The Dramatist by Ken Bruen Page A

you studying? I doubt you’re planning on being a vet, or have you changed—sorry, been cured—to that extent?”
    He was with the game now; his eyes, or eye, took a more intense focus. A smile at the corner of his mouth, he said,
    “I’m doing an arts degree.”
    Numbers clicked in my head and my mind joined the dots, raced to a mad conclusion. He’d been stalking me, had a history of violence, and now here he was, presenting what? I took a breath, asked,
    “Any Synge required?”
    “What?”
    “John Millington Synge. Come on, you’re studying literature, any dramatist on there?”
    If he was guilty, he wasn’t showing it. I had to tread carefully. The last time I named a killer, I was wrong and an innocent young man had been slaughtered. The reverberations of that horrendous mistake would haunt my days. I couldn’t possibly afford to go down that road again. I went the simple route, asked,
    “Why are you following me?”
    Now he was animated, as if he thought I’d never ask, answered,
    “I wanted to thank you.”
    “You what?”
    “Honestly, I was very ill, headed down a road of serious trouble, but you came along, and as a result, I got help and here I am, a whole new person.”
    There was a mocking edge to his voice, so I said,
    “Let me see if I got this straight, I hit you with a stun gun, you went in the water, the swans went at your face and you lost an eye. For that, you want to thank me?”
    The recapping of the events had a strange effect. His face seemed to light up, as if the narration had got his juices going. He said,
    “Can I shake your hand, Jack?”
    The last thing I wanted to do was touch this guy. I went,
    “What you could do, you could help me out.”
    Suspicion and malevolence danced across his face. He said,
    “You name it, big guy.”
    I told him about the two dead students, that I was investigating for the insurance companies. Could he ask around, seeing he was on campus, find out about their friends and any relevant information? He reached in his pocket, took out a spiral notebook, pen, asked for their names and details. I said I’d pay him for his time. He shrugged that off; money was not a problem. I asked for his phone number and he handed me a card, saw my astonishment, said,
    “I’m a very organised person. You want to give me yours?”
    “Mine?”
    “Yes, your business card. Does it say ‘ Private Investigator, Discretion Guaranteed’? ”
    Now he was fucking with me. I said I didn’t have one and he nodded, as if he understood. I said,
    “You’ve been tracking me so you already know where I live.”
    I stood up, got a grip on my cane and he stared, fascinated. For a moment, I wondered what he was seeing? Then he jerked back from the momentary lapse, asked,
    “What happened?”
    “A hurling accident.”
    I walked away and he shouted,
    “We’re alike, you know.”
    I didn’t look back, said,
    “I don’t think so.”
    But he had the final word with,
    “We’re both injured but moving on—moving on and up.”
    Put music to it, you had the making of a country song.

 
    “There are sides of all that western life, the groggy-patriot-publican-general-shop-man who is married to the priest’s half sister and is second cousin once-removed of the dispensary doctor, that are horrible and awful. This is the type that is running the present United Irish League anti-grazier campaign, while they’re swindling the people themselves in a dozen ways and then buying out their holdings and packing whole families off to America.”
    J.M. Synge in a letter to Stephen McKenna

 
    For the next few weeks, I gathered information on the dead students . Talked to their friends, classmates, and turned up nothing. Mentioned Synge to them and drew blank faces. Ronan Wall, the swan guy, rang me often and offered no clue as to how I should proceed. If he was the Dramatist, I had no way of proving it. His tone continued to be a mix of baiting, flattery and arrogance. He even