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pension of forty thousand euro was untouchable.
    Some wrath, eh?
    And to cap it all, as the elections approached, the prime minister was being accused by his former driver of bringing money in plastic bags to Manchester. He seemed highly indignant – more about the plastic bags than the money.
    I drained the last of my coffee and was about to gowhen Philip Fogarty and Anna Lardi came on with the haunting ‘Lullaby For The Nameless’. It is as gut-wrenching as the title suggests. I felt a jolt in my heart and an aching for a very large Jameson. The booze had inched a degree nearer.
    I was wearing a sweatshirt that had a faded but legible logo that proclaimed: SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES . Perfect for a PI in disguise.
    Fogarty had another killer with ‘Inhumane’, but that was too close to the bone for me. I got the hell out of there. I adjusted my hearing aid to low, and in my newish 501s felt my limp wasn’t too noticeable.
    The weather had been unseasonably sunny and I turned my face up to the sun, felt the early-morning heat. I turned right by the fire station and headed out towards the tech college. A business school was situated next to the park there and a cluster of students were outside, smoking. Since the smoking ban had come into effect, more young people than ever had taken up the habit and as I passed, I heard them chatter. Not one of them was Irish. One tenth of the population was now non-national and the number was increasing. If they were happy to be in our shiny new rich country, they were hiding it well. They scowled at me as I passed, but maybe it was because I seemed . . . admit it . . . old. As I turned into Grattan Road, I could see the beach, the ocean, and I let it soothe me as it always did.
    A man was sitting on a bench. He had a collie on a leash, straining to get free and run on the beach. He was wearing a heavy black-leather jacket. He looked up and smiled, revealing huge gaps in his teeth. ‘Jack Taylor, I heard you were in the madhouse.’
    Nice greeting.
    I could have said the country was one open-air asylum, but went with ‘How’ve you been?’
    This is the Irish version of ‘I’ve no idea what your name is.’
    And I didn’t.
    He drew up a huge amount of phlegm from his heaving chest then spat to the side and said, ‘I’m well fucked. They say I have a tumour on me lungs and need treatment.’
    He needed some lessons in manners too, but I kept that to meself, asked, ‘When do you begin?’
    He reined in the dog, pulling harshly on the lead and cutting off the poor thing’s air, looked at me as if I was stupid, went, ‘Begin what?’
    I wanted to get the hell away from him, sighed. ‘The treatment.’
    He gave a very nasty laugh. ‘Don’t be fucking dense, Taylor. You let them butchers at you, you’re already buried.’
    Before I could venture an opinion, he pointed to the beach. ‘See that family, down near the water?’
    A black family, their laughter and joy carrying onthe Galway breeze. They looked happy and it eased the darkness this guy was breathing.
    He said, ‘Niggers, stealing our country right from under us. Try getting a white doctor in the hospital.’ He let out a sneering laugh which caused another upshot of spit. ‘. . . Good fucking luck. All the white doctors have legged it to Dublin, and you know, if I let Brandy here loose to run on the beach like she loves, them bastards would think, dinner.’
    Disgusted, I turned to go. I muttered, ‘Take care.’
    He patted his jacket. ‘I’m carrying a hatchet, that’s all the care I need.’
    You could ask what made him so nuts, so full of hatred. All I can say is: ‘the new Ireland’.
    No matter how hostile Ridge was going to be, she’d be a ray of sunshine compared to him. There’s a song titled ‘Home Is Where The Hatred Is’.
    I thanked Christ I