Purgatory Read Free

of age, with accreditation from London. And determined to make her mark. Rourke charmed her. A serial rapist with a dirty soul, he’d managed to con her into the belief that if only someone would believe in him, ah, he’d be gold.
    Like that.
    She had that rare ability, given mostly to judges and priests, to completely ignore all the evidence. They didn’t think outside the box, they were fucking buried in it. A measure of Rourke’s psycho charm borne out by Nesbit’s description of this spawn of Satan as
    “A cheeky monkey .”
    Her impassioned plea before the judge, in what the Guards had believed was a slam dunk, turned the verdict. Rourke walked, rather strutted, free.
    Was he grateful?
    Yeah.
    Nesbit, rushing to him on the courtroom steps, expecting a wave of gratitude, got,
    “Fuck off, cunt.”

4
    She can be delicately morbid.
    —Alice Blanchard, The Breathtaker
    Purgatory is seen as hell light.
    Rourke should have been a good-looking kid. Tousled blond hair like a character in a chick-lit novel, delicate build, but the eyes . . . the eyes contained an essence that had come from a place of eternal dread. They conveyed the black energy that drove on hate. He never wondered why he had more of this emotion than all others; he learned early to conceal it, used a knife charm to evade responsibility, and derived almost ecstatic bliss from the inflicting of pain.
    His type does well in
    The army
    And
    The church.
    Now, late on a Friday night, thrown out of a pub on the Quays, he’d ended up near Nimmo’s Pier. He’d trolled here before, robbing gays, penny-ante dope dealers. He’d been downing the working stiff’s cocaine, vodka and Red Bull, not that Rourke and work had ever met. His acquittal was blurred in his mind, owing to the amount of booze he’d taken, and a hit of the new solvent doing the rounds added a level of confusion to his head.
    All he felt was the usual compulsion to wreak damage. He moved to the end of the pier and looked up at the lone light hanging above the rim. The bulb was gone so he was in virtual darkness. Saw the figure weaving toward him and his body went into attack mode. Then a moment of confusion.
    Was the figure moving very fast and . . . moving in a direct line toward him?
    WTF?
    Then thought,
    “Good, come to Momma.”
    Then a hand was reaching out and he felt the full voltage of the taser. His brain briefly registered
    Born to Be Wild.
    I was on a female mystery kick, reading only lady crime writers. My contribution to equality. Had asked Vinny to stack my new bookshelves with them.
    He did.
    I skimmed through the authors.
    Sara Gran
    Zoë Sharp
    Margaret Murphy
    Wendy Hornsby
    Lynn S. Hightower
    Megan Abbott
    Cornelia Read
    Alafair Burke
    Hilary Davidson
    Jan Burke
    And was content.
    A further two boxes were yet to be opened and I kept the anticipation of that for the dire days of February. The radio was tuned to Jimmy Norman and he was playing the new album from Marc Roberts. You could think that most was okay in my narrow world. Apart from a desperate yearning to get hammered but I knew how those demons roared. Could see clearly in my mind
    The double Jameson
    Two tabs of Xanax
    Pack of Major.
    Almost in sync, I scratched the patch on my left arm. Muttered not today ; was reaching for a book when my mobile shrilled.
    Stewart.
    Said,
    “Need to talk to you urgently.”
    “Thought you Zen masters didn’t do . . . you know . . . urgency.”
    He sighed, then,
    “Jack, it’s serious, about the note you received.”
    We met in Crowe’s bar in Bohermore. My choice. A sign in the window declared
    Bohermore’s first Mayor.
    Michael Crowe, one of the brothers who owned the bar, was indeed the mayor and a good one. Stewart was from a middle-class family, reared in Devon Park, which in my day said,
    “You’re posh.”
    Not really, but the notion was there, still lingered. Meant that Stewart didn’t know the family and Stewart made it his business to know almost all the