Galway Girl

The pope came, and although he didn’t outright admit liability for the pedophiles he did say they were filth.

I had one aim: find Sean Garret, the guy who destroyed the life of

Alice Bennet, the young woman who came to me and asked,

“Will you find me?”

I’d sure as fuck find him.

I did.

He was the son of wealthy parents (aren’t they always), a star rugby player, had the looks of a young Sean Penn, which might account for the mean streak.

I did as they do in contemporary crime fiction: I hacked his social media outlets.

Okay, I paid a young student to do it.

Garret was very active in/on

Twitter

Instagram

Snapshot

And a date app called

Gogetim.

Cute.

I followed him for a week. He did desultory attendance at the construction firm part owned by his father but played a lot of rugby and clubbed — a lot.

I finally cornered him alone one Friday evening as he strolled from his car, Ray-Bans perched on his head, white sweater tied loosely round his shoulders, a cut-rate Gatsby.

I swung my hurley and took out his right knee; there went the rugby career. He crumpled, agony on his face, screeched,

“Why?”

I was raising the hurley to smash his nose when he pleaded,

“Tell me what I did?”

I was ablaze with rage, snarled,

“Alice, remember her?”

His face changed from total agony to incredulity. He gasped,

“My ex?”

Then he stared at me, said,

“You have to be Taylor. She said she’d get you to come after me.”

WTF.

A terrible comprehension was dawning in his eyes. I could see it. He held up his hand to shield himself from the hurley, said,

“I can’t believe she did it. It’s that fucking lesbian who put her up to it.”

An insane crystallization was pulling at the edge of my mind. I took out my flask, took a wallop, offered it to him. He drank and winced.

I leaned against his car, took out cigs, lit us up.

He said,

“I shouldn’t, with the training, but...”

Indicated his ruined leg.

Continued,

“She once told me if I ditched her she’d cry rape, even get into a vulnerable shelter, not that she’d spend much time there, just enough to fake out the carers. And here’s the weird bit...”

The agony of his ruined knee kicked in on a fresh wave and he howled with the intensity of it.

I handed him the flask and he drank deep, muttered,

“Thanks.”

Then continued,

“Alice had this scheme to entrap you, pretend she was fucked, and blame me, in every sense, then get you to hammer the bejaysus out of me for ditching her.”

He looked at me, said drily,

“Seems to have worked.”

I tried to get my mind around the way I had been played, then asked,

“Her lesbian friend, lemme guess, is her name...”

I had to take a breath, then uttered,

“Jericho?”

He nodded.

I put the hurley back in my kit bag, muttered,

“Sorry, I guess.”

He limped away, said,

“That really, really helps.”