Green Hell by Ken Bruen Page A

Credit cards (gold) and other data revealed him to be nineteen, a student of engineering at NUIG.
    A member of Galway’s foremost lap dancing club. (We had a lap dancing club?).
    Where?
    There was a nice tidy package of coke, some “E” tabs, and close to six hundred in notes. Paid for the vet.
    Google threw up that Dec lived at home in Taylor’s Hill with his father, a pediatrician of note; and his mother, a runner-up in the Rose of Tralee. The family had no pets.
    Keith Finnegan was reading the news. I heard this:
    â€œA young student from a prominent family was savagely beaten in a mugging outside Galway Cathedral as he attempted to attend midnight Mass.”
    Unless they were now offering Black Masses, the Guards had failed to notice the locked doors.
    To ensure Ziggy’s warmth and sense of belonging, I placed him in a Galway United sweatshirt beside my pillow at night.
    I woke in the morning to find him snuggled sound asleep on my chest.
    He was adapting.
    It was like a scene from an
    Armageddon movie. Large boulders
    were thrown over the wall onto the
    car park by the sea.
    (Comment on the storm by
    Joe Garrity,
    manager of Sea World
    in County Clare)
    A card from Arizona read:
    Jack-o,
    I went to the Poisoned Pen Bookshop.
    Met a hot guy named Patrick Milliken and
    Heard Jim Sallis read. That dude rocks.
    Back soon.
    Xxxxxxxxxxxxx
    Your greenish Em
    Ziggy was improving rapidly, already knew where the treats were. Chewed on every available table, chair, bed leg. It was a given he would be lying next to my pillow. That was oddly endearing.
    I kept up a nigh daily posting of nails to de Burgo. Oiled and cleaned the Ruger daily. Visualizing putting two rounds in the fucker’s balls.
    The storms continued to lash holy hell out of the west coast. I so wanted to bring the pup to run on the Salthill beach but the ferocity of the Atlantic on Galway Bay would be too much.
    He’d already had a lash of Galway ferocity.
    The Guards were now saying they had an eyewitness to the mugging of the young man at Galway Cathedral.
    Were they blowing smoke? I sure hoped to fuck they were.
    Noon that Thursday, I opened the door to . . . Em. The pup peeping from behind my legs. She was dressed . . . Parisian chic? Pale leather coat, black polo, and—surely not—leather pants over black boots. Her hair was now in that elfin cute brown style like the poster of Amélie, the French movie. She greeted me,
    â€œBon soir mon fils et le petit chien.”
    She had a rugged worn gladstone bag which she handed to me, said,
    â€œSnap to it, Jeeves.”
    Despite the nonsense, I was glad to see her. Nearly . . . nearly hugged her.
    She breezed in and, with one fluid gesture, scooped up the pup, said,
    â€œVas bon, mon chéri.”
    Plunked herself on the couch, the pup already snug in her arms, said,
    â€œSo, let’s make with the beverages, Jacques.”
    I built some fine hot toddies, even lit a cig, and as I handed it to her, a loud thump rattled the door. I muttered,
    â€œ. . . the fuck?”
    Opened it to Ridge and a new face to me, in a crisp new uniform. He looked about twelve but a mean little twelve. Viciousness already marking his eyes. She ordered,
    â€œJack Taylor, I need to interview you in relation to a very serious assault.”
    I swept my arms wide, said,
    â€œDo come in.”
    She stopped on seeing Em, the recruit nearly colliding with her back. She said,
    â€œThe ubiquitous Em?”
    Ridge always had a tell. I had tried. I had tried to clue her on it, comparing it to a royal flush. But she brushed it off as
    â€œDrink shite talk.”
    Eyeing the dog, she opened with,
    â€œMr. Taylor, we have a witness who describes a man resembling you as being the assailant in a vicious mugging.”
    Em, slowly lighting a slim cigarette with a gold lighter, asked,
    â€œThe time and date, sergeant?”
    Ridge glared at her, looked at the travel bag, played the queen,