Sigil

by Aidan J. Reid

  “Mrs. Tighe has just arrived. Should I send her in?”

  “Give me a few minutes,” Cleverley said to the receptionist, as he started to walk away and back toward the entrance of the morgue. “I just need to tie up a loose end.”

  SEVEN

  It was around noon when Louise Tighe, supported by Father Regan, faced the table that was elevated to waist height. On the other side was the coroner, whose head was bowed out of respect. His eyes looked up into the face of the woman and then settled on the priest who seemed to be keeping her upright, arm hooked underneath her elbow.

  “In your own time, of course,” Cleverley said.

  Regan caressed the arm of the woman whose eyes were fixed on the sheet-covered body inches from them. Since receiving the news, she had wanted nothing more than to see him. Now, given the chance to do just that, she couldn't find the strength to see what lay underneath.

  “Are you ready Louise?”

  She looked to the owner of the voice and saw the kind, moon face of the priest close to her own. His eyes were sad and it made her feel pain. Feeling discomfort, it was instinctive to rub her pregnant belly. It seemed to soothe her suffering and made her feel at ease instantly, perhaps reminding her of the joyful seed that she had been carrying, soon to blossom. Doing so this time, however, brought no relief. Instead of the warm feeling, she felt coldness there like touching cold tile after a hot shower. It made her hand draw back quickly.

  “Louise?”

  “I'm ready.”

  Regan looked up at the coroner and nodded assent to peel back the sheet. Tighe’s short hair was still combed forward in spikes parked midway down his forehead, which had a greasy silvery sheen under the lights. If eyes be the window to the soul, Tighe's were firmly closed, swollen and puffy and a network of capillaries had emerged from within as if searching for a new life host. The lids were discoloured and bruised in shades of deep purple with his mouth a similar colour. The sheet stopped short of revealing the extent of the neck injuries.

  The grieving widow pushed the table away at the awful truth and fled the room in tears. The table rocked gently on its frame and an arm from the corpse fell out from under the sheet and hung in the air. Fr Regan was about to turn around and give chase but paused and looked at the fallen limb.

  “Father, it's best she has some time on her own. Trust me. I've seen this sort of thing too many times,” Cleverley said. “She'll come back when she's ready.”

  “Perhaps you're right,” Regan said. He pulled himself flush to the table and moved the hand under the sheet again. “Can you tell me, Mr. Cleverley, if he suffered at all?”

  “It's hard to say. But whatever pain he was feeling before he decided to take his life, is over now.”

  “Very true. Very sad.”

  “Tragic.”

  Regan continued to stare into the blank white face of Lewis Tighe for a few moments as if trying to summon some divine truth from beyond death. Some search for meaning. Cleverley watched the priest, slowly growing impatient.

  “Was there any sign of a struggle?” Regan asked.

  “Struggle? Of course. He was dangling from a rope by his neck.”

  “I mean,” Regan said and cleared his throat, “was there any kind of struggle aside from the actual hanging?”

  “None that we could tell father. Police did their investigation. Didn’t find anything untoward. He was found ten feet in the air, hanging from the beam of Boyd's farm. Look here.” Cleverley lowered the sheet further and pointed to the deep red laceration in Tighe's neck. “The cord dug into his flesh which would have made him powerless. Combine that with the fact his wrists were bound.”

  Cleverley lifted the hand closest to him and raised it to show the priest where the cable ties had scratched the skin around the wrist, pink and flayed. Regan shook his head gently and blessed himself.

  “Any idea why he was out there in the first place? That's two miles away from their home.”

  “I can't answer that. Maybe he wanted to do it in a quiet place away from the kids?”

  “Hmmm.”

  Cleverley flipped the sheet back over the face of the corpse and his foot clicked a lever at the front of the table which was the brake for the trolley.

  “Now. If you don't mind father...”

  “Yes, absolutely. Of course. Another question though Mr. Cleverley.”

  The coroner was reversing the trolley with great difficulty but stopped short of the double doors that led out to the hallway.

  “Shoot.”

  “What kind of state were his clothes in?

  “His clothes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?

  “Just humour me.”

  “You're starting to sound like the police here father, no offence.”

  “I know. But the clothes he was wearing. Were they in any way ripped, or damaged in any way?”

  Cleverley propped his back against the metal frame of the tray now and scanned his mind.

  “No. Designer jeans. They were ripped but in the way that’s supposed to be fashionable these days.”

  “Nothing else strange about his appearance?”

  “He came in clean as a whistle. Prop him up and you could take him for a weekend at Bernie’s,” Cleverley said, becoming a little looser with his tongue now that the widow was out of the room.

  “Thanks very much, and sorry for holding you.”

  The coroner muttered something which Regan didn't quite catch because he had already turned his back and was heading out the door. Already, his mind was in overdrive, wondering why Lewis Tighe’s left hand was missing their fingernails.

  EIGHT

  The livestock farm belonging to Joe Boyd and his wife Evie stretched across several acres on the outskirts of Ballygorm.

  The butcher and two shops in the village had relied on Boyd's farm for three generations. Villagers supported their own, and Joe Boyd was no exception, though he wasn't to everyone's taste. The smell of slurry signalling the dawn of Springtime was an unwelcome reminder that country life had its drawbacks.

  A necessary evil, he would argue; and many agreed with him. It was usually the younger generation who complained loudest, happy to eat the produce but never considering how that burger came to be; the fields that needed to be fertilised for the cattle year in year out; the expense and labour involved for such a task.

  The seasonal routines of farming were drilled into him by his own father over almost four decades. The old man was still active right up until his seventies, herding the sheep, stacking bales of hay in the barns for the cattle to feed on, feeding sickly lambs who wouldn’t take to their mother’s teat from a big milk bottle. Villagers affectionately called his father the Bull. Young Joe was named Calf, a name some of the older residents still called him. For the past two decades, he had taken on the mantle, and it was his and his alone.

  Boyd was leaning against the strong iron swing gate that enclosed a herd of cattle beyond. They were grazing nearby and he watched them, without really paying attention. His mind was cast adrift again, thinking about his old man. He sneezed into the open air and rubbed his chin dry of the spit.

  Suddenly the distant noise of a motor rose from behind the hedgerows which circled the field pulled his ear. It grew steadily in pitch, a little tinny whine, squealing like some animal in pain. Not trusting his ears, he stood on the second bar of the gate and looked in the direction of the noise. A vehicle pulled off the road and onto the gravel track that wound up toward the farm. It wasn’t making a turn at the entrance, like most lost drivers would, and instead continued up toward the house. Boyd stepped off the fence and walked to the yard and saw it pull up.

  When it was parked, Boyd approached it with trepidation, as if an alien craft had landed. The occupant opened the door and stepped backward out of the driver's seat.

  “I could power hose that for you if you like father? Seems like it could do with a wash. No trouble at all.”

  Fr Regan met the far
mer as he approached the car, crunching the gravel stones beneath his boots. They shook hands warmly. Boyd’s was a strong grip, used to lifting heavy equipment, operating machinery and carrying baby calves.

  Regan looked up into the farmer’s smiling face. The sharp angled features hardened over a lifetime of long hours and hard labour shaping his rough, sun-weathered face. The focus of the eyes, usually grey and stone hard, had almost melted into pools of silver.

  “You're very kind Joe. The only thing holding my baby together is the dirt and the rust. A power hose could send it into early retirement.”

  “Long overdue father. Bit like myself!”

  “I'd say you're right!”

  They both laughed, and walked to the front door of the house. As they passed a window, Regan saw that Mrs. Boyd was in the kitchen. She was busy clearing a worktop and by the time they entered, she had already gone.

  “Everything OK with Evie?” Regan asked.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” he said. He shrugged his big shoulders which seemed to add strain to his face as if the little woman herself was sitting on them. “She's just a bit rattled. She's not big into the religious side of things, you know yourself.”

  “I'm not here to preach Joe. I'm here as a friend. For yourself and Evie.”

  “I know. I appreciate it.”

  The two men walked across the kitchen and toward the living room with its long cream-coloured settee. Regan sat in it and Boyd joined on the solitary chair by its side.

  “Beautiful picture,” Regan said pointing to a framed photograph on top of the TV. “That must be…”

  Boyd looked. “Maggie,” he said, and sighed.

  It was a portrait photo, professional. The young girl wore thick glasses, built for structure rather than style. The lenses framed half of her face. Her dirty blonde hair was lined at the fringe in a bowl cut. At the sides of her head, the hair dropped, cupping her ears and stopped short just below her chin. The collar of a blue school uniform, loose at the neck, formed a vase from which the oval image sprouted.

  “What age is she again?”

  “Wow,” he said and pulled back deeper into his seat and made the calculations on the ceiling. “She must be twenty now.”

  He held his nose to stifle a sneeze that looked like it would blow his head clean off with the pressure.

  “You OK?” Regan asked and smiled.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just a wee cold.”

  “Listen, Joe. Terrible thing this morning,” Regan said. “The whole community is going to take it hard when word gets out.”

  Boyd took a sip from his cup and shared the priest’s sad expression.

  “Terrible altogether father.”

  “Have the police been around?”

  “You mean after they found him?” Boyd asked and received a nod in the affirmative from the priest. “Said they’d be around later tonight or in the week. Collect statements and whatever they need. How’s your coffee?”

  They chatted on and by the time Boyd walked the priest to his car the sun was beaming high above. Boyd again offered to give the car a quick wash down.

  “No thanks. I can't be cleaning it up too much. It'll give an awful bright shine then. There’d be no way I could blend into the background if that was the case.”

  “I'm not sure it's good camouflage either father. You’re still watching your shows then I take it?”

  “You know me too well Joe. We all need something to hold onto during the tough times. Inspiration comes from the most unlikely of places. If you're ever feeling low, or that you need someone to talk to, my confessional is always open. It might do the world of good, for you both.”

  Boyd nodded his head in agreement, but Regan fancied it as more of a polite gesture than anything else. He got into his car and started the engine. Boyd gently closed the thin car door, which wobbled on its hinges, and patted the thin roof to wish the driver good luck, before turning and entering the house again.

  As Fr Regan drove off, he watched in the wing mirror as Boyd re-entered the house. The car had just trundled off out of sight behind the big barn. Regan noticed that the doors were open. Around the corner the car ground to a halt and Regan clambered out, edged up to the corner of the barn and peered around the building.

  He stared at the house, looking for movement but found none. Creeping out, the priest was visible for a few seconds before quickly entering the barn. Tucked inside, he scanned the interior, engaged fully through his senses which had suddenly become highly tuned. The animal sounds were all around him. His breath paused in his chest, allowing a moment of quiet to completely take in every sensation before letting it out in one slow effort. He had already pictured the scene several times, had placed himself in the tortured mind of Lewis Tighe.

  As Regan walked deeper into the barn, his gaze fell on a beam overhead, halfway down that looked different from the others. Its surface was scratched. Splintered wood had been chipped off to show daggers with pale white wood below. The floor beneath him was muddied and covered with straw. On either side of Regan, the animals were curious with silent wonder as he slowly walked the barn. When he was almost under the beam he moved with solemnity, as if stepping up to the altar.

  The void of death still hovered here. A man had died only hours earlier. A man who had endured great suffering, which affected not only his family but the wider community. It was an eerie feeling standing in that spot below the beam and looking up at the point from where the body had so recently dangled.

  But the over-riding emotion the priest felt at that moment was one of excitement, as his foot kicked an object buried in the straw which he bent down to inspect. The blood on the pliers was still wet as he removed the strands of straw from its metal teeth.

  NINE

  The profile picture of Stryker 69 showed a well-groomed man in his late twenties reclining with his arm propped on a window ledge. A chequered shirt sleeve had been rolled up to the elbow exposing a thick muscly arm below. The light caught his tanned face in streaks, reflecting off the designer sunglasses as he peered out against the sunshine. His face was chiselled with high cheekbones that looked vacuum formed, and there was just the right amount of stubble on his face, like carefully sprinkled iron filings on a tanned canvas, shaped around a breathy pout.

  A shrub of chest hair was exposed under the shirt which had been opened several buttons deep. The original photo had been fed through a number of filters which helped create the finished image. With beautifully blended contrast in lighting and hues, it all served to emphasise the subject's greatest attributes, his beautiful face. Stryker 69 knew that some would find it bordering on narcissistic. Others would find it erotic, artistic and beautiful.

  They would find him beautiful.

  He looked from the image and then to his own reflection in the wall mirror on one side of the room. It didn't matter that the photo bore no resemblance. The photo was simply Stryker’s entry point. His ticket to the party. From there, he could rely on his online patter, chat, and charm to bewitch them. It was all a game, albeit one that he was very good at. Eventually, they would fall for it and the image of Stryker 69 would fade in their minds. What was left, was him. What was left was...

  “Ian!”

  He glanced away from the computer screen and toward the opening door. The woman’s head popped around the door and, seeing him rooted at his desk, she let out a little audible gasp as if she had just opened a sealed lunchbox retrieved from the Titanic.

  “Dinner's ready. Did you not hear me calling?”

  “Sorry Ma. Just been busy. Coming now.”

  Leaving the door wide open, his mother disappeared, her soft footfalls descending the staircase to the kitchen. Ian breathed a sigh of relief. Looking up at the image on his monitor, he noticed the dozen or so other incriminating tabs were all tucked behind. He opened one of them to see if the woman had responded yet. The model’s avatar still had a red offline dot in its corner. A dialogue box was still open. On it, the text continued to
flow from the lurkers. He read some of the text, criticisms of the model, of each other, spam adverts, memes, and general banter. Stryker clicked on his own avatar. He read the stats on the screen that he had worked hard to build throughout the year.

  The profile he had written to accompany his picture had been stitched together through much trial and error, playing to their insecurities and needs. Every girl was different of course. Most of the girls signed up to video webcam shows to strip for tips in front of an adoring fan base who would text commands to unlock certain features in their shiny new toy. Stryker never criticised the choices that the women made. In context, they were being entrepreneurial, offering a solution (their body) to the market (horny guys) in a safe and secure setting (via webcam). They weren't prostituting themselves, nor were they dumb sluts as some insanely jealous keyboard jockeys would shout from their virtual rooftops.

  They came in all shapes and sizes, all creeds and nationalities. Several of them openly admitted to Stryker that they were only using the forum as a way to make quick cash. The most successful models like CrystalQueen and NastyNympho had made enough money in three months to pay off their college tuition fees for the year. Not bad for a job where you can work from the comfort of your own home at a time of your convenience. On top of that was the thrill of having hundreds of men glued to your every move. That kind of power and control can turn the shy little bookworm ignored in class during the day, into a confident, whip-cracking dominatrix at night.

  What Stryker enjoyed most about the shows, apart from the obvious nudity, was stripping away the onscreen character of each woman, working his onscreen charm on the bottom feeders of the adult cam pool – like heavily pregnant, obese or disabled models. He slowly developed his craft and eventually earned their trust.

  Those targets were much easier to seduce because the rooms were virtually unoccupied. In many cases, it was only him and the model. Her speaking through the webcam. Him speaking through text dialogue. After many months of honing his skill, he graduated from the school of leftovers and began climbing his way up the beauty ladder, taking on bigger and bolder projects. In time, he became so good that he was able to engage in after-hours private unpaid chats with the models. Their professional persona dropped, they became Facebook friends (with a fake profile he constructed) before exchanging mobile phone numbers.