Galway Girl

The first Guard was killed on a Friday.

The new Garda superintendent Mary Wilson (who was more than a little sick of the Supremes jokes) declared to the assembled Guards,

“This is horrendous.”

Owen Daglish, a long-serving, not to mention long-suffering, sergeant, muttered,

“Not much escapes the bould Mary.”

Sheridan, a loan to the beleaguered Galway station, gave him a look, said,

“Watch your mouth, Sonny.”

Sonny!

Owen had a good ten years plus fifty pounds on the American.

American is used loosely as Sheridan gave the impression of being a Quantico guy but other elements, such as his fucked-up accent and Irish cynicism, pointed to a more likely Irish heritage but he was nevertheless, as he liked to cut it,

“A very influential swinging dick.”

The Galway guys put it in their own tribal accent.

Like this:

“A prick.”

Sheridan belonged to a new offshoot of Special Branch whose brief ranged wide and definitely included counterterrorism.

His pet obsession was Jack Taylor, the so-called PI who was on the periphiery, as he mauled the term, of so many recent violent deaths and yet stayed one beat ahead — or perhaps behind — an arrest.

It was a new young ban Garda named Nora McEntee who discovered the note at the murder scene. The forensic guys, horrified at the sheer violence of the scene, focused on the body and, owing to the pressure for rapid results, overlooked the most basic item.

The wastepaper basket.

Nora had been left to secure the scene as the professionals treated her like shite, with,

“Don’t touch anything, girlie!”

You fucking believe it?

Girlie!

This was after she’d been told to grab some coffees for the teams, and the edict,

“Don’t fuck up the pastries.”

She sneered quietly at these macho blokes fussing over pastries.

How freaking gay were they?

Did they share the treats with her?

Or even refund the twenty euros for the designer java?

Did they fuck.

She’d picked up the trash basket out of curiosity and, lo and behold, a sheaf of parchment, curled at the edges. To age it? Or add grim authenticity?

Unfurled the paper and, smart girl, wearing crime scene gloves,

Read,

Unconsciously admiring the beautiful handwriting, in bold Gothic script,

Ta bronach orm

When Wilson, the super, read this she was not pleased, especially as she had to ask the novice ban Garda, the aforementioned Nora McEntee, to translate.

None of her close-knit team, the favored ones, spoke a word of their native tongue. Time was, you didn’t speak Irish or, worse, didn’t play hurling, you hadn’t a Protestant prayer of joining the Guards.

But now, as the writer Charlie Stella put it,

“Fugget about it!”

Best intoned in New York hard vowels.

Nora duly obliged, translated,

“I am sorry or, actually, I am heartbroken.”

Snicker from one of the bright sparks with,

“Geez, really, which is it?”

Wilson, more than miles beyond patience, sent him to traffic on the Headford road, the roundabout nightmare. He resigned.

Shortly after, thanks to his utter contempt for people, he rapidly became a rising star in the charities racket.

Nora McEntee looked at the framed photos of Guards who had died in the line of duty.

End of watch, as they say in the U.S.

She was gripped by the portrait of ban Garda Ni Iomaire.

Ridge.

She was Nora’s hero.

Ridge had been noted for:

Being gay, in an obscenely misogynist force;

Her utter dedication;

Her fearlessness;

Her patience with new recruits.

Nora had gone to her a few times and she always said the same thing:

“Never back down and never, ever let the bastards see you are vulnerable.”

She had also introduced her to

Kai tai yung.

A ferociously vicious form of self-defense that mutated in Galway from what had been a benign form of tai chi. To a Guard on the Galway streets when the clubs let out at four in the nasty morning and the fast-food joints were shutting their doors, gentleness was about as useful as a nun’s rosary beads.

The blot on Ridge’s almost brilliant career had been her relationship with Jack Taylor, a notorious drunk and former Guard. Despite repeated warnings, she had stayed in his corner even as her personal feelings toward him soured.

And soured fiercely.

Taylor had been MIA for many months after the death of his daughter.

Nora felt he was far from done. As Ridge had once said,

“Taylor always turns up, no matter how fucked he is, and God knows few do fucked like him, but he somehow drags all his bedraggled act in some form of together and shows up.”

Ridge had gone silent for a bit, then added,

“There is something to be said for a man who does always show up. Not a lot, but you know something.”

In those broken words Nora detected a kind of twisted admiration.