That morning in the field had been the last straw. Pete had almost had a heart attack when he saw them approaching. He’d thought they were thugs hired by Connolly. He’d never felt so ashamed as he watched them hurry away, afraid that he was going to shoot them. He’d gone to see the Gardaí after that. What did it matter if Connolly retaliated? That land was a curse; it had destroyed his marriage and turned him into a madman who slept in a tent with a shotgun for company.
As for Mrs Flannery’s shifty behaviour in the pub that night, Fiona had tried to approach the subject delicately but it was no use. Mrs Flannery had closed up the moment Moriarty’s name was mentioned and Fiona hadn’t wanted to upset her further. Speculation was rife in the McCabe household that she’d previously had a run-in with the journalist, though they couldn’t think what might anger such a lovely, even-tempered woman.
26
IT TOOK a few weeks for the excitement to die down around the town. Will Connolly’s arrest brought a buzz to the place. Fiona felt sorry for his mother, who seemed to have been found guilty by association.
“Ara, it’s understandable too,” Mrs McCabe said as Fiona made them tea. “She’s had an awful shock. I always thought there was something funny about that boy.”
“So you’ve claimed.”
It was funny—Mrs McCabe had only had good things to say about Will before he was identified as the murderer.
“I did,” she protested.
Various complicated looks passed between her children, but no one said anything. It was too early in the morning for another argument.
They drank their tea and ate their breakfasts in silence—almost unheard of in the McCabe household. After all the excitement of the previous weeks, it seemed they all craved peace and calm.
Francis slapped his paper and shattered the silence. “Ah, would you look at this. Your man Simon Moriarty has a book coming out. He didn’t waste any time.”
“A book?”
“Oh yeah,” Fi said. “Remember, he was writing that book about Dec’s experience selling the land.”
“I wouldn’t have minded that so much. He’s gone and revised his plan. See here.” He dropped the paper and folded it quickly with the dexterity of a card shark. He passed it to Fiona who was sitting closest to him. Her eyes widened as she read.
“Greed and the re-emergence of the Celtic Tiger: how one man’s wealth-seeking led to his murder. Coming in August.”
“Ah, I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it, Mam,” Fiona said with a grimace, passing her the paper. “Looks like someone’s about to profit from the unfortunate affair.”
“Ah, sure it was what Dec would’ve wanted.”
“He only wanted the money so he could provide for his parents and get himself over to England.”
Mrs McCabe grinned widely. It was obvious that she was up to something.
“What is it, Mam?”
Her mother shook her head. “Nothing at all.”
“No, there definitely is. You only put on that high-pitched voice when you’re trying to play innocent. What are you up to?”
“Nothing. I told you,” she said, reaching for Ben’s plate even though his breakfast was only half-finished. “I’d better start on the washing up. Who’s helping me? Come on you useless lumps.”
FIONA’S first instinct was to reach for the buzzer under the bar. She paused when she saw the look on his face. It made her wish she had a trapdoor in the floor she could just disappear into: that was another benefit to having a more traditional pub complete with a cellar under the bar.
“How’s it going, Gerry? What can I get you?”
He looked stony-faced. In fact, if Fiona hadn’t heard him declare his feelings for her, she’d assume he was coming to murder her now. He certainly had a strange way of showing his emotions.
“I’m alright,” he said, taking a seat at the bar.
Fiona thought about buzzing Marty in the hardware shop anyway just to avoid the awkwardness of this conversation, but she stopped herself. It had to happen sometime and it was better to get it out of the way.
“Ah, good stuff. You’re sure I can’t get you a drink?” She wanted to apologise for being responsible for him being hunted by a mob of McCabes, but she had no desire to be the first to bring it up.
She hadn’t heard the end of it since it happened: even her mother had been giving her stick about Gerry and asking why she wouldn’t give him a go. Her father had declared his intention to break Gerry’s legs if he ever went near her, no matter what her feelings were.
In other words, the McCabe household had returned to normal.
“Here, I wanted to talk to you about that day. You know. With the ice-cream. And the hurleys.”
“Yeah,” she said, playing with her fingernails and trying to guess the exact shade of red her face had become. Beetroot or tomato? She focused on it as hard as she could as she willed him not to say what she felt sure he was about to say.
“Listen, I’m after realising we never had a chance to talk one-to-one with the… ah… mix-up.”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s true.”
The cosmos must not have been listening to her, because he carried on without pausing. “I was wondering, Fiona, if you’d want to go out sometime. For a drink maybe, or to the cinema?”
Her composure left her. She didn’t want to be cruel to him, but what was she supposed to say? She wouldn’t go out with him because he was the town scumbag and he was still wearing the same neon-stripe Adidas tracksuit bottoms that everyone else in the town had stopped wearing back in nineteen ninety eight?
So she did what she always did when she felt rushed or panicked. “Ah listen, Gerry, I can’t. It’s not possible,” she babbled. “I’ve a boyfriend. It’s only new but I think he’s the one. Sorry about that.”
He stared at her, frowning. “I didn’t know that. I would have heard.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I would have. You know how fast news travels around here. What’s his name?”
Fiona swallowed. As much as she babbled when she was under pressure, she wasn’t great at making up lies on the spot. “Felix,” she said quickly.
“Felix?” Gerry repeated, as if he’d never come across the name before. “What kind of a name is that?”
“Oh, he’s… German. You know, from Germany.”
“And what’s he doing over here?” Gerry folded his arms and leant his elbows on the bar. “I’ve never seen a German around Ballycashel.”
“Oh you wouldn’t have known,” she said quickly. “His job relies on him blending in. It’s for his own safety.”
“Why? What does he do?”
“He’s in the army.”
“But sure,” Gerry said with a frown. “The German army doesn’t operate over here. Does he live in Germany?”
“No, no,” Fiona said, shaking her head as she tried to collect her thoughts. She couldn’t back out now. “He’s in the Irish army. See, that’s why he has to blend in. If they found out he was a German…”
“They’d what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s the thing. He won’t tell me. But there’d be serious consequences for him.”
“Like getting him deported back to Germany?”
“Maybe.” She made a big show of wiping her eyes. “Don’t. I can’t even think about that. It’d break my heart.”
Gerry studied her for a while. “When’s he coming here next?”
She stared at him. “What?”
“When’s he coming to visit you?”
Fiona had the familiar feeling that she’d bitten off more than she could chew. “I don’t know yet. He’s very busy. Next week or the week after, probably.”
“And will he be in here?”
“I don’t know, Gerry. I don’t have a crystal ball, do I?”
“I’m only asking.” He was silent for a while. “I’ve never met a German. I’d like to see him. I’m curious.”
“I’m sure he is,” Gerry said gruffly.
27
“OH GOD,” Fiona said as she came in the door and pulled out her usual chair at the table. “You’ll never guess what happened last night.” She looked around. “Where’s Mam?”
Kate and Ben were sitting on the other side of the long table, and Marty was sitting at one end. All of then shrugged. “What happened last night?”
Fiona wasn’t sure if she could even bring herself to repeat the story out loud. “Do any of ye know any Germans?”
Ben looked at her with a frown. “Michael Schumacher?”
“No, I meant—”
“Michael Fassbender,” Kate offered.
“Is he not from Kerry?”
“Germany originally.”
“Are you serious?” Ben asked. “But the accent on him. How can he be German?”
“Lads!” Fiona said, holding up her hands. “Stop. Listen. I meant do you know any Germans personally? Not off the telly or the movies or whatever.”
“Fi, this is Ballycashel.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
“So you’ll be aware too that the foreign population is pretty minimal. We’re not exactly twin cities with Dusseldorf, are we?”
She buried her head in her hands. “Oh God, what have I done?”
This, of course, only fed their curiosity. “What happened? What’s going on?”
She groaned. “Gerry came into the pub last night to ask me out. I panicked and said I had a boyfriend. A German boyfriend called Felix.”
“Why on earth did you do that?”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly going to tell him I wasn’t interested in him and to leave me alone, was I? He’d probably steal my car and burn it out.”
“Obviously,” Kate said tossing her hair over her shoulder. “But why the hell would you say your man was German? Why not from Dublin or Belfast or somewhere?”
“I don’t know,” Fiona said mournfully. “I just don’t know.”
“You’re some eejit,” Marty said, shaking his head. “Where on earth are you going to find a German?”
“How about Germany?” Ben smirked.
“Very smart,” Fiona said with a grin. “Pity you couldn’t tap into that wisdom when you were doing your Leaving.”
“Now you sound like Mam,” Ben said, poking out his tongue.
“I do, don’t I,” Fi said. “Where is she? It’s not like her to abandon her growing manchildren without feeding them full of breakfast first. Have ye seen her this morning?”
“We have, yeah. She was faffing around in here before.”
“What’s she at?”
Their only response was to shrug.
Fiona stood. “I’ll go find her; see if she’s alright.”
She got as far as the kitchen door when her attention was caught by the radio. She stopped and stared at it, wondering if her mind was playing tricks on her.
“Lads,” she said, turning around and gesturing at the radio. “This woman sounds identical to Mam. It’s weird.” She reached for the dial and turned up the volume.
They looked at her, half-interested. Then there was an ear-splitting moment of static interference.
“God, Fi, turn it down. It’s like listening to nails on a blackboard.”
Fiona reached for the dial just as the radio presenter said “there seemed to be a radio in the background there. Can I get you to turn it down?”
“Ah, sorry Joe,” that uncannily familiar voice said. “One of the kids must have messed with it. I’ll just go sort it now.”
To Fiona’s astonishment, her mother emerged from the hall a couple of seconds later.
“Stop messing with that,” she said, swatting Fi’s hand away.
“What are you up to, Mam? Are you on the radio?”
But Mrs McCabe was gone again and she didn’t bother to answer. Fiona gestured for the others to come closer. This time they showed more interest.
“You’re back, Mrs McCabe.”
“I am.” There was a coquettish air to her voice that they had heard when she’d called Simon Moriarty.
“And you were telling me about a terrible story down there in Bally… Bally…”
“Ballycashel.”
“Ah yes. A lovely spot. Why don’t you tell us what went on.”
“Well,” Mrs McCabe said. “There was a murder. A terrible affair. The long and the short of it is it was a property deal gone sour. The poor young lad who was killed only sold the bit of land to get some money together to pay for the nursing home for his parents.”
“Ah God,” the presenter said in his enunciated radio voice. “That’s awful. I hope they got the fellas who did it.”
“Oh yes,” Mrs McCabe said disapprovingly. “They did.”
Fiona pictured her mother fighting hard not to slate the Gardaí in Ballycashel. She knew it must have been hard. “What’s she doing? What’s the point in calling Joe?” she hissed.
“Maybe she’s lonely.”
“But she has all of us.”
“Anyway, Joe, as terrible as that is, there’s another part to the story. More greed, if you like. You see, this poor young fella thought that the scandal of it might help with his savings. He got in touch with a journalist and told him the story, you know, on the proviso that the profits would be shared.”
“And what happened there, Margaret?”
“Well the poor boy is gone and your man gets to keep all the profits to the book!”
Fiona rubbed her face and stared in disbelief. “She didn’t.”
“It looks like she did,” Marty said with a grin. “Fair play to her.”
“Her and her pet causes. I swear she makes those environmental activists look like a lazy bunch of schoolkids.”
“Shh,” Fiona said.
The presenter was addressing his listeners now, telling them the background and referring to the book. When he wrapped it up, he hit them with the twist.
“We have Simon Moriarty on the other line.”
All four of them gasped. They could hear their mother’s cry of surprise from two rooms away. “Oh no,” Fiona groaned. “She’s going to get herself sued for slander.”
“Would ye shush?” Ben said. “I’m trying to listen to this.”
They all fell silent and listened with growing amazement. Because it soon became clear that their mother wasn’t going to be sued. In fact, it looked like she might just have gotten her way by shaming Simon Moriarty on national talk radio, the heartland of his fans.
“I’ll be splitting the royalties with the Hanlon family in light of this. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, Mrs McCabe.”
All four siblings whooped. Sure it was only money, but it felt like a victory. At least Declan’s actions might result in something positive for his parents.
28
FIONA GLANCED ANXIOUSLY as the door to the pub opened. “Right, Angus, this might be him. Remember what you’ve to do?”
“I thought my name was Felix.”
“It is,” she hissed, before turning and pretending to wipe down the fridges.
“Howaya Fiona.”
She turned and looked up, even though she had known immediately who the voice belonged to. “Oh, hi Gerry. How’s it going?”
“Can’t complain,” he said, looking around.
“Just thought you’d pop in for a drink, did you?”
He nodded. “Thirsty work this afternoon.”
Fiona knew well that the only reason he was there was one of his buddies had told him about the tall fella who’d been spotted going into McCabe’s. As if to confirm that, Gerry was now staring down her brother Colm’s college friend.
“I haven’t seen you around here before, buddy.”
Angus/Felix shook his head. “Ja,” he said in the most terrible German accent Fiona had ever heard. “I am not from diese town.”
/> Fiona cringed but it was too late to intervene. Colm had suggested Angus because he’d been a keen amateur dramatist when the two were in college. He had been badgering Colm for months to take him out fishing, so a deal had been struck. She hadn’t banked on his hammy acting: she just hoped Gerry wouldn’t notice.
“That’s quite an accent there. Where’s that from?”
“München.”
“Where’s that now?”
“It eez in Germany.”
“Ah,” Gerry said, feigning astonishment and making Angus’s acting seem Oscar-worthy. “I see. You’re the boyfriend so,” he said, nodding at Fiona.
“I am ze boyfriend of Fiona. Ja. Yes.” Angus nodded vigorously and Fiona wished there was a way for her to kick him under the bar, or to scream enough without Gerry hearing.
Gerry looked him up and down, sizing him up for the third time. She tapped the buzzer under the bar four times; short fast bursts. It was the signal that Gerry was on the premises. She doubted he’d kick off, but she didn’t want Angus getting a black eye because he’d been kind enough to help her out.
“What can I get for you, Gerry?”
He stared up at the menu. He had stopped the ‘Guinness’ routine soon after she told him she was taken. She had realised—to her horror—that far from being a wind-up, it was what he considered a chatup line. She certainly wasn’t confident about the future state of her love life if that was the general level of charm possessed by Ballycashel men.
“I’ll have one of those ciders.”
“Coming up.”
“What are you drinking, pal?”
Fair play to Angus, he had insisted on ordering a German wheat beer to get in character. As far as Fiona knew, his only exposure to Germany had come from a weekend visiting a friend who was doing an Erasmus exchange years ago.
Apple Seeds and Murderous Deeds Page 14