A Kind of Drowning, page 7
“I’ll drop it back at Christmas,” he said knowing Gallagher’s mind was elsewhere.
Gallagher barely nodded, transfixed by the laptop’s display.
With no job and the new project of a villain to pursue, Crowe walked toward the edge of the town. He stood at the T junction that led eventually to the motorway; Dublin 50km / Belfast 105km. A faded looking aircraft indicated the airport. Like the town, the sign was rusted and covered in seagull shit. No-one would willingly venture out here, unless they were broke, desperate, or waiting for the housing crisis to abate. Turning on his heel, Crowe’s route took him past rows of glasshouses and farmyards where rusted implements became trellises for ivy and weeds. The roads were narrow, no more that boreens, with long lines of wild grass growing up through the middle.
He was hoping for his fox and imagined that it was lying amid the late spring growth, the tall grasses and wild spring flowers, watching him.
He’d order an extra bag of chips tonight and leave some in the courtyard for it.
Sensing he had reached a dead end, he doubled back toward the main street and decided to walk the half mile to the old churchyard and the newer builds.
Looking for the lair of the gangster with a missing thumb.
11
Sometimes Thea slipped out of the house without telling her parents. She knew that it was wrong. Once the whole town had gone looking for her and Grace, driven by gut instinct, had found Thea sitting on one of the dunes staring out to sea. Sometimes her parents’ rows would escalate past heated whispers or staring competitions. Tonight, was one of them. Yelling. Angry yelling. Thea had rocked back and forth on her bed, hands over her ears. The shrieks from Mam were becoming too much.
“Don’t worry, be happy,” Thea mantra’d.
She’d put on her headphones, scrolling Spotify until she found her happy mix. It wasn’t enough. She was still shaking from the big bullies in the cafe. Thea had been scared by them. Mr Grumpy had stood up for her. She liked Mr. Grumpy. Even if he was always grumpy. A full moon beamed into her bedroom. Beyond the window it backlit the sea and the island. A Roscarrig native, she knew the tides, knew the secret places and trails of the other children. Sometimes she had followed them, curious, eager to join in their play. Sometimes they threw sand and pebbles at her, chasing her off. Other times, they just teased or ignored her. But she was always curious. Everything interested her and everything scared her at the same time. Thea loved the sea. Loved dangling her legs off the island’s cliff face staring up at the moon on nights like this. Thea loved the moon.
In the morning, it would be all kisses and cuddles, but Thea sensed, no, Thea knew things weren’t happy with her parents. Shouting at each other. Mum behaving like a bully, calling dad silly names; her mouth pinched up and lined as she spoke. The more Thea dwelt on this the more her music was just white noise and the more she became unsettled.
Something crashed below. Followed by the tinkling of shattered glass. Thea decided: She was going for a walk.
The first whispers of a warm summer came in through the window, catching her curtains with the sailing boat motifs. Thea pulled out her white Minnie Mouse hoodie and tugged it on. She stuck her head out the window and looked along the line of back gardens fenced in wooden panelling. A few lights beamed out. Beyond, long fields squared off by hedgerows led down to the beach. Dad thought that more houses would be built soon. He hoped it would because he could get more work for his business.
“Maybe next year will be better,” was something he said every morning.
But more houses would then block out the view of the island. Thea didn’t want that.
The argument must have been coming from the kitchen. Thea heard a window slam shut, reducing the shrill din and Dad’s loud roars.
She unplugged her phone and tip toed down the stairs. She took her keys, put on her reflective arm band, and closed the door behind her. Taking the well-worn sandy pathway behind the houses that bisected the fields like a permanent scar, Thea Farrell headed toward the beach.
She might even see some seals along the way. They reminded Thea of dogs.
It was 11:15pm.
12
The Twitter post got over a thousand retweets in less than ten minutes. Thea’s impish grin viralled across time zones from the Canadian west coast to the outer islands of New Zealand. Missing. Please RT. A Facebook page was set up, that too began flashing across feeds around the globe. The TV, the radio, Thea became the hot topic around canteen tables with tabloids folded out. Open plan offices became conspiracy soapboxes with grisly conclusions and outcomes. Night shift cleaners folded her away and threw her face into black bin sacks. Over the week, social media interactions climbed into a million. Celebrities and radio hacks joined in. Fishermen ploughed the channel between the island and the mainland; search teams of volunteers assembled in early morning light: Roscarrig was finally on the map.
But Thea was in the wind.
She was gone.
Then, in the dawn light of the tenth day, a call came in from one of the search boats. A body had been found. A crowd had gathered at the harbour waiting for the trawler. Thea was returned to her home town not three hundred yards from the doorstep of the Boogie Woogie Café. She was then removed by hearse to the Coroner. Crowe hadn’t been there, he had been out walking along the headland, scanning the rocks and piles of seaweed working off a whiskey hangover. But Derry Gallagher had been on the quayside. He’d filled Crowe in. He thought Thea’s father had looked ‘relieved, if you understand my meaning’, but then, what parent wouldn’t, waiting for a child to come home, alive, or dead.
The narrative shifted on the social media feeds. Thoughts and prayers, candles, emojis of hugging, hearts, and tears. #RIPTHEA. Mel had tweeted her staff would wear pink for the funeral. The community replied everyone would wear a ‘bit of pink’.
Crowe shook the last of the aerosol hair dye and gave it a final squeeze. Staring back was a haggard, lined horror show with cropped, unkempt hair, now a shade of ‘Daring Bubblegum’. Not that he had a lot to dye; the roots were in poor flaky shape and he had no idea what the back would be like. The smell of chemicals reminded him of Alison, the incense of everyday beauty maintenance. Like the lipstick she never went outdoors without. Like the smell of nail varnish remover. He washed the morning’s search off his hands, working the soap through his fingers smelling of kelp. The private quest for Thea was over, the pulling kelp apart on his path, as if each mound could have been a body. His hands had developed tremors after he had heard of Thea’s death. The soaping became more furious. His hands became a blur of suds and when he stopped his ablutions and looked up; he was crying.
The tears of a clown.
Thea wasn’t much older than Cathal.
The twist of coke sitting snug under the toilet S-bend whispered to him. He fished the pink-dappled marigold gloves out of the pedal bin. He dashed back to the toilet, his synapses firing in anticipation. Reaching under the S-Bend, he freed the packet and held it up...
He threw it in the toilet and flushed. The coke bobbed about in defiance. Crowe flushed it again. It floated in fuck-you circles.
Maybe another time, he thought as he fished it out. He wiped it down, checked for leakage into the packet and satisfied the product was untouched, returned it to its nook.
A cigarette and instant coffee would have to suffice.
Crowe stumbled out of the bathroom; a sudden compunction gripped him. He needed to hear Cathal’s voice – even a grunted ‘Fuck-off’ would have brought him deep joy. He needed to hear his child’s voice. He needed to hug his son and ruffle his hair which always annoyed him.
Fuck the restraining order.
Crowe’s hands were greasy with soap, the phone slid about like an eel, stubbornly evading his grip. He went straight to voice mail; ‘leave a message’, Cathal’s voice had lost its boyishness, the threshold of a man.
“It’s Dad. I love you. Call me some time, I’d love to hear from you,” was all Crowe could mutter.
The phone slipped from his fingers and bounced on the wood flooring. Crowe palmed away tears with the heel of his hand. Every morning, Thea had said to him “Don’t worry, be happy, Mr Grumpy.”
Now that greeting was forever silenced, engulfed by the unforgiving depths.
“The father had seemed relieved”. Derry Gallagher had touched a finger against his pitted nostril when he had said this. A lifetime of small-town dirty secrets had flashed across his features in his all too easy smile.
Twenty years of policework, bloodwork, arrests, convictions, and slimy little pups getting away with it began to tap Crowe on the shoulder. It had come out of nowhere. That cop voice that says, ‘Knowing is one thing, proving it is another.”
The father had seemed relieved. Thea was a strong young woman, thought Crowe, Thea could deal with most situations; she didn’t seem the drowning kind.
Crowe reassembled himself on the carpet. Dripping soap, he picked up the phone and with his stubby thumbs, punched in the one number he knew better than Alison’s: Olivia Cutts, the Assistant State Pathologist.
13
There is something inherently wrong when a funeral is attended by the young, thought Crowe. Funerals should always be dour affairs, clouded in incense with droned out rosaries and mumbled inane platitudes. But Thea’s funeral was black and pink like a bag of liquorice allsorts. A celebration. The coffin was a simple pine construction with brass hinges in the shape of cockle shells. Placed on the top was a recent picture of Thea, a smile that lit up the world, encased in a silver frame. On the offertory table on the altar, the priest, Fr Gibney, informed the congregation of the totems that Thea loved; a tatty, much loved, and much washed Garfield toy, her sunglasses, a signed Ireland rugby shirt (she had told Crowe that every summer she played tag rugby) her favourite hoodie, and her pink apron from the Boogie-Woogie Café. Her phone though had not been found, and her iPad had been taken away by the investigating Gardai.
Crowe stood at the back of the church, hidden under the choir’s balcony. Phones set on silent were still being scrolled, casting odd rectangles of light bobbing like mechanical fireflies. The organ above him groaned and the choir seemed choked. Notes drifted astray into the eaves. Crowe folded his arms and closed his eyes. His mind began to hop, he thought about and ruled out the three pups that day in the Café. They were yahoos, but not murderers. If this was a murder. He opened his eyes and scanned the silent congregation; Derry had dialled down the showbiz, but still managed to nod and glad hand his way to the front. His hair seemed to have gone a shade darker and his pink tie could probably be seen from space.
Then Crowe spied the librarian. She was picking her way along the far side of the church, looking for a gap in the pews. She looked like she was concentrating on the act of just moving forward. Her sunglasses were welded to her nose. Figure-of-eighting, followed by an unsteady genuflection, the sunglasses found him, and she weaved her way up beside him. He inched sideways and she wedged herself in.
She smelled of mouthwash and another fainter undertow as she whispered,
“Thanks,”
The unseasonably warm day and press of warm bodies added a new oppression to the atmosphere. She was sweating. He could smell it.
“Clodagh,” she said.
“Crowe,”
“Apt,” she muttered.
Fr Gibney celebrated the mass, people stood, kneeled, and sat. Rites and chanted replies were punctuated by snuffled sobs from the front pews.
“Isn’t it awful?,” said Clodagh, just a pitch too loud.
A couple of faces turned from the seats to stare at them.
Crowe pressed his back deeper into the wall,
“Terrible,” he said.
Gibney, a frail stick of a man removed his glasses and adjusted the microphone while leaning in to deliver the final reel of his homily,
“You may, or may not have heard of Morris West, he’s one of my favourite authors. A passage of his comes to mind when I think of Thea, Andrew and Grace here today” he cleared his throat,
“‘I know what you are thinking – you need a sign, what better one could I give than to make this little one whole and new? I could do it, but I will not, I am the lord and not a conjuror. She will never offend me as all of you have done, she will never pervert or destroy the work of my father’s hand. She is necessary to you to evoke kindness that will keep you human’ – that’s what Thea did for this parish, this town, she evoked kindness. Young Thea Louise Farrell kept us all human. Don’t worry, be happy.”
The old and bent priest let the sentence hang.
A cathartic yell and a lengthy round of applause filled the old stone church. Then the organ wheezed to life and somehow Thea was everywhere in the church. Crowe didn’t believe in ghosts, though destroyed existences spoke to him sometimes in dreams. But if they did exist, right here, right now, Thea was amid her kith and kin.
From the front pew, came a guttural shriek. A sound that could have been howled at the dawn of mankind, the cry of a grieving mother. Grace tore out into the aisle and wrapped her arms around the coffin. It teetered on its trellis. Her wails were heart rending. Her face, contorted grief. The congregation stood stock still as if frozen. In his youth, Crowe had seen a foal struck and killed on the road by a truck. The sounds its mother made as she tossed and bucked were the same. Eventually, some relatives stirred and placed their arms around Grace, while the husband hovered around the edge.
She shrugged them off,
“Fuck you. Fuck off, Andrew - Fuck you all!” she screamed.
Clodagh Robertson bent forward and vomited up a small stream of Pernod. The acidic blast of aniseed filled the space between her and Crowe. It sloshed messily on their shoes and tiled floor.
“Better get some air,” said Crowe.
He guided Clodagh out gently by the elbow into the sunlight, inwardly furious. He wanted to see Andrew Farrell escort his dead daughter’s coffin up the aisle and into the hearse. To see Daddy’s face up close. Because Mammy had told him to fuck-off in front of six-hundred people.
“Do you smoke?” asked Crowe.
“I’d kill for one now,” replied Clodagh,
As Crowe lit her up, Clodagh cupped his hands in hers as she bent into the smoke. Their touch, skin-to-skin sent his nerve ends into an unexpected surge.
They stood like two sullen teenagers hauled to the church to make the pledge after an all-night cider party. The smoke eddied around them like sulphur on the breeze.
“Going to the grave?” he asked.
“I don’t know the family that well. Have you a first name?”
Crowe said nothing,
“Man of few words,”
Crowe shrugged.
“I could always invent one for you,” she said.
“P,” he started, then paused on a drag, “tell me – are you living here long?”
“Six months. I was born here, got married, that didn’t work out so well. Moved back to care for my mother and became a librarian. I see you most mornings,”
“I didn’t see…”
“I kayak every morning. I saw you searching.”
“I never noticed,” said Crowe.
She pulled deeply on the cigarette,
“No-one ever does,”
Then she tilted her head. The sunglasses seemed to peer deeper into him. Crowe could see his reflection in the lenses,
“You’re the guard who was all over the news? The one who attacked that poor man in the tracksuit.”
“It was a disagreement,” he said putting an end to that conversation, “Touching that,” he continued.
“What?” said Clodagh.
“The things that defined Thea. Her personal possessions on the altar.”
“Missed that bit trying to find a seat. Sad. Were her medals there?”
Crowe couldn’t be sure what she had said. Slurring from the booze and inhaling the smoke had made it sound like Metal. Menthol. Meddle. Meth?
“Sorry, repeat that?”
Clodagh Robertson flicked the half-finished butt. It arced over the stone path to the neatly tended grounds in a final blaze of glory.
She reached into her shoulder bag and took out a stick of chewing gum. She popped it in her mouth,
“Her medals, Thea was a special Olympian. She was a water baby,” said Clodagh.
“It was never mentioned,” started Crowe.
“Silver – two of them. Swimming.” A grating smugness had crept into her.
“No. Just a Garfield, a few gewgaws,” said Crowe.
“Gewgaws?”
The hangover had shifted her polarity; a sneer had crept into the smug. It drifted on the blast of peppermint as it slid across her face.
Crowe’s phone beeped. The number carried the Dublin prefix.
“Gotta go,” he said.
“Thanks for the ciggy…?” said Clodagh.
“John,”
“I thought your name began with ‘P’?” she said.
“P is for Podge,”
“That’s a real hick name,”
“I’m a real hick at heart,”
“I’ll stick with John,”
But Crowe had already turned on his heel. He thumbed the dial on the mobile retuning Olivia Cutts’ text message.
If he had looked back, he would have seen Clodagh Robertson slowly engulfed by a tide of pink and black.
14
It was doubtful that Mulligans Bar on the main street of Roscarrig had seen anything like Dr. Olivia Cutts in its lifetime. She breezed in through the frosted double doors like it was the Cannes Film Festival.
“Jesus, Pink hair Crowe. Is it panto season already? The state of you,” she said, “what is so urgent that you need me to trek out here?”
“I was at Thea Farrell’s funeral yesterday. Speaking of which…?”
“I’m doing, well, thank you very much,” she replied.
Cutts swung her satchel onto the table, sliding the condiments basket to the table’s edge.
