“So, no one ever made it past the brush-off?”
He hesitated again and I felt a little prickle at the base of my neck. This was it. Whatever he was going to tell me next was important. It was why he said “Jaysus” when I came over. He was afraid of something.
“What? Who was it?”
He thought about lying, then thought better of it.
“All right, look. I don’t know if this is important at all. But back in, oh, I guess maybe August, end of the summer, she was in and these four fellas were talking to her and I noticed she didn’t just brush them off. They were talking real intensely, like she was interested in whatever they were telling her. I heard one of them say he was staying at the Westbury and they were going to be there later and she should join them. I was listening because like I told you, your man Andy really fancied her and I was wondering would she go or stay, so I could tell Andy, like. He was gearing up to ask her out for a bite to eat. He had it all planned out, the sad bastard.”
“Did she go?”
“I don’t know. It got busy and when I looked up again, they were all gone.”
“So … what? That’s it?”
“Well.” He hesitated again. “Two of ’em were Americans and the other two were Irish. One from the north. The Americans were older fellas, but the Irish two were a bit younger, like maybe thirties. That seemed weird, for one thing.”
A group of guys at the back of the room were laughing loudly and shouting. I had to lean in to hear the barman’s words.
“They were asking her where she was from,” he said. “I heard them asking if she knew someone named Pete O’Connell and she said she did but I think she was just slagging ’em off, like, ‘Yeah, do you know how big America is, you eejits?’ and they were all laughing. Then, like I said, it got really busy and when I looked up again they were gone. She was, too.”
“Is there any way to figure out who they are? They didn’t pay with a credit card or anything, did they?”
“For pints? No. Maybe the Westbury would know.”
“That’s a good idea,” I told him. “What about the other two?”
He hesitated again. “Like I said, one of them was from the north. One was from here. I heard him saying he was from Arklow, something about coming up to Dublin to get parts, like maybe he ran a garage.” He took a deep breath. “I’m not a hundred percent, but I heard the other lad call him Niall.”
“Where’s Arklow?”
“Down in Wicklow.”
I could feel my heart speed up a little.
“When you say the north, you mean north like Northern Ireland?”
“Yeah.” There was more. I could tell.
He looked at the woman as though he was hoping for guidance. “The other fellas, the Americans. Like I said, they were a bit older. The Irish fellas didn’t know them. Didn’t know them already, like. They were meeting for the first time. The Irish two came in first and then the Americans came in and one of them kind of looked around and then he held up his newspaper—it was some kind of sign—and then they went over and shook hands and they started talking to each other. They seemed to have a lot to say.”
I looked from him to the woman and back again. “So?” I was missing something.
“So they had a look about them. The Irish guys. If you want to know the truth, they looked like fucking Provos. Especially the guy from the north.”
I must have look confused, because the woman explained, “Provos. Provisional IRA.”
“Really? And Erin—my cousin—she was talking to them? To all four of them?”
“That’s it,” he said. “And it’s right after that that she stopped coming in.”
I waited, and finally he said, “There was something about them. I’ve been a barman a long time. You see all kinds, you know, you really do. Something about those fellas made me wonder what she was mixed up in and hope she was all right.”
17
1993
It was nine, still not quite raining but almost, the moisture hanging there in the air as though it was just waiting to be pushed over the edge.
He had said, “Stop by the café.” Had he meant it? Was he just being polite?
I turned down Eustace Street and wandered around Temple Bar. People poured out of the pubs and I had to dodge a kid vomiting against a brick wall on Temple Lane and a couple making out next to the youth hostel entrance on Fowne Street.
Conor was locking the door as I approached the café and I called his name so he wouldn’t be surprised to find me standing there.
He looked surprised anyway. “You’re not looking for salad, are you? Trust me, it’s shite by this time of night.”
“No. I was walking by so I thought I’d see if you were here.”
He looked down at me. He was wearing a brown leather motorcycle jacket, boots. He put the keys in his pocket and then held his hands out at his sides. “I’m here,” he said. “At least I think I am. I just had a load of seventeen-year-olds come in completely langered. One of them was sick in the bathroom. Another one had to run out to be sick.”
“I think I saw him,” I said. “I had to move fast to save myself.”
He grinned, then caught himself and asked, “Is there, uh, news?”
There were still a lot of people on the street and it didn’t seem like the right place to ask him about Erin. “Not exactly. Look, do you want to get a drink? I could use a pint, and it sounds like you could, too. There’s something I want to ask you. About Erin.”
He looked away and I thought he was going to give me an excuse, but then he forced a smile and said, “All right, then. It’s going to be pissing rain in a few minutes.”
We started walking and he said, more to himself than to me, “Where will we go? Ah, the Palace is all right,” and we walked along Fleet Street for a couple of minutes before he held the door for me at the Palace Bar. It was small and crowded and old-fashioned inside, but we got our pints and found two stools at the back, up against a bar along the wall.
The stools were close together and when I slid mine in, my thigh came to rest alongside his. I could feel the heat from his body. He shrugged off his leather jacket and I caught a whiff of his deodorant, spicy, sharp, not something I recognized. He took a long sip of his Guinness. “Well, what is it you want to know?”
“The cops, the Guards, wanted to know if Erin had any boyfriends. They probably asked you, too.” He nodded. I said, “I was just at the Raven and the barman said that Erin was in there talking to some older American guys. They were with an Irish guy and a guy from the north and he said he thought they were Provos.” The word felt odd in my mouth.
He stared at me, shocked. “Provos? Fuckin’ hell. He said that?”
“Yeah. Does that … Did she ever say anything to you about that?”
He still looked shocked. “That’s … He can’t be thinking…” But then something occurred to him. He met my eyes and looked away.
“What?”
“It’s not … I just remembered it now. She left one night after her shift and came back a bit later. She said she thought someone was following her. I was finished my shift anyway, so I saw her home. She said maybe she’d imagined it, but she was a bit wobbly. Something scared her right enough.”