The little shit leaned over and swung his fist, then stood back as Matty slammed the boot shut.
The car made a screeching noise as it accelerated. By then, Dixie was walking quickly away from Portmahon Terrace.
28
The overalls that John Grace was wearing were paint-streaked and dusty. When he opened the front door to Harry Synnott he had a document wallet under his right arm and a sandpaper block in his left hand.
Synnott grinned. ‘If you whip out a pair of overalls and hand me a paintbrush, I’m out of here.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m almost finished.’
Grace dumped the document wallet on the stairs and accepted the bottle of Johnnie Walker that Synnott offered. ‘That ought to do the job.’
Grace stepped around a filing cabinet in the hallway as he led Synnott towards the kitchen. ‘I’m converting my office back into a bedroom – Jess is moving in.’
Jess was Grace’s daughter. ‘She’s just starting a full-time job with an advertising outfit. The price of childcare, it makes more sense to move back in here for a while, until she’s settled. Me retiring, that makes it easier. Frees up the home office – used to be Jess’s room, anyway.’
There were four box files on the kitchen table, three red, one blue and white. Synnott saw that they were marked with the names of cases that John Grace had worked on.
‘Souvenirs?’
Grace shook his head. ‘Mindless hoarding. Whenever a case ended, I’d stick a copy of the papers on a shelf. Most of them I junked last week. Those four, the big cases, I figured I’d look them over, see if they’re worth holding on to.’
Harry Synnott had never collected such keepsakes. He remembered what mattered, and he reckoned that what wasn’t strong enough to stick in his memory probably wasn’t worth remembering.
John Grace put on the kettle, then moved the old case files onto a corner of the kitchen counter. ‘The big cases, the ones that mattered.’ He smiled. ‘Until you look at them.’ He opened one of the box files. Most of the statements and reports were held together by a loose fastener. There were two slim court transcripts in comb bindings.
‘A man named Wallace – crippled his neighbour in a fight over a hedge. It was a big deal at the time, all over the papers. Columnists waffling on about the shocking lack of values in modern society. I saw myself on the nine o’clock news, walking into the court carrying an evidence sack with the garden shears that did done the damage.’ He dropped the file on the table. ‘Pathetic gobshites, both of them. The victim was a loudmouth who’d bullied his family for years. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer scumbag. The other fella, Wallace, was the neighbourhood nice guy and he’d taken all kinds of hell from the scumbag before he let loose. He shit himself in the van on the way to Mountjoy. Hasn’t worked since he got out of prison.’
‘No one said life was fair.’
‘And that was one of my big cases.’ Grace picked up the file again and held it for a moment. Then he dropped it into a large cardboard box on the floor at the end of the counter. The file sat on top of an accumulation of documents, newspapers and magazines obviously destined for junking.
‘Let’s not get bogged down in that shit.’ Grace picked up the Golden Pages. ‘Chinese or Indian?’
‘You’re, what, now – forty-five?’
John Grace said, ‘Forty-eight’.
‘Young to be a grandfather.’
‘We started early, Mona and me.’
Grace had always looked younger than his years. Harry Synnott knew that at forty-four he looked older than Grace. He was always surprised when he caught a sudden glimpse of his reflection. The lines that defined his face were deeper than he remembered, while the tinge of grey made his hair look not so much distinguished as tired. He knew two people around his own age who had died suddenly and John Grace’s premature retirement was another unpleasant milestone. O’Keefe’s offer of the Europol job had at first seemed like the interruption of a career in mid-flight. Now he was thinking of the move as the natural end of one career and the start of something else.
Could be it’s a blessing. Stick too long at the one thing, you don’t notice the slide into repetition, habit, passing the time until retirement.
‘Have you figured out – I mean, at forty-eight, this is going to be a long retirement.’
They were sitting in the kitchen, the table cluttered with their dinner plates and various tinfoil containers of food.
‘Financially I’m OK,’ Grace said. ‘The mortgage is paid off, the pension’s not bad, Mona and I don’t need much, apart from the odd week down the country. Later on, maybe I’ll pick up the occasional nixer. The security business is wide open to a former detective inspector. Nothing’s certain, but however it works out I’ve gone as far as I’m going in the policing business.’
Synnott spent some time on his King Po Beef. Then he said, ‘How much does this have to do with Nicky?’ Synnott had never spoken to Grace about the incident in which Grace had seen another policeman shot dead. At the funeral, Grace had still been too traumatised to exchange more than the usual clichés with commiserating colleagues. That case wasn’t among the box files John Grace had kept.
Grace took his time over a forkful of rice. When he spoke his voice was flat. ‘Nothing. Everything.’
When they were moving from the kitchen into the living room, John Grace put his three remaining case files side by side on the kitchen counter. After a moment, he picked one up and dumped it in the waste box. He tapped another and said, ‘That was a sad one – two young lads, just a bit wild, got into a fight with a couple of hard men. Both kids got a kicking, one never recovered consciousness. We got one of the hard men for murder, his mate got off. He was dead within a year – an uncle of the dead lad caught up with him.’ Grace dropped that file, too, into the waste box. The remaining file was marked
Swanson Avenue.
Harry Synnott said, ‘Where did you put the whisky?’
They sat in the living room, with the curtains pulled back. Beyond the back garden, the landscape curved up towards Howth. ‘Even that one,’ John Grace said, ‘all it was – end of the day – the Swanson Avenue thing was no more than an ambitious loser who couldn’t keep his zip shut. Pissed off at the missus because she found out and might take his comfy little life away. We were smarter than he was – which, when you think of it, is no great compliment to us. Pathetic.’
Synnott said nothing.
‘I’m not saying it didn’t matter – the work we did.’ Grace swirled his glass and the ice made a noise. He sipped the whisky. ‘Bastard deserved what he got. All I’m saying is, looking back, even at the ones that were big at the time – they don’t amount to much more than sweeping up the shit in the crazy house.’
John Grace was pouring Johnnie Walker over ice and talking about a detective he knew who’d retired and moved to the country and he’d never been happier. Sitting a few feet away, Harry Synnott made an agreeable noise. He’d been distracted ever since the conversation about Grace’s retirement plans.
I wouldn’t know what to do.
Without the job of policing, there was no end of things that Harry Synnott might take up to fill his time, but there wasn’t anything that had the sense of—
What?
Substance? Power?
More than that.
Reality.
– that policing brought to his life. Other people found their own way of pinning things down, dealing with the chaos and the chance and the randomness of it all. Family, hobbies, games, community work – they were fine for those who could settle for that kind of thing. In Harry Synnott’s mind, none of those things would even survive without the pattern laid down by law enforcement. It was what mattered, and he couldn’t imagine existing without being part of it.
Law and order. The means and the end.
The means are defective, so the ends are arbitrary.
The law is a swamp patrolled by alligators in wigs and gowns. They operate by rules that others hardly know exist, let alone understand.
Even when you think you know what the law says, some smartarse in a wig finds a new wrinkle in an old rule and you watch some sniggering thug waltz out of court.
When the law is a bouncing ball on a spinning wheel, all that a righteous man can aim for is order.
Harry Synnott looked down at the ice cubes sliding around the bottom of his glass. He’d downed the last whisky without even noticing.
John Grace was right. When you stood back from the detail, even the big cases were just the pathetic flopping about of blundering humans trying to find a short cut to a slice of something better. The police couldn’t stop it happening: at best they could try to find an acceptable pattern in which to rearrange the debris.
Maybe that was precious little, but it was still something.
Maybe in a thousand years.
John Grace was talking about another detective who’d retired, a man embittered by a lack of promotion. ‘He seems a lot calmer now.’
Harry Synnott said, ‘He was never very good at the job.’
Harry Synnott knew that what good policemen do is make order from chaos. Without order there’s no meaning. He knew that the day when he stopped being part of that would be the day he stopped living. His life might still have days and nights in it but nothing else.
I wouldn’t know what to do.
*
At first, Shelley Hogan didn’t notice Dixie arrive in The Bronze Bean coffee shop. One assistant was clearing tables, another hadn’t turned up this evening. Shelley was making two cappuccinos for a couple at a window table who were making no secret of their impatience. Meanwhile, Shelley was half-listening to a slim young woman in tight jeans and a halter-neck top who had a complaint about the quality of her latte. Shelley wondered how anyone could have so much to say about a cupful of anything.
Stay calm. The customer is always right, even when she’s a cow.
The woman said, ‘It’s the principle of the thing. It’s about respecting the customer.’
Shelley noticed Dixie standing behind and to the left of the mouthy young woman.
‘Hi, sweetie.’
The woman looked from Shelley to Dixie and back again. Then she said, ‘Christ, what’s the point.’ She left the latte on the counter and by the time she got back to her table her friend, an equally slim young woman with a large ring on every finger, and on both thumbs, was getting to her feet. The two walked out without looking back.
‘How are ya? Coffee?’
Dixie shook her head. Shelley felt a surge of tenderness towards her friend. She seemed more frayed than at any time since the old days, after Owen died. Her looks were buried under the fear and the worry, she wasn’t taking care of herself, her clothes were shite. Today she was wearing jeans and a dark green top that she’d borrowed from Shelley’s flat, and they did nothing for her. The sparkle, the bounce, all the things that made her Dixie had been drained out of her.
Shelley served the cappuccinos and returned to the counter. Dixie said, ‘I spent the afternoon wandering around. Brendan’s in trouble, two guys came and – look, I can’t go home.’
‘You’ve got a key, sweetie, you know you’re welcome. When I get out of here tonight I’m going to Robbie’s gaff, then I’m back here at lunchtime tomorrow. You’ve got the place to yourself for the weekend.’
Dixie hesitated. Then, ‘Any improvement – moneywise?’
Shelley made a face. ‘I’m going to have to get somewhere that pays better than this kip. I’ve ten or fifteen in my bag, that’s about it.’ There wasn’t anything that Shelley hadn’t already considered – nothing to sell that would fetch what Dixie needed, no one to try to borrow from who wouldn’t back away. Shelley herself was as close to the edge as she’d ever been. Robbie would keep her supplied with enough smack or blow to keep her head together, and until the next pay day came her mother was good for the price of enough groceries to make the difference.
Dixie said, ‘I had to ask, just in case something—’
‘What’s your name?’
The voice came from the left, over by the cash register. Shelley turned and saw that the cow in the halter-neck top was back.
‘Sorry?’
The woman said, ‘I want an apology.’
‘For what?’
Dixie was heading towards the door.
‘Dixie?’
Dixie turned and shrugged. ‘See you tomorrow.’
‘If I don’t get an apology—’
Shelley turned to the complaining woman and said, ‘I’m sorry – for whatever – OK?’
‘I can always take my custom elsewhere, you know.’
On her way out the door, Dixie passed the complaining woman’s companion, the woman with rings on each finger.
When Shelley spoke her voice was low, without anger. ‘Just piss off, will you?’
The woman stared at her for several moments, then turned and held her shoulders back as she walked quickly towards the door. Shelley made a dismissive noise with her tongue and her teeth. Several customers looked like they were pretending not to have noticed the squabble. The cappuccino couple at the table by the window stared at Shelley, making their disapproval plain. She gave them the sweetest smile she could manage.