Evergreen (a suspenseful murder mystery)

by David Jester

  Aidan gave him a blank stare, decided against answering. He looked at the sea of petrified faces, all of them looking at him for an answer. He couldn’t see Patrick and in that moment he hated his friend more than ever.

  He heard a muffled sound, turned to Eddie to see that the beaten man was enjoying himself. His tortured face a picture of delight as he mocked Aidan with a wide grin and a muffled laugh.

  He scowled at him, strode forward and looked up. “You think this is fucking funny?” he bellowed.

  Eddie nodded.

  Aidan kicked the chair out from under him. He saw Eddie’s eyes spring open in that split second when he realised what was happening -- when he felt the solid ground beneath him disappear. Everyone inside the pub heard the crack as Eddie’s neck snapped.

  “Not laughing now, eh? You prick.”

  17

  “They’ll come in eventually,” someone said. “We can’t stay inside for ever.”

  Aidan had other ideas. They could stay inside forever, anything was preferable to going outside and facing the Aherns. He was confident he could take them on, he knew he could beat Mickey and Shaun in a fight, but they had weapons and they outnumbered him by more than two to one.

  He turned as a rock hit the window, shattering the glass, billowing the curtain and bouncing off a table before stopping at his feet. He stared at it, casually kicked it away.

  “You come out or we’ll come in!” Mickey Ahern shouted, as if he’d been listening to their conversation. “You have two minutes before we burn this shit hole to the ground!”

  Everyone directed their shocked expressions at Aidan. He ignored them, peeled back the curtain and peeked outside. They had already trashed a few of the nearby homes from the inside out. He watched as tables, chairs and appliances were thrown out of windows and doors; he watched as they splashed cans of petrol onto the trashed homes.

  “They’re destroying our homes! We have to stop them.”

  Aidan ignored the shouts. Their homes were already gone; Evergreen was gone.

  ***

  Patrick pried his eyes open, felt a stabbing pain shoot through his head. His attacker, the figure in black, was hovering over him, looming over his sleeping face like in his dream. They took a quick and cautious step back when he opened his eyes, as if scared of him.

  He quickly looked around for a weapon but couldn’t find one. He pushed himself off the ground, scuttled over to the nearest wall and pressed himself up against it. He wanted to stand, to run or fight, but his head was still spinning.

  His attacker approached him with slow and cautious steps, his hands held out in front of him as if preparing to strangle him. He pushed himself further against the wall, feeling the cold concrete pressing unforgivingly against his spine. He turned his head just as they approached. Then they grabbed him.

  ***

  Elliot Thompson shoved Aidan out of the way. Aidan watched, disinterested, as the desperate man stuck his face to the glass and witnessed his home, and the homes of others, being destroyed.

  Mickey Ahern saw him and shouted again. “Send my son out and your homes will be safe!”

  Elliot turned to Aidan who gave him an apathetic shrug.

  “This is your fault,” Elliot told him.

  Aidan shook his head.

  Elliot turned back to the window and aimed a shout through the hole in the glass. “Please, don’t do this!”

  “Give me my son and we’ll all leave,” Mickey shouted back. “You have my word.”

  Elliot hesitated, turned to look at Eddie’s dangling corpse and then back at the window. “He’s dead,” he shouted. “We’re sorry, it was an accident--”

  Aidan dragged him away before he could say anything else. He threw him across the room with one swipe of his arm. He closed the curtain tightly and prayed that the Aherns hadn't heard his outburst.

  His prayers went unanswered; he saw the flames, the blinding light, through the thin curtain as Evergreen was set on fire.

  ***

  Patrick squirmed in the killer’s grasp, sensing that his end was nigh. He kicked out, swiped the attacker’s legs from underneath him. He released his grip, yelped, and then crashed to the floor, narrowly avoiding a collision with Patrick who quickly scrambled to his feet.

  He heard the commotion outside and above him; he felt the ceiling shake as a stampede of worried feet scuttled around. He headed for the stairs, took them two at a time and then stopped midway, slowly turning around.

  He needed to see who the killer was; he needed to know who had destroyed the community. Evergreen wasn't just a part of his life, it was his life, and their actions had taken that away from him. He descended hastily, watching the figure slowly climb to its feet.

  When the killer saw that Patrick was upon him he quickened his movements and tried to wriggle away, but Patrick grabbed him roughly. He felt slender and fragile in Patrick’s hands, nothing like what he’d been expecting. He grabbed at the balaclava and ripped it off.

  “Holy shit,” he said softly, taking a step back.

  The figure in black, the cold blooded murderer, smiled meekly at him. “Hello Patrick.”

  18

  “I thought you were dead,” Patrick said, suddenly wondering if he was the dead one; if this was a trick thrown his way by something demonic or angelic; if this was his afterlife.

  Mary Ryan didn’t say anything, she just stared with those beautiful, caring eyes. He had dreamed of catching the killer, he had dreamed of doing unspeakable horrors to them in a brutal act of vengeance, but this was his mother, the only person capable of softening his heart.

  “But--but...you?”

  She nodded meekly, like a child revealed as a secret admirer.

  “I don’t understand,” Patrick said.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I have time.”

  She sighed, wiped a restrained tear from her eye. She looked to the ceiling as the commotion increased, as the worried feet seemed to be running in fearful circles in the room above them.

  “Okay,” she resigned.

  ***

  Mickey Ahern didn’t entirely believe that his son was dead inside the pub, not until the men he told to surround the building reported that they could see his body dangling at the back of the room. Eddie could be a pest, he was reckless, mischievous; if he wasn’t getting his family into trouble with the law then he was getting them into trouble with other families, but no matter what he did Eddie was still his son and he loved him.

  When they told him they’d seen the body he struggled to hold back his feelings. His little boy, with the sly smile and the passion for devilry, was gone.

  “Burn them to the ground,” he ordered with a tear in his eye. “Kill them all.”

  They were all armed with baseball bats, but a few of them had rifles and sawn-off shotguns stored away in their cars. Under Mickey’s orders they retrieved the guns and lined up outside the pub, ready to shoot anyone who tried to escape. Behind them Evergreen was burning to a cinder, pulsating flames ripped at the night air; a thick noxious plume rushed into the blackness.

  They splashed a trail of petrol around the pub and against the walls. Mickey shouted one last curse towards the people inside, assuring them they would rot in hell after burning on earth, and then they set the pub alight.

  ***

  Mary tried to reassure her son, to put her arm around him or at least to stay close, but he couldn’t get further away from her. She was his mother and as strongly as he felt for her, as he thought he felt for her, he couldn’t bear to be so close to such a brutal and sadistic killer.

  “I didn’t leave all those years ago,” she said sombrely, taking a step back to give her son the space he needed. “They forced me out.”

  “You left me,” he denied, shaking his head. “I’d just lost my father and then you walked out.”

  She had a pained expression of sorrow on her face. “It wasn’t like that,” she explained. “They killed your father and then
they tried to get rid of me.”

  “What are you talking about?” he demanded to know. “My father died fighting. He was a fighter, that’s what he did.”

  “They rigged the fight,” Mary said passionately. “They killed him.”

  “Who the fuck are they?”

  “Evergreen,” Mary suddenly spat, as if he word burnt her tongue.

  Patrick tilted his head back, riled by her outburst. “What are you saying?”

  “They rigged it, they drugged your father, poisoned him. He had no chance of winning the fight or living to tell the tale if he did.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “It’s true. I caught them. Your father was the favourite.” She raised her hands into the air, describing his glory, “The great Evergreen fighter. ‘Rocking Ryan’. Everyone knew he was going to win, he never lost. They ran books on the fights and he was always favourite, even more so on that one.”

  Patrick had taken a few steps back, towards the door. He could hear all hell breaking loose upstairs and he was eager to go up there, to get away from his mother, or what used to be his mother.

  “They made a fortune from him,” she continued.

  “You’re saying that everyone in Evergreen rigged the fight -- killed one of their friends and family -- for the sake of a few quid?”

  “Not everyone, and it was more than a few quid.”

  He shook his head, looked exasperated. “I don’t get it. What does this have to do with what you did? What does this have to do with all the people you killed?”

  ***

  “We have to get out!” someone screamed.

  “If we go out there, they’ll shoot us,’ Aidan told him.

  “We have no other choice.”

  The others agreed, Aidan could only watch and murmur his distaste as they began to talk and conspire amongst themselves. The pub was slowly burning, engulfed in fire like the Evergreen homes before it. The Aherns were surrounding the pub on all sides, covering all windows and doors with guns.

  “We need to wait,” Aidan tried to tell them. “Someone will see the fire, someone will call the police.”

  “And what good is that going to do!” they screamed at him.

  He didn’t get the chance to tell them that when the police sirens sounded the Aherns would scatter, allowing those inside to get a clean break. He didn’t get a chance to stop them. They filed out of pub, some taking the back door, others the front -- rushing out in a simultaneous lemming-like mass. Aidan lowered his head and covered his ears, preparing for the inevitable.

  ***

  “Haynes. Flanagan. Byrnes. Brady. They were the ones who set it up, they were the ones who killed your father.”

  Patrick shook his head slowly. It didn’t matter if she was telling the truth or not, what she did was inexcusable. “So, what? You killed them because they killed him? This was all a part of some sick revenge plot?”

  “I didn’t kill them, I killed their children.”

  “And that makes it all okay?”

  “You don’t understand,” Mary tried to move forward, Patrick flinched further away. The bottom rung of the staircase pressed against his calves. “After I found out what they did, they threatened to kick both of us out of Evergreen. They said that if I exposed them, if I told anyone, they would make you suffer. If I took you with me, they would hunt us down.” She was pleading -- a desperate look in her eyes, her hands clenched into fists. “This was your home, these were your friends, your family. I didn’t have any money, I didn’t have anything. I wanted to take you with me, but your life was here; not with me, struggling to survive on the streets.”

  “So they killed my father and you left me with them?”

  She sighed heavily, slunk into herself. “I knew they wouldn’t hurt you. They had no reason to. But...I’m sorry. Please, forgive me.”

  He shook his head. “What you did was…”

  “I know. But they took my child away from me, so I took away theirs.”

  At that moment he saw something else in her eyes. The pleading, sorrowful look was replaced by something more sinister: the accumulation of years of vengeful thoughts, of building and expelled hatred.

  A staccato blast of gunfire split the malice on her face. The shots came from outside, echoing through the open door at the top of the stairs and down into basement. The force of the noise shocked Patrick forward as shot after shot rang out. He heard screaming and yelling, then he heard the satisfied calls of thrilled murderers cackling above the sound of the fiery night.

  He turned back to his mother, now right in front of him. He looked into her eyes for the first time in a decade and, as much as he hated himself for it, he pitied her.

  “We have to get out of here,” she told him.

  He shook his head. He didn’t care what was happening upstairs, he wanted answers. “You didn’t tell anyone else?” he wondered. “No one backed you up?”

  “Murphy,” she said softly, stepping back to allow Patrick the space she felt he needed. “He knew, he tried to stop them.”

  “Murphy was a pervert. A rotten, disgusting--”

  “He wasn’t. They made him like that. They turned the community against him, ostracised him because of what he knew. He turned into a drunk because of what they took away from him, because of the burden of guilt he carried.”

  Patrick held a hand to his temple and shook his head. “This makes no sense. Sheila Haynes is a quiet woman, she keeps herself to herself. Sandra Brady is in prison. Edna Byrnes is old. They don’t have the influence anymore.”

  She shook her head slowly, “They don’t, no,” she said softly, her eyes on the top of the stairs where a darkness blocked the light, casting a black shadow over the basement. She nodded, gestured to the top of the stairs. “But he does.”

  19

  “Well, well, well,” Aidan said, bounding down the stairs. “Mrs Ryan. Long time no see.”

  Patrick could sense the hostility between the pair. Aidan stopped by Patrick’s side, a few feet from his retreating mother whose face was a picture of blackened disgust.

  “You’re in on this as well?” Patrick asked.

  Aidan looked insulted. “Whatever she’s been telling you, ignore it,” he said confidently, moving closer to his friend, teaming up to glare at Mary Ryan. “She’s crazy.”

  “There’s your man,” Mary said, “He’s the one who set it up. He’s the one who killed your father, the one who forced me to leave.”

  “But he looked after me when you left,” Patrick said, defending his friend.

  She snarled at Aidan, thrust an accusing finger at him. In the distance they heard the sound of police sirens slicing through the night; the sound of crackling fire tearing through the pub. “He’s a murderer. A vicious, devious devil.”

  Aidan laughed. “Come on,” he said to Patrick, we have to go. Leave her here to stew.” He grabbed Patrick by the elbow and tried to tug him away. Patrick remained standing, defiant.

  “I’m not going anywhere until I find out what the fuck is going on.”

  “I told you,” Mary said.

  “You told him a pack of fucking lies,” Aidan snapped, shooting spittle out of his snarled lips.

  “She’s telling the truth.” They all looked up to see Seamus standing at the top of the stairs, sweat dripping from his brow, his sleeves rolled up; a rifle in his hands. He moved down the stairs, holding Aidan in his sights, stepping alongside Patrick.

  Aidan growled impatiently. “What the fuck has this got to do with you?”

  “He’s been helping me,” Mary said. “He’s been looking after me, watching--” her words froze into a gaggle; Aidan had thrown out a hand, grasped her tightly by the throat.

  He lifted her off the ground, thrust her up against the wall. Seamus, reacting on shock, squeezed back on the trigger. The noise shattered through the basement, sending everyone to their knees.

  The bullet tore through Aidan’s shoulder, spinning him around before he fell against the w
all face first. He turned, a hand holding the blood onto his shoulder, a grimace on his face.

  Patrick snatched the gun from Seamus’s hands, whipped the bartender in the face with the butt of the weapon and then jumped back, aiming the rifle at him and his mother.

  Aidan grinned from ear to ear. He stepped up, made a move towards Patrick.

  “Stay where you are,” Patrick ordered. “No one fucking moves.”