15. The Wake
CHAPTER 15
THE WAKE
A man has only so much luck in a lifetime. I mean, I was practically out of the force: a part-timer, filling in paperwork, finding missing cats and bicycles (not that we ever did find the missing cats or the bicycles). You’ve read Freud. Parapraxis is the specialized, technical name for a bungled or faulty action that nevertheless reveals something fundamental about our deeper selves. The Freudian slip, for example. “Nail them on my own,” I’d said to Crabbie. I wasn’t supposed to nail anybody. But clearly, I was craving a win after a year of no wins. And poor Crabbie was forced to patrol the dark places with me to sort out my issues. Again.
South of the border was where the real bungling would begin.
But we’ll get to that...
Belfast to Newry to the Border to Dundalk.
Dundalk Lawn Bowling Club.
Crabbie and me in dark suits.
They weren’t checking IDs coming in, but they were doing a pat-down search. Back to the BMW, which we’d parked behind a fish shop. We left our guns in the boot and threw our shoulder holsters in there too.
Back to the bowling club.
Pat-down.
“How did you know the deceased?” the goon at the front door asked.
“We knew him through the art world. I have some of his paintings,” I said.
The goon nodded. “Why don’t you have a seat over there to the left. There are plenty of tables available,” he said.
We went inside. Bit run-down and garish. Faded candy primary colors you would normally associate with a scary fairground.
Plenty of tables available. In fact, there couldn’t be more than thirty people in here, and most of those looked like old bowling gents come for the free grub. If the goon wanted us to go left, it probably meant that...
Yeah. Over to the right of the room I saw Brendan O’Roarke, surrounded by friends and heavies, near the emergency exit and the bar. He was a big mess of a man with gray hair sticking out all over the place, jet black eyes, and pale gray skin. He had big hands, big builder’s hands, big throttle-you-around-the-neck hands.
Even from here, you got the sulfurous whiff of the true believer.
“Come on, in you go, gents,” another bouncer said. “It’s an open bar. There’s sandwiches at the back. I would get a sandwich now. It’s supposed to fill up.”
Within half an hour, his prediction proved correct. Two busloads of people arrived from Belfast, and before we knew it, the place was full of IRA, ex-IRA, and various Republican sympathizers.
I saw quite a few celebrity Republicans from the seventies: ****** *********, ********* ******, the really quite lovely ********** ********* and even ****** (Mad Dog) *********.
No one was hiding what Alan Locke had been now. They were proud of him, and they were going to raise a glass in his honor. When the Proddy scum police north of the border finally released his body, they’d have a proper funeral too. Armed men firing volleys over the coffin. The works.
The fact that RUC Special Branch hadn’t deemed this wake an event worth attending told you everything you needed to know about Special Branch.
Crabbie and I had been to the bar and got a glass of lager to blend in with everyone else.
“So, are you allowed into a Catholic wake?” I asked him.
“Of course,” he said dismissively, and then added in a whisper, “Will there be kneeling?”
Presbyterians didn’t kneel.
“No kneeling, no prayers, just speeches and drinking and maybe music.”
By nine p.m. it was so crowded, it was easy for us to get close to Brendan’s table without it being suspicious. Brendan was holding forth on cement making. We drifted away. Booze would loosen his tongue.
At ten, a man I didn’t know got up and said a few words about Alan. The man was drunk and mumbled things about the movement and about Alan being a great friend and a great comrade.
When he was done, there was scattered applause, and two fiddles, a bodhran, a guitar, and a set of Irish pipes began to play folk standards.
Crabbie and I drifted in and out of conversations, catching snatches here, snatches there. Close to midnight, I saw Inspector O’Neill and some of his lads, who had also thought to sneak in to see what they could pick up.
I nodded at him.
He nodded back.
We said nothing.
Finally, Crabbie and I managed to get close to Brendan’s table again, where Brendan was talking about death by shotgun.
“No, no, all things considered, a shotgun blast to the head isn’t so bad,” Brendan was saying. “Especially in the old bonce, like. All over in a flash. Stand well back, though. No, that’s an easy way to go. Have you heard about this brain-eating amoeba? That’s a bad one. It lives in lakes, and if it gets up your nose it burrows into your brain. First thing you know is a headache. Headache gets worse and you go in for a CAT scan. And lo and behold, your brain is riddled with amoeba. No way to get it out without turning you into a vegetable. No cure at all. Only thing to do is shoot yourself.”
“Is that why you never learned to swim, Brendan?” a young flunky asked him.
“I never learned to swim, because there were no swimming pools and the sea was too fucking cold.”
An older man came by with a tray full of whiskies and handed them out.
“To Alan!” everyone said, and we raised our lagers.
One of Brendan’s mates took up the subject now. “There’s much worse ways than your amoeba, so there is. Me uncle was in the British army, and he told me what the Japs used to do in Burma. They cut you and stake you out on an anthill. Ants would eat you alive over days. They’d bring you water so you stayed alive while they ate you.”
“Fucking British army scum. That’s what they fucking deserve,” Brendan said. “Only thing worse than the fucking British army is the fucking traitor Micks who work for them.”
“I think he’s talking about us,” I whispered to Crabbie.
“ Ssssh, for God’s sake, Sean!” Crabbie hissed.
“Maybe we should go over there and introduce ourselves.”
“Maybe not.”
“If I had the cancer, I’d jump off the cliffs of Moher,” another of the old stagers was saying.
This brought a round of murmured agreement from the men.
“If you’ve got the bottle to do it, there’s only one way: shoot yourself in the heart first and shoot yourself in the head,” Brendan said.
“After you’ve just shot yourself in the heart?”
“Yup.”
“There’s no way.”
“I’ve seen it done.”
I took this as my cue and broke into the little circle. “What you’ve seen done, gentlemen, is a murder dressed up as a suicide. There’s no way someone could shoot themselves in the heart and then shoot themselves in the head,” I said.
“Who are you?” one of Brendan’s bodyguards asked me.
“You were talking about the worst way to go? A friend of my father’s told me a story once. He worked in the shipyards. He told me that before they launched a ship, they used to put a black cat down into the boiler furnaces to scare off any demons or gremlins that might have gotten on board. He said that one time the apprentice whose job it was to put the cat in there couldn’t get the cat to come out before they fired up the boiler. He went into the furnace to get the cat, they didn’t realize he was in there, they shut the furnace door and ignited the coal. Poor bastard.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Brendan asked me with cold hate in his eyes. It was evident that he knew exactly who I was. He’d seen my photograph. Probably read my file by now.
“Detective Inspector Sean Duffy, Carrick CID,” I said, offering him my hand.
He let the hand hang there, and all the other men in the circle looked on me with unconcealed horror and amazement. A policeman had come here ? To Brendan’s bowling club? To Alan Locke’s wake? Did I have a fucking death wish?
“Ah, yes, Inspector Duffy from Derry,” Brendan said.
“That’s right,” I said.
I offered my outstretched hand to any of the men in Brendan’s circle, but none of them wanted to shake it.
“A nice Catholic boy from Derry working for the Brits. In the RUC, no less,” Brendan said, spitting out the words.
“You got all that right except for the ‘nice’ bit.”
Brendan’s big bodyguard got between him and me. “What brings you here?” he asked.
“Pay my respects to Alan Locke’s friends and family. I’m the copper in charge of his murder investigation.”
“You’re not wanted here, pal.”
“No?” I said, shaking my head.
“This is a private affair, in a private club. You really should fuck off,” Brendan said.
“If you value your kneecaps,” someone else muttered.
“Or your bollocks,” another voice offered.
“I’ve been trying to have an interview with you, Mr. O’Roarke,” I said.
“I’m aware of that. Dundalk Garda have informed me about your request.”
“And?”
“I am considering it.”
“We all want the same thing here,” I said. “We all want to find out who killed Alan Locke.”
“Is that so?” Brendan said, his voice dropping to an ominous burr.
“It is so. So if we could talk to you about your friend Alan?—”
“I said I was considering it!” Brendan shouted, and suddenly the conversation in the immediate vicinity ceased. Even the music hesitated before picking up again.
Brendan whispered something to one of his bodyguards, who physically picked me up and began carrying me to the exit.
I saw O’Neill’s and Crabbie’s panicked faces trailing after me.
“All right, goodbye, then. My commiserations on your loss,” I said.
The bodyguard dumped me outside onto the pavement. “And don’t fucking come back!” he said.
I walked a little bit away from the bowling club until I saw Crabbie and O’Neill.
O’Neill was irked. Crabbie was resigned.
“What the hell was that?” O’Neill asked.
“I asked him for that interview.”
“If you want to commit suicide, mate, do it on your patch, okay?”
Crabbie was shaking his head. “Not a good idea to get into his bad books, Sean, even if you do live in Scotland.”
“I was already in his bad books. He’s read my file. He knows I’m from Derry. He’s been one step ahead of us ever since Alan got shot,” I said.
“Good night, gentlemen, safe journey back across the border,” O’Neill said, and slipped off back into the darkness.
Silence in the BMW back to the border.
Silence from Newry to Belfast.
On the outskirts of Carrickfergus, I turned to Crabbie. “Look, I said I was sorry, all right?”
“I thought you were finally growing up, Sean. I’m disappointed in you,” Crabbie said.
And those words from that man hurt more than I can possibly say.