Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told

by Phelan, Tom;

  “Without the rope it looks like he just fell off the bike,” Lalor offered reassuringly. “You’d better get on home, Eddie, and get the cows milked before the sergeant comes looking to tell you the bad news.”

  “Bridie’s in a terrible state,” Coughlin said again, “but I don’t think it’s because he’s dead. She was terrible upset about him going after the Martyr’s money, not to mention the way he talked to her in the hospital when he had the appendix. She begged him not to ask the Martyr for her winnings, but nothing would do but for him to go. He changed terrible since he was home the last time, got terrible mean, and nothing we did was good enough for him. He wouldn’t be seen in the motor with us; we were too smelly and dirty for him.”

  Kevin Lalor walked back to the corpse and bent down to put the Martyr’s money in the pocket of the suit jacket.

  “Kevin’s touching the corpse,” Barlow said in alarm, and Mikey poked him into silence with his elbow.

  When the Civil Servant straightened up, he said, “You’d better go on home, Eddie, or the two of us will get in trouble. Mikey and the Bracken chap could show up any minute and see you, and then the cat’s out of the bag.”

  “Jeepers,” Mikey whispered.

  “Bridie’s afraid they’ll find out I did it and think I did it on—”

  Kevin Lalor strode back to Coughlin’s hiding place while Coughlin was talking. With a fierceness that sent a shiver up and down Mikey’s spine, the Civil Servant said, “Eddie, fuck off. Go home. I might risk going to jail for you because you’re unlucky, but sure as hell, I’m not going to jail for you for being stupid. If you’re not gone in one second, I’m going to get the rope and tie it back where I found it.”

  “It’s only Bridie—”

  “Fuck off home, Eddie. Now!” the Civil Servant said in a voice that Mikey did not know he had.

  The boys saw the bushes moving in front of Lalor, and then there was silence. With a flushed face, Kevin returned to the corpse and stood there looking down, his hands behind his back again.

  In Mikey’s ear, Barlow Bracken whispered, “Come on, Mikey. I’m afraid.”

  “I’m too afraid to move.”

  “If we go now, he won’t hear us.”

  “All right,” Mikey whispered. While he was bent down picking up his can, Kevin Lalor called out, “Hello,” and Mikey drew in his breath sharply, catastrophic expectations flooding his face wetly. He knew Kevin Lalor was about to lunge through the bushes to rip them apart before they could swear never to tell anyone what they had seen.

  But the expected did not happen, and when Mikey straightened up without his can, he peeped through the new hole Barlow had made in the sally leaves. On the crest of Sally Hill, each standing beside his bike, were Mikey’s father and Sergeant Morrissey. Clearly and distinctly, the boys heard what was said.

  “Now, boy, you stay here with your bike, and don’t be ruining the scene of the crime, if there was a crime,” the sergeant said, his long-suppressed Cork accent leaking into his phrases. “I don’t want any smart bollicks from Dublin coming in his motor car with his little suitcase and telling me I didn’t perserve the scene.”

  The sergeant, stepping high through the long grass beside the road, pushed his bike over to the fence and propped it against the wire. He shook the bike twice to make sure it wouldn’t fall and sent vibrations down the wire, causing Mikey and Barlow to clutch each other in terror as the strands of wire beside them danced in their staples.

  The sergeant, trouser legs pulled up and exposing his white shins above the tops of his black boots, stepped back through the grass onto the road. Like a duck stretching after a long sit-down, he stuck each foot out behind and shook the dew off his boots. Then he leaned down and brushed at the trouser legs with his hand.

  “I have the cows to milk, and I hate the sight of a corpse,” Mister Lamb said.

  “Hold your horses for a few minutes, Mister Lamb,” the sergeant commanded magisterially, “the Law might be needing you.” Without looking at the corpse, but circling widely around it, Sergeant Morrissey stepped down Sally Hill and confronted Kevin Lalor.

  As if he had practiced the move in front of a mirror until he had developed it into a tone-setting gesture, Morrissey unbuttoned the breast pocket of his uniform and extracted his notebook. He opened it to the first page, took a pencil from the same pocket, looked at its point and pressed it against his tongue. He rebuttoned the pocket flap, pushed the stiff, shiny peak of his hat one inch up his forehead, looked over the top of his notebook and said, “Tell me your name, Mister Lalor.”

  “Joan of Arc, Joe. Who the hell do you think I am?”

  “For the sake of the Law, Mister Lalor, tell me your name.”

  “Kevin Lalor, for Christ’s sake.” Mikey had never seen Kevin so impatient before. Maybe he was still cross at Eddie Coughlin.

  The sergeant wrote, then asked, “Were you the first person on the scene, Mister Lalor?”

  “I don’t know, but there was no one else around when I got here.”

  “At what time was that boy, Mister Lalor?” The Cork idiom and singsong cadences had been ridiculed so loudly by amused schoolchildren that the sergeant had tried to bury what was natural to his speech patterns within his first weeks of coming to Gohen.

  “Spud Murphy was ringing the seven o’clock Angelus,” Kevin Lalor said.

  “Did you recognize the body, Mister Lalor?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And whose body do you think it is, Mister Lalor?”

  “Josef Stalin. Can’t you look at the body yourself, Joe, and see it’s Father Coughlin?”

  “Father Coughlin!” the boys in the bushes echoed in unison, but neither heard the other.

  “Everything in its own good time, Mister Lalor. Everything in its own good time. In the Law we have procedures to follow.” The sergeant wrote, the tip of his tongue sticking through his lips. “Mister Lalor, since you discovered the body have you seen any other person in the vicinity?”

  “Simon Peter went up the hill on his way to get you.”

  “And how would Mister Lamb have known to come for me unless he had been in the vicinity in the first place?” The sergeant lowered his head until his eyes were peering at Lalor from just below the rim of the peak of the cap. He was a cat tensed to spring.

  “When I came across the body, I went back to Simon Peter’s house and asked him to go for you.”

  The tension fell out of the sergeant’s poise. “So, Mister Lalor, you left the body by itself for the time it took you to ride your bike to Mister Sheep’s house and back again?”

  Kevin Lalor did not respond to this question, and the sergeant tried to make himself clearer. “Did you leave the body by itself while you went for Mister Sheep, Mister Lalor?”

  In the bushes, Mikey whispered, “Sheep?” and did not know he whispered.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Joe,” Kevin Lalor burst out, “will you stop your old shite! How the hell could I go for Simon Peter and stay here with the body at the same time. Do you think I’m Padre Pio? Or maybe you think I brought the body on the bike with me.”

  “He called him Joe again,” Mikey said inside his head.

  “You are speaking to the Law, Mister Lalor,” the sergeant said sternly. “So I’ll take it the answer is yes, you left the body by itself while you went for Mister Lamb.”

  Simon Peter Lamb said from the top of the hill, “Can I go on home now, Joe, to do the milking?”

  “Mister Lamb, the Law will be needing you,” the sergeant snapped. “Now, Mister Lalor, did you touch any of the devidence?”

  “What evidence, Joe?”

  “Did you touch the body?”

  “Why would I touch the body, Joe?” Lalor asked.

  Lalor’s irritating informality in the very formal atmosphere which the sergeant was trying to establish caused the lawman to completely lose his suppressive grip on the singsongedness of his accent. “I don’t know why you’d touch the body boy. All I know is
I have to have answers for the bollickses from Dublin when they come to examine the scene.”

  In the bushes, Barlow nudged Mikey. “We saw Kevin touching the corpse.”

  “Why will anyone have to come from Dublin to examine the scene?” Lalor asked.

  “The Law says the superintendent’s the one who says there’ll be an inquest or not, and when he gets here he’s going to ask me what I’m asking you, and he’ll ate the face off me if I can’t tell him the answers.”

  “When the superintendent comes, he’s going to say this man fell off his bike and broke his head and that’ll be the end of it. Any eegit could see—”

  “Wait now, Mister Lalor. Hold your horses there boy. What bike, and how do you know the man broke his head and you after saying you never touched the body.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ, Joe. The man’s bike is at the foot of the hill in the grass, and if you look at the head you can see it’s as flat as a pancake unless it’s lying in a hole, and there is no hole there because I’ve walked up this hill every morning of my life and I know where there’s no holes.”

  “Kevin cursed at the sergeant,” Mikey said, without moving his tongue and without bringing his open lips together. But not even Barlow, whose ear was inches from Mikey’s ear, heard him.

  “Keep your shirt on, mister. I’ll remind you that you’re assisting the Law with its enquiries. And now, Mister Lalor, you will point out to the Law the injuries on the victim’s head, but be very careful; don’t touch devidence.”

  For the first time since his arrival on Sally Hill, the sergeant looked directly at the body. “I didn’t know he’d only one leg,” he exclaimed, his control over his accent in total shambles. “And I’ve seen him often on his bike. Like your own oul lad. Isn’t that a curious thing?”

  “The leg’s under him,” Lalor said. He looked up at Mister Lamb, almost imperceptibly shook his head slowly and turned his eyes to the sky. Simon Peter waved and did a tiny dance in the dust.

  “How do you know that, Mister Lalor?”

  “Any eegit . . . Look at it, Joe, up there at the crotch”—Lalor pointed—“you can see the leg is bent back, and the foot is under his arse.”

  “So it is boy. That must have hurt like hell.” For several moments the sergeant contemplated the pain caused by such twisting of the limb, his hand slowly moving on his face as if feeling for missed stubble. “And will you look at that yoke on his face! In the name of Jesus Christ, what is it? It looks like a big bird shite.”

  “It’s his eye,” Lalor said.

  “How would you know that?”

  “If you look higher up his face, you will see there is no eye in one socket. Therefore, it is reasonable to deduce that the mess on his cheek is the remains of the missing eye.”

  Mikey breathed, “Holmes.”

  Lalor’s sarcasm was lost on the sergeant. “Were the crows at him when you got here, Mister Lalor?”

  “No, Joe, there were no crows.”

  “Then how did the eye get out of its socket if there was no crows?”

  “Maybe he hit his head so hard on the ground that the eye came shooting out.”

  “In the name of the Sacred Heart of Jesus!” the sergeant exclaimed.

  In the bushes, Barlow felt his two eyes with his fingertips.

  “I never saw the likes of this before. Will you look at his empty eye-hole? And what did you say about the head, Mister ah . . . Lalor?” The two men moved to the top of the corpse. “Just make sure, boy, you don’t touch anything,” the sergeant warned.

  Lalor went down on his hunkers and the sergeant was forced to follow, his knees loudly creaking. Lalor pointed. “Look how flat the back of the head is, and look at all the blood that seeped down under the neck.”

  “But you said there’s a hole there in the road, Mister Lalor, and the head’s lying in it.”

  “No, Joe, I said there’s no hole there, that the back of the head got smashed in when the man fell, and that’s why it looks like it’s lying in a hole.”

  “But look!” The sergeant pointed. “Look at them footprints at this side of the head, and you said there were no crows around to pick out his eye. There’s devidence!”

  “Those are paw prints, Joe, not birds’ claw prints.”

  “How do you know about footprints, Mister Lalor?”

  “Any eegit will tell you a dog or a fox or a badger made those prints, not a bird.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” The sergeant looked up the hill at Simon Peter Lamb. “Mister Lamb,” he called, “come down here for a minute and help the Law, and I don’t want to hear another word about the way you hate a corpse.”

  “Aw, Joe, you know I hate having to look at a fecking corpse,” Mister Lamb said.

  “My father cursed,” Mikey said, but only he heard himself.

  “Mister Lamb, the Law demands that you come down here to examine these footprints and tell the Law what they are before Doctor Roberts gets here and ploughs around through devidence in his big boots.”

  Sighing loudly in protest, Simon Peter gently laid his bike down on the road. Holding his hand in front of his face, as if warding off a blinding sun, he came down the hill. Even as he went down on his hunkers, he kept the hand between his eyes and the corpse.

  The sergeant pointed toward the paw prints. “In your opinion, Mister Lamb, what made them footprints?”

  “A badger, Joe,” Simon Peter said. He stood up and headed back up the hill.

  “How can you be so sure of that and you only gave them a quick look?” the sergeant called after him. “Maybe they’re crows’ footprints.”

  Kevin Lalor answered for Simon Peter. “For someone who’s lived in the country all his life, Joe, knowing paw prints from claw prints is as simple as knowing your arse from your elbow, that is if you do know your arse from your elbow in the first place.” Lalor stood up.

  The sergeant tried to imitate Kevin’s no-hands ascent out of his hunkered position, but his knees were not able for the pressure and he toppled forward. His hands landed on the chest of the corpse, and the corpse made a sound like the sound an old man shamelessly makes while delivering himself of a cubic foot of gas.

  “Jesus Christ,” the sergeant said, and as he pushed himself up he exerted more pressure on the body. The corpse made a verbal sound of relief. “Aaaah.”

  “Did you hear that?” Mikey asked, but his voice was only heard within his own skull.

  “Be careful not to disturb devidence there, Joe,” Simon Peter Lamb called down from the hill.

  “Now, men, no matter who asks you, be it the superintendent himself or anyone else, don’t tell him I touched devidence.”

  “Can I go home to milk the cows now, Joe?” Simon Peter had retrieved his bicycle and was pointedly poised to take off, his foot on the pedal.

  “While this investigation is still going on, Mister Lamb, the Law might have to call on you for assistance. Your missus will know what to do with the cows. Now, Mister Lalor, what were you saying about the bike?”

  Lalor pointed. “The bike’s down there in the grass on the right, Joe.”

  To the boys in the bushes, it seemed that the Civil Servant was pointing directly at them. Quietly, as silently as a great-grandfather rat slipping into black water, the boys withdrew their hands and let their peephole fill up with leaves. They held their breaths against imminent exposure, but once again they had not been discovered.

  “Show me exactly where you found the bike, Mister Lalor. This is very important to the case,” the sergeant said, and he waited for Lalor to accompany him. Shoulder to shoulder they came down the hill, and stood opposite the spot where Mikey and Barlow were trying to be silent in the sallies. Mikey made a sound like a hen sighing in her sleep.

  “There it is . . . there,” Kevin said.

  Through the tiny spaces in the leaves the boys saw the two men outlined, shaped like standing-up bears, one thin, one stout, ten feet away. With mouths like the mouths of dead fish, with eyes hoode
d like the eyes of a hunting cat trying to make itself invisible, with chests rising and falling silently, the boys struggled to contain their expanding terror.

  “That’s a new Raleigh bike,” Sergeant Morrissey said. “I wonder did it get damaged when it crashed?”

  There was silence.

  “Did you touch the bike, Mister Lalor?”

  “No, Joe, I did not touch the bike.”

  The sergeant pulled up the legs of his trousers and stepped through the wet grass, putting his feet down as carefully as a gleaning turkey in wheaten stubble. He moved to within five feet of the boys and bent down to examine the bike. “Brand new bike,” he said. “Not a scratch on it, nor any muck or cow dung either. It’s a peculiar man that keeps his bike in this condition, always worrying it with a rag. It doesn’t look like it’s damaged at all. I’m on the lookout for a secondhand bike for one of my lads. I’ll have to ask Eddie the brother about that. He must have come straight off onto his head, and then the bike kept on coming and it never got a scratch. Would you think that, Mister Lalor?” But he was not asking a question, only demonstrating his own powers of deduction.

  The sergeant stood up and stepped closer to the boys and said, “The first mug of tea in the morning always runs through me like a dose of jollop.” The fumbling silhouette of the stout bear moved between the spaces in the leaves in front of the boys’ faces. Then they heard water hissing, smelled the odor of fresh man urine. The hissing stopped, and the silhouette shook its shoulders, fumbled again and the two shadowy figures went away, moved back up the hill and out of sight.

  The boys reopened their leafy peephole.

  As Kevin Lalor walked back to the corpse behind the sergeant, he waved in the air to get Mister Lamb’s attention. “Did I just hear a cuckoo, Simon Peter?” he called. He pointed to his temples with his index fingers and imitated the action of tightening loose screws.

  “Ah, sure I’ve been hearing a cuckoo all morning since I went in to get Joe there,” Simon Peter called back.

  In the bushes, Barlow nudged Mikey with his elbow and said, “If the sergeant catches them, he’ll—”