The Rosary Garden by Nicola White (best books to read now TXT) 📕

and goodbyes quickly. In the stairwell, Considine put her hand on his sleeve, and Swan stopped.

‘Why did you bring me here?’ she asked.

‘Because you’re working the case with me.’

‘Well, you could have told me what it was about.’

‘You can’t afford to be that sensitive.’

‘What’s going on in your head? Is it the Hogan girl? The blouse you gave me for forensics, it was from her house, wasn’t it?’

Swan didn’t answer, just led the way back to the car. They stood on either side of it, looking at each other across the roof.

‘Say it was her, how could she act so cool?’ Swan asked.

‘Cool all right,’ said Considine. ‘Garda O’Malley said she asked for a last look at the baby when they were taking it from the garden. Did you know that?’

‘I didn’t … That bag of hers that was in the shed – bring it up to forensics for a check on the inside. And get in touch with her friend again, Carmen Fitzgerald. Have a little chat.’

19

Their footsteps boomed on the wooden floor of the empty marquee. Davy did a little crouching run around the pillars with the loaded trolley; brumpa-brumpa-brumpa across the boards. Ali thought this was hilarious and probably would have been pretty funny even without the cans of cider they had shared in the van.

‘Watch out for the whirly light-cupboard thing,’ she said.

‘Oh, we wouldn’t drop the whirly light cupboard,’ Brendan said from the empty stage, and Ali bent over on a wave of giggling that was almost annoying in its intensity, like being tickled by someone who wouldn’t stop. Brendan jumped down and patted her head in passing, dislodging one of the combs that held her hair in a whirl on top of her head. A hank of it fell over one eye. She cursed, he laughed.

Father Philbin appeared at the marquee entrance and squinted across the gloom at them.

‘Are you not set up yet, lads? The band’s due for the sound check.’

Not waiting for their answer, he crossed the floor and disappeared into the side tent, where refreshments would be sold. Brendan and Davy quietened and started to connect their speakers and decks. The wall of the tent behind them lifted at the bottom and a thin man in a boiler suit and flat cap crawled through, holding a cable and plug board, which he handed to Brendan.

‘Good man!’ Davy called after him. From outside came the wheeze and splutter of an engine cord being pulled. A low thrum started, followed by a click, and the tent was cheered with light from the strings of coloured bulbs that hung across the space.

‘Hey, Ali – here’s your whirlies!’ Brendan had the light box working, kaleidoscope patterns pulsing across its square screen like fast-blooming flowers. An insistent beat burst from the speakers and Ali started to move. The bass was so loud she could feel it vibrate in her kidneys. She shut her eyes and danced. She hadn’t felt this good since … she couldn’t remember. When the last bars faded away, the music seemed to drain through the floor.

She opened her eyes to find five men in matching jackets staring at her. One of them started to clap slowly.

‘You the floor-show?’ said another.

‘Just, ah, testing the boards.’ She stomped her heels in a little tattoo, looking down at her feet to hide her embarrassment.

The one who had clapped stepped forward. He had ink-black hair in a style that could only be described as a pageboy. The oldest pageboy in the kingdom – close up, he looked about fifty.

‘We’re The Corvettes,’ he said with a smile and held out his hand. He couldn’t be prouder if he was saying, ‘We’re Roxy Music.’

More sockets and wires were brought in for The Corvettes to do their sound check. Brendan and Davy were sorting out their record boxes, so Ali stood against a pillar and watched the band run through a few numbers. What they lacked in originality, The Corvettes made up for in versatility. They raced through versions of ‘Karma Chameleon’ and ‘The Hucklebuck’, before the singer produced a bodhrán and someone else got out a fiddle and they were whooping up a jig and a reel. Two of them never even moved the fags from their lips.

The man with the pageboy whispered closely into the mike, ‘And this one is for the be-yootiful girl in the tight red trousers’, and they swung into ‘Three Times a Lady’, before deliberately fluffing it and breaking down into a tumble a few bars in, the bass drum whacking alone into the empty tent like an amplified heart.

Some women came in carrying crates of teacups and an urn the size of a rubbish bin. Drink wasn’t allowed at the dance, which was why Davy was now pulling Ali outside – so they could get a pint in at the Red Rock Saloon before things got busy. Brendan left a cassette of party music playing, just to fill the space.

‘The machine plays both sides, so we’ve got sixty minutes and counting,’ he announced, gunning the accelerator in the van.

By those calculations, the tape ran out ten minutes before they made it back to the marquee. A dozen quite elderly people sat on the benches that lined the edge of the tent, while two children practised their spinning on the empty boards.

Brendan hopped up on the stage, mumbling words of welcome and apology into the microphone, while shaking a twelve-inch single from its sleeve.

‘Here’s one I know you’re going to like.’ Bouncy electro-pop streamed out of the speakers.

Ali sat on the side of the stage. It was good to have a pseudo-occupation, to pass the occasional record up for Davy to pass to Brendan. Around eleven the marquee started to fill up in earnest, people drifting in, the men bowed by the weight of bottles in their jacket pockets, the girls carrying clinking shoulder bags. Ali noticed tight huddles where she could just glimpse something being added to the bottles of