The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3)

by Gerald Hansen

  Fionnuala tore a pack from the shelf behind her and thrust it in the bag.

  “Ta very much!”

  Fionnuala pushed a delighted, shuffling Mrs. O’Mahoney towards the door and guided her forcefully onto the sidewalk, then flipped the sign to CLOSED and locked the door. Now was her only chance, and she was cutting it close.

  Right before Mrs. O’Mahoney came in, Fionnuala had gone to the back stock room and filled two cases with cans of each vegetable they sold. She now hauled those cases across the cracked linoleum toward the shelves of cans on display. She snatched her empty green and red tartan shopping cart from under the counter, flung the pricing gun on the top flap and raced towards the shelves. She fired the pricing gun over the cans in the cases.

  For months, Fionnuala had been raking it in: buying cheap contraband stock from the Eastern Bloc at bargain bin prices from a creature with hollow eyes and shaky hands at the market under the Mountains of Mourne Gate in the city center, selling the goods at the shop mark-up, and slipping the difference into her handbag at the end of every shift. But the day before, Mrs. Feeney had flounced into the Sav-U-Mor, a can of Brussels Sprouts clutched in her fist and demanded to know what she had sold her. When Fionnuala had stared, stunned, at what she thought was a bizarre former communist delicacy inside the can, she realized with a sinking heart that something had gone terribly wrong. And when Mrs. Heffernan struggled in half an hour later with a can of carrots that contained anything but, Fionnuala realized the last few cases she had bought must have fallen off a truck from a very distant land indeed.

  She threw the cans of tainted Cauliflower into the satchel beside her, took ten of the shop’s from the case, and soon a new, and hopefully edible, row of cauliflower gleamed out. She cleared the cans of Brussels sprouts, the clock ticking in her mind.

  Although Fionnuala Flood was a woman who never settled for what she had (even though it was more than she deserved), pure greed hadn’t been her only motivation. Cigarette clinging with grim determination to her lower lip, she worked her way through the new potatoes, the carrots, the turnips and the mushy peas. Her gray face, with its horsey mismatched teeth, usually drooped in despondency, but now it was bobbing like a Thai hooker’s. The brightly-colored bargain-bin clothes she seemed to favor as if to make up for the grayness only magnified the passage of time on her body, her bulk straining the seams as she reached up and down; she had never learned that the overweight should avoid tight clothing.

  She was delving into a case of baked beans when she tensed at a rattling at the door. A key turned much too swiftly in the lock.. Her co-worker, Edna Gee, waddled in breathlessly, an alarming mix of floral print paired with plaid.

  “What have ye got the closed sign on display and the door locked for? Skivvins’ll go mental!”

  Edna gawked at the sight of a frozen Fionnuala, one arm stretched to the shelf, the other jammed into the shopping cart.

  “What in Jesus’ name—?”

  “Dear Lord in heaven above!” Fionnuala seethed through a smile as false as her hair color. “I’m gasping for me tea! Get yer lazy arse to the back room and put the kettle on, would ye?”

  Edna’s eyes flashed in suspicion at the piles of cans.

  “Them shelves was near bare yesterday, and the deliveries isn’t due till the afternoon. What are ye up to?”

  Edna moved closer to inspect.

  “Nothing!”

  “Me hole!” Edna snorted. “Ye’ve got a rabbit-in-the-headlights look in yer eyes, and this from a woman who can kill with a glare. There’s something untoward going on here as sure as the Pope be’s a Catholic.”

  She reached down.

  “Get yer paws away from me cart,” Fionnuala snapped, smacking Edna’s hand.

  The realization finally dawned in Edna’s dull eyes.

  “Holy Mary Mother of God! Ye’re stocking yer own gear on the shelves and—”

  “Back off, ye daft crone,” Fionnuala warned.

  “Ye’ve discovered a way to line yer pockets and put one over on that tight-fisted scourge Skivvins at the same time!”

  Edna’s plump, veined face suddenly brightened with connivance. She sidled conspiratorially up to Fionnuala and whispered, “Ye sly, sleekit cunt, ye! Go on and let me in on the scam, would ye, love?”

  “Ye must be joking!” Fionnuala snorted. “And don’t ye ‘love’ me. A drop of yer piss would scald anyone, ye aul cow.”

  Fionnuala balked when Edna was hired for the Sav-U-Mor the year before: not only had they been enemies since elementary school, Fionnuala long suspected one of Edna’s many sons was responsible for digging up her father’s grave years ago and kicking his skull around the cemetery as a soccer ball.

  “Aul?” Edna roared. “I’m not the one prancing round town in bleached ponytails like one half me age.”

  “We be’s drowning in a sea of debt,” Fionnuala cried, switching tactics. “We’ve mounds of bills, and I’ve all them wanes with mouths begging to be filled.” She placed a hand on Edna’s shoulder and forced a tear from her eye. “Edna, ye’ve not a clue what a misery me life’s been.”

  “Thousands would believe ye, not me, but,” Edna snorted, shaking the unwanted hand off and then inspecting her shoulder as if she suspected Fionnuala had stolen some fabric off her coat. “Take them crocodile tears of yers and shove em up yer arse! Sure, two of yer lads be’s locked up in Magilligan Prison, yer eldest girl be’s off in Malta living the life of a degenerate, and that Dymphna of yers be’s shacked up with her Protestant fancy man on the Waterside. Ye’ve no need to fill their mouths. I’m all for shoving me hand in the till; I’ve spent a lifetime engaging in it, like. Some of us, but, need money more than others.” She planted a hand on her hip, looked Fionnuala up and down with disapproval, then spat out with resentment, “We’ve not had a sister-in-law win the lotto and throw an extra house at us. The whole town knows how ye ran after her money—”

  “Naw!”

  “Persecuted and tortured by ye, that poor aul soul Ursula Barnett was, chased off to America, never to be heard from again—”

  “Naw!”

  “There be’s a river in Egypt for the likes of ye. Denial, pure and simple. Anyroad, ye’ve made me look a right eejit.” Edna’s voice rose in hysteria. “Side by side we stand behind that counter more hours than not, and ye’ve never let on, not a clue did I have ye’ve been lining yer pockets all this time by fiddling with the stock. How long has this been going on, then? That’s what I’d like to know. If Skivvins found out, he’d never believe I didn’t have a hand in it and all. And I know ye only too well, Fionnuala Flood. Ye’d be sure to point the finger of blame at me, and ye know I’m still on probation for that shoplifting offense last year. Give me a cut of the action,” and here her lips curled into a cruel threat, “or I’ll be on the phone to Skivvins.”

  She slipped her hand into the plaid and freed her mobile from the folds.

  “One word to Skivvins,” Fionnuala seethed, smacking the phone out of her hand, “and I’ll bleeding throttle the fecking life from ye, ye minger! And ye don’t know me in the least.”

  “Lemme at the evidence, ye thieving bloody stoke, ye!”

  Edna clawed for the cart again, and Fionnuala pushed her away.

  They grabbed opposite sides of the handle, scuffling in a field of cans, the goods rolling down the aisles. Their lumbering forms groaned with the exertion, their smocks would’ve billowed if they hadn’t been stiff with filth, and they shoved clumsily into the bruised vegetable bargain display. It careened over, sending overripe cabbages and turnips raining down upon their struggling bodies.

  “Fecking useless stoke!” Fionnuala seethed, her fingernails slicing through the air to latch into the flab of Edna’s jowls.

  The bell over the door tinkled again, and William Skivvins pranced in, cufflinks glistening. His left eye twitched, first in confusion, then in rage at the scene before it. He gave a sharp intake of breath, and then the roaring began.

  CH
APTER THREE

  HOLDING A SQUIRMING Siofra in the mud with one hand, Victoria admired the glittering prize she had just shackled to her wrist. Her favorite Disney Channel star, Hannah Montana, all conditioned blonde hair and sweetness, warbled into a microphone inside the petals of a daisy that was the watch frame, and a little guitar happily ticked off the minutes.

  “How dare you! How dare you afford one!” Victoria seethed into Siofra's whimpering face. “I’ve been trying to get my hands on one for months. They’re sold out all over the Internet! Did you steal it? Snatch it off the wrist of someone whose family actually works and can pay for one?”

  As Siofra whipped her head from side to side, the treasures that hung from her ears were revealed. Victoria was quick at registering Hannah’s toothy smile, the glimmer of pink and gold, the musical notes.

  “You’ve the matching earrings as well?” Victoria gasped.

  “Leave me earrings be! Themmuns is mines!” cried Siofra. “And give me back me watch!”

  In her life of entitlement, Victoria shuddered at the affront of one of the lower classes having something she didn't, and now it was three things she didn’t have.

  “I'm going to take them from you too. Just as you must’ve taken them from someone more deserving!”

  Her hand shot out and she pummeled Siofra with slaps, then tugged the earrings from her lobes, hoping they were pierced and she’d see some blood. Siofra yelped and thrust her body towards the nettles, which were proving increasingly useless the more that was snatched from her.

  Even as Victoria clasped the daisy delights onto her ears, her joy was overridden by the perplexity of how this little prole had them in her possession.

  “How did you get them?” she demanded of the girl struggling to prise herself from the field of muck.

  “Give me em back,” Siofra moaned weakly. “Themmuns is mines! Mines!”

  “How could a penniless toerag like you afford them? That can’t be.”

  “I didn’t nick em.”

  “Tell me who you nicked them from now or the beatings are going to get worse!” Victoria warned, fists balled. “The poor soul missing them is probably a classmate of mine! Tell me! Tell me!”

  Even menaced as she was, Siofra couldn’t hide her pride: “I got em from the Hannah Montana fan club website. Them is a limited edition. Number 1215.”

  Victoria snorted her disbelief. “You need a credit card to buy from a website, and you don’t even have a job.”

  Siofra leaped up with a roar, and her fingernails sliced through the girl’s mop of hair and clamped onto her skull. She drove Victoria’s head into the pile of nettles and cackled with victory as she scrubbed the pert nose into the spiny leaves.

  “My face! My face is full of nettles!”

  Victoria’s shrieks pierced the air, but she felt no pain yet, only Siofra grabbing for the earrings. Her elbow shot back and cracked against Siofra’s breastplate. Siofra grunted, and Victoria whipped around, her fist pounding into Siofra’s stomach. Siofra collapsed again, wincing with pain and heaving for air.

  “My hives will soon disappear,” Victoria said, her fingers running over her face. “But your pitiful life will stretch before you until your body is dumped into its coffin. And it’ll be a wooden one, I’ve no doubt. If not cardboard.”

  “I’ve memorized the ratty features of yer ugly face,” Siofra wheezed from the mud, revenge shimmering in her watering eyes. “I’ll kick yer thieving Proddy arse the next time I see ye, ye effin gack!”

  Victoria made a show of inspecting the time on her new watch. “Half-past eight exactly, I see,” she tittered. She looked down upon Siofra with a mix of pity and disdain, the tingles creeping across her cheek. “You’re a half-human Fenian beast. But you’ve brilliant fashion sense.”

  Victoria pointed her mobile phone at Siofra’s spitting, disheveled form and, giggling gleefully, snapped a photo of her face wracked with pain just as Siofra trod on a shard of broken glass. The Protestant girl ground her heel into Siofra’s CD player, cackled as it cracked under her weight, shook her head so the earrings jangled against her neck, and barked with more hilarity.

  “And my daddy’s car is bigger than your daddy’s car as well!” she sneered. “But thanks very much for my new gifts!”

  Victoria flitted out of the alley toward the safety of the BMW, pressing fingers with concern up and down her cheeks.

  Siofra stifled her sobs as she swabbed at her bloody heel with a filthy tissue she had plucked from the garbage, mortified to be crying and barefoot in public and cursing the fact that her daddy couldn’t even drive.

  Another unknown but much smaller girl chanced by the alley and stopped, stricken, at the sight before the garbage can.

  “Are ye right there, wee girl?” she asked, scanning the blood, the tears, the scattered lip glosses, the cracked CD player and broken handbag strap. She reached out a hand to help Siofra up, but Siofra slapped it away.

  “Coke or Pepsi?” Siofra demanded.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “WHAT ON GOD’S GREEN earth,” William Skivvins roared, “are you deranged women playing at?”

  “That one’s been meddling with the stock!” Edna panted in a voice hoarse from decades of sucking down thirty cigarettes a day. “I caught her at it red-handed, her tote brimming with contraband, snatching at the tins on the shelves as if she were at the make-up counter during the January sales at the Top-Yer-Trolley!” Derry’s Wal-Mart.

  “I never! I never!” Fionnuala insisted.

  Mr. Skivvins struggled to make sense of the scene before him.

  “Where did all these tins of vegetables come from?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” Fionnuala said.

  “Ye kyanny take the thieving out of her,” Edna said. “She’s one of them Heggartys. It’s in all themmuns’s blood!”

  “Och, and what about the band of hooligans ye spawned from yer filthy, scabby—”

  “Enough!” William barked, feeling soiled. “Why can’t you comport yourselves in a more age-appropriate manner? It’s like playtime at the schoolyard in here.”

  The women didn’t have the presence of mind for shame, choosing instead to glare defiantly at each other. William marched to the shelves and inspected the cans. He plucked a can from Fionnuala’s case. At first glance, it was like millions of others that had rolled off the production line of any industrialized nation’s factory. Closer inspection revealed the metal to be rusty and disfigured, and the label to be plastered on the can in a slipshod manner. He slid his fingernail into the edge of the label, and it curled off, fluttering to the floor, where all could clearly see the Scotch tape on its back.

  “From the inferior quality of these cans,” he said with a menacing calmness and eyes locked on Fionnuala, “and the likelihood that the labels have been tampered with, they have clearly not come from our supplier. What have you done?”

  Fionnuala opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, then opened it again, then clamped it firmly shut. She couldn’t let him know the full extent of her deviousness.

  “That’s how they was delivered,” she insisted. “I’ve done nothing, save stock em, price em and sell em, as ye’re paying me to do.”

  Skivvins stood in contemplation of the situation, his upper lip twitching, and his manicured nails clacking on the top of the counter. Finally, he seemed to reach a point of no return in his mind.

  “I don’t think I’ll be paying you to do that for much longer,” he said quietly.

  “I’ve not done nothing!”

  “To tell you the God’s honest truth, I haven’t a clue what you’ve been up to, nor do I care to invest the time or mental energy to figure it out, Ms. Flood. I’ve a litany of complaints the length of the River Foyle from customers about your threatening and rude behavior. I suppose it’s no more than I expect from someone born and bred in the Moorside.”

  “Ye don’t know me!” Fionnuala barked mechanically. “I was born in Creggan Heights, so I was.”

>   “Almost as bad. You are one in a very long and tiresome line of degenerates in my employ who’ve spent a lifetime celebrating casual violence and petty crime, perched on the brink of drug addiction and alcoholism, the dreadful effects of which I have the misfortune every day to see. And to smell, too.”

  “Ye don’t know me! Ye don’t know me, so ye don’t!” Fionnuala kept insisting, and the more she screamed it, the more he gave her looks which said he was certain he did.

  “Needless to say,” Mr. Skivvins said, flicking the cuffs of his shirt sleeves straight, “your employment at Sav-U-Mor is terminated as of this moment.”

  “Please lemme explain!”

  “You’re sacked, you thieving creature!” he roared at Fionnuala’s twitching face, while Edna doubled over with silent mirth.

  “Och, ye can shove this manky job up yer saggy arse,” Fionnuala said. “Dead-end? Dead right! I’ll be down to the council board for wrongful dismissal, but, mark me words!”

  Fionnuala clawed the strings of the tattered smock and tore it from her. She threw it into Skivvin’s face, then scrabbled around for her cans, the tears rolling down her face as she stuffed them into her shopping cart. Skivvins and Edna watched her silently, arms crossed firmly, eyes persecuting her. Fionnuala went behind the counter, and Skivvins, alarmed she was making for the cash in the register, pranced over.

  “Och, I’m collecting me special tote, just,” Fionnuala snapped through her tears. She hauled it over her shoulder, grabbed the shopping cart and made for the door.

  She shoved her horsey features into Edna’s face.

  “And ye haven’t heard the last of me, as God’s me witness!”

  Edna harrumphed, a superior look on her face, and said in a strained voice and with a sudden sneer in her smile, “I suppose I should give ye this in any event. I’d just bin it, otherwise. I only bought it to wind ye up, anyroad.”

  Fionnuala started down in incomprehension, unable to make out through her tears what Edna was shoving into her hand. Never one to turn anything down, though, she grabbed it and stormed towards the door. Edna turned apologetically to her employer.