Free The Sleepers of Erin by Jonathan Gash Page B

Death. It’s going to survive the Heindricks. Understood?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Even if the Heindricks team up with a wriggler like you, Lovejoy.’
    ‘Okay. But what do you think happened to Joxer?’
    ‘I believe the Heindricks – or you on their orders foully murdered Joxer and tried to burn his corpse.’
    ‘What makes you think—?’
    Ledger lost patience. ‘Piss off, Lovejoy. Sign him out, Derby.’
    Derby produced a clipboard and asked me to sign a form stating I had been interviewed at the site of a crime or accident. He gave me a pen. I started to sign, then tilted the board to catch that garish light and read it several times till Ledger asked what was up.
    ‘Ledger, who’s Joseph Xavier Casey?’
    ‘Joxer. His real name.’
    A piece of gnarled twisted iron the size of a small horseshoe lifted from the ash as I moved my foot. Burning anything gives off a terrible stink. My breath was slow coming, but the sound it made caused Ledger to look harder. I signed his stupid form quickly, thinking of Sinead’s cousin Joe Casey who did clever special nocturnal work for the Heindricks. I’d been so wrapped up in my own plight I hadn’t even thought. Sinead had told me about her cousin Joe Casey soon after we heard Marcia’s news in the pub. She must have thought I’d realized they were one and the same person.
    ‘May I have a lift home now?’
    His hesitation made me mad, but I maintained my sorrowful visage. He’s a cyncial sod. Not one ounce of trust.
    ‘Lovejoy. If I once find you—’
    ‘I don’t feel so good.’
    He agreed, with yet more mistrust, which was how I thankfully found myself in Constable Smethurst’s car bombing back to my cottage. Near the brewery I conned a coin from the lad to ring my doctor urgently, or so I told him. Anyway he could afford it. The Old Bill pay themselves enough. I tried the hospital, saying it was an urgent message for Sister Morrison. The beleaguered Night Sister frostily told me that personal calls were forbidden on internal lines, and anyway Sister Morrison didn’t live in the nurses’ home. That was the end of my day. About three-thirty I waved so long to the copper and went indoors, not even a respectable failure.
    The rest of that night was a bad one for me. The trouble is, when you are so utterly tired it sometimes works the opposite way and you can’t drop off no matter how hard you try. I’m one of these people who never cares whether I sleep or not, which is okay as long as you aren’t grieving. And I was.
    My divan bed unfolds in my cottage living room. I’ve no upstairs, except for a crummy bat-riddled space under the thatch, which you climb into like Tarzan of the Apes. I hate those ceiling lights which always dangle glare in your eyes, so my two electrics are controllable table things. Tonight, though, I was in a familiar morose mood and fetched out my old brass oil lamp to shed a more human glow on the interior. Then I drew the curtains and lay in bed, thinking of Joxer and the state I was in.
    Folk come and go in your mind at the best of times, always in and out of your life. Because of all this movement, it’s a sad mistake to try to keep things just as they are, though God knows enough people desperately keep on struggling to. Okay. That’s life, and I have the sense to accept it. But Joxer had been killed, and I wasn’t going to accept that one little bit.
    The Heindricks wanted a divvie – me. They’d given me four days to recover. Then they were sending me somewhere, a place overseas where I wouldn’t need a passport. Lena Heindrick had said that. And Joxer had said Kilfinney. As a warning, as a tip-off? I’d never know now he was dead, but you don’t need a passport to Eire and Joxer was Irish and Kilfinney sounded vaguely that way on . . .
    To my astonishment I woke with my robin tapping like hell on the window, greedy little swine. I’d slept into daylight, which was just as well. I was in a hurry.
    Four days’ start on the