Free Irregulars by Kevin McCarthy Page A

times.’
    ‘Strange times indeed.’
    The pair of them say nothing for the time it takes the girl to enter and pour tea.
    They sip in silence for a moment, and O’Keefe sets down his teacup. ‘Mrs Dolan, my father is in your debt.’
    The woman’s gaze is assessing but warm, and O’Keefe is confused by her scrutiny. Flattered but wary.
    ‘You look like him, you do. So much like him when he was younger. He’s not well, I hear.’
    ‘No, but I’m prepared to fulfil any obligation he has to you.’
    ‘I expect you are. Your father told me that you were a Peeler down in Cork. A fine one. A fine investigator.’ She speaks as of a time long past, a different life, a different person. ‘He was proud of you, as well he should be. A fine, strapping man like yourself. And doing right by his Da.’
    O’Keefe’s face reddens. ‘I don’t know how good I was, Mrs Dolan. I worked my share of investigations, as I said: any number of robberies and more than a handful of murders.’
    ‘No, no … nothing like that,’ Ginny Dolan says abruptly, and O’Keefe notices the woman’s face change, her smile frozen. ‘No … please God,’ and in the common phrase— please God —O’Keefe hears a real prayer. ‘Nothing so serious as that …’
    ‘I didn’t mean to imply anything, Mrs Dolan, sure. I’m not certain what you even want from me.’
    ‘A job of work. You’ll be well paid.’
    ‘That’s not necessary, Mrs Dolan. I’m here to repay what my father owes, whatever it is you need me for.’ And as he says this, he regrets it. There are favours, he thinks, the madam of a brothel could ask for, that would test a man’s morality at best. ‘I’ll try.’
    ‘You’ll take the job, Mr O’Keefe.’ It is not a question.
    ‘What is the job, Mrs Dolan?’
    She takes another cigarette from her case and pauses while O’Keefe leans across and lights it.
    ‘My son,’ she says. ‘I want you to find my son.’
    ‘Your son?’
    O’Keefe wishes he had a cigarette. He pats his pockets and realises he has not bought a packet since his binge.
    Ginny Dolan holds out her open silver case and O’Keefe gratefully accepts one. He lights it and takes the smoke deep into his lungs, feeling light-headed and stronger for it.
    ‘But why,’ he asks, exhaling, ‘do you not go to the police, Mrs Dolan, if your son is missing?’
    The madam sets down her tea cup with a clatter. ‘No police. Is that clear, Mr O’Keefe? I’ll not have my son lagged by that shower, and they’d not be interested in finding him anyway. Your father,’ she softens her tone, ‘… was a good man, Mr O’Keefe. We were great pals in our day … I only wish him well, but I will have my Nicky found and no police.’
    O’Keefe nods, unwilling to anger her further, finding himself slipping back into a role he thought he would never play again—that of investigator.
    ‘No police then.’ He pulls on his cigarette and begins. ‘All right so, when was the last time you saw your son, Mrs Dolan?’
    ‘Last month, more than a month really. Nicky slept here, like always, and then was off the next morning before I woke.’ Her smile is gone now, fear etched into the pinched lines around her eyes, a filigree of worried years around her lips as she pulls on her cigarette.
    ‘His name is Nicholas?’ O’Keefe instinctively pats his pockets again, this time for the patrol diary that is no longer there. He feels unprepared and amateurish without one of the hardback notebooks he had carried all those years as a Peeler, resolving to commit what the woman says to memory and copy it down as soon as he is able.
    She nods. ‘Nicholas Dolan. And I should tell you, before we go any further, that he has been running with the anti-Treatyites. The Irregulars as they’re called now in the papers, so you see now why we cannot have the police looking for him. They’d hand him over to the Free Staters and he’d be banged up with the rest of them, or worse, shot.’ She