Chapter 5: Sligo

Norm’s driver chatted amiably as they headed towards Sligo but didn’t actually get around to introducing himself, Norm noticed. Mostly his conversation seemed to be centred around pointing out the various landmarks along the way.

They van pulled up in Castle Street. His driver nodded towards to green door of a bar on a corner. An engraved sign on the door’s glass panel said “Pride of Eireann” over a harp. Around the door enamel signs encouraged the idea that a wide range of alcoholic beverages were available inside. “I should go in there if I were you,” he said. “Have a chat with Danny Monahan. Tell him Eddie thought you could be a help.”

Norm grabbed his bag, thanked his driver and got out. His feet had barely touched the pavement when the van drove off.

It was a cold afternoon, and he needed no second urging to get out of the wind. The door to the bar let him into a cosy room. A fire burning in a grate on one wall looked like it was never extinguished. A few groups of men were sitting around but there was none of the furtiveness that such gatherings had come to have back in England. The place looked refreshingly normal to Norm as he stepped up the bar and ordered a whiskey. A glass with an inviting double measure of Bushmills appeared. As Norm took the glass he spoke to the barman. “I’m looking for Danny Monahan,” he said.

The barman was slow to respond. He was a tall, wiry man and moved as though worried that his limbs might not be entirely under his own control. He ran his hand across the top of his head, taking so much time to speak that Norm felt something of importance was going to be said. In the end he was non-committal. “Well, there’s a lot of Dannies,” the barman replied. “And a lot of Monahans too. Why would an Englishman be looking for any of them? And why would he be looking in my bar?”

“A friend of his suggested I should look him up.”

“A friend? Now that’s a rare thing. And for Danny too! Even rarer.”

Norm was beginning to get irritated. “Do you know where I can find him or not, because if not I’ll pay you for this drink and let you get on with your day.” He had hardly finished speaking when he was aware that someone was standing right beside him.

“I’m Danny,” a slow, quiet, voice said. “Who the fuck are you?”

Norm looked around. The voice had come from a man a good six inches taller than he was and a fair bit wider too. The barman had found something else to do at the other end of the room. “Eddie said I should look you up. He seemed to think I might be of some use.”

“And why would that be?”

By now Norm was feeling that he had very little to lose. “I’m not sure but it’s possibly got something to do with the fact that I’m just over the border from the north, I spent last night sleeping in a barn, that I’ve got no papers and no place to go and that when I’ve paid for this drink I’ll have the princely sum of 50 euros left in my pocket. Apart from that I’m pissed off that the only way I could get somewhere to have a quiet drink without worrying about some police bitches breaking up the party was to come all the way over here.”