4
The rain had slackened off to a faint damp haze, but the clouds were getting denser and darker; there was more on the way. Ma was pressed up against the front-room window, sending out curiosity rays that practically burned my eyebrows off. When she saw me looking in her direction, she whipped up a J-cloth and started furiously cleaning the glass.
“Nicely done,” I said to Kevin. “I appreciate that.”
He shot me a quick sideways glance. “That was weird.”
His own big brother, the same one who used to nick crisps from the shop for him, in full cop mode. “Didn’t show,” I told him approvingly. “You worked it like a pro. You’ve got a knack for this, do you know that?”
He shrugged. “Now what?”
“I’m going to put this in my car before Matt Daly has a change of heart,” I said, balancing the case on one arm and giving Ma a wave and a big grin, “and then I’m going to go have a little chat with someone I used to know. Meanwhile, you’re going to wrangle Ma and Da for me.”
Kevin’s eyes widened in horror. “Ah, Jaysus, no. No way. She’ll still be raging about the breakfast.”
“Come on, Kev. Tighten up your jockstrap and take one for the team.”
“Team, my arse. You’re the one pissed her off to begin with, and now you want me to go back in there and take all the flak?”
His hair was sticking up with outrage. “Bingo,” I said. “I don’t want her hassling the Dalys, and I don’t want her spreading the word, at least not right away. All I need is an hour or so before she starts doing damage. Can you give me that?”
“What am I supposed to do if she starts heading out? Rugby-tackle her?”
“What’s your phone number?” I found my mobile, the one my boys and my informants use, and sent Kev a text that said HI. “There,” I said. “If Ma escapes, you just reply to that and I’ll come rugby-tackle her myself. Fair enough?”
“Fucking hell,” Kevin muttered, staring up at the window.
“Nice one,” I said, clapping him on the back. “You’re a trooper. I’ll meet you back here in an hour and I’ll get you a few pints tonight, how’s that?”
“I’ll need more than a few,” Kev said gloomily, and he squared up his shoulders and headed off to face the firing squad.
I stashed the suitcase safely in the boot of my car, ready to take to a lovely lady in the Technical Bureau whose home address I happened to know. A handful of ten-year-olds with underprivileged hair and no eyebrows were slouched on a wall, scoping out the cars and thinking wire hangers. All I needed was to come back and find that suitcase gone. I leaned my arse on the boot, labeled my Fingerprint Fifi envelopes, had a smoke, and stared our country’s future out of it until the situation was clear all round and they fucked off to vandalize someone who wouldn’t come looking for them.
The Dalys’ flat had been the mirror image of ours; there was nowhere to stash a body, at least not long-term. If Rosie had died in that flat, then the Dalys had had two options. Assuming Mr. Daly was the proud owner of one serious set of cojones, which I didn’t rule out, he could have wrapped her up in something and carried her out the front door and away: into the river, onto some abandoned site, into the piggeries as per Shay’s charming suggestion. But, the Liberties being the Liberties, the odds were high that someone would have seen it, remembered it, and talked about it. Mr. Daly didn’t strike me as a gambling man.
The nongambler’s option was the back garden. Probably nowadays half the gardens had been dolled up with shrubs and decking and various wrought-iron doodads, but back then they were neglected and ragged: scrawny grass, dirt, boards and broken furniture and the odd wrecked bike. Nobody went out there except to use the toilet or, in summer, to hang washing; all the action was out front, in the street. It had been cold, but not cold enough to freeze the ground. An hour one night to start digging a grave, maybe another hour the next night to finish it, another the third night to fill it in. No one would spot you; the gardens didn’t have lighting, on dark nights you needed a torch just to find your way to the jacks. No one would hear you; the Harrison sisters were deaf as a pair of fence posts, the back windows of Veronica Crotty’s basement were boarded up to keep the heat in, everyone else’s windows would have been shut tight against the December cold. Cover the grave, during the days and when you were all finished, with a sheet of corrugated iron or an old table or whatever was lying around. No one would look twice.
I couldn’t get into that garden without a warrant, and I couldn’t get one of those without something that bore a passing resemblance to probable cause. I threw my smoke away and headed back to Faithful Place, to talk to Mandy Brophy.
Mandy was the first person who was unequivocally, unmistakably glad to see me. The scream out of her nearly lifted the roof off; I knew it would send my ma scurrying for the window again. “Francis Mackey! Jesus, Mary and holy Saint Joseph!” She pounced and caught me in a hug that left bruises. “You nearly gave me a heart attack; I never thought I’d see you around these parts again. What are you doing here?”
She was mammy-shaped these days, with mammy hair to match, but the dimples were still the same. “This and that,” I said, smiling back. “It seemed like a good moment to see how everyone was getting on.”
“About fecking time, is all I can say. Come in out of that. Here, yous”—two dark-haired, round-eyed little girls were sprawled on the front-room floor—“go on upstairs and play in your room, give me some peace while I talk to this fella here. Go on!” She shooed the girls out with her hands.
“They’re the image of you,” I said, nodding after them.
“They’re a pair of little wagons, so they are. They’ve me worn out, I’m not joking you. My ma says it’s my comeuppance, for all the times I put the heart crossways in her when I was a young one.” She whipped half-dressed dolls and sweet wrappers and broken crayons off the sofa. “And come here to me, I hear you’re in the Guards now. Very respectable, you’re after getting.”
She was holding the armful of toys and smiling up at me, but those black eyes were sharp and watchful: she was testing. “You’d think,” I said, dropping my head and giving her my finest bad-boy grin. “I grew up, is all. Same as yourself.”
She shrugged. “I’m the same as ever, sure. Look around you.”
“So am I. You can take the fella out of the Place . . .”
“But you can’t take the Place out of the fella.” Her eyes stayed wary for another second; then she nodded, a quick little snap, and pointed a Bratz’s foot at the sofa. “Sit down there now. You’ll have a cup of tea, yeah?”
And I was in. There’s no password more powerful than your past. “Ah, Jaysus, no. I’m only after my breakfast.”
Mandy tossed the toys into a pink plastic toy box and slammed the lid. “Are you sure? Then d’you mind if I fold the washing, while we’re talking? Before those two little madams come back and have the place turned upside down again.” She plumped down on the sofa next to me and pulled a washing basket closer. “Did you hear I married Ger Brophy? He’s a chef now. He always did love his food, Ger did.”
“Gordon Ramsay, yeah?” I said, and gave her a wicked grin. “Tell me something, does he bring his spatula home with him, in case you’re bold?”
Mandy squealed and smacked my wrist. “You dirty bastard. You are the same as ever, aren’t you? Ah, he’s no Gordon Ramsay, he’s at one of them new hotels up by the airport. He says it does be mostly families that missed their flights and businessmen looking to take their fancy women somewhere they won’t be snared; nobody minds about the food. One morning, I swear, he was that bored he put bananas in the breakfast fry-ups, just to see what would they do. No one said a fecking word.”
“They must’ve thought it was nouvelle cuisine. Fair play to Ger.”
“I don’t know what they thought it was, but all of them ate it. Egg and sausage and banana.”
I said, “Ger’s a sound man. You both did well there.”
She shook out a little pink sweatshirt with a snap. “Ah, sure, he’s all right. He’s a good laugh. It was always on the cards, anyway; when we told my ma we were engaged, she said she’d seen it coming since we were in diapers. Same as with . . .” A quick glance up. “Same as with most of the weddings round here.”
Back in the day, Mandy would have heard all about that suitcase by this time, complete with detailed gory speculation. The decayed grapevine, plus my man Kevin’s sterling work with Ma, meant that she wasn’t tense and she wasn’t being careful; just a little tactful, so as not to hurt my wounded feelings. I relaxed back into the sofa and enjoyed it while it lasted. I love messy homes, homes where a woman and kids have left their mark on every inch: sticky finger marks down the walls, trinkets and nests of pastel hair-gadgets on the mantelpiece, that smell of flowery things and ironing.
We shot the breeze for a while: her parents, my parents, various neighbors who had got married or had kids or moved out to the suburbs or developed intriguing health problems. Imelda was still around, a two-minute walk away on Hallows Lane, but something at the corners of Mandy’s mouth told me they didn’t see as much of each other any more, and I didn’t ask. Instead I made her laugh: get a woman laughing and you’re halfway to getting her talking. She still had the same round bubbly giggle that exploded out of her and made you want to laugh too.
It took ten minutes or so before Mandy asked, casually, “So tell us, d’you ever hear anything from Rosie?”
“Not a dicky bird,” I said, just as easily. “You?”
“Nothing. I thought . . .” That glance again. “I thought you might have, that’s all.”
I asked, “Did you know?”
Her eyes were down on the socks she was rolling, but her lashes flickered. “What d’you mean?”
“You and Rosie were close. I thought she might have told you.”
“That yous were eloping, like? Or that she . . . ?”
“Either one.”
She shrugged. “Ah, Jaysus, Mandy,” I said, putting a humorous twist on it. “It’s been twenty-odd years. I can promise you, I’m not going to throw a wobbler because girls talk to each other. I only wondered.”
“I hadn’t a notion she was thinking of breaking it off. Honest to God, not a clue. I have to tell you, Francis, when I heard yous two weren’t together, I was only gobsmacked. I thought for definite you’d have been married, with half a dozen kids to put a stop to your gallop.”
“So you did know we were planning on heading off together.”
“Yous went off the same night, sure. Everyone figured.”