Page 65 of Love Unlocked

There are the two versions of Al. The Al who grieves Walter, Tara and the life the three of them had together and this new Al, the relieved Al, who really isn’t missing any of it at all. He can now see the problems they had that he couldn’t recognise before. He really isn’t missing any of that. He’s woozy and exhausted after his boozy weekend with friends and family. Restorative perhaps but he feels like he needs a holiday after the break.

He’s feeling lighter today, more buoyant. His body and mind don’t feel as heavy. It didn’t take him so long to move around the kitchen. His brain isn’t glitching, walking into rooms and forgetting why or staring at a bowl of muesli and forgetting to add milk. He feels more fluid. As he’s walking, he breaks his own enforced rule of having to finish the song you start and switches it off and instead takes his headphones off. He doesn’t need music to hide in today, he takes in the sounds of the city instead.

He looks the security guard in the eye when he enters the office building. He even has a little chat with the person in the lift. A shared gratitude for the feeling of spring in the air. It’s a bright morning. It was bright until five thirty p.m. and this is headline news today in small chat world. In a few weeks it will be bright until six p.m. and that will be even more cause for conversation. The hibernation is ending, the human species are emerging with a yawn and a stretch.

He greets Natasha who’s wearing a very strong red lipstick to try to hide the crusted cut on her lip.

‘You’ve a pep in your step today,’ she says.

This morning he doesn’t mind standing in the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. He’s not nervously hugging the walls and trying to dodge Walter. He doesn’t want to see him, but he doesn’t want to keep looking down anymore. His chin is up. His shoulders are back. He will stand his full height. He has a meeting first thing in the sweat box. He’s had little sleep after two heavy drinking days with his friends and family and he’s quite sure he will crash soon, but he’s had worse days. He drinks the coffee and he’s good to go.

Speaking on the removal of graffiti from a bridge in Leinster, which is his jurisdiction, he presses a button on the presentation.

Natasha smirks at the image of graffiti on a bridge that appears on the screen. A penis and testicles.

‘Where possible the use of proprietary graffiti-removing products are to be favoured over abrasive cleaning techniques. We need to avoid unnecessary damage to the fabric of the structure. A combination of water-soluble sprays, aerosols, gels and high-pressure hosing, stiff brushes and abrasives. This area is in close proximity to a water course and the structure has been coated with crack-bridging coating. Graffiti is a persistent problem on this one. I suggest carrying out a trial on a small section of the structure. No acid-based cleaners on this stonework, please. As for the steel girders.’ Al pauses, a smile crawling to his face. He hears Melody’s macho-voice in his office on their first meeting. Steel girder. He laughs and his colleagues finally look at him. ‘Sorry, where was I?’

He looks around at his tired Monday morning colleagues. Tired eyes. Nobody needs this talk today.

‘Basically, the cock is in ink and felt tip, the balls can be cleaned using a glycol ether solvent, such as methoxypropanol, applied with a clean white cloth over the affected area.’

They snigger.

Over their heads, through the glass, he sees two uniformed gardaí enter the office. They look around and then speak to Alison at reception. Everyone in the meeting turns to look at what he’s staring at.

It’s never good news to have gardaí show up, at an office or anywhere, unless you’ve called them, and Al doesn’t think anybody here called them. Everybody gets nervous for their own reasons: worried about their loved ones, the drugs stashed in their desk drawers or coat pockets or whatever they’ve been up to at the weekend. Tony the boss is on it immediately and steams through the office to greet them. The two gardaí, Tony and Alison suddenly look over at the meeting room. Specifically at Al. Then everybody at the conference table looks at Al too. He immediately thinks of his family, of his brother and his stupid driving. He drives too fast, he’s always told him to slow down, especially on country roads which are a menace. Al abandons the sweat box immediately, going to them. They’re already coming to him, they meet in the middle.

‘Al Collins?’ one Garda asks.

‘Yes,’ he says, feeling sweat break out of every pore. ‘What’s wrong? What happened?’

‘Why don’t you talk privately in Al’s office?’ Tony says, arms out and leading the way like a restaurant manager.

Before Al enters his office he takes one last look around at the floor, Natasha’s heavily made-up eyes are almost popping out of her head.

‘Don’t talk to them without a lawyer,’ she whispers loudly.

And then suddenly he’s worried for new reasons. Has he done something? Do they think he’s done something?

Al sits behind his desk. The first Garda, who looks vaguely familiar, sits in the chair before him. The second Garda remains standing and examines Al’s framed collection of bridges on the wall.

‘Consider this an unofficial visit. We’ve met before. I’m Ryan Kane.’ He briefly lifts his hat off his head, which Al thinks at first he’s doing in some old-fashioned way of greeting, then realises it’s to show him who he is. ‘Tara works with my wife Elizabeth, we had dinner together once.’

Al vaguely remembers an Elizabeth but can’t remember the dinner. The penny slowly drops, of who Ryan Kane is but not why he’s here.

‘This is Garda Enda Stafford.’

‘We’re here because Walter Whelan spoke to me.’

‘Walter?’ Al takes a moment, as the utter confusion clouds his mind. Then the fear for his loved ones subsides, and the anger takes its place. Walter has done this to humiliate him. He sent the gardaí to his workplace to do his dirty work, the coward.

Natasha enters the office, without permission, with a bottle of cool water for Al, nothing for the police. Her disrespect for them is evident in her snarl.

‘No more disturbances, please,’ Garda Stafford says.

‘I work here, I can do what I like,’ she snaps. ‘Anything you need, you call me, Mr Collins.’ She’s never called Al that in her life before. As she’s backing out she holds her thumb to her ear and her pinkie to her mouth, mimicking a phone, and mouths, lawyer.

It breaks the tension. He feels like laughing.