Deadly Confederacies

by Martin Malone

  ‘Just taking a break,’ I said.

  Partly true. The full truth was that I’d been sniffing her out. I’d listened to her mother earlier that day, when she called into my house for her regular gossip coffee with Louise, my doll. She mentioned that Jo was giving her a hard time. She’d do nothing for her in the house. Smoked in front of poor Gerry, her asthmatic brother, who was also a bit retarded. Her father was a nice man, salt of the earth type. He passed the collection baskets around during Mass. Didn’t drink either. A right holy fucking Joe. There’s no one that good. No one.

  ‘I might get myself a Chinese,’ I said.

  I raised the volume on the radio. Found a channel that played music, which I thought might strum her into a knickers slipping off mood.

  She didn’t clip her seatbelt; her legs were ever so slightly apart. Knees then started coming together and parting, like she needed to pee. White shoes with little heel – she was tall. I was thinking about her knees drawn high and wide, and my balls resting against the cheeks of her arse. I felt my cock begin to harden. I’d heard she was riding the bingo bus driver in his bingo bus when his passengers were in the hall checking their numbers. Sixty-nine, heh heh.

  ‘Do you want a cigarette?’ I said.

  ‘Haven’t you got anything stronger?’

  ‘Such as?’

  She canted her head in a cute way and looked at me, silently asking if I were serious.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll give you a joint. But you better not rat on me, Jo … right?’

  She said nothing, so I told her again, and she said, ‘I’m not a kid.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that,’ I said, giving her a smile.

  It was a fine night, with a sky flush with stars.

  We left the town behind. Something soppy played on CKR that she said I was to leave on when I went to switch channel. Marianne Faithful singing Dreaming my Dreams. I don’t like it – the song is fine – but it was a favourite of my wife’s. Bitch of bitches. The mood sort of slipped in the car. Plummeted, actually. She sighed long and hard. We were driving between stretches of the Curragh Plains. 5,000 acres of short grassland that’s a crop of thistles, nettles, furze bushes, sheep and sheep shit. By day, racehorses thunder up the gallops and joggers take to a track around the woods, while others walk their dogs. Four-legged variety, mostly. By night, in certain parts, lovers park their cars. And that’s where I was headed, swinging a left turn just before Chilling factory. I was telling her that this dirt road was called Colgan’s Cut, after a highwayman who used it as his escape route after robbing the mail coaches. She wasn’t interested. The young don’t care about the past – they think the world started as soon as they developed memory.

  She was sitting up, alert now, straight back. And her knees had come together.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she said, glancing out the passenger window.

  ‘I thought you wanted to smoke a joint?’

  ‘Eh, I meant for later, Tommy … just take me home, will you?’

  ‘Jo. Okay. But I’m having a smoke first. Okay?’

  ‘I’m fucking bursting.’

  ‘Number one or Number two?’

  After the recent spell of scorching weather, the ground was hard and bumpy. I pulled off onto a grassy circular area surrounded by furze bushes. Monday night. I knew the spot was always empty early on in the week. I pulled in close to the bushes that were in full golden bloom.

  ‘Well?’ I said to her shocked face.

  ‘Are you for real? What sort of question is that to ask anyone?’

  ‘You in the rags or what?’

  ‘Wait till I tell my Dad about this.’

  ‘About you smoking weed?’

  ‘Number 1,’ she whispered.

  ‘You can go in the furze. I’ve got a pack of wipes in the glove compartment if you need them.’

  She wound down the window halfway. It wasn’t an easy roll, as the dial on the lever was absent. She stared at distant lights then, but I couldn’t be sure. People often look way beyond immediate and distant things. She stepped out of the car, shut the door, looked back in at me over the gap in the window and said, ‘I think you’re behaving a bit too fucking creepy for my liking.’

  She took off at a mad gallop, heading for the dirt track. Her action caught me completely by surprise. She screamed as she ran. When I caught up with her, I spun her around. Pinched her nipple hard, and dared her to do something about it. She went to slap my face, but I caught her wrist and then the other. Dodged an attempted knee into the balls. She was coughing and sputtering, too winded to scream. Instead, she gasped on a spit, ‘Please … no.’

  She knew in that instant she was in serious trouble. Her eyes went incredibly large. She struggled to break free of my hold. But I was strong. I could have held her 24/7, no problem. She shrieked, and I told her to stop, and she wouldn’t. So I clocked her one to the jaw. It silenced her. I went to touch her cheek, gently, to show that it didn’t have to be a bad experience for her. But she bit me hard on the arm, near the elbow. I punched her in the face. And I felt and heard bone crack. She breathed a raspy sort of breath as I dragged her into the furze and stripped her of every stitch of clothing. I had an image of myself as a wolf and she … well … what she was: a defenceless young and pretty maiden. It was a big turn on, as turn ons go. She smelt of sheep shite and blood and vomit, but those reeking odours didn’t fall on me until after I was done. That fuck’s that, I remember thinking. What now? I was in a cold and hot raging temper.

  Dumped her body in the boot. Covered her with a blue picnic rug I’d bought in the V de Paul. I knew the bogs well. Still do. I eased from the Cut and crossed the road onto the plains, traversed the grasslands, her body going thumpity-thump in the boot. Crossed a minor road and kept going over the grassland, scattering sheep, easing under a railway tunnel put there to aid farmers to shepherd their sheep from one part of the plains to another. Didn’t hit road again for three kilometres, all the while her body going thumpity-thump on the undulating terrain. Passed ancient ring-forts and a tinkers’ camp near a fox covert. I heard their dogs barking and smelled the smoke from their wood fire. Not far from where we did in the picture-house woman. I was like Jack – cool as.

  Drove the road past the Hill of Allen, and kept going to the heart of the bogland.

  Back at the warehouse, Jack said, ‘What the fuck kept you? There’s covering for you and then there’s covering for you.’

  ‘Fucking car,’ I said, ‘it conked out more times.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, carrying on with wrapping polythene around a pallet towered with grocery products. Satisfied the tower wouldn’t collapse under a wobble, he got in his forklift and began to raise the pallet. Then he eased down along aisle four. Aisles were marked out like track and field lanes. I looked at him. He hadn’t noticed anything odd about me, nothing apart from the fact that I’d been away longer than usual.

  A cold breeze drifted in through the warehouse, and the skies beyond the shutter spaces were navy coloured and still ripe with stars. I felt great in myself – I was bubbling, rich with energy.

  After depositing the load, Jack went down the line and pressed the green buttons on the portable control boxes. The shutters began to grind and squeal their way toward home. While he was busy doing that, I crossed the floor to the loo and looked at myself in the soap-flecked mirror. I washed my face because it was bright red from exertion and excitement, then I slipped into a cubicle and checked my dick, eased the foreskin back into place. Less than an hour ago it had been pummelling away inside her, and a rush of pleasure at the memory trickled along my veins. I checked my arm, and there were deep teeth-marks visible, and blood too. I suppose it was the last physical mark she would leave on anyone. It didn’t have to turn out in a bad way for her – it was her call. Back at the washbasin, I washed off the blood, but that bite mar
k impression, I could tell, wasn’t going to fade for a few days. When I was a kid, a dog bit my leg, and the mark lingered for a long time. I applied a Band Aid and went out and joined Jack. I gave him a hand to sweep the floor and stack the empty pallets, making space for the day shift and the daily arrival of stock, which we would be shifting that night into orders for the artic’ drivers. Fucking got so maddening that routine. Boredom used to have me climb the walls and chew on my fingernails.

  Outside the factory doors, we lit up cigarettes and enjoyed the cool morning air on our faces. He was squinting into the morning haze, like he was trying to see future sorrows.

  ‘You should sell that piece of scrap,’ he said, on a sniffle.

  ‘That might not be a bad idea,’ I said.

  He himself drove a red Ford Cortina with black trim. It’d belonged to a colleague’s father, who bought it new with his redundancy money from Irish Rail. A shrine-mobile, it had scapulars, wooden crosses, novena cards and bottles of holy water – touches that Jack said he couldn’t bring himself to throw out. We had that in common with each other, too: a total disbelief in some almighty figure that was going to reward or chastise us according to what we deserved. If God is almighty, then there shouldn’t be wars and famines … simple fucking logic. No one I know ever came back from the dead to say ‘Hello, how are ya doing, Tommy?’

  On the way home, I drove past the spot where I had done in Jo. Didn’t give in to the urge to drive up there to see if I’d left anything behind. Wandering sheep would bead the patch with droppings. Horses would pick out divots with their hooves, especially if it rained. Nature was already beginning to disturb and conceal.

  I carried on by. I hoped Louise was out of the sack. I didn’t want to listen to the moans she liked to drip-feed into my ears. She entered the bedroom about three p.m., drew back the curtains, and whispered, ‘Jo’s missing.’

  ‘What?’ I said sleepily, the bite stinging. Like Jo was haunting.

  ‘She didn’t come home last night,’ Louise said, raising her voice a little.

  She went to tug the blind cord, but I said for her to leave it. My mouth was parched, and the bite mark was throbbing harder under the plaster.

  Louise waited by the window and looked at me, saying things with her looking.

  ‘What’s there to eat?’ I said.

  ‘I’ll do you a fry,’ she said.

  She wore jeans, and a red turtleneck that had a coffee stain down the front. No matter how often she washed it, the stain remained.

  ‘Are you getting up?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, but I’m still knackered … so don’t go fucking nagging at me to mow the lawn and shite.’

  ‘They’ve rang the guards.’

  ‘The guards?’

  ‘About Jo … I told you … she’s missing.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say it’s anything to be going ringing the cops over. I think she’s off shagging some lad.’

  ‘She’s not like that! You know that she’s not. How can you say that?’

  ‘I don’t know what else to think … how would I? Jesus.’

  ‘I’d be out of my mind if either of our daughters didn’t come home when they were supposed to.’

  ‘So would I,’ I said.

  Amy and Heather, 11-year-old twins.

  ‘Make us that fry,’ I said.

  It seemed like everyone in town joined in with the guards to search for the missing Jo. Two days and the weather broiling and people were out in skirmish lines, searching the plains. The furze were thick golden islands, impenetrable, and hid countless small clearings. A little black purse with some coins in it was found by a sheep farmer at the Cut, and later identified as belonging to Jo. It contained the bus ticket she had bought earlier on the day she’d disappeared. Evening papers and the TV news devoted space and time to her. My stomach was beginning to grow ulcers, but I knew all I had to do was not to panic – news gets old quickly. New murders bury old ones … and new ones were always happening.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Louise said as we watched the TV.

  Jo’s old holy Joe, Bob, was beseeching anyone with information to come forward. He looked broken. But then he always had that broken look. It was like his face always knew that this day was coming.

  ‘Do you think she’s dead, Tommy?’

  ‘It’s not looking good for her.’

  ‘What sort of sick bastards are out there? It must be someone who knows her … Bob thinks so, doesn’t he? He said as much, didn’t he?’

  ‘Shush,’ I said.

  I went on three searches, spoke with and agreed with fellow searchers who whispered to each other in confidence that we were looking for a body. Into the mix came news of some fucking turf-cutters unearthing a medieval Bible that had been preserved for centuries in the Bog, not far from where I’d hidden the ‘disappeared’ Jo. I began to feel like I was running out of fucking space. It felt like my veins were being squeezed. Freaked me out some – then everything seemed to slacken off. I don’t know why, but it did. I figured that the lull was just a respite.

  Almost a year on, and her name again started to appear in the newspapers. Grainy images of her in a straw hat with a wide brim and a polka-dot band. None did her any real justice: she was far prettier.

  I expected appeals on TV from Bob and members of her family to happen. She was gone. I would love to have said to them, get over the fucking fact and move forward. It’s what the rest of us have to do. It’s her own fault that she’s not here.

  I suspected that this would be the way of things: every year, for months, her name wouldn’t register on people’s tongues, or even in their minds. Flurries of activity then in the weeks before the anniversary, and after it had passed by. Time once more would wrap its foggy shroud around her.

  It helped my/our position too, deflecting cop heat, that meantime other women had been attacked, that another had also vanished. Though they did bring the heat on me a little, because I was a suspect, like it or not, and not just because of Jo, but for the picture-house woman. Jack had done that stupid thing, which almost sold the pair of us down the fucking Liffey and out to sea.

  Fitz was the guy who infrequently sought me out to invite me to help the police with their enquiries. I easily imagined his crestfallen look after he’d gone and checked out my statements – nothing hits a cop harder than him thinking his hunch system is fucked.

  I don’t think of her that often. Even now. Jo was a Sally and a Liz back in time. Neither of those women went missing or was harmed in any way by my good self, so I know for a fact that Jo is the odd bitch out.

  Twice during the winter and inclement months I’d gone to move her body from the bog-hole, and on each occasion I’d heard this strong voice in my head saying not to go next nor near her.

  Louise was happy that I’d moved on from the warehouse to work at the buildings. The money was much better in construction, and the work mostly open-air, which suited me. I’d served two years as a brickie before, and I’d worked it so I could finish serving my time. Fully qualified, my wages soared and I was in huge demand, even if times were hard in the industry. Travelling from site to site gave me an opportunity to suss out the lovely fillies on the pavements. Yummy mummies, fine young things, and sometimes it wasn’t the mummies or the fine things that kept my eyes turned but something else about a woman that seemed to do it for me.

  I’d flown to England with a woman I fell in with in a bar. She was called Liz. Though she was a little on the old side and running to fat, she was fit for purpose in that she had a dirty tongue, and sex-wise there were no holds barred. The only complaint I had was when she took out her dentures and placed them on my belly before she put her mouth to me. Shrivelled my cock it did, looking at her falsies staring up at me. It shook me a little when she said, ‘I think you’ve hurt women, haven’t you?’ She claimed
to be psychic. I replied, ‘No. Jesus, no.’

  Uncomfortable moments like that sprang up out of nowhere. For instance, one afternoon, Amy stood beside me in the mall. We were standing outside a shoe shop waiting on Louise to come out of Marks & Spencer with a roast for the dinner.

  ‘Daddy, there she is,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jo who went missing, you remember?’

  A poster of Jo on the shop window, smiling. Tanned face, smiling eyes.

  ‘Please help … information to … Jo,’ she read aloud. ‘I used to like her babysitting us, she was very funny, Daddy.’

  ‘She was … yeah … finish your smoothie.’

  She sucked loudly through the red straw.

  ‘Daddy, do you think she ran away?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Do you think she’s dead?’

  ‘Amy. They’re not nice questions.’

  ‘She didn’t take her money out of her bank account or credit union … Mammy said that.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, really. So I think … I think … Daddy, pay attention.’

  ‘I’m listening. What?’

  ‘Aliens took her.’

  ‘Maybe so.’

  She finished her smoothie, and then told me she was bursting and couldn’t hold it. Fuck, I thought. Fucking kids. We moved to the nearest loo, and on the way I saw Bob and one of his daughters handing out fliers. I couldn’t think of her name. She was the spitting image of Jo. And she stood right in our way, like some fucking ghost – she smiled at people while Bob kept a serious face that showed his mood and his sickness.

  ‘Bob,’ I said, simply.

  His daughter was talking to a tall, skinny woman in a red trouser-suit.

  Bob shrugged and said, ‘We can’t sit around and do nothing. Can we?’

  He didn’t know he was talking to a member of a small group of suspects. Up close he had the appearance of a man whose heart had lost its chime.