“For God’s sake, Mary! Sure it’s only trouble. They’d twist things around. ‘How long were you there now, Mr. Byrne,’ and ‘What were you doing there anyway, Mr. Byrne.’ They could make anything out of it. Anything! Put you under pressure and you wouldn’t know what you’d be saying.”
The swans were drifting their way now. He looked down at his wife again. Her lips were set in a tight line, her eyes on something far off. Her lips hardly moved.
“They’re not going to think you’re a… you know, Joe.”
He glared at her now but she wouldn’t look back. She leaned forward. Her eyes were on the swans now, he saw. He wanted to tell her a thing or two, so he did. But why keep this bloody conversation going? It’d only give her ideas. Her voice was gone soft now.
“Look, Joey, here they come.”
Even with drops of sweat rolling down his spine he felt cold. His ear hurt from pushing the phone against it.
“Ma! I swear to God! You know me, Ma! Come on now.”
His mother interrupted again. He began rapping his knuckles against the doors of the telephone booth. He stopped listening to her and studied the faces of the passers-by. He got his chance when he heard her sob.
“I can prove it to you, Ma!” he broke in. “Just give me the chance! Honest! It’s just a big screw-up! Someone thinks that I-ah, it’s too complicated. It’s probably someone has it in for me, telling lies or something. I don’t know-”
She interrupted again. He tapped his knuckles harder on the Perspex to stop from shouting at her to shut up and just fucking listen. No one wanted to listen.
“No, I won’t, Ma. Are you joking? Go to the fu-to the cops! Sorry. I mean, what have I done? Nothing! You know them, though, they’ll never believe the likes of me. What if the lads get to hear I talked to the cops. You know what that’d look like? Which? The lads? Come on, you know who I’m talking about. The cops’d never take my word for anything.”
He listened again. She needed to get over this part, he knew, to get really worried about him. A shadow fell across the dusty Perspex panels of the booth. He started and squinted into the glare. It was nobody he knew.
“Please, Ma! All I’m asking you is to take the stuff with you going to work. Just throw it all in a plastic bag. The chalk, the rolls of paper… What? All right, two bags. Yeah! I need some clothes. Just a change, like. It’s only for a couple of days. Aw, Jesus, Ma! Please! Don’t ask me again. I’ll tell you when it’s over. You wouldn’t understand it. It’s so stupid anyway.”
She told him again about the Guards calling to the house looking for him. Couldn’t she cop on that his only chance was to keep away from the bloody house until this mess got sorted out?
“Look, Ma! Ma! Listen! Will you listen for a change, Ma? Okay, look. I’m totally innocent. No. Yes. Totally. I’m not mixed up in anything. Listen, I’m going to do a job search. Really. And while I’m waiting, I’m going to do the pictures again. Remember the summer when I was pulling in fifty quid a day when I had the stuff up by the Green? The Madonna? Yeah, that’s your favourite. See? I remember, Ma. You always liked that one, didn’t you, Ma?”
That set her crying again. He wanted to scream at her. He bit his lip. Christ, he was the one in a jam and here he was trying to calm her down.
“Show a little bit of faith in me, Ma. Please! You know I have the talent. I’ve let you down, I know. But I’m going to stay at a mate’s house for a while until this gets sorted out. No, I can’t tell you! I really want to get back to the art and everything. So will you bring the stuff around, will you?”
She had stopped crying. He heard her rubbing a hanky against her nose.
“Ace, Ma! Make sure no one’s, you know, following you. And leave it in the lane-way right next to a pile of stuff. Yeah, I want to suss out the place. There’s a whole load of black rubbish bags out there. Just drop the stuff in behind them.”
He placed the receiver back on the hook. The sweat was just pouring out of him. He felt proud that he hadn’t asked her for money. He had standards. He could have phoned his sisters but all he would have gotten from them would be lectures. It didn’t matter now. He could handle this on his own. But maybe he should have asked the Ma anyway? No way. She only made a hundred and twenty or so in the restaurant kitchen.
He slapped the door open and headed down toward Capel Street, moving fast. The fear had woken up something in him. He wasn’t hungry; his senses were sharp. He still felt that quivery pressure in his chest, but he knew that something had left him too. The streets were crowded but he moved nimbly, his eyes on everything. He watched for fellas standing around streetcorners. He’d always been a good runner. Brennan, the teacher that had started him on it all those years ago, had told him that he had the ability. What did he call it? Raw talent, yeah. He went through names as he walked, wondering who he could lean on for a couple of nights. Only Jammy Tierney had stood by him, sort of: until today.
He stayed close to the edge of the footpath and kept looking to his sides. He went through the names again and that sinking feeling got worse. The money that Jammy’d given him could get him a few nights in a bed and breakfast. If he scored a few hits… Forget it. A Garda car sped through the lights at Capel Street. Mary was dead. Dead. The shock came to him as dizziness now, disbelief. He looked around at the shops, the traffic, the hordes of people. The sky was yellow, not blue. He ran his fingers through his hair. Greasy, sweating. Maybe this isn’t happening. Maybe this was some kind of a bleeding dream.
The woman slid the mug of coffee across the table toward Sister Joe and folded her arms. High up by the sleeve of her t-shirt, Minogue spotted part of a tattoo. She was gone forty and had dyed her hair. Her stare told Minogue that traffic with Garda officers was not something she liked. He gave himself odds of five-to-one-on as regards her former vocation. She was studying Malone.
“I know you from somewhere,” she said to him. “Seen you before, so I did.”
Malone poked at the salt and pepper containers.
“Thanks, ’Vonne,” said Sister Joe. “Look after yourself.”
The woman broke her stare on Malone and turned on her heel.
“Thanks for taking the time, er, Sister,” said the Inspector. “I hope we didn’t…?”
“Joe will do fine. It’s all right.”
Sister Josephine Whelan tore the sachet of sugar.
“Theresa is going to live. She overdosed. There seems to be a more potent form of heroin coming into Dublin this last few months. She was lucky.”
“I, em, hope…”
Minogue couldn’t find the words. She looked up from her cup at him.
“It’s as well we didn’t meet back at the centre anyway. Girls won’t come in if there are Guards there, will they now? Even if they are from Clare.”
“Ah, go on with you. Are you…?”
A smile flickered about her face.
“Kilbaha,” she said. “Via London for eleven years. The Irish emigrant community.”
Sister Josephine Whelan had the complexion of a waxed Macintosh apple. Her blue eyes became points when she wished to communicate without words. Forty-odd, Minogue decided-young as nuns go-and she had a stiff, assured abandon about her. Did she argue with God, he wondered while he took in her spare and well-considered words, and upbraid Him for leaving his flock to spawn those who hunted and destroyed others? Had it been Kilmartin grumbling that nuns had gone very militant this last while? Sister Joe’s accuracy and slow production of words had made the Inspector cautious. He expected pointed words from her about Guards before they parted.
“Now,” she said. “Tell me what happened to Mary.”
Minogue took his time. He was distracted by the stares of the group of women sitting at a table at the far wall of the restaurant where Yvonne had moved to.
“So that’s as far as we are now. Have I forgotten anything there, Tommy?”
Malone shook his head. A waitress began removing plates from the next table. Sister Joe pushed her glasses against the bridge of her nose.
“She had not been raped,” she said.
“No.”
