The Muldoon Book Club

Episode two: Getting the ball rolling. James Lacey is on his first case.

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In this week’s episode, we’re looking at getting the story started, particularly James Lacey and the setting. Let’s look at the opening of chapter one again:

Constable Lacey turned the corner of Ashfield Street and stopped outside a shoddy, multi-storey brick tenement. In the early days of the building’s life, he presumed that the bricks must have been red once, but on closer inspection, they had always been grey. Now, they were tired and as soot-ridden as the people that existed within their walls. He passed a beggar who rested against one wall, his head slumped, probably in sleep. Lacey sidled past, trying not to smell him, and moved through to the courtyard.

The steps in front of the building, lined with hungry-looking, flat-capped men made him shudder. Each dull, hollow eye focused on him, his suit, his clean-shaven face. The uniform, reserved mostly for the beat and attending to street brawls and other cases of public disturbance, remained on the hook back at the station. Behind him, women were talking quietly to each other, casting a suspicious glance at the young man as they did so. When he turned to look at them, they quickly returned to filling their pots and buckets at the standpipe.

Filthy, ragged children played in the courtyard below the hideous building, stopping dead in their tracks when they saw the young man standing there. They stared with curious, wide eyes poking out of blackened, dishevelled heads. He tried not to make eye contact. The sad, filthy windows could have harboured a thousand faces, none of whom he’d be able to see watching him through the glaze of soot.