Best Served Frozen (The Irish Lottery Series Book 4)

by Gerald Hansen

  “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

  Brian wrenched Lorcan's cap from his head. A roar erupted as it fell to the floor at their feet. A bloody hairnet fluttered after it.

  A few machines away, Paddy Flood was slicing through the innards of a haddock on the fish cakes production line when he heard the noise over the churning and clanking of the machines and the Ella Henderson—“Ghost”—blaring from the factory-wide speakers. It seemed Ella had been telling them for months now she kept 'going to the river to pray.' The woman on the conveyor belt to his left, pouring the cut fish into the potatoes and seasonings, nudged him.

  “What daft eejit has gone and got himself into a fight, and on that catwalk way up there and all? Eejit!”

  Paddy tugged the innards out of the fish and had a sinking feeling. Where violence was concerned, there was someone who was probably involved and, as he looked up at the catwalk, yes. It was Lorcan. His daft eejit of a son.

  “Och, for the love of...!” Paddy moaned, flinging the knife down and charging across the factory floor. “Stop! Stop this foolishness now, youse!”

  The morning at the Fillets-O-Joy packing plant had begun badly enough for him. And now as he pushed through the cheering throngs to save his son, the afternoon was worse.

  Paddy had clocked in with Lorcan at 7:34 AM, and been tapped on the shoulder by one of the sharp-suited nancy boys from the offices, a clipboard pressed to his chest. Management wanted to see him. Immediately after he had changed into his gear. And he had better change into his gear sharpish. Then the nancy boy had minced off. Paddy's first panicked thought was that there had been more trouble with Lorcan.

  “What have ye gone and done now?” he had asked, shoving his time card into its slot with a sigh of resignation. “I told ye to give that Sinead Sheeney a wide berth.”

  “Nothing, Da!” Lorcan insisted. “I haven't given yer woman so much as a glance! Not after all that bother last week. Do ye think I'm demented?”

  Paddy did.

  “Ye know I put me own job on the line begging them to take ye on here. The strings I had to pull. Me years of service on the line, fresh outta prison with a reputation for violence as ye have, like. Pulling strings, naw. More like pulling teeth, it was.”

  “I've done nothing, but! I swear to the heavenly Father!”

  Paddy knew only too well that saucer-eyed look of innocence and, made as it was by those piercing blue eyes and framed by that handsome face, knew it was usually effective, especially where the ladies were concerned. Ladies like their co-worker Sinead Sheeney, who was a newlywed and should have been immune for at least a few months after the wedding bells had stopped ringing. But Paddy had noticed her tittering with Lorcan amongst the pistons and grinders at his every lame joke, the batting of her eyelashes, the glances too long at Lorcan's backside, even though, as far as Paddy could tell, it was basically shapeless in the padded overalls, and then he felt queasy for having dared look at his son's backside.

  Paddy saw the look for what it was, a peacock showing off its feathers. He wondered if Lorcan practiced that look in a mirror at night, wondered if he had practiced it for the year and a half he had been locked up for grievous bodily harm, but he didn't know if Magilligan Prison had mirrors in the cells, or even something with a shiny surface that could serve as one.

  Though his wife chose to believe the sun shone out of that backside of Lorcan's, Paddy realized what a chancer he was, and he feared for him. Fionnuala had forced Paddy to get him a job at the plant, and Paddy wasn't fool enough to cross her path. For 24 years, the boy had been unemployable, a young life spent doing little but being charming and throwing the drink down his gullet, with a quick temper and fists to match. And in the five weeks he had been working at Fillets-O-Joy, Lorcan had put those fists into action again and again. Always outside the plant itself, usually in the Rocking Seamaid, the pub all the workers ran to once they had clocked out. With this summons to management, Paddy wondered if Lorcan's temper had somehow spilled onto the factory floor.

  But when Paddy saw the nancy boy circulating through the other workers and pausing before he tapped one or another of them on the shoulder without even consulting some list on his clipboard, Paddy realized they were being chosen, he had been chosen at random. Similar to how the SS had, with the point of a finger, sealed the death of many an Auschwitz victim. He wondered if the nancy boy even knew his name. He chose to give Lorcan the benefit of the doubt, but then he wondered why he had been called into the office. Unease filled him. Fewer cigarette breaks? A pay cut? Redundancy?

  He and his son changed tensely in the locker room, excluded from all the guffawing, good-natured sniping and and back slaps around them.

  Since his sister Ursula had given him an extra house after the lottery win a few years earlier, Paddy was the outcast of the plant, the social pariah. He was, in their eyes, slumming it. He tried to remain invisible to quench abuse verbal or physical.

  It didn't help that Paddy was quite a looker himself, and that had caused resentment and hatred, and it was now worse that Lorcan had been added to the mix, he being a younger, more fit, charming version of his father, without the paunch and the gray bits in his shiny black hair.

  “Och, hi ho,” Paddy sighed behind his locker door. “I wonder what yer man wants with me in the office. Well, I'll find out soon enough anyroad. Are ye on them mixing and grinding machines again today?”

  Their tasks changed suddenly according to some mysterious roster. Paddy himself was on fish chilling with slurry ice. The day before he had been on liquid wastes.

  “Aye. It's not doing me vertigo good, so it isn't.”

  Being on the mixing and grinding machines meant workers had to perch themselves on a catwalk above the packing plant floor and dump tubs of fish waste—skin, internal organs, heads and carcasses—down a chute that led to the machine. This would transform the waste into a brownish powder that was fish feed, and spit it out onto a conveyor belt where other unfortunates would package it to send to pet food and fertilizer factories.

  “I feel for ye, son. The weeks I'm on it I wake up with terrible nightmares of falling through space and clawing at fish scales as they whizz by. Not to worry, but. Next week ye might be moved to liquid wastes. The stench be's something terrible, and the acids be's wile caustic, but at least ye've not much effort to put into the job.”

  “Liquid wastes? I don't much like the sound of them. What are they, anyroad?”

  “They're the blood water and brine from the storage tanks, together with the discharges from the washing and cleaning. They pour into them grand big tubs ye see the others hauling around through the factory floor, and ye've to sift out the solids from the organic doodahs, the nitrogen from the phosphates and what have ye, the oil from the grease, and dispose of em all as the plant sees fit. It depends, so I've heard, on the acidity level, the temperature, the general odor and—”

  “And here was me thinking nothing could be worse than the fish wastes! I'll be phoning in sick.”

  “Don't ye dare!”

  Lorcan took his flask out of the locker and guzzled down. He passed it to his father.

  “About this job, Da, I don't know if it be's a right fit for me... I've been speaking to me mate Eddie, and ye know he got one of them passports like wer Eoin did, with the working visa attached, and—”

  Paddy took a swig, wiped the whiskey from his chin, and passed the flask back to his son.

  “I don't want to hear it!” He shuddered as the drink entered his system and goodwill coursed through his veins. “It's decent, honest work.”

  From the look Lorcan gave him, decent, honest work was the last thing his son wanted.

  “I'm away off to the office. Mind ye stay clear of that Sinead Sheeney,” Paddy warned as he headed to whatever fate awaited him.

  In padded overalls, hairnet, peaked cap, clunky boots with steel toes to avoid them being chopped off by the many machines in the plant that could, oversized gloves swinging at his side, Paddy pl
odded upstairs to the office, each step seeming like he was heading for the gallows.

  But when he entered, the snide bastard behind the desk told him that Paddy had merely been moved from liquid wastes to fish cakes.

  The fish cakes machine had broken down, he explained, looking down at a stapler, and as there were quotas to meet, management had chosen ten workers. They now had to perform the tasks the machine usually did. Two to eviscerate the fish, two to mix them with potatoes and seasonings, two to shape them into cakes, one to coat half of the cakes in batter, one to bread the other half, and two to package them, put them on pallets and wheel them to the freezer. Paddy would receive his task when he got to the floor.

  “Where on the floor do I go, hi? And...I've never made fish cakes before. The machine always did it, sure. I haven't a clue what be's involved. Will there be training of some sort...?”

  “Ye'll see where they've set everything up. Next to the canteen door. And no training is necessary. I'm sure youse can all figure it out, big man.”

  This did not comfort Paddy. Confused about what he was meant to do, he approached the production line on a hastily-cobbled together conveyor belt that had a 'will this do?' look about it. It didn't look like it even moved, for which Paddy was grateful. A stationary conveyor belt. The same nancy boy stood before the bewildered workers, consulting his clipboard. He told Paddy he would be on packaging. Paddy was relieved. He could pack. But when all the jobs had been allocated, it was clear the list had been mixed up, so that there were somehow five on battering and breading, none on shaping, mixing, or eviscerating, three on packing and one on breading.

  The nancy boy made some changes, and Paddy was handed a knife and told to eviscerate. And he had. For five hours. Through Simply Red, Lady Gaga, Swing Out Sister, Wham!, Britney Spears, A Flock of Seagulls, Adele, and the Charlie Daniels Band.

  “Are ye outta yer mind, Lorcan?” Paddy now roared up at the catwalk, racing around the vat of liquid waste in his path. The two rolling it toward the exit stopped to stare upwards, eyes dancing with delight. They pulled out cigarettes. Paddy gripped the sides of the ladder and hauled himself up the first few rungs. He saw them tussling, heard the thud of flesh on flesh, and, just as he was about to reach the catwalk, he froze as a body sailed through the air behind his straining limbs. He turned. Lorcan landed with a splat in the vat of liquid waste.

  “Whooo-haaay!!” Like a goal had been scored against England.

  Paddy stared down in horror, a crick in his neck. He descended. Applause rang out as Lorcan's head popped out of the liquid waste, panting for air, hair slick with brine and fetid glop, face slick with blood from his lip and the carcasses of fish. Paddy reached him as he was hauling himself over the edge of the tub, his overalls dripping industrial toxins and offal. Paddy stepped forward, then quickly stepped back, the stench gagging him.

  “I'll fecking murder ye, Brian Sheeney!” Lorcan roared up at the catwalk, shaking a discolored fist upwards.

  “Naw, ye won't,” said the nancy boy, who had materialized at their side. “Ye're coming with me. To the office.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Who the bleedin feck—?!” Mrs. McDaid wasn't a pleasant woman even at the best of times—for instance the January sales—but now she was positively spitting. She brandished the mop as if it were an assault weapon. “Fionnuala Flood?! What on God's green Earth are ye blackening me doorstep for?”

  She made to slam the door. Fionnuala charged forward, the stroller a battering ram. The babies shrieked as they were caught in the jaws of the door. It bounced open, and Fionnuala forced herself and the infants past a startled and fuming Mrs. McDaid.

  Fionnuala reached around and shoved Padraig and Siofra into the front hall before her. The Floods' own smells mingled with the stench of stale drink, cabbage and sweaty socks within. And a chemical-like fug that hung in the air from the hundreds of thousands of pharmaceuticals that had passed through. She pushed the children toward Mrs. McDaid so that, even with her short-sightedness, the woman could see the grief on their faces plain as day.

  “Dear God in Heaven!” Mrs. McDaid spat. “Have ye taken leave of yer senses?” As alarming as the invasion seemed to be to her, she still had time to notice: “And what's up with yer hair, woman?”

  Fionnuala had hidden her usual bleached ponytails with a temporary rinse, blue-black, to accentuate her bereavement.

  “Ye may well ask!” Fionnuala wailed, trembling her lower lip and forcing the tears from their ducts. She threw back her dyed head and bayed coyote-like. Mrs. McDaid took a step back, a hand on her breast. The anger in her eyes had dissolved into alarm. Padraig and Siofra apparently felt their mother's laser eyes boring into the backs of their heads, for their hands suddenly wrung in unison, and their sobs and moans rose into the air to join their mother's. Mrs. McDaid didn't know where to look. Her alarm turned to concern. She wiped her hands on her housekeeping smock.

  “I'm in mourning!” Fionnuala blubbered. “We...we're all in mourning. We're after coming from the undertaker's, so we are. The one down Shipquay Street. Tommy Murphy's place.”

  “Terrible tragedy and all that. But...but...” Mrs. McDaid sputtered and harrumphed and glanced down in all manner of ways at her wrist which didn't even have a watch. “What's all this to do with me? I've me appointment at Xpressions —”

  “Och, that I know, sure.” Tuesdays at 2, wash and set. All the Moorside knew.

  “And I've the movers coming over tomorrow. As ye can see.” Her chins indicated the boxes piled everywhere. The house was indeed empty except for the mop, the bucket, her body, the Floods, the boxes, two suitcases, the light bulb above them, and the dirt. She must have sold all the fittings. “And then I've to make me way to Belfast. I've me flight to make tomorrow night. We're on wer way to,” she sneered triumphantly, “Florida!”

  Fionnuala stiffened. Everyone in the Moorside knew a visa to the USA was difficult to come by; if you could get to the States, you had made it. Commissioned by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the PSNI, there were advertising posters on the minibuses, next to the ones for HobNobs and the latest Rihanna release, warning that a criminal prosecution would ban you from getting a US visa. Although there were fifty states, everyone seemed to choose the same one. Florida. And nothing save the funeral of a much beloved made them fly back to Derry again. And by way of funerals, Fionnuala's veil bobbed up and down.

  “That I know and all, aye. That's why I'm here. To catch ye before ye leave the misery of life here behind ye and start yer new life basking in the Florida sunshine. And...wourwugh!” She let loose another theatrical moan, and daubed her face here and there with the toilet paper, smearing the mascara which trickled down her face so that she looked like Alice Cooper caught in a sudden summer rainstorm. She then reached forward with the sopping, blackened shred to touch Mrs. McDaid's right shoulder. Mrs. McDaid fought the urge to recoil. “Och, I know there's been a history between wer families, sure. Yer youngest, Declan, was me Padraig here's best mate.” She dug her nails into Padraig's shoulder blades in case Mrs. McDaid had forgotten who Padraig was. Padraig pointed to himself. “And, aye, right enough, wee Padraig introduced yer lad to flinging rocks at pensioners and torching phone boxes with petrol bombs, so I understood enough, forgave yer wee dote Declan enough, and, not to come banging on yer door when he attacked me in me own back garden with a rusty aul poker a few years back. Ye mind?” Fionnuala nudged Padraig.

  “I'm terrible sorry for being a bad in— influench on Declan, hi,” Padraig recited, automaton-like.

  “Me hair—”

  “Calm you down,” Fionnuala cooed. “Sure, if ye're a few minutes late ye woman Molly won't mind. I've just told ye I've forgiven yer Declan, aye? And, come to that, do I have to remind ye of the time them older sons of yers, that Caoilte, Fergal and...?”

  “Eamonn?”

  “Aye, that's the one. Eamonn. Anyroad, ye mind when they was but teens and hadn't started pushing their
drugs all round town yet and they broke into me granny's graveyard and lifted her leg bones, her femurs or somesuch as the Filth called em at the time, from her holy resting place and gave em to the drummer of their goth band what used em as drumsticks? Months of going to gigs down the town, it took me, for to retrieve em and place em back in the aul woman's coffin so's she could rest in peace in one piece. And did I come banging on yer door then, shouting the odds? Did I feck! Did I give yer lads up to the Filth? Did I me arse! I let ye be, as I know ye're a kind-hearted, church-going member of the parish, sure, who works all the hours Gods sends at that packing plant, for which I've no doubt ye was paid a thankless pittance. And I understand the parents doesn't be responsible for the actions of the wanes. And I know yer fella, what was it they called him...?”

  “Sean.”

  “Aye, yer Sean was struck down by a paratrooper's rubber bullet during the Troubles years back and popped his clogs on the operating table, and it must be a terrible wile strain raising them four lads on yer own, like, so I hadn't the heart to add more grief to yer life back then. And, aye, some round town says ye and yer lot's single-handedly responsible for the denigration of wer youth here in the Moorside, what with them supplying all and sundry them Es and amphetamines and I know not what. And I know me other lad Eoin was even one of their pushers for a wee while, and, aye, he was banged up for his transgressions, as was yer lads and all. Though, of course, wer Eoin has since been released, and be's living in the States now. And all over town, and the telly and all, I've heard yer lads broke outta the prison the other week.”

  Mrs. McDaid's listening ears were beginning to wilt. Fionnuala saw the twitching of impatience at the corners of her lips, the anger seeping into her eyes again. Perhaps that was enough guilt-tripping. She held up her hand. “Hear me out, love. I'm almost at the end, so am are. I know yer family's dead kind and generous and, if I may be candid here, them lads of yers be's terrible good-looking to boot. Lovely, strapping young lads ye've raised there.”