Galway Girl
- Автор: Бруен Кен
- Серия: Jack Taylor #15
- Год: 2019
- Язык: английский
- Год: Head of Zeus
- ISBN: 978-1-83893-306-7
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «Galway Girl». Краткое содержание книги:
Concrete, known as The Kremlin.
The tenants were tormented every night by
Bongos
Girls screeching
Fights
And, inevitably,
A horrendous version of “The Fields of Athenry.”
You couldn’t give the bloody apartments away.
Picture this:
A long-framed shot, the camera ready to zoom in.
An American, on his first visit to Ireland, name of Danny Rourke, is standing on the steps of Jurys hotel, bottom of Quay Street.
It’s just past dawn and Danny, all the way from St. Paul, Minnesota, has sneaked out to smoke a cig. He hadn’t smoked for thirty years but, hey, it’s his vacation and it’s Galway.
Go party.
He lights the cig with a Zippo he bought from Brendan Holland, the newsagent on Eyre Square. It has a Claddagh ring on the side.
He loves that.
He stares at the Spanish Arch, about five hundred yards away, through a light mist.
Soft Irish rain.
Yes,
He mutters,
“Jumping Jehovah.”
A body is hanging from a rope, swinging in the breeze of the arch.
He had only recently retired from the St. Paul Fire Department and his training kicked in. He dropped the cig, ran toward the sight.
Maybe it was a prop from the Arts Festival; all sorts of weird shit were posed around the city.
He reached the figure and let out a soft
... fuck.
It was an elderly woman dressed in some sort of costume with a placard around her neck.
It read,
Play
Dead.
No, the Guards were not short of witnesses.
One guy had spoken to two girls in white overalls and Arts Festival T-shirts who were bringing a mannequin to the top of the arch.
He and his buddy helped them with the ladders!
The young ladies were extremely grateful.
The ban Garda who was interviewing them as her sergeant supervised asked,
“Can you give me a description?”
Guy One said,
“Big ladders.”
The sergeant had to suppress a guffaw.
The ban Garda tried,
“The girls, what were they like?”
As one, the guys chorused in quasi-American,
“Smokin’.”
In disbelief, the Garda asked,
“They were smoking?”
The sergeant bit his lip to keep the smirk away as Guy Two said,
“Hot, like, you know, smokin’ hot.”
The ban Garda wanted to chuck her notebook in the water — and the guys, too.
One of the guys said as she turned away,
“Lemme write this in your notebook.”
A clue?
She handed over a loose page and the guy, laboring, gouged out numbers. Young people don’t actually, like, write.
They text.
Hence his apparent difficulty.
He handed the paper back.
She stared at it, near dizzy with hope, asked,
“You got their number?”
He fizzled with annoyance, said,
“That’s my number.”
She snapped the notebook shut, began to stride away.
Her sergeant said,
“You have the perfect blend of persistence and stupidity, you’ll go far.”
Then added,
“Now if you only played hurling.”
They spoke to a range of other witnesses and got little more.
As they headed toward Jurys for a tea break, one of the guys shouted,
“Call me.”
28
The funeral of an actress
Is drama.
The funeral of an actress /
Galway girl
Is melodrama.
Headline in the papers:
Actress
in
Suicide/Murder
Mystery
Fuck, the papers went wild with the death of Jess.
Speculation as to whether her über-loyal fans had helped her stage a grand exit,
Or if they’d killed her.
The obvious suspect was Jericho.
But
She’d a solid alibi.
The air of mystery/mystique in Jess’s death was fueled, too, by the now heavily publicized fact that she was—
Shock, horror, delight—
The bishop’s sister.
That he wasn’t yet bishop didn’t matter.
The lurid ingredients were there:
The bishop,
The actress,
A lesbian?
And
Siblings.
More than enough to sell a ton of papers.
And they sold.
Malachy sent me a short terse text:
This is your fault,
You bollix.
Now, if I showed that to the papers, I could have named my price.
The
Bishop
and
the
Bollix
(They could have added this headline.)
The American who’d first spotted the body became a minor celebrity
And enjoyed it.
Sure beat fighting fires.
The Galway Advertiser had this:
“Exclusive with Danny Rourke”
By Kernan Andrews.
Jimmy Norman on his hugely popular radio show had him as his guest.
Jimmy asked,
“So, Danny, your initial impression on seeing the body hanging underneath the arch?”
Danny had developed a deeper voice since his brush with fame, felt gravitas was necessary, and also made sure to wait a few beats before answering.
This implied:
Solemnity
Sorrow
Thoughtfulness
Or he was just a thick fuck.
He said,
“James” — always use the interviewer’s name, a lot — “I thought first it was like a prank.”
His tone rising at the end to suggest a question.
Jimmy didn’t know.
Which is why he was asking him, but he nodded carefully, which is always dicey on radio but Jimmy had been at this game a while.
Danny, getting into it, said,
“Me and the missus” — he spoke thus as he was told it impressed the ordinary listener — “we’d been to the Druid...”
Paused.
“Like, you know, the Druid, the theater?”
As if.
Jimmy sighed, said patiently,
“We are familiar with our world-famous theater.”
Sarcasm alas is lost on visiting Americans as they still believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that we are well-wishing folk.
Rourke, taking this as encouragement, if not exactly as approval, warmed to his narrative.
Like this:
“So Deb and I...”
Pause.
“She’s my better half. We had been to see Playboy of the Western World.”
Jimmy interrupted fast lest Rourke explain that play.
“We know it.”
Rourke, thrown a wee bit, wondering did he detect a hint of impatience?
Faltered, then cautiously proceeded.
“Peg’s costume was remarked on many times by Deb and when I saw the, um,
Body, Jesus H, it was the same outfit.”
Caught himself, corrected this,
“Well, not the exact one, of course, but, buddy, it was a ringer.”