“Help you with something?”

She moved from her table, took the seat opposite me, and, when she spoke, I noticed the stud in her tongue. How do they eat with that?

Maybe they don’t.

She said,

“You don’t know me.”

Statement.

I asked,

“Any reason why I should?”

Allowing a hint of force in there. If she was here to bust my balls, she’d chosen the right fucking day and the right fucking time to try it.

Her accent was the new cultivated Irish that spoke of: money, education, confidence, and fuck you.

As alien to me as a Brit.

She said,

“You put my brother in the mental hospital.”

As lines go, it’s a showstopper.

I asked.

“What?”

She took my spoon, asked,

“May I?”

Cut a corner of my Danish, said,

“I like sweet things.”

She’d thrown me. The only person I knew for sure I’d put in the home for the bewildered was my own self. Then,

Jesus Christ.

Years ago, a young man had been beheading swans. I’d nailed him and, yeah, he came from a good family, meaning cash and clout. No jail time, sent to a hospital. She asked,

“Coming back dude? The booze hasn’t destroyed all the brain cells?”

I’d met most brands of psychos during my career as a half-arsed investigator. They all shared the same total lack of empathy. Not so much they lacked a human element, more like they were a whole other species. A highly lethal one. But that kid, he’d used a samurai sword to decapitate the swans. What I most recalled was the absolute glee in his eyes. He didn’t so much enjoy his deeds as revel in them. I’d used a stun gun to knock him back into the water. The swans had gone for his eyes. He lost one. Every fiber of my being had been to let him drown. But I’d dragged him out. I’d hoped never to see the creep again.