Wanna be a millionaire? Then don’t work for a living. Fifty years of that crack and before you know it some joker’s digging a hole and lowering you into it. ‘Oh, he was such a nice man. He’ll be sorely missed.’ A load of bollocks. Take my advice: he who works last lasts longer.
‘Aye, well, it’s all right for you,’ I hear you say. ‘But how do we make a million?’ Fair question. You could try kidnapping, but I wouldn’t advise it. I’ve never seen one yet that hadn’t got something wrong with it. Grabbing the victim’s easy enough; collecting your wages is the hard part. Either the victim calls attention to himself by being unreasonable and trying to escape or there’s a lot of extra coming and going where you’re hiding the bastard, and the next thing you know the TV’s running it and some nosy neighbour’s saying to herself, ‘Here, hang on a minute,’ lifting the phone and it’s, ‘Fuck me, the cops are surrounding the place.’
Nah, the only way to kidnap somebody is to get rid of them as soon as you grab them. No nosy neighbours, no hideout, no coming and going, nothing to worry about. These days it pays to be streamlined.
So I told Charlie Swags that as soon as the baby was snatched, it was to be taken out of the city. (The last thing you want is some squealy kid knocking about the place.)
Then I sent its mother a note; the usual stuff – NO COPS, BRING CASH (in this case a hundred grand) – and the following morning gave her a call. She had to be sitting with her hand on the phone if the speed of her was anything to go by.
Here she was: ‘Yes? Yes? Hello? Hello?’
She must’ve thought I was deaf. I could just imagine the lads there with her whispering, ‘For fuck’s sake, missus, will you give us a chance to get the trace going?’
‘Mrs Winters?’
‘Yes, this is Mrs Winters.’
‘You want your baby back, you bring the money to Kilreed today at two o’clock. Wait in the phone box outside the post office. And come alone.’
It’s hard to tell from a few words, but I got the distinct impression she was suffering with her nerves. Maybe she wasn’t sleeping well.
Of course you’re saying to yourself by now: how’s he gonna collect the money if he’s no baby to hand over? Simple: only kidnap when you want to drive the victim’s loved ones round the twist. As a diversionary tactic – never for money.
Not that she had any. Not on her husband’s wages. She was probably driving him nuts with the ‘I want my baby’ routine. Y’know what women are like. He was probably wishing they were like tape recorders and came with a pause button.
She wasn’t a bad-looking woman though: late twenties, popcorn hairstyle. Brave pair of tits on her too – I’ve seen smaller arses. Not that I fancied her. In women, I wear a size ten; she had to be a fourteen at least. My only interest in her was that her husband had got in Charlie Swags’s way, and I needed him to get in somebody else’s.
So at two that afternoon I was in the attic office of a hotel, binoculars in hand, looking down at Mary Winters as she went into the phone box in the village of Kilreed to take my call. She was looking very red around the eyes – probably something to do with the wallpaper paste Swags’s men had squirted into them when she’d stepped out of the lift of an underground car park and had junior snatched out of its carrycot. They’d mixed citric acid with the paste, by the way. They tell me Optrex is good for getting rid of it, but you need gallons of the stuff. A hospital’s better.
‘Turn left at the corner,’ I told her, ‘then left again at a sign that says “Whites”. Follow the lane till you come to a farmhouse.’
I watched her arrive. Whites’ farmhouse was less than half a mile from where I was. She’d be bugged of course, and the law wouldn’t be far away, waiting to pounce when I handed over the baby. That’s how they’d be seeing it. They have training for this sort of carry-on, so they can get their man.
She got out of her car, y’know, looking around the farmyard to see what the story was – no doubt expecting me to pop out from behind the barn or whatever – and heard what I wanted her to hear – the sound of her baby roaring and crying in the farmhouse, then the phone ringing just inside the open front door. I was giving her another little call to see how she was getting on.
‘Put down the attaché case and go up and get your child,’ I told her.
After that I couldn’t tell you what happened exactly. I couldn’t see inside. But I’d say she went on in through the hall and looked up and saw an infant in a body harness dangling from the hatch into the attic, where I’d left it.
She was very controlled, to be fair to her. No ‘Oh my God’s, or ‘Look at my poor baby’ crap. All I heard coming down the phone was a distracted wail of relief, then the sound of the case hitting the ground and her running up the stairs, the stepladder creaking as she climbed up to save her baby, only to find a doll dressed in the clothes it was last seen wearing, and her going into hysterics – which was nothing to the screams that came out of her when she climbed up into the attic and saw a recorder playing the tape I’d made of her baby crying and realised that she was going home alone – aaagghh! – and wailing, ‘Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby? Where’s my bay … be …’ and breaking down in tears.
Whether or not the case contained the cash, I couldn’t say. The law had no doubt come up with it for the occasion. They have contingency funds, y’know, for unforeseen eventualities.
Anyway, I heard the clatter of her flying back downstairs to the phone, then coming at me again with her ‘Where’s my baby, where’s my baby? Please tell me where my baby is’ routine.
‘You were told not to involve the cops.’
‘But my husband’s a Guard. How could I not tell him?’
He was a detective sergeant. Chilly Winters. One of the Garda Síochána’s finest. Trained to notice if his kid’d been kidnapped. He could notice whatever he liked as long as it wasn’t me.
‘I can’t show my face with him in on it.’
‘What was I supposed to do? She’s his daughter. What was I supposed to do-oo?’
‘Find some way to keep him out of it.’
‘How could I? Tell me. Plea-ease. I’ll do anything you say.’
‘I’ll have a think and get back to you. I can’t say fairer than that. Bye now.’
‘No, wait. Tell me where my baby is. Please tell me where my baby is. Please. Please …’
A monk’s fancy woman could have been breastfeeding it for all I knew.
Oh, I meant to say, as far as their investigation was concerned, the Gardai would carry out their inquiries, you know the way they do – locate my vantage point as the only place the farmhouse could be seen from across the village rooftops by tracing the phone I was using, which had only one set of prints on it, belonging to a man called Ken Varden, who was connected to the hotel. That way they’d go after him instead of me. He had a beef against Chilly Winters and vice versa. Winters had reason to suspect him for this. Everything would fall into place. Except Ken Varden. He’d already fallen into another place.
And Mary Winters is still waiting for me to get back to her.
So forget kidnapping. There’s plenty of other ways to make money. If you’re prepared to do what I do: make your experiences work for you.
As far as Mary Winters’ daughter was concerned, well, no point in wasting a perfectly good baby.
And I had a personal use for it. One that had nothing to do with Charlie Swags or anybody else. The real reason I had taken it.
Yeah, well, that’s the way it goes.
I went to see my brother Conor about it.
Conor was doing all right for himself – owned a thatched cottage at the gate to a long drive that led up to where he was having a big house built, horses and cattle in the fields, new motor at the door. Gorgeous.
He was lunging a horse when I arrived. So I just leaned against the fence and enjoyed the feel of the place. I love watching horses. Maybe I’d have taken them up too if things had started off differently. I think it’s in the blood, y’know. Still, what with the old leg fucked, not much I could do about it now. If you saw me getting on a horse you’d think I’d been thrown by one. Odd how two guys from identical backgrounds can end up so far apart though. That’s what an accident of birth does for you, I suppose.
Some horseman, my brother. In different circumstances I’d probably even be proud of him. Ah well, back to why I’d come.
He unclipped the bay, slipped off its bridle and let it run loose.
‘Nice horse,’ I said.
‘Not bad.’
‘Red Dock’s the name.’
‘Conor Donavan. What can I do for you?’
‘I’m looking for a friend of mine – a girl I knew in London – by the name of Anne Donavan. The priest in the village said I’d find her here.’ It was bullshit. He couldn’t know her. She was a figment of my imagination. And I hadn’t seen a priest in years. Religion never added up for me.
The only Anne Donavan Conor knew was his daughter. She was the main reason I’d come. I wanted to get something straight in my mind about her. ‘She’s never been in London,’ he told me. ‘She’s below in the cottage, if you want to have a word with her, but she’ll tell you the same – she’s the only one by that name round here.’
Helpful sort of a brother. Strange standing talking to him without him knowing who I was.
Anne didn’t know me either when I put the same bullshit to her. I was three feet away from her but I could’ve been the Man in the Iron Mask for all she knew. And yet I was her uncle. Funny how people’s perception of each other based on the information they hold rules out what would otherwise form instant recognition of a fellow family member. That old saying ‘He comes from a close family’ applies only if they know who you are.
‘Everything is relative,’ a guy once said to me. I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. I was only ten. ‘Except for you,’ he said. ‘You’re not relative. Not even to your relatives. No one gives two fucks about you, and I can do with you whatever I like.’
That’s me – not relative. What I do doesn’t count. Who gives a fuck?
‘Sorry I can’t help you,’ Anne said.
She was helping me just by standing there with no wedding ring on her finger and being old enough to have a baby (seventeen, I’d say – three years younger than me). I’d need someone to say he’d delivered it of course. I had it in mind to make Anne the mother of Mary Winters’ baby. Well, every child needs a mother. Call it the sentimentalist in me. Like everything else, it’s all a question of getting the paperwork right.
‘I wonder if it’s worth trying the local doctor,’ I bullshitted on. ‘He might know the Anne Donavan I’m looking for.’
I knew there wasn’t another one. But I double-check every detail.
She didn’t look as if he’d hold out much hope. Tight-knit farming communities, where everybody knows everybody else, y’see. She gave me directions to the guy who’d delivered me – Doctor Skeffington.
‘He’s the only doctor round here,’ she said. ‘He sits from four till six.’
‘Thanks.’
I didn’t go in to see him – the medical query I had in mind was best handled outside of normal visiting hours.
So I watched until he came out of his surgery and drove away in a Ford Cortina. New one, by the look of it. He was being called out. To a farm, as it happened, along a country lane wide enough for only one vehicle. Nice and quiet.
I reversed my car into the lane and sat trying to pick a few winners for the next day’s meeting until I saw his headlights coming back on and his car pulling out of the farmyard. Then it was just a case of opening the bonnet and waiting till he pulled up behind me. Considerate sort: he switched off his main beam so it wouldn’t blind me, got out and came round to where I was leaning over the engine looking browned off. Tall, skinny guy he was in a tweed suit, with a white moustache and hardly any hair.
‘Sorry about this,’ I said. ‘Just conked out.’ A new Merc, it was. ‘You’d think they’d be more reliable. Can’t depend on anything these days.’
‘Sure now, these things happen,’ he said. ‘And usually on a night like this.’ He buttoned up his car coat.
Seemed pleasant enough. I always liked that about country people. They’re so easy-going. Break down in the city and the cunts are ready to beat you out of the road.
‘You’re not going back towards the village?’ I asked him.
‘I am.’
‘Any chance of a lift?’
‘Jump in.’
‘Great. I better not leave her blocking the road.’
He gave me a shove. Didn’t take much. I’d chosen the brow of a hill, to save our backs, y’know. Just a matter of freewheeling her down onto the main road and in tight to the hedge then getting into his passenger seat.
‘Now,’ I said and came out with some tripe, letting on to thank him.
‘Ah, not at all,’ he said and set off, both hands on the wheel, eyes front. Careful driver. You’d have thought he was taking his driving test.
‘You’re a doctor, I see.’ His bag was at my feet.
‘I am.’
‘Busy?’
‘Sure now. January. You know yourself.’
I did indeed. I’d only just got over a sore throat. Had to take antibiotics. ‘You know,’ I said, diving straight into why I’d swung the lift, ‘something’s always interested me, and maybe you can help me out.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Well, a mate of mine’s wife had a baby born in the house and when he went in for its birth certificate, they just handed it over. No proof required. I mean how did they know he was telling the truth? He didn’t have the baby with him.’
‘When a baby is born at home, the attending doctor or midwife rings the maternity ward dealing with that area – St Martin’s in Dublin, in the case of Clonkeelin – and the birth goes on the register. The registrar’s office only has to ring the maternity ward in question to confirm before issuing the certificate.’
‘In that case, you wouldn’t do me another favour?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Ring St Martin’s and tell them you’ve just delivered a baby.’
‘Eh? What baby?’
‘A girl.’
‘What girl?’
I think taking a revolver out of my inside pocket gave him a hint. It affected his driving anyway. One look at it and he nearly ran into a hedge. ‘Watch the road now,’ I said. ‘We don’t want to be calling any doctors.’
He was a steady old boy, all the same, and soon got a hold of himself. Didn’t look like he was shitting himself or anything. Just like I had his undivided attention. Interesting how people’s faces react to this type of carry-on. Some the blood drains out of. Though it doesn’t always take a gun to make that happen – footsteps approaching the dormitory after lights out used to have the same effect; you get to know the sound of certain footsteps – while others’ ability to make spit runs out on them. The doc was fast becoming the latter. From then on he sounded like he could murder a drink. Still, as long as it didn’t affect his voice too much. It was his voice I wanted. More than likely St Martin’s would recognise it. Of course I could always ring them myself, saying I was Doctor Skeffington, and report a birth, but what if I hit on a nurse who knew him? She’d know right away I wasn’t him. Whereas if he rang, it would all seem authentic.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what all this is about, but—’
‘No buts, Doc. Just pull in at that phone box.’ (I’d clocked it on the drive out, for the return trip.) ‘All you have to worry about is making the call the way you always make it. Then you can go home.’ I find it best not to give people too much information when their lives are under threat. That way they can tell themselves that everything will be OK if they simply do what they’re told. It’s bullshit of course, but that’s self-preservation for you.
He hit the brakes.
‘In you go,’ I said and went in behind him. ‘Tell them Anne Donavan’s just had a baby.’
‘Anne Donavan? But Anne’s not even pregnant.’
What the fuck did that have to do with anything? Some people, I dunno, you have to tell them a dozen times. ‘Make the call, Doc, and stop fucking about. I haven’t got all night. C’mon, move. And don’t forget to tell them her address.’
He did what he was told, fumbling with the dial and pressing the ‘A’ button a couple of times when the hospital answered. ‘Hello, this is Doctor Skeffington … I’ve just delivered a baby to Anne Donavan, Clonkeelin …’ All that crack.
‘A girl,’ I whispered.
‘A girl,’ he told whoever was on the other end. ‘A baby girl.’
I’d decided to call the girl Frances incidentally. Frances Anne Donavan. I like the name Frances. The ‘Anne’ part was for the kid to latch on to as a sign when she grew up. Her birth had now been registered by Anne Donavan’s own doctor.
‘OK,’ I said, ‘back in the car.’
‘Can’t I go now?’
‘You don’t expect me to limp home, do you?’ What kind of doctor was he? It must’ve been the guts of ten miles back to Dublin. Not that I was going there right away. Besides dealing with him, I couldn’t leave my Merc lying around for Winters to find and think: fuck me, that’s Red Dock’s car. Wonder what it means. You know what cops are like, always wondering what stuff means.
I jumped in the back and told him where to go. Then came a spot of reminiscing. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’
‘No. No, I don’t.’
I’d put on a bit of weight since our last meeting. ‘You made a similar phone call the night I was born.’ No gun needed that night.
‘The night you were born?’
‘You delivered me. My mother was Teresa Donavan. She had twins.’
I don’t think he was much into reminiscing. He was more concerned about his future. But it was coming back to him. Not his future – it was taking its last trip. The memory. Not a pleasant one, if the gob on him was anything to go by.
‘Which one of us was born first?’ I asked. The lady in question having since departed with the info, he was probably the only one left who knew.
‘Ah …’
‘Sean or me?’
‘Ah …’
‘Quit with the “ah”s, Doc. You’re not checking my tonsils. Which of us was born first? Sean or me?’
‘Ah …’ Shit. He hadn’t given it much thought of late. ‘In the name of God, why are you asking me this?’ was the sort of crap he was expecting me to put up with.
‘Answer me.’
‘But I don’t know.’
‘Was Sean first or was I? I’m Robert, by the way, in case you don’t recognise me. Nice to see you again after all these years. Which of us was born first? It’s a simple question. Me and Sean used to lay bets on it. He used to bet me he was. I used to bet him I was. Typical kids’ stuff. So who was born first – me or Sean?’
‘I don’t know, as God is my judge. It was too long ago.’
‘Think, man, think. How many sets of twins did you deliver then never lay eyes on again, for fuck’s sake?’
It was no good. He was straining for an answer but couldn’t latch on to one. By this stage, if he had, it would only have been his way of attempting to appease me. Therefore I wouldn’t have believed him. That’s the trouble with this lark – nobody bothers to remember fuck all about you. Fuck it. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, Sean. You were born first.
‘Why did she give us up? And don’t give me any doctor–patient confidentiality crap.’
‘But you don’t understand. I was standing in for my predecessor. He was off sick. I was only here for a few months. I loved it here. When he retired five years ago I bought his practice. I had always practised in Dublin. I wanted to end my working days in the countryside. I … I …’
Fuck it – this wasn’t working out at all. Nobody lies with a gun in their neck. I’d felt sure he could help me. I didn’t ask him who my father was. He wouldn’t have known that either. If he had, he’d have known why we’d been given into care. ‘Care.’ There’s a word if I ever heard one. I looked it up in a dictionary once. It had a lot of definitions – but not the one that applied to me and Sean.
‘Take the next left.’ It had a long stretch of narrow road that rounded a sharp corner. ‘And hurry up, for fuck’s sake. Hit the throttle.’ I doubt he’d ever hit it as hard.
I couldn’t leave him to talk.
I slammed his head down onto the wheel hard enough to knock him out, then dived down behind both seats a split second before the car smashed into the high wall bordering the field that formed the corner. It hit it a fair old whack too. Hard enough to make the back end leave the ground. If I’d been in the front, I’d’ve wrecked my hair smashing through the windscreen. What was left of his was already wrecked. I was all right though, no damage done. Just a pain in my side. That’s what I get for not wearing a seat belt.
I got out and opened the bonnet.
The trouble with this method is that sometimes the ‘whack’ fucks the bonnet catch and it won’t open. Makes it hard to pour petrol over the engine. Half a Lucozade bottle’s usually enough. You have to be quick though. No need to strike a match – the heat of the engine sets it alight then it’s drop the bonnet and get the fuck away from it as fast as you can.
The only thing I didn’t like about this was that the law’d find out he was a careful driver and wonder if foul play had been involved. On the plus side, this was the country, and sheep are forever darting in front of cars. Maybe he got caught out swerving to avoid one. The bump on his head would be consistent with hitting the wheel on impact, leaving him unconscious to be barbecued. And although cars rarely burst into flames on impact, the fuel pipe would be destroyed and forensic wouldn’t be able to tell conclusively what had happened.
Which left the little matter of my prints. They were all over the inside of the car. It goes without saying that they’d end up as charred as the good doctor. That’s what he gets for giving people lifts. I waited for a few minutes to make sure he didn’t come round. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have survived long enough to get out anyway. I’d nearly wound down the back-door window before the impact to let the air in on it. Air would’ve got the flames going faster, but the law might’ve wondered why it had been left open on a winter’s night. Had he been carrying a passenger? Who? It doesn’t do to give the bastards too much to think about. Besides, you’re only talking about getting it going faster by a matter of seconds.
Leaving the windows closed of course meant that the heat from the flames made pressure build up inside, and the only way it could escape was by blowing the windows out. I legged it way before that happened, empty Lucozade bottle in hand. Can’t leave evidence like that lying about. I have to take my time when it comes to legging it. That’s why I always have to be choosy when it comes to the likes of this. I can’t do anything if it involves lifting. I heard the glass blowing out though. Not much of a bang. More of a boomph. I doubt the doc’d heard it or gave a fuck. He was approaching the rare stage. Another ten minutes and he’d be well done.
The following morning I went straight to the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths in Dublin and applied for a birth certificate for Frances Anne Donavan and gave them the mother’s details. They phoned the maternity ward, did their confirming and issued the cert. Anne Donavan now had a baby called Frances she didn’t know about.
Didn’t matter: she wasn’t gonna bring it up. It had gone from being a Winters to being a Donavan, and now it was in for another name change. I’d already taken it to experts in that department.
The day the kid was snatched by two of Charlie Swags’s finest, I was waiting in the lower ground floor of the same car park. They bunged it into the back seat and I drove straight to the west of Ireland to an orphanage in Connemara. It cried for most of the 200 miles. I got some of it on tape for Whites’ farmhouse attic. Mustn’t forget the special effects. It was only when I arrived at the orphanage that I noticed what was making it howl. Some of the paste that had been squirted into Mary Winters’ eyes had gone into its left eye, and had left it red raw.
I put a note in its shawl saying ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please take care of my baby. They won’t let me keep her.’ The nuns would believe it was illegitimate, and the note would indicate the mother couldn’t raise it by herself because of the shame it would bring on her family.
Thanks to all that stigma stuff they’d attached to illegitimacy, dumping unwanted kids was easy. I couldn’t have done it without them.
And the reason I’d chosen this particular orphanage: I didn’t want the kid found. It was in Connemara and Connemara was a generation behind Dublin. In some instances, ten of a family eking out a living on a few acres, living in a cottage with a tin roof and mud floor, no electricity or running water – let alone a TV to see the news – was not common, but not unheard of either. And Irish was spoken as much if not more than English. Dublin news wasn’t exactly widespread in that part of the country. A too-easy view to take, I know. Connemara was hardly the Amazon jungle. People there would hear of it. I mean we’re talking about a cop’s kid being kidnapped. Then again, on the face of it, it was just another little baby girl born into a world where she wasn’t welcome, dumped on the steps of a home in the middle of the night with no birth cert. And I knew that the Church had made a career of keeping babies. I knew the system – that keeping her gelled with what I knew about them.
I forgot about the kid for a while after that. Then I took to renting a cottage in the village she was near for the occasional week over the next few years and got on nodding terms with a couple of the nuns. In the summer months the kids worked the land they had there, growing vegetables and stuff. They used to sell them to the public, and I was a customer. Gradually I got to know some of the kids by sight. One in particular stood out. At my reckoning she was just coming on six years of age, and she had a birthmark just above her elbow, which I had searched for the night I’d brought her there, to identify her to me later on. But that wasn’t what made her stand out. She had what had turned out to look like a second birthmark – a blotch in the corner of her eye. The wallpaper paste had scarred her. A very minor mark, not unattractive, strangely enough, but it looked permanent. The nuns hadn’t treated it, and it had burned her.
So I’m standing there in my walking gear, as if I’d holidayed in the area for that purpose, complimenting this nun on their set-up, and admiring the rows of meticulously weeded vegetables, when the girl came over with a basket of carrots she’d dug up. She emptied it onto a cart then turned to the nun.
‘Can I give Jack one, Sister?’ she asked.
Sister smiled like the Virgin Mary at her and the girl gave the donkey the carrot, patting him and all that, saying, ‘There’s a good boy, Jack.’
Not to be too obvious about singling her out, I asked a couple of other kids their names. ‘Gemma Small’ and ‘Rebecca Donagher’ they said.
‘And what’s your name?’ I then asked her.
She, like the others, looked at the Sister for permission to speak.
‘That’s our Lucille,’ said the Sister. ‘Aren’t you, Lucille?’
‘That’s a nice name,’ I said. ‘And what’s your second name?’
‘Kells,’ she said, all shy. ‘Lucille Kells.’
Now that I knew what they’d renamed her, I could let the years roll by and see what happened. Fifteen years went by before I went looking for her again. Only now I didn’t know where she was.
A pretty secretive world, the orphanage system. Tracing kids isn’t easy. I could break into the Health Board’s office and go through their computers till her name came up. The same for adoption placement agencies. Maybe she’d later been adopted. Break into Church computers, those of the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths. Everything’s computers these days. Employ a snoop? I know a few good ones, who could get me any kind of info. Lucille Kells could be registered with credit-card companies, the driving-licence department; have a medical card, store cards. Any number of ways of finding her.
A lot of guys in my position would’ve kept closer tabs on her through the years – tailed her the day of her release, got to know her by being helpful until, and if, she made a move on Clonkeelin, then taken it from there. All kinds of options. Not me. Why would an apparent stranger go to those lengths? Why risk being seen by the law as the first person to help her on her release then, following the deaths of those she believed were her birth family, the Donavans, leave yourself open to all kinds of suspicion?
What I’m saying is – if it could be proven that I’d taken an interest in Lucille, it would form a link. Fuck that. I’m way too cautious for that. How do you think I’ve stayed ahead of the law all these years? As far as anybody knew, I did not know Lucille, and she did not know me. And that’s how it was gonna stay.
The fact was Lucille was in her early twenties before I tracked her down. A car accident left me with two broken legs and, because the left one’d been broken when I was a kid – Christian Brothers threw me out of an upstairs window – and hadn’t been treated properly, the second break wrecked it. Left me with twenty-eight per cent bone density from the shin down, screws, plates, all that, crutches for a couple of years, the limp worse than ever.
Anyway, I’d worked out a long time ago, and this was reinforced as I got older and came across some of the kids I’d grown up with, that the religious – the Crucifix Brigade who brought me up, some of them anyway – had a system for naming dumped kids. I’d met up with a kid called Brag. He found out his real name was Brown. He came from Athenry in County Galway. They’d used the first two letters of his real name ‘BR’ and added the ‘A’ from Athenry and the ‘G’ from Galway and came up with Brag for easy reference. B-R-A-G. Dock: ‘DO’ being the first two letters of my real name Donavan, ‘C’ for Clonkeelin, ‘K’ for Kildare. That’s how they’d arrived at Dock. I met another lad who hadn’t been able to find out his real name. I knew him as Tom Crew. I told him he’d probably discover that his real name began with ‘CR’ and that he came from some town beginning with ‘E’ in a county beginning with ‘W’. Waterford or Wexford, or some place like that. That’s the way the bastards have you, y’see – running around buying maps to find out where you come from. I’m not saying they did this countrywide, but it did go on a fair bit. Another lad was called Lord. I didn’t fancy his chances. Lord, like Kells, is a religious name. Since the religious didn’t know where Lucille came from, they’d obviously come up with her name and offered it up in their prayers or some crap like that. Unknowns – those babies who were abandoned without paperwork, as opposed to those whose backgrounds were known – were given names with a religious connotation to them. That’s my theory. The nuns probably named her after a ninth-century holy book that was written by some monk, The Book of Kells.
Kells is also a very rare name. In the phone books countrywide there are only a few dozen of them. And how many of those would be called Lucille? Dock’s the same.
It’s not a common name either. Ring up directory inquiries and ask for a Robert Dock – different than asking for a Robert Murphy. To tell you the truth, before I went looking for her, it hit me when I kept seeing all the kids going about with mobiles to their ears. I thought maybe Lucille had come out of that orphanage and settled in the nearest city. So I rang the mobile-phone directory inquiries for Galway. No good. Her name wasn’t registered with them. I told them to try Dublin. Kids have a habit of flocking to the capital. There was one Lucille Kells in Dublin. I had a number. But that’s all I had.
I gave it a go. ‘Lucille Kells?’
‘Yes?’
I fed her some crap that added up to ‘I have a letter which I have been asked to pass on to you from Connemara. Cellphone gave me your number, but not your address.’
‘Number two, Primrose Avenue, Dublin Four.’
‘Thanks.’
The easy ways are often the best. I took a spin round to Primrose Avenue to make sure I had the right girl. There she was. The sweater she was wearing covered that port wine stain on her arm, but it was her, right up to that red blemish in her eye. Oddly enough, I rarely saw that arm of hers again. She always seemed to wear long sleeves. Embarrassed by it, I suppose.
I followed her for a while after that, found out she worked in a café, shared her flat with an unemployed girl, Gemma Small, one of the kids from the orphanage, got to know some day-to-day stuff about them.
All I had to do now was let her know who she was – Anne Donavan’s daughter.
And the only way to do that was by giving her her birth certificate.
The trouble was, I couldn’t just send it to her. It had to look right.
I remembered how some of the kids I grew up with had been treated when they left the home. Sometimes they’d be told who they were, usually by being given letters that had been sent to them over the years by relatives, which had been kept from them. There are so many variations on how kids were treated that I could go on forever telling you about them. The religious, for whatever reason, didn’t treat us all with the same consideration. Some kids were given info about themselves, most weren’t. The thing was, it was plausible to be given it. Lucille would know that. So I went back to the orphanage where I’d left her and asked, in passing, about the sister I’d seen Lucille with. ‘Oh, she’s moved on to such and such a place,’ I was told.
‘Oh, and what about Sister …? I used to love talking to her … What’s this her name was?’
‘Sister Joseph?’
‘Yeah.’ Yeah, m’bollocks.
‘Oh, dear Sister Joseph passed away five months ago.’
I was in. It was only a question of posting the cert to Lucille, saying Jo had asked for it to be passed on. It wasn’t the first time it’d been done. And Jo wasn’t around to call me a liar.