The Convictions of John Delahunt by Andrew Hughes Read Free Book Online Page B

When he looked towards me with a raised eyebrow I said, ‘I wonder if you can help me. I’m trying to locate a particular man.’
    The old docker turned his face and spat into the river. ‘And does he wish to be found?’
    I smiled and said undoubtedly so. I told him I was a scrivener in a solicitor’s office, sent to find a man named in the will of a wealthy client recently deceased. ‘We were told he worked on the docks of Arran Quay, and so here I am. His name is Arthur Stokes.’
    ‘Never heard of him.’
    ‘That’s a pity. I’ve made numerous enquiries now and all of them fruitless. You’d have thought it easy enough to find a man with a cleft lip.’
    He glanced at me, and I made a point of peering at the clock on the pepper-canister cupola of St Paul’s Church.
    ‘I do know of a man,’ he said, still wary. ‘Though not personally. I’ve seen him drinking several times in Nowlan’s up in Stoneybatter.’
    ‘Thank you. I might look there.’
    He cocked his head twice as if to say I could do as I wished, then walked away. He sensed he had spoken loosely.
    Smithfield Market was a maze of stallholders through which local children dashed barefoot. Vendors put lanterns over their booths as evening fell. On the pavement outside Nowlan’s, an old street hawker cried at me. She held dozens of rosary beads looped over her outstretched palms and up the length of her arms. Our family had had a Catholic nanny once, who prayed nightly with beads made from jet and amber. She showed them to me one evening, and tried to explain what they meant. I was only interested in the larger beads that symbolized the mysteries. It fascinated me, that the events of a man’s life could be remembered on a string of stones.
    Nowlan’s pub consisted of two large rooms connected by a single bar that ran the length of the wall. Labourers and dock workers sat on benches, where decades of grime had given every surface a polished black varnish. A group of well-dressed students occupied a table in one corner, most likely apprentice barristers from King’s Inns.
    The back room was darker. Pipe smoke hung in the air and yellow tobacco stains covered the walls. With the last of my money I ordered a drink, and sat on a stool just inside the partition. My attention was caught by a child’s porcelain doll that sat incongruously among the bottles and glasses behind the bar, on a shelf backed by a large mirror. I observed the other customers in the reflection. For the most part they hunched in groups at tables. One old man sat alone and warmed his fingers over a shivering candle. The gloom made it hard to distinguish features as I looked from face to face.
    As I surveyed the room in the mirror, I locked eyes with a man who stood close to me at the bar. He wore a wrinkled yellow cravat beneath a grey flannel shirt, unbuttoned at the neck. His hands rested on the counter, fingers laced protectively around a glass of stout.
    He turned to me and said, ‘I haven’t seen you in here before.’
    ‘No. I’m just passing through.’ I rotated my whiskey so a chip in the rim pointed away.
    ‘You sound as if you’re not from around here all right.’ His glass was a third full, but he finished the stout in one swallow. Then he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and said, ‘Mine’s a Guinness, if you’re buying.’
    ‘I’m leaving after this one.’
    ‘Who were you looking for just now?’
    ‘Nobody.’
    His lip curled up, and he was about to speak again, but then another man approached. The newcomer was tall and broadly built with cropped fair hair. Streaks of black grime covered his face and forearms. He nudged the man with the yellow cravat and spoke quietly to him in a Belfast accent. ‘Would you leave that lad in peace, for Jesus’ sake. I’ll get you a drink.’
    I kept my head forward. As the Ulsterman called for Nowlan, he placed his right hand on the counter. A blackened bandage covered his palm, wrapped over the webbing of his thumb