Read Online Irregulars by Kevin McCarthy - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kevin McCarthy
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first, comes to the door. ‘You’re welcome, sir. Sorry about Maggie. She’s deaf and dumb as a pillar but a great little worker all the same. Does a grand job reading lips, though with that stoat of a moustache on you, I wonder how she managed.’ The girl smiles and O’Keefe smiles back. ‘Mrs Dolan is in the parlour.’
He follows this girl upstairs and is met at the parlour door by an attractive woman clothed in a silk dress in a shade of dark yellow that complements her brown hair and eyes and her pale skin. She appears to O’Keefe to be in her forties, but could be older or younger. Older, he imagines, because his father had retired from the police almost ten years previously. Her hair is worn in an elaborate topknot, and O’Keefe wonders how much of it is a hairpiece and how much her own. She looks more like the wife of a judge or bank manager than a procuress, even if the dress appears to O’Keefe too elaborate for daytime wear.
‘Thank you, Dolores,’ the woman says, smiling brightly. ‘Make us some tea, would you, dear? Or would the gentleman prefer something stronger?’
‘Tea, please,’ O’Keefe says with an urgency that makes his face redden.
The brothel madam laughs, and as she does, O’Keefe observes that she is missing most of her back teeth and that her laughter has a smoky rasp to it that is at once warm and vaguely menacing. The laughter of hard living, he thinks, much like his own rare laughter these days.
‘Forgive me,’ the woman says, extending her hand, her knuckles studded with emerald and ruby rings that O’Keefe guesses are not paste but real. ‘My name is Ginny Dolan. I’m an old friend of your father’s.’
‘Seán O’Keefe, ma’m, pleased to meet you,’ he says, taking her hand, but is wary of her suddenly, wondering again what hold a woman such as this could have over his father.
She studies O’Keefe, and under her gaze—dark eyes intent, intelligent and wholly separate from her smile—he feels the pull of fear again in his gut. ‘I am given to understand that you were once a detective, like your father.’
‘We didn’t have a detective branch in the Peelers per se ,’ he says, thinking she must surely know this, in her line of work. ‘Other than Crimes Special Branch, which looked after political crimes and such. But I worked my share of investigations, some plainclothes, others in uniform.’
The Dolan woman smiles warmly at him and rests a hand on his forearm. ‘Thank God for that then. You’re just what I need, no offence to your father.’
‘None taken,’ O’Keefe says.
‘Please, come through. How rude of me.’
Holding out her hand for him to enter, O’Keefe defers and allows the madam to enter the parlour first. As she passes in front of him, he notices that she walks with a pronounced limp and that her left leg appears to flay outwards, her spine canted in the opposing direction. A hobble more than a limp. Rickets, he thinks: the disease of the poor. He wonders how she had made her living as a whore with the disease, and decides that her ailment might have led to her rising from the shop floor to the director’s office in some way.
O’Keefe knows, from his days in the police, that brothel madams can be callous creatures, every bit as brutal as their male counterparts. Most, if not all, are former whores themselves—women so bludgeoned by life in the trade that nothing matters to them but the money they make off the backs of the girls they employ. But to O’Keefe, Ginny Dolan presents herself as a far more complex woman.
Perhaps it’s her apparent wealth, O’Keefe thinks, realising that the house in which they stand is the madam’s dwelling and not open for business. On the wall are photographs of a baby and young boy, along with a family photograph from some time in the last century. The hall tables are topped with vases holding fresh flowers. There is nothing of the stew house about this place. It is a home.
He waits until
He follows this girl upstairs and is met at the parlour door by an attractive woman clothed in a silk dress in a shade of dark yellow that complements her brown hair and eyes and her pale skin. She appears to O’Keefe to be in her forties, but could be older or younger. Older, he imagines, because his father had retired from the police almost ten years previously. Her hair is worn in an elaborate topknot, and O’Keefe wonders how much of it is a hairpiece and how much her own. She looks more like the wife of a judge or bank manager than a procuress, even if the dress appears to O’Keefe too elaborate for daytime wear.
‘Thank you, Dolores,’ the woman says, smiling brightly. ‘Make us some tea, would you, dear? Or would the gentleman prefer something stronger?’
‘Tea, please,’ O’Keefe says with an urgency that makes his face redden.
The brothel madam laughs, and as she does, O’Keefe observes that she is missing most of her back teeth and that her laughter has a smoky rasp to it that is at once warm and vaguely menacing. The laughter of hard living, he thinks, much like his own rare laughter these days.
‘Forgive me,’ the woman says, extending her hand, her knuckles studded with emerald and ruby rings that O’Keefe guesses are not paste but real. ‘My name is Ginny Dolan. I’m an old friend of your father’s.’
‘Seán O’Keefe, ma’m, pleased to meet you,’ he says, taking her hand, but is wary of her suddenly, wondering again what hold a woman such as this could have over his father.
She studies O’Keefe, and under her gaze—dark eyes intent, intelligent and wholly separate from her smile—he feels the pull of fear again in his gut. ‘I am given to understand that you were once a detective, like your father.’
‘We didn’t have a detective branch in the Peelers per se ,’ he says, thinking she must surely know this, in her line of work. ‘Other than Crimes Special Branch, which looked after political crimes and such. But I worked my share of investigations, some plainclothes, others in uniform.’
The Dolan woman smiles warmly at him and rests a hand on his forearm. ‘Thank God for that then. You’re just what I need, no offence to your father.’
‘None taken,’ O’Keefe says.
‘Please, come through. How rude of me.’
Holding out her hand for him to enter, O’Keefe defers and allows the madam to enter the parlour first. As she passes in front of him, he notices that she walks with a pronounced limp and that her left leg appears to flay outwards, her spine canted in the opposing direction. A hobble more than a limp. Rickets, he thinks: the disease of the poor. He wonders how she had made her living as a whore with the disease, and decides that her ailment might have led to her rising from the shop floor to the director’s office in some way.
O’Keefe knows, from his days in the police, that brothel madams can be callous creatures, every bit as brutal as their male counterparts. Most, if not all, are former whores themselves—women so bludgeoned by life in the trade that nothing matters to them but the money they make off the backs of the girls they employ. But to O’Keefe, Ginny Dolan presents herself as a far more complex woman.
Perhaps it’s her apparent wealth, O’Keefe thinks, realising that the house in which they stand is the madam’s dwelling and not open for business. On the wall are photographs of a baby and young boy, along with a family photograph from some time in the last century. The hall tables are topped with vases holding fresh flowers. There is nothing of the stew house about this place. It is a home.
He waits until
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