Static Cling

by Gerald Hansen

  “I think I might have a wee idea about that. Ye know, I saw a new crack in the window as we was entering the shop, and it made me wonder...Let me make a quick phone call.” He scrolled through the contacts on his phone, smearing curry on the screen. “Is that Oisin?...C'mere, don't youse use Final Spinz for yer cleaning of the linens? ...Aye, I recall it being mentioned and yer name coming up in that article about Zoë Riddell in the Journal the other month. When do youse pay for their service?...And how? Cash?! But surely—aye, I understand...And could ye tell me, what about the other hotels? Do ye know about them and all? Do they pay cash also?...Aye...Right ye are. Aye, see ye Friday. Cheerio.”

  He hung up.

  “Just as I suspected. Ye mind it was in the business pages—och, naw. Ye don't read them, ye said. Anyroad, it said in one of the papers that Final Spinz had secured the contract for all the hotels in Derry. The surprise of getting the contract had less to do with the tiny size of the dry cleaners, and more to do with the mighty force of Zoë Riddell. Ye saw yerself how small the shop is.”

  “How did they manage to get the contract? And make the hotels pay cash? I assume that's what your mate said on the phone?”

  “Aye, Oisin runs the Palace down the Strand. That Zoë Riddell's a bleedin genius, that's how. Like yer woman, that blonde one, on Dragons' Den, and them two blonde ones on Shark Tank.” McLaughlin loved these shows. “Though Zoë be's dark rather than blonde.”

  “I don't watch the telly,” D'Arcy sniffed.

  “Not even the women's rugby?”

  It was as if she hadn't heard.

  “By my calculations,” McLaughlin said thoughtfully, counting vaguely on his fingers, “given the amount of hotels in Derry, and multiplying the number by how many beds and dining room tables in them...more than £10,000 musta been in the till. And the third Wednesday of every month be's the only time so much is ever in that till. And today's the third Wednesday. Which means—”

  “An inside job!”

  “Which also means—”

  “One of these is responsible!”

  She waved her notebook.

  McLaughlin looked down at the page flapping under his nose. D'Arcy held it still so he could read.

  SUSPECTS:

  FANOOLA FLOOD

  ROSE ADELE IVY SCADDEN

  ANNE MARIE O'DELL

  SHEEFRA !!!

  BRIDIE McFEE ???

  “Aye,” McLaughlin said with a nod. “The only question be's, but, which one? The most likely suspect is—”

  “That hard-faced harridan,” D'Arcy snarled, “That pear-shaped cow with the bleached ponytails and the face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle. And a mind narrow in inverse proportion to her waistline.”

  McLaughlin eyed her askance, then spoke. “But we mustn't be so hasty to point the finger at her. There are other suspects.”

  D'Arcy seemed inspired and triumphantly scribbled another name in her notebook.

  “Zoë Riddell herself! Some insurance scam, perhaps? Free publicity?”

  “Aye. It passed through me mind as well. The moment I saw her there at the scene of the crime. What's the likelihood she just happened by, was just strolling by her business and decided to enter right before the yobs?”

  “And the passed out one? That Bridie McFee?”

  “Hmm. Maybe it'll come out during the interview that she had some grievance against the shop. Though the wee girl didn't look like she had much use for a dry cleaners. Perhaps we'll discover she's in dire financial need. We'll have to check up on her finances.”

  “And the nurse?”

  “Gambling debts. Up to her eyeballs in it. Scratch cards, apparently.”

  “How do you know that, sir?”

  McLaughlin patted his nose.

  “She's apparently on her fourth mortgage. Mrs. Ming we can rule out, at least.” He leaned over the arm rest towards her. She tensed. “I'll reveal something to ye now, D'Arcy. But not a word to anyone on the investigation, mind. She was me mammy's karaoke partner.”

  She relaxed. “Not so hasty, there, sir. She might have, or might have had, I should say, some grandson or third uncle infected with the criminal element.”

  McLaughlin raised an eyebrow.

  “Och, ye're a brilliant copper, so ye are, wee girl.” As D'Arcy twittered with pride and added Mrs. Ming to the list, McLaughlin seemed suddenly disappointed in life in general. “I'll put me feelers out and see what word on the street is. Perhaps there's something I don't know about. That people didn't wanny dare worry me about.”

  “As...disappointing as it is, I suppose we can discount the little girl. As vulgar as she is, she must be only about eight years of age.”

  She scribbled out her name, and McLaughlin grabbed her arm and looked at her sadly. It was as if he wanted to take back the compliment he had just given her.

  “Appearances can be deceptive. As I'm sure ye realized when she insulted ye. That Siofra Flood used to go to school with our Catherine. And she be's twelve years of age, not eight. Raised on a diet of crisps and sweets, I've no doubt. That her mother shoplifted from the Top-Yer-Trolley. And when Mrs. Flood can't be arsed, she sends the wee girl, and her older and younger brother and all, down there to shoplift for her. Naw. It saddens me heart to say it, but we kyanny discount wee Siofra. Put her back down on yer list. Sure, ye know yerself the criminals be's getting younger and younger as the years go by, how young them drug addicts start today. And the hunger for drugs drives them to robbery and muggings and crimes of all sorts. Aye, the wee girl looks younger than her years, and I always suspected it was malnourishment, or perhaps bad nutrition, but now that I think of it, heroin might be to blame. And now I mind...Do ye not know she approached the McDaid brothers, Derry's drug lords, back when them ruled the streets, for to pay for her first holy communion frock? Perhaps they're still in touch. Unlikely, aye. But ye never know. Stranger things have happened.”

  D'Arcy gasped. “And as her mammy works there, she mighta let slip about all the cash that be's in the shop on the third Wednesday. And the wee girl needed the cash to feed her drug habit.” She nodded with sudden conviction. “I thought it odd the girl was there in the first place.”

  “Perhaps yer instincts is right. We'll find out.”

  D'Arcy snapped her notebook shut, strapped herself in, and grappled the steering wheel.

  “Where to now, sir?”

  “We've to find out where the ambulances took Zoë Riddell and the McFee girl and go visit them.”

  The seat belt sliced his bulk in two. The car sped through the streets. As she drove, D'Arcy got on the police radio to find out where the paramedics had taken the two.

  Zoë Riddell was the only Protestant on the scene, the only one who wouldn't want to protect a perpetrator whether Catholic or not, the lone soul who would answer the questions posed to her. But she'd been out cold when they'd arrived and hadn't been able to answer any questions. And then they had hauled her into the ambulance, so she wasn't even within earshot of the questions any longer.

  And they had to get to Bridie McFee and drag the information out of her. Before Fionnuala Flood and Nurse Scadden visited her bedside without even grapes and threatened her to keep her trap shut. That wasn't outside the realm of possibility.

  While the unmarked police car sped through the traffic, McLaughlin turned to D'Arcy.

  “What did ye make of that newspaper palaver?” he asked. “I kyanny get me head around it.”

  It had happened right after they left the break room. Fionnuala Flood had clomped her way down the hallway after them, calling out in a reedy, overly-polite voice that she seemed to have stolen from somebody else, “Sir! Sire! Sirs!”

  When they had turned around, she had given what looked like an awkward curtsy and said, her eyes shimmering with some emotion McLaughlin couldn't gauge: “I've me newspaper out there on the counter. I paid for it with me own money. Are ye gonny remove it as evidence? Please don't, sire. I need it.”

  “I'm afrai
d so,” McLaughlin had told her. “I'm sure ye've seen it on the telly often enough. Everything in the shop needs to be itemized and bagged by SOCO and examined.”

  Anger had flashed in her eyes.

  “Och, sure, it's a flimmin aul useless newspaper!” she had barked, suddenly transformed into her old rude self. “What use can it possibly be of to youse?”

  “We don't know, Mrs. Flood. But we must take everything from the crime scene.”

  “Fifty bloody pee it cost me!” she roared, her face stretched with rage. “Have ye any clue how much fifty pee means to the likes of me? Naw! Ye haven't a clue, have ye? Because the bastard Brit government doles out thousands a month in blood money for yer wages, doesn't they? Money straight from the—” Here she dry heaved and did strange things with her mouth and tongue and spittle as if saying the next few words were making her ill “—the hateful bloody bastard of a slag Queen of England. I want me paper! I want it now!”

  “I'll reimburse ye for the fifty pee ye paid for the newspaper. Bear in mind, but, that this is highly irregular, Mrs. Flood.”

  McLaughlin fiddled around in his pocket.

  “Is it today's newspaper?” D'Arcy had chanced as Fionnuala stood there with an expectant palm out.

  Fionnuala had scowled as if that were the most ridiculous question posed so far that afternoon. “Naw!” she snapped. “Yesterday's! I wanny see how wrong they got the weather forecast.”

  It seemed D'Arcy didn't know quite how to respond. Perhaps this was true. Who knew what peculiar way this madwoman's mind worked?

  “Of course not, ye silly bitch!” Fionnuala snorted. “Today's!”

  McLaughlin had finally located a coin. “There's a pound so's ye can buy yerself another copy.”

  Understanding spread over Fionnuala's face. It seemed she hadn't realized, because it was still the same day, she could just buy another copy of the newspaper at any newsagent with relative ease. She snatched the coin out of McLaughlin's hand.

  “I've no change!” she warned.

  “I wasn't expecting any, Mrs. Flood.”

  Then she had galloped back down the hall.

  McLaughlin and D'Arcy had inspected the items on the counter. The tablecloth draped against the cash register, the plastic bag of filthy overalls, the empty bag of Jelly Babies. They were excited about some of the stains on the tablecloth. They looked like blood. But turned out to be only rust. And they had spent quite a while inspecting the newspaper. But they could see nothing incriminating in it, except perhaps crimes against objective journalism and good taste. The headline was RENEGADE SHEEP RUNS AMOK IN MULTI-STORY, Two Injured.

  Now D'Arcy answered, “I haven't a clue, sir. She seemed obsessed with it.”

  McLaughlin shrugged.

  “We'll make sure the technicians have a careful look at it.”

  More important than the mystery of the newspaper right now, though, was the death of Mrs. Ming. A crime, manslaughter—maybe even murder—had been committed. Probably along with a robbery. It was frustrating, with the ghetto mindset of the victims, that there was no cooperation. But understandable. However, McLaughlin thought as they rolled past a post office and a mattress store, somebody had to stick up for Mrs. Ming. His mother's karaoke partner. They needed to find the reason for her death. And the person or persons responsible.

  As D'Arcy steered into a roundabout, McLaughlin was humming “The Last Waltz.” It had been Mrs. Ming's last waltz, indeed, in the dry cleaners.

  * * *

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Bridie McFee moaned. Her mind was muddy, as if submerged in sewer water. She struggled to wrench open her eyelids. They seemed pasted to her eyeballs. In a tiny corner of her consciousness, a lone thought sparkled: Me fecking gut aches.

  It wasn't the familiar pain she got when she gobbled down too many steak and kidney pies, or when she thrust five pints of lager down her throat and there was no functioning loo in the vicinity. It was a scary deep throbbing she had never encountered before. And now that her brain was revving up, she realized her nostrils ached, too. And that her lips were raw and tender, numb almost, and that pains were shooting up and down the length of her windpipe. Her throat felt...violated. Her brain oscillated between revulsion and excitement. Had some lad...?

  She tried to summon the strength to move an arm, a finger, in either defense or triumph. Never before had gravity seemed to press down upon her body with such great strength, and she was an expert at fighting it, had spent a lifetime compelling her excess poundage through the mighty and sadly all-encompassing force.

  She remembered. Her raw lips twitched with sudden distress. She recalled it now like a series of horrific slides flashed upon the backs of her pasty eyelids: Damien's roars as the latest argument broke out, the freckles on his face stretched with rage, his raised fist, the tea cup sailing like a missile towards her, her grabbing her handbag and slamming the door, the teary trek to the Craiglooner pub, looking down and seeing two mismatched trainers on her feet, the first pint, the first shot of whiskey, the 2 Unlimited on the jukebox, the second pint, the toilet that wouldn't flush, the second shot of whiskey, the climb onto the table to dance to “Call Me Maybe,” the hands pulling her down, her screaming abuse at the bouncer for not allowing her to dance, the third pint, the bags of crisps—oyster & vinegar, sweet chili chicken, cured ham & pickle and roast ox—the first shot of tequila, the next pint of beer. And after that...? The slides were gone.

  Oh! No, they weren't.

  As her mind rewound with increasing horror, three more flashed onto her eyelids, perhaps the worst: Damien's hand clawing at her handbag, wanting her money purse, as she tried to reach the door, her smacking it away, him calling out after her that 'she was in for a battering when she got back.'

  She forced her eyes open. The fluorescent strips above scalded her eyes. She winced, and at a glance of the decrepitude around her, she clamped her eyes shut again.

  She tried to gasp but couldn't. A tube was shoved down her throat. She gurgled around the rubber. Her eyes had seen enough to know that she was in a hospital. But....and here curiosity got the better of her, and her eyes just had to flicker open again, as unwilling as they were to take in where her body had ended up.

  She was in a hospital bed, or a trolley-type thing, in any event. And, she realized to her increasing dismay, the bed was shoved into an alcove between the elevators and the waiting lobby. It was stuffed with victims of what looked like stabbings and drug overdoses. From the peeling paint and the cracks in the walls, which were covered by posters which screamed out the dangers of recreational drug abuse, advice unheeded by many in the waiting room, she knew this wasn't Altnagelvin. Her heart fell. Altnagelvin was the modern hospital with a first-class staff that catered to many in Derry, and where Bridie had gotten her tonsils out and been given a grape lollipop when she was eight.

  This was St. Blanchard's. She had heard the stories about it. The underfunded, almost forgotten hospital that languished between the race track and the chemical plant. It had been thrown up in the 60s, bombed once in 1973 and twice in the 80s, and had never really been renovated properly. The city council should've condemned it long ago, but had never gotten around to it. The doctors were the worst in their class, and the overworked staff did the best they could with the outmoded and sometimes defective medical equipment they were damned with. The hospital beds always had one wonky wheel that went the wrong way, like the worst of shopping carts, and there were always additional injuries from slipping on pools of blood that formed more quickly than they could be mopped up.

  The patients of St. Blanchard's were mainly drug addicts looking for prescriptions, alcoholics who didn't know where they had entered, and the homeless who the paramedics thought the smell or look of might offend the good sick folk of Altnagelvin. And here Bridie had been brought and now was, next to the waiting room, on show for all the drug addicts, alkies and losers of Derry to see.

  Her heart fell. What had happened? Why had the ambulance t
aken her here? Didn't they know who she was? Perhaps Altnagelvin had been too far away? It was on the top of a hill, after all. She looked down and was shocked. A needle hung from her arm, leading to a bag containing a clear liquid she suspected wasn't vodka. To her further horror, a catheter was fitted...fitted... It seemed to be fitted to her bladder! Was this to save her the embarrassment of wetting the bedsheets? But she was on a trolley! There weren't even bedsheets! Only cold steel! In any event, it seemed her piss had gone straight into the bag that hung from the tube. It was filled to bursting.

  The druggies were eying her from their yellow and orange plastic chairs, seemingly to wonder how to scam money out of her. She reached for her handbag. She couldn't find it.

  A face blocked out the lights above her like an eclipse. She gurgled a scream through the tube down her throat. A tarnished stethoscope swung over her, almost putting out her eye. She was shocked. It was a Pakistani woman in a doctor's coat. Bridie thought they were always the best in their class.

  “I see you are back with us again,” the doctor said. Her grimy coat, fraying at the wrists, was spattered with stains old and new, blood and worse. She had too many letters on her name tag for Bridie to make sense of them. The doctor had sparkly blue eyeshadow, a nose ring, and her pink lips were pinched with disapproval. She checked a clipboard that Bridie supposed had been at her feet on the trolley. “Ms. McFee. Thankfully, you had that...ID...in your...” The doctor's eyes swiveled, unable to meet Bridie's. “Well. We could identify you, in any event.”

  Bridie blushed. Her Robbie Williams Fan Club membership card. She always kept it close to her heart. In her left bra cup.

  “You were coming to consciousness when you arrived, but were babbling nonsense. We had to put you back under due to the high risk of shock and hyponatremia during the operation.” Whatever hypnoatremia was. “I think we can take this out now.”

  As the woman unplugged the tube from Bridie's lips and wound it out, Bridie realized she was surprised at the Asian's accent. She sounded almost Derry. What was the world coming to when even the Pakistanis, who seemed imperious to the changing of their accents, were now third or four generation in Derry? Speaking like normal people? Bridie never saw them around the town. Where had this woman hidden? Though perhaps Bridie had spent a lifetime ignoring them, her brain refusing to accept their existence.