Adrian McKinty - The Bloomsday Dead

“Have you any brothers or sisters?” I asked.

“Jesus, you’ve no idea, mister.”

“Give them a share of the candy.”

“I will,” the kid promised.

“Give you another twenty if you could russle me up a T-shirt, this one’s fucked.”

The kid nodded, walked across the waste ground, walked into the nearest caravan, came out with a black Led Zeppelin T-shirt. A man appeared and said something to the kid and pointed at me. The kid replied, nodded. Brought me the T-shirt. I put it on.

“What did that man want?” I asked.

“Nothing. He was just telling me there was two men who came after ya, looking for ya, loike, asking questions.”

“What did he say to them?”

The kid grinned.

“Nobody saw anything or anybody.”

“Ok. Good. Which way back into the city center?”

“Down to the right. All the way down the hill.”

I left the boy and walked down the hill, past boarded-up houses and a few scary-looking hoods keeping watch at the corners. This was the heart of a bad area (interestingly, just behind the façade of new Dublin) and I walked fast to get out of it, but not so quickly that I would attract attention. If they thought I was an undercover cop or a rival hood I’d be approached at gunpoint, bundled into a van, and taken somewhere to be interrogated. Take me bloody hours to get out of it.

At the bottom of the hill I came to a bus station and then I saw some familiar street signs.

I was near the river again.

Belfast, I’d told the kid. And Belfast it would be.

The peelers.

Oh, they’d send a couple of beat cops to the exit points. Avoid the train station, avoid the bus station, avoid the airport, but there was no way the Garda could control cars leaving the city, not these days. Dublin was a big, modern commuter city with a thousand roads in and out.

Piss easy, steal a car, drive out of town. Shit, hire a car. They didn’t know who I was. Get my credit card, dial Hertz.

I found a quiet nook and took out my cell phone.

I called up every car-hire place in County Dublin but in every one the story was the same: “We’re all out of cars, there’s a big festival in Dublin to do with James Joyce. You’ll have no problem tomorrow, but not today.”

So, it was either thieve a vehicle or risk the bus or train stations. I really could chance the latter two. I didn’t have much respect for the Garda’s ability to apprehend someone even if they did have a photofit. But then again maybe that would be pushing my luck just too far.

As for the first option. There were hundreds of cars parked right here in the street, but who knew what fuckwit would miss his vehicle fifteen minutes from now, call the cops, and then they’d circulate the license plate and some keen motorcyle cop would lift me. What then? Shoot an unarmed Garda Síochána just trying to do his duty?

Nah. I had another idea. I found the card in my trouser pocket. I phoned the number.

“Hello,” I said when I got connected.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Hey, it’s me, the old geezer from the parade.”

“Oh, you, where did you go?” Riorden asked.

“Hey, let me ask you something, have you got a car, a Volkswagen?”

“Yeah, I do, a Volkswagen Beetle. One of the new ones. Why do you want to know?”

“Uh, I don’t. Just checking. Friend of mine wants to buy a car, he really likes Volkswagens, that’s all. You’re not in the market to sell it?”

“Is that why you called me up?”

“No, you got me. It’s only an excuse, I wanted to see you again and I couldn’t think of a reason for calling you. Where are you?”

“We’re still at Jury’s, do you know it?”

“Aye, I know it.”

Twenty minutes later I walked into Jury’s. A party was in full swing. It was a nice June day, the international media were in town, term was winding down. What more excuse did you need for celebration?

In any case it was packed with students. Standing room only and there wasn’t much room to stand. Two hundred dead easy if someone shouted “Fire.”

I found the girl talking to an enormous black-haired English rugby player in an Aran sweater. She was on lemonade, but he was half wasted and thought his luck was in. I waited till she took a bathroom break before I approached him.

“Fuck off, Hercules, the lady is spoken for,” I said with menace.

“Are you talking to me?” the rugby player asked.

“No, I’m talking to the midget who works you by remote control, now fuck away off before we test the adage, the bigger they are…”

“You’ve got to be pulling my leg?” he said.

“No. I’m not pulling your fucking leg. I’m not climbing up your fucking beanstalk to steal your magic beans either. I’m telling you to fuck away off before I get upset.”

“Jesus, are you looking for trouble?” he persisted.

“Believe me, I don’t have to go looking. I’ll count to ten and you better be out of here, this lady is spoken for.”

“You picked the wrong guy to start a fight with,” he maintained.

As I began my countdown, he clenched his fists.

“One, two, three, four,” I counted and kneed him right in the nut sack. He sank to the floor and as he tumbled I grabbed him by the hair and smacked my fist twice into his face. He wilted, wobbled, fell. I checked to see if anyone had spotted my assault on a brother student, but everyone was drunk, exuberant, not paying attention and I was a fast wee turd when occasion arose.

“Lend a hand here, Nigel can’t hold his drink,” I shouted and pushed the big guy’s head backward onto the concrete floor.

A couple of his mates, looking round for the first time, saw that their pal was out for the count and ran to help him. Just then the girl came out of the toilet.

“Your boyfriend can’t take his drink,” I said.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” the girl said, looking to see that he wasn’t dead, but not much beyond that.

“Good, you deserve better,” I said.

“Who are you?” she asked, exasperated.

I bit my lip.

I was going to romance her but suddenly, from out of nowhere, I was fed up with this story. I wanted to expedite matters. I wanted to bring things to the goddamn climax. There wasn’t time for an hour or two’s worth of bullshit.

“You want the truth?” I asked.

“Yeah?”

“I’m a police officer, I’m undercover. Inspector Brian O’Nolan. Dublin CID. I know you don’t want to hear this in the middle of a party but someone broke into your car,” I said deadpan.

“Someone broke into my car?” she said, horrified.

“That’s right. We ran the plate, your name and number came up and I thought, Jesus, that’s a coincidence, I was talking to that wee lassie this morning.”

“Is that why you asked about it on the phone?”

“Aye, but I hate to tell people bad news on the phone. Thought I’d come in person. Come on. We’d like you to ID the vehicle and drive it to the nearest station for us, if you don’t mind.”

“Jesus, I’m glad I gave you my number,” she said, happy enough to buy the story without a heartbeat.

“Come on, let’s go ID the car.”

Five minutes later and we were at a small parking lot near Trinity. I deflected easily the many “You don’t look like a cop” or “You have a bit of an American accent” questions, reassured her that her car was relatively unharmed, and asked her a couple of details about her habits, friends, and teachers to see if she would be missed.

“There’s the car,” she said, pointing to a blue Volkswagen. “Shite. It looks ok from here.”

I checked the street.

There were people about but no one paying us any particular attention. We walked to the vehicle.