I read about the murders in the paper a few days ago. A-1, I said to myself. Exactly what I need. I’m doing a Masters in Creative Writing. Well, the university thinks it’s a journalism course, but I’m doing it creatively. Journalism is dead. Writing is dead too, but here we are.
I drive out to Ballycotton where it happened. The petrol station is busy. Makes me think, is it always this busy, or is it because of what happened. I thought the same driving here. A lot of cars on the road. That’s probably my tendency to over-dramatize. It’s catastrophically chronic.
The petrol station coffee machine reads Frank & Honest. Frankly and honestly, I’ve had better cups of coffee, but I need it. I say to the lady behind the counter that it’s awful bad business isn’t it. Awful bad, she agrees. Very sad.
“So sad,” I say. “I suppose they were all well known? Around here?”
“Certainly,” she says. “The parents anyways. The poor mother now. Unimaginable what she must be feeling.”
“Or thinking,” I say.
“Sorry?” The petrol station lady is confused.
“Nothing,” I say, and I leave. I think about what the mother must be thinking. She can’t not be thinking about what caused it. What could have gone wrong, what could have gone better. If it was me that was the mother left behind, I’d be drinking back the sup of alcohol to get it gone. I’d be flat on my back drinking, and I don’t think I would ever be able to stop.
I park up near the scene of the crime, as they say. I’m at the back of a line of parked cars, all with wheels in the ditch. Haven’t seen crowds like this since a sunny day at Inch Strand. I get out of the car, sipping out of my insulated steel Stanley cup. Let the people see I’m not a dickhead with a cardboard cup, ready to toss it in the ditch like the other trash I see accumulating. I’m brilliant.
“What’s the story here, so?” I says to the fella already standing there. He’s looking from a distance, way back by his car.
He looks at me like I’m simple.
“Murder suicide.” His neck swivels back to face where he was looking. His chin is tilted high, as if the angle of being a centimetre higher will add to his vision.
“Holy shit, really?” I let my chin drop a bit, slack. I’m tempted to let drool out, but he already looks like he’s questioning if I want a slap.
“Wait here, I’ll report back.”
I walk away, the grumbles of the man a pleasant vibration of cursing behind me. The day is unimaginably sunny. Why is it so sunny? It shouldn’t be like this, but I’m blocking the sun with my hands as I walk towards the light.
Half the people are standing by the opposite side of the road. The other half are grouped by the caution tape drooping from one gate post to another. I join the caution tape people.
My toes must be too close to the edge, because a Garda with his arms folded steps towards me. Each step is a straight legged lean, like he can’t be bothered to crook his knee to walk.
“Back a bit now, please,” says the Garda.
“Of course, Garda,” I say, standing back a bit now. “Sorry, Garda.”
He nods, satisfied. He stares at me. He knows I’m going to ask something about it, about the tragedy. He wants the satisfaction of saying nothing he can reveal.
“Awfully nice day, Garda.”
He looks at me in disgust, and turns away.
The house is a mid century farmhouse. Not sure which century. They all look the same to me, these farms. The yard covered with shite. Random bits of straw (or is it hay?) poking up through the shite.
The front door is wide open, and that’s the spookiest part for me. I shiver. I think I see blood on the handles. The woman beside me must read my mind.
“Can you imagine? That’s desperate. Blood there.” She points. This causes the Garda to turn and scowl at her.
The woman is short. Her winter hat comes down on her ears firmly, framing a face that looks carved from wood. There’s earnestness there, and fear.
“Were you around when it happened?” I asked.
She looks at me proper.
“You’re a journalist.” Her voice is high with a Cork inflection rising towards heaven.
“I am,” says I. I pull out a notebook to look the part.
“Who are you with?”
“I’m on me own,” I reply, kicking myself almost immediately. Foolishly amateur, and her eyes narrow.
“You don’t write for anyone.”
“It’s mostly digital and online these days, but we still do writing too,” I say. What a save.
“The videos are big time, yeah,” she agrees with me. “But who?”
“The Chronicle.” This is a national online online thing.
“I didn’t like how ye wrote about the protests. The protests against the fake asylum seekers up in Middleton.”
I hadn’t expected that a woman her age knew how to access the internet. But of course it was for that shite.
“You mean the articles about the Irish patriots?”
“Yes,” she said, eyes lit up.
“You have to read between the lines.”
“That’s right, that’s right. It’s all there.”
“All there,” I say. No clue what she thinks is all there. The conversation is painfully drab and boring but I know she knows something.
“I suppose people knew he could do something like this some day.” I stand looking towards the house, waiting for her to come up with something to drag my attention back to her.
“The lad was a sour prick, and he was probably one of the gays.”
I pretend to look shocked, which she enjoys. She looks up at the old farmhouse. That building has probably seen at least five generations of people living in it. Eating in it. Sinning in it. And now killing in it. Her lip curls.
“I heard shots in the distance, and I knew instantly what it was. There was a sense. It wasn’t hunting.”
“Not rabbits, anyways,” I say.
“Not rabbits. I ran down, and it was so still. So quiet. It was hard to believe anything at all had happened, if it wasn’t for Ann stumbling out from inside. She was covered in blood.”
“Did you call the guards?”
She looks surprised to see me speak, as if she had forgotten I was there.
“I didn’t have to. They arrived immediately after me. Ann had called them, and she waiting for over an hour with the guards outside before the bastard did it.”
She took a deep breath, and exhaled, the fog of it strong in the sunshine. I cautioned a next question.
“And why -” I didn’t have to ask.
“He was jealous. He wanted the house. He wanted it all. And now no one has anything.”
She laughs, a high pitched chuckle.
“When did Patrick come home from college?” I ask her.
“How did you know that?” she says.
“Facebook, of course.” I close my notebook. Enough talk here. I start backing away. This seems to raise the hairs on her more than anything else I’ve said. Body language, the biggest communicator of them all.
“And when will I see this on The Chronicle?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Do you not need my name?” she calls after me. I’m walking back to the car. I should have taken a picture of the scene, but I don’t have to. I’ll be remembering.
“I like to keep my sources anonymous!” I call back. The Garda stares after me, and spits on the ground.
Your man is still standing by his car, maybe after moving a foot closer. Chin still stuck straight in the air.
“Don’t bother,” I say. “It was a misunderstanding. They were watching John Wayne and someone thought the shots were real.”
His eyes go wide, and he goes straight to his car, pissed.
“Fucking films!” he shouts, bitterly disappointed.
I drive to Kiltern Harbour. That’s the closest seaside, and the closest beach. It is strange being so close to the ocean when you were just on a farm covered with the smell of cowshit. The change is nice. Overwhelming, almost. The fresh air and sea is too much.
I buy chips at the chipper. It’s busy. I try my shtick of what a terrible shame what happened up there in Cloughrichard to the one behind the counter.
“Where?” says yer one. Young ones don’t know anywhere and they don’t know the local news. They only know the global headlines on their phones. I feel like an old one now.
I take my chips (salt & vinegar, please) and walk up to the end of the pier. It’s a working pier, but just barely. One weak looking fishing vessel, and the fisherman on it only looks to have caught a cold recently. He sneezes repeatedly.
I stare out at the sea, and the cold breeze whips some calmness into me. I breathe in deep, and enjoy my bag of chips.
There’s a man doing similar near me. He’s an aul fella. Looks a bit shook for some reason. I go over to him, and ask if he’s alright. I almost offer him a chip, but that would be a bit much, I think.
He says he’s grand, but doesn’t say anything else for a bit. Then he sniffs the air, invisible tears on his red cheeks that could have come from the cold.
“It’s just someone I know died recently.”
“Up the farm in Cloughrichard?” I ask.
He’s surprised, but nods his head.
“I’m sorry. Were you close?”
The old fella starts crying. He’s looking out at the sea, and he’s crying. I can barely make out what he’s saying as his voice is a bit of a mess.
“Three dead. Three dead like that. How can such a thing…”
I say something stupid like “there, there” but it does the trick. I’m patting his arm, and he’s straightening up, doing that thing where people breathe out deeply to calm down. Whoosh. All the fear and sadness gone out in a breath, at least for the moment.
“I actually know the family slightly,” I say. “I’d love to pay respects to…”
“Noreen?” he says. “You know Noreen?”
“I don’t think she’d know me but I knew some of the family going way back.”
He nods again, and I’m grateful he doesn’t ask who I know.
After he walks away, I enjoy the last of my chips. Salt and vinegar dregs, the crunchy bits which have fallen to the bottom of the bag. The bottom of the barrel is the best. I throw the bag into a bin, but the wind promptly rips it out and it goes flying through the air.
It’s about 4pm now. I drive my car over to Temple Mount Hospice, where the aul fella told me Noreen was being looked after. I still have no idea who that old boy was and how he was related to them. But she was recovering there, among the afflicted, the aging and the terminally ill. The doomed. Nasty thought for me to have.
The car park has palm trees and gravel flower beds. A lovely crop of gravel this year, very grey and brown. A dog is pissing in it now, and I bet he would rather piss in a real garden too. This is all he’s got though.
“Good boy,” I say as I pass. The owner looks up at me, frowning. “Nice dog, too.” The poor man must be there visiting his dying mother or something, and I’m out here bothering him.
The reception is very helpful. Down the hall, etc.
The room is unguarded. Obviously. There wouldn’t be any reason to guard the room of a woman attacked by her own son now that the prick is dead. And she’s not a suspect.
She recognises me straight away, and I know this was a bad idea.
Noreen is in her late sixties, and she’s not in great form. She’s sitting up in a bed, but she looks exhausted. She looks terrified, but I doubt that’s because I’m here.
“Hi, Noreen, is it?” I extend a hand. She doesn’t even raise her arm. She’s looking at me, up and down.
“I’m just getting a few words for the report on this tragic event. First of all, I’m so sorry.”
“You’re a friend of his.” Her voice is flatter than her face looks. Panicked. Against a corner. But her voice is dead.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re the friend. You were by the house before.” Her voice is so quiet.
I pull up a chair.
“What happened?” I asked.
She turns her head away. I’m furious that she won’t look at me.
“What happened?” I’m asking though I have no hope of knowing. I know she doesn’t know.
“They would never stop. They were always at it.” Her head slowly turns back to me. The yellow flower pattern of the bed sheet is sickly, and must be from a timeless collection of hospital linen that makes me sick to look at.
I look at her eyes, and I know she knows.
“Why are you here?” she asks me, in that fucking soft voice.
“Why did your son shoot his father and brother in the head?”
She smiles. It must be the first time she’s smiled in a long time, but she finds what I said funny.
“Isn’t it obvious.”
She refuses to say anything else to me, no matter how much I scream. Not when I shake her frail arms, and slap her shoulders. Not when the dumb receptionist runs in and grabs my arm, holding me back with the help of some other guy. Noreen just stares at me with her dead eyes. Laughing at me with her dead eyes.
The guards come, they don’t shit. I walk away free and crying. The bastards.
I still don’t know what happened. I can pretend to myself the others did it. That they pulled the trigger, or as good as pulled the trigger. That they drove them to it.
The truth is, that unless Noreen shot them all, he probably did do it. Because he hated them, and they hated him. I wish I could say someone else did, and he was innocent, but that’s never how it goes. There’s limits even to my creative fiction journalism. Reality can’t be denied. He’s a dickhead for doing it, and he’s dead now.
I’m only sad he’s dead and I’ll never talk to the dickhead again.
Jack Desmond is a writer and filmmaker from West Cork. He has written and directed fiction films and documentaries in the Irish and English languages.