PURGATORY
Also by Ken Bruen
Once Were Cops
Sanctuary
Cross
Priest
The Dramatist
The Magdalen Martyrs
The Killing of the Tinkers
Funeral: Tales of Irish Morbidities
Shades of Grace
Martyrs
Sherry and Other Stories
Time of Serena-May/Upon the Third Class
Her Last Call to Louis MacNeice
Rilke on Black
The Hackman Blues
A White Arrest
Taming the Alien
The Guards
London Boulevard
Blitz
The McDead
Vixen
Dispatching Baudelaire
The Dead Room
American Skin
Bust (with Jason Starr)
Calibre
A Fifth of Bruen
Slide (with Jason Starr)
Ammunition
The Max (with Jason Starr)
All the Old Songs and Nothing to Lose
Headstone
PURGATORY
A Jack Taylor Novel
Ken Bruen
The Mysterious Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
New York
Copyright © 2013 by Ken Bruen
Jacket design by Marc Cohen/MJCdesign; Jacket photographs shot glass © Masterfile; paper © jupiterimages/Getty
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Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
eBook ISBN: 978-0-8021-9396-4
The Mysterious Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
Disclaimer:
Purgatory is a work of fiction. While the real-life crimes referred to in the novel actually occurred, their chronology has been condensed in order to maintain a greater level of suspense and continuity in the actions of the characters in the story, who are entirely fictional.
For
Michael and Ollie Crowe
Derek Hynes
Part 1
The Men
The skateboarders had that peculiar blend of Irish self-consciousness, dumb persistence. The unusually good weather in early January had led to a makeshift ramp that was ambitiously steep and high. The Council would have removed this but had its hands full with the Occupiers, who had a large tent perched to the left side of Eyre Square.
Too, the skateboarders kept the locals from lynching the Council over various charges.
Water
Refuse
Home
And just about damn everything else.
Three Guards were deemed sufficient to watch the growing crowd for what was rumored to be a spectacular attempt.
A double flip in midair from Joseph, a sixteen-year-old whiz flier from Tuam. He was small. Undistinguished, with the revamped grunge look that owed more to the new poverty than to fashion. Quiet seeped as he took his run at the ramp. A slight ah from the crowd as he accelerated faster than they’d expected, then he was airborne, high above the ramp, left the board, was in mid-turn when the single shot rang out.
He seemed to hang for a moment, the top right side of his brain scattering in a slow mist, then a loud scream from the crowd as his body hurled to the concrete.
Two people were hurt in the panic.
A skater had the presence of mind to steal the almost-famous board.
1
“Your crazy daughter is on our short list.”
“There’s nothing wrong with her.”
“She talks to people who aren’t there.”
“No she doesn’t, she only listens.”
—Carol O’Connell, author of The Chalk Girl
My life seemed to have reached a time of calm. New home, new(ish) habits, new people.
Prize bonds.
Who knew?
Who the fuck knew?
A staple of my father’s generation. People bought them for their family’s future. The Lotto and lotteries of every ilk came down the greed pike and these forgotten bonds languished in drawers or the pages of family Bibles never opened.
I had, owing to a threat to my father’s reputation, rummaged among his few possessions.
Kept in a Lyons Tea chest, his few papers scorched my heart. A certificate of loyalty to the Knights of Columbanus, an Inter-Counties semifinal medal in hurling, now as tarnished as the country. A fade to faded picture of the family at
Get this
The fucking beach.
Not exactly a Californian scene. Didn’t evoke a Beach Boys theme.
No.
My parents, in their street clothes, with a summer concession of my father’s, sleeves rolled up. My mother was wearing what might have then been called
A summer frock.
Save they didn’t do seasonal.
She wore the same item in winter, with a cardigan added. She did have her one habitual trait.
The bitterness.
Leaking from her down-turned mouth to every resentful fiber of her being. I was maybe eight in the photo, an ugly child who grew to embrace ugliness as a