“Sweets for the sweet.”

The girl bent down, waited till Tom bled out, said as he gurgled, “Christ, keep it down.”

Then rifled through his jacket, found his pay packet, said,

“Payday.”

They didn’t glance back as they strolled from the alley.

If you woke up breathing

Congratulations!

You have another chance.

– Graffiti on the wall of the Abbey Church

Tom Russell’s powerful new album had his stunning song

“Guadaloupe,” sung by the ethereal Gretchen Peters.

It was unwinding in my head as I crossed the Salmon Weir Bridge. Looked in vain to see a salmon leap.

Nope.

Into our third year of the water remaining: contaminated, poisoned, lethal.

The bottled water companies continued to rake in the cash. No recession for them. The rest of us poor bastards continued to boil the water.

Grudgingly.

A Garda car swerved into the cathedral car park. Call it instinct,

I knew they weren’t stopping to light candles.

A Ban Garda got out.

Wearing sergeant stripes.

Ridge.

Or in Irish, Ni Iomaire.

The uniform suited her. She looked kind of regal. Seeing her, the late winter sun bouncing off the gold buttons on her tunic, I felt the old pang. The deep regret I’d been kicked off the Force. Ridge and I went back even further than Stewart. We weren’t friends. More’s the Irish pity.

Fate seemed to continually throw us together. I admired her. Not that I’d ever tell her. Her family had been scarred by alcoholism and she had an inbuilt loathing of alkies. My last case, she’d received a serious beating but appeared to be recovered. Insofar as you ever get past such an event. I had a limp, a hearing aid, more broken bones than a nun has polished floors.