Static Cling

by Gerald Hansen

  In the middle of the room, the boss had sunken, unbidden, to her knees on the floor. Zoë's left hand was raised in surrender, her right clutched her neck. Fionnuala didn't know if it was a natural reaction of fear, or to hide the golden crystals of her Swarovski Regent choker. Zoë was staring before her at Mrs. Ming slumped against the front of the counter, then she looked up at the pitchfork prongs inching closer and closer to Fionnuala's sputtering, half-enraged, half-terrified face. Zoë's own face was drained of blood, and her panicked eyes seemed to be telling Fionnuala to get on with it.

  Somewhere deep in Fionnuala's shuddering mind, she felt a slight relief. But still she wondered as her trembling fingers tried to twist the key in the till lock, Why the feck couldn't these bloody chancers have come in on me day off? When that slag Anne Marie works the counter? Just my luck! And with the hotel takings in the till and all! Jammy fecking sods!

  The key seemed jammed, or the hole was too small. Sweat trickled down Fionnuala's brow and the bleached hairs on the nape of her neck rose as the pointy bits of the pitchfork hovered millimeters away from her pores. Her fingers had never been dainty, but now each seemed like not one bloated sausage but two. She dug the key into the slot again and again, and each time it was more difficult than the time before, so sweaty were the sausages. Pitchfork shuffled impatiently at her side. It might have been nervousness—perhaps this was his first hold up?—but his free arm and hand were flapping around like a lunatic's, and his masked head was jerking this way and that.

  Fionnuala's brain screamed as she suddenly wondered if he and his gang were high on some cheap mind-altering drug. Who knew what bloodbath they would leave behind in the dry cleaners after they had gotten their mitts on the cash? She had seen it often enough on the telly: those out of their minds on PCP and she didn't know what, eviscerating and mutilating strangers they ran into on the street just for the fun of it. And not remembering a thing about it the next day when they were back to themselves again. Oh, the tragedy of it all! They would all be slaughtered mindlessly, and the cleaning lady had just mopped that morning!

  “Och, for the love of God!” Pitchfork screeched. “Can ye not open a till, woman? Give us that key here, would ye?”

  He made to grab it, and Fionnuala elbowed him.

  “Don't touch! It's my till, so it is!”

  The pitchfork prickled her neck, and Coal Tongs thrust his tongs across the counter towards her alarmed face. They might have seemed a pathetic weapon, laughable almost, but now the pointy bird-talon-like bits were snapping open and shut so close to her nose, she shuddered at the thought of the damage they might do. She could smell the scent of old coal rising from them. And...she didn't know why, but there was something familiar about Pitchfork to her. Was it his hands? His voice? His smell?

  “Open that till!” Coal Tongs yelled.

  “Just...just ring something in, Mrs. Flood!” Zoë finally blurt out.

  Fionnuala's mind went blank.

  “I-I've no clothing here, but. W-what should I ring in?”

  She looked at Mrs. Ming's minging bag, still on the counter. Her eyes brightened.

  “Och! I've them overall—”

  “Anything, woman!” Zoë barked. “Anything at all!”

  Fionnuala started, then thumped a button. Raincoat With Lining. The register chimed and the drawer popped open.

  All around her, something in the air seemed to deflate.

  “Take it! Take it all, ye fecking knackers!” Nurse Scadden shrieked from her position on the floor next to Mrs. Ming's left leg. Her voice was reedy and high-pitched for once. “Take it and leave us be!”

  Fionnuala yelped as Pitchfork knocked her against the partition. Her flabs of flesh undulated as they hit. The ply board shuddered, and the hanging clock popped from its nail and clattered next to her clog-like shoes.

  A black garbage bag appeared out of nowhere that Fionnuala could ascertain. Pitchfork propped his weapon against the wall, then reached his hateful hands into the drawer and tugged out the few tattered bills that were in there. He rummaged deeper into the back of the drawer. Fionnuala shot her eyes towards Zoë, her heart plummeting.

  Zoë's lips disappeared into a thin line. She had been kneeling there the whole time like a peculiar statue, one arm up, but now both her arms thrust around her chest. It seemed she knew, just as Fionnuala did, what the thugs were really after. But how could they know?

  “Result!” Pitchfork wailed. He hauled out with some difficulty wad after wad of fifty and hundred pound notes, the money Fionnuala had hidden there that morning. The hotel takings. £15,000. The hotels had a lot of bed sheets and duvets.

  While Coal Tongs and Trowel roared out some chanty football thing and waved their weapons with reckless abandonment, and Fionnuala fumed and trembled, and Nurse Scadden crawled into a corner half fetus-like and sobbed, and Siofra whimpered behind the chair, and Bridie snored, and Mrs. Ming's body kept on leaning against the counter and the blood in her veins got colder and her limbs slowly stiffened, Pitchfork scooped the money up and shoved it into the bag. Wad after wad after wad.

  “Now,” Coal Tongs shouted, “open them handbags and dump them into this here sack, hi!”

  “And yer jewelry and all!” Trowel bellowed. “Get it off youse and into the bag!”

  Another bag had appeared, this one in Coal Tongs' hand.

  He reached down, grabbed Mrs. Ming's handbag and all her scattered detritus from the floor. He thundered towards the old woman. As Coal Tongs wrenched the rings from her fingers, Fionnuala saw confusion in his eyes though the holes of the mask. He was casting the old woman an odd look. He looked up at Pitchfork, apparently the 'boss.'

  “Is Mrs. Ming not de...?” There was an unexpected nervousness in his voice.

  Fionnuala couldn't peer over the counter to see what he might be talking about, but then it didn't seem to matter. Coal Tongs left Mrs. Ming's side, then marched over to the corner and towered over Nurse Scadden.

  “Give us all ye have. Into the bag now!”

  She wailed, “I've but twenty pounds—”

  “Shut it!”

  He trailed the handbag, which really had seen better days, Fionnuala thought, from Nurse Scadden's wrist. He grabbed her earrings and her watch. He stomped over to Bridie's passed-out body, rummaged under her bulk, and tugged out her handbag. It disappeared into the bag. He unclasped her pink and yellow polka dotted Swatch, and it went into the bag as well. He tried to pry some rings from the girl's fingers, but they were too imbedded in her bloated flesh, and they seemed plastic, in any event. He turned around and stalked towards Zoë.

  Something in Zoë seemed to have died. It was as if she knew she was the fatted calf in the room, which was strange, as she was the fittest there. The LV bowler bag slipped down her arm from her elbow, and she held it out to Coal Tongs. Resigned. “Here.” It was like a sigh.

  Pitchfork pointed his prongs at Fionnuala. She had already felt his eyes inspecting her dangly earrings, and the chain link belt that dug into her daisies-and-roses mini skirt, and her sparkles-like-it's-genuine artificial Titanic Heart of the Ocean necklace, and dismissing them as unworthy of going into his bag, and she was offended. Affronted. How dare he...! The other one had taken every last bit of that fat nurse bitch's cheap wares! And Fionnuala was sure Bridie's Swatch was a knockoff; they sold them in a variety of colors and designs at the market for £10.

  She snatched all her jewelry, trailed it off her body, and shoved it in the bag. She flung her phone in there as well. She saw the eyes in the balaclava widen with surprise, and, even with a mask covering his face, Fionnuala had a sense Pitchfork was about to protest. She glared at him, and he seemed to reconsider.

  “And where's yer handbag, horse features?” he demanded instead.

  Fionnuala's nostrils flared as a trickle of hatred ran up her spine.

  “Snatching morsels from the hunger-stricken, so youse are!” she sniped. “Have youse no clue how skint I am? And that aul pensioner and all!
What would yer mammys say if they knew what vile sinfulness youse was up to today? Playing hard men, so youse are, when youse're nothing but cowards! Snatching the rings off of a room full of women. We're all of us women! Women! Thieving bloody cowards!”

  “Aye, ashamed of yerselves, youse outta be!” Nurse Scadden agreed from the corner. “Take everything from that lady of the manor, that minted Proddy bitch posing in the center of all she owns here, aye, it's Zoë Riddell, so it is, and she owns all this, and more besides. Much more besides! Take all her flash designer gear, all her sparkly bling, and leave us be! Gimme back me handbag! Me twenty pounds and me ten pack of fags! Ye know how long I have to work for to be able to afford them? Kyanny even afford to buy a pack of twenty!”

  Fionnuala stared in shock at Zoë. Months ago, yes, she herself would have blurt out words of exactly the same ilk. But this was now.

  “I swear, Mrs. Riddell,” Fionnuala said, “I never told her to say them things!”

  Zoë was unclasping her necklace, and she dropped it into the waiting bag, where it joined her watch, her earrings and her purse. Trowel, Coal Tongs and Pitchfork were dancing little shuffle-type dances that seemed to say they had hit the jackpot with Zoë's ornaments. Typical! Fionnuala fumed. In a room thronged with Catholics, the lone Proddy was the center of attention, her belongings deemed somehow more cherished than all the rest of theirs combined. She ground her molars, and her fingernails dug into her palms.

  “And now them rings!” Coal Tongs yelled down at Zoë.

  She tugged them off and plopped them into the bag.

  “And the last one!”

  Zoë gasped. “Not my wedding band!” she implored. “Not the ring from my dead husband! Killed by...”

  She faltered and shut up as the bird claws of the tongs snapped menacingly and moved ever closer to her nostrils. Fionnuala knew the woman didn't want to bring up the fact her husband had been killed by the IRA during the dark days of the Troubles all those years ago. Perhaps these buffoons were sympathizers. There had always been a criminal element to the IRA, as far as Fionnuala was concerned.

  “Give it us,” Coal Tongs roared. “Or I'll snap yer nose off! And then yer finger. So we'll get it anyroad.”

  Fionnuala looked on in fascination as Zoë struggled inwardly, caught between common sense and sentiment, until finally the woman relented and tugged the ring off her finger. It clinked as it disappeared into the bag. Her flesh was now bare, the better part of £50,000 suddenly gone.

  Trowel fiddled with the venetian blinds at the door.

  “Hurry it up, youse,” he warned. Youse, you all “I thought I heard sirens just then.”

  Fionnuala snorted. Her ears were finely tuned to detect a siren from five miles away, maybe even seven, and they could detect nothing in the air. And why should there be? There was no secret button under the counter she could've pressed to summon the coppers. How could the Filth, or anyone, ever know what was going on beyond the bubbles painted on the window? Trowel was just another man playing tough, but secretly shitting his pants. She could tell.

  “Aye, I hear them and all,” she said. “The Filth'll be here in moments.” She turned to Pitchfork. “The staff room's down a terrible long corridor, so it is. And there's seven locks on the door. Ages, it'll take us to get in there. For the fiver and the packet of tissues ye're likely to thieve from me for yer trouble.”

  “Right! On our way!” Pitchfork said.

  Nurse Scadden gave a grunt-groan. The injustice of it all, the noise seemed to say.

  “Ye mean...youse aren't gonny take yer woman's handbag and all?” she shrilled, nodding at Fionnuala.

  “Let's clear outta here, lads,” Trowel said.

  Pitchfork and Coal Tongs thundered towards the door. Trowel tore it open, then poked his head out. Through a few of the blinds, the ones that were crooked, Fionnuala saw him look up and down the street.

  “Not a soul in sight,” he said.

  “Ta, youse,” Pitchfork said. He gave a little bow.

  Coal Tongs snickered. Then they were gone. The door slammed shut. The victims were left penniless and bathed in the sewer-stench of Mrs. Ming's grand nephew.

  Nurse Scadden grabbed the wall and made to haul her body upright. Zoë collapsed on the floor, her body crumpling like a building just-demolished. Heart-wrenching noises of despair rose from the pile of designer gear, and Fionnuala suspected they were coming from Zoë's mouth. She had never heard the woman of steel cry before. Fionnuala's clogs clacked across the linoleum as they hurried towards the boss. Siofra materialized from behind the chair and blocked Fionnuala's way.

  “Mammy! Mammy!” the girl wailed, wrapping her arms around as much as she could of her mother's thighs in their ladder-ridden black tights. “I was terrible afeared them men would—”

  Fionnuala grabbed her daughter's head and ripped it from her womb.

  “Ye've not shite yerself, have ye?” she hissed down at her. “I'd be morti—”

  “Naw, Mammy.”

  “Thank feck for that! I'll deal with ye in a moment, wane. I've to see if...er, Miss Zoë's alright now.”

  The Filth, we're gonny have to deal with now, I'm gonny have to deal with, Fionnuala thought with growing annoyance as she bent down and tried to locate a vein to take Zoë's pulse. Gonny be hauled into the cop shop for questioning. Again!

  “Are ye right there, ma'am?” Fionnuala asked, and when she got no reply, she whipped around and barked at Nurse Scadden. “Why the feck am I doing this, anyroad? Ye're the professional here! Can ye not do the job ye got all them fancy degrees for?”

  But Nurse Scadden was inspecting Mrs. Ming.

  “Degree?!” the nurse cried, mortified. She pried open one of Mrs. Ming's eyelids and peered underneath. “A three week course and a certificate, ye mean.”

  She didn't want to be seen as an effete intellectual. And who would, Fionnuala wondered, softening to the woman a bit.

  “What's up with Mrs. Ming?” Siofra asked. “Does she be needing a priest? For to read her her Last Rites, like?”

  “Naw. It's too late for that, wane,” Nurse Scadden said.

  “An ambulance?”

  “Naw, wee girl. It's too late for that and all.”

  “Ye mean...a coffin?”

  “Aye, the poor aul one be's needing a coffin. Though a hearse before that, I'd say.”

  “Och, for the love of God!” Fionnuala moaned as she stomped towards the counter and the business phone that stood next to the dead woman's toxic bag. “That's all we need! A death in the shop!” She stabbed 999 on the phone, then barked down the line, “Police and ambulance....Aye. One dead and another I dunno. And maybe one with alcohol poisoning and all. And we've been robbed dry.... Eh? ....Sure, I had nothing to do with it, but!... Och, if ye insist. The Filth'll find out soon enough anyroad, I suppose...Fionnuala Flood. There! Ye've dragged it outta me! Are ye happ— ...Naw, F-L-O-O-D. Final Spinz. Aye, the Lecky Road.” She held her hand over the receiver and sniped down at Nurse Scadden, who was doing some sort of tests on Mrs. Ming's body while Siofra looked on in wonder. “Not a soul will want to step foot in this tip now. That Kreases-N-Klean Kollars is sure to get all our custom! Another flimmin bloody job, I'll have to look for now!” Flimmin, damn (or similar)

  * * *

  CHAPTER FOUR—Twenty Minutes Earlier

  Rory marched across the Diamond, a young man on a mission. He needed to end once and for all this ludicrous, relentless rumor. It should have been buried and forgotten five years earlier.

  As he passed the butcher's, he cast a look at the display window. Cow and pig carcasses hung from hooks, and were surrounded by a selection of plucked game. It was his mother's butcher shop, Riddell and Son. He was the Son. He peered past the beak of a hanging duck and saw custom was brisk. Good for his mother. And, he had to admit with a bit of shame, good for him. He continued down Shipquay Street.

  Riddell and Son was the closest of his mother's retail outlets to the Riddell Enterprises offices
. And now here was another on his left, the Amelia Earhart interactive center, perhaps the biggest in size of all Zoë owned, though not a big money maker. There were many of Zoë's exploits dotted around Derry (as a Protestant, though, Rory thought of the city as Londonderry; he would never reveal this to Dymphna). Indeed, almost everywhere Rory went in Derry/Londonderry, the power of his mother and her entrepreneurial nous greeted him from a wide array of windows and signage. At some stage, he had realized—his first day on the job, actually—it would all pass to him. And Dymphna, he thought. And then to their children. He supposed.

  In his 24 years, he had never given any of this much thought, never wondered about the clauses and small print of the family business ownership. This was the world he had been born into, and he had always thought everyone's mothers and fathers were minted. The parents of all the mates he had gone to school with had many business enterprises as a matter of course, so he thought that was the way of the world. To be fair, it was only when he was at college that Zoë's empire had started to snowball. Most of his school years, she had just run the Pence-A-Day storage center on the outskirts of town, and the fish and chip van in the city center, which didn't even have a name. And back then, they had had a much smaller television at home. And no dishwasher. Or shower with seven shower heads.

  And it was only when he had gone to Derry Community College and seen the state of the canteen and the classrooms and the bargain bin footwear on his classmates that he realized he had spent a pampered childhood in an exclusive private school. He hadn't had a clue he and his childhood friends were the lucky ones in life. Then he had been embarrassed. His mother was bit too successful, he himself was a bit too rich compared to the people next to him in his statistics class.

  His mother had tried to get him to buckle down and hit the books, but he hadn't cared. He had always been more interested in pretending to study, kicking around a soccer ball with his mates, downing vast quantities of lager, popping the occasional E, gyrating his skinny limbs on the ecumenical dance floor at Starzz, and prying his eyelids open in a hungover haze late the next morning, tense, suspenseful, wondering who he had been lucky or unfortunate enough to have bedded the night before. It was that nondenominational dance floor at Starzz, the all-inclusive power of trance and techno music, that had brought Dymphna to him.