Page 100 of Hang on St. Christopher

“I’ve informed Superintendent Clare about it, but he doesn’t think it’ll be worthwhile going through all the bureaucratic hassles to send down some men there to mingle,” Crabbie said.

“He does things by the book, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“And yet earlier, he was praising our creativity in this investigation.”

“Indeed.”

“You know, you and I could just drive down there and join the crowd and see what we could pick up informationwise.”

“Sounds dangerous, Sean. Two undercover policemen at an IRA hit man’s wake?”

“In that case, I’ll just go down there and nail them on my own.”

Crabbie sighed. “You know I can’t allow that either.”

CHAPTER15

THE WAKE

A man has only so much luck in a lifetime. I mean, I was practically out of the force: a part-timer, filling in paperwork, finding missing cats and bicycles (not that we ever did find the missing cats or the bicycles). You’ve read Freud. Parapraxis is the specialized, technical name for a bungled or faulty action that nevertheless reveals something fundamental about our deeper selves. The Freudian slip, for example. “Nail them on my own,” I’d said to Crabbie. I wasn’t supposed to nail anybody. But clearly, I was craving a win after a year of no wins. And poor Crabbie was forced to patrol the dark places with me to sort outmyissues. Again.

South of the border was where the real bungling would begin.

But we’ll get to that...

Belfast to Newry to the Border to Dundalk.

Dundalk Lawn Bowling Club.

Crabbie and me in dark suits.

They weren’t checking IDs coming in, but they were doing a pat-down search. Back to the BMW, which we’d parked behind a fish shop. We left our guns in the boot and threw our shoulder holsters in there too.

Back to the bowling club.

Pat-down.

“How did you know the deceased?” the goon at the front door asked.

“We knew him through the art world. I have some of his paintings,” I said.

The goon nodded. “Why don’t you have a seat over there to the left. There are plenty of tables available,” he said.

We went inside. Bit run-down and garish. Faded candy primary colors you would normally associate with a scary fairground.

Plenty of tables available. In fact, there couldn’t be more than thirty people in here, and most of those looked like old bowling gents come for the free grub. If the goon wanted us to go left, it probably meant that...

Yeah. Over to the right of the room I saw Brendan O’Roarke, surrounded by friends and heavies, near the emergency exit and the bar. He was a big mess of a man with gray hair sticking out all over the place, jet black eyes, and pale gray skin. He had big hands, big builder’s hands, big throttle-you-around-the-neck hands.

Even from here, you got the sulfurous whiff of the true believer.

“Come on, in you go, gents,” another bouncer said. “It’s an open bar. There’s sandwiches at the back. I would get a sandwich now. It’s supposed to fill up.”

Within half an hour, his prediction proved correct. Two busloads of people arrived from Belfast, and before we knew it, the place was full of IRA, ex-IRA, and various Republican sympathizers.

I saw quite a few celebrity Republicans from the seventies: ****** *********, ********* ******, the really quite lovely ********** ********* and even ****** (Mad Dog) *********.