The Coast Road
One evening in early June, a student sits on a headland looking out over Dublin Bay. Rhiannon Brophy is one of the few people not ruminating over the calamities tearing at every seam in Irish life. The miracle of ‘Celtic Tiger’ has imploded and families face ruin, and the prospect of a return to emigration. The Catholic Church is in disgrace, and government is inept and impotent.
Rhiannon is waiting, preparing to put her fancy, borrowed digital camera to work. She needs some twilight shots over Dublin to top off her multimedia project ‘In The Dark.’ It depicts how young people are kept in the dark, and how their talents and insights are ignored. She has been working on the project for months. The project is late, and she has lost much of her fervour for it.
Rhiannon is minutes away from discovering a body in the undergrowth nearby. The body is that of Padraig Larkin, a homeless man in his late 50s. Larkin has been a fixture, a common sight to hundreds, if not thousands, of Dubliners who have spotted him over the years as he rambled the roads and lanes of these prosperous Dublin suburbs. The King of Ireland, many called him, or the High King. Larkin’s nicknames came from the stern, defiant soliloquies he delivered impromptu, calls to defend Ireland from 'the invaders.' It is all to clear that Padraig Larkin’s troubles never released their grip on him, often returning him to the times before his descent into addiction and mental illness, back to his schoolboy fascination with the Vikings.
Larkin’s murder strikes a chord with the public, and the newspapers and talk-shows echo an old Irish partiality to the outlaw and the outcast. Many see Padraig Larkin as a victim of Ireland's blind materialism and its indifference to those on the margins. ‘The Green Man,’ a Facebook group for Larkin’s cause, even depicts Padraig Larkin as a kind of Fisher King, a man wounded and finally killed by an uncaring Ireland that has lost its spiritual and moral base.
Weeks pass, then months. There are no suspects, no arrests. The Garda Commissioner is cornered at a community meeting by a self-styled investigative reporter JJ McCarthy. “Has this case been kicked into the long grass?” a disgruntled Carthy demands to know. “Developers can bankrupt the public purse, and the church can protect child-abusers - walk the streets freely. Is there any justice in this country?”
Like many homeless, afflicted people, Larkin had his 'rounds.' Though he was a loner, there were visits to the homeless shelter for medical help, a shop that would sell him drink, a shelter he used intermittently on cold nights. One of the more routine station on Larkin’s ‘rounds’ was Disciples, a centre open to the troubled and homeless. It is there where Sister Immaculata, an elderly nun, had listened to Larkin, soothed him, and fed him over the years. Now, six months later, Immaculata waits for news that Padraig Larkin’s killer, or killers, has been caught. She finally makes her dissatisfaction known to a friend - none other than the Garda Commissioner, John Tynan.
The timing is moot. There are brazen gangland murders almost weekly now, and the public is losing confidence in the police and justice system. Guards mutter amongst themselves about the futility of chasing criminals, when they are out on the streets almost immediately. There is keen nostalgia for the old days, when Guards weren’t scrutinized at every turn, and criminals did not have such legal protections. From the ranks of the Gardai’s most seasoned detectives, a wave of retirements begins - the very policemen that the Gardai need so desperately in their fight against gang crime.
Minogue hears all this and more in sessions with Kilmartin, but he lets his friend’s dark ruminations go by. Their days together in the fabled Murder Squad are all in the past, but Minogue’s soft landing in International Liaison is a stroke that any copper would envy. What’s not to envy with the glamour of Interpol, conferences in Lyons and Vienna? Minogue takes his French lessons at the Alliance Française and courses in information technology. So with all this advancement, why then is he so uneasy, so restless? Does he miss the gritty, stressful job that he had held in the Murder Squad for so long?
Apparently he does: he has applied for, and is selected for a temporary assignment on (murder) case review. Clearance rates, particularly in Dublin, have plummeted. Commissioner Tynan wants a seasoned policeman to take a run at several high-profile murders, a copper who can produce results discreetly, without ruffling any feathers amongst the rank-and-file policemen who have worked on these cases for so long.
Minogue extracts a concession from the Commissioner, however. He wants a deputy that he has worked with before, another experienced detective, one Detective Garda Tommy Malone. This is awkward – as Kilmartin wryly mutters over a pint, Malone is a magnet fro trouble. Malone has just been acquitted in the death of a petty criminal involved on the margins of heroin trafficking, that same drug that killed Malone’s twin brother Terry some years ago. Innuendo about Malone has revived, and even Kilmartin retails his own deepening suspicions about Malone. Sure, he allows, ‘Molly’ Malone sometimes brought a heavy hand and a serious grudge to his work with the Drug Squad, but how did an unarmed suspect fall to his death, and why..?
Malone appears less than thrilled to have been removed from Drugs Central to work on case review. Nevertheless, Minogue suspects that Malone’s lack of enthusiasm is a show however. It’s to mask his relief at being back working with Minogue, someone who is not suspicious of him, or scared of him. Just as they are about to begin a case review of another murder, the two detectives are shunted over to rework the Padraig Larkin case. They soon find themselves in Dalkey Garda station, trying to work tactfully with the local Guards and get up to speed on the case, ruffling as few feathers as they can.
The Padraig Larkin that Minogue and Malone come to know soon takes on more dimensions. Darker truths begin to emerge from Larkin’s past. Growing up in the years when Ireland was making its first tentative steps in a new Europe, he had gone astray in his teens, experimenting with drugs and getting into scrapes.. These mis-steps were dealt with on the quiet by his well-connected parents. His father was the eminent Anthony Larkin, a judge of the Circuit Court. But at his death Padraig Larkin had been alone for almost two decades. His only sister lives in Britain, and she has not had contact with him for years. She does not attend his funeral.
Larkin was certainly disturbed, and his appearances in parks and lanes all around this suburb unsettled people and even frightened those whom he surprised with his sudden speeches. Larkin’s cohorts were homeless men, likewise damaged by alcohol and mental illness. Their memories are unreliable, their grasp of reality often foggy. Listening to one, Minogue sees that he is dealing with a man who has the mind of a child.
Was Padraig Larkin in the wrong place at the wrong time? A Peeping Tom, an unwitting witness to some criminal activity? Teenagers drinking in the park were mostly a summertime event, but feral youths in a pack will do things for kicks. Records of vandalism and break-ins to cars parked there offer nothing bearing on the case. Was Padraig Larkin beaten to death for making a homosexual pass? One of the homeless men who frequented Disciples is perpetually angry, careless about taking his meds, paranoid. He also rants about ‘queers.’ Is he angry enough, delusional enough, to have beaten Padraig Larkin to death?
As Minogue delves deeper into the Larkin case, the saintly Sister Immaculata begins to loom larger. It is too large for his liking. He is already wary of her, resentful of her connection to the Commissioner. He is also frustrated by her. Immaculata may be from a different Ireland, one that has passed, but how could he not admire such a devoted woman? She has dedicated her life to others, in Ireland and on the missions in Africa.. But like so many of her generation and calling, she is overbearing. She takes it as given that Irish people will defer to clergy, and allow themselves to be guided – directed – by them.
Minogue’s tactful reminders to her to let him do his job his way are unavailing. Though he sees that a showdown is coming, his frustration only grows. In spite of his rational side, he realizes that his respect for her has only grown. She is protector and advocate of Ireland’s outcasts, full of a stubborn, scrappy non-conformism and an elemental feminism that he admires. He sees something else however, and it baffles him as much as it makes him very uneasy. Is Sister Immaculata holding something back? Or is it something else: have her years caught up with her? Is she slipping under in the early stages of dementia?
In the strained atmosphere of the Garda station where Minogue are cooped up, Minogue tries to keep his focus, and to stay alert while he revisits the case in hopes he can put his finger on something - anything. He can only bear down harder, he feels: police work, police science, is the way forward. Eyeing the television news over a pint of Guinness one evening in Ryan’s pub, he watches in grim fascination as pilgrims at a shrine in the West of Ireland crow to the reporter about a miracle they have witnessed: a pattern, a shape in the clouds over the shrine, a configuration of light…. Last month it was crowds began flocking to a tree-stump bearing a likeness to Mary too. What next, he thinks, is Ireland turning back the clock to reading tea-leaves, and looking at moving statues?
With Kilmartin’s cynical cackling fading from his mind, he wonders again about the times they’re living in. The old ways can’t work any more. They never did anyway. All the lies and delusions, the greed and the cruelty, they’re are coming to light now. In a country shaken loose of its beliefs, no wonder everybody’s looking for signs and divinations, hoping for miracles. Was Kilmartin right to be cynical about this ‘cold-case’ job that gormless Matt Minogue has taken up so naively? Maybe it was indeed just a sop to the public to quiet their anxieties. And judging by the Padraig Larkin case, one that feels like it is sinking only deeper into the quicksand the harder that he pursues it, a miracle is exactly what’ll be needed here. Well isn’t that ironic, as Kilmartin mutters darkly one evening, isn’t it too bad Minogue is not a believer in miracles.
But soon, unexpectedly, a door will open into the past. Minogue will return to those years long before the giddy, cannibal Celtic Tiger landed, back to a country on the threshold of the momentous changes that still wrack the country today. It has taken him some time, but Minogue will finally get it: he needs to make his own miracle here.
One evening in early June, a student sits on a headland looking out over Dublin Bay. Rhiannon Brophy is one of the few people not ruminating over the calamities tearing at every seam in Irish life. The miracle of ‘Celtic Tiger’ has imploded and families face ruin, and the prospect of a return to emigration. The Catholic Church is in disgrace, and government is inept and impotent.
Rhiannon is waiting, preparing to put her fancy, borrowed digital camera to work. She needs some twilight shots over Dublin to top off her multimedia project ‘In The Dark.’ It depicts how young people are kept in the dark, and how their talents and insights are ignored. She has been working on the project for months. The project is late, and she has lost much of her fervour for it.
Rhiannon is minutes away from discovering a body in the undergrowth nearby. The body is that of Padraig Larkin, a homeless man in his late 50s. Larkin has been a fixture, a common sight to hundreds, if not thousands, of Dubliners who have spotted him over the years as he rambled the roads and lanes of these prosperous Dublin suburbs. The King of Ireland, many called him, or the High King. Larkin’s nicknames came from the stern, defiant soliloquies he delivered impromptu, calls to defend Ireland from 'the invaders.' It is all to clear that Padraig Larkin’s troubles never released their grip on him, often returning him to the times before his descent into addiction and mental illness, back to his schoolboy fascination with the Vikings.
Larkin’s murder strikes a chord with the public, and the newspapers and talk-shows echo an old Irish partiality to the outlaw and the outcast. Many see Padraig Larkin as a victim of Ireland's blind materialism and its indifference to those on the margins. ‘The Green Man,’ a Facebook group for Larkin’s cause, even depicts Padraig Larkin as a kind of Fisher King, a man wounded and finally killed by an uncaring Ireland that has lost its spiritual and moral base.
Weeks pass, then months. There are no suspects, no arrests. The Garda Commissioner is cornered at a community meeting by a self-styled investigative reporter JJ McCarthy. “Has this case been kicked into the long grass?” a disgruntled Carthy demands to know. “Developers can bankrupt the public purse, and the church can protect child-abusers - walk the streets freely. Is there any justice in this country?”
Like many homeless, afflicted people, Larkin had his 'rounds.' Though he was a loner, there were visits to the homeless shelter for medical help, a shop that would sell him drink, a shelter he used intermittently on cold nights. One of the more routine station on Larkin’s ‘rounds’ was Disciples, a centre open to the troubled and homeless. It is there where Sister Immaculata, an elderly nun, had listened to Larkin, soothed him, and fed him over the years. Now, six months later, Immaculata waits for news that Padraig Larkin’s killer, or killers, has been caught. She finally makes her dissatisfaction known to a friend - none other than the Garda Commissioner, John Tynan.
The timing is moot. There are brazen gangland murders almost weekly now, and the public is losing confidence in the police and justice system. Guards mutter amongst themselves about the futility of chasing criminals, when they are out on the streets almost immediately. There is keen nostalgia for the old days, when Guards weren’t scrutinized at every turn, and criminals did not have such legal protections. From the ranks of the Gardai’s most seasoned detectives, a wave of retirements begins - the very policemen that the Gardai need so desperately in their fight against gang crime.
Minogue hears all this and more in sessions with Kilmartin, but he lets his friend’s dark ruminations go by. Their days together in the fabled Murder Squad are all in the past, but Minogue’s soft landing in International Liaison is a stroke that any copper would envy. What’s not to envy with the glamour of Interpol, conferences in Lyons and Vienna? Minogue takes his French lessons at the Alliance Française and courses in information technology. So with all this advancement, why then is he so uneasy, so restless? Does he miss the gritty, stressful job that he had held in the Murder Squad for so long?
Apparently he does: he has applied for, and is selected for a temporary assignment on (murder) case review. Clearance rates, particularly in Dublin, have plummeted. Commissioner Tynan wants a seasoned policeman to take a run at several high-profile murders, a copper who can produce results discreetly, without ruffling any feathers amongst the rank-and-file policemen who have worked on these cases for so long.
Minogue extracts a concession from the Commissioner, however. He wants a deputy that he has worked with before, another experienced detective, one Detective Garda Tommy Malone. This is awkward – as Kilmartin wryly mutters over a pint, Malone is a magnet fro trouble. Malone has just been acquitted in the death of a petty criminal involved on the margins of heroin trafficking, that same drug that killed Malone’s twin brother Terry some years ago. Innuendo about Malone has revived, and even Kilmartin retails his own deepening suspicions about Malone. Sure, he allows, ‘Molly’ Malone sometimes brought a heavy hand and a serious grudge to his work with the Drug Squad, but how did an unarmed suspect fall to his death, and why..?
Malone appears less than thrilled to have been removed from Drugs Central to work on case review. Nevertheless, Minogue suspects that Malone’s lack of enthusiasm is a show however. It’s to mask his relief at being back working with Minogue, someone who is not suspicious of him, or scared of him. Just as they are about to begin a case review of another murder, the two detectives are shunted over to rework the Padraig Larkin case. They soon find themselves in Dalkey Garda station, trying to work tactfully with the local Guards and get up to speed on the case, ruffling as few feathers as they can.
The Padraig Larkin that Minogue and Malone come to know soon takes on more dimensions. Darker truths begin to emerge from Larkin’s past. Growing up in the years when Ireland was making its first tentative steps in a new Europe, he had gone astray in his teens, experimenting with drugs and getting into scrapes.. These mis-steps were dealt with on the quiet by his well-connected parents. His father was the eminent Anthony Larkin, a judge of the Circuit Court. But at his death Padraig Larkin had been alone for almost two decades. His only sister lives in Britain, and she has not had contact with him for years. She does not attend his funeral.
Larkin was certainly disturbed, and his appearances in parks and lanes all around this suburb unsettled people and even frightened those whom he surprised with his sudden speeches. Larkin’s cohorts were homeless men, likewise damaged by alcohol and mental illness. Their memories are unreliable, their grasp of reality often foggy. Listening to one, Minogue sees that he is dealing with a man who has the mind of a child.
Was Padraig Larkin in the wrong place at the wrong time? A Peeping Tom, an unwitting witness to some criminal activity? Teenagers drinking in the park were mostly a summertime event, but feral youths in a pack will do things for kicks. Records of vandalism and break-ins to cars parked there offer nothing bearing on the case. Was Padraig Larkin beaten to death for making a homosexual pass? One of the homeless men who frequented Disciples is perpetually angry, careless about taking his meds, paranoid. He also rants about ‘queers.’ Is he angry enough, delusional enough, to have beaten Padraig Larkin to death?
As Minogue delves deeper into the Larkin case, the saintly Sister Immaculata begins to loom larger. It is too large for his liking. He is already wary of her, resentful of her connection to the Commissioner. He is also frustrated by her. Immaculata may be from a different Ireland, one that has passed, but how could he not admire such a devoted woman? She has dedicated her life to others, in Ireland and on the missions in Africa.. But like so many of her generation and calling, she is overbearing. She takes it as given that Irish people will defer to clergy, and allow themselves to be guided – directed – by them.
Minogue’s tactful reminders to her to let him do his job his way are unavailing. Though he sees that a showdown is coming, his frustration only grows. In spite of his rational side, he realizes that his respect for her has only grown. She is protector and advocate of Ireland’s outcasts, full of a stubborn, scrappy non-conformism and an elemental feminism that he admires. He sees something else however, and it baffles him as much as it makes him very uneasy. Is Sister Immaculata holding something back? Or is it something else: have her years caught up with her? Is she slipping under in the early stages of dementia?
In the strained atmosphere of the Garda station where Minogue are cooped up, Minogue tries to keep his focus, and to stay alert while he revisits the case in hopes he can put his finger on something - anything. He can only bear down harder, he feels: police work, police science, is the way forward. Eyeing the television news over a pint of Guinness one evening in Ryan’s pub, he watches in grim fascination as pilgrims at a shrine in the West of Ireland crow to the reporter about a miracle they have witnessed: a pattern, a shape in the clouds over the shrine, a configuration of light…. Last month it was crowds began flocking to a tree-stump bearing a likeness to Mary too. What next, he thinks, is Ireland turning back the clock to reading tea-leaves, and looking at moving statues?
With Kilmartin’s cynical cackling fading from his mind, he wonders again about the times they’re living in. The old ways can’t work any more. They never did anyway. All the lies and delusions, the greed and the cruelty, they’re are coming to light now. In a country shaken loose of its beliefs, no wonder everybody’s looking for signs and divinations, hoping for miracles. Was Kilmartin right to be cynical about this ‘cold-case’ job that gormless Matt Minogue has taken up so naively? Maybe it was indeed just a sop to the public to quiet their anxieties. And judging by the Padraig Larkin case, one that feels like it is sinking only deeper into the quicksand the harder that he pursues it, a miracle is exactly what’ll be needed here. Well isn’t that ironic, as Kilmartin mutters darkly one evening, isn’t it too bad Minogue is not a believer in miracles.
But soon, unexpectedly, a door will open into the past. Minogue will return to those years long before the giddy, cannibal Celtic Tiger landed, back to a country on the threshold of the momentous changes that still wrack the country today. It has taken him some time, but Minogue will finally get it: he needs to make his own miracle here.