by David Jester
He remained still, watching and gently weeping, until the others began to appear. By then Andrew had already been staring at her for fifteen minutes, had taken in every inch of her pale, battered, bruised and sliced flesh; every drop of the congealed blood that clung to her flesh, seeped out of her backside, out of her vagina -- the first he had ever seen.
The adults took him away, but they would never remove those images from his nightmares.
***
Patrick knocked back three glasses of whiskey in quick succession. It had been a long time since he had drank so much so early, but his mind needed numbing. The community was in shock and he felt that he was on the verge of losing its support.
He sat in the Dog and Bull -- an onsite pub run by one of the community, who had bought it from a local, non-traveller, a few years ago -- slumped over the bar, the empty tumbler in his hand.
“I’m behind you,” Seamus, the bartender and owner, said confidently, giving Patrick an appreciative nod.
Patrick smiled, pointed to his glass to gesture for a refill. It was good he had some support, but he needed more than that.
It was clear that Siobhan’s murder wasn’t random, but less clear that she had been murdered by someone within the fifty-strong community. Patrick had his suspicions about Susie, he knew what she got up to on the occasion when the restraint and simple life of Evergreen bored her, he spent a good deal of time away from the area, had worked on a nearby building site for many months and had drunk at one of the clubs that she liked to visit on a night-time. There was no way of telling that she was murdered by someone within Evergreen, but whoever killed her clearly wanted to send the community a message.
Seamus filled the glass and Patrick drained it again.
He was having a hard time getting those images out of his head. She hadn’t just been killed, she had been brutalised -- viciously slaughtered and then impaled, stuck on show like some grisly totem. It had taken all morning to scrub the last remnants of her from the fence and the ground, some of it wouldn’t budge; they would have to repaint. He had picked up parts of her from the ground, a piece of innards that lay festering in the mud below the fence, a swatch of skin torn from her breast, left a few feet away from the gate.
What made it worse was that it had been done under his nose. His caravan was just a few feet from that fence. He had struggled to sleep, had tossed and turned all night and had probably been awake when the killer impaled her. He felt sick to his stomach, the whiskey wasn’t settling well and neither were his nerves.
“Don’t blame yourself,” Seamus said with a warm, compassionate smile. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Patrick shook his head. It wasn’t his fault but he should have heard. Susie may have already been dead by then but at least he could have caught the killer in the act, stopped him from doing it again, because two girls were dead now and there was a good chance he would strike again.
He drained his glass, felt the whiskey kick back in his stomach, lurch into his throat. He made it to the bathroom before the torrent of amber alcohol wretched out of his mouth. Some of it made it into the toilet, most decorated the floor.
He flopped to his knees, arms cradling the toilet bowl like a favourite childhood teddybear. He waited until his stomach had expelled every last drop of alcohol, every last slither of sickly yellow bile, then he finally managed to drift off to sleep.
***
He sobered up, slept off a throbbing headache and an unbearable sickness at home. He lived alone, had done since his teens. He felt better that way. A few people questioned why he was still alone at his age, why he hadn’t settled down, but he didn’t care for their careless gossip.
He’d had girlfriends, all of them outsiders, and he’d had the opportunity to marry one of those and bring her into the community. She was pretty, a few years younger than him but well out of his league. He’d met her on the job, working on refitting her kitchen. She was a single parent, looking for someone, anyone, to sweep her off her feet. He’d been the first virile, competent man she’d seen. He hadn’t cared though, he needed her as much as she needed him. They spend a few months together, she became clingy, wanted to be part of Evergreen, practically begged him to let her move into his home. He rejected her, as much as she wanted to be a part of their culture, she would have never fitted in. That wasn’t the only reason he refused, but he wasn’t so sure of the other reasons; lack of self-confidence, an inability to settle down, it didn’t matter, what was done was done. He finished her and moved on, back to nobody.
He washed the sick out of his clothes, cleaned the blotches from his shoes and then sat naked on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands.
Aidan came around, saw the door was unhinged and entered without knocking. He frowned when he saw his desolate friend sitting naked and looking glum. He stood in the doorway, folded his hands across his chest. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked, thinking of the one way he knew how to comfort people.
Patrick bolted at the sound, looked up startled and then sunk his head glumly again. “No, I’m good.”
Aidan was twice his age, but they had been friends since the beginning. Aidan had known his mother and father, had been with them when they set up the community. They were close, always had been. Aidan was the one who looked after him; dragged him from his despair after his father died and his mother left.
“You need to call a meeting,” Aidan said with a firm nod. “Get everyone together again, see if we can’t figure this out.”
Patrick groaned. Meetings, that was how they tried to solve everything. It worked for everything else, the minor disputes, the rare cases of theft and other petty crimes, but then everyone was in agreement of what the right thing to do was, the majority usually ruled, that wasn’t the case now. Some said he should contact the police, others wanted them to strike at the Aherns. He wanted neither but he felt he was losing his vote.
After Susie’s murder the dissent would only intensify. She had clearly been displayed as a message to the community, a blatant link to the Aherns that others would want vengeance for, but Patrick wasn’t convinced. They were a group of rotten thugs, there was no denying that, but this was beyond them. They weren’t capable of such calculated, brutal murder. Even the younger Ahern, Eddie -- the reckless, drunken twenty-one year old who had jumped Patrick a few months ago and had been making obscene phone calls to some of the women -- wasn’t capable of such atrocities.
“Then what?” Patrick asked, looking up with a strained expression on his face. “What the hell are we gonna say?”
Aidan shrugged, still looked confident that his approach was the best one.
Patrick shook his head. “Gather them then,” he said sullenly. “Tonight, at the Dog and Bull. I want everyone there.” He looked up, a serious flare behind his eyes. “Everyone.”
6
Patrick’s head still throbbed. He had taken a few painkillers but they had little effect. His pain, his tiredness and the lingering threat of a hangover set his blood on fire with an inextinguishable irritability. He felt jumpy, on edge; ready to bite the head off anyone who spoke or looked at him out of turn.
That irritability only increased when he noted that someone hadn’t shown up for the meeting. He wouldn't have noticed it if not for loud-mouthed Aileen Brady giving her typical, unwanted two cents.
“I’m just saying, I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, playing the innocent when everyone knew that trouble was what she loved the most. “But Murphy isn’t there.”
Everyone seemed to be there, the room was packed with forty-odd talking heads, but somehow the teenager who liked to have her nose in every pie, had picked up on one absentee. Paul Murphy was a drunk, a loner. He was touching fifty and didn’t look like he had long left. He was a bitter, foul smelling man who few people liked. They tolerated his drunken, obnoxious and often obscene behaviour because of his past, because he used to be a caring family man, before the drink turne
d him into a wife beating prick who had scared his family into the protection of wider society.
Aidan McCleary was just as pent up as Patrick, he’d had a few drinks and had never been able to hold his drink. He was a fighter, a man who liked to use his hands and his brawn, but the drink shortened his typically short fuse to dangerous levels.
“The fucking bastard,” Aidan spat on the floor and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I bet it was him. The filthy fucking perverted little prick.”
Patrick already had his suspicions. Murphy was perverted, had ogled a number of the young girls in the past and had come on a little too strongly to a couple of them over the years. He held up his hands though, tried to cool things down.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
Aidan sneered, shoved his way closer to his friend. “Look around, Paddy,” he said with a wide armed gestured. Everyone is here, we have nothing to hide.” He gestured to everyone. “Isn’t that right?” he yelled.
They all chorused back an agreeable noise. Aidan liked to play to the crowd.
“Calm down,” Patrick urged.
“He’s a sick man,” someone jumped in.
“He tried it on with me once,” Aileen said, throwing some more cents into the fire. “Caught him staring at me.”
“And me,” someone else added.
“And me.”
“Me too.”
“It was him.”
“It had to be him.”
Aidan was grinning widely, his eyes on his friend. “Well,” he said in summary. “Let’s go get the bastard.”
Patrick tried to stop his friend but he was gone before he could make his shouts heard over the bubbling raucous. He tried to move forward, but the shifting wave of bodies blocked him as the mob scrambled towards the door.
They spilled out into the night, yelling, cheering and chanting like a drunken gang of football hooligans. They stampeded across the park, past the former homes of Siobhan Haynes and Susie Flanagan, the parents of whom were the only ones excused from the meeting, left alone to continue their mourning.
As Patrick continued to yell, unheard, he saw Sheila Haynes poke her head through a thickly curtained living room window. Her face was both ruby red and strangely pale at the same time, the deathly shade of a mourning woman who had cried herself out and was awaiting her own demise. He gave her a solemn look -- he hadn’t spoken to her since the night of her daughter’s death, she hadn’t spoken to anyone else -- before he moved on.
Aidan was at the head of the group, a few of the younger, blood thirsty men had joined him, including his teenage son Matty. They were egging him on as they strode and staggered by his side, eager for their pound of flesh.
The Murphy caravan sat at the edge of the site, close to the forest and the graveyard beyond. He’d been moved away from the others, forced to relocate after he’d been caught spying on them through his bedroom window, his perverted eyes and his idle hands making use of the proximity to a young mother and her two young girls.
They swarmed in on the caravan, hovered around it. Aidan slammed on the door, yelled inside, “Murphy, get out here, now!”
His heavy fists threatened to break down the flimsy door. As he waited he shifted agitatedly on his feet. The adrenaline stormed through his body, desperately searching for a vent.
Murphy didn’t reply; Aidan banged harder. “Get the fuck out here you creepy little fuck!” He kicked the door hard, releasing some of that desperate anger. Beside him his son threw a foot against the soft material, emulating his father with a weakened kick and shout.
Patrick stopped them before they tore down the door. He tried to usher Aidan to one side, away from the ears of the surrounding yob and the youngsters who were on his heels like adoring disciples.
“Don’t do this,” Patrick said. “We don’t know it’s him.”
Aidan nodded towards the mob, “They seem to think it’s him,” he said.
“We have no proof.”
Aidan shook his head, disappointed in his friend. “You seriously want to leave now? To tell them all to leave this creepy little pervert alone? No one likes him, no one wants him here. They don’t like you for letting him stay here and now they’re starting to dislike you for this whole business as well.” He put his hand on Patrick's shoulder, Patrick could feel the heat in his friend’s eyes, could smell the vengeance and alcohol on his breath. “I’m telling you, as a friend: turn around, walk away. Let us deal with this, otherwise they’ll turn on you.”
Patrick looked to the mob, they were getting angrier by the second. Some of them were trying to peek inside the caravan, others were beginning to thump and rock it while others seemed to be searching for weapons or things to throw at the plastic windows.
Patrick nodded, lowered his head. He hated his friend for making him do it, hated himself for doing it, but he had no choice. He walked away and left them to it. He could hear Aidan’s screams as he did so, could hear his hardened fists and heavy boots as he thumped and kicked the door.
Aidan turned away angrily, gestured for the mob to wait as he ran back through the park, brushing past his deflated friend on the way. He hopped inside his caravan and emerged seconds later looking like a drunken Rambo -- a sword strapped to his back. Aidan loved his weapons; his caravan was an armoury of swords, knives and pellet guns. He had an antique revolver from world war two in a case above his bed; a bayonet from world war one on prime display in his living room. He poached game with his rifles but rarely got a chance to use his blades.
The crowd cheered as their hero returned, armed to the teeth. He stood by the living room window, looking up at the tightly closed curtains and the light beyond. He pointed the tip of the blade upwards.
“This is your last chance Murphy,” he yelled.
He saw the curtains twitch, saw the little pudgy, disgusting face of Paul Murphy appeared and then quickly disappear when he saw the sword.
Aidan set to work on the caravan, hacking and slashing it, denting and chipping the pliable metal. The yells increased, the noise levels rose and everyone joined in. They rocked the caravan, thumped on it with a berating cacophony. Some of them threw stones; a couple of them broke through the window.
Someone fetched a bottle of vodka, ripped a part of their tee-shirt off, soaked it in the vodka and then stuffed the rag back inside the bottle. They tore at the window, turning a small hole into a bigger one, before lighting the rag and tossing the bottle inside.
The light of fire danced and sparkled; a cheer rose from the mob, the intensity increased. As the fire spread, more bottles were thrown. A few of the younger members of the community tried to assist by burning bits of paper and scraps of clothes and hurling them at the caravan, squealing in delight as they did so.
Paul Murphy shouted. He screamed for his life. The noise outside was too high for his wails to be heard. He didn’t try to escape, didn’t want to face the nightmare outside. He sat in the corner of his living room, his hands over his head, his body curled into the foetal position, whilst he cooked inside his burning home.
7
Patrick was the only one at Murphy’s former home the following morning. He caught a few stares on his way through the park; people lowered their eyes, turned away.
An emotional hangover had cut through the community following a night of vengeance and murder. Patrick shook his head when he saw the caravan, the former home; now a burnt out shell. He felt partially responsible. Murphy was a horrible man, there was no denying that, but even if he had killed those girls, he didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve to be cooked alive in his own home. And if he did, if that really was justice, then what was the moral cost for those who had killed him, weren’t they just as bad?
The charred shell and the blackened body would have to be disposed of. The police didn’t enter Evergreen, no one from outside ever came in, but he didn’t want the evidence on display nonetheless. He texted Aidan, ordered him to come and help him clean up. He was still annoyed w
ith his friend, but it wasn’t the first time he’d let drink and anger get in the way of rationality and it wouldn’t be the last.
Aidan joined him ten minutes later, slinking toward the shell of former life with his hands in his pockets and his chin on his chest. Patrick handed him a roll of bin bags, pointed him to the shovel. He took them without acknowledging his friend. Patrick stared at him, waited for him to raise his eyes so he could let him know, with a glance, just what he felt and thought of him. Aidan didn’t look up until Patrick left.
He found him in the pub later. Patrick was nursing a pint of beer, receiving worried and cautious glances from those who entered and then left when they saw him.
“About last night…” Aidan said, sitting down opposite and twiddling his thumbs like a mischievous child forced to admit to breaking his mother’s favourite vase.
“Forget it,” Patrick snapped.
