Chapter 7

Detective Declan Walsh gently fingered his large moustache.

It was bigger than his belly.

His desk was littered with all sorts of paraphernalia, but most importantly there was a freshly printed copy of that morning’s Irish Times.

It was smooth.

As a paper, it was unrivalled. It had the most readable headlines in the country.

REMAINS OF MAN FOUND. POSSIBLE SUICIDE. ATTACK ON ECCLES STREET.

What the fuck was Dublin coming too?

The fucking Irish Times.

As toilet roll, better could be found. Because the print had a tendency to stick itself to the arse and then find itself on the other side of the trousers.

And that could be embarrassing.

But that was Walsh’s tuppence and he kept it to himself. That is, he shared it with no one, not even Murphy.

It was all a problem of internal and external.

Walsh looked out the window of his sixth floor office and thought of Gérôme's Pygmalion and Galatea. He had seen it somewhere but he could not remember.

Where was it?

Washington?

Perhaps it has been in Paris.

What an ass she had.

If only he could bite it.

Lick, lick, yum, yum.

LICK.

He turned back towards the room and immediately dismissed those imaginings. He was a Garda after all, a civic-minded man with the public close to his heart.

—Murphy!

The man behind Walsh swivelled around on his chair.

—Yes, sir.

Murphy was something else. Thinking of.

—Where would we be without the morning news?

—Nowhere, sir.

—That’s right Murphy! And what does the news tell us?

—How many bastards there are in the world?

Walsh laughed while speaking, through this scene. It was a horrendous scene. Like some awful Christmas pantomime that graced the many minor stages of Dublin during that equally dreadful season.

That dreadful year.

This one.

Right now.

1955.

—That’s right, Murphy. How many bastards. And what do we do with these bastards, when we catch them?

—We pitchcap them, sir.

—Fucking right, Murphy. Fucking right! We cut their fucking balls off and we shove them up their arse. One by fucking one!

He was salivating.

Walsh stood up from his chair. Fingers on his stomach. He was a massive man. All hair and arse.

Fucking right, he said again.

He walked across the room like someone who was walking for the first time after waking from a coma. He filled a paper cup with water from the waist high cooler and turned, with presumed elegance to Murphy.

—Murphy.

—Yes, sir.

—Have you read the news this morn?

—I haven’t, sir.

—I was aware of that. But I needed to be sure.

—Yes, sir.

—For that is the difference between us. The only difference.

There were indeed many more differences. More than we could recount here. Murphy did not masturbate every morning, Walsh did. That was another difference, for example.

—Yes, sir.

—Did you see what happened up on Eccles Street?

—I heard sir.

Walsh was surprised. His pulled his chin in and lifted his left eyebrow upwards. Another ghastly sight. It looked as though he had no neck.

—Did you then?

—I did. Two men attacked a woman. And then ran off. It seems there was no motive.

Walsh raised a hand and finger into the air. He was on the cusp of making a point, a major victory for the beleaguered detective.

—There is always motive Murphy. There is always a motive.

In this case there was not.

Directly anyway.

Qui Bono.

Murphy too raised an eyebrow and gestured back to Walsh with the corner of his mouth, as if to say, go on, tell me, you fat prick. Tell me you big fat fuck so I go on do something fucking else.

You fucking fat prick.

One day I will have your job. One day I will kill you. One day I dash your head off a urinal. Until it breaks into tiny little pieces.

—Murphy.

Awake from your gentle reverie.

Indeed.

—You’re asking me, what was the motive? Was it robbery? Was it for financial gain?

It seemed no one had told Walsh that the former and the latter were approximate synonyms.

—I don’t think so, sir. They left without taking anything. They only struck her, twice. Once across the face and once (he looked down at the police report) on the side of the head.

Walsh envisaged the act.

Relished it.

Bastards, he said under his breath.

—A shower of fucking bloody bastards.

—There are no witnesses.

Walsh checked him.

—There are always witnesses, Murphy. You just have to look. I want you to get down there before lunch and find out what the fuck went on down there last night. Question everyone.

—Even the woman?

—Especially the fucking woman.

Walsh was wheezing.

He turned and gazed out the window in satisfaction. Those sentences were nicely wrought. They had balance. Even. Especially. They had, what would you say, finesse.

Ah yes, that’s it.

He looked down into his hand. He had crushed the paper cup.

—And Murphy?

—Yes, sir.

—Check out that mess on Patrick’s Street. It seems there was an accident. Someone fell from the steeple.

—I will.

—One less soul to consider.

Perhaps, said Murphy, knowing that he would have to do much more considering.

Fat fool.

Walsh gazed out over Dublin and thought of the dead man.

Mortem sibi consciscere. Maybe.

On Fleet Street, Murphy turned left, onto Westmorland Street, and made his way north side, on foot.

He passed over O’Connell Street, taking notice of nothing.

The trams passed him by, but he passed them too, when they were stopped, motionlessly, letting their passengers alight, on to the cold street below.

The rain at least had stopped.