The Blood Dimmed Tide

Liverpool, 17 December 1998 12.55 am

2007-02-17T02:28:00.001-08:00

The dark blue Transit van bounced the kerb at the junction of Bold St and St Luke's Place, coming to a halt in the middle of a small pedestrianised area facing a roofless Victorian church. A three quarter moon shone down on pavements slick from recent rain and a solitary bell chimed the hour somewhere across the city. Leaving the engine running, the driver dismounted the cab and walked to the rear of the vehicle. Breath steamed from his mouth into the December night. He was tall and wore combat fatigues, black balaclava and leather gloves.

He unlocked the rear doors and pulled them open in a motion which was both efficient and unhurried. Two similarly dressed figures emerged from the darkness of the van's interior. Between them they half dragged, half lifted a stout middle aged man by the arms. His feet hit the pavement and he tumbled like a half - cut marionette. The two men roughly pulled him erect facing the rear of the van, his arms pinioned behind him. A thin trickle of blood ran from down his temple staining the starched collar of his pressed white shirt. His head rolled from side to side as he attempted to bring his eyes into drunken focus on his surroundings.

The driver gestured with his head towards a structure in the centre of the pavement area a few paces from where they stood in frozen tableau. It was a sculpture. A minimalist's idea of a Christmas tree fabricated in 16 gauge steel. Painted white, it rose thirty- five feet into the night sky. Its serrated branches tapered from base to pointed apex like the jagged teeth of an ocean predator.

In a movement which might have been rehearsed, his captors frog-marched their prisoner backwards in double time towards the tree. In a single smooth motion they hoisted and pushed the middle aged man against the tapering point of one of the lower branches. The momentum forced its tip through his torso. As it emerged on the left side of his chest, he emitted a choked moan, a mixture of surprise and agony. His chin dropped onto his collar bone and a widening patch of blood stained the pristine white of his shirt front. He was dead before he had time to register his fate.

Without looking back, the two men turned back to the van, pulling off their balaclavas as they climbed into the cab. Still efficient and unhurried, the driver closed and locked the rear doors, re-entered the cab, put the van into gear and drove smoothly off the pavement and away down the road. Within seconds the odour of exhaust fumes hanging in the dampness of the winter night was the only memento of their presence.

Chapter 1

2007-02-17T02:08:00.000-08:00

I was living down on the docks that year, in a flat in a refurbished warehouse. I liked being by the water. I had my back to the city and in the still of the dockside night I could watch ships arrive and leave with every tide.

The passing of ships in the night was a good metaphor for my life then. I was rudderless, floating through the days, moved only by currents I couldn't control. It was a time spent slipping the moorings and drifting when I should have been lowering the gangplank and coming ashore. Somewhere inside I suppose I was waiting for a safe harbour beyond the reef my life had become. In the meantime, I got by bumping into other drifting objects amongst the flotsam and jetsam of Liverpool life. There was nothing or no-one amongst them to act as my sea-anchor.

My girlfriend had left me at the start of the year. I was on a tailspin towards forty. I was out of work. It was coming on Xmas and my closest friend in the world was the large grey cat who let me share his view of the river. And I was drinking.

Drinking is probably the wrong word for what I was up to. It implies some sort of pleasure. I was engaged in a process involving chemical saturation which passed the time and, excepting short walks between bars, kept me off the streets. It was self-medication providing the numb escapism necessary for the emotional abdication I was seeking. Don’t misunderstand, I was no AA, working my way down to hitting bottom, alcoholic. I was just looking to shake hands with oblivion and I knew that one day, if I kept it up, I’d run across it in a room full of bar-flies not unlike myself.

The good thing about that kind of drinking is that you’ve always got friends. There’s always someone around to take your mind off your life. Dull people become interesting, interesting people become fascinating and to make them that way all you have to do is keep the drinks coming. I was good at that. And a man has to have a hobby. Staying up late and drinking a lot of beer was mine. It definitely beat facing an uncertain future and middle age.

I'd just put the phone down. I don't know why I'd picked it up in the first place. These days it only brought more fresh hell. Bernadette Geraghty had called to tell me that her husband, my former employer, was dead. Tom Geraghty, a Spike Island jack with three decades on the Liverpool force and sole proprietor of Open Eye Security Services (Our motto we see it through) was dead and gone. He was my best friend. Whatever that means.

He had been killed the night before at the junction of Bold St and St Luke's Place. A hit and run she said. The impact had impaled him on a conceptual Christmas tree installed there for the season. Its branches were white painted steel tapers. I'd walked past it half a dozen times in the last week. I tried not to imagine him hanging there like some grotesque Yuletide decoration, dripping out his life's blood onto the flagstones. I failed and the image sent ice-fingers up my spine.

I'd not seen him in the nine months since I slipped the net on Open Eye. Now he was gone for good. I almost hated him for dying on me. It was too late for an Irish macho, male-bonding reconciliation. Too late for a drink induced kiss-and-make-up session. I suppose if there was a time to feel guilty, good old through to the bone, mortifying, moan- inducing Irish Catholic guilt, this was it. The news pushed me one octave below numb. And now I needed a drink. A big drink. I pulled on my coat, left the flat and letting the door slam behind me.

As I walked through the marina towards town I couldn't help but think about Tom. Like most things in my life, the job with him came about by accident. I'd rented a flat over his office in Seel St. and Geraghty started using me as a human answerphone while he was out collecting debts, serving writs, and generally snooping around. After a few months he decided to formalise our relationship by offering me paid work.

He was a firm believer in the Irish Catholic work ethic. Every man should have a regular job, even if they don't exactly kill themselves doing it. According to Tom, all he needed was a body to answer the phone, keep the diary, and pay the bills on time. Or so he said. An easy minimum wage with no heavy lifting and plenty of time to piss away turned into five years of irregular hours and plain hard graft.

Open Eye specialised in small stuff. Maritals, tracing, commercial undercovers, security systems and the occasional bit of CPP; 'minding' to you and me. Five years of that had left me with a microscopic perspective on life in general. Digging the dirt on errant spouses, collaring petty thieves for tight-fisted shopkeepers and hunting down sullen teenage runaways for bereft and angry parents tends to have that effect.

But I've always liked learning and the old man taught me a thing or two. If he didn't know himself you could guarantee he knew someone who did. And I won't trouble you with some of the things they did know, if you catch my drift. He was an old school hard cop from Liverpool 'A' Division who took mouth from no man and made sure everyone knew it.

He introduced me to a world I'd recently begun to make my own. Late drinkers, seedy night clubs, blues and shebeens. The kind of places where you can always get something approximating what you want, be it drugs, a woman, or just another beer to delay the onset of morning. He knew where to go after everywhere else had closed. He knew the inhabitants of those places. They knew him, and if they respected or feared him I don't think he cared that much.

In between undercover work in factories and warehouses, tracing debt skippers and doing the dirt on adulterers, we had a lot of time for each other. We were close in that oxymoronic way Irish men sometimes become. Tom was probably the nearest thing to father I could recall. My own parents had been killed in Belfast during the height of the Troubles. A trip to town from which they'd never returned. An unclaimed bomb had left bits of them all over the city centre. There's a shopping precinct there now. At fourteen I'd been taken in by an aunt in Liverpool, a widow with four of her own all younger than me. Male role models had never been a significant feature of my growing up.

It wasn't the pay or the hours that brought about the parting of our ways. I had met a dancer called Linda, we'd vowed eternal love, decided to settle down together and bring babies into the world. I'd taken on a responsibility for the first time in my life with all the fervour of a convert. I started to think about mortgages, pension plans and providing for my putative family unit. I even started taking an interest in the running of the business, rather than just accepting my pay at the end of the week. I began to think in terms of expanding, diversifying and increasing the client base.

Tom wouldn't have any of my MBA bolloxology. It was his firm and he'd run it the way he always had. He was getting on and as much as he liked me, as a younger man I was a rival. The same story has been repeated time and time again in small farms, shops, and pubs wherever Irish people are. If I suggested a change, he automatically said no. If I said black he said white and if I put up a fight, he was always ready to remind me how lucky I was to have the work at all and if I didn't like it I could always fuck off back to being an unemployed chancer. Or words to that effect.
'Good for nothing, no-mark waster, who'd still be living on shit street if I hadn't taken you on out of the goodness of me heart'.
These were words that ended most of our business meetings in the last few weeks of my employment.

And then Linda danced out of my life. She'd decided that settling down wasn't such a good idea after all. She needed more time to explore her “self”. Alone. This was explained in a one page letter left on the kitchen table in the flat I now inhabited between pubs. Postcards sent from exotic places on the other side of the world and indistinct messages left on my answerphone in the wee small hours suggested she was still exploring. After a time I'd stopped wondering who the other members of her expedition might be.

Her leaving hurt me far more than I was able to admit. It's an Irish thing. Someone goes, you shrug your shoulders, head off to the pub and drown any loss you might feel in pints of plain. Sometimes they'll even join you for a quick oscail an doras, the drink for the door. May the road rise to meet you and don't let the door catch your arse on the way out.

Tom bore the brunt of my abdicated emotions. If I was going to be a heartbroken fool too stupid to admit it to himself , I was going be a financially secure one. Money can make up for a lot of things. Even repressed emotional devastation if the wages are good enough. Months on, my only success was in perfecting my heartbroken cynicism and increasing my capacity for alcohol.

Dr Freud might say that my falling out with Tom represented some kind of delayed Oedipal crisis on my part. They say Irishmen put off growing up as long as possible. Tied to their mammy's apron strings and under the shadow of the old man. I don't know. Sometimes a cigar is just a slim panatella.

What I did know then was that at I felt bad. I'd always thought of Tom as indestructible. He'd still be swaggering from pub to pub and intimidating scallies for as long as God gave him breath. Beyond death and taxes, it was one of the few things I could rely on. I knew his wife. She'd fed me often enough. I'd watched his twin daughters, Breege and Cait, grow from self-conscious teenagers into confident young women. He loved his children with intensity but not possession. They were his crown jewels. I thought of them now and the times he'd warned me about playing up to their teenage flirting.

'Don't let me catch you looking sideways at them girls of mine, boy' he'd say 'Or I'll take your legs off at the knees. They're too good for a latchicoe like yourself.' He was right. They were. And now he was gone.

Chapter 2

2007-02-17T02:01:00.000-08:00

It was a mild night for December and the walk up the steep incline of Parliament St had me sweating by the time I turned into Gambier Terrace. A knot of prostitutes gathered under the street light at the corner of Faulkner St. It was only nine o'clock and their best trade wouldn't start until the boozers kicked out.

'Are ya doing a bir o'bisness, luv?’ one of them asked as passed by. She took hold of me by the waist and walked with me a few steps. I felt her hand go down to my back pocket feeling for a wallet. Another time I would have shrugged her off and refused with a smile, but tonight some small angry worm turned in my head.

'How much?' I said.

'Ten for a wank, fifteen for a suck, and twenty for a fuck.'

She was about nineteen but the smack had taken its toll and what might have once been a pretty face was now thin and pasty with eyes that never quite connected with your own. She was wearing cheap patent leather high heels, a lycra miniskirt, and a leather jacket that would be unfashionable in weeks, if it wasn't already. Her legs were bare and her hair was pinned up in a topknot that reminded me of a pineapple. I thought of Tom's two daughters and the contrast couldn't have been more stark.

'Not enough' I said.

'Yer what, la?' A bemused expression flickered across her face and she cocked her head on one side.

'Not enough. I'd want a fuck of a lot more than twenty to shag you, wee girl.' My remark took a while to register but when it did her reaction was predictable. She raised her hand to punch me in the face. I caught her by the wrist, slowly shaking my head and keeping my eyes fixed on hers. She must have recognised the anger in my face. The fight went out of her. I stared at her intently for a second or two longer, released her wrist and turned to walk away.

'Go and fuck yourself, den, you mad paddy bastard' Her nasal screech was like finger nails running down the blackboard of the winter night.

'I will so. Nothing beats sex with someone you love.' I spoke without looking back.

Any further abuse was interrupted by the arrival of her minder. Another smackhead. In his twenties with a mop of dirty blonde hair combed low in a fringe almost to his eyeline, he wore the scally uniform of shell-suit and trainers. He was a little taller but thinner than me. They could have been brother and sister. The same pallid looks and mean, darting eyes. He blocked my path and spoke over my shoulder to the girl.

'Dis fucker bothering you Marie?'

'Fucking bastard thinks he's clever, Kev.' He turned his attention to me.

'You been giving lip to my judy, arseface?' I looked into his face and said nothing.

'I'm talking to you, you fucking queer. Are yer deaf or wha?' I continued to look into his face. I could feel my blood rising. I knew I wanted very badly to hurt him, also very badly. 'You heard, cunt, are you fucking deaf? he said. 'Now fuck off before I make you.'

The ugly meanness of his features was echoed in his voice but I didn't feel like playing the role of scared punter that night. I stood there, staring him out. He reached out to grab the front of my coat. I side-stepped past his arm and grabbed his wrist. I twisted his arm up his back and pushed him face first into the thick hedge that ran the length of Gambier Terrace. He yelped as a thin privet branch whipped into an eye. I continued to push up on his arm and down on his head with my other hand. Marie tried to grab me from behind. The other girls had disappeared into the night. I ran my heel down her shin on to her instep and heard her howl and swear in pain. She let go her hold on my jacket. She'd have to wear tights tomorrow.

His head went down through the hedge and his forehead made solid contact with the low wall beneath the hedge. I ground it into the sandstone parapet and would have gone on but the anger left me as suddenly as it arrived. He was shouting in pain and anger. I held him there for a few seconds and then bent and talked close into his ear. His cheap deodorant failed to mask the sour milk smell of his body odour.

'You're a lucky wee boy tonight, Kev. I'm not going to tear your arm off however much I want to. And believe me I do.'

'Gerrof me yer fucking bastard' he hissed 'I'll fucking do you next time'

'Count yourself lucky if you last til the next time, wee man. You're in no position to be giving out threats.' I applied some more upward pressure on his arm as a reminder.

My anger had subsided so much I'd begun to wonder what I was doing and more importantly how I was going to bring this situation to an end. I lifted my hand off his neck and reached into his pocket. There was a knife, a five inch butcher's tool with a thin worn blade and an evil point. I wondered how many drunks and old ladies he'd threatened with that.

'Not nice at all carrying something like this around in your pocket, wee man. You could cut yourself badly. I think we'd be as well to hand it in at the station, don't you?' I nodded down the road towards Hope St nick.

'Fuckin' 'ell. I didn't know you were a bizzie, mate, you should 'ave said. I'll kill that fuckin' bitch Marie'

'You'll do nothing of the sort wee boy, except run and hide every time you see me coming. If I see a mark on that girl, I'll do more than twist your arm. I'll pull the fucker off and feed it to you. Understand?' He nodded his head frantically.

I flung the knife high over the hedge and heard it and in the soft undergrowth. Marie had disappeared. I pulled him up from the wall, turned him round to face down the Terrace. I raised my foot and gave him my boot up the arse to help him on his way. He went sprawling on to the flagstones. I hoped it hurt.

'Now fuck away off and remember what I said.' He picked himself up and ran off up Faulkner St. I'd have to watch out for him the next time I walked along there after dark.

I continued my walk to the Irish Centre. At Hope St there was some activity outside the police station. Gang trouble over the past few months and a number of shootings meant the local bizzies had started tooling up. Herren Heckler and Koch were doing good business with Merseyside constabulary these days and Messrs. Smith and Mr Wesson weren't far behind them. Armed police on every corner made the city feel more like Belfast than Belfast.

Body-armoured cons were loading into a transit minibus festooned with matt-black grilles. They looked like something off the Deathstar. I half expected Darth Vader to step out and see them off. May the force be with you indeed. They wore side-handled batons, handcuffs, and other equipment on Batman utility belts slung low on the waist. Much good they would do them facing a sawn-off Remington. Mind you, so far the dealers had only been killing each other.

I knew what Tom would have made of all that. In all his time on the force, he never even owned a set of handcuffs. He'd joined up in the days when Liverpool policemen had to buy their own. He'd refused on principle. First he could find better ways of spending the ten or eleven quid they cost and second, as he put it. 'the day I need a pair of cuffs to bring in some buck on my beat, is the day I jack it in and go back to the land of the bogs and the wee folk.'

Outside the Philharmonic pub a coachload of tourists were being set down. I wondered what brought them to Liverpool in December. The Beatles, probably, and an domestic economy that still functioned, unlike the one in this city. In ten minutes they'd be back on the bus after photographing each other in the brown marble toilets where John Lennon once threw up.

I walked on and I could see the lights reflecting through the stained glass tower of the Metropolitan Cathedral at the end of Hope St. It was a building that inspired a mixture of awe and shock. It stood on its own embankment, a gargantuan space capsule come to earth in Liverpool surveying the whole of the city from sea to shore. The prods had had the decency to build their cathedral into the side of a hill. Not the taigs. It was a message to the whole city when it was built in the sixties. 'This is our town' it said, in no uncertain terms. And wasn't everyone to know it? Even the Protestants were Catholics in Liverpool.

Chapter 3

2007-02-17T01:59:00.000-08:00

The Irish Centre nestles in the shade of the cathedral. A century before it had been a gentlemen's banqueting club built to service the appetites of Liverpool merchants who'd grown fat on the strange fruit of the slave trade. When they ate 15 course dinners and planned the future of an empire on which the sun never set, their nearest neighbours lived on stirabout in the poorhouse where the cathedral now stood. If there was irony in the present use of either site, I couldn't say quite what it was.

I stepped inside the door, said hello to Jimmy on the desk , and wandered into the bar. It was a week before Christmas and the place was awash with premature celebrants. I took my usual place at the end of the bar under pictures of Connolly, Pearse and the other men of the Easter rising. Theresa was working the bar alone, effortlessly serving six or seven orders simultaneously while engaging in banter with her favourite regulars.

Eventually, I caught her eye. We didn't speak. She knew my order of old. As she poured my pint I looked around. There were a few people I knew enough to say hello to, but none of the major drinkers were about. I knew it would only be a matter of time, though. Theresa brought my Guinness.

'Alright love? How's me favourite customer tonight? She was a small, dark and attractive woman, a little younger than me. Once upon a pre-Linda time we used to flirt, trading craic and intimacies in equal proportion. For a while there had been rumours about us. 'And her with a husband and three bairns in the house' was the standard comment on our behaviour from the old ones. The rumours, like the flirting, had largely petered out since Linda had come and gone.

'Alright thanks darling girl, how's yourself? And could I have a large Jameson as well, please'.

'You're starting early tonight ,aren't you? You'll be no use to me later on when I get warmed up'

'Ah, mo chroí , if I thought you meant that, I'd go on the wagon altogether, so I would. The Jimmy's isn't for me, it's for a friend.'

'Since when did you have friends, U? I thought there was only me in your life.'

'I have to have something to do with meself while you're at home with Séamus and the kids. What's a man to do to heal his broken heart?'

'Have you shares in Bowater Scott or wha'? Cut it out before I run out of Kleenex, will yeh. Large Jimmy's was it?'

I nodded in reply. She walked to the optic and poured a large measure of the amber fluid. She returned and placed the spirit glass beside my pint on the bar.

'Are you alright, love? Only you look a bit down in your boots tonight.' I didn't feel like explaining.

'I'm fine, thanks Tess. Just a bit of bad news, that's all.'

'Wha' 'ave the dole found yer a job at last, then?' She laughed and before I could respond had turned to serve pints to some other punters. Fifteen-love Theresa.

I looked at the Jameson's for a while and then walked pint and glass in hand to the nearest empty table. I sat down and placed the whiskey carefully on a beermat. I looked at it for a little longer and thought of Tom. I touched the glass with my glass and toasted him in my own mind. Beneath the hubbub of scouse and Irish accents, Shane McGowan groaned a mournful song over the sound system. It wasn't long before my reverie was disturbed.

'Alright, U? Have you heard the news about Tom Geraghty? Terrible that wasn' it? I heard there was blood all over the show.'

It was Brendan Monaghan cadre of the local Connolly Association and a living example of scouse wit, or so he thought. A squat, bald man in his sixties, he spoke in continuous breathless monologues. Before I could respond he went on. 'Course, that line of work you expect something to happen, but I bet he never thought he'd end up hanging from a Christmas tree like a bleeding fairy light, though.'

'Brendan, do you ever shut up and give your arse a chance?'

'Sorry lad, I forgot you two were mates.'

His face took on a sombre cast for a second and then he glanced about him quickly changing the subject as he did so. 'Anyway, while I'm here I'll sell you a Democrat. Forty pee, mas é do thoil é.' I dug into my pocket and handed over the loose change. He passed me the paper.

'Go raibh míle maith agut. By the way, have you found a job yet or are you still sponging off honest taxpayers such as meself? Mind you, you'll never be rich buying socialist rubbish like this. It's a good job one of us round here is a capitalist or the likes of you would starve to death.' Before I could reply he'd bustled off to sell papers a few tables down from me. I flicked through the paper. It was the same old stuff. You could always rely on socialist Republicanism.

I was ordering my second pint when Timmy arrived. I saw him across the room scoping for company, waved him over and added a pint of Harp to my order. I hoped he was on an up tonight, I needed him to be on good form.

When he was up Timmy was like a head shower. A diagnosed manic-depressive since he was fifteen, he'd been in and out of hospitals, psychiatric units and half-way houses as long as I'd known him. He was one of those people who had huge insight into the world and no defences to it. He could reduce you to tears of laughter with his stories and just as quickly have your eyes filling up in the other way when he shared the pain he'd endured over the years. He joined me at the bar and his face was full of concern. He put his arm around my shoulder.

'Are yer alright lad? I heard about Tom. I'm dead sorry.' I shrugged his arm off.

'Aye, I'm alright. It's Bernadette and the girls I’m worried about'

‘Ave yer been up to the ‘ouse yet?’ I shook my head and swallowed the last of my pint. He looked at me intently as Theresa placed the pints on the bar.

I paid for the drinks and we sat down at my table. A second large Jimmy's joined its predecessor. Timmy looked at me hard again and I felt his eyes penetrating my skin. I couldn't hold his gaze.

'It's hit you, hasn't it lad? Me, I never liked him, he was a hard old bastard and he made me and our kid's life a misery when he was working down our way. He gave us more kicks dan ha'pennies, I can tell you. I wouldn't say I was glad he was gone dough.'

'Don't start ,Timmy, alright? Just leave it, eh?'

'Alright, U. I'm only saying like. D'yeh reckon it was an accident or wha'?'

'I don't know, kid, but let's just leave it for now and we'll have a couple of beers, ok?' He shrugged his shoulders and stared at me across his pint. We were joined by a few more regulars, there were more pints bought and the two Jamesons sat there untouched a reminder to me, if no-one else, of an absent friend.

As we got drunker, a debate about the situation in Northern Ireland became fractious. Safe out of it in Liverpool, there were still some folk who thought the cease-fire was a mistake. They preferred the simplicity of the Armalite over the complexities of the assembly. I wondered how many Omaghs it would take to convince them otherwise. Voices began to be raised as arguments entrenched themselves. Hearing armchair republicans advocating the return to the gun in a war where they'd only ever been spectators made the anger worm in my head turn for a second time that evening.

Timmy had to separate me from the company. He knew about my parents, none of the others did. He pulled me away just as I was offering Kenny O'Malley the opportunity to express his opinions beyond the front door. The two Jamesons were still on the table as we left. They wouldn't last long after time was called.

'U, you're a stupid bastard sometimes. That fucker O'Malley is a karate man and doesn't he like to show it off. He'd have done you quick as look at you.'

'Cop on, Timmy, do you think I give a fuck about that shite? Bleeding bollixes in pyjamas, don't scare me' My words were slurred and I could almost taste the numbness in my lips.

'They might not scare you, you thick Paddy bastard, but they can cut your drinking career off in its prime whatever you like to think. And he's one twat that would take pleasure in putting you on dee 'ospital diet. Come 'ed, we'll have a last bevvy across in dee Aquaba.'

He dragged me across Mount Pleasant and into Hope Street. I had followed this path on so many evenings I didn't even have to think my legs into action. A ring on the bell and the the Georgian door swung open wide to admit us. As ever, I was greeted with an obsidian smile by Ali the Somali doorman. As we crossed the threshold the thought struck me that I'd never seen him nor he me when I was sober. It was not an insight to be proud of.

Chapter 4

2007-02-16T16:24:00.000-08:00

In Liverpool it was a self-evident truth that ending a night’s drinking in the Aquaba was an admission of defeat. Run by Somalis for students, actors and other late night losers it was the last resort of the lonely and displaced. Free in, pub prices and few fights, if only because most of its clientele were searching for a different kind of oblivion, the Aquaba was a twilight zone of familiar faces and meaningless, drunken conversations with people who remained transient strangers no matter how many times you met them. Bogart and Bacall looked down from badly painted murals on boozers and losers stuck in a repetitive waltz of late night drinking and casual liaisons.

'Fuck.! Is it my round again?' Timmy protested loudly as we lined up against the bar.

'It's alright, la, I'll get deese. Pint a Guinness and a pint a Harp, Loreena'. Timmy and I looked at each other and then around to the source of the voice.

We both turned to face our benefactor. It was Hatter McVie. Another Liverpool character. He'd never bought me a drink before in all the time I'd known him, but he grew up in the same street as Timmy so I assumed the charity was directed towards him rather than me. He looked at us from under a broad brimmed straw panama. The last time I'd seen him he'd been wearing an old bowler with a ragged brim. This was a definite improvement, if a little unseasonal. His wire frame glasses glinted in the light from behind the bar counterpointing the darkness on our side of it. His teeth, framed by a neatly trimmed beard, were yellow with nicotine.

'Alright, Hatter. How's yer mam? The old lady was only asking after her the other day' Timmy said.

'Bearing up, lad. You know how it is with that Alzheimer's. One day she thinks I'm me dad, the next she doesn't know me from Adam.'

Five times married, Hatter had been living with his mum for the past few years. Sometime poet, sometime pimp, he had run pubs whose stay-behinds were legendary even by Liverpool standards, but Hatter lived a quiet life now. Part of the Liverpool scene when there was one, now he was on the dole and looking after his old one. The drinks came and Timmy and I raised our glasses to him. He nodded in acknowledgement.

Someone waved to Timmy from across the room. He left me at the bar to join them. I leaned back and watched him walk across the bare wood floor. Humphrey Bogart looked down on both of us.

'I heard about Tom. Fuckin' tragic that.' It was Hatter again. I looked across to him and he signalled me to draw closer with flick of his head. I moved along the bar towards him. 'I don't know what you've heard la, but it was no fucking accident.'

'What d'you mean?'

'Fuck me. 'ave you got cotton wool in yer ears, kid? I mean' and he spoke the words slowly with the deliberation one would use with a child or a deaf person, 'it was no-fucking-accident'

'How d'you know that?'

'I don't know it. I just heard dat's all.'

'Who from?'

'Hey lad, ask no questions and you'll be told no lies, alright? But a little bird told me that Geraghty was poking 'is nose where it didn't belong. You know wha' I mean?' I shook my head

' Tom did that all his life, wee man. It never got him killed.' Exasperation crossed his face. He could have been telling the truth but I just didn't want to know right then.

'Hey, I'm fucked if I know. I'm just telling yer wha' I 'eard, alright. I thought you might be interested since he was your mucker, like. I mean he was never going to win popularity prizes, now was 'e?'

'Yeah, but...' He interrupted.

'But nothing, pal. All I 'eard was that someone wanted your mate Tom off the case, as thee say in the best detective fiction. To tell the truth, I only mentioned it because I thought you might know 'oo he'd been upsettin'.

'I've not seen Tom this last nine months. We'd had a falling out. I don't know what he was at.'

'Well anyway, someone had 'is cards marked, that's wha' I 'eard. I'm just telling yer.'

I thought of all the people Tom had put away in his time. He'd been off the force ten years before he died, but memories, like prison sentences, could be long. And in Liverpool scores always get settled sooner or later.

'So where did you hear this about Tom anyway?'

'Hey lad, I might be cabbage lookin' bur I'm not green, alright? I just heard from someone who heard from someone who for all I fuckin'' know heard from someone else, ok? You know what this town's like, you've fuckin' well lived here long enough. I don't know who 'e'd got on the wrong side of and even if I did, I wouldn't fuckin' well tell you. I've got the old girl to look after.' He turned away and sipped from his drink.

'Alright, kid, alright. So when did you hear this?'

'Look, la, I just heard, dat's all. When, where or who is my business and what fuckin' difference does it make anyway?'

'It makes a difference to me, so it does.'

'Look, pal, Geraghty's dead. I can think of half a dozen who might be laughing at that thought. You're not going to bring him back, so just sup your drink and stop midering me. Alright?'

'Aye, alright. But if your little bird starts tweeting again, you let me know, ok Hatter?'

'I suppose so, but I'm not promising.'

'Loreena, a Guinness and a Harp, and one for himself here.'

I paid for the drinks and carried the two pints over to the table where Timmy was chatting animatedly with two women. Functioning on auto-pilot I placed the drinks on the table and didn't pay too much attention to them. I was still digesting Hatter's words. My thoughts were interrupted by Timmy's voice.

'Alright U, for a minute there I thought I was going to have to buy meself a drink. This is Alison and this is Sarah.This is me mate Ulick, bur 'is friends call him U.' He indicated the two women with separate nods of his head. They were instantly recognisable as students, one in her early twenties, the other maybe five years or a decade older. The older one was dark haired with white skin. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, with alcohol I guessed. The other was fair-skinned and pink-cheeked in a definitely Saxon way.

'What should we call him?' the dark one, Sarah, asked. She was very pretty and her eyes were a sharp blue. She reminded me of Linda. But there wasn't a woman who didn't these days. She had an English accent, from somewhere in the West Midlands.

'Depends 'ow friendly you're planning to be' said Timmy with a leer. 'Excuse me, I'm just going to rinse the prince'. The two women giggled. He rose from the table with the steady deliberation of a man just on the wrong side of a few pints and walked back across the room. Their glasses were empty.

'Will you take a drink?' I asked, at a loss for anything else to say.

'Oh yes please' said the blonde. 'Mine's a cider and Sarah is drinking Beck's.' Her diction was crisp with the received pronunciation of the Home Counties and minor public school. I walked to the bar and ordered the drinks. Timmy joined me at the bar on his way back from the jacks.

'Which one d'you want, mate? They're both up for a bir o' crack.'

Drink never affected Timmy in any obvious way when he was manic. I only saw ever him drunk when he was depressed. In this phase he could drink all night and still remain articulate and funny. I'd seen him operate with women before on many occasions. He made them laugh so much, he was down their throat and between their legs before they knew it. 'I've been with blondie before, but I wouldn't mind a go a' 'er mate, if you fancy her.'

'Timmy, you're a pig, you know that?'

'Pig I might be, bur I'm never short of dee old female company, unlike some I could name. Have you sorted yerself out about that tart from Hong Kong yet or are you still beatin' yer breast and howlin' at the moon?'

'Mind your own fuckin' business, my mad friend.'

'Hey lad, I might be mad, bur I'm not soft. At least not where the judies are concerned. Trouble with you is you're still looking for Miss Right when what you should be looking for is Miss less wrong than the last one that fucked you over. You get to our age, mate, and there isn't much choosin' to be done.'

'Since when was I your age, you dirty wee bastard? Come 'ed, these drinks are going flat.'

We re-joined the two women at the table. Soon Timmy had us all giggling helplessly with one of his stories about the Orange Lodge his granddad had belonged to. I'd heard it before, about the Grand Master who thought that Martin Luther was a 'wee blaarck barstarrd who got shot in America'.

He and Alison went for a dance. Sarah remained with me at the table. She was talkative enough for both of us but when she tired of telling me about her studies and the boyfriend she'd just broken up with, she started to interrogate me. She wanted to know where I was from, where I lived now, what I liked to do in my free time. Most of my replies were short and to the point. Finally she got to the big one.

'So, Ulick, what do you do?' Her eyes were penetratingly, almost electrically, blue and I felt that I was being interviewed rather than making small talk.

'You could say I'm semi-retired.'

'So what do you only do half as much as you used to then?' She smiled and sipped from her glass.

'Like everyone in this town who isn't a student, a social worker, or a bizzie. You know. A bit of this a bit of that.'

'Are you normally this evasive or is what you do a secret you're ashamed to tell me?'

'Well if you must know, I used to be an inquiry agent, but at the moment I'm what you might call reviewing my career options.'

'What, you used to be a dick and now you're on the dole? Sounds like a country song.' She smiled again and I noticed her lips formed an almost perfect rosebud.

'I prefer to think of it as resting, if you must know.'

'So when you were a private detective, what did you detect? Was it interesting?

'Oh the usual stuff. Greed, lust, the normal human failings. And no, most of the time it wasn't that interesting, just tedious. People aren't as imaginative in their immorality as we like to think.'

'What a shame.' She smiled and shook her head. 'I was hoping you'ld let me in on the seamy side of Liverpool life.'

'You don't need a detective to show you that, wee girl. Just look around this room and you'll see most of it here. Thieves, dealers, con-men, alkies, reformed alkies, adulterers, would-be adulterers, couldn't be adulterers if they tried, stop-outs, lock-outs, and spongers. That's just in this bar. If you head downstairs you'll really rub shoulders with the creme de la scum.'

'See your man over there at the bar.' I nodded towards tall man in a tan leather jacket. 'He has five women working Hope Street for him as we speak. See the guy he's talking to. They call him Joe Boots, 'cause he carries an extensive range of pharmaceuticals.'

'I didn't realise I was in such illustrious company. Are you always so bitter?'

'I'm not bitter. It's just the reason I know this stuff got himself killed the other night.'

Her interest moved up a gear at this remark, but at the same time I could see something resembling compassion in her face.

'Killed? Oh I'm really sorry. Was it someone close?'

'Not really. I just worked with him a few years, that's all. Would you like another drink?' She nodded her assent and I walked back to the bar. I returned with the drinks and she resumed her interrogation.

'How was your friend killed?' she hesitated and then said quickly 'Of course if you don't want to talk about it I'll understand.' I felt the drink kick in and the small angry worm turned for the third time that night.

'I'm so glad to be in the company of someone who understands' I sneered ' but if you must know, he was run over by person or persons unknown. But that wasn't what fuckin' killed him, darling girl. What fuckin' killed him was a metal fucking Christmas tree that some twenty grand a year wanker from the fucking council thought would put us all in the spirit of the fuckin' season. That's what killed the poor bastard. Now are you satisfied? You have the fucking gory details to tell your mates in the junior common room tomorrow.'

My outburst had clearly shocked her and she looked desperately around for a sign of Alison or Timmy. They were nowhere to be seen. 'I'm really sorry. I wasn't looking for gossip. You just looked as though you might want to talk about it that's all. I really didn't mean to upset you.'

Her face took on a genuine look of concern and her hand reached across the table to rest on mine. I started at the touch. She was the first woman to touch me in tenderness in the six months since Linda had left. Her hand was warm and dry and her finger tips were soft and smooth. My anger subsided into dormancy.

'Ah sure it's alright, wee girl. I shouldn't have gone at you like that. It's the old paddy temper. You know what we're like when drink’s taken. Talking of which, will you take another?'

'Let me get it. It's our turn.'

I didn't argue and turned to watch her walk across to the bar. She was wearing black 501s, DM's and a white T-shirt, it was kind of student uniform. Mentally I compared her body to Linda's. She had broader hips but I didn't get the impression she was held in place by the stiff material of her jeans. I tried to imagine myself in bed with her. But since Linda, I couldn't imagine myself sharing a duvet with anyone other than the cat.

From behind, her T-shirt did not hide the straps of her bra and all I could think of was red lines on white flesh. She returned with the drinks I could see her nipples dark through the whiteness of her top and I wondered what her breasts would be like to hold. Even in my drunkenness I doubted that that would be my fate. But you never knew your luck with the women. She sat down. I raised my glass to her and she touched hers to mine across the table, her eyes focused on mine. I told her about Tom and the accident. She listened silently while I spoke, nodding thoughtfully from time to time. Eventually, she spoke.

'I'm terribly drunk now.'

'Ah well so, you're in the best company for that. Anyway, there's no such thing as terrible drunk. Either you are or you aren't and either way I promise not to take advantage of you'

'Really?' She stretched the word out. 'I only came here to have advantage taken of me.'

'Well sure, I'm a good catholic boy and all I see when I look at a woman is guilt.'

'All I see when I look at a man is germs. Isn't that a sign of the times?' She smiled broadly and I couldn't but help return her smile. Her eyes never left mine. Her hand snaked across the table and enclosed my own.

'How are you off for germs, then?' Her grip tightened on my hand.

'It depends what you mean. Are you talking about the sharing or avoiding of them?'

'Depends what's on offer. The way things are at the moment, I'll take my chances'

'Well as far as I know, I'm relatively germ-free, but I haven't had any tests.'

'You can always use a condom. That would do for me.'

Before I could reply, Timmy and Alison returned to the table. Sarah released my hand and the two women exchanged meaningful glances in that code which women use and men can never understand.

'Timmy says he's knows a place round the corner that's open after this one closes. Do you fancy it Sarah?' I interrupted before Sarah could reply.

'Ah Jesus, Timmy not the Max. You can't be taking these young ones down to that kip of a place.'

'What the fuck's wrong with the Max, la? It's bleeding open innit?

'That's about all you can say for it. Look at the fuckers who drink there.'

'Since when did you get fussy, U? I can remember more than the odd few nights down there wit' you.'

I could see Sarah's interest was aroused. Her quest for the louche had overcome her desire for sex.

Tonight, the last place I wanted to end up in was the Max' or the Maximum Break to give it its full title. It was one of Tom's haunts, but despite that I'd never liked the place. Scouse and Beryl, the old couple who ran, it were friends of his from days on the beat. But it was what it was. A run down snooker hall, come shebeen, come coppers' knocking shop.

They sold spirits and warm bottled beer from a cupboard under the bar and had done as long as anyone could remember. The local bizzies turned a blind eye because there was never any trouble, mainly because they were largest section of clientele. It was also a place for touts, hustlers and the odd student who thought working his way around college was a better option than working his way through it.

I'd seen too many an innocent part company with a week's wages in a 'friendly' game over its green baize tables and overheard too many fit-ups being arranged around the bar to ever find myself feeling comfortable there. I never knew why Timmy liked it except for the fact that it was always open for a drink if they knew your face. During his manic phases that was a major plus for anywhere in his eyes. It was only the possibility of post-Max coition that stopped me just walking away.

'Well I wouldn't mind checking this place out, specially if it's as bad as U makes it sound.' She looked across the table at me as she spoke.

'Alright then, come 'ed' said Timmy 'Let's drink up here and get across dere before deh queues start.' His irony was lost on them but not on me.

As we headed out the door. Ali's eyes met mine. As he said goodnight he smiled gently. They say the Chinese are inscrutable, but I couldn't tell anything from his expression. Over the years he had seen me leave the Aqaba in varying states of drunkenness and except for my time with Linda, rarely with the same woman on consecutive nights. I wondered what was going on behind that face; approval, pity, amusement or just the good manners of complete indifference. As long as I put money in his pocket what did he care, I thought. And why should I care anyway? I did though, without knowing why just then.

Chapter 5

2007-02-16T06:21:00.001-08:00

There was a noisy queue for taxis outside the Aquaba and several knots of people saying rowdy goodnights crowded the pavement. We weaved between them and stepped over at least one semi-comatose drunk, a kid of about twenty asleep with his back propped on the low wall outside the club. His friends waited for a vacant cab to carry him to his bed. I hoped his cabby was a sympathetic one, otherwise it would be the scenic route home and a few more quid out of his pocket that night.

We turned right past the Phil' into Hardman St and down the hill towards town. Timmy had Alison by the hand and was chatting to her animatedly, pointing out sites of interest as they walked. Sarah and I walked a few yards behind them. We didn't talk and we didn't touch.

As we waited to cross at the bottom of Hardman St I looked over to the spot Tom had died. The Christmas tree was still in place and appeared to be undamaged. Its skeletal foliation seemed to luminesce in the sodium lights. In my mind's eye I saw the Fire Brigade hosing it down, washing the stains of Tom's blood down the drains and out to sea. There would be no trace of him left to upset shoppers and tourists. Beneath its branches was a police notice appealing for witnesses to the previous night's incident. I wondered how long that would remain in place.

We walked past the burnt out framework of St Luke's church. The moon which shone behind it was in the third quarter. The one working face on its sandstone clock tower showed twenty-five past two. I wondered how long Tom had watched his life tick away on its rusting fingers. I didn't know why, but it seemed important.

As we passed the church it started to rain very hard. A sudden squall had blown in from off the river. We dashed the last few hundred yards down a sidestreet and into the doorway of the Max. Behind the glass inner doors on a barstool sat Scouse Farrell. Five foot four, but broad as a bull. The height of the stool disguised his own shortness. All you saw was a big man in his sixties with brindle hair shaved to a crew cut and a nose broken almost flat into his face. He leaned forward without looking up from the copy of The Ring on his lap and with a hand as large as a spade pulled the door inwards.

'Alright Timmy, alright U, I'd ger in out the rain if I were youse. Don't want you ruinin' de expensive carpetin' on us now. A' dem girls wit' youse, and if so, do thee know the trouble they're in? ' The utterance came in a machine gun nasal burst of pure Liverpool accent.

Scouse's appearance always made me smile. From the top down he wore the classic uniform of an old time night club bouncer. Double-breasted DJ with cheap silk lapels, over-tight at the seams and straining across the midriff. Immaculate, white dress shirt and black dicky-bow from which his thick neck seemed in a struggle to escape. Below the waist was a different matter. Tonight he wore a pair of baggy pale brown acrilan slacks and wool carpet slippers in red and beige plaid.

'Alright, scouse' said Timmy ' Are the plates playing up again?' He'd noticed the slippers too.

'Don't talk to me about de' feet , pal. I'm lucky to be standing here with them at all. You'd think wit' de number of quacks I've seen, one o' dem would be able to sort 'em out. Mind you dis weather doesn' help at all'

'I've got some oil I made in me O.T. group up at the day hospital that's supposed to be good for feet. I'll bring you a bottle down next time I come' said Timmy.

'Ta very much, lah. Bur I think it'll be Lourdes water that dese things'll need before long, ar kid. I'll be chuckin' out from a bleedin' wheel chair if dee keep up the way dey have been.'

During this exchange the two women stood patiently looking through the glass partition which separated the foyer from the main room of the Max. There wasn't much to see. Apart from the lights above two of the half dozen snooker tables which took up most of the floorspace and a desultory fluorescent tube illuminating the small bar in the corner, the room was wreathed in blackness. Players would emerge out of penumbra and into the pool of light bathing a table, shoot their break and then return into the shadows. The darkness on the periphery of the tables was as impenetrable as the expressions on the faces of the snooker players. Only their cigarette smoke lingered longer in the light than they did.

'I s'pose it's my fuckin' round again, is it?' said Timmy 'I never thought I'd end up using me disability money to subsidise third level education.'

The two women giggled drunkenly as Timmy ushered them into the main room. As I turned to follow them Scouse placed his hand on my arm and halted my progress. He leaned towards me. Perched on his stool his face was level with mine.

'I'm sorry for your trouble, lad. We found him, you know. I called the ambulance, bur it was too late for him.' His voice was low, intimate and strangely gentle.

'What happened, Scouse? Did he say anything?'

'I don't know lad. About half one last night Billy Parkes, you know little Paddy's eldest lad, come dashin' in here ravin' about a body hanging from de tree up at de top der. I got the missus to phone for an ambulance and walked up dere for a look see. I thought it might be some 'ead the ball, or a smack 'ead, you know like. I couldn't believe me eyes when I saw Geraghty hangin' dere. By de time I got to him, he was gone. I don't know how long he'd been dere. Dere was blood everywhere. I've seen a few things in me time, but this was terrible.'

'Did anyone else see anything?'

'At dat time of the morning? Dere's no fucker about is deh? Dey're all hoping for a last go at gettin a shag before de clubs close, or well tucked up for dee night. De young feller only found him because he'd spent up early an was on 'is way 'ome, like.'

'Did the Parkes lad say anything?' He shook his head.

'He was in a right state, I'm tellin' yer. Little get thinks he's a hard man, an' all. Well he's not the man 'is father was, if last night is anything to go by. No bottle, none at all. Anyway, son have you 'eard from is missus? D'you know when's the funeral?'

'Aye, she called me tonight to let me know. She didn't say when the funeral was. There'll have to be an inquest and a post-mortem, I suppose.'

'Well if you find out, ler us know. I'll keep me eye on the Echo in the meantime and Beryl'll organise a whip-round for a wreath. Mind you der'll be a few here dat won't be purrin' der 'ands in deir pockets too quick. Deh big fellah wasn't popular, even amongst ' is own, you know. 'E was always dead straight with me doh.'

'What about the Parkes lad? Is it worth speaking to him do you think?'

'I doubt it la'. That one will still be wetting de bed with nightmares. I got now sense out of the little bollocks. Dey had to take him to the 'ossy too, you know wit de shock. Anyway, as I said before, I'm sorry for your trouble. Tell Beryl your next round's on dee 'ouse.'

'Thanks, Scouse. I'll see you later.'

I turned and walked away from him into the main room. Timmy and the women were on stools at the bar.

'Here's the man of mystery now' I heard Sarah say as I approached. Her voice was timbred with a brittle ring of drunkenness. The conversation with Scouse had somehow sobered me up and I began to feel the grief I'd been controlling all the night. Timmy handed me a drink. It was a Jimmy's. I drank it back and ordered another round. Beryl brought them over and refused the money I offered her.

It's alright lad' she said softly 'Put dat towards the flowers for Tom'. I returned the cash to my back pocket.

'Fuck me old boots' said Timmy loudly 'A free drink in 'ere. As somebody died or what?' I gave him a glare and he realised what he'd said. He started to apologise and I stopped his words short.

'Forget it, Timmy. Don't dig a bigger hole for yourself than you already have.'

His pale blue eyes looked deeply into my brown ones as if he was trying to establish my state of mind. His round face held no expression. He had spent so much of his own life being looked at by people in that way he'd picked up the knack himself. Sarah, insensitive to the tension between myself and Timmy, put her arm around my shoulder and leaned onto me. I shook her off gently but firmly and moved just out of her reach along the bar. I threw back my drink, put the glass carefully down on the bar and stepped away from the group.

'I'm heading on now. I'll see you again, alright? Safe home to you.'

'Aye alright, U, see you round.' Timmy's voice sounded hollow with a tone of contrition. The women said nothing for a moment. I was across the room and through the door before I heard them call their goodbyes.

I said goodnight to Scouse and stepped into the street. The rain had stopped and the moon was still bright as I walked down the hill towards home. I circled around Chinatown and cut through onto Paradise Street. There were few clubs in this part of town and those that there were did their business mainly at weekends. The sudden squall had polished the empty pavements and they shone like obsidian. It felt like walking on the moon.

As I walked I thought of Tom plodding the beat around here and remembered some of his stories. It was strange. I'd not thought about him since the P45 had dropped through my letter box but now on the deserted moonlit streets everywhere I looked seemed to be a feature in the geography of his past.

I passed a spot on Paradise Street where he told me that as a probationer he'd arrested his first drunk. The lad turned out to be a cousin of his from Listowel and didn't he only write to his parents to say what a gentleman their son was. Telling them how Tom had got him a warm bed and a good breakfast on his first night in a strange city. He had the tact not to mention the forty bob fine it had cost him.

At the end of Paradise Street I turned right and cut across past some seventies' municipal monstrosity onto Wapping. I passed the Baltic Fleet, a pub named from the days when Liverpool still had one. I remembered the story of Betty Savage, a real life Maggie May who'd worked the south docks. According to Tom she'd had her throat cut after rolling one drunken sailor too many. It was a Dutchman who'd done it. Not because of the money, but because she'd ditched his wallet in the River Mersey. It was bad luck really. The wallet contained the only photograph he had of his wife and child. They'd been killed by the Nazis in a concentration camp. He'd searched for Betty every time his ship had docked. Eventually he found her and killed her. Mad with drink and remorse, he'd given himself up to Tom at the Pier Head sub-station.

It chilled me to think that so much of my knowledge of the city, my adopted home, was loaded with someone else's memories. I saw it through the eyes of an ex-rozzer now lying cold on a mortuary slab. I didn't have place-memories of my own to recall. At least none that were worth passing on. Even if there was ever anyone to pass them on to.

Chapter 6

2007-02-16T06:21:00.000-08:00

By the time I reached the waterside the analgesic effect of the drink had begun to recede. The fog horn of tanker across the Mersey at Tranmere oil jetty echoed and bounced across the glassy surface of the still river making a sound lonelier than I thought was possible. I remembered a Hank Williams' song one of my uncles in Belfast had made his party piece when I was a kid. That night I was too blue to fly but not quite so lonesome I could die. I still had the cat for company. Humming the tune softly to myself I approached the entrance to my block.

I was fumbling for the keys as black cab pulled up at the kerb. There was a dark haired woman in the rear seat and she leaned forward to pay the cabbie. I carried on fumbling with the key in the lock. The cab door slammed just as I had managed to open the lobby door and its passenger joined me at the threshold. It was Sarah but that didn't register with me for a moment. As I focussed on her presence I felt less drunk than tired. She spoke first.
'Hello, U'.

The cab did a three point turn and sped off in the direction it had come. I heard the sound of the diesel motor fade in the distance. The tanker across the river blew its foghorn again twice. The sound now seemed somehow impatient. I remained silent, one foot on the porch, one inside the threshold.
'Timmy gave me your address. I didn't think you should be alone tonight.'
'For a wee man he has a big mouth, that lad. I hope it doesn't get someone into trouble.' The words came out in a slurred half mumble.

'I can go if you want. Just let me call a taxi.' I looked at her for a moment, like a poker player trying to read her face for a tell. I drunk-stumbled over a reply.

'No, no. It's okay, I'm just surprised that's all. Come in and have a cuppa. The place is a bit of a kip though.'

She smiled and appeared to relax. I led her though into the hallway and turned on the light. Under the fluorescent she looked older than she had in the dim lights of the Aquaba. I could see the odd grey hair amongst the black. She was closer to my own age than I had first thought. I beckoned her towards my door, unlocked it and pushed it open. I was immediately conscious of the smell of soiled cat litter. Collins had been busy while I was out. If I could smell it, I knew it was ten times more noticeable to her.

'Sorry about the reek. The cat's been locked in all day.

'You have a cat? Where is he? What's he called? I love cats.' The questions came with the rapid fire enthusiasm of a child.

'Collins, cause he's such a big feller.' The joke, such as it was, didn't appear to register with her.

As if in answer to a cue Collins appeared like a silver grey shadow in the bedroom doorway. He arched his back and glared at me in the way only a cat can. She bent to stroke him but he darted around her and into the bathroom. I heard the thud of paws on plastic as he landed in the bath. It was followed immediately by a loud and indignant miaow.

'Excuse me, but he wants a drink. Go through and sit down.'

I directed her through to the living room and walked back into the bathroom where Collins sat like an Egyptian idol gazing intently at the cold tap. I bent over and turned it on to drip. He leaned forward and licked greedily. As he drank I did a quick tidy-up of the bathroom. It was so small it should have been difficult for it to get too untidy. Too many things out of place and you just couldn't get into it. I threw some bits and pieces into a cabinet, had a quick wipe around the sink removing old shaving stubble, and checked the pan for skid marks. There were none. I pissed, quickly splashed my face with cold water and returned to Sarah in the living room.

She'd cleared a space for herself on my old sofa and was looking about herself with open curiosity. I stood in the doorway watching her pick a visual path through my possessions. She finally turned to look at me.

'This is a nice place. I love your view.' She nodded her head towards the large french window that overlooked the riverside. From the opposite bank the lights of the Wirral peninsula shone and reflected on the surface of the water.

'Sure it's a bit of a mess' I looked around at the boxes and packing cases that littered the room. The remains of last night's takeaway pizza still lay on the carpet in front of the TV.

'You ought to see my place. I know what it's like when you've just moved in.'
'I've been here nearly a year.'

'In that case it's a pigsty and you should be ashamed of yourself.' She smiled and shook her head gently from side to side.

'Men. Typical.' she went on 'And you Irish men are the worst, you know. You're so used to having your mammies clear up after you, when it doesn't get done you'd never think to do it yourself.' I interrupted before the lecture went on.

'Would you like a cup of tea?' I half-turned indicating the kitchen.

'I would, yes.'

As I filled the kettle and set it on to boil, I called back to her through the open door..

'You seem to know a lot about Irish men'

'And whoi shouldn't oi?' Her voice took on a stage-Irish lilt. 'Aren't oi a choild of the Oirish diaspora, meself so? Weren't me dadda and mammy exiles from the green soil of auld Erin?' I rinsed out two cleanish mugs and warmed the teapot from the hot tap, emptied it and dropped in three teaspoons of tea from a tin caddy.

'My mother's from Mayo, my dad's from Donegal. It was a mixed marriage. I was brought up in the midlands. My given name is Sorcha Ní Dhonmhaill, believe it or not.'

Her voice came from much closer than before and I turned to see her framed in the kitchen doorway. She held the old pizza box in one hand.

'God, U, the kitchen's worse than the living room. Do you never wash up?'

'Once a week, whether it's needed or not. And anyway so, do you not know what my mate Bukowski says about people with tidy kitchens? It indicates a mind with nothing better to occupy it' A change of subject was needed.

'An bhuil tú Gaeilge agut?'

'Níl mé. Well a cúpla fócal as they say. My dad was a native speaker but he was a bit ashamed of the fact and never wanted us to learn it. Anyway, I don't know who your mate is, but remind me never to eat at his place if it's anything like this.'

'Just call by on a Saturday and you'd not recognise the place. Don't leave it too late though. Saturday's also my cooking at home day.'
'Is that an invitation?'
'It could be, so. Just sling that old box in the nearest clear space.' She moved some dishes to one side and put the box in the cleared space.

The kettle reached a boil and I poured the water onto the leaves in the pot. Filled a jug with milk from the fridge which I sniffed before pouring, put pot, jug and mugs onto a black Japanese lacquer tray that Linda had left behind, pulled a teaspoon from the cutlery drawer, turned to her and said

'Do you take sugar, sugar?'
'No thanks, I'm sweet enough.'

We both winced at the old joke. Before I could turn to pick up the tray she had taken the short step from doorway to kitchen unit, put her arms around my neck and kissed me full on the lips. I responded by leaning into her and wrapping my arms around her waist. Her tongue entered my mouth and as it met my own I could feel an erection forming. Sensing my condition she pushed her pelvis against me and I felt myself become firmer still. It was almost an alien sensation.

I moved my lips onto the whiteness of her neck and kissed it gently down towards her shoulder. She leaned her head to one side and her right hand moved with a slight pressure down the length of my spine. Her left hand pressed down on the back of my head making my lips press harder into her shoulder. The pressure increased as she pulled me closer to her. I gave her a nip at the point where neck joined shoulder and she mewled lightly like a kitten. She began a gentle cyclical grinding of her pelvic bone against my groin and I felt the uncomfortable constraint of my jockeys. I untangled myself from her grip, took both of her hands in mine and raised them to my lips.

'That was nice.' I looked into her eyes and smiled 'Now. Is it tea or sex you're wanting?'

'Sex first, then tea. And biscuits if you have any.'

Chapter 7

2007-02-16T05:42:00.000-08:00

She led me by the hand into the bedroom. Yellow sodium lights on the dock road filtered through the Swedish nets Linda had brought with her when she moved in. We kissed again in the middle of the room amongst a scattering of books, papers and clothes. Collins sprang up from the nest he had built for himself out of my quilt and regarded us with supreme feline contempt. Suddenly Sarah broke off our embrace but held on to my hand.

'Look, U. I don't want to fuck you up with this. I fancy you, but I don't know if I like you. This may be a way of finding out, or it might not. If you think this may be wrong for you, then we can stop now, have the tea and no hard feelings.'

Her face was solemn as she spoke and her solemnity affected me. I felt that I was on the edge of a great big abyss of betrayal but I couldn’t tell who I was betraying, Linda or Sarah. I attempted to shrug the feeling off and failed miserably.

‘I’m easy. Stay or go, it’s up to you. But there’ll be no biscuits if you leave’
'I knew you were easy or else I wouldn't have wasted the taxi fare down here.’

Her face broke into a broad smile and she pulled me back onto the bed which bounced beneath us. Collins immediately leapt off and disappeared into a reserve napping spot on a pile of unwashed clothes in a corner of the room.

We kissed and touched, alternating our lovemaking with the removal of clothing. She unbuttoned my shirt and her hand snaked down to the front of my jeans and tugged at my belt. I pulled her T-shirt over her head, fumbled briefly with the catch on her white lace bra releasing her breasts. I bent forward to hold and kiss them. She lay back across the bed. I followed her down. I heard two thumps on the floor as she kicked off her DMs. I unbuckled her belt and pulled down her jeans.

Her panties were high-waisted with a lace insert which matched that on her bra. They contrasted with the masculine functionality of the Calvin Kleins' Linda had worn. The contrast pulled me up momentarily. I was back at the abyss of betrayal. She sensed my pause and then redoubled her efforts with my belt. She released the buckle but couldn't manage the button on my waistband. I knelt up and undid it myself with both hands. She tugged at my flies and the remainder of the buttons opened easily. I eased them and my jockeys down as far as my knees and my erect penis bobbed upright. She took it in her hand and for a moment seemed to examine it clinically. I recoiled from the unfamiliarity of her touch. She stopped and looked up into my face.

'Apart from this thing, what's up?'

'Nothing.' I lied 'I'm just concerned about getting my boots off, that's all.'

'Fuck, I thought you might be more of an altar boy than you let on.'

She stroked my back, caressed my head, and scattered kisses across my neck and shoulders as I leaned forward to unlace my boots. I pulled them and my socks off. My jeans and underpants followed. I kicked the latter across the room. I didn't want them open to inspection in daylight. I couldn't remember if I'd changed that day or the day before.

As we fumbled through the mechanics of sex with a first time partner, I thought of Linda and the last time we had made love before she left. I hadn't consciously known she was to leave, but I had known in my heart it was over. For Linda, if not for me. What is it that they say about the heart and its reasons? I tried to focus myself on the physical act and push these feelings to the periphery of my consciousness. We changed position and Sarah came to orgasm astride me. I continued my own battle between body and mind for a while longer and then surrendered. There was more than alcohol and lubricated latex between me and orgasm. My erection began to subside inside of her. We disengaged and lay back hand in hand facing the ceiling. After a while, she propped herself up on her elbows and looked up into my eyes.

'Did you come?' I considered lying but the look in her eyes told me she’d know.

'No. Too much booze and the old wellington boot. You know how it is when you get to my age.'

She laughed. 'I did. Twice. What a greedy girl.' She giggled in satisfaction at the thought and then quickly turned onto her back. She took my hand in hers, raised it to her lips and kissed my fingertips gently. A tsunami of despair washed over me and I knew I was still hooked on someone half a world away. Sarah was the first to break to post-coital silence

'Speak to me in Irish, U.'

'What?' She repeated her request with greater emphasis.

'Speak to me in Irish. I thought sex was supposed to make you blind, not deaf'

'That's wanking, not sex.'

'Whatever. Just speak to me in Irish.'

I'd learned most of my Irish working on building sites as a student. Words for tea and concrete figured highly in my vocabulary. But I remembered a poem I'd half learned once to impress a girl from Kerry I'd had a crush on. I spoke it slowly, struggling to capture the rhythm and recall each word

Níl agam aidhm ná dúil
ala le hala
ná uair le huair
a gceangal ní heol dom
ná a léamh
sa mbláth eascair
dá ngairmtear an saol-

As I spoke the words haltingly she moved down my body and released my now flaccid penis from its rubber envelope. She encircled its base with the finger and thumb of her left hand and began to massage it lightly. I paused in my recitation, a spasm of tension traversed my groin. She sensed it, looked at me and spoke.

'Carry on. It's beautiful. Ignore me.' She resumed her carnal activity and my penis slowly began to harden.

'mar go bhuil agaibh
aidhm 'gus dúil
neach eicínt
smaoineamh eicínt
bhur scéimh féin b'fhéidir
- amhail gluaiseacht coillte is crainn
don chonfairt ag fiach
gluaiseacht lae agua uaire daoibh

By now I was erect and enclosed in a circle formed by her fist. I continued to recite.

'ach níl agam aidhm ná dúil
an leanfainn
ná níl agam aga-'

I stopped unable to remember the last few lines. She seemed fixated on her task. What she was doing felt good. For the first time I relaxed and flowed with the sensation, emptying my head of anything but Irish. I tried to think of some more lines of poetry. I could think of only old sayings and greetings. Stock phrases and the occasional curse. She maintained a steady up and down motion with her hand, kissing and nuzzling my chest and stomach as she did so. My Irish began a terminal descent into gibberish.

'Is Éireannach mise, Ulick is aimn dom, rugaidh mé sa Béal Feirste ach táim i mo chónaí sa Learphoill. Tá cailín deas, túse, agus is maith liom an rud tá tu ag dhéanamh. Ná stoppa. Tá mo bod crua ach tá an moirteár chomh caite le cú. Ba mhaith liom pionta Guinness, mas é do thoil é.'

Snatches of nursey rhymes, curses and blessings. Soon the only thing that mattered was the warm sensation of her hand around my penis. She continued to pump steadily with her fist and my pelvis moved in counter-time to her rhythm. I moved faster and faster, still mouthing nonsense in Irish. I felt seminal fluid spurt and a warm, once familiar glow radiated through my groin.

'Go raibh maith agut. Go raibh maith agut. Go raibh míle, míle maith agut' were my last words as the unfamiliar feeling of relief spread through my physical being.

Her breasts brushed my chest as she reached across me and pulled a tissue from a box beside the bed. She used it to wipe the spilled semen from my stomach and groin.

'I get the feeling you liked that.' she said.

'Just a little bit.' We smiled at each other and I leaned forward to kiss her. Not passionate this time, just warm and intimate. The sudden familiarity of it scared me not a little.

'Thank you' I said seriously, trying to find some trace of deceit in the penetrating blue of her eyes. 'All part of the service'

She snuggled into my side and I pulled the quilt over us. Her handed rested on my pelvic bone, her head on my shoulder. The street lights outside had extinguished and we lay there in darkness. After a few minutes a gentle snoring told me she was asleep. I looked over at the alarm clock. Its red LED read five past five but but what I saw looked more like SOS. The sleep perfumed heat of her body beside me felt oddly familiar and I wondered what she'd be like to wake up with.

Chapter 8

2007-02-16T05:32:00.000-08:00

I was to remain wondering for a while to come. When I was woken by Collins purring like a compressor in my ear it was eleven a.m. and Sarah had gone. There was a note propped against the alarm clock. 'Didn't want to wake you, I had to get back. Call me soon or I'll call you.' Her telephone number followed. 'PS Thanks for last night. PPS. I have desire but no aim.' The last line referred to the poem I'd recited. She had more Irish on her than she pretended. I smiled.

I turned the radio on. The DJ was talking to a woman from West Derby. His platitudes and her singsong accent drove me from the bed. Collins led the way into the kitchen as I pulled on the crombie overcoat that doubled as a dressing gown. In the daylight the room looked even more of a tip than it had the night before. I put the kettle on to boil and rinsed out a mug. I promised that today would be the day I cleaned up. It was nearly Saturday after all.

I sat on the sofa with my coffee and looked around for the remote. It was across the room on top of the telly. Where else would it be? Placing the crockery on the carpet I walked across the bare wood floor to retrieve it. As I sipped and ate, Richard and Judy enthused vapidly about some special, last minute ideas for Christmas they'd come across. They reminded me that there were only seven shopping days to go. All that meant to me that there were six days before I started panicking. I decided I didn't have to worry. And there’d be two fewer presents to by this year.As the show cut to Fred out on his island, the telephone rang. It was Breege, Tom's daughter.

'Hello, U. How are you? Did I wake you?'

'No, I've been up and about for ages' I lied. 'How are you? I'm sorry about your Da.'

My condolences sound hollow and insincere. Why was it always so hard to find the words appropriate to the grief of others? You'd think a death-cult like Christianity would have a vocabulary to deal with it. They’d had two millenia to work on it.

'I'm fine. I still haven't got used to the idea yet. I know it'll hit me soon, though. I suppose the medical training hardens you a bit.' She paused and I said nothing waiting for her to continue.

'Look, I need to talk with you. Can we meet?'

'Of course. When?'

'How about lunch today?'

'That's good. Solid or liquid?' She laughed. It was an old joke between us.

'Solid, I think, just to be on the safe side.'

'Okay. One o'clock at the Everyman, then. In the Bistro.'

'I'll see you there. Bye, U'

'Slán, kid and give my love to your mum and Cait.'

'I will, bye.'

I finished my toast and rolled my first cigarette of the day to smoke with the remains of the coffee. The smell of tobacco smoke brought Collins rushing onto my lap. He was a nicotine addict, the most active passive smoker in the world, feline or human. He purred loudly and tried to get near my face as I smoked. He obtained far more pleasure out of my habit than I ever had. I'd given up giving up, but I tried to ration myself. He stretched up from my lap and gently bit my chin trying to pull my face nearer to his so he could obtain more of the smoke. By the time I finished my coffee he was curled up on my lap sleeping off breakfast. I lifted him off and standing up placed him into the warm spot where I had been sitting. He glowered at me balefully, curled into a ball and went back to sleep.

I walked to the bathroom then showered and shaved. During the latter I examined my face in the mirror. I didn't look as tired as I should have, but my brown eyes were bloodshot. There didn't seem to be any more lines on my face or grey hairs amongst the black on my head than there were the day before. My hairline hadn't receded in the night. I did notice that I had small fair hairs growing in my ears. They would have to go. In the sink there was silver amongst in the black stubble.

Wrapped in a white towel that Linda had stolen from Raffles in Singapore, I walked into the bedroom. The phone-in was over, replaced by music for housewives. I looked around at the clothes scattered about the room. In the end I settled on a black Aran sweater with the same colour 501s. Both were covered in Collins' grey hairs.

I pulled on my boots, removed my wallet and loose change from last night's jeans and hunted around for my keys. Under the rules of our co-habitation, all shiny things left lying around became Collins' property. I found them pushed under the tv unit where he put all his acquisitions sooner or later. I was glad they hadn't ended up in his other hidey-hole behind the fridge.

It was close to twelve forty-five by the time I was ready. I decided that the dishes could wait until tomorrow. I smiled and thought of the old joke about the Irishman and the Spaniard. The Spaniard is trying to explain how latin people are more laid back than northern Europeans, about the culture of manana. If it isn't done today, it will get done tomorrow. The Irishman smiles, shakes his head and apologises for his lack of comprehension. We don't have a word in our language to express that degree of urgency.

It was fine day for mid-December. The sun was shining thinly and the air temperature was mild. I thanked God for global warming and the ameliorating effects of the river. Another tanker had replaced last night's departure over at the jetty. The tugs which had guided it into place were heading back to their own moorings down-river.

I repeated my walk of the previous evening. A solitary prostitute stood on the corner of Hope St and Canning St within spitting distance of the police station. She jerked her head at the driver of every car which slowed at the junction of the two streets. Even from a distance I could see the black roots of her blonde hair. She was older than the girls of last night and wore the winter uniform of Liverpool female sex-workers. Cheap leather jacket, black mini-skirt and stockings, high heeled court shoes. Incongruously, on her hands she wore bright red, hand-knitted woolly gloves. I wondered at their erotic possibilities and then realised that the last thing punters want is cold hands on their vital parts. It didn't matter how warm hearted the girl might be if she made your mickey shrink on contact. She stood alone. There was no sign of a Kev-type protector. As I passed her, she turned towards me.

'Are yer doing a bir o' trade, luv?' she said as I passed her. The usual greeting. I smiled and shook my head. 'Not today, girl, thanks.'

A look of disappointment crossed her face, which was careworn but had been carefully made-up to hide the obvious damage the years and her life had done. Her eyes were lightly shadowed in blue and looked tired. The were tiny lumps of mascara on her lashes. She'd been a pretty girl once, I thought.

'Sorry'. I said and in a sad way I meant it. I walked on towards my destination.

Hope St was buzzing with student pedestrians moving from mid-day lectures to refectories, cafes and halls. The street formed the boundary line between the two University campuses. It was easy to tell students from natives. Who said class wasn't marked on the body?

Apart from headgear, student fashions seemed to have changed very little from my time. Skirts were shorter and the jeans a little baggier. I appreciated the former and regretted the latter as I walked behind a gaggle of female undergraduates. It seemed that flares had come and gone, in a mercifully brief interval, but platform boots were in fashion for the women again. I remembered my own period in those absurd stilts during the 1970s. I wondered if they knew how clumsy they looked and then recalled that I hadn't in my time. At least these days they weren't being worn with twenty-eight inch bottom Oxford bags. The gods of retro-fashion are merciful in small ways.

At the entrance to the John Moore's University car park I crossed the road and started down the stairs to the Everyman bistro. In the alcove stood a kid of about nineteen. His face and clothes were unwashed and his skin was the colour of newsprint. As I passed him he held out a battered McDonald's cup in my general direction. I dropped some loose change from my pocket into it. He thanked me in a distinctly cockney accent. As I walked down the steps into the bar I pondered on the thought that Liverpool was now importing its poverty and homelessness from the rest of the country. It was one of the few growth areas of the local economy.

Chapter 9

2007-02-16T05:20:00.000-08:00

She was already there when I entered the bistro. I saw her wave to me as I walked down the steps and into the bar. Facially she was the image of her mother. Only in her colouring did she take after Tom. Chestnut hair and dark green eyes. Her skin was almost olive, making her look more Latin than Celt. She was a complete contrast to her twin sister who was blonde haired and fair skinned with eyes the colour of pale sapphire.

Breege was always the quieter of the two sisters. The more serious, thoughtful one. The teenager I had first met always struck me as older in her years than her sister. And unlike her sister, she rarely if ever drew attention to herself. She never sought applause or approval and always seemed content with people's acceptance of her presence. I wondered if that made her a good doctor.

She stood up as I approached the table and we hugged with sincere affection. Her hair smelt vaguely of coconut shampoo. She wore a black two piece suit with a dark grey silk blouse buttoned to the neck. On the seat beside her lay a camel coloured raincoat with a tartan lining. We sat facing each other. There was a half drunk cup of tea, a packet of Silk Cut and an ashtray containing three butts on the table between us.

'I'm sorry about your da.'

The words felt routine and empty, a hollow incantation. She must have heard them many times in the two days since his death. Her skin had a pallor to it born of grief and long hours indoors.

'I know you must be. You were as close to him as anyone. He missed you, you know.'

'I missed him.'

‘You never said so.’

'Neither did he.' I felt the full intensity of her dark green eyes on me. I felt like one of her patients awaiting an unwelcome diagnosis.

'Would you like anything?' I said, breaking her gaze. She shook her head.

She reached down to the table and picked up the fag packet. She took one out and tapped its end in a rapid staccato on the side of the packet. I rose from the table, walked to the counter and ordered a coffee. I returned to the table, sat down and spooned some sugar from the bowl into the cup. As I stirred it slowly, she inhaled on her cigarette and began again.

'U, I'm going to get to the point.'

'You were always the blunt one.' She smiled sadly.

'There's something funny about what happened to dad.'

'Working in a hospital must have done something to your sense of humour.' She smiled again, wryly this time and went on.

'I've spent the last six months working in a casualty department. I've seen a lot of RTA deaths in that time. Dad didn't look like anything I've ever seen.' Her sentences, like her tone, were clipped. It seemed she was speaking to a fellow professional rather than fellow mourner.

You were on duty when he was brought in?'

'No, thank God. But I read the admitting officer's report and I've seen the PM notes. The cause of death was the impalement. The branch entered his back amongst the thorassic vertebrae, severed his aorta and punctured the left lung. It emerged just to the left of his breast bone.'

I could sense the control that delivering this terse description of her father's death was requiring. Her eyes did not leave mine as she spoke. For me the intensity of the image was not dissipated by her use of clinical language. I wondered how she must be feeling.

'Couldn't that happen if he was hit by a car?'

'It could. But the other injuries aren't consistent with the kind of impact that would be needed to drive him onto the branch.'

'How do you mean?'

'Apart from the damage done by the branch, Dad was hardly injured at all. He had bruising to the upper body and head and a couple of broken ribs, and that's it. You think he'd fallen down a flight of stairs or been in a bit of a scrap. Not knocked over by a speeding vehicle. Have you ever seen a pedestrian hit by a car travelling at speed?' I shook my head.

'I have and those kinds of injuries don't look like Dad's. There was almost no internal injury except that caused by the tree. If he'd been hit head on, there would be fractures all over, as well as cuts and abrasions. The soft organs would have been traumatised. He'd have been a mess inside and outside. He wasn't.'

'What do you think happened then?' As she shook her head I decided to keep Hatter's gossip to myself.

'I wish I knew. And I try not to think.' I could see the effort her self-control was requiring. Her eyes filled with tears as she looked at me but she did not cry. I put my hand on her shoulder. A professional reflex clicked in and she regained her composure.

'So what do the police say?'

'They're not saying anything at the moment. The attending officer put it down as a hit and run. The guy who found him didn't see anything but heard brakes and a vehicle accelerate away. There'll have to be an inquest of course, but I expect they'll go with that. You know how they work. They always look for the most straightforward.'

'And you don't think it was?'

'I don't. It's more than just a feeling. Look.'

She reached down beneath the table and pulled a large padded envelope from a brown leather shoulder bag. After clearing a space on the table she tipped the contents of the envelope onto it.

'I called you from the hospital after I picked up dad's PEs'

'PEs?'

'His bits and pieces -personal effects. Sorry. Jobspeak.'

She leaned back against the wall as I scanned the items scattered on the table. I could read nothing but expectancy in her face. It was like that children's game. Any moment now she would cover Tom's stuff with a cloth and I would have to list what was there. As I looked across them, I began to feel sad. These few objects were so much the man.

A folding pigskin wallet frayed at the seams and shined with friction from being carried in a back pocket. A souvenir of the Greek island that he and Bernadette visited for the same two weeks every September. I knew it contained a photograph of himself, Bernadette and the two girls taken at their graduation. I knew without opening it that there would be a single credit card and about forty pounds in cash.

An old fashioned metal spectacle case. Tom was long-sighted but vain and he needed them for reading. He wore them a little as possible and when he had to he always made a big show of finding them, patting himself with both hands. They were always in the same place. Inside left jacket pocket.

A small dental plate. He'd lost his upper front teeth arresting a middleweight contender called Malone in a pub on the Dock Road. Tom had lost the first round and as Malone circled in for another, Tom had picked up a pint bottle of Guinness from the nearest table and slammed it down on the boxer's skull to win by a technical knockout. He didn't get up after a count of nine and went to the Bridewell via casualty.

The local punters, who had relished the thought of a hard jack getting his come-uppance over a couple of rounds with Malone, had reported him for police brutality. He'd gone before the disciplinary board with a wired jaw, a black eye and a nose in splints. He was reprimanded and suspended for a week without pay. Malone himself had refused to lay charges. Tom described it as the most expensive pint of Guinness he'd never drunk.

A chrome-plated Swiss wristwatch with a white face and a simple black leather strap, a wedding present from Bernadette. The bezel was marked with a small scratch at three o'clock and the radium on the fingers and numerals had long since lost its luminosity. I could see small flecks of dried blood encrusted in the external rim of the face where crystal met chrome. The watch kept terrible time, but he wouldn't change it for the new ones she bought him every other birthday. It was inscribed on the back with their intertwined initials and their date of their wedding. Bernadette joked that he only kept it so he wouldn't forget their anniversary.

A small plastic bag of loose change, perhaps two or three pound coins and some silver, completed the items from the envelope. All in all it wasn't much to have with you at your end.

I scanned across them again and realised what wasn't there. His notebook. Breege must have felt like Sherlock Holmes to my Watson. The missing notebook was the dog that didn't bark. Even as a private detective he had maintained his policeman's habit of recording everything in a small black notebook which he carried with him everywhere. One drawer in his office desk was full of them dating back over the ten years since he had retired.

'What do you think happened to it?' I asked. I knew she knew what I was talking about and she breathed a visible sigh of relief.

'You noticed then. Thank God for small mercies. I was beginning to think I was paranoid. His keys were gone too but I didn't twig to that. It was the notebook that set me off.'

'No. It's missing and that's odd. Could it have fallen out in the accident?'

'It wasn't an accident. And no, I don't think so. Apart from the keys, everything else is there, why should his notebook go astray?'

'Do you know what he was working on?'

'No. That's why I phoned you. I thought you could help me find out'.

As she said this she reached into a side pocket in her tailored jacket, pulled out a bunch of keys and dropped them on the table. They were a spare set that I had used. The key fob advertised Bushmill's whiskey.

'You knew the way he worked, better than anyone. I thought you could have a look around the office and see what you can see.'

'Did he not take anyone on after I left?' She shook her head.

'He thought you'd be back with your tail between your legs once you saw sense. I suppose he didn't know you as well as he thought.'

'I think he did. He just had more patience than you give him credit for.'

'Would you have come back?'

'I don't know. If he had asked me, probably yes. But he didn't so I didn't.' I picked up the keys and put them in my jacket pocket.

'Do you want to go now?' She shook her head.

'I don't think I could face it now. Anyway, I have to get back to mum and give Cait a break.'

'Ok. I'll take a walk down there later and have a look in. Will I call you if I find anything?'

'No. I'll call you tonight. I don't want mum bothered if there is anything funny going on. It's best if you and I handle it.'

'Fine. I'll speak to you later.'

She removed the items from the table and carefully returned them one by one to the envelope which she then put back into her bag. We stood up together and I helped her on with her overcoat. She turned and kissed me with sisterly affection on my right cheek. Then her eyes fixed on mine.

'U, I don't know what dad was working on, but if his death wasn't an accident, you could be bringing trouble on yourself by getting involved.' I smiled, made snake-eyes and went into an execrable Bogart routine.

'You know us private dicks, lady, trouble is our business.' She returned my smile and then her face went serious again. She looked at her fingernails, as if embarrassed.

'It's not a joke, U. I don't want you to end up like dad, that's all.'

'It's all right, a rún. I promise I'll run and hide if I bump into anyone who looks like Sidney Greenstreet.' She relaxed and smiled.

'Ok, just be careful. Please.'

'I'll try.'

I gave her the gunman's salute and she turned and walked away across the bar. I followed her with my eyes until she disappeared up the stairs and then I sat back down at the table. I felt for the keys in my pocket, pulled them out and put them before me on the table. I ran my index finger across them touching each one in turn. They were arranged on the key ring in order of size. Ground floor front, second floor front, inner office, safe, desk, filing cabinets, and petty cash box. Looking at the keys brought back the memory of my last meeting with Tom.

The last time I had had them in my possession, I had been growing more frustrated and he more obdurate in his resistance to change. While he was great in the role of immovable object, I was less efficient playing irresistible force. The decision to quit had come quite suddenly. I just woke up one morning in March, still recovering from a St Patrick's Day tear that had lasted the best part of a week and decided enough was enough. I had no plans and very few options open to me. I just knew things couldn't go on the way they had since Linda had left.

That morning, as always, Tom was already behind his desk when I arrived at the office. He had grunted a good afternoon. No matter what the time of day, unless I arrived before him, that was always his greeting. I said nothing in reply. I walked to my desk, opened the top right hand drawer and began sorting through its contents looking for anything personal that might be there. There were a couple of postcards from Linda, a personal stereo and some cassettes. I took them out and placed them on the desk. I bent to open the next drawer down.

He leaned across from his own desk which stood at a right angle to mine facing the door and dropped a buff coloured folder in front of me.

'Would you ever take a look at that, U?' It wasn't a request. I didn't look up from my search or acknowledge the presence of the folder on my desk. If we spoke I knew I'd not leave the office that day or any other.

'Have you lost the use of your ears as well as your tongue this morning, me laddo?'

I ignored him. There was nothing I wanted from the second drawer and I knew the rest of the desk just held business stationery and small equipment. I picked up the few items, put them in my coat pocket and walked around to the front of the desk. Facing Tom I took the office keys from another pocket and placed them on his desk.

'I won't be needing these anymore. I'm jacking it in.'

He looked at me but remained silent. I could feel him scanning my face with his bizzy eyes, looking for weakness and calculating the appropriate response. I kept my eyes on his. Finally, he reached across the desk, picked up the keys, and in one continuous movement turned his revolving chair ninety degrees to the left, opened the top drawer of his desk, dropped them in, and closed it carefully.

'Fair enough, lad.' he said. He made no other comment and his face remained impassionate as he looked at me. I turned and walked towards the door.

'I'll see you then, so.' I said as I opened the office door and half looked back.

'Aye, lad. If I don't see you first.'

As I looked back I saw that his eyes had returned to the file in front of him. Those were the last words I heard him speak. I gently closed the door behind me, walked through the waiting room and down the stairs onto the street. It was a cold spring day and summer still seemed a long way off.

A week later I received a recorded delivery letter containing a month's wages in lieu of notice, three weeks holiday pay, and my P45. There was no other message.

Chapter 10

2007-02-16T05:15:00.000-08:00

My contemplation of the keys was disturbed by a woman's voice and a hand on my left shoulder. I looked up and around. It was Sarah. She smiled down at me. She held a tray in front of her containing a bowl of soup, some granary bread, a cup, a glass and a bottle of Evian. She sat down occupying the place vacated by Breege.

'Hello, handsome. Doing some slumming or are you trying pick up another student?'

'Ah, the lady vanishes. You know how it is, kid. Like Chinese food. You eat it all up and half an hour later you want some more. How're yeh?'

'Fine, thank you very much. You really know how to pay a compliment, don't you.' I couldn't tell from either her tone or facial expression whether she was serious or continuing the banter. She sat down facing me.

This afternoon her hair was tied back in a thick pony tail and her unmade face had the ruddy healthiness of someone who has taken a brisk walk on a windy day. She wore a bottle green felt jacket with imitation horn toggles up the front and a red cotton roll neck top tucked into the same black 501s she had worn the night before. She looked at me expectantly. It was, it seemed, my turn to initiate conversation. I said nothing.

She sprinkled some pepper on her soup and mixed it in slowly with her spoon. Then he broke off a lump of bread split it with a knife and spread butter thickly on both fragments. I followed the actions closely. They might be clues.

'I'm sorry I had to leave this morning. I had to get home. You were sleeping so soundly I didn't want to wake you. By the way, you snore like a drain.'

'So do you, wee girl.'

'I do not.' She paused and then 'I don't really, do I?' Her face reddened a degree further.

'Indeed you do, but it's a very feminine class of snoring.' She giggled a little and smiled. She lifted a spoonful of soup to her lips, blew on it lightly and then swallowed.

'That's an oxymoron, isn't it? Feminine snoring? Like military intelligence or British justice.' It was my turn to smile. She took a bite of the buttered bread and another spoonful of soup.

'I wouldn't worry about it. Sooner or later, everybody snores and everybody farts. They get runny noses and have bad breath in the morning. Their shite stinks and they leave stains in their jockeys. Women bleed once a month and men's feet stink all the time. It's never stopped people fucking though.'

I sipped my coffee. She continued to eat. I was struck by the mixture of elegance and robustness in her table manners. She moved the spoon away from her into the bowl bringing it back to her mouth in clockwise motion. She sipped from it delicately without slurping. She did not nibble at the bread, though. Rather, she attacked it, tearing off bite-sized lumps with small white teeth.

'Are you trying to tell me something? Is this Ulick Butler's guide to relationships?. Beware the imperfections of the flesh.' She hesitated slightly between my Christian name and surname as if she was unsure of the latter and had to think about it. I couldn't recall mentioning it the night before.

'Not beware, just acknowledge and learn to live with them. Human perfection is just a fantasy.'

'Are you sure you were never an altar boy?' I laughed and shook my head.

'I was not. My folks weren't such good Catholics. Or at least , they weren't as good at imposing it on me as the priesteens would have liked. By the time the Brothers really got their hands on me I was too tainted with the stain of modernism to take all that hell and damnation stuff seriously.'

'I wish I could say the same. The nuns did a good job. I have the catechism hard-wired into my lower brain. I still worry about not having enough sins to confess, even though it's years since I've been.'

'Did you do that, too? Make up sins to confess?'

'Oh did I not? Everything from covetousness through petty theft to impure thoughts. Lies were always a good one, too. They have you every way don't they? If you've done nothing, you have to lie and pretend you have so you can get absolution. I gave up going the week I committed my first grown up mortal sin. It was weird. I felt good about it and at the same time was too ashamed to admit it to the priest. I sort of excommunicated myself after that. Mind you, it was years before I owned up to my mum that I'd stopped going to mass.'

'And what was the sin to prompt this?'

'Oh you know. The sort of thing we got up to last night.'

I said nothing and took another sip of my coffee. I found myself unable to look her in the eyes and my own gaze shifted to an old fashioned enamel sign advertising Bovril on the wall just above her left shoulder.

'Do you have a problem with last night?'

I shook my head from side to side and struggled to maintain a bland expression on my face. I felt uncomfortable with her directness. Actually I did have a problem, but I wasn't sure quite what it was. It could have been the residual catholic remorse that always follows casual sex, it could have been something to do with Linda, it could have been something to do with Sarah herself. It was probably a cocktail of all three. I felt insincere and shifty. Internally I struggled to regain some composure and failed badly.

''Cause if you do, I don't' she went on. 'It was nice and if it happens again that would be good, but I'm not going to lose sleep if it doesn't.'

'What can I say to that?'

'It's not up to you to say anything except what you feel. I don't need male bullshit but I would appreciate honesty. As I said last night, I might fancy you, but I don't know if I like you. And I don't know you well enough even to consider if I trust you. But if you can't be honest now then don't say another word.'

'Do you fancy going for a drink?'

She looked at me almost reproachfully and shook her head slowly. Her gesture hinted at patient exasperation. I imagined the sequence of her thoughts; men; bloody men; bloody Irish men. Then she smiled suddenly and mischievously.

'Why not? It's Friday afternoon. The weekend starts here and I've nothing on for an hour or so.'

'Irish Centre?'

'It's as good a place as any.'

As we left the Everyman I noticed that the boy with the MacDonald's cup had vacated his pitch. In his place stood a woman in her sixties. She wore two overcoats fastened with string and a felt hat secured with a pin. Wisps of grey hair emerged below its brim. On the floor was a selection of plastic carrier bags. I could see the top of a large brown cider bottle protruding from one of them. The others seemed to be filled with rags and newspaper. She didn't look at us as we passed, but she did begin a litany of swearing murmured just above her breath.

'Whore, shit, pig, cunt. Whore, shit, pig, cunt. Bastard, bollocks, fucking tinker's get. Whore, shit, pig, cunt. Whore, shit, pig, cunt. Bastard, bollocks, tinker's get.'

For all the obscenity, it was directed at no-one in particular and she recited quietly with the innocence of a child repeating a nursery rhyme. As we walked towards the Irish Centre her chorus echoed in my head to the rhythm of our stride and I wondered which of her curses applied to me at that moment.

A clock somewhere was striking the half hour as we entered the centre. Happy hour didn't begin until three and the place had largely cleared of lunch time imbibers. There was a group of retired subbies sipping pints of stout and studying the racing form around a table in the far corner. Mary the day barmaid stood in quiet conversation with the single customer leaning at the bar. In the background Daniel O'Donnell blandly crooned some country and Irish ballad I couldn't recognise and would have been ashamed if I had. I walked Sarah to a large sofa beneath a framed print of fishermen on Inis Mór. She sat down and I remained standing.

'What will you have?'

'Half a Guinness would be nice. I can't drink much in the afternoon. It does things to me.' She giggled.

'And what things would those be?

'It makes me want to go to bed' she said, and then as an afterthought 'To sleep.'

'Ok. Glass of Guinness it is then.' I turned and called down the bar. 'Mary. Pint and a glass down here please.'

The grey haired woman in her early sixties turned from her conversation across the long wood bar and walked towards me. She stopped at the Guinness pump nearest to her and took two plain glasses from the shelf above and began to pour the pint. I leaned on the counter one foot resting on the polished brass rail that ran its length six inches above the floor.

'I'll drop it down when it's ready, U' Her accent was the same as it was the day she left Longford.

I sat next to Sarah on the sofa, reclining into a corner. We had positioned ourselves to form two sides of an almost equilateral triangle. Our head and upper bodies were as far away from each other as the upholstered seat would allow, but our feet were almost touching beneath a low table in front of the couch. Daniel continued to croon, something schmaltzy about Donegal. Like every other one of his recordings it seemed to me.

'What we're we talking about?

'You weren't talking about anything at all. In fact you were avoiding talking as I recall. But you needn't say anything if you don't want to. It really doesn't matter that much to me.'

Her dismissal made me pause. I knew I felt uneasy about the night before, but at the same time there was something about this woman which made me want her to like me. Made me want her to think I was a decent man. I didn't want to draw her into some unconscious game I might be playing with myself. Whore, shit, pig, cunt. Whore, shit, pig, cunt. Bastard, bollocks, tinker's get. The old woman's metre came back into my head.

'Fair play to you, then. If honesty is what you want honesty is what you get. I honestly don't know if I have a problem with last night. I know I think you're ok, but that's a superficial thing, an initial impression. I can always be wrong. And as for trust. I'm not a big man in that department. I expect the worst from everyone and hope the world will prove me wrong. So far it hasn't. These days all I know is that the only things that matter are staying up late and drinking at lot of beer. Everything else is just wasted energy.'

My monologue was interrupted by Mary's arrival at the table. She placed the large and the small glasses carefully down on beer mats. The pint in front of me, the glass in front of Sarah. I looked up at her.

'Ah thanks, Mary. You're a darling.' I reached into my pocket for some money.

'Leave that money where it is until three o'clock, U. It's only a few minutes and it'll be cheaper then.' She retreated behind the bar to continue the conversation with the solitary drinker.

'Where was I?'

'You were doing an 'I'm cynical, what's your name' routine for someone's benefit. You romantics are all the same' she went on 'You got tombs in your eyes but the songs you punched are dreaming.' It was a line from a song I recognised but couldn't place.

'Joni Mitchell' she said. 'But Morissey or Costello are probably more up your street, I guess. Male romanticism always hides as cynicism.' She raised her glass to sip from her Guinness.

'So what does the female version mask itself as, then?'

'It doesn't mask itself at all. That kind of romanticism isn't part of our emotional equipment. We either go mad or get on with things as they are. But women have always been more practical. You leave us very little other choice with your behaviour.'

'Now who's being Ms Cynical?'

'Not cynical, just accurate.' I conceded the point mentally and went on.

'Ok, look. You said you didn't want to mess me around. All I'm saying is the same to you. We met. We fucked. It was nice. No problem. What happened happened and, as Doris Day put it, 'qué sera, sera.'

We remained silent for a few moments, sipping at the drinks. I really wanted a cigarette during that interval but I never carried my tobacco outside the house these days. Eventually she broke the silence.

'Alright. That's the mandatory period of mutual disclosure over with. Can we start shitting each other now or is small talk something else you have a problem with.'

'Not at all, not at all. Hasn't my own small talk won design council awards for its microscopic dimensions? What would you like? My specialities are the weather, curious facts about the famous, and TV programmes of the 1970s. Beyond that I can usually muster up enough banalities to wing it with most topics. You choose.'

'Let's go back to mortal sin. That's where we started.'

I shook my head and simultaneously breathed in slowly between my teeth making a kind of hissing noise.

'I'm not too sure about that. I've committed the odd one or two, but I'm not sure I know you well enough to say which ones. How about we warm up with the venials for now?'

The clock behind the bar struck three and I rose to order some more drinks. While Mary prepared them we exchanged anecdotes about our mutual experience of catholic mortification. I paid for both rounds when they arrived and we continued chatting. She was witty and sharp. She made me laugh as she poked fun gently at me and herself. I got the feeling I was doing more than just amusing her. Suddenly she he looked up at the clock behind the bar.

'God, is that the time? I have to be somewhere shortly. Thanks for the drink.' She hastily gathered up her coat and bag and started towards the door. She walked a few steps backwards facing me.

'Am I still on for dinner Saturday?' I had forgotten the tentative invitation of the previous night. She hadn't.

'Do you eat meat?'

'Now and again, but only white meat.'

'Ok. Saturday about eight. Bring a bottle, but the management accepts no responsibility for fussy eaters.'

'Great, see you then, then. Bye.' She turned and almost dashed for the door.

I sat there contemplating the possibility of another pint. Since three o'clock the bar had started to fill up with a mixture of students and alcoholics seeking cheap beer to start the weekend. None of my regular drinking cronies had landed yet. I decided against another drink in my own company and for a trip down to Tom's office in Seel St. I waved good-bye to Mary and walked out of the centre.

Chapter 11

2007-02-16T05:14:00.000-08:00

I walked down Mount Pleasant towards the city centre. On the opposite side of the road what had once been a Victorian poorhouse was now part of the John Moore's University. The red brick structure had been recently cleaned and re-pointed and a corporate logo had been placed over every entrance way. The sandstone lintels beneath the Victorian Gothic window frames were newly painted a pale contrasting cream, as were the bars on the ground floor windows. Each time I saw them, I wondered if they were an original feature of the poorhouse or a later addition designed to keep people out rather than in.

Mount Pleasant had always been one of my favourite streets in the city. When I first came here as an adolescent, one side of the street had been populated almost entirely by cheap boarding houses with names redolent of the city's seafaring culture. Named after ports or places across water dear to their owners, from Antrim to Recifé, from Dublin to Valparaiso. As a kid when I came across these names in the atlas, they reminded me of the familiar rather than the foreign. Their clientele was more varied but less redolent of the romance of the sea. Walking along Mount Pleasant when those lads berthed after closing time could be as adventurous as anything encountered on the high seas. Walking the plank meant fewer bruises.

There were a few still of the old ones left, but merchant seamen no longer formed their clientele. It was football supporters over from Scandinavia or Ireland for a Liverpool game or backpackers doing a Beatles pilgrimage who filled their berths these days. It was Ryanair not Cunards and the White Star line who transported trade to their door steps these days.

I crossed the road and walked along Rodney Street. A continuous terrace of houses originally built for Georgian merchants now housed orthodontists and architects. The beauty and dignity of so much of the city never failed to strike me. The terrace was broken up on the left by the derelict site of St Andrew's Church of Scotland, a reminder of another aspect of the city's inheritance. The Celts who kicked with the other foot. Its gardens and graveyard were overgrown and its roofless interior was filled with a jungle of overgrown shrubs and bushes. A large sign near a rusting, padlocked gate signified the Orange retreat. ' Sunday services are now held in the Cathedral at eleven o' clock.' Needless to say, whoever had posted it didn't mean Paddy's wigwam.

After pubs, Liverpool probably has more churches and abandoned churches than any other form of public structure. Turn any corner and chances are you'll find pub or a place of worship. In some parts of the city they amounted to much the same thing, particularly on a Sunday.

At the end of Rodney St I turned down Upper Duke St heading toward Chinatown. It was the long way to the office, but I had chosen this route so I wouldn't have to pass the spot where Tom died. I turned right at the junction of Duke Street and Berry Street and walked the few hundred yards past the Chinese restaurants, takeaways and supermarkets to the top of Seel Street.

The offices of Open Eye lay about half way down in a squat three story nineteenth century commercial building. Above the lintel the name of its original occupants had been built into the red brick in foot high Roman letters; Thos. Atkinson & Sons General Merchants 1876'. With the confidence of the Victorian bourgeoisie they had clearly expected their occupancy to last for the life of the building. They were wrong, but the conceit provided a lasting memorial. A fading sign and a rusting burglar alarm housing above the entrance ensured the present tenants that they were being vigilantly guarded. I stepped up to the main door.

Darkness had set in as I had walked down from the Irish Centre and the street lights had come on outside. The foyer I entered was poorly lit in the winter afternoon. The original brass gas mantles had been converted to electricity but did little to dispel the gloom of a winter twilight. It was as if the brown glazed bricks which ran up the walls absorbed their low wattage light. The air was still and warm, fragranced with the antiseptic smell of industrial cleaner.

There was neither sight nor sound of human habitation. The free-standing wooden cubicle to the left of the entrance which doubled as a reception desk was unoccupied. The security man had clearly opted for an early dart. I looked inside. A peaked cap bearing the same logo as that on the alarm outside stood on a small table next to an ashtray overflowing with dog-ends and a roughly folded tabloid newspaper. There was an old-fashioned black baekelite wall phone. The wall lights reflected in its chromium dial. A yellowing, hand-written list of current tenants was taped to the glass of the sliding window.

I turned from the cubicle. Directly in front of me a wide stone staircase ascended to the first floor. Its steps were made of some grey aggregate into which a band of one inch squares of black and white tiling had been inlaid. The banister was polished mahogany and the wrought iron rods supporting it had been painted a dirty eau-de-nil matching the upper part of the walls. It was like stepping into another century.

I put my hand on the varnished wood and climbed two flights. At the top a narrow corridor opened up at right angles to the stairwell. I turned right and almost immediately right again and stood facing the doorway of Open Eye. We shared the corridor with three other enterprises. The office facing us at the back of the building was occupied by a Jewish furriers. The currently fashionable unpopularity of their trade had led to a change of door-sign I noticed. There was no longer anything to indicate what went on behind the office door. The two offices at the other side of the stairwell were tenanted by a Chinese import-export firm whose business was far more inscrutable than its owners and an escort and model agency of the dubious kind.

I had dated the latter's receptionist for a short while. She had dumped me when she realised I wasn't ready for a trip down to H. Samuels for the diamond solitaire. I remembered afterwards she had taken up with one of our clients. A rotund businessman in his late forties. I used to see him collecting her from the office some nights. He wore loud silk ties, too much expensive aftershave and drove a five year old Jaguar. All of which suggested that he was a better prospect in the diamond ring market than meself. I wondered if they were still together or if he'd traded her for a newer model..

I inserted my key into the lock midway up the outer door. In detective fiction, this is the point when I would to find the office ransacked or Tom's chair occupied by a lugubrious fat man smoking a cigar while a henchman lurked behind the door, blackjack ready to put out my lights. I stepped across the threshold.

In the light from the corridor I could see that the waiting room was empty, but at once I knew someone had been in there since Tom's death and prior to me. Two or three days' mail lay in an untidy heap where it had been pushed back by the door opening at sometime earlier. I had not done that. I bent and picked up a letter from the pile. It had come from Manchester and had been posted the previous day. Whoever Tom's caller had been, he or she had visited earlier today.

I stepped back up and examined the lock and frame of the door. I could see nothing which indicated a forced entry. The orange sodium glow of the street lights shone through the glass panel of the door into the inner office. The hair on the back of my neck started to prickle. I stood facing the inner door breathing quietly through my nose. The air was warm and still. I could hear the cycling of water through the antiquated central heating pipes and vague noises of traffic passing down Seel Street. Apart from those sounds, there was nothing else. I sniffed the air like an animal and caught a hint of something vaguely familiar but also out of place. It took the vestigial part of my brain some seconds to place it; lavender.

I relaxed as soon as I had identified the odour. I knew who Tom's visitor had been and it wasn't Joel Cairo or Caspar Gutman, only Elsie the cleaning lady. She would drop in once a week for a quick spin round with dyson and duster. The lavender smell was the scent of the polish she used. I felt relieved that I wasn't going to be called on to play Sam Spade, or worse still, Miles Archer. I'd left my gat at home anyway.

I turned on the waiting room light and unlocked the inner door. The smell of lavender was stronger in here, almost sickly in a sweet cloying way. There were more wooden surfaces than in the other room and Elsie had been liberal with the aerosol. I groped for the light switch to the left of the door frame. A fluorescent tube hummed into life and illuminated a room about twenty feet square.

The office was furnished functionally. Both desks were made of mahogany-veneered chipboard bolted together around a steel frame and stood on a floor carpeted with neutral grey tiles. There were no pictures or prints on the walls. A calendar was pinned to the wall behind my old desk. Its pages had not been turned since my departure. The only concession to anti-minimalism was a brightly coloured hand-woven carpet in the centre of the floor. It was a souvenir of one of Tom's Cretan holidays.

His desk faced me. It stood in front of the large window and at right angles to my own. His presence lingered in the room as if he had marked it with a pheromone. Through the window I could see the unlit neon sign of a jazz club across the street. To the left, the wall was lined with four-drawer filing cabinets the colour of gunmetal. Each drawer was labelled with a pink cardboard slip. Immediately to the right of the door against the dividing wall there was a plain office table on which stood a computer, a printer and half a dozen diskette boxes. Had it not been for the ministrations of Elsie, I mused, the machine would have been shrouded in dust. Tom had hated it and refused even to go near it. I picked up the nearest diskette box. It was locked.

I walked behind Tom's desk and tried the drawer where he kept his notebooks. Like the disk box, it too was locked. Even without his key it was easy enough to open. I inserted the narrow auger of my Swiss Army knife into the lock pushed hard and twisted slowly. I felt the tumblers give, withdrew the blade and pulled the drawer carefully out. The drawer looked like it was full of giant liquorice allsorts. Small, black policeman's pocket notebooks were stacked neatly in four rows on their side, each about half an inch thick.

Tom averaged about a dozen per year. Had he lived another year, he would have needed a new drawer. I knew exactly how far they went back. The very first one dealt with the events of October 1984. What I needed to know was when they stopped. I picked up the notebook at the end of the shortest row and opened it with a flick of my wrist. The first began in September 1998. It recorded a telephone interview with a client who wanted surveillance carried out on his factory in a trading estate in Warrington.

I flicked through the pages speed-reading Tom's crabbed personal shorthand. I saw names I recognised from cases I had worked on and the odd abbreviations he used when he was hurried. The last entry was dated at the start of the second week in October. His notes on that day referred to the same job as the first page. He had identified the source of his client's losses and reported the names of those involved for the client to take action.

Either business had dropped off rapidly since October or one or more notebooks were missing from the drawer in addition to the one which should have been with his personal effects. I checked back up the row, just in case they had been replaced out of sequence. They hadn't. Each notebook followed on in perfect chronology from its predecessor.

I knew the other drawers would contain nothing of interest. Neither would the contents of the filing cabinets help much. Case files were held alphabetically not chronologically. I would have to search almost every one to establish if anything was missing and even then I wouldn't be sure if whole folders had been removed. It might have to be done, but it wasn't a task I fancied overmuch.

Then I remembered the computer. Open Eye billed by the hour and invoiced by the month. At the end of each week unpaid fees and expenses were entered into a customer file which formed the basis of the monthly invoice. Copies of all the invoices were held on the floppy disks which lay in boxes on the table behind me. Each disc held one quarter's invoices. I could check the invoices and go from there back to the hard copy in the filing cabinets to find out what Tom was working on at the time he was killed.

I crossed to the table and turned the machine on. The hard disc ground into life with a dull whine, the screen flickered blue and then grey as the software booted up. I ran my finger along the top of the boxes following its course with my eyes until I came to the one labelled 'invoices'. It was locked. I used the knife to open it and scanned through the labels on the diskettes.

Our business year had run from April to April. I looked for the disk labelled October-December, the quarter in which I was interested. I noticed that the handwriting on their labels was not Tom's. He must have brought someone in to handle the office administration in my absence.

When I had set the system up I had been very careful to make sure that it was foolproof. Tom had put up so much resistance to the idea of using a computer that I wanted nothing to give him the excuse to say I told you so. There were two back-up systems; a manual one to floppy disk and an automatic one to a sub-directory on the hard disk. I had used the machine for correspondence and reports but its main purpose was for customer accounts and records. It had only partly superseded the Remington manual on which Tom hammered out his letters and reports. The typewriter stood under a dust-cover on its own small table to the left of his desk.

Using the mouse I started our accounts software and double-clicked on the directory command and scanned down the list of files which appeared a second later. They were held in alphabetical order. Another click of the mouse and the directory re-appeared in chronological sequence. There were no transactions recorded later than the third week of October that year.

I reached over, took a disk from the front of the box marked 'back-ups' and inserted it in the drive. Its files covered an even earlier period. I changed directories and scanned those held in the computer's memory. The result was the same. None of the files in memory had been created or modified after October. Only two possibilities presented themselves to me. Either Tom had all but retired two months earlier or the computer had not been used in that time.

Leaving the computer I walked back across the room to Tom's desk and leaned against its front. I pulled on the nail of my left hand little finger and wished I had my tobacco with me. I walked absently from the desk to the filing cabinets lining the wall and pulled open the top drawer of the nearest cabinet. It was locked. I took the key ring from my pocket inserted a small steel key and turned. The drawer slid open noiselessly.

I ran my index finger along the green metal-braced hanging folders. They reminded me of an accordion bellows. I stopped at a client's name which was unfamiliar to me and pushed the folder open. I suppose you could call it the luck of the Irish. Right at the front of the folder was an invoice dated December, two weeks ago. Moreover it had been prepared using the office computer. I hissed a yes through my teeth and almost punched the air.

I walked back to Tom's desk and seated myself in his revolving chair. I rotated it through one hundred and eighty degrees until I was facing the large window overlooking Seel Street. Traffic and pedestrians moved up and down the street at their different rhythms. I leaned forward, rested my elbows on my knees and cradled my chin and cheeks in my open hands. The neon sign outside the jazz club was still switched off.

I was now sure that the notebooks and disks had been taken and that files had been deleted from the computer. I didn't know why, I didn't know when, and I didn't know by whom. For some reason I was sure that they had been removed since Tom's death, but I couldn't say why. It seemed a fair assumption that someone had been at pains to ensure that the knowledge of whatever case Tom was working became a mystery that went with him to the grave. A further search of the filing cabinet would be useless. Whoever had gone to so much trouble to make the notebooks and the computer files disappear would not have overlooked any hard copies.

Then the light bulb went on in my head. What people usually didn't realise about computers was that when you deleted a file, it wasn't actually physically removed. It stayed where it was until it was overwritten at a later date. The third component of my foolproof system had been the purchase of a utility programme that included file recovery. My paranoia and Tom's obdurate technophobia had had some value after all. Gambling on the hope that no-one had written anything to memory since the back-up files had been deleted. I went back to the computer and ran the programme.

The screen dissolved from grey to a bright royal blue and a menu of options appeared. I clicked on undelete. A series of prompts guided me through the process of recovery. In a few minutes I had a restored every file deleted since the second week of October. There were over fifty. The puzzle-solver in me was now sucking diesel. I switched on the printer and paced back and forth across the Cretan carpet impatiently as the machine clunked out a list of the deleted files.

Once the list had printed, finding the missing information was plain sailing. Working alphabetically, I crossed checked the customer names on the list with folders in the filing cabinets. I had reached the Ms before I failed to find a matching folder in the cabinets. I marked the name 'P McGann' with a pen taken from the desk and continued to work down the list. There were no other folders missing.

I returned to the computer and opened the McGann file. The client was a Mrs P McGann with an address in Liverpool 1 just around the corner from where I now sat. The Panopticon Gallery. I didn't know it, but I smiled at the thought of old Tom immersed in the Liverpool art scene. I scribbled the address on the list of deleted files.

The information on the invoices was sparse but sufficient to tell me what kind of job it had been and when it had started. Mrs McGann had employed Tom to undertake some kind of surveillance work based in Liverpool in the middle of November. That was about all. Any other information would have to come from the client herself. I noted down her telephone number and glanced at my watch. It was nearly five o'clock. I decided to chance a phone call. I walked to the desk and dialled the number.

The phone at the other end rang four times. As soon as it stopped, there was the echoing rumble of an answering machine on the line and a woman's voice told me there was no one to take my call. I replaced the receiver before the beep. The words were spoken in a clipped received pronunciation English. The accent of a class not a place and it brought out the recalcitrant Paddy in me. If that was her voice, I didn't think I was going to like Mrs McGann.

Chapter 12

2007-02-16T05:13:00.000-08:00

Deciding I could do little more of use in the office, I turned off the computer. Before locking the filing cabinets I opened the drawer marked 'Personnel' and removed a thick manila folder which I tucked under my arm. Someone or something in there might be able to shed light on the mystery of the disappearing notebooks and files. I left the office turning off the lights as I went. The game, it would seem, was afoot. I needed a cigarette, a pint, and a quiet moment to think.

In the dimly lit corridor the silence was almost tangible. It was broken only by my footsteps on the scuffed parquet flooring. I could see light spilling through the fanlight of the Chinese import-export company but no other evidence of occupation. The Jewish furriers were orthodox and would have left before sunset to prepare themselves for the Sabbath. The escort agency was in darkness.

I left the building and walked around the corner into Slater Street. It was a narrow side street made narrower by cars parked on either side. It was littered with cafes, takeaways and pubs offering happy hours, doubles bars, and early evening cocktails for office and shop workers on their way back to the 'burbs. On the right a new place had opened. The name was taken from a bar in New York where I had once celebrated St Patrick's day. I looked through the plate glass window. The resemblance to the Manhattan bar ended with the name.

Next door was Guinan's, an Irish theme pub. A broad-shouldered black man in a black silk bomber jacket stood on the front step vetting the customers who passed him to get to the door. I smiled a hello but he looked through me as though I wasn't there. His eyes were programmed to acknowledge only trouble or pretty girls.

The long stone-flagged bar room was sparsely populated. The shop girls who would fill it after six were still behind counters and working cash registers. A group of office workers sat around a small old-fashioned wooden table on chairs looted from church halls and Sunday schools. The men wore suits with loosened silk ties and poly-cotton shirts with the collar button undone. You couldn't tell the cheap from the expensive the way they were worn. The women were kitted out in a range of business gear. Blouses from Lewis's, Littlewoods and M and S; skirts from Next and Warehouse; shoes from Dolcis. I guessed they were bank clerks breaking up the journey home or preparing for a long haul safari in the jungle of Friday night pubs and clubs.

I leaned against the counter and waited for one of the three staff to notice my presence. They were talking at the far end of the bar. Eventually one of them glanced up and saw me. He turned sluggishly and walked unwillingly down to where I stood. I didn't recognise him, but it wasn't a place I regularly used. He wore a green T-shirt bearing the pub's logo. On the T-shirt was printed a sentence in Irish. It translated as 'I am Irish from the island of Ireland.' His skin was fair, his eyes were blue and his mop of hair was black. On looks alone, he could fit the bill.

'Wharr yer 'aving, lah?' he said in a North Liverpool drawl which dispelled the illusion. I ordered a pint of Guinness and which he sprayed into a glass. I carried it over to an empty table in an alcove by the front window.

As I sipped the dark beer, I thought about Tom again. In my years working with him, this was the first thorough-going mystery I had ever encountered. Most of the cases I had worked had been about as mysterious as The Sun crossword. The only mystery most of the time was when you were going to get paid.

I opened the file I had taken from the office. It contained three smaller folders; one marked 'Timesheets', another 'Wages' and the final one 'Correspondence'. The first held photocopies of forms detailing hours worked on a weekly basis. Separate columns indicated the date and the name of the client. At the top of the form was a space for the name of the operative. Most of them were blank, indicating that Tom had undertaken the work. A few bore other names, some I recognised some I didn't. Tom had obviously dealt with my departure by sub-contracting work, by the look of it a quite substantial amount. I smiled at that thought. I had been cheap to employ but very expensive to replace, but he would have borne the cost rather than ask me back.

My own name did not appear at all. The timesheets only went back as far as April and I had left in March. I scanned through the sheets. During the week before his death, Tom had devoted his time exclusively to Mrs McGann. He had billed over 50 hours on it that week.

The rest of his caseload had been dished out to other agencies and freelancers, none of whom appeared to have worked on the McGann case. For all his doggedness, it was unusual for him to work so single-mindedly for one client. I wondered what the case was for it to prove so distracting. I made a mental note of the few names I recognised on the timesheets. I would call them to see if they could tell me anything about what Tom was doing.

The wages file held nothing of use to me. Tom had employed a part-time book-keeper since April. The correspondence file gave me her address. A letter confirming her appointment, hours and conditions of labour had been posted to a Miss Ryan at an address in Netherly a few months earlier. It had been typed using Tom's manual and I smiled at the number of tippexed corrections. He was the only typist I knew who could be ham-fisted with a single finger.

As I flicked through the papers, two men sat down at the table alongside mine in the window alcove. I tried to ignore them. They made it hard to do. that. No sooner had they seated themselves than they launched into a heated debate about politics in over-loud voices. It was clear that this was a late round in a battle which had been going on over discount beer in pubs for most of the afternoon.

These were happy-hour merchants; unemployed men stretching their dole or fiddle money over as many cheap pints as it would allow. Because of the proximity of their table to mine, I knew that sooner or later they would try to draw me into their conversation. This was a Liverpool pub and there was no escaping the inevitable. I avoided eye contact and buried myself deeper into the file.

From the corner of my eye I could see the older of the two, a slight man with pale grey hair and beard looking me over. He was losing the argument and seeking an out. Eventually he leaned across. He was definitely drunk and from what I had overheard of their debate, neither would win prizes in a sparkling personality competition.

'Is dar a birr of overtime, den, lah?' His voice was friendly but thick with beer. It contrasted to the aggression I had heard in it during their discussion. I looked up and said nothing. I kept my expression blank and shook my head. He went on.

'Ownny de money mus' be great for you to be werkin' in deh pub on a Fridee night.'

I could see I was not going to get away from this one.

'Look, wee man, no offence, but I've got have this out the way before six otherwise the boss'll do for me.' I smiled insincerely, not that he'd have noticed.

'No problem, lah. Jus' thought seein' youse on yer own an' all you might want a birr o' crack, like. Work is it? I'll leave you to it then, mate.'

He resumed conversation with his companion, a tall heavy man in his late twenties. I could hear him softly explaining away my rebuff. I went back to the papers before me. I ran through them all again to see if they could tell me anymore than I already knew. They didn't. I felt frustrated and annoyed. I wanted a cigarette.

I drained my glass walked to the bar, ordered another pint of Guinness, bought a box of matches, and obtained change for the cigarette machine. The first three columns were empty and I thought that maybe God was trying to tell me something. I finally obtained a packet of Marlboro and returned pint in hand to my table.

I could see that the younger of the two drunks was leaning over trying to read the top page of the folder I had left open on the table. I stood next to the table watching him. When he became aware of my presence, his head snapped back. He looked vaguely embarrassed but offered no apology, verbal or non-verbal. I said nothing.

I resumed my seat and began reading. I decided I would list the names of Tom's subcontractors alongside the client cases they had worked. It was just displacement activity, I knew, but it would make it easier when I called them all over the next few days and I wasn't doing anything else right now. I could my neighbours glancing furtively in my direction from the corner of my eye. It was only a matter of time before they renewed contact.

When I'd finished the list, I removed the outer wrapping of cellophane and crumpled it together with the silver paper inner cover into a small neat ball which I dropped in the ashtray. I drew out a cigarette, pushed it between my lips, lit it and inhaled. I felt the sweetish taste of toasted tobacco and the rush of nicotine lighten my head. The younger man, who had been watching me, rose from his seat and moved to the chair facing me across my table. He wore a black leather biker's jacket festooned with zip-fasteners and enamel badges. He leaned across the table and I could smell the stale beer on his breath.

'Give us a ciggie.'

It was a challenge, not a request. He was not from the city. His voice had a Lancashire burr. St. Helens or Widnes, I thought. He was a woolly-back, a culchie, fair game in Liverpool on a Friday night.

'I don't smoke' I said drawing in on my Marlboro. I took it from my mouth in my left hand and tapped the ash onto the floor with my index finger. My eyes remained on his throughout. A look of confusion flickered across his face.

'What the fuck's that, then?' he said indicating the cigarette in my left hand.'

'It looks like a kingsize filter tip to me.' His confusion deepened.

'Well I said give us one.'

'And I said I don't smoke.' His face flushed pale crimson.

'D'you think I'm soft. I can use me eyes, you know.'

'I don't know if you're soft or hard, wee boy, but I do know you've manners that would be a shame in a farmyard. Where I come from me mammy taught me to say please and thank you when I wanted something.' His perplexity turned to anger. He knew I was baiting him but he wasn't quite sure how to deal with it yet.

'I know where you're from, you Paddy bastard. I were in th'Army and you'd not get away with making a coont out of me if we were over there now.'

His Lancashire accent broadened as his anger mounted. I waited silently to see if he'd back off. He didn't. I had to find someway out of the situation. I hated fighting with drunks. They won't lie down and you have to hurt them more than you would a sober opponent.

'I want a fooking fag. Now.' He spoke slowly with deliberate emphasis on each word.

Without warning he reached to snatch the packet up from the table. He was too slow. As his arm snaked across, my left hand containing the cigarette stabbed abruptly downwards. The glowing tip exploded on the back of his hand half an inch above the knuckle of his middle finger. He yelped in surprise and pain, reflexively pulling the burnt paw to his lips. It would hurt now and stay sore tomorrow. I knew. Someone had done it to me once. I still had the scar. I picked up the fag packet and put it carefully in my jacket pocket.

'What did you do that for, you fooking Irish bastard?' He spoke from behind his hand in a hurt whine. He looked as though the fight might have gone out of him. I hoped it had.

'Look, wee man, you shouldn't take what you don't own. Remember your manners.'

The shock of unexpected pain subsided. His face reddened and I could see in his expression that he wasn't going to let things lie here.

'I know your sort, you fooking Provo. I don't need lessons in manners from the likes of you.'

'If you don't cop on, squaddie, you might end up with a lesson you won't forget in a wee while.'

'Oh aye, yeh? What are you going to do, you fooking taig? Get your Fenian friends to go to work on me kneecaps? Fooking gangster animals and your women are worse. We knew how to deal with them in our regiment.'

He was well on the road to major violence. I imagined the things going through his mind. Being spat at on the Falls, shot at in Andytown, smelling the fear on himself and his mates on foot patrol in South Armagh. I had no intention of becoming the means for him to exorcise those experiences. He was half a foot taller than me and probably out-weighed me by two or three stones. If it came to a stand up fight he would win. Or do me serious harm in the process. I just didn't need the aggravation. I could see him eye the heavy glass ash-tray, assessing its potential as a weapon.

My eyes flickered below the table. His feet and legs were spread apart. I decided to end the interaction right now. Bracing myself on the edge of the table top, I tilted back on the rear legs of my chair. I felt its old joints creak and shift with the added stress. I lifted my right leg into a horizontal position, bending it slightly at the knee. Fortunately the table was high and the old Sunday school chair was low. He just looked at me, deciding how and when he would cause me pain. If he went for me now with the chair off balance I would be in serious trouble. I wondered how long it would take the doorman to spot the ruckus and come to my rescue.

I lifted my hands from the table and my chair tipped forward suddenly, throwing my full weight forward. My right leg drove like a battering ram towards his groin. I straightened my knee just before contact with his body and my timing was perfect. The heel of my DM caught him square in the groin area and the thick rubber sole buried itself at the base of his beer-belly.

He was ready for neither the shock or the pain of the blow and his breath left him like the air from a burst balloon. He fell sideways from the chair onto all fours gasping and coughing for breath on the floor. His face was white. The nerves in my own stomach and groin tingled in empathy with the agony I knew would be radiating up his body. His companion looked on in shock and surprise, speechless.

I stood up. Now was a good time to leave. I closed my folder, picked it up and tucked it under my arm. I walked around the table towards the door. The woolly-back ex-squaddie was still on all fours. He was making retching noises now. I resisted the temptation to help him empty his stomach with another kick. As I reached the door, the black bouncer pushed past me through it.

'What deh fuck is going on 'ere?' His question was rhetorical, addressed to no-one in particular. The old man looked at me for guidance, his eyes wide. I leaned against the edge of the open door and shrugged. The old man spoke to the bouncer but looked at me. I gave him my most menacing wink.

'Nothin', mate, nothin'. 'Is beer just went down the wrong way, dat's all.'

The man on the floor began vomiting steadily and the sour smell of partly ingested beer polluted the air. The bouncer sniffed in distaste. He grabbed the ex-squaddie by the scruff of the neck and pulled him roughly to his feet.

'If he's going to fuckin' laugh at the floor, 'e can do it on the road, alrigh? You. Drink your pint and fuck off out of it. Now. Fuckin' alkies.' The old man nodded frantically in assent. In one movement, the bouncer turned the younger man and bundled him past me out of the door I was holding open. He dumped him onto the street to the left of the doorway. I followed behind him and turned right onto Bold St.

As I walked up the hill towards St Luke's I tried to place the episode in some context. I never knowingly looked for trouble, but somehow it would seek me out. An old girlfriend once said that I just had 'one of those faces.' I didn't know. I was no nearer improving my self-knowledge when I reached the top of the street.

Tom's steel nemesis was still in place. A small bunch of flowers wrapped in cellophane lay at the foot of the tree. There was no card to indicate a donor. Scouse and Beryl, I thought. The police appeal notice had disappeared as predicted. It was probably decorating a study bedroom in a student hall of residence. I never understood why students felt the desire to acquire such objects. There seemed to be a lot of things I didn't understand. And as I passed the tree, I knew what the most important of them was. It was the reason why Tom Geraghty had ended up in the chapel of rest.

I looked again carefully at the tree and its surroundings and wished I had access to the police photographs and diagrams of the scene. I didn't even know on which side of the tree Tom had been found. Breege was right about one thing. It was a long way from the Berry Street kerbside. Furthermore, the broad paved area was occupied by a scattering of circular concrete litter bins. Anyone mounting the kerb at speed from that side would have been sure to have made contact with one of them. I examined each in turn. I could see no signs of impact damage.

I looked down at their bases. There was no broken glass or coloured plastic in evidence, the normal detritus of vehicle collision which often lingered long after the event. The tree was much nearer the Bold Street kerb. Even so, the sharp corner and the ramps of sleeping policemen placed every few yards in the road surface would have prevented any vehicle from getting up sufficient speed to throw a man of Tom's size as far as the tree.

My cycle of pacing and pausing had begun to attract attention from other pedestrians. An Asian man watched me with open curiosity from the doorway of a curry house and two old ladies seated on a wooden bench waiting for a taxi home had made me the subject of their talk. I could see they thought I was another eccentric product of care in the community. For the second time in half an hour I decided now would be a good time to leave.