Free Cross by Ken Bruen Page A

dunno why – madness, perhaps – I put the card in my jacket.
    Then I was outside and it was raining heavily. I muttered, 'Good, hope I catch me death.'
    Just outside the main door of the hospital, a veritable cloud of smoke near obscured the entrance. Not from the weather, no . . . the smokers, huddled like frightened lepers. The smoking ban was a year old now and these groups of social outcasts were a familiar sight, frozen in winter, laughing in summer – if you can ever call a summer in Ireland such.
    A new term had been coined as nicotine romances had sprung up. People got talking;
in their allied addiction, social barriers that might have taken much longer to overcome were now literally so much smoke. The flirting
thus was termed Slirting . . . Flirting with the smoke.
    I reached for me cigs and remembered I
didn't smoke any more, didn't drink either.
No, I was too busy killing all I cared for.
    If one of the smokers had noticed my gesture and offered me one, I probably would have taken it. My eyes were locked on the River Inn, clearly visible from where I stood. I
began to move.
    I was at the hospital gate when I heard,
    'Jack?'
    And now fucking what?
    A man in his early thirties, well dressed if casual, a good-looking guy but with a wary air about him. It was that that triggered my memory.
    'Stewart?'
    My former drug-dealer. He'd been busted, got six years and then hired me to investigate the supposed accidental death of his sister.
That case had been among the worst I'd ever been involved with and led to the death of Serena May, the Down's Syndrome child of Jeff and Cathy.
    He smiled, a smile of no warmth. I suppose if you do hard time in prison, warmth isn't going to be one of your characteristics. The
time I'd gone to see him in jail, his front tooth had been knocked out and that was just what was visible. I noticed the tooth had been replaced. And his eyes – when I'd first met him, his eyes had been full of energy, and now they were pools of granite.
    He asked, 'Are you OK? You look like someone died.'
    How to answer that? Fall at his feet and bawl like a baby? Go hard ass and say, 'No biggie'?
    I said, 'People are dying all the time.'
    He considered that, then said, 'I have a new flat, just down the road. You want to come have a drink . . . ?'
    He paused, added, 'Or a coffee?'
    My drink history was known to all and sundry. I said, 'Why not?' and we began to walk towards St Joseph's Church. Before we got a chance to speak, a Guard's car passed, the cops giving us the cold scan.
    Stewart watched them cruise slowly by and after they'd passed he said, 'They never let you move on.'
    Amen.
    His flat was near Cook's Corner. The pub there, almost a Galway landmark, had a FOR
SALE sign, but then what hadn't?
    Cook's Corner is literally the centre where
three roads cross. You can walk down Henry Street, the canal murmuring to you on both sides, or turn and head north to Shantalla, literal translation being 'old ground' and still home to some of the best and most genuine people you could ever hope to meet. Or you could retrace my path, back to the hospital.
There was a fourth option, but no one ever mentioned it; a fourth road that was there, but never alluded to: the route to Salthill. Years ago, it led to Taylor's Hill (no relation) and housed the upper classes. You had money or notions, you lived there. So it was never referred to by the people, money and notions not being on the agenda. But times, they were a-changing and Cook's pub was about to open the door to all sorts of speculators suddenly taking an interest in what had always been described as the poor man's part of town.
    You think I'm kidding?
    There were three charity shops on this patch alone.
    We went into a plain two-storey house and he opened a door on the ground floor, said, 'Welcome to my humble abode.'
    I never believed people actually used such clichés. What was next, Mi casa es su casa ?
    I have seen houses and apartments of all