Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)(71)
By the time I managed to unhook myself from everyone and find myself a nice cold can and an inconspicuous corner, I felt like I had run some kind of surreal psych-ops gauntlet carefully designed to disorient me beyond any chance of recovery. I leaned back against the wall, pressed the can to my neck and tried not to catch anyone’s eye.
The mood of the room had swung upwards, the way wakes do: people had worn themselves out on pain, they needed to catch their breath before they could go back there. The volume was rising, more people were piling into the flat and there was a burst of laughter from a gang of lads near me: “And just when the bus starts pulling away, right, Kev leans out the top window with the traffic cone up like this and he’s yelling at the cops through it, ‘KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!’ . . .” Someone had pushed back the coffee table to clear a space in front of the fireplace, and someone else was pulling Sallie Hearne up to start the singing. She did the compulsory bit of protesting, but sure enough, once someone had got her a drop of whiskey to wet her throat, there it was: “There were three lovely lassies from Kimmage,” and half the room joining in on the echo, “From Kimmage . . .” Every party in my childhood had kicked off the sing-along the same way, right back to me and Rosie and Mandy and Ger hiding under tables to dodge being sent to the group kiddie bed in whoever’s back bedroom. These days Ger was bald enough that I could check my shave in his head.
I looked around at the room and I thought, Someone here. He would never have missed this. It would have stuck out a mile, and my guy was very, very good at keeping his nerve and blending in. Someone in this room, drinking our booze and ladling out the maudlin memories and singing along with Sallie.
Kev’s mates were still cracking up; a couple of them could hardly breathe. “. . . Only it’s around ten minutes before we stop pissing ourselves laughing, right? And then we remember that we were legging it so hard we just jumped on the first bus we saw, we don’t have a f*cking clue where we’re going . . .”
“And whenever there’s a bit of a scrimmage, sure I was the toughest of all . . .” Even Ma, on the sofa sandwiched protectively between Auntie Concepta and her nightmare friend Assumpta, was singing along: red-eyed, dabbing at her nose, but raising her glass and sticking out all her chins like a fighter. There was a gaggle of little kids running around at knee level, wearing their good clothes and clutching chocolate biscuits and keeping a wary eye out for anyone who might decide they were up too late. Any minute now they would be hiding under the table.
“So we get off the bus and we think we’re somewhere in Rathmines, and the party’s in Crumlin, not a chance we’re gonna make it. And Kevin says, ‘Lads, it’s Friday night, it’s all students round here, there’s got to be a party somewhere . . .’ ”
The room was heating up. It smelled rich, reckless and familiar: hot whiskey, smoke, special-occasion perfume and sweat. Sallie pulled up her skirt and did a little dance step on the hearth, between verses. She still had the moves. “When he’s had a few jars he goes frantic . . .” The lads hit their punch line—“ . . . And by the end of the night, Kev’s gone home with the fittest girl in the place!”—and doubled over, shouting with laughter and clinking their cans to Kevin’s long-ago score.
Every undercover knows the dumbest thing you can ever do is start thinking you belong, but this party had been built into me a long time before that lesson. I joined in on the singing—“Goes frantic . . .”—and when Sallie glanced my way I gave her an approving wink and a little lift of my can.
She blinked. Then her eyes slid away from mine and she kept singing, half a beat faster: “But he’s tall and he’s dark and romantic, and I love him in spite of it all . . .”
As far as I knew, I had always got on just fine with all the Hearnes. Before I could make sense of this one, Carmel materialized at my shoulder. “D’you know something?” she said. “This is lovely, so it is. When I die, I’d love a send-off like this.”
She was holding a glass of wine cooler or something equally horrific, and her face had that mixture of dreamy and decisive that goes with just the right amount of drink. “All these people,” she said, gesturing with the glass, “all these people cared about our Kev. And I’ll tell you something: I don’t blame them. He was a dote, our Kevin. A little dote.”
I said, “He was always a sweet kid.”
“And he grew up lovely, Francis. I wish you’d had a chance to get to know him properly, like. My lot were mad about him.”
She shot me a quick glance and for a second I thought she was going to say something else, but she checked herself. I said, “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Darren ran away once—only the once, now, he was fourteen—and, sure, I wasn’t even worried; I knew straightaway he’d gone to Kevin. He’s only devastated, Darren is. He says Kevin was the only one of the lot of us that wasn’t mental, and now there’s no point to being in this family.”
Darren was mooching around the edges of the room, picking at the sleeves of his big black jumper and doing a professional emo sulk. He looked miserable enough that he had even forgotten to be embarrassed about being there. I said, “He’s eighteen and his head’s wrecked. He’s not firing on all cylinders right now. Don’t let him get to you.”
“Ah, I know, he’s only upset, but . . .” Carmel sighed. “D’you know something? There’s ways I think he’s right.”