Кен Бруен: In the Galway Silence

Jean and Claude Renaud were twins.

Terrible twins.

Truly.

Les enfants terribles .

Their father was French and the mother from Galway.

On their eighteenth birthday they were given matching sports cars. That neither could drive was neither here nor there. The father had made a greedy fortune from one of the first hedge funds in Ireland and was cute enough to get out before the ax fell. He then invested in property and made more.

Instead of being jailed, he was made a Freeman of the City.

The twins on the said birthday went on a massive pub crawl.

Ingested

Ecstasy

Speed

Coke

Jack Daniel’s.

And did it bring them any joy?

Nope.

Just added to their sense of entitlement. Barred from the clubs along Quay Street, they headed for the Spanish Arch, seeking aggravation. Saw a man huddled in a wheelchair on the edge of the pier. Jean said,

“Let’s fuck with the retard.”

Claude shouted,

“Hey, spastic!”

Jean came up behind the chair as Claude came from the front. There was a moment of utter quiet, then the man lashed out and caught Claude in the groin, and then he was out of the chair and hit Jean with the flat of his hand in the throat. Moving quickly, he bundled them forcibly into the chair and secured them with duct tape, grabbed Jean’s mouth and applied a liberal dose of superglue to his lips, then the same to Claude.

Finally, he took a sign wrapped in cellophane, attached it to the back of the twins, stood back, and, with a firm push, sent them into the water.

He waited as the water settled over their frenzied thrashing and, satisfied that he could read the sign, turned on his heel, strolled away.

I was happy.

Unbelievable as that sounds.

I had endured just about every trauma there is and had reached the point of suicide, and then,

Things got worse.

I was friends with a nun, which is as unlikely as me being happy but true. I had helped her out some years back and we remained friends. She introduced me to her cousin Marion and we had clicked.

Were even considering moving in together. I had moved to a new apartment on the Salthill Promenade. Big spacious place with a view of the ocean that was astounding. I had been

Involved

Mired

Baffled

Over the past few years with a homicidal goth punk named Emily / Emerald. She had wreaked all kinds of murderous havoc until I had reluctantly taken her off the board.

Now get this.

She had left me a shit pile of money.

Go figure.

Thus the new pad and certainly a factor in my new view of the world.

For the zillionth time I had cut back on my drinking. Yeah, yadda, yadda. As Marion was fond of a drink, I was reasonably free from censure for the time being. Felt no need to mention the wee issue of Xanax. I had also stopped beating people in every sense.

Marion came with her own story: namely, a son.

Nine years old and the first time I met him I would like to think we bonded and shared warm days out at hurling matches.

Dream on.

Marion brought him to the GBC, my favorite restaurant as they still served old-fashioned grub and had no list of calories on the menu. The boy was small with blond hair and, fuck, a curled lip, from attitude rather than design. Before I could speak, he whined,

“Why couldn’t we go to McDonald’s?”

I put out my hand, said,

“I’m Jack.”

He looked at my hand like it was diseased, scoffed,

“Who even shakes hands these days?”

I let that slide.

He sighed, said,

“I’m Jeffrey.”

Least that is how I heard it. I said,

“Good to meet you, Jeffrey.”

He raised his eyes to heaven, said,

“It’s Joffrey.”

I said,

“What?”

He looked at his mother, said,

“You tell him.”

She said, with a tinge of mild hysteria,

“Like Joffrey in Game of Thrones ?”

He stared at me, asked,

“You do know what that is?”

This asked with a world-weariness.

I said,

“Joffrey is the spoiled pup that gets poisoned.”

I was sitting in Garavan’s, black coffee with a base of Jay. Reading the latest horror from Trump. Le Pen was ranting in France and all of Europe in turmoil.

When you manage to grab the snug, it is implicit that you do not want company. A large man appeared before me, blocking the light, muttered,

“Taylor.”

He was in that bad fifties range with streaks of stringy blond hair clinging precariously to the scalp. Disconcerting was the hint of baby powder from him. From a grown man it is just creepy.

I said,

“I’m busy.”

He moved in front of me, launched a slew of photos on the table, said,

“I’m Pierre Renaud. You have heard of me.”

Not a question.

I said,

“Nope.”

There was a trace of accent in his speech, as with those for whom English is a second language.

He said,

“I received Man of the Year five years ago.”

Before I could be scathing about that, he said,

“My beloved sons, look, murdered.”

I looked at the photos and could make out two men bound and bloated in

A wheelchair?

I asked,

“Is that a notice pinned to one of them?”

“Yes.”

I couldn’t decipher it, asked,

“What is it?”

He took a deep breath, then said,

“Silence.”

I tried,

“I am deeply sorry for your loss.”

That seemed to seriously annoy him. He said,

“Your condolences mean nothing.”

He produced a thick envelope, dropped it beside my empty glass, said,

“You will find who did this terrible thing and bring them to me.”

I pushed the envelope aside, said,

“I won’t.”

This shocked him. He asked,

“You say no to me?”

I stood, pushed past him, got a refill, then back to the snug where he was still standing. I sat and went back to the paper. He leaned over, said,

“You will do this for me.”

I was sorry for his loss but beginning to tire of the aggression, said,

“Go to the Guards.”

He spat in contempt, said,

“Imbeciles.”

I shrugged, not something I had ever done but felt it was at least Gallic. He gathered up the photos, said,

“ À bientôt .”

Sounded a lot like

“Fuck you.”

I didn’t want to investigate the murder of the twins. To immerse in darkness again was a road I had no wish to travel. Battered and wounded by all the loss of previous cases, I had barely managed to survive. Beatings, attacks, had left me with

Mutilated fingers

Hearing problems

A limp

Lethal dreams

And

A shitload of anxiety that Xanax barely kept a lid on. With a new woman in my life and happy for the very first time, would I risk it all?

Nope.

But.

It is that very but that has led me astray so many times. A sly curiosity niggled at me so I figured,

“Vague inquiries couldn’t hurt.”

I had one ally / friend still remaining in the Guards.

Owen Daglish.

He was a drinker of fierce proportions and that might have held my link to him. When I called him, he groaned, said,