John Brennan - Dead And Buried

‘Conor,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to see you again. A young man,’ he added.

Conor shook his hand. ‘Welcome home, Uncle Colm,’ he said.

Murphy kept hold of his hand for a moment longer, and smiled. God, Conor thought his heart was going to burst.

His ma and da came in then, with kisses, handshakes, how-are-yous, how-was-its. His da drew out a bottle he’d been saving. He was forever drawing out bottles he’d been saving and they were always piss. But no one cared, least of all Colm Murphy. He might’ve been the king of Long Kesh but a prison’s a prison, and Murphy knew better than anyone that off-licence whiskey tastes better to a man that’s free than the best champagne to a man that’s not.

‘Here’s to you, Colm,’ said Conor’s ma.

‘ Sláinte . Thank you, God bless you,’ Murphy said, lifting his half-full glass.

And now Colm Murphy was lying dead in the back seat of Patrick Cameron’s clapped-out car. No more Uncle Colm and goodbye to Coleraine Road, Conor thought. All that was gone, now – those days were dead. Patrick had killed more than a man.

The dimmed headlights led the way over the dark roads to Dundonald. Patrick sat in the passenger seat with the gun in his lap. Conor just drove. His hands were cold on the wheel: they’d rolled down the windows to try to let in fresh air, though it’d done no good. He tried not to think but thoughts kept coming to him, things he could do, things he’d seen in films.

Patrick hadn’t got his seatbelt on, Conor noticed. So why not slam on the anchors, send him into the windscreen – he’d have his gun off him in a second, turn around, back to the town, to the police.

But he knew he wouldn’t do anything. Apart from anything else, this was Patrick, for God’s sake. His wife’s little brother. Family. So Conor just drove.

The faint nightlights of the Kelvin farm were visible on the hill and the dashboard clock showed ten to four when Patrick broke the silence.

‘D’you remember something?’ he said out of nowhere. ‘I remember something.’ There was a note in Patrick’s voice that told Conor that, whatever it was that Patrick remembered, Conor wasn’t going to like it. Patrick went on. ‘It was four or five years back,’ he said, ‘and you and Chris had just started going out. We were in the car. You were taking us somewhere – trying to show Chris what a great feller you were, palling up with her little brother, like. You were driving us out to Bangor. D’you remember?’

He did. He nodded stiffly. Kept his eyes on the empty road.

‘And then you got that phone call. From that farmer over at Coldholme.’

Another nod. ‘Jimmy Price.’ Of all the damn things to talk about.

‘And you didn’t want us to come, did you? You said it was “vet stuff”. But Chris wanted to see what you did at work and hell I did too. Anyway you’d promised us a day out. So you turned the car round and you drove all the way out there at Coldholme. And what did we find?’ Patrick let out a low whistle. ‘What – did – we – find?’ he repeated.

They’d found old Jimmy Price, first thing, white as a sheet, cap in his hands, waiting at the farm gate. He’d said the lad and the lass’d best stay in the car, Conor, son, it’s not pretty; no it’s not – but there was no stopping them now and besides, Conor had thought, how bad could it be? Jim had led the three of them out to the third barn. Hell, it was barely even a barn – just an exposed tumbledown, with three walls and a dirt floor and four bare beams jutting from the ruined roof.

There was a smell in the air of blood and faeces and fear. In the middle of the barn a lean-looking black mare staggered in mad circles. A yard and a half of coiled intestine drooped from the gash in her belly.

‘Jesus Christ, Conor,’ Jimmy said.

Conor felt Christine’s hand grip his arm and he heard Patrick behind him gag and then heard the spatter of the kid’s breakfast on the ground.

He’d read about this sort of thing. He dropped to one knee and squinted at the wound: a reckless two-foot slash – Stanley knife? Screwdriver? – all the way from her vulva to her middle.

‘Why’d anyone do it?’ Jimmy demanded shakily. Conor could only shrug. You heard reports of this stuff. Who knew why the people who did it had to do it? Something to do with sex, something to do with religion, something to do with madness.

He straightened up and warily moved closer to the circling mare. With every step she trod her own wet guts into the shit and dirt of the barn floor.

‘Cush, now, cush,’ he said, knowing how much good it’d do.

The sick bastard had taken her tail, and hadn’t been too neat about it. Her eyes as well. Conor dropped to his knees again and unfastened the clasp of his medical bag.

‘Everybody out,’ he said.

Patrick laughed. It was a hell of a noise, there in the quiet car, out there on the dark road. Conor was aware of the cold sweat on his arms and back.

‘So you did the deed,’ Patrick said. ‘You did what had to be done. And then – d’you remember?’ His voice now became softer, intent. ‘We had to take her away, didn’t we? Jimmy was going to call the knacker’s yard but you said no, something to do with regulations, proper procedures – you’d deal with her.’ Another laugh. ‘So there we were. You, me, Jimmy and his boys heaving this mess of an animal into the trailer. Guts all over. Blood everywhere.’ A pause. ‘And d’you remember,’ Patrick asked, ‘what you said?’

Conor shook his head. He didn’t remember. He only remembered the mare – and the look on Jimmy Price’s face when they closed up the tailgate of the trailer.

‘I was snivelling about all the blood,’ Patrick said. ‘And you said, “grow up”. It’s only blood, you said. It can’t hurt you, Patrick. And I thought, what a man!’ And then that laugh again – God, Conor wished he’d shut his bloody hole. ‘You were my fuckin’ hero that day, man.’

Conor drove on, watching the road. Grey hedgerows glided past, and the gold sovereigns of a fox’s eyes twisted out of sight. They still hadn’t passed another car, and Conor was guessing they wouldn’t. Patrick tapped the barrel of his gun on the dashboard, reflectively, as though he was deep in thought.

‘You said you didn’t give a damn about blood,’ he said. ‘You said, “blood means nothing to me”.’

Conor swung the car off the road, veering sharply through an iron gate and into a narrow cobbled car park past the sign: D. Kirk and D. Riordan, Veterinary Surgeons. He braked. The car rocked back on its heels.

Patrick turned in the passenger seat and hooked an elbow casually around the headrest. ‘There’ll be no one around, right?’

Conor shook his head. ‘Kirk’s away in Antrim till tomorrow night. Riordan’s on his holidays. There’s no one here.’

Patrick nodded briskly. ‘OK. It’s time we did to this old feller what you did to Jimmy Price’s poor black mare.’

That’s not Colm Murphy, Conor told himself. In the dead cold dark of the practice car park they’d hauled the body out of the car and slung it awkwardly in a tarpaulin. Heavy, like you’d imagine. Murphy always seemed like he was made out of iron, or he’d been quarried from Fermanagh limestone.

In the dark they’d carried it across the yard to an outhouse a little way behind the main practice building. Conor fumbled with the keys to the padlock. Patrick stood and shivered. The cold, Conor noticed, had shaken the bravado out of him – or maybe it was the dark, or the smell of the body and the blood – or just the thought of what he’d done, and what would happen next.

And then, once they’d dragged the body in its bloodstained tarp inside, and the door was deadbolted behind them and the bitter white striplight in the rafters had flickered into life, Conor leaned on the broad stone bench that stood in the centre of the floor and looked down – forced himself to look down – at Colm’s still, pale face. His rounded, bullish features were composed, his eyes shut (had Patrick done that, Connor wondered – had Patrick, unable to bear the scrutiny of the dead man’s empty gaze, closed Colm’s eyelids for him?). They’d laid him flat on his back, arms at his sides. The tarp was draped across the gunshot wound in his chest. Conor took note of Colm’s clothes: a shabby grey jumper, no shirt underneath; unbelted jeans; shoes with no socks.