Apple Seeds and Murderous Deeds

by Kathy Cranston

  She got up to make a cup of tea and sat down in front of the laptop again. She moved the slider back close to the start of the video and started watching. Nothing else leapt out at her this time, but she almost spilt her tea when she watched Dec’s strange stretch a second time.

  He didn’t just stretch out his arms and make that weird tapping motion, she saw now. He’d been fidgeting with a straw all night—she remembered noticing it at the time and the video had shown him reaching for it after he’d taken one of the matchbooks. Now she frowned as she noticed the straw appear on the bar in front of him, resting under his hand with about four inches exposed and pointing toward the spot where he had stretched his hands. Every so often, she could just about make out his thumb tapping on the black plastic.

  Is he trying to tell me something? she wondered.

  She dismissed that thought straight away. Of course he wasn’t. He was messing around with a straw, she told herself. Fidgeting like most of the human population of Ireland did with click pens and straws and the like.

  She shut off the laptop and moved to the couch to watch a movie. She chose the most gruesome thriller she could find on Netflix and settled in, hoping the fear would blot everything else from her mind.

  But it didn’t work. The same thought kept coming back to her over and over: Dec had never been a fidgeter. Never.

  8

  WITH BLEARY EYES, Fiona ran down the back stairs that led to the pub. She had kept the pub closed and spent half the night in front of her laptop. When she wasn’t watching the video, she was getting lost on google trails for hours as she searched for Morse code or other signals he might have been using. She could barely see straight now.

  “Morning sis,” Marty said as she unlocked the door for him. “I was afraid you weren’t going to make it down at all. I need my coffee fix.”

  She grinned at him. He had never been a big coffee drinker and she knew he only stopped by every morning to support her—not that she’d ever let on that she knew.

  “Sorry. The guards were over yesterday wanting to look at the camera footage from the bar. I spent half the night looking for something we might have missed.”

  “Oh right?” he said, looking serious as he took a stool at the bar and watched as she switched on the coffee machine. “What makes you think you missed something?”

  She shrugged wearily. “I don’t know. Just this feeling I got. Brennan doesn’t care—all he cares is they seem to have got their man.”

  “Who is it?” Marty asked sharply.

  She turned and appraised him. He was a gentle giant, but he had never been able to tolerate injustice against his friends and family. “They don’t know yet,” she said, a warning in her voice. “And when they find out I want to promise me you won’t go after him. Leave it to the guards.”

  “What, Robocop and his fail army? Sure, that’s the highway to justice right there.”

  “Marty! I don’t want you getting in trouble over it! Anyway, the guy was smart enough to keep his face hidden. We didn’t see one clear shot of it. I don’t know who he is, but my money’s on him being a hardened criminal.” She shivered. “Maybe from one of those crime gangs you read about in the paper.” She scratched her ear. “Though he didn’t look like it. If I had to guess I would have said he was a schoolteacher.”

  “Maybe,” Marty said, playing with a sachet of raw sugar. “He’s a spy. All done up to look ordinary but secretly he works for the government.”

  “That’s it!” Fi cried, gesturing excitedly at him.

  “He’s a spy?” Marty looked doubtful. “I’m not sure—it’s a bit farfetched and probably down to the movie I watched last night.”

  “No, not that.” She tapped his hand. “You messing with the sugar; it reminded me. Dec kept fidgeting. No, that’s not right. He was calm for ages and then he started fidgeting. I’ve never known him to be a restless sort.”

  Marty shook his head. “Me neither. And I’ve known him since ye were both still in nappies. So you think the guy made him nervous?”

  She sighed, not sure whether to voice her theory. On the one hand, it would be good to get a second opinion. On the other, she was too tired to handle the teasing Marty would no doubt give her if he thought her idea was crazy. Then a thought struck her. Who cared about her ego if it meant it helped find Dec’s killer?

  “Okay, so this is going to sound weird, right, but there was a part of the video where he suddenly lays out this straw he’d been messing with. And then he sort of.” She paused and began to tap her index finger against the bar. “He started tapping it like this. And he was doing this big weird stretch like this.” She copied the movement and then waited silently for Marty’s opinion.

  “So what do you think it was?”

  She shook her head. “I thought it might be some kind of code; like Morse code? But I don’t know. I tried to jot down whether they were long or short taps but they all looked the same to me. And there was no rhythm to it. I don’t know—I feel like it’s some kind of code if only I could decipher it.”

  “Fiona,” Marty said seriously. “I don’t mean to knock your theory or anything, but think about it for a second. This is Dec we’re talking about. He was a great fella and a hard worker, but you’re saying he whipped out a complicated code just like that? I don’t know…”

  She felt like the wind had been let out of her sails. He was right and she knew it. “What then?” she asked desperately.

  “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. He must have seen the defeat in her face because he stood up all of a sudden. “Let me have a look at this video. Where’s your laptop?”

  FIONA LOOKED up hopefully when the door at the back of the pub opened. “Well?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. He was up to something alright, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is.”

  She sighed. “Fair enough. Thanks for looking. Here I’ll make you a fresh coffee—this one’s getting cold.”

  He said nothing. She thought nothing of it until she turned around and saw he had vanished.

  “Marty?” she asked. It wasn’t like him to just disappear without saying goodbye: everyone in her family was notorious for not being able to leave a room without saying it at least five times. Besides, she would have heard the bell in the otherwise empty bar.

  There was a grunting sound from close by. Alarmed, she hoisted herself up and leant over the bar. Sure enough, he was off his chair and on the ground.

  “Marty!” she cried, jumping down again and running around behind him. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

  He muttered something and she was on her feet again in an instant, reaching across the bar for her phone.

  “Mam! It’s me!” she shrieked about a second after hitting 2 and speed dialling home. She could always rely on her mother to pick up before the third ring. Even if she was busy, Mrs McCabe had such an insatiable appetite for gossip that she kept the portable phone near her at all times—even when she was gardening or having a bath. “It’s Marty. Oh, you better send Dad over. I’ll call an ambulance now. He’s taken a fall and I can’t get any sense out of him and—”

  She gasped as the phone was pulled away from her. She spun around in shock.

  “Mam, I’m fine,” Marty said. “No, I’m fine. Really. No, I’m not just having you on. I was busy looking at something under the bar and she mistook it for me being injured.” He paused and Fiona could hear the faint buzz of her mother’s voice. “No, it’s not mice. Just some… look, don’t worry about it. Okay, I’ll be there. Bye, bye bye. Bye. Okay, bye.”

  Fiona rolled her eyes. “When you didn’t answer I thought something was up with you—like you’d had a stroke or something.”

  He shook his head, eyes gleaming. “Not at all. No, I started thinking about that video. I knew Dec had to be up to something.”

  It was the excited look in his eyes that made her realise he had solved the puzzle. Sure enough, he held up a little piece of cardboard. Fion
a’s heart plummeted.

  “Ah,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know what I expected. That’s just one of the matchbooks I had printed up for this place. Remember? You all thought they were hilarious.”

  But Marty looked no less pleased with himself. “I know that.” He flipped open the little book. “Look at this, Fiona. I think you were on to something.”

  She leant forward and a shiver ran down her spine at the sight of the spindly words on the side opposite the little row of skinny matches.

  “Oh God,” she gasped.

  Marty nodded grimly. “Do you recognise the writing? Is it his?”

  She nodded. They may have only gone out for a few weeks, but it was in that early teenage stage where it was practically mandatory to write each other long and soppy notes on pages torn from the middle of school copybooks. She’d have recognised that distinctive spidery writing anywhere.

  “It’s Dec’s alright,” she said, shaking her head. “But this means…” she stopped and shivered again, trying to make sense of it. “This means something was going on alright. It wasn’t spontaneous—he knew he was in trouble.”

  She took the book from Marty and stared at the writing in blue pen. Danger. HQ. Dash, it said, with the last word underlined.

  “See here,” she said, pointing below the writing. “It’s a faint pen line like he was about to write more and got disturbed.”

  He nodded. “You’re right.”

  “Probably Gerry,” she said, remembering how Dec hadn’t been alone for long. “It doesn’t make sense—why didn’t he just say something to me? This makes no sense.”

  “Maybe he was afraid?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe, but he seemed calm as anything.”

  “He could have been keeping a brave face on it—not wanting to have anything kick off in the bar. Or he might not have realised the severity of what he was involved in.”

  They fell silent, both staring at the text on the cardboard. Fiona held it up to the light on the off chance that there was something else on there.

  “I don’t understand it,” she said after several moments’ silence.

  “Me neither,” Marty said. “It’s not like Dec to be so vague. Not even vague… this makes no sense.”

  “Was there anything else down there?” she asked hopefully.

  “Nothing,” Marty said, shaking his head. “I found it wedged into a knot under the bar. There’s nothing else down there apart from a few blobs of chewing gum.”

  Fiona winced and was about to comment but thought better of it. After all, other peoples’ bad habits kind of paled in comparison to what had happened to Dec. “I’ll freeze it off later. What do you think I should do with this?”

  Marty shrugged and took the matchbook back again, before dropping it on the bar. “Fingerprints,” he explained, reaching for a paper napkin. “We should probably get this to the guards. That’s all we can do. I’ll drop it over to the station now if you want.”

  Fiona sighed. “You’re right. Here, let me get a picture of that before you do. Just in case we think of something.”

  He was holding it up for her to photograph when the door of the bar burst open. Fiona looked at Marty in alarm—she was sure she’d locked both doors when she let him in.

  9

  MARTY LIFTED his stool and held it forward as if he was going to use it to defend them both. It would have looked ridiculous if anyone else had done it, but his sheer power and height made him look extremely intimidating. By the time the inner door opened, Fiona almost felt comfortable that everything was going to be fine no matter who had come for them. The only logical conclusion she could draw was that it was the strange man with the glasses—he had somehow found out that they had footage of him.

  It soon became obvious that her imagination was running rampant.

  “What are you doing here, Mam? I thought you were someone breaking in.”

  Mrs McCabe turned to her with a furious look that Fiona knew all too well. “You frightened the life out of me, calling me up and telling me something was wrong with Marty. Sure I had to come down here and see with my own eyes that he was alright.” She stared at her oldest son, still frozen with the stool held up like he was about to attack her. “And here I see he’s acting the gurrier. What, would you hit your own mother with that thing?”

  He sighed and dropped the stool. “No, Ma. We didn’t know it was you, see. After all the…” he stopped and glanced at Fi. She shot him a warning look back.

  Unfortunately, their mother picked up on the silent message that went between them.

  “What are ye two up to?” Mrs McCabe demanded in the dangerously low voice that meant she thought she was onto something. She was like a beagle once she picked up the scent of something amiss—there was little anyone could do to throw her off the trail.

  “Nothing,” they both said in unison.

  But it was too late—Mrs McCabe had sensed something was going on and they knew she wouldn’t rest—or leave—until she got to the bottom of it. Her attention shifted from her children to the piece of card that was still in Marty’s hand.

  “What’s that?”

  He stared back at her helplessly.

  “It’s one of my matchbooks,” Fiona said quickly. “Marty’s helping me with some marketing.”

  Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “Marty is?” she repeated, her voice dripping with scepticism. “My son Marty, who thought it was a good idea to put up a billboard on the Dublin Road with that awful poster of the girls in bikinis. How did you think that was going to advertise the hardware shop?”

  Fiona couldn’t help but smirk. Her brother turned the colour of beetroot. “You have to admit it was a good idea. Gung-ho marketing. He’s a guru, see?”

  Her mother wasn’t buying it. Fiona wasn’t surprised—you didn’t do things like that in a town like Ballycashel. To make matters worse, Father Jimmy had been mortally offended and had chosen to highlight the issue during Sunday mass. Mr and Mrs McCabe had decamped to Newtownbeg for mass for several months after that, unable to bring themselves to show their faces in Ballycashel church.

  “You’re lying to me,” her mother snapped. “I can tell. That weird thing happens with your lip.”

  Fiona closed her eyes and gasped. “Your words—they cut like a knife.”

  “Stop changing the subject, Fiona McCabe. I’m not leaving here until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “We’re just taking some pictures to put on my website.”

  Her mother crossed her arms; there was no way on earth she believed this. “Why didn’t you ask Enda to help with that big fancy camera of his?”

  “He’s in Lourdes. And my phone’s just as good.”

  “Nonsense,” Mrs McCabe fired back. “Especially not in here with this light. You’d need a big proper setup with lights and the like.”

  “And how exactly would you know this?” Fiona demanded, forgetting about the investigation for a moment.

  Her mother looked affronted. “I watched a programme on YouTube about it. Beginner photography it was called.” She sniffed. “It’s a shame the pair of ye didn’t watch it; you might have thought up a better lie.”

  Fiona’s stomach rumbled and she rolled her eyes. She knew well from past experience that this could and would stretch on for hours. “Fine,” she said. “If you must know, the guards were over last night looking at the footage from the cameras here. They reckon the suspect is a guy that was in here talking to Dec on the night he was killed.”

  Mrs McCabe flushed. “A murderer!” she cried. “Here in our bar! Oh, Fiona. It’s not safe.”

  “But you worked here for years when Dad had the pub! I don’t know what you’re on about.”

  “Those were different times,” her mother said primly.

  “You’re telling me that murder was only invented in the years since you and Dad stopped running the pub?”

  “Don’t be difficult. No, I’m telling you that it’s not something that h
appened in a little place like Ballycashel. I don’t know.” She shook her head as if to emphasise her disbelief. “Is it the internet or the motorways? The world’s been turned on its head.” She sat down at the bar. “Right. So what have we got?”

  Fiona glanced at Marty, who shrugged helplessly. “Sure we might as well tell her if we’re bringing it to the guards anyway. They’re as useless as a brown paper bucket.”

  “Fair point. Okay Mam, we didn’t see much on the video but Dec was acting weird. Marty found this matchbook shoved up under the bar where he was sitting. Here, have a look. Just don’t touch it in case they need to fingerprint it.”

  Mrs McCabe retrieved her glasses from the cord around her neck and carefully opened the matchbook with the napkin Fiona slid across the bar to her.

  “It’s his writing alright,” she said conclusively.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Because I remember it well from having to fish his notes out of the pockets of your school skirt.”

  Fiona flushed.

  “You should’ve been more careful at hiding your things,” her mother said. “At least he could spell—not like that Tony fella you went out with him after.”

  “Tony Fisher?” Marty repeated with undisguised disgust. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

  Fi shrugged, unable to look either of them in the eye. What was it about close family that had the ability to reduce you to a moody teenager? she wondered. “We went out for about a week. I’m not sure we even held hands before he dumped me for Susan Cassidy. They’re still together now.”

  “Lord bless us and save us,” her mother said, shaking her head. “You’d a lucky escape there, Fiona.”

  Fiona was amazed—she hadn’t been in touch with Tony since then, but he must have been bad news if her mother wasn’t actively trying to set her up with him. Still, she had no desire to open up that can of worms.