The New Policeman Read Online Free PDF

know. And if I did I wouldn’t tell you.”
    J.J. had no chance to press her. Ciaran was at the front door, bellowing. Marian looked at the clock, grabbed her script, and raced out.
    J.J. finished the washing-up on his own. His fiddle was on the settle where he had left it. He resisted the temptation to pick it up, and when he had finished cleaning up the kitchen he put his wet clothes in the dryer and went upstairs to have another think about what to wear.
    His new sneakers would do, anyway. They weren’t a fashionable brand—Ciaran wouldn’t allow anything made by sweatshop labor into the house—but they were cool enough. That was one decision made, but J.J. found he couldn’t get any further. He had no sense of fashion at all. Helen still bought all his clothes. Should he ring Jimmy and ask him? Would he sound like a fool? Probably. But it would be better than looking like one. He went downstairs to the phone, but he was cut off at the pass by Helen, coming back in from the milking.
    “Are you busy?” she asked him.

    Those words invariably preceded a request for help with something. J.J. searched for an excuse, but he was too slow. He was wrong, this time, as well.
    “I wanted to have a word with you,” Helen said. “About my grandfather.”

     
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THE WISE MAID
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11
    The new policeman was off duty, driving along the narrow roads that ran through the heart of the Burren. He was driving very slowly, partly because he hadn’t been driving very long and wasn’t at all comfortable with the idea, and partly because he was looking for something. What it was that he was looking for was unclear to him, but he assumed, or at least he hoped, that if he saw it he would recognize it.
    He pulled off the road to allow another car to go by. It didn’t need the whole width of the road, but Larry felt it was probably safer to let it have it anyway. Then, since he had found a convenient place to leave the car for a while, he decided to get out and take a stroll around. He climbed the nearest wall andwandered across the rocks, stepping from one slab to the next, avoiding the treacherous cracks between them. As he walked he wondered if it would be appropriate to pay a visit to Green’s that evening. When he thought about Sergeant Early and Garda Treacy he was fairly sure what their reaction would be. But he was off duty. There was nothing in the rule book, as far as he could remember, that made the local pubs off limits to him.
    He turned to his left and climbed a rocky hillock. When he got to the top, a spectacular view revealed itself: gray hill after gray hill stretching away until they met the hazy horizon. Westward the sun, huge and yellow, was sinking fast. The sight reminded him of home and that elusive thing he had come here in order to find. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. No. Needles in haystacks didn’t come close to describing the magnitude of the task he had in hand.
    And time was slipping away much, much too fast.

     
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THE STONY STEPS
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12
    J.J. was curious about what Helen had to say, but at the same time he dreaded it.
    “Let’s have a cup of tea,” said Helen.
    Tea was their fuel and their comfort, snatched wherever possible during their frantic days. When the range was lit in the winter, the kettle was always sitting on it, ready for when it would next be needed. That day hadn’t been cold enough for the range, but the sitting room was always inclined to be damp, so while Helen boiled the electric kettle and made the tea, J.J. lit a few briquettes in the fireplace. Then, without telling Helen, he took the phone off the hook. Marian was staying overnight with a friend when her drama group was over, and Ciaran was going straight on to Galway after dropping her, to a meeting of thelocal antiwar group. Provided no one dropped by the house, J.J. and his mother might get a rare chance to talk in peace.
    The light was almost gone from the day. While the tea brewed in