Galway Girl

It would be the summer of the Galway girls.

Summer of dead girls.

The Galway Races began and the rain returned

With a vengeance.

I was summoned by Malachy.

I don’t really do summoned.

The same young priest from before at my door.

I had a ferocious hangover.

One of those, I’ll kill someone.

I snarled,

“You have a name?”

He caught the tone, said meekly,

“Pat.”

I threw open the door, said,

“I need a coffee, probably the hair of the dog.”

He ventured in slowly as I began to make the coffee. He dared,

“Um, I’m not sure we have time for that.”

I didn’t even look at him, said,

“Sit the fuck down, shut up, and don’t speak until I’m on the other side of two coffees, three cigs, and anything else I can keep in my gut.”

I poured two mugs of coffee, thought about it, then added a slug of Jay to both.

The mugs, wittily enough, proclaimed:

          Mug 1

          Mug 2

Cute.

The first cig nigh killed me and Pat tried,

“Is that a good idea?”

I laughed.

“Good idea? Jesus, I haven’t had one of those since 1957.”

He drank the coffee and I could see his color rise, the Jay almost instant in its effect.

He looked at his watch, said,

“He won’t be best pleased.”

I waited a beat, then,

“Fuck him.”

And he laughed.

I grabbed his mug, said,

“Lemme top that up.”

Added a fair dollop of Jay, handed him the mug, he took it willingly.

I let him get on the other side of that, then,

“What’s his big hurry?”

He was lit up, said,

“He is mighty pissed.”

... bit like yourself,

I thought.

He was all chat now, said,

“Jericho got bail.”

Fuck.

He added,

“Jess put up her home as bond.”

Not good.

I sent Pat away, muttering I had to get on this right away.

Pat crashed the car one street away.

Oops.

       Sean Garret, the rapist

Who’d destroyed the young woman Alice’s life?

Alice, who wanted me to find her.

Figured, first I’d find Garret.

Google showed him to be

“One of our future leaders.”

Not if I found him.

Photos of him were extremely flattering.

Good looking in a slightly going-to-seed fashion, shaggy blond hair, almost surfer dude but with Armani suits.

His family owned one of the major construction companies and, at twenty-two, he was already a director, owned a Porsche, had a girlfriend who’d been on one of those Love Island shows.

Like all the new Irish who had Hollywood teeth and the awareness of a hedge fund.

The new generation, who didn’t have any talent but had burning ambitions:

To be seen

To be worshipped

To be envied.

Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, the new shrines.

For all the glitter, shininess, they exuded a deadly dullness.

I went to Charlie Byrne’s. It had been a time since I saw Vinny.

He was behind the counter, chatting to Noirin, a stalwart of the bookshop.

Vinny said,

“You’re looking well, Jack.”

We all took a moment to savor this nice, if blatant, lie. Noirin said,

“We hear you’re keeping company with a famous actress.”

Jess.

And keeping company

Has a myriad of meanings, from the sublime to the banal.

I said,

“She’s the reason I’m here.”

Vinny gave that knowing smile, ventured,

“You’re going to bring her up to speed on crime fiction?”

Close.

I said,

“She’s up for the leading part in the BBC adaptation of Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady.”

Noirin said,

“We do have a copy of that with all the original drawings, poems in her own hand, but it’s dear.”

I.e., expensive.

Vinny said,

“Oh, I’m sure we can help with that.”

It was indeed a beautiful volume, reason why Kindle could never hope to dominate the market.

Noirin wrapped it in the bookshop’s distinctive bag, said,

“You’ll be well in now.”

You’d think after my more than fractured relationship with Jess the last thing I’d do was buy her a gift.

She was indeed full of bluster and bullshit.

But

Somewhere in that entire complicated front I had glimpsed a frightened child.

I kind of admired her blunt embrace of life, to face all with a shot of gin and cheek. She was that rarity: an original and a ferocious pain in the arse.

I got home and instantly knew someone had been there.

I moved cautiously around and, in the bedroom, hanging from the light was a black noose.

Black as in jet-black rope.

On the bed was a sheet of black notepaper with red lettering that read,

“Hang loose.”

A body was hanging from the Spanish Arch.

A crowd gathered quickly and word spread that it was the actress from Dynasty.

One guy ventured,

“Christ, now that’s a bad review.”

The Guards arrived and it took hours to process the scene and finally take the body down.

The American who’d discovered the body later said to his wife,

“Remember our first night here?”

She did, said,

“Sure, hon, we went to see Playboy of the Western World.”

He nodded soberly, then,

“The dress the body was in, it was the same as Peg.”

She asked,

“You think they hung her after the performance?”

He loved his wife but, Jesus H, sometimes...

The Guards didn’t have to appeal for witnesses.

If anything, they had too many.

The square in front of the arch is party central in the summer.

Beside the square is one of the ugliest buildings in the city, a gray slab of

Concrete, known as The Kremlin.

The tenants were tormented every night by

Bongos

Girls screeching

Fights

And, inevitably,

A horrendous version of “The Fields of Athenry.”

You couldn’t give the bloody apartments away.

Picture this:

A long-framed shot, the camera ready to zoom in.

An American, on his first visit to Ireland, name of Danny Rourke, is standing on the steps of Jurys hotel, bottom of Quay Street.

It’s just past dawn and Danny, all the way from St. Paul, Minnesota, has sneaked out to smoke a cig. He hadn’t smoked for thirty years but, hey, it’s his vacation and it’s Galway.

Go party.

He lights the cig with a Zippo he bought from Brendan Holland, the newsagent on Eyre Square. It has a Claddagh ring on the side.

He loves that.

He stares at the Spanish Arch, about five hundred yards away, through a light mist.

Soft Irish rain.

Yes,

He mutters,

“Jumping Jehovah.”

A body is hanging from a rope, swinging in the breeze of the arch.

He had only recently retired from the St. Paul Fire Department and his training kicked in. He dropped the cig, ran toward the sight.

Maybe it was a prop from the Arts Festival; all sorts of weird shit were posed around the city.

He reached the figure and let out a soft

... fuck.

It was an elderly woman dressed in some sort of costume with a placard around her neck.

It read,

No, the Guards were not short of witnesses.

One guy had spoken to two girls in white overalls and Arts Festival T-shirts who were bringing a mannequin to the top of the arch.

He and his buddy helped them with the ladders!

The young ladies were extremely grateful.

The ban Garda who was interviewing them as her sergeant supervised asked,

“Can you give me a description?”

Guy One said,

“Big ladders.”

The sergeant had to suppress a guffaw.

The ban Garda tried,

“The girls, what were they like?”

As one, the guys chorused in quasi-American,

“Smokin’.”

In disbelief, the Garda asked,

“They were smoking?”

The sergeant bit his lip to keep the smirk away as Guy Two said,

“Hot, like, you know, smokin’ hot.”

The ban Garda wanted to chuck her notebook in the water — and the guys, too.

One of the guys said as she turned away,

“Lemme write this in your notebook.”

A clue?

She handed over a loose page and the guy, laboring, gouged out numbers. Young people don’t actually, like, write.

They text.

Hence his apparent difficulty.

He handed the paper back.

She stared at it, near dizzy with hope, asked,

“You got their number?”

He fizzled with annoyance, said,

“That’s my number.”

She snapped the notebook shut, began to stride away.

Her sergeant said,

“You have the perfect blend of persistence and stupidity, you’ll go far.”

Then added,

“Now if you only played hurling.”

They spoke to a range of other witnesses and got little more.

As they headed toward Jurys for a tea break, one of the guys shouted,

“Call me.”