Sanctuary Read Free

you’ve wasted my time for?’
    I tried to remember the time when we’d been friends, but it was too long ago. I asked, ‘Won’t you at least check it out?’
    He stood up. Despite his weight, he was still imposing. Oozing hostility, he said, ‘We have serious business to attend to, not this nonsense. Take my advice, Taylor. Get the fuck to America or wherever, there’s nothing for you in this town, in my town.’
    I stood up. ‘And if there’s another death, what then?’
    He shook his head. ‘Go on, get out of here. Have a drink or something, it’s all you’re fit for.’
    At the door I said, ‘God bless you.’
    He indicated my book, said, ‘It’s that rubbish that has you the nobody you are.’

 
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6

Forgive Us Our Trespasses
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    Judge M. Healy was the very opposite of a so-called ‘hanging judge’.
    He went so far in the other direction that it had become a running joke. Defence lawyers loved him, and the prosecution loathed and despised him. His motivation was one: notoriety, and two: he’d been a defence lawyer and had been slapped down so often, he was out to make his mark another way.
    It got him the headlines he craved and inflated his ego. In the previous six months, he’d had before him:
A violent rapist. Sentence: two years suspended.
    A paedophile priest. Sentence: counselling.
    A wife beater. Sentence: Six months’ community service.
    A drunk driver who killed a young woman: Sentence: rehab.
    Outrage, of course, but short-lived and soon forgotten.
    Removing a judge in Ireland is like trying to stop the Galway rain. Plus, he was a huge supporter of the government and, with elections due, he was secure.
    And smug with it.
    Very.
    He’d reply, when challenged, ‘The jails are overcrowded. I’m giving these people a second chance.’
    And it never cost him a moment’s sleep.
    He kept a luxury apartment in the city centre and used it to entertain the growing number of women who sought his
expertise
. Life was good and he knew it was only a matter of time till he got appointed to the supreme court.
    That Friday evening, he finished court early. He was the judge, he could finish whenever he wished. He was anticipating an evening of fine food, some vintage cognac, a call from the government chief whip, and a young lady to blow his trumpet later.
    He reached the apartment feeling as if he ruled the world, and rubbed his stomach at what the evening promised. He poured himself a cognac, swirled itround in the glass and let out a deep
aah
of contentment. When the brandy had warmed his stomach, he went into the bedroom to change into something loose and comfortable.
    He nearly dropped his snifter when he saw the noose dangling in the middle of the room, and a voice said, ‘You get to be the hanging judge after all.’

 
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7

Zen Mode
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    I was having a coffee in the Eyre Square Centre, listening to the various conversations round me. The main topic was the poisoning of the water system. Nearly a quarter of the town had been to the hospital with diarrhoea and vomiting, and some of the schools had been closed. The bug lasted up to two weeks and finally the powers that be had announced that the water was contaminated and instructed us not to drink it.
    I thought,
Now they tell us?
    They suspected a parasite in the water. Tests were being carried out and meanwhile, they suggested, we should boil all water or drink bottled water.
    In other words, they hadn’t a clue and were covering their arses.
    The supermarkets had run out of supplies and were madly scrambling to get bottled water brought in from nearby towns.
    I had no idea how it was I’d escaped. Being sober, of course, I wasn’t dehydrated and so had no need of water as such.
    A shadow fell across me and I looked up to see Stewart, my former drug-dealer, who’d spent six years in jail. I’d helped