Himself(20)

‘That’s you?’

‘That was me.’ She puts her hand up to her head and touches the few white hairs remaining on her naked little head.

Mahony spots her wig, caught on the leg of an upturned hat stand. He brushes it off and hands it to her.

She takes it and smiles, her eyes bright with checked tears. ‘Pour us a drink, kiddo.’

Back in bed with a whiskey, Mrs Cauley watches the dust settle. She sucks at her teeth. ‘Shauna will be hopping. She’ll have to run the broom around the corners. She won’t like that, the idle mare.’

The room is demolished; many of the larger stacks remain standing but the floor is littered with piles of papers and broken books.

Mahony hands the playbill back to her. ‘The Playboy of the Western World, by John Millington Synge.’

‘A great play by a great man,’ Mrs Cauley says, smoothing the edges of the paper gently.

Johnnie smiles at her from the end of the bed.

‘But you’re wondering,’ she murmurs, ‘what this play has to do with our investigation?’

Mahony looks outside. It’s nearly dawn and he’s buckled on the worst kind of whiskey and in no fit state for guessing games. Somewhere in his flittered mind he marvels at Mrs Cauley’s tolerance of cheap liquor, for, apart from the jaunty slant of her wig, she’s as bright as a blackbird.

‘And here it is.’ She taps the playbill on her lap. ‘The St Patrick’s annual fundraising production presents a premium opportunity for the amateur detective.’

Mahony fights a wave of nausea. ‘I don’t get you.’

‘Every man and his mother rolls into town for it – they all come, it’s an event.’

Johnnie gets up and rambles through a knoll of pamphlets to the French doors to watch the sun rise behind the trees. His face is glowing. Mahony has never seen a dead man appear happier.

Mrs Cauley looks thoughtful. ‘First off, we’ll use the auditions to quiz the hell out of them. They’ll be there in droves, lining up ready for a good interrogation.’

Johnnie nods primly and straightens his tie.

‘Then we use the play to flaunt you, kiddo. To keep you right under their noses, in their line of sight,’ says Mrs Cauley, jubilantly. ‘We put you centre stage.’

Johnnie takes a bow.

Mahony stares at her. ‘Ah now – Jaysus, I can’t act.’

‘Think about it, Mahony.’ She leans forward in the bed. ‘It won’t be long before they work out who you are, if some of them haven’t already. You’re the spit of your mother: the same big wounded eyes and damaged little smile.’

Mahony squints at her; he hasn’t the strength to argue.

‘You can only remind them of Orla and, no offence, Orla is the last person this town wants reminding of.’

Mahony nods. ‘Fair enough.’

‘So you parading about on that stage as large as life will wind the bastards right up.’ She pats her quilt gleefully and chuckles. ‘Then we sit back and let them give themselves away. Get them rattled enough and someone’s bound to point the finger.’

‘So I act in the play?’

‘You do. Have you another plan?’

Johnnie twitches his moustache in Mahony’s direction in an attempt at a sympathetic smile.

Mrs Cauley narrows her eyes at Mahony. ‘Are you the kind of cowboy to run from trouble?’ There’s a bad kind of delight in her voice.

Mahony laughs and shakes his head.

‘So let’s ride headlong into town with our guns blazing.’ Mrs Cauley holds out her mug. ‘Set ’em up.’

Mahony reaches forwards and pours out the last of the whiskey, wondering if the feeling will ever return to his fingers.

‘A toast to you, my leading man. And to our investigation.’ Mrs Cauley downs her drink in one, her eyes hardly watering. She grins, wickedly. ‘And to the straight-up joy of getting Mulderrig’s bollocks in a twist.’





Chapter 7


May 1948


Orla sat on a log squinting one dark eye against the smoke that rose from the cigarette in her mouth.

The man stood, tucking in his shirt, watching her. The man knew that she didn’t care whether he was there or not. She wouldn’t sit prettily like other girls. Look how she sat with her legs open. The slut. She was more like an animal than a little girl.

The man wanted blushes and shy kisses.

He wanted her to take his money with a bit of gratitude.

He walked over to her and took the cigarette out of her mouth. Her face was filthy and so were her clothes. Her body always smelt sour. Every time the man went home he was shaken with the fear that he couldn’t wash her off him and that his wife would come to know what he had done, what he couldn’t keep himself from doing.

The man finished the cigarette and threw it on the ground. He knew he wasn’t the first. He knew he wasn’t the only. He knew not to go empty-handed to the forest behind the cottage. He knew that for extra she’d fight back. But sometimes he had to beg. And he always had to pay.

When she was distracted, when her eyes were fixed on the light through the trees behind you, that was the time to look at her. Because when her hard black child’s eyes were staring back at you, well, you just couldn’t think.