PREAMBLE
“I was checking off the
names of various characters in my head, ticking and crossing as I went through
the litany of all those with whom I had come in contact in the previous ten
days; Eddie Hennessy, genius and murder victim; John Devlin, rogue, living out
his last days in peace; Bog O’Byrne, thug and now motorway bridge support;
Brendan Bertram, sweet old man with enough to say and more to tell; Bingo and
P.J., idiots on crutches; Joan Jones, a tragic, lost opportunity to be the love
of my life; Steffi Ellerbrock, a beautiful surprise out of the blue; Jackie
Strong, infamous piece of scum and still to account for his risible life; Dave
Robinson and Billy Strong, dead men walking…………”
Introducing Private Investigator Sticky Miller and his
resourceful sidekick Limp Donnelly as they investigate the death of a
poet. In the process, they get involved
with gangsters and other shady characters in Belfast and beyond. With little fear of action, no fear
whatsoever of puns and a penchant for pontificating, bullets, one-liners and
words of wisdom fly in equal measure in this hard-boiled, explosive crime
story.
FIRST CHAPTER
“Belfast is a shit hole. If the world had piles, that’s where they’d
be.” The man who spat these words in my
face ended up in hospital with a broken jaw and two black eyes. My bruised hand was purely a
coincidence. Nobody runs down my
city. That’s my job.
On a particularly dull and boring Belfast
day in my first floor flat overlooking the river and a couple of empty
warehouses that looked
spooky in the foggy smog, I tried to find a
position where the eyes of the toy leprechaun on top of the bookshelf did not
follow me around the room. It was
impossible to hide from the damn thing.
It sat there between James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’, essential to impress the
ladies, and Seamus Heaney’s ‘Death of a Naturalist’, just essential for mind,
heart and soul. Here I was, a private
investigator, outwitted by a little green lucky charm, which had been given to
me as a fun gift by an old ex-friend who seemed to enjoy taking the piss out of
the Irish. I remember thanking him from
the heart of my bottom as I poured, nay wasted, a perfectly decent pint of
Guinness over his head. We have not
spoken since but his spirit and spite haunts the leprechaun who in
turn haunts me with static but deadly
eyeballs. Some self-imposed threat of a
lifelong curse stops me from disposing of it, so we have a silent pact just to
get through each day without unnecessary rancour. Over the years, I have
assigned a very important task to the green chap. He carries my front door key in a slot
between his buttocks and
to save my legs I throw him out of the
window to whomsoever I
authorise to come up and see me. It is an arrangement that works and we just
get on with the relationship of being a key-minding leprechaun and a private
investigator.
The doorbell rang, just a normal ding-dong,
although I had promised myself a new chime of the Black Velvet Band as soon as
I could afford the luxury of it. I
looked out of the open window to see Limp Donnelly’s bald spot. I shouted at him to get ready to catch the
leprechaun and then threw it down towards him.
In true tradition, he raised his hands above his head and waited for the
key to arrive. When it missed his hands
and banged into his forehead, he shouted an expletive that seemed to echo
across the river, bouncing between the warehouses before evaporating into the
stillness of the afternoon. “Fuuuuuuuucccccccckkkkkk!”
I had hoped that Donnelly had brought a
fresh bottle of Bushmills whiskey with him to warm us up. The flat was as cold
as a solicitor’s heart, only because I was too tight to turn on the heating on
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I
looked forward to the other days but as this was Wednesday, I was wearing
several layers of clothing and waiting for potent liquid refreshment as a
necessary remedy for my blue nose and shivering limbs.
Donnelly had indeed delivered the
goods. He had a plastic carrier bag
containing two bottles of booze, which he presented to me with glee, unaware of
the demon bag’s singular threat to the planet.
He took the view, supported by me incidentally, that plastic bags are
made from products of the Earth, so there is nothing strange in their
manufacture
to threaten the Earth, just, it would seem,
Earthlings who get off on gloom, doom and despondency. When a supermarket poster declares that every
time you re-use a carrier bag the planet says thanks, a) no it doesn’t and b)
the marketing guys should ease up on smoking their nuclear tobacco. This is Earth-chattering stuff.
Limp put the bottles on the kitchen table
and incarcerated the plastic bag with all the others accumulated under the sink
in a cupboard akin to Alcatraz for bad, bad things. There were a couple of tax demands in there
too. He poured generous drinks and sat down.
Donnelly and I had a long history of friendship, moral support,
pub-crawls and a love of poetry. We
would write and perform poetry every Thursday night at The Stanza, a venue for
writers to meet, share verse, get drunk and put the world to rights. It was the perfect antidote for a private
investigator used to crime with all its nasty traits and evil outcomes. It was certainly a welcome respite as
business had been a little slow of late.
In practical terms, Limp was expert at finding his way around Internet
search engines and he seemed to know enough people to gouge out information
when I needed it most.
“Have you written anything new for tomorrow
night?” I asked.
“No,” said Limp, “remember Eddie Hennessy
is doing a rare performance.” Hennessy
was a world famous poet, with global poetry sales in respectable numbers. He was a Belfast man in his late sixties and
wrote some of the most wonderful words in literature. He had never forgotten his roots, his
upbringing, the locality that had shaped him and his friends and
supporters. The gig was a last minute
arrangement and I was looking forward to it
because I loved him and
his canon.
The phone rang.
“This is me, is that you?” I enquired. I knew it was a silly way to answer the
phone, but it tickled me every time.
“Yeah.
Sticky, it’s Barney at The Stanza.” Barney was manager, caretaker, chief
cook and bottle smasher at the venue and a friend of mine who had fed me in the
hard times and made sure I got home when I was mugged by alcohol. He had one tooth in his mouth, but ironically
a great warm smile. He was Walter Brennan with a broad Belfast accent. I detected nothing but anguish in his voice.
“What is it Barney?” I asked.
“I’ve got a problem over here,” he said,
his voice a little higher pitched than normal.
“What is it? Booze sales down and you need
me to bump up your income?”
“I wish it was that simple Stick. It’s Eddie Hennessy.”
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Don’t tell me, he needs a killer limerick to
open the show and he knew he could rely on me?”
“Shut up, will you?” Barney was in no mood
for unwise cracks.
“Barney, what’s going on? What’s wrong with
Hennessy?” I said with my hand clenched around the receiver and tight ripples
forming on my brow. I heard an intake of
breath.
”Hennessy’s dead.”
<<<<<End of Chapter 1>>>>>
I'll see how it goes in revision. If anyone is interested in reading or assisting with publication, please get in touch - joecushnan@aol.com
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