Back to Hidden Valley by four. The light in the kitchen. Laura was huddled in the armchair and immediately blurted out,

“He was here, he was waiting when I came in. I didn’t see him at first and he gave me a terrible start. He seemed to think that was funny. He said he’s a social worker who takes his work seriously and felt he should make a house call as you are drinking so much. He asked if I was your wife or if I was even Ann Henderson, and then he said that you, for an alcoholic, sure do manage to pull a lot of women and what was the attraction? Couldn’t I find a normal guy or was this just some kind of weird kick?”

That she was now shaking uncontrollably tore my guts. I went over, bent down, said,

“It’s OK now. I’m here and I won’t leave you.”

She grabbed hold of me, pulled me tight, said,

“He said he was a friend of yours, Jack.”

“OK…did he touch you?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Jack, he scared me.”

“It’s all right, honest; we’ll go to bed and I’ll hold you close, and nothing like this will ever happen again.”

She believed me. As she drifted off to sleep, wrapped tight round me, I so badly wanted to go get the 9mm, go right round and blow his sick fucking head off. Those moments definitely influenced everything that subsequently happened. If I had to pinpoint one second when I made the worst judgement of my life, I’d say it began then.

Brendan Flood rang at noon the next day. Had the address and Bryson’s work itinerary. I asked,

“How’d you get all this stuff?”

“The Lord provides.”

“He sure does.”

“I mentioned you at our group.”

“Group?”

“We meet for prayers, say the rosary, ask for healing.”

“I see.”

Did I?

“Your name will be uttered for the next nine weeks.”

Nine weeks, 9mm…ammunition of all kinds.

“Thanks, I think.”

“Don’t mock, Jack. Miracles happen; look at how I’ve repented.”

That’s what worried me. I rang Jury’s and got a very groggy Keegan. I asked,

“Can we meet?”

“Oh, God, what time is it? What country is it?”

“ Ireland.”

“Shit, I thought I went home.”

“Can you find the GBC at three?”

“Is it a pub?”

“It’s a café.”

“Not a pub?”

“We have work to do.”

“Then it should be a pub.”

And he hung up.

I considered bringing the gun, but wasn’t Keegan as much weapon as anyone needs? He was late. I ordered a tea. The waitress said,

“We have lovely scones.”

“So my mother says.”

Her ears went back, interest riding high, asked,

“Do I know her?”

Time to shut her down, said,

“Hardly, she’s dead.”

No more pleasantries. When Keegan arrived, he got short shrift, and he said,

“That’s the first unpleasant person I’ve met in Ireland.”

“You think so? She offered me scones.”

“Fuck her.”

Despite this, he seemed remarkably chipper. I said so. He produced a silver hip flask. It had the Galway emblem. He said,

“My chick got it for me. It’s got poteen.”

“Poitín.”

“Didn’t I say that?”

“Sure you did.”

He took a hefty slug, said,

“Argh…the waitress looks better already. Want a blast?”

“No, thanks. Bryson’s been round my house.”

I then relayed the events of the last few days, including Jeff’s baby. He said,

“Down’s syndrome. There was a villain on my patch, he had a little girl like that.”

“How was she?”

He lit up.

“ Chelsea, yea, I remember her name. Oh, she was a beauty, class act. Alas, I used her to hit at her old man.”

“What?”

“Don’t get pious on me, Jacko. I’m a cop, not a very nice guy, which is why we’re here and I’m taking grief from some ugly cunt of a waitress.”

He looked over at her. She’d been about to bring him a menu, but seeing his face, she changed her mind. He said,

“If a piece of filth like Bryson came to my house, put a fright on my woman, I’d put him in the ground.”

He looked rabid. Spittle formed at the corner of his mouth. He continued,

“Last year, we’d a serial rapist in Clapham. The brass used my WPC as a decoy. Hung her out to dry, the reckless bastards. Her back-up got delayed. I didn’t.”

“What happened?”

“He had her on the ground, her tights torn off, a knife to her throat, shouting obscenities. I pulled him off, and know what he did?”

“No.”

“He laughed at me, said he’d be out in six months and he’d do her then.”

“Would he…be out?”

“Less time probably.”

“So what did you do?”

“Helped him fall on his knife.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Hadn’t we better make a move?”

I said,

“Take a peek at the corner table by the door.”

He did.

A well-dressed man, obviously distressed, was pouring out a story to a middle-aged couple. They were listening eagerly, hanging on to his every word. Keegan asked,

“What’s going down, a scam?”

“If compassion is a scam, then yes. He’s telling them in broken if well-accented English how he left a small bag in a café corner. But he is upset, so many cafés, they all seem alike. All his valuables are there, ticket, passport, credit cards.”

“The mangy bastard, does he score?”

“He doesn’t want anything, leastways nothing material. He gets off on their compassion, their joint upset at his calamity.”

“You know him?”

“Sure, he used to be a guard.”

“Someone should give him a slap round the earhole.”

“Why? It’s the much lauded ‘victimless crime’ in all its classic glory. All he takes is their time and a drop of their emotions.”

We got outside and I said,

“Bryson has a studio apartment near the docks.”

Keegan wasn’t done with the compassion deal.

“This is one strange country, and you, Jack, might be the strangest in it.”

“Ah, Keegan, come on, don’t tell me you don’t have characters like him on your beat?”

“Dozens. In London, though, he’d get their address, then come some slow Tuesday, he’d nip round, rape the woman, behead the man.”

“That happened?”

“I had a dog once, Meyer Meyer, after a character in Ed McBain, a mongrel. I heard they can be babe magnets.”

“Was he?”

“He got the babes, all right. I got the dogs, still barking some of them.”

I laughed.

“There was a psycho loose then, the papers called him ‘the Torch’. He covered Meyer in petrol, flicked a match.”

“Jesus.”

“I liked old Meyer, he was good company.”

“What did you do to the Torch?”

“Nothing.”

“Ah, come on, Keegan.”

“We never caught him.”

“Oh.”

Christopher McQuarrie, The Usual Suspects screenwriter, turned director with The Way of the Gun, said,

“I was afraid of hiring James Caan because I’d heard stories. Then the first thing he said to me was, ‘You sick fuck.’

“I guess he’d heard stories about me, too.”

I was telling Keegan this as we approached Merchants Road, but a trawler away from the docks. I asked him,

“How do we play this?”

He gave a sardonic smile, said,

“Straight.”

He produced keys and got us through the front door. Up one flight to 107, the apartment. Keegan again with the keys and we were in. The first sensation was smell, reek of incense. Keegan said,

“Our boy likes to smoke dope.”

“He smokes incense?”

“Cop on.”

I tried.

A large living room, looking like a garbage tip. Throw rugs on the floor, items of clothing scattered everywhere. Keegan said,

“Not a tidy lad.”

The kitchen was a mess. Discarded cartons of junk food on every surface. Dishes piled high on the sink. Keegan ordered,

“You do the living room, I’ll toss the bedroom.”

I found a stack of Time Out’s, the gay listings particularly well-thumbed. On the table was Fred Kaplan’s Gore Vidal. I shouted that in to Keegan and added,