Best Served Frozen (The Irish Lottery Series Book 4)

by Gerald Hansen

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  IN THE MEANTIME, THE story doesn't end there! Why not read the next in the series? Here's an exclusive excerpt from Static Cling, just for you.

  PROLOGUE—1980

  Word had spread, as it usually did, throughout town and up to the most deprived corner of Creggan Heights. Into the ramshackle cul-de-sac of Pewter Gardens, including the pebble-dashed semi-detached house at the end, number six. This was where the Heggarty clan lived and thieved.

  The IRA had detonated a 900 kg car bomb just as a British mobile unit, two armored cars, had been passing a row of shops in the even worse neighborhood of the Moorside, which was fifteen minutes, if you ran, from Creggan Heights. A British solider had died outright, and as the remaining soldiers, shell-shocked and injured, had tried to retaliate with gunfire, kids and teens had poured out of their homes and started throwing rocks and whatever came to hand at the soldiers. Ulster Defense Regiment (UDR) reinforcements had just been called in, and now the row of shops was bathed in clouds of tear gas, rubber bullets flying in one direction, rocks in the other.

  But all this mayhem was of no consequence to Maureen Heggarty as she said “Cheerio” and returned the handset to the receiver. What interested her were the five shops which had been damaged, windows blown out, signs singed. She knew that row of shops well. A newsagents, a butchers, an electronics store, a pharmacy and a record shop. All now vulnerable. Her best mate Tricia Malony had given her the bars, the news. In their youth, Maureen and Tricia had always danced around their handbags together. That happened rarely nowadays, since Maureen's husband had been killed by a British bullet three years earlier, and she had a brood of children to raise by herself on a pittance from the government. The British government. Blood money. But Maureen took the money. And she and Tricia still met at the hair salon every Wednesday for a wash and set—some habits die hard—and sat beside each other every Sunday in the third pew on the left hand side at St. Moulag's, if nobody had taken it up before they arrived, and they attended the christenings and first holy communions as the younger ones of their ever-extending families grew older.

  As Maureen hurried past the peeling wallpaper of the stairs to the four bedrooms, she thought of the goods she and her six sons, aged 13 to 19, could loot during the mayhem. Fence here in the house. And then sell. She rushed by the door that concealed the toilet, the door that hid the bath, and the cupboard for the immersion heater. She banged and battered on three of the bedroom doors. The fourth she shared with her only daughter, Fionnuala, now eight. She'd be of no use to Maureen's plan.

  It was only seven in the morning, and all her children were still sleeping. She herself had already lit the fire in the sitting room, and had been in the scullery, the kitchen, making their breakfast. A huge pot of porridge. Then Tricia had rung and told her the exciting news.

  “Up and at em, boys! Rise and shine! NOW! NOW, ye lazy articles!”

  Maureen ripped open the door of bedroom number one and, eyes tearing, gulping down the sick that threatened to shoot up her throat, she drew back at the adolescent funk that shot like a full quiver of arrows from the room.

  “Throw some gear on and get yerselves downstairs! Sharpish!” she roared.

  She did much the same at doors two and three.

  She didn't know where the idea had come from. She was shocked at herself. Perhaps it wasn't the first time Maureen had gotten it into her head the usefulness of her six layabout sons combined, but it seemed like it. She now understood their power. The town menace they could become. Petty crime had always run rampant in her family; things on shelves were never safe from her sons' hands. But this was to be the premiere of the grander, more elaborate, criminal activities the soon-to-be notorious Heggartys would engage in. The drug dealing and armed bank robberies and hired beatings and much, much more would all come later. Some only a few weeks later, some months, some years. The Heggarty boys and “Ma” Heggarty would rule Creggan Heights much like the Corleone's, though they were Irish, not Italian. (Then they would all emigrate to Florida and continue their criminal empire there.)

  “Get a move on!” Maureen barked as her sons staggered out of their rooms and stood gathered and grumbling in the hallway, stretching and yawning, bleached mohawks matted, spiky black hair flat, a few shaved skulls, clothes flung haphazardly onto their limbs. “There's five shops down in the Moorside we're gonny plunder! Youse is always blathering on about no meat for tea. No meat, not enough hot water, not enough drink, enough fags.” Fags, cigarettes “Them days is soon to be gone. Our salad days is coming, lads! Salad days, I tell youse! Get them wheelbarrows from the back garden and haul them to the front...” She ran to the immersion heater cupboard and threw it open, reached inside and grabbed some sheets and blankets that had been hung there to dry. She threw them at their startled, sleep-deprived faces. The stench of last night's lager arose from them all. “Take them along with youse. To hide the booty from prying eyes, ye understand. Come on, come on, lads! It's the first day of the rest of our lives!”

  As the wheelbarrows were rolled through the front hall and bargain bin trainers were slipped into and jackets flung on, Maureen stood before her bedroom and wondered what to do about little Fionnuala. Her young daughter. Her only daughter. The plundering shouldn't take long, but on the off-chance they were caught and all hauled down by the Filth to the cop shop, she couldn't leave a girl not yet ten in the house alone. Fionnuala hadn't set fire to anything yet, or anything of the like, but a mother never knew when it might start. Maureen barged in and had no need to wake Fionnuala, as the little girl was already awake on the left side of the bed they shared, lips trembling atop an unfortunate overbite, four threadbare blankets pulled up to her neck. She still had her hair in ponytails, the same ponytails she would, decades later, bleach and still wear.

  “What's happening, Mammy?”

  “The beginning of an era!” Ignoring the look of confused fear on her daughter's face, Maureen hauled Fionnuala out of the bed and threw the girl's pink dress with the green bow at her. It had been on a heap on the floor from when the girl had taken it off the night before. She tossed some white tights at the girl as well.

  “Get them on ye, wee girl. Ye're going next door. Mrs. Ming'll look after ye while yer mammy...changes yer life.”

  When Fionnuala was dressed, Maureen pretended she didn't see the tears that welled in the girl's eyes. She shoved a doll in her hand. It was Biddy. Fionnuala didn't like Biddy much. She was one of the old-fashioned dolls that didn't cry, didn't wet herself, didn't speak, while the dolls of her school mates did all those things. Biddy's eyes didn't even open and close, and were always staring at her. Accusingly, as if saying, why haven't you thrown me out yet? But Fionnuala had no time to search for a different doll, as her mother almost wrenched her arm from its socket and forced her down the stairs and out the front door. As Fionnuala tripped along the weeds of the front garden and through the gate, she caught a glimpse of her brothers lined up out front with three wheelbarrows, but didn't have the chance to say anything to them, as she suddenly found herself stood beside her agitated mother in front of the door next door, Mrs. Ming's. Her mother banged at the letter slot as if it were a matter of life and death.

  Mrs. Ming pulled open the door with a look of surprise on her face, and there was some hurried whispering over Fionnuala's head between the two grown ups, which ended up with Mrs. Ming saying, and this Fionnuala could hear, “Don't tell me any more! Aiding and abetting, they'll haul me into the cop shop for, otherwise!”

  “It's to keep the wane safe, just.” Wane, child

  “
Safe from a harm of yer own making, ye mean!” The neighbor gave a labored sigh. “Aye, give us her here for a few hours. I'll watch over her. Poor wee critter.”

  Perhaps the last time Fionnuala Heggarty had been called a 'poor wee critter.'

  “And would ye mind feeding her and all?”

  Fionnuala was shoved into a strange hallway, the door was shut behind her, and she clutched Biddy tightly to her chest.

  And there began a childhood event, which one might expect to be etched in the memory of little Fionnuala Heggarty forever, but had long been forgotten by Fionnuala Flood today.

  Little Fionnuala saw the layout of the house was like their own, but opposite, if that made sense. The wallpaper had different flowers but was also peeling. The woman towering over her seemed in her hundreds, like her mother, though Mrs. Ming was only 42 at the time. Younger than Fionnuala was now. This being 1980, the woman had brown feathered hair with blonde highlights, pointy trapezoid earrings with black, white and red stripes, and blue eyeshadow. She was wearing a chunky light blue sweater with a cat embroidered on it, and over that a dark blue-and-white checkered housekeeping smock, but this must have been only for show, thought Fionnuala, considering the state of the sitting room she was being led into. Not that their house was spotless by any means. But even her mother would never had left the dust to multiply as it had here.

  “Me wanes is all out, so we've the house to ourselves,” Mrs. Ming said as she opened the door to the sitting room and led Fionnuala inside, and Mrs. Ming seemed to be happy about this. Fionnuala certainly was. It was rare she was in a house with fewer than six people.

  Mrs. Ming had three children, Fionnuala knew. But Bill was two years older, and a boy. So she didn't have anything to do with him. And Sorcha and Una were girls, but they were younger than her and therefore silly kids. Fionnuala didn't have anything to do with them either. At least, not this first visit.

  The sitting room had the same bald carpeting as back at her house, though it was orange and brown, not blue and purple, and there were the same spitting embers from the fireplace beyond the same fire guard.

  Mrs. Ming nodded at the fireplace. “Sit yerself there, wee girl. Ye're starving with cold. Ye can entertain yerself with the fire set while I make me way into the scullery for to get ye something to eat. Ye've not had breakfast, am I right?”

  “Naw,” Fionnuala said shyly. Mrs. Ming had to strain her ears to hear her. She left, and Fionnuala sat happily by the fireplace. She placed Biddy beside her; together they would play with the bird-clawed coal tongs, the little shovel and the poker that were the fire set. She wondered what her mother and her brothers were doing. What did they need those wheelbarrows for? Where were they going? What would be in the wheelbarrows when they came back? She tried to put the little shovel in Biddy's hands, but it kept slipping out. Fionnuala placed it between the dolls legs and pretended in her mind Biddy was holding it. Then she grabbed the tongs for herself. They were the most fun of all the three items of every fire set. She clacked them open and closed. And then Mrs. Ming came back in with a plate.

  “There's not much in the larder, I'm afraid,” Mrs. Ming said. “This'll have to do. The tea's steeping, and it'll be up soon. How do ye take it?”

  “Milky, three sugars,” Fionnuala answered mechanically.

  “Right. Well, take it offa me, wane!”

  Fionnuala took the plate the woman gave her, and Mrs. Ming left the room again. To get the tea, Fionnuala guessed. She looked down and gasped. Cooed with delight. It was only three Jaffa Cakes, a macaroon and a handful of Jelly Babies on a chipped and not-quite-clean plate there amongst the stench and squalor of this unknown sitting room, but to Fionnuala this was a revelation. Is this how others were treated behind closed doors? And there were twelve of them on her cul-de-sac alone.

  She looked around to ensure none of her brothers was around, but of course they weren't. Back home at the dinner table, Fionnuala always had to wait until they were full before she was allowed to eat. Then she could take whatever food happened to be left over, which was usually the misshapen Brussels sprouts, the fish sauce with all the fish gone, the burnt bits of the ham hock. The scraps. Maybe Mrs. Ming's surfaces were thick with dust, but her heart seemed generous and kind.

  Fionnuala tried to give Biddy a bite of the macaroon, but as usual, the doll's lips remained shut. She mustn't be hungry. That was okay. As Fionnuala happily scoffed down, she looked around her. There was a lumpy green sofa under the scary Bleeding Heart of Jesus portrait that graced so many houses, her own included, and a rug or something had been thrown over the back of the settee, just like at theirs, though this one seemed to feature the embroidered faces of the Virgin Mary, Mother Theresa and some other woman, Fionnuala couldn't imagine who this third woman might be—the Pope's wife?— smiling out at her from a field of crosses.

  “Don't sit so close to the fire,” Mrs. Ming said when she came back with two cups of tea. With saucers! “Yer spine'll melt.”

  What this spine was and where it might be found in her body Fionnuala didn't know and was scared to wonder. She scooted away from the fire. Mrs. Ming turned on the radio. It was sitting on top of the TV. Fionnuala wiped crumbs from her lips and stood up with the tea cup in one hand, the plate in the other. The plate was now empty, and she didn't know where to put it.

  “C'mon, Fionnuala, love, and sit ye beside me.” The settee wheezed as Mrs. Ming sat on it and patted the cushion beside her. “Ye can put that plate anywhere. On top of the telly.”

  Fionnuala did, then sat beside the woman.

  “So,” Mrs. Ming said, “yer mammy's out on a mission with all them hard men, yer brothers. I always wondered what ye'd be like, living with the likes of them. Ye seem fine, but.”

  All her playmates, and others, called her brothers rowdies, hooligans, bruisers and, most frequently of all, hard men. But Fionnuala didn't know which 'hard' her brothers were supposed to be. Not soft or not easy?

  Mrs. Ming's eyes wandered over the little girl. “I'm sorry me wanes isn't here for ye to play with. It's only the two of us, ye see.”

  “Have ye no Mr. Ming?”

  “Och, naw, love.” Mrs. Ming shook her head in sorrow, and her hand pulled out the crucifix hidden under her smock and sweater. She ran her fingers over it, then pressed it hard. “Mr. Ming was called to the Lord, just like yer own daddy. The Brits got Mr. Ming and all. He be's in a better place now, but. Just like yer daddy.” Mrs. Ming released the crucifix, then grabbed a huge hardback book with a colorful cover that was beside her. “Before yer mammy came round, I was just having a look through one of me favorite books. The Wonderbook of the World, this one be's called. Let's have a wee juke through it together, shall we?” Juke, look. “There's loads of photos, so ye should enjoy it.”

  “Aye.”

  It was strange for Fionnuala to see a book outside of her classroom. They didn't have any at her house. And with a TV, why would they? Mrs. Ming flipped through the pages. Fionnuala caught glimpses of strange animals, buildings, plants and clothes she had never seen before. She looked up at Mrs. Ming with interest.

  “What's all this in the book?” she asked.

  “It's about all the different countries of the world. Each country has four pages of photos, and a few bits and bobs of information about it. And the flag and the money and what have you. It's wile fascinating. Did ye know there be's almost two hundred countries in the world?”

  “Naw!” Fionnuala's eyes widened.

  “Here's what they say our country looks like. Ye know what country ye live in, don't ye? You and yer mammy and yer brothers?”

  “Ireland?”

  “Aye. Northern Ireland, but. Do ye know the difference, love?”

  “We live in the North and others live in the South?”

  “Aye. But our part of the country be's part of the United Kingdom. We've different money from them down South, even. There's some as says we're not a country, we're a province or some such nonsense. The Wonderbook of
the World, but, knows best. It's given us our full four pages. And rightly so, I should think! Is the book right or wrong? Maybe we'll never know. But this is where we live anyroad. Northern Ireland. I'd like to think of it as a country for the moment. Shall we have a look at what the Wonderbook of the World thinks our country looks like, eh?” Fionnuala nodded solemnly. Mrs. Ming flipped a page. “Here we are, right after Norfolk Island.”

  “Where does Norfolk Island be?”

  “That's of no concern to us now, wane. Let's see what the book shows us for Northern Ireland.”

  The girl's eyes grew round with wonder. The book had been aptly named.

  “What's that, Mrs. Ming?” Fionnuala asked, pointing at something on the first page.

  “A castle on a cliff overlooking the Irish sea. Lush, verdant fields and a sparkling blue ocean.”

  “Does that be somewhere near us? Here in Derry? In Brooke Park, maybe?”

  Brooke Park was the only place in Derry Fionnuala had seen such a large stretch of grass. The library there had been bombed in 1973, and then the temporary library that had been built to replace it had been bombed in 1974. Did the IRA have something against knowledge?

  “Naw. It's elsewhere. Nearby, but.”

  “And what does them creatures be, Mrs. Ming?”

  “Sheep.”

  “And that odd thing?”

  “A harp. It's an instrument. Music comes out of it, like.”

  “And that?”

  “A leprechaun. It's a wee man. A lucky wee man what has a pot of gold.”

  “And why's he wearing them strange clothes?”

  “That's his outfit, love. And it be's what some thinks all the men here wears. Eejits, mostly.” Eejit, idiot

  Fionnuala laughed into her tiny hand, then together they flipped another page.

  “And who does this be, Mrs. Ming?”