The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3)

by Gerald Hansen

  From what Maureen could tell, Paddy had been keeping his todger in his jeans since Padraig had caught him at it, but it still rankled—a foreigner trying to tear her family apart!—and the woman responsible would now have to pay. If someone had asked her the day before what she planned to do to Agnieszka Czerwinska, Maureen would have said she only wanted to strike the fear of the Lord in the Polish woman’s heart. But she realized that ‘having to pay’ now meant having to pay. And everyone knew the recent invasion of foreigner workers to their town never kept their money in banks.

  Maureen hobbled to the kitchen, rifled through some drawers until she came across a faded pamphlet—instructions to the microwave oven nobody had ever read—and rolled Keanu’s stroller out the door. She made her home visit, and the taxi was halfway back from the whore’s house when what was on the video hit Maureen.

  CHAPTER 62

  PADRAIG CACKLED AS he raced a squealing Dymphna up the sidewalk, his mother and father scurrying ahead of them towards the house.

  “Would ye quit popping them fecking wheelies, Padraig! Me neck’s gonny be fractured along with me ankles!”

  “It be’s the manky wheelchair!” Padraig said. “Something be’s up with the front wheels, sure!”

  Paddy hurried into the hallway after Fionnuala, his head spinning. He knew Moira had to be confronted, and that the trip was an opportunity to buy cigarettes in bulk, but he was clueless as to why they all had to flee the country so quickly. Endless overtime at the plant, avoiding Aggie at every turn, avoiding Fionnuala at home and Padraig on the street, he had been out of the loop in family matters the past few days.

  “What the feck have ye been playing at, love?” he asked.

  “It must be that video I nicked from an aul one’s attic. The most important video of the century, sure,” Fionnuala explained as she rushed it into the kitchen.

  “What are ye on about? What be’s on the video that makes it so special?” Paddy asked.

  Fionnuala chewed on her lower lip as she tugged open a cupboard and rifled through the mayhem inside. She had yet to tell Paddy about the contents of the video, had yet to tell anybody, actually, as she couldn’t trust anybody but herself. Padraig and Siofra had seen it, but they were too young to realize the importance. Fionnuala wanted to luxuriate solo in the excitement of this final period of privacy, before she was catapulted to celebrity on the world stage. She imagined opening the door to the family home to a barrage of blinding flashbulbs from an army of reporters. She hoped they wouldn’t catch her in her bathrobe and curlers. And as a bonus, she mused, perhaps her renown would make her daft idiot of a husband see sense, make Paddy realize she was still worthwhile as a person and a wife.

  “Fling some clothes in these, you,” Fionnuala barked instead, dragging the big black garbage bags out. “We’ve not the time nor money to purchase luggage, and after that fire most haven’t many clothes left in any event. Can ye unearth some clean socks and smalls to shove in?”

  Siofra clumped down the stairs, her charred, headless Barbie clutched in her hand, wondering what the commotion was.

  “Dymphna!” Siofra gasped as Padraig finally wrenched her older sister through the door. “What’s up with ye?”

  “Gather some clothes together now, Siofra,” Fionnuala said. “We’re away off to Malta.”

  The Barbie fell from Siofra’s hand.

  “Och, pick yer jaw off the floor, wane, and quit gawping at me like that or ye’ll feel the force of me hand on—”

  “Naw, Mammy! Naw!” Siofra wailed. “I’m not gonny go to Malta now! The morrow be’s the talent show, sure!”

  “Feck yer talent show! The Filth be’s on wer tail, and ye were part of causing that aul Mrs. Ming to keel over, don’t ye forget! Attempted murder, themmuns’ll want yer wee arse for and all. There be’s special units for wanes in the prison, ye know.”

  Paddy sidled up to his wife. “I’ve sent Padraig upstairs to do the packing. I’ll nip to the off-license on the corner for some lager. We kyanny make a journey without drink, sure.”

  Fionnuala considered. “Mind ye pick up one of them flagons of cider for me mammy and all.”

  Padraig slipped gratefully out the door, out of the firing line. Fionnuala turned her attention back to Siofra, and Dymphna sat stranded between a furious Fionnuala and a sobbing and now foot-stamping Siofra.

  “Naw! Naw! Weeks, we’ve been working on wer act! All them flowers and fishes we made for the Happiness Boat, and the wee song I wrote and all! Days, it took me! I can stay at Grainne’s, sure. Och, Mammy, please, Mammy, please! Grainne’s mammy’s sure to say aye!”

  “Would ye stop yer endless yammering, wane?! We kyanny hear if sirens be’s coming down the street for us!”

  Siofra’s pleading turned to anger. She bellowed up at her mother: “I don’t wanna go! I don’t wanna travel to some strange land to harm wer Moira. I love me sister! And I hate ye!”

  Dymphna gasped into the handle of the wheelchair as Siofra lunged forward and attacked Fionnuala’s stomach with her little fists. Siofra yelped as Fionnuala snatched a handful of her hair, a barrette pinging off and ricocheting against Dymphna’s cheek. Siofra’s feet lashed out at her mother’s shins, and Fionnuala roared and threw her against the wall. Siofra landed with a thud and looked up at her mother like a wounded dog. Then tears erupted from her eyes.

  “A traitor, ye be’s!” Fionnuala seethed, hand twitching in the air to strike. “First this palaver about loving yer beanflicking perv of a sister! And ye think I haven’t spied ye skipping hand in hand down the town, all palsy-walsy with yer flash new mate, the police inspector’s daughter, Little Miss Mini-Filth Catherine McLaughlin? Her collapsing at yer First Holy Communion on them drugs ye took from yer brother Eoin be’s responsible for the poor wee boy being locked up! Consorting with the enemy, so ye are, wee girl! Next ye’ll be telling me ye love yer auntie Ursula and all! Traitor!”

  Smack! Smack!

  Siofra screamed and sobbed in the corner, and Paddy returned, laden with drink. Padraig lumbered down the stairs bearing bulging garbage bags. With her father there, Dymphna felt safe to utter:

  “I kyanny go, either, Mammy! Look at the state of me. I’m two months up the duff with two gammy legs.”

  “Ye want two gammy arms and all?” Fionnuala threatened.

  “This wheelchair, but,” Dymphna pleaded. “It flips up all the time, and I’m afeared I’m gonny fall over.”

  “Och—!” Scorn creased Fionnuala’s face, and she raised her hand again.

  “It be’s true, but, Mammy,” Padraig put in. “It took all me strength to stop it toppling over on me.”

  “Why,” Dymphna said, cringing under her mother’s hand, “couldn’t we wait until themmuns at the hospital issued us a wheelchair that functions properly? Nicking it from the corridor like that, wrenching me from me bed and dumping me in—”

  “Ye haven’t a third ankle to break, ye daft cunt!”

  “Love,” Paddy said, grabbing Fionnuala’s hand and maneuvering it to her side, “a malfunctioning wheelchair does be a problem. We’ve to leverage it down at the bottom with something heavy. Doesn’t there be that aul case of tinned vegetables propping up the shelf in the cupboard? Padraig, go on and grab that case and shove it onto that...tray-like thing under the wheelchair.”

  “Och, ye’ve the lager, grand!” Fionnuala said as Padraig plopped the ‘luggage’ on the carpet and hurried into the scullery.

  She reached into the liquor store bag, popped open a can, swigged down, then proffered an accusing finger at Dymphna.

  “And ye see you, wee girl, ye’ve never had an ounce of family loyalty in them disease-ridden limbs of yers. I’m saddled with the mortification of a half-Orange bastard for a grandson, and now ye’ve another on the way! Dear God in Heaven alone knows what religion the father of this one might be!”

  “What’s that wane doing bawling in the corner?” Paddy asked.

  “Och, the daft eejit doesn’t want a holiday
to Malta. Doesn’t know what’s good for her, how good she has it. I was twenty-seven before I stepped foot out of Derry. And then it was just a bus with no shock absorbers down to Dublin. Five hours of Hell on Earth, it was.”

  Paddy and Padraig forced the case of vegetables under the wheelchair, then Paddy gave a few pushes up and down the hallway to make sure Dymphna didn’t flip back.

  “That’s grand,” Fionnuala said. “And we can sell them veggies in some foreign market when wer funds run out and we’re in need of spending money. I hear the prices of souvenirs on the Continent be’s shocking. And would youse believe a quid for a tin of fizzy lemonade, them Frenchy-Frog bastards charge!”

  Their eyes goggled at this information. Maureen sailed in with Keanu.

  “Right! We’ve wer funds now,” she said, opening her handbag and flashing the bills around.

  Dymphna, Padraig and Siofra (who had dried her eyes but still glared at her mother, her hand accusingly caressing her cheek time and again) stared at the money. They had never seen so much together in one hand in their lives.

  “Mammy!” Paddy said. “Where did ye get all that cash from?”

  “I’ve me methods,” Maureen said, eyes boring into him. Actually, a few more affairs, and Paddy’s penis could fund her pilgrimage to Lourdes and maybe one to the Holy Land. “I’ve no need to pack as, sure, all me gear be’s burnt. Let’s be on wer way, shall we?”

  Fionnuala searched them wildly for an appropriate place to hide her special video. She shoved Keanu to the side and hid it in the seat of his stroller. Nobody in their right mind would want to glance at that hideous infant, she thought.

  “Out! Out the door now!” Fionnuala demanded.

  As they left, Fionnuala hissed at the scowling Siofra: “And the day after the morrow be’s the Top-Yer-Trolley annual sale, wane. Ye think I want to miss that? Highlight of me year, so it be’s! But I’m sacrificing that for wer freedom!”

  CHAPTER 63

  HALF AN HOUR EARLIER

  Maureen splurged on a taxi as time was of the essence. She hid Keanu in the hedges and banged on the door with the force of a woman scorned. She hoped the husband of Paddy’s fancy woman wasn’t home. Maureen knew the foreigner workers never invaded their country alone; they always came in pairs, or with a litter of children they sought to raise as Irish nationals, as they were embarrassed to be Polish/Filipino, and for that Maureen couldn’t fault them. Her gnarled knuckles continued their banging.

  “Czym mogę słuźyć?” Aggie asked, poking her head out. What can I do for you? Maureen instantly hated her blonde hair, blue eyes and voluptuous breasts.

  Pronouncing Agnieszka Czerwinska was impossible, so Maureen had prepared, scrawling the name in capital letters on the back of a final disconnection notice from the electricity company. She forced it at the woman.

  “Does this be you?”

  Aggie looked down, surprised, and nodded, which was her first mistake.

  “Immigration!” Maureen barked, flashing her ID from the church social and shoving her way in. Allowing Maureen in was Aggie’s second mistake.

  “I’m undercover,” Maureen explained as Aggie looked the pensioner’s track suit doubtfully up and down. “And still in service. Budget cutbacks have forced us to retire at 80. May I see yer papers?”

  Aggie was confused at the torrent of English.

  “Paper?” she asked, handing over a binder where she had scribbled her ESL notes. “You want pen also?”

  “Naw, yer papers!”

  Aggie, trembling, handed over a newspaper, her eyes shining with hope that that was what the scary woman wanted.

  “Yer work visa!”

  Aggie hastened to comply, opening the drawer of an end table and rummaging within. Maureen inspected the spartan furnishings of the living room, her eyes falling on the unframed photo curling on the mantelpiece of the woman with her arm wrapped around a wimpy blonde man who must be her husband at Giant’s Causeway, the two of them beaming their unsightly overbites at the camera.

  Aggie handed over her passport with jittery fingers. Maureen flicked it open, found the visa and inspected it.

  “And yer husband’s?”

  Aggie scurried once again to the drawer.

  “Fakes! Obvious fakes! Where did ye get these made? How much did they set ye back?” Maureen demanded to know, brandishing the passports in her claw. Aggie reached for them, but Maureen’s cane smacked the fingers away.

  “But..but...real! Real!”

  “Do you know it’s expressly forbidden under EU law to fornicate with a married national?”

  Aggie’s brow winkled with incomprehension.

  “Ye kyanny shag yer Irish fancy-man!” Maureen seethed. She waved the instructions to the microwave oven at Aggie; she figured Poles would never be able to tell what the pamphlet was, so long as she kept her fingers blocking the illustrations of how to open and close the door. Maureen pointed to the Care and Cleaning section. “It’s all written in this clause here. I won’t report ye to me superiors. For a price.”

  “What you say? What that meaning is?”

  “That meaning is ye won’t be going to prison if ye pay me! Money!” Maureen ruffled her thumb and fingers together in what she hoped was the international symbol for money, all the while wondering how Paddy had wished this foreign creature an understandable good morning, let alone that he wanted to commit the sin of adultery with her. “You-pay-me-money.” She said it as if to a spastic child.

  “We have few monies! Work long hours, few monies.”

  “Right! I’m calling back-up!” Maureen announced, slipping the passports in her pocket and pulling out her cellphone. “That meaning is more police in yer living room.”

  Maureen motioned the overturning of tables and chairs, and then pressed the numbers for the soccer results hotline. Maureen’s eyes, magnified to the size of owl’s eyes through the lenses, bored into the terrified immigrant as a bright female voice rattled off the scores.

  “Big, angry, strong policemen!” Maureen intoned menacingly.

  “Stop! I give money! I give money!”

  Aggie rummaged through the drawer again and handed over a handful of rumpled bills. Maureen hung up and totaled them quickly in her mind.

  “More!” she barked.

  Aggie whimpered as she reached into the drawer again and tugged out bills of higher denomination. She handed them over, pleading on her face. Maureen’s wrinkles lit up with delight.

  “And I thought ye said ye worked long hours for little money?”

  She handed over the passports.

  “Husband taxi-driver,” Aggie admitted.

  “Ye’ve been wile civil, and ye’ve seen sense at last. Keep yer quim away from yer betters in the future.”

  That infuriating look of incomprehension once again.

  “Don’t shag Derrymen!” Maureen clarified.

  Maureen hobbled as quickly as she could to the door, grabbed Keanu’s stroller and rolled it down the path. Inside, Aggie picked up the pamphlet that was supposed to contain the rules of EU immigration, and saw instead an illustration of a hand wiping out a microwave oven with a soft, damp cloth. She hurried to the door and flung it open, but Maureen was already gone.

  “Ty suko! Ty suko” Aggie yelled into the rain. You bitch!

  As Maureen settled herself in the taxi, £675 richer, she reflected over what she had done. There was, of course, the reputation of the Heggarty name to consider; regardless of their smorgasbord of crimes, no Heggarty had ever spent time in prison, and Maureen didn’t want her flighty daughter Fionnuala to blemish that record. But it was less the hassle and mortification of the prison visits that had made Maureen visit Aggie, nor the need to make the woman pay for straining her daughter and son-in-law’s marriage, more the misery of the past two weeks’ non-stop rain. Her pallid flesh was begging for a little Mediterranean sun.

  The taxi was zooming up the Lone Moor Road, the factory walls towering, when Maureen went back to the video in he
r mind. There was nothing on it that screamed controversy. She wondered if Fionnuala were going mental; perhaps it was the strain of putting on a brave face while her husband dipped his meatpole into Polish pleasure fields. And then it hit her: the pearl earring she had seen on the screen.

  Maureen’s brain froze, and her eyeballs felt as if they had been skewered with knitting needles. She desperately needed to reach for a sick bucket, but there wasn’t one in the back of the taxi, and she knew the drivers charged a £25 Sick Cleanup Fee, highway robbery, so she kept it in her throat and swallowed. Then the taxi stopped. Shaken, she paid the fare and weakly tugged Keanu’s stroller out. She looked up and down the street for a police car, understanding completely why the coppers were after them. If she were a copper, she’d be after them too.

  CHAPTER 64

  IN A LOCKER ROOM OF the precinct, the seven men of the Armed Response Unit suited up in helmets and bulletproof vests, checked their Tasers, 9mm Glocks and MP7 rifles. They had been preparing to storm the Flood’s house once McLaughlin received the search warrant and gave the go-ahead, but plans were changing. Two Armed Response Vehicles and a Tech Vehicle waited outside, engines running, to now ambush the bus en route to Belfast the family had boarded.

  The regular troops in the police incident room sat, stunned, at Inspector McLaughlin’s announcement, the information phoned through to the station by the owner of the pawn shop. Lynch and Briggs did their best to look concerned, but their minds were urging the Floods on to success.

  “How could a common housewife get her hands on such a thing?” the same young copper asked.