The Drowned Detective Read online

  THE DROWNED

  DETECTIVE

  Neil Jordan

  For Dermot Healy 1947–2014

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  1

  It was odd, I thought, as we followed the government minister in his caravan of black Mercedes four-by-fours, how often a spouse is abandoned for a less attractive alternative. This minister, for example, this ghostly presence behind tinted windows, had a wife who had hired us to trace her husband’s movements, a woman whose fragrance filled the drab office we worked in, providing a welcome relief from the odour of Lynx that came from the desk beside me. She was petite, her prematurely grey hair was dyed a subtle mix of blonde and silver, she was moneyed, of course, immaculately dressed in some designer’s outfit I should have known by name – Chanel, Armani, Zegna, Azzedine Alaia. They always sounded like species of rare plant, these designer names, plants I should have known. Anyway, she was clad in one of them and sat on the rickety chair and there was no denying she must have once been beautiful. She still was, by anyone’s standards, a beauty that would only be accentuated by that march of tiny lines, those creases of worry round the eyelids that soon, as she explained her all-too-familiar predicament, became wet with tears. He was seeing, she believed, someone who lived in a small apartment above a neon sign that spelled out Vulcanizace, in large and vulgar letters. Vulcanisation, Frank had translated, and he seemed to share the client’s distaste of the word, its implications and whatever was the process. He conversed then in his native tongue with Istvan, who generally sat in the inner room, listening for any titbits he could gauge from our increasingly tart conversations, and they repeated the word several times between themselves. Vulcanizace. Vulcan, I thought, the Roman god of fire, and I remembered those tyre-repair outfits along the Harrow Road and we eventually came to the bitter conclusion that her husband the government minister was severely compromising his security by seeing a woman who lived above a tyre-repair shop.

  Istvan readied his telephoto lens and Frank guided the vehicle into the outside lane. They had a procedure, these bulked-up merchants of Mercedes 4Matic all-wheel drives, when they came to a junction. One blocked off the middle lane while the ministerial vehicle sped inside it, the others following hard at the rear. It looked impressive and sounded more so, with much screeching of tyres and blaring of outraged horns, but Frank glided the van round the whole circus quite neatly, took advantage of the chaos to execute a U-turn, and parked in a shadowed alleyway on the other side. We could see the sign from there, Vulcanizace, the three dark-windowed 4Matics mounting the pavement below it. There was a woman in the dim interior, with a large tyre in her hands. She was dressed in an old denim jumpsuit with luxuriant red hair spilling round her oil-smudged shoulders. She not only lived above the tyre shop, we realised then, she worked in it as well. And as the neatly dressed diminutive figure emerged from the ministerial car, flanked by two bulky, dark-suited minders, Istvan clicked his unblimped camera and all three of us wondered what the attraction could be.

  Maybe she vulcanises him, said Frank, in his almost perfect English. Covers him in rubber.

  Circus tricks, muttered Istvan.

  And I remembered what fun it used to be and thought it best to leave them to it. There were issues now that diminished the enjoyment and I could see Frank’s cufflinks, gleaming against the gear-handle. I remembered the tears of the attractive wife. I understood her jealousy all too well. I had a Polaroid photo in my pocket and an appointment with Gertrude. I slid back the rear door and said I was off and asked them to keep it discreet.

  I knew they would. They were professionals, after all. I banged on the roof of the van as I went, a companionable goodbye, at least I hoped it sounded like one. I made my way from the alley on to the sunlit street and saw the red-headed jump-suited lover of the government minister pull down the corrugated overhead door. The sign above her flickered in useless neon in the hot glare of mid-morning. Vulcanizace.

  Jealousy is unfortunately a hazard of the job. If one hasn’t got it, one wants it, one wants the keen quickening of it. The way a boxer channels his anger into a random punch, I channel jealousy: I make it work for me, in a strange, disembodied, objective way. I could be jealous of a passer-by if it made the instincts work, I could be jealous of a lapdog, I could be jealous of a gnat. But the jealousy that’s useful is the meditative kind, the kind that wonders what that unknown one’s lunch appointment will be like, where will they sit, who will they meet, what traces will they leave. Because we all leave traces, as I had told Sarah some days ago. Some of us more than others. Like snails, silky gleaming things that follow our tracks, knowingly or not, retain bits of our residue, our memories, our fleeting pleasures, the things we have done, the things we wanted to do but hadn’t got the opportunity or the time. The handbag now, that’s the magpie’s nest of traces, the Aladdin’s cave, the Sutton Hoo of them, an archaeological hoard that someone like me could spend a good six days on. Metro tickets, supermarket receipts, loose change, sweat-hardened bills of useless currencies, scribbled notes, tubes of lipstick and the tiny white crystals that could be from a sugared sweet or a gram of cocaine.

  So, while to have this teasing jealousy of what we call a randomer’s life can be a good thing, to have the corrosive jealousy that infects one’s own is not a good thing at all. And I tried to think of other things as I made my way towards the river. I thought of the politics of this strange place, my attempts to learn the language, and I felt twinges of all kinds of regret, about things I hadn’t done or should have done or had forgotten to do. A language I had promised I would master, books I had promised myself to read, histories I should have plumbed, old enmities I should have learned about to understand this strange, fractured present. Something was about to burst, I felt, to shatter, to break, and I hoped it wasn’t me. I could see the white marble towers of the parliament building gleaming above the rooftops and so I knew the river was close. I was on my way to meet Gertrude the psychic with the pet Pomeranian. Lecturi Psihice, her sign had read, as descriptive in its way as Vulcanizace, but far more intriguing. And it was jealousy that had drawn me to her first, that word again. I even knew it in the language. Gelozie. But I would visit her now in my professional capacity, nothing personal about it. Was it always part of my job, I wondered, to listen to psychics and play with Pomeranians? I had a more muscular job once, in a much hot
ter climate where all the enmities could be immediately understood. But that was perhaps best forgotten, like all the things I should have done.

  The smell of the river was my guide, through the warren of streets that surrounded it. It was the smell of old mud, ancient unresolved politics and very current sewage. There was a barge wheeling around aimlessly in the centre, raising large concentric whorls of brown foam. Nothing is clean any more, I thought and no one will swim in that murk for a long, long time. I crossed the suspension bridge, and as I reached the last hawsers on the other side, I could see her, on the second floor of one of those by-the-river buildings. She was close to the window frame, looking down towards me with something white in her arms that could have been a cushion, a towel or even a Pomeranian. She was wearing one of those wraparound robes, a slash of yellow against the general grime.

  There was a communal entrance with stairs that led to a lift, but the lift was still broken so I climbed the stairs again and wondered, would she have made coffee? Then I remembered she didn’t drink the stuff, as I pressed the doorbell and listened to its intermittent jingle.

  I had walked with dogs in my day, before I had ended up in this forgotten place. Generally larger ones, Alsatians or Dobermans with a quick-release collar around their straining necks, a metal chain and a nightstick or a more lethal weapon that bounced off my thigh. I had even got to like them, the utterly unearned affection that they gave to me, wanting nothing in return. Large dogs were faithful, I remembered, and rarely a cause for jealousy. But I had no history with Pomeranians.

  Anyway, the door now opened and the smell of old face cream met me as I entered the room and the slash of yellow that was Gertrude walked from the window and asked me to take a seat. She was drinking some green liquid from a cocktail glass through an elaborate straw. It could have been crème de menthe, it could even have been a wheatgrass smoothie, though she had never seemed to me to be the wheatgrass type. And when she spoke I detected, or maybe I imagined, a faint hint of alcohol from her breath. But she was smoking one of those electronic cigarettes as well, so it was hard to tell.

  Jonathan, she said, and she pronounced my name in three separate syllables, Jo-na-than, what are we to do? stroking the feathered bundle, as if I shared her absurd attachment. Poor Phoebe has a condition that is pacific to small lapdogs.

  Specific, I corrected her.

  I suspect a luxating patella.

  Luxating. It was odd she had no problem with that word. It made me think of enemas and bowel movements. But I was to be proved wrong.

  Which means the poor dear’s knee poops in and out.

  Poops. I didn’t bother correcting her. But I wondered about that word again. Luxating. I wondered how it sounded in her tongue.

  And now she is whining – how do you say? Intermittently.

  And the Pomeranian was whining, not intermittently at all, but kind of constantly.

  Show me, I said, and took the little bundle in my hand. It whined as she passed it over and whined again as I fingered its knee joint under the quite ridiculous umbrella of overflowing hair.

  I would take her to the vet myself, she said, but my own knees are bad today. I have trouble with the – what do you call it? Hibiscus.

  Meniscus, I said. I think that’s the word.

  My meniscus, her patella.

  And I could picture it now. The walk to the veterinarian’s, with the laughable bundle in my hands, past the smoking junkies on the river and who knows what kind of witticisms thrown my way. Whatever they were I wouldn’t understand them, and I was past caring.

  So, she continued, and she was oddly on the ball, old Gertrude, despite her canine weakness, have you brought the photograph?

  And I remembered why I had come. I had surprised myself by forgetting myself and I wondered, could I make a habit of it? It would be a sweet habit, this forgetting.

  Maybe I should get a dog myself, I thought, as I took the envelope from my pocket and gently extracted the Polaroid.

  Petra was crinkled and faded now. But her childlike beauty and what was the word – optimism? Hope? Lack of care, maybe. Innocence. Whatever it was, it still showed through the grimy print that had sat for too many years in her mother’s handbag.

  She was blonde, Petra. She was smiling, as all young girls seem to be. She was happy, I suppose. As all children are meant to be. But she had gone missing a long time ago and left her parents, called Pavel, with a residue of misery.

  I should never have spoken to them, Gertrude said.

  But you did, I replied. And now they’ll never let go.

  Remind me, she said.

  Remind you of what?

  What I told them.

  That she was somewhere in this city.

  On the east side, she said.

  Yes, I said. Somewhere among those old tower blocks. A brothel, the father imagines.

  Brothel? And she raised an eyebrow. I never said brothel.

  She turned the old Polaroid with her painted nails.

  I said a small room that she cannot leave.

  2

  They had come to the office four or five days ago. A country couple, on the other side of middle age, with the same lines of endurance etched on both of their faces. Their Petra had gone missing twelve years ago, in one of those resorts along the Black Sea. I had walked back into the office from a session with the therapist. Did I mention that I needed a therapist? Anyway, I had walked back into the office trying to forget the thing I couldn’t forget. And he was there, Frank, and I remembered it all again. He was speaking to them in the language I was still trying to understand.

  I was telling them, he said, that we do missing husbands, wives, doctored bank accounts, counterfeit vodkas and handbags. But what we don’t do is missing children.

  His tone of voice was neutral, matter-of-fact. He wanted them out of there, rather quickly.

  There are police departments for that, I added, with a hint of what I hoped came across as solicitude in my voice.

  But the mother’s eyes responded. The father stared at his feet.

  Police don’t care, she said, in her bad English.

  Police do fuck all, added the husband, spitting on the worn carpet by his ancient shoes.

  And in a moment of weakness, or a moment of vengefulness – probably the latter – I took the Polaroid from Frank’s cufflinked hand and saw little Petra for the first time.

  Frank always wore cufflinks. They were one of those traces I was trying to forget. I had found one of them in questionable circumstances and, as he must have known about it, it would have been politic to change his habits of couture. But some habits die hard, I knew that too.

  Why come to us, I asked them, after all this time?

  Dream, said Mrs Pavel.

  A dream? I asked.

  A dream, the husband said, and he seemed weary of it all. She had a dream.

  I saw her, said the wife.

  You saw Petra?

  Yes. She said help me. She was as pretty as the day she left.

  She was a little girl, in this dream?

  I lifted up the Polaroid to the light coming through the window. I heard Frank’s exasperated sigh. And I must admit, it gave me some satisfaction.

  My sweet little girl.

  And then they went to, would you believe, a psychic, Frank muttered wearily.

  He was handsome, Frank, in a kind of annoying, indeterminate way. He was ex-special forces, of some army that used to be. He also shaved his chest.

  A psychic, I said. Mildly surprised. I had recently visited a psychic. But I would have been embarrassed to admit the reason.

  Was her name Gertrude?

  Gertrude, the mother said. How did you know?

  Maybe because he’s psychic, Frank said, wearily, and I, almost to my own surprise, found myself drawing the line at his tone.

  And what did this psychic tell you?

  That she’s somewhere in the city. In a small room she cannot leave.

  And the
father spat out a word that I recognised.

  Bordel.

  A brothel, said Frank. He thinks she’s in a brothel.

  I have a daughter, I said, that age. I couldn’t bear to lose her.

  No? Frank said, and he gave that tight smile that I imagined Sarah knew all too well.

  I wondered idly, did my daughter know it too? But she couldn’t, I thought. Or maybe I hoped. That was a line that Sarah wouldn’t cross.

  You think they should go to the police?

  I know they should.

  And what will the police do?

  Make a file. Stick it in a drawer. But it will be their drawer, not ours.

  But I knew she would haunt me, little Petra. And we had Gertrude in common. And I would have placed any inconvenience on Frank’s shoulders. This particular one seemed heaven-sent.

  There are pivotal moments, I know that now. Moments where the world turns, after which everything is different. Moments where we say, later, with the benefit of hindsight, that’s where it began. And they are often tinged with the shabbiest of motives. One small, recalcitrant emotion gives the world a gentle push. And that emotion was, in his language, gelozie.

  Tell them we’ll look into it, I said as my eyes moistened a little with what I hoped was a show of paternal solicitude and a sense of infinite regret.

  You can’t be serious.

  But I can, I told him.

  Why? he asked.

  Because, I told him, as I held up the Polaroid, I have a daughter that age.

  Her blonde hair and her hopeful eyes. The girl I knew absolutely nothing about.

  Because, I told him, this face will haunt me for ever if I don’t.

  I waited to understand what I could of what he told them. And when the mother kissed my hand and the father stood, with ancient weariness, as if to begin a journey that should have ended long long ago, I knew he had told them rightly what I had said. And I asked him, with apparent courtesy, to make a file of the relevant details.

  3

  Which is how I came to be holding Phoebe the Pomeranian as Gertrude ran her fingers over the Polaroid of Petra.

  Your wife, Gertrude said. You make it up with her?