He chuckled, said,

“It’s what you dish out regularly.”

Fuck.

I caved, said,

“Okay, you can come.”

I took a breath, asked,

“You want to meet at my apartment?”

He agreed.

“I’ll bring the hurly, I bought one.”

I said in a very controlled tone,

“Bringing a weapon and using it are two very different things. You might think it’s just a matter of swinging the stick, but nigh on crushing a man’s skull is a whole other gig.”

I could hear him sighing. He said,

“Bit rich that you lecture me on violence.”

I made a stab at easing down.

“It may not come to violence, and he may not even be the guy.”

Raftery was silent and I thought he might have hung up, but then,

“He’s the guy, and a fucker who attacks nuns is definitely going to need a sizable beating.”

Then he hung up.

Back at my apartment, as I waited for Raftery, I took my second hurly from the cupboard. It was nearly new. I hadn’t yet put the steel clips on the top but figured I could manage without them. Kept reminding myself,

“This is probably a wild-goose chase.”

And yet.

I tried to read the newspapers piling up on the sofa. The photos of dead children in Ukraine were almost unbearable. It was ten days until a huge Russian celebration, the commemoration of Russia’s victory in the Second World War. It was two days to May Day and Putin had hoped to have utterly conquered Ukraine by then.

He hadn’t.

So, a muted May Day.

Maybe.

Putin continued to threaten the West with the nuclear option if aid was given to Ukraine.

Refugees continued to pour across Europe. Here in Ireland we had already received thirty thousand and the housing of them was a mega problem.

One-third of our own government was The Green Party, led by an ejit named Ryan. He wanted to ban the turf industry and make it illegal to sell it.

If he managed to pass this proposed bill, it was truly the end of rural Ireland.

His government partners were scathing in their criticism of him, but he refused to back down and it seemed he might yet bring down the government.

The response from the public was reminiscent of the outrage over the water charges, and that had literally brought down the previous lot.

I lit a cig, my first in three days, and was dizzy from the nicotine. I moved to the window, the bay window that revealed a brilliant view of Galway Bay.

It soothed my soul somewhat and set up that old yearning. For what, I still didn’t know. My attention was drawn by a young man leaning against a bench, he was staring right at me. Something about him...

Then it hit.

The two men who’d attacked the homeless, what were the names?

Yeah, Scott Williams, the one who had run away... and—

Tony Wren, whose knee I had shattered.

The one staring up at me, defiance writ large, was Scott Williams. It made me smile to imagine that he might have come to intimidate me. I grabbed my jacket, went down to meet him. My heart was jumping at the prospect of violence, a surge of adrenaline coursing through my veins. Outside, Williams moved from his slouch against the bench to stand up, face me. I crossed the road, got right in his face, snarled,

“You are looking for me?”

Uncertainty moved across his face, and he tried to back off a little, but the bench was blocking his passage. He was average height and I towered over him. He had regular features but odd eyes, as if they weren’t in focus. He had the sort of loose body that is not quite flabby but heading fast in that direction. The sort of shape becoming common in our youth, with all the fast-food outlets and incessant phone surfing but no moving.

He summoned up something to have him say,

“I know where you live now.”

I laughed into his face, spat,

“So?”

He wanted to look away, but I was so close to him that he couldn’t. He said,

“So, you need to watch out.”

I said,

“I’m here, let’s get into it right now. Why wait?”

And I pushed him back, not very forcibly, but such was the angle, he fell over the top of the bench, landed on the prom in a tangle of limbs. I moved over, put my boot on his chest. I said,

“Look me up online and see how they heavily suggest my involvement in the deaths of fuckheads a whole lot more vicious than you could ever be.”

He tried to rise but I kept him pinned. I said,

“Take this as gospel, if you ever come near my home, or me...”

Pause.

“Ever again, I will kill you.”

I stood back and he got shakily to his feet.

“You assaulted me.”

“You burned a friend of mine to death, if you think that’s going away, you are even dumber than you appear. So bear in mind that, some dull evening, you’ll think you’ve gotten away with it and you’ll get a tap on the shoulder with my hurly. Your friend got his knee crushed so you can imagine what I have in mind for you.”

He began very slowly to edge away from me, and tried a last hurrah, shouted,

“I’ll get you!”

“You’ll need more than a piss-poor attitude.”

I added,

“When I was a child, if you gave cheek to an adult, they literally put a shoe in your arse, so I’m regarding your little spiel as cheek.”

He looked in disbelief at me.

I put my boot in his departing arse.

Angelina Jolie visited Ukraine to, as she said, show her support, claimed she wanted it to be low-key yet somehow a flock of photographers managed to track her every move. Nancy Pelosi met with the Ukraine president, Zelensky, and promised more aid.

Zelensky did comment on... war tourists.

One of the remarkable things about the Ukraine refugees was their determination to bring their pets, dogs, cats, even parrots with them on their trek to freedom, turning down transport if their pets were not allowed. Arriving in Ireland, their pets were not allowed in much of the accommodation on offer.

In the UK, a Tory MP was seen watching porn in the House of Commons — twice! He claimed he’d been researching tractors on his phone.

Inflation was running rampant and the price of fuel, oil, gas rocketed. Russian TV showed a simulation where a new missile fired underwater would cause a tsunami to obliterate both Ireland and the UK. The Irish did not respond well to threats, even simulated ones.

Guinness introduced a new pint titled: 00.

Yup, zero alcohol.

A pint of the black with no alcohol!

The country uttered a collective:

Why?

Next they’d have alcohol-free Jameson, and we’d nearly welcome a tsunami.

Back at my apartment, I waited on Raftery and pondered on the chances that the man we were going to visit would be the attacker of the nuns.

I was tempted to ring Sheila, tell her we might have a resolution, but knew in my bones that could go dreadfully wrong. I got my holdall ready, put the hurly in there, and poured a small Jameson, while it still had an alcohol content.

The doorbell went and I opened it to Raftery, dressed all in black. He had put a sling on his hurly and slung it on his back like a rifle or a guitar.

“You look ridiculous.”

Unfazed, he came in, saw the bottle of Jay, said,

“I’ll have a shot of that.”

I shook my head.

“We are hoping for some discretion and looking like two wild hurlers, dressed in black, is like a neon sign.”

I poured him a small Jay, said,

“You follow my lead.”

He gave a tight smile.

“You seem to have confused our roles. I’m the guy with the name and address, you are in fact the tagalong.”

I counted to ten, drew in a deep breath, asked,

“So, okay, who is he?”

He smiled in victory, began,

“His name is Brian Lee, works in IT, and has a house in Threadneedle Road, a handily detached house so we won’t be disturbed.”

I waited, He continued,

“He’s single so no wife to mess with his timetable of assaulting nuns.”

“Alleged,” I stressed.

He stared at me.

“You don’t seem too delighted we’ve solved this case.”

My patience was now paper thin. I tried,

“We can’t afford to make a mistake; we’ve got to get this right.”

He said,

“I don’t actually need you; I could go on my own, you don’t know where he lives and I have a hurly. How difficult is it to swing the damn thing?”

We danced around this for a while and eventually, I said,

“Okay, let’s go.”

He made a mock exasperated sigh.

“Now you’re talking.”

Raftery was driving a white van. Said, when he caught my look at it,

“It’s a crime story. Got to have a white van, or have I been reading the wrong books?”

We put the gear in the back and drove toward Threadneedle Road. We could have walked as it is but a spit from my apartment. I asked,

“Why have you a van, not a car?”

He smiled delightedly, said,

“Ah, there’s the mystery.”

But he didn’t elaborate.

We got to the address, parked a few hundred yards from it, I reached in the back for my hold all and Raftery grabbed his hurly. I tried again.

“I think one hurly is sufficient.”

He shook his head.

“Not if we’re really going to wallop the hell out of the bollix.”