Static Cling

by Gerald Hansen

  But even worse than all this was...what she had read in the newspaper. She couldn't get her head around it. It made her feel she was living in a different world. She felt too old for his horrible new world. How she wished she could've spoken about it to Paddy. That's why she had called. Not to inveigle her way back into the home. He had been her partner, her sounding board for almost thirty years. Now she needed his... Advice? Help? Assurance that everything would be alright? She didn't know which. Perhaps a bit of all three. But he hadn't answered.

  Fionnuala stood up, walked to the mini-fridge and opened the door. Inside there was an egg and a light bulb that didn't light. And a bottle of gin. Generic.

  She unscrewed the top and guzzled down. She raged against this new, scary, alien world she found herself in, and the unfairness of it. At least she wouldn't have to drag herself from her lumpy mattress at the crack of dawn the next morning; the dry cleaners would be closed due to the investigation. She worried Zoë wouldn't pay her for the forced time off. If she would even have a job to go back to after the PSNI had tarnished her good name. Again, unfair.

  She passed out on the lumpy mattress two hours later. The pillow-like-a-corpse-torso was wet with droplets of gin, a bit of drool. And many tears.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 14

  The warm front had moved in at 6:32 that morning. The whole town, shielding itself indoors, was atwitter at the shock of a hot sun. The wicked, deadly, dehydration-and exhaustion-inducing sunbeams. Little children in the Moorside did not frolic as usual amidst the empty syringes and used condoms on the broken teeter totters and rusty merry-go-rounds. But it wasn't only the playgrounds that were deserted, so were the streets. Derry had become a ghost town.

  Even the Protestants in the Waterside seemed not to own air-conditioners. Windows everywhere had been jimmied open, old half-forgotten fans had been carted down from the attics of those fortunate enough to own such Yank luxuries. They were placed strategically in sitting rooms far away from bay windows so that the neighbors couldn't see and covet them. They now rasped slowly back and forth in the homes of the lucky few, barely putting a dent in the sweltering heat. Throughout the town, sweat lashed down bodies sitting in semi-circles around open fridge doors, and even the buildings creaked and groaned, the bricks and mortar not prepared for such a lethal onslaught from dastardly Mother Nature. Seventy eight degrees! (Though it was called 'twenty-fecking-five' in Celsius.)

  Earlier that morning, McLaughlin and D'Arcy had braved the deserted badlands and trudged across the baking pavements to the morgue, endured the hellish depths of the non-air-conditioned chamber, and visited the medical examiner. Their sweat had sprinkled upon Eibhleann Ming's body displayed there on the trolley in all its wrinkled, stitched-back-up unglory as they stared sadly down at her. No matter how many probing questions McLaughlin had posed to the medical examiner, it seemed that Mrs. Ming had died of natural causes. Apparently from a myocardial infarction. McLaughlin had finally dragged out of the man in the white coat that this was a garden variety heart attack. A heart attack! It would be an uphill battle to get the Queen's Prosecutor to agree that whoever had robbed the dry cleaners had caused the woman's death, and should therefore be prosecuted for manslaughter. That left them with no complainant. Unless one of the many Mings filed an official complaint. Which seemed unlikely, as they were Catholic.

  Now fanning themselves with files of unsolved cases, McLaughlin and D'Arcy huddled and sweltered together in a forgotten corner of the incident room of the Derry division of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. McLaughlin's office was being renovated, and was not fit for purpose, drills and cans of paint everywhere. McLaughlin chose to investigate this case with his cards close to his chest, D'Arcy his only co-conspirator. He had suspected from crimes in the past that there were some on the force, some younger Catholic coppers, who felt loyalty to Fionnuala Flood, as a remnant of the old Heggarty firm, and tipped her off when there was an investigation into some criminal activity of which she was suspected. When they had trailed her into the interview room in the past, she always seemed prepared for every question. Although there many Protestant coppers—indeed, almost everyone—McLaughlin could have taken his pick from, the only one he trusted not to leak anything was his minion D'Arcy.

  “I'm shocked about yer woman, Zoë Riddell,” McLaughlin said. “Of them all, I thought she would be only too delighted, desperate even, to assist us in our inquiries.”

  “Aye, me too, sir,” D'Arcy said. “Why did she say she could remember nothing? I can't believe it. It leaves us rather at a loss as to how to gather intelligence about exactly what happened. And it casts a certain spotlight on Riddell as the perpetrator, don't you agree? That she planned the hold up herself? For reasons I, at the moment, can only struggle to grasp.”

  “What about this Anne Marie O'Dell? The girl who had the day off from Final Spinz?”

  “Catholic.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. They thought. They watched the sweat roll down the face of the other.

  “Ostensibly,” McLaughlin finally said, “no crime has been committed. This is gonny have to be an unofficial investigation for the two of us, just. The others can busy themselves with the torched ambulance, the break-in at the Sav-U-Mor on the Diamond, the overdose from that nightclub Starzz, and the naked teen in the Richmond Center. Mrs. Ming and her death be's our wee wane.”

  D'Arcy answered, “We have the contingent from Final Spinz all set to come in at five today for their interrogations. If we all haven't perished from heatstroke by that time. And I contacted that O'Dell as well. She'll be there too.”

  McLaughlin looked at her sharply. Insubordination or initiative? Only time would tell. He mused about that for a moment, then finally said, “Let's start slowly. What do we know, absolutely?”

  “That there was a robbery.”

  “Naw. Sure, even that we have no proof of. Only supposition. The lack of handbags and jewelry and so forth. And an empty till.”

  “That Flood creature could claim there had been no customers all day long, and so that was why there was no money in the till.”

  “There would have at least been a float. Don't ye agree?”

  “Why don't we work the opposite way, sir? What don't we know? That we must find out?”

  “We don't know how many perps there were. Or what they took. Or how threatening they were. If they terrified the aul woman to death.”

  “We can gather that the robbery must have occurred at...” D'Arcy looked down at her damp notebook. “Half one or thereabouts. We could canvass the neighborhood. See if anyone saw anything untoward.” She waved a hand in the air. “Men racing out of the shop with bulging bags or waving weapons, and the like. There should have been enough shoppers in the area at that time. Catholics and Protestants. Which means there won't be this daft wall of silence. We could issue a press statement asking anyone to come forward with anything they might have seen.”

  “Excellent idea, D'Arcy.”

  “And if I may, sir...?”

  “Aye?”

  “About the interviews this evening...I've been thinking...As you know, I went on that interrogation techniques training course in Belfast last month. And one thing I learned there won't leave my mind. Did you ever hear, sir, that it's more difficult for people to lie in a foreign language? It's what's called a 'double stressor.' Skin conductance responses have shown that...” And here she went on at length and in jargon McLaughlin couldn't comprehend about, he gathered, how much easier it was to detect lies when people were speaking a foreign language. “There have been experiments and studies about it. We could hook them all up to lie detector machines. I know it's not admissible in court, but it's better than nothing.”

  McLaughlin shifted his chair an inch away from D'Arcy.

  “Interesting. And useful if the suspects was one of them Poles or Filipinos what have chosen lately to make Derry their home. For what reason, I kyanny fathom.”

  “Och, sure, the ci
ty's quite handsome today, sir. Quite the holiday destination, you might say. There's the new sports complex, and the City Walls museum, and the many monuments to the Troubles, including the Free Derry Wall, which seems a popular photo op location for tourists, and the Amelia Earhart interactive center. And White just earned a Michelin star. And Giant's Causeway, one of the wonders of the natural world, is a delightful day trip, only thirty minutes away or so. Depending on the car. And Derry was the European City of Culture back in 2013.”

  “What was I thinking?” McLaughlin marveled with a shake of his head. He shifted again in his chair as a wave of pride in his city rose in his chest and a pool of sweat gathered uncomfortably in his privates. Derry was indeed a jewel on the River Foyle. Now a scalding-to-the-touch jewel, but a jewel nevertheless. “Of course the Derry of today be's a marvelous destination for not only tourists, but also economic immigrants. Ye know, dealing with the grime and dangers and vulgarity of the Moorside as we always do, I quite forget the rest of the city be's marvelous.”

  “But you misunderstand me. What I think, sir, is that we conduct the interviews to them all, to Flood and her daughter and McFee and the nurse and O'Dell and Mrs. Riddell, in a foreign language. After a life spent spewing out lies to the likes of us, except for Mrs. Riddell, of course, it must be second nature to them all. They would pass even a lie detector test with flying colors, I suspect. It would be difficult to trip them up, and we'll only be wasting our time.”

  “Are we sure they can all speak a foreign language?”

  “As you know, sir, I got here early this morning. Before you came in, I found out which schools they all attended, called those schools up, and got all their reports to see which languages they studied.” McLaughlin eyed her, and deep within him the suspicion was confirming itself. He'd better watch his back or he'd find this young pretender leaping over it on her way up the PSNI ladder. Over him. “Since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, or a few years after, in any event, Irish has been part of the core curriculum for primary and secondary students in certain schools,” McLaughlin suspected she meant Catholic schools, “so the younger suspects, O'Dell, McFee and the Flood girl, studied Irish. The Flood girl, actually, was the best in her class in Irish for three years in a row. McFee failed or close to it every year, but I'm sure we can drag some out of her. The older suspects don't seem to have learned Irish, as I'm sure you yourself didn't, because it wasn't sanctioned by the government at the time. Indeed, it was looked on with an amount of suspicion and fear. But Nurse Scadden studied Latin, and Mrs. Riddell French, Italian and a bit of Russian.”

  “And how's yer Irish, D'Arcy? As ye said, mine be' s non-existent.”

  Her already flush face blushed even more. Sweat spat from her pores.

  “I'm sure you realize, sir, I had no, er, opportunity to learn Irish. But there must be many on the force, the younger Catholic coppers, who can speak it. Perhaps even fluently. We can pull them into our little team to conduct the interrogations.”

  “And your Russian? French? Latin?”

  “I-I'm afraid I concentrated more on Women's Studies, sir.”

  “Hmm.”

  Sweat oozed down their pores and dribbled down their bodies. The inspector's shirt was sopping between his shoulder blades and at the base of his spine.

  He shook his head. “Och, this be's terrible...convoluted. Studied does not mean learned. Sure, I had years of Spanish. Kyanny even order a beer in the flimmin language. I was in Majorca for me last holiday, and I had to draw a picture of a pint glass with foam coming outta it before yer man at the counter understood what I meant. Ye shoulda seen me drawing of the paella on the napkin in the restaurant after. Naw, I don't think it'll work. Inventive thinking, but. Ye've a grand brain there, D'Arcy.”

  She jumped as he pounded his fist on the table.

  “Damn it all to hell! Why does it be so difficult to force these flimmin eejits to help themselves?” Eejits , idiots. “We've all the resources in the world here in the station, state of the art, so they are, but they amount to naught if the victims of a crime don't wanny speak to us!”

  D'Arcy still seemed put out at having her idea rejected, but she forced herself brazenly on.

  “Another thing that caused me to think, sir, was the fact that the Mings held a wake last night. Though apparently it was termed a pre-wake. But it's still a wake. A party. I don't know about you, sir, perhaps you view it differently from your worldview, but I find the fact that such a celebration took place suspect in itself.” She said this with a sniff. “Surely it's not tradition to hold a wake the very day the person dies. I've heard a wake revolves around 'laying out the body,' or something like that, but they didn't even have a body to lay out. To me, it reveals some...some...happiness at the woman's passing. Perhaps we can find a motive there.”

  McLaughlin snorted. “I understand what ye're thinking. I also understand the Mings, but. People always be's looking for any excuse for a celebration, a chance to guzzle down the drink with yer mates. Yer team winning, yer team losing, the change of the seasons, the new off-license that opens up on the corner, passing yer exams, failing yer exams, a wane's first tooth, an aul one's last tooth falling out. All cause for a drink-fueled knees-up.”

  D'Arcy looked at him askance. She seemed unconvinced.

  McLaughlin continued. “I must admit, but, for once ye've heard about something that went on in the Moorside that I hadn't heard of meself. Must be as me wife's locked up in that sanatorium, and me Catherine's at the boarding school. Me traditional sources of gossip, ye understand. Why did Bill Ming hold a pre-wake? Maybe it wouldn't hurt to look into that. We need to be taking a closer look at him. And a few of his family and all. There be's some suspect characters in the Mings' family tree.”

  D'Arcy was eying him with alarm.

  “The interview room is in danger of getting rather full this evening. How will we fit all these people in? Let alone interrogate them thoroughly?”

  McLaughlin patted his nose with his index finger and smiled over at her.

  “I think I've a plan. I was watching some film on the telly last night. Not really watching, glancing at it from time to time, as ye do. It was something with that Jeff Bridges. About some plane crash and the effects afterwards. And it gave me an idea, so it did.”

  He leaned over and explained it to D'Arcy. As the sweat dripped, the explanation continued. Her jawbone moved from side to side. Her face said I-still-think-my-interviews-in-a-foreign-language-idea-is-better, but McLaughlin was her superior. So, though her face still said what it did, her mouth smiled.

  “Marvelous idea, sir! Tonight, but...?”

  “We'll just inform them as to what they'll have to do when they arrive at the station, then send them on their way. The real interrogation will begin tomorrow. And none of them will be any the wiser. Clueless, they're gonny be, and spew out all that they've been keeping to themselves.”

  “Isn't it...entrapment or something, but?”

  “I don't care. I want to avenge Mrs. Ming's murder. I want to ferret out the heartless butcher. This is the best way to do it. Unorthodox, it might be. But I'm sure ye agree we're gonny see some results. Just wait and see, my dear D'Arcy. Wait and see.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER 15

  Bridie McFee opened the microwave and fought back a scream. It looked like a crime scene inside. Worse than the one she had slept through the day before. She slammed the door shut. She'd have to cook Damien's sausages and his bacon as the Lord intended: in the pan. Teetering there in the kitchen at the beginning of a sweltering day in a mangy robe that just about protected what little modesty she had, she couldn't be bothered, couldn't be arsed, cleaning the microwave up. And she didn't have the time, anyway. Not while Damien was waiting for his breakfast. In bed.

  Trying her best to ignore the sounds from the bedroom, she threw a pan on the stove. There were a few clicks, and the gas lit underneath it. She leaned over, pulled her hair back so it wouldn't be set ablaze, lit a ci
garette with the flame, took a few puffs, felt better, then tossed the sausages and the bacon in the pan. She flicked on the kettle for the tea. She grabbed two pieces of bread and flung them under the toaster. A few more clicks and flames whooshed out to toast the bread. She tottered to the sink on newly-born foal legs, shoved a pot underneath the faucet and filled it up. Ash from the cigarette clamped in her mouth fluttered into the water. She scooped out as much as she could, wiped it off down the front of her robe, then trudged back to the stove. She winced at a sudden twinge of her wrist. The pot seemed to weigh a ton. Maybe it was a relapse from her weakened state the day before, she thought. Water slopped over the edges as the pot shuddered in her hand. She hurried to the stove and banged the pot on the burner. She turned on the gas underneath. As she waited for the water to boil, she puffed the cigarette down to the butt, stubbed it out on a saucer, then leaned over and marked today off on the calendar above the stove, even though the day had only begun. The season premier of Safari Millionaire: Macapá was now only four 'full' days away. At a minute after midnight tonight, she could check tomorrow off, and then it would only be three full days away.

  The kettle clicked. She filled two tea mugs with water and put in the teabags. They had to steep for exactly five minutes. That's how Damien liked his tea. She poked the sausages with a fork, flipped the bacon a bit. The pan spat oil at her, and for a fleeting second she was taken back to her life before...

  An oddly-shaped slab of melting lard? Or the Virgin Mary staring up at her from the bubbling depths of the basket?

  Derry was still divided over exactly what Bridie had seen in the chip vat of the Kebabalicious four months before. The Church had refused to investigate, so there were only some blurry, useless photos Bridie had managed to take with her phone, and Bridie's word, for it. And she insisted it was a Marian apparition. Skeptics pointed out that Bridie had been hungover as usual, and that, in any event, the Mother of God only appeared to those of a saintly nature. Which wasn't Bridie McFee.