Welcome to Gombeeni’s of Ballymagaleen

The life of Sergeant Bod Gombeeni defies straightforward narration, not least because his official service record appears to have been “mislaid” somewhere between Ballinasloe and Ballymagaleen during an internal review of the Garda Síochána’s Vice Squad.  Born in a place he rarely specifies and of parents whose surnames appear to have changed mid-baptism, Bod has mastered the art of strategic vagueness.

He is a man of law-adjacent instinct rather than mere regulation, whose policing style combines the moral elasticity of a canon lawyer with the timing of a stand-up comic.  In Ballymagaleen he is both guardian and gossip, enforcing order chiefly through presence, persuasion, and the quiet suggestion that he “knows things.”

Bod speaks English, Irish, and a Sicilian dialect he picked up during what he insists was “a study tour in Naples,” though witnesses recall sirens and handcuffs.  He is known to burst, without warning, into Verdi when content and Rossini when provoked.  His dog, Broy, a Kerry Blue Terrier of baleful intelligence, accompanies him on patrol, listening attentively and never contradicting him—a quality Bod values highly in colleagues.

He lives by the principle that “most trouble can be postponed till tomorrow, provided nobody dies and the Guinness keeps.”  He is married, more or less continuously, to Faighne Gombeeni, with whom he shares a home, a business, and an elaborate mutual-defence treaty.

Faighne Gombeeni—née unverified, though rumours suggest a maternal connection to Sicily and a paternal connection to a shipping manifest—presides over Gombeeni’s of Ballymagaleen with the serenity of a pope and the pricing of a pawnbroker.  She is fluent in Irish, English, Sicilian dialect, and Operatic Italian, conducting transactions as though each sale were a duet and each receipt a recitative.

Her early life is the subject of lively speculation and selective amnesia.  Giles na Magadhlin has observed that her first encounter with the then-young Garda Bod Gombeeni occurred “in the course of a routine moral inspection,” which somehow evolved into a forty-year partnership of commerce and mutual incrimination.

Faighne’s business philosophy is simple: “Never sell anything you might have to buy back.”  Her customers are loyal, partly from affection, partly from fear that she knows too much.  She has the eye of a hawk, the discretion of a confessor, and the temper of Mount Etna on wash-day.

Her constant companion is Broy, whom she claims to have trained herself, though observers suspect he merely does what she would have done anyway.  When not managing the shop, Faighne sings arias from Verdi, Puccini, or occasionally The Saw Doctors, with a voice that has been known to raise both roofs and suspicions.

She is the heart, the wit, and—by general consent—the real power in Ballymagaleen.  To speak ill of her is to risk being short-changed for life; to speak well of her is to be invited for coffee, from which few emerge unchanged.