Ken Bruen

Purgatory

Part 1

The Men

The skateboarders had that peculiar blend of Irish self-consciousness, dumb persistence. The unusually good weather in early January had led to a makeshift ramp that was ambitiously steep and high. The Council would have removed this but had its hands full with the Occupiers, who had a large tent perched to the left side of Eyre Square.

Too, the skateboarders kept the locals from lynching the Council over various charges.

Water

Refuse

Home

And just about damn everything else.

Three Guards were deemed sufficient to watch the growing crowd for what was rumored to be a spectacular attempt.

A double flip in midair from Joseph, a sixteen-year-old whiz flier from Tuam. He was small. Undistinguished, with the revamped grunge look that owed more to the new poverty than to fashion. Quiet seeped as he took his run at the ramp. A slight ah from the crowd as he accelerated faster than they’d expected, then he was airborne, high above the ramp, left the board, was in mid-turn when the single shot rang out.

He seemed to hang for a moment, the top right side of his brain scattering in a slow mist, then a loud scream from the crowd as his body hurled to the concrete.

Two people were hurt in the panic.

A skater had the presence of mind to steal the almost-famous board.

1

“Your crazy daughter is on our short list.”

“There’s nothing wrong with her.”

“She talks to people who aren’t there.”

“No she doesn’t, she only listens.”

— Carol O’Connell, author of The Chalk Girl

My life seemed to have reached a time of calm. New home, new(ish) habits, new people.

Prize bonds.

Who knew?

Who the fuck knew?

A staple of my father’s generation. People bought them for their family’s future. The Lotto and lotteries of every ilk came down the greed pike and these forgotten bonds languished in drawers or the pages of family Bibles never opened.

I had, owing to a threat to my father’s reputation, rummaged among his few possessions.

Kept in a Lyons Tea chest, his few papers scorched my heart. A certificate of loyalty to the Knights of Columbanus, an Inter-Counties semifinal medal in hurling, now as tarnished as the country. A fade to faded picture of the family at

Get this

The fucking beach.

Not exactly a Californian scene. Didn’t evoke a Beach Boys theme.

No.

My parents, in their street clothes, with a summer concession of my father’s, sleeves rolled up. My mother was wearing what might have then been called

A summer frock.

Save they didn’t do seasonal.

She wore the same item in winter, with a cardigan added. She did have her one habitual trait.

The bitterness.

Leaking from her down-turned mouth to every resentful fiber of her being. I was maybe eight in the photo, an ugly child who grew to embrace ugliness as a birthright. Tellingly, my father’s hands were on my shoulders, my mother’s were folded in that

“What are you looking at?”

Pose she perfected every day of her miserable life.

My mother wasn’t a simple bitch.

She was more evolved, a cunning sociopath who hated the world under the guise of piety.

Dead for years now, so did I finally, Oprah-like, come to understand and, yes, alleluia,

Forgive?

Yeah, like fuck.

And, oh my God, she would spin in her grave to know those prize bonds were sitting there. There may not be justice but there is sure some cosmic twisted karma. Took a while for the bonds to be processed but, when they were, I was stunned.

Cash.

Lots of it.

So.

I stopped drinking.

How weird is that? When I couldn’t afford it on any level, I went at it like a famished greyhound. Now, I quit?

Go figure.

Three months in, I was doing okay, not gasping, hanging in there and feeling a whole lot healthier. I’d been down this road so many times, but something had altered. My last case, I literally lost two fingers, and witnessed some events that shadowed me in a new way. I finally figured out booze wasn’t easing my torture but fine-tuning it. Would it last? Who knew?

I was sitting in Garavan’s, just off Shop Street. It still resembled the old pubs: an Irish barman, snug, no bouncers, decent slow-pulled pints, and memories of the bearable kind. Pat, a middle-aged guy, was tending the pumps, brought me a black coffee, glass of sparkling water. He was off the booze his own self, so no gibes. Said,

“I’m off the cigs.”

He was an old-school smoker, mainlined nicotine. I said the usual hollow things, ended with,

“Did you use the patches?”

“Fear,”

He said.

Whether of health, economics, his wife, I didn’t push.

Life needs a touch of mystery and not everything requires an answer.

2

Some people, I saw, had drowned right away. And some people were drowning in slow motion, drowning a little bit at a time, and would be drowning for years. And some people, like Mick, had always been drowning. They just didn’t know what to call it until now.

— Sara Gran, The City of the Dead

Purgatory is the pit stop en route to hell.

The woman sat opposite me, didn’t ask, just sat. This used to happen a lot. People believing I had some inside track for finding things, people, solutions, and maybe answers. I’d found some answers, over the years, and they were always the wrong ones. Or right but for the wrong reasons. I’d given it up with the booze, the cigs, the Xanax.

Before she could speak, I said,

“No.”

Knocked her back.

Her mouth made a small O of surprise. I knew the gig.

The touching photo.

Some heart-kicking story.

Her son/brother/husband

Missing

Was a great/caring/lovable

Individual

And

Could I find him, what happened to him?

The whole usual awful parade of misery.

She tried,

“But, they said, you care.”

I said,

“I don’t.”

And I didn’t.

Not no more.

Sorry.

My new home was a steal.

Galway, in the boom years, the most sought-after location for housing in the country. Plus the most expensive. Now the new austerity, the bankruptcy, and you couldn’t give away property. I rented a two-bedroom, ground-floor, bright, open apartment in Merchants Road, not a spit from the Garda station.

Flat-screen TV, modern kitchen for all the cooking I’d never do. Large pine bookcase. I’d given Vinny a shout at Charlie Byrne’s bookshop and he’d stacked the shelves. He knew my books, sometimes, even knew me. Plus, he’d handed me an envelope, said,

“It was left in the shop for you.”

No, he hadn’t seen who dropped it off.

My name on a deep blue envelope, almost the color of a Guard’s tunic. Inside

A photo of a young man, on a skateboard, high in the air, looking like an eagle against the sky. Then a piece from The Galway Advertiser which read

. . verdict due on January 10th in vicious rape case. Tim Rourke, accused in the brutal rape and battery of two young girls, is due in court for the verdict. Controversy has surrounded the case since it was revealed the Guards had not followed procedure in obtaining the evidence.

There was more, about this being the latest high-profile case likely to be thrown out over some technicality. And still

The bankers

Developers

Clergy

Continued to fuck us over every way they could.

A single piece of notepaper had this printed on it