Crowe sat, looking blankly at the car dashboard. Lynn’s grim warning bounced around inside her head.
Only the phone vibrating in her bag distracted her. By the time she rummaged around to pull it out, the call was gone. She looked at the display.
Tom. Shit.
Two missed calls. Three messages.
‘You nearly done? Want me to wait? What’s the story?’
She typed in a message.
‘Delayed. Heading home.’
As she steered away from the kerb, she noticed the white graffiti on the wall beside her. RCAD Patrol, it read. Putting her foot down, part of her tried to recall what the acronym stood for.
It was 10 p.m. by the time she entered the code to the underground car park. She liked the location of the apartment building: a stone’s throw from the Four Courts on one side, O’Connell Street on the other, with Temple Bar just across the Ha’penny Bridge.
Crowe refused to live in garda ghettos in County Meath and west Dublin. She wanted to live in the city. She’d had enough of the country as a child: the isolation, the long summers sitting by her window wishing she had someone to play with, fighting with her parents to drive her to the local disco, or to anything. Okay, here, she had the smell of piss, the addicts injecting and defecating in the lane-ways, the shouting during the night and the endless clatter of traffic. But she had the Luas at her doorstep and her station was within running distance. If she got transferred to any other district in the region, she had the buses, the Dart and the Luas. She thought that all through before she and Tom bought the two-bed apartment. What she didn’t think through was the timing: right at the height of the boom. That was like a boil on the sole of her foot. Now, the ‘for sale’ and ‘for rent’ signs jostled for space, adding a new layer to the outside of the building. People rattled around inside their apartments, jobless, waiting for things to turn around. Like Tom.
As she entered the apartment, Tom was in default mode: stretched back on the couch, a glass of beer in his right hand, a packet of crisps beside him, watching some nature programme.
‘You’re back,’ he said.
Crowe put her hand on his shoulder.
‘Sorry for being so late. It’s been a long day.’
Her search for sympathy didn’t elicit any.
She turned to the kitchenette. Dried lumps of bolognese in one pot. Soft spaghetti floated on yellow water in another. She looked back towards Tom, toyed with saying something.
Her heart sank further at the thought of all the CCTV waiting for her in the office tomorrow.
Crowe raised her eyebrows as the Luas curved past a garish sex shop. She and Tom hadn’t made love in ages. He’d barely looked at her last night. There was no passion in his eyes anymore. No lust even. Not towards her anyway.
She got to her stop at Canal Works. An arrowhead shape of swans flapped over her as she strolled the short distance to the station. When she got there, a new sign had gone up at the entrance. It informed locals that the public office at the neighbouring Kilcocher Garda Station was soon going to be closed between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. and that all public inquiries should come here. Crowe had heard the justice minister the other night on the radio saying it was about ‘efficiency and effectiveness, not cutbacks’.
Some shite like that anyway.
Her mood lifted somewhat on seeing Grant at the counter, talking to a woman. She was scribbling down details on a scrap of paper.
Heads turned when Crowe entered the public office. She smiled at the male guards on duty and got a few muted hellos in return. She was used to not getting the warmest of responses. She wasn’t really one of the lads. Grant, on the other hand, was very popular with the male guards. The females were cold to her when she got assigned to the station, less than half a year ago. They didn’t like a good-looking garda on their patch. Crowe hated that kind of bitchiness. She’d made an effort to be friendly to Grant from the start and helped her out any way she could.
Crowe stepped over the boxes that fought for space on the ripped blue lino. A kettle balanced on a narrow window ledge.
‘Hi,’ Grant said, her blonde hair swinging as she closed the latch. She gave Crowe a warm smile.
‘Helping the good people of dear old Dublin, I see,’ Crowe replied.
‘Of course. I am here to serve,’ Grant said, doing a mock salute.
‘You will remember to put that incident onto Pulse, won’t you?’ Crowe said nodding first to the loose piece of paper Grant had just taken details down on and then to a computer.
Grant feigned offence. ‘What do you think I am, some blonde bimbo?’
‘So how’s things with you?’ Crowe asked, siding closer to her. ‘Did you decide between Fiachra or Noel?’
‘Who the fuck is Noel,’ ones of the lads shouted, ‘some turnip-munching culchie from darkest Tipperary?’
‘Never you mind,’ Grant said, turning her back to them and leaning against the counter.
Crowe looked at Grant’s trousers. Standard issue all right, but certainly a bit tight around the bum. She could sense eyes staring in that direction. Crowe reflected on her own unflattering heavy pair of jeans with large loops. She needed loops that were big enough for a thick belt. It took her ages to find jeans like that. It was all to hold up her holster, which weighed as heavy as a bag of sugar on her side. She wouldn’t get the official belt for detectives until she was formally appointed as one. What a joke, she thought. She was what they called a ‘buckshee’ detective. She did all the work of a detective. In fact, she believed she worked harder to prove herself. But she didn’t have the title, nor for that matter the same level of pay.
‘Anyway, that’s why I’m giving Noel a chance,’ Grant said with a mischievous smile, rousing Crowe from her brooding. ‘How are things with you? How’s Tom?’
Crowe’s mood dropped.
‘Ah, grand. You know yourself.’
Catching Grant’s sympathetic smile, Crowe made her excuses and left, kicking herself for being such a downer.
Crowe manoeuvred around the mound of box folders in the middle of the district detective office. She’d tried last week to organise the metal filing cabinets to make space for folders, but the others just told her to leave it.
‘You’re a detective, not a clerk,’ her sergeant loved to say. ‘Solving crime is what we do, not interior design.’
That usually got a chuckle from the other detectives. All she had in the room was a cubby hole. Her boxes and files were stuffed into the corners of other rooms.
The unit on shift must be out on a job, she thought, as she deliberated which desk to take. As a buckshee she didn’t have her own desk yet and had to take pot luck. What pissed her off most about that was when a detective would stand over her, waiting for her to get off, even though she might have a shitload of paperwork to do. Sometimes she’d hear them breathing and sighing behind her. Often, she’d come back after going to the toilet and one of the guys would have logged her off and taken the desk.
She had reached for her organiser when the Chief barged in. He closed the door firmly behind him and leaned against it. The bottom of his shirt had pulled out from under his trousers, barely covering his belly. Crowe got up.
‘Garda Crowe. Sit down. I wanted to ask you about Ms King?’
Crowe ran a finger over her organiser.
‘Could it be a prank by some local kid that went wrong?’ he asked.
‘It’s possible, Chief, but given the content of the note and previous incidents experienced by Ms King, probably not.’
The Chief nodded and adjusted the weight on his feet.
‘Any luck with CCTV or witnesses?’
‘We did a door-to-door, but drew a blank. I’ve collected footage from the area and will go through that in the coming days.’
‘Good.’ He nodded. ‘Good.’
Crowe’s shoulders relaxed. The Chief could be a ball breaker. But he was also what members called a ‘Garda’s Garda’, an ordinary policeman who knew the frontline. He ran one of the busiest divisions in the city. He liked a tight ship. And didn’t like nasty surprises.
‘And Ms King’s dealings with us?’
Crowe clutched her organiser tight.
‘I have to follow this up. I understand she had been in contact with Detective Sergeant Flynn and had met him in the days before.’
She paused as she watched a muscle pulse on the side of the Chief’s head.
‘And are you presuming those intimidating her knew that?’ he asked.
Crowe scratched the side of her neck.
‘Is it not possible,’ he continued, ‘that she told someone else and they passed it on, or they were overheard?’
‘Yes, Chief, it’s possible. She was going through a family support project in the Oasis –’
‘Lynn Bolger, I know,’ the Chief interrupted. ‘She has little time for us. They all believe their own paranoia: that we are always harassing their poor innocent junkies, as if they weren’t responsible for nearly all the burglaries and robberies in the area.’
Crowe could see the side of the Chief’s head pulse again.
‘Yet, somehow we are the enemy,’ he added. ‘She give you all that bollocks?’
Crowe shifted in her seat and decided to share his views. ‘Yes, Chief, I got all that, in bucket loads.’
‘Anyone else that knew of the deceased’s dealings with us?’ he asked again.
‘Ms Bolger said Ms King would not have told anyone else, apart from maybe Father Keogh.’
The Chief breathed deeply and stuffed his shirt back into his trousers.
‘Another member of the Garda fan club,’ he muttered. ‘What has he to say for himself?’
‘Haven’t spoken to him yet.’
‘Ah, he’ll give you the same guff,’ he said, waving his hand in the air. ‘But, best cover all your bases.’
He leaned closer towards her. ‘Sort this one out, Crowe. Nice and quick. And I’ll write you up well.’
With that, the Chief left. Crowe felt a tingle down her spine.
Write you up well. Wow.
The report on her interviews was making its way up the line, she thought, grabbing the stack of CCTV disks from her cubbyhole. The Chief would have the final word on the recommendation for promotion, she knew, before it went to HR at Garda HQ. Although, with the embargo on promotions, it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. But still.