If on a winter's night

 

It was the stain on the kitchen wall and the new padlock that always stayed with Garda P.J. Crowe. How the metal gleamed from the pine shed door, caught in his sweep of torchlight. A twinkling glint on that November night, that cold-burned into his psyche for years to come, that no amount of whiskey could ever numb or erase…

 

It was one month later. A bitter Thursday afternoon. Crowe passed the club honour guard, who stamped their feet outside the small parish church against the biting North westerly. A lone piper clad in a black kilt and uniform was squeezing up bagpipes. 

Its wails a keening, wheezing lament.

He stood at the back of the crowded church. The two coffins at the Advent altar stood side-by-side. A heavy leather bible that looked contorted and thumb-marked sat on top of the faded, threadbare GAA club shirt draped over the man’s coffin. An old hurley was propped against the bible’s spine. The kind of hand-worn family axe CulHurl that had a rusted metal strip. The second coffin had a small smorgasbord of gewgaws. A kitsch ensemble of an unfulfilled and isolated life. Neither coffin had a framed photograph of husband-and-wife; Declan and Jackie now lying side-by-side. As Crowe looked around; there seemed to be no tangible identity to the dead couple; no wreaths, no cards, no book to sign in your condolences. That said, the parish had pulled out the stops on this one. Local representatives of all political stripe sat alongside regional and national papers. The TV crews had long moved on. The funeral service was being streamed out to distant relatives in Canada and Australia. This was going to be a big show production. The organist was pumping ‘How great thou art’. The choir, augmented by the local musical society, delivered a full-blooded version, their lush harmonies soaring into the church’s aged wooden rafters. 

Crowe always preferred the Elvis version.

The way the torchlight had caught the padlock …,

That night, it had been a routine call, a domestic disturbance. The third one in two months from the same address. The Wilsons. Crowe’s desk sergeant, a precise Kerryman, Dinny Brennan and his superior, the bullish Monaghan old-timer, Mervyn Brougham instructed Crowe to swing by. ‘See what the fuss was about this time, Crowe,’

It took some time to find the right turn-off amid the unlit secondary roads that crisscrossed the foot of the Dublin mountains. Time that now to Crowe, a lifetime ago, had been more critical than first imagined. Two miles along a poorly lit minor road, Crowe found the Wilson house. A patina of frost cracked under his Garda car as he inched it up the narrow tarmac driveway. The downstairs lights were on, the upstairs dark.

It was an old house but kept looking. Dark patches of English Ivy dotted the aged brickwork, caught in the weak streetlight and untouched by frost. A nail clip moon sat undisturbed in the sky. As Brougham used to say amid the porter glasses and whiskey downers of a Monday afternoon, “… wee Declan did well there, he got his feet in under the table and married his landlady,” 

Declan Wilson, pillar of the community, minister of the Eucharist, mentor to the under 11’s hurling squad and treasurer of the town’s Credit Union. Wilson, the very stock on which the Republic was built upon; hard-working, mass goer and teetotal. Jackie, an only child, brisk and businesslike, worked the till at the local shop where Crowe would purchase his cigarettes. Nursed her parents until they died. Married Declan soon after.

A lot could change in less than a year. 

    “You watch those coffin nails, Garda,” she would grin as she handed him the packet. Though that inner elfin charm with an on-trend hairstyle had shifted imperceptibly to hollow cheeks, a small lank ponytail and less attention to her appearance. Come January she wasn’t working there anymore. A slow fade out and no-one looked out or asked for her. 

Gone.

    The door opened on the first ring,

Wilson had a broad expanse of lined skull with dour downturned features. Grey hair grey parted on the left; styled in what a barber would call a business cut. The eyes were quick and sharp under thick, unkempt eyebrows. His meaty hand bulk kept the doorway narrow. Crowe couldn’t see much past him.

    “Everything ok, here?” asked Crowe.

An oily smile danced around Wilson’s close shaved chin. It never reached the eyes,

    “All good, guard – how can I help?” said Wilson.

    “There’s been a complaint,” said Crowe, stepping back and looking around.

    “Complaint?”

    “A disturbance.. Call logged in at the station,” said Crowe. He went back to the car and removed a heavy grip torch and turned it on. The beam shot out across the lawn.

`    “… from whom?” asked Wilson.

Whom?

    “Neighbours. Said there was a lot of shouting and banging,” said Crowe.

    “Are they sure it was us?”

    “Just following up. Your side gate open?”

Crowe was already walking. As he opened the gate latch, he heard the front door slam. A little too quickly.

Crowe surveyed the huge back garden, it was over ninety feet long and just as wide. It looked very well-tended, yet impersonal, like a garden centre. Flanked by an old Lilac tree, a modern shed stood tin-roofed at the end. Secured by the bright shiny lock that caught in the torch’s glare.

Sweeping the beam, Crowe saw farmhouses a few yards either side of the stone garden wall. The night was so still, so crystalline, that even a cough would sound like a gunshot. 

Still, it must have been some racket to have these neighbours calling.

    “Dennis Brennan is still desk sergeant?” asked Wilson.

    “He is indeed. Can I speak with your wife?” 

    “She’s in bed asleep, guard,”

    “It's 9.30?” said Crowe.

Turning he panned the torch across Wilson’s dark green fleece. Below the Gaelic club crest was a stain. Then a waft of disinfectant drifted off him, something coppery and stringent beneath. Crowe ran the beam down Wilson. It came down to carpet slippers. Old man style slippers. They were spotted in places, not part of the pattern. 

    “She suffers from migraine. She’s had a bad evening,” replied Wilson.

Crowe followed the pathway to the back door and kitchen. It was a Dutch split door bolted closed and the light from the kitchen spilled out onto the frosted lawn. 

    “Get a lot of foxes? They make a racket,” asked Crowe peering in.

    “Badgers, foxes, feral cats, you name it, it's like a motorway intersection here at night,” said Wilson. 

Crowe thought he’d caught a catch in the man’s breath. 

It didn’t feel right. Didn’t feel right at all. But Crowe was green, in time these instincts would be honed to a diamond edge as he rose through the ranks. But this evening, he wasn’t so sure. Doubt had crept in and taken hold. Doubt and respect to a town elder. It was a picture postcard of urban serenity; the days before satellite dishes and when Ireland had a decent world-cup squad. The night had a Samhain edge, complete with a pagan hoar frost that invited visible breath and ruddy noses.

Crowe stood on tiptoes to get a better view into the kitchen. Old painted shaker style units gave the place a rural appearance. It was brightly lit under naked fluorescents. But it was the stain on the pristine white tiling above the AGA range that caught his eye. A splash, not a smear – it could have been coffee or blood. Dried out they looked the same. The splash was about head height and spreading upwards. Crowe dragged his gaze away to look at the rest of the kitchen.

An oak table had a glass overturned and along the floor, a chair lay on its side. Crowe redirected his beam at the stain; it looked viscous and unnatural.

Like the spotting on Wilson’s slippers.

    “I’d like to talk to Jackie,” said Crowe.

    “Like I said, Guard, she’s asleep,” said Wilson.

Crowe turned back to look at Wilson. He seemed expressionless, a lizard warming itself on a rock, an automaton.

    “Just say I’m following up on a call – I’ll take the heat,” said Crowe.

Crowe gave a clumsy locker room wink; … sure, you know women and their sleep…

The pause was too long. Wilson caught off guard, clicked into a more calculating stance. He stood motionless and silent. 

    “She was always having the craic at the shop. Always gave me fierce flak over the smokes,” continued Crowe. He swept the beam one more time across the billiard baize smooth lawn.

Finally, a flicker. A glint slid into Wilson’s eyes.

    “I’ll get her,” he said.

    “Do, sure,”

Crowe was about to head towards the shed when his walkie-talkie crackled into life,

    “Crowe, what the fuck are you up to?” hissed Brennan through the static.

    “Checking out the Wilsons,”

    “Jesus, you were just to knock in, not traipse around the fuckin’ garden,”

    “Something’s not right, boss. It’s dodgy as fuck here,” said Crowe pitching his voice down to a murmur.

    “Just get out. Wilson is trying to reach Brougham; he’s been on the blower twice screaming. Just say good night and get your arse out of there for fuckssakkke,” 

Brennan sounded like a choking viper in a blender.

Crowe knew all of Brougham’s haunts. On the way over he’d investigated the four local bars. No sign and Crowe very much doubted he’d be in the one church saying the novena. Probably shit-faced in his jaguar up a boreen nearby.

Sometimes the darkness can creep towards you. Sometimes silence can be menacing. Panning his torch one more time, Crowe edged back to the side gate and crunched his boots toward the car.

    “I’ll say goodnight, so,” he said, panning the light up at the bedroom window. One curtain seemed to have been pulled off the rail. It hung awkwardly on its remaining hooks.

Wilson was at the car. He opened the driver side,

    “Still asleep I’m afraid. Don’t want to wake her. I’ll tell Jackie you were asking after her,” said Wilson.

Crowe extended his hand without warning. Wilson recoiled for a moment as if Crowe was throwing a punch, then went to shake it.

Wilson’s knuckles looked bruised; one seemed dislocated.

    “Did that today, guard - pulling a shrub up.” He slipped the hand quickly into the fleece.

Crowe’s eyes searched for a bin or full black bag. The front garden was as neat and orderly as the back. Nothing indicating the titanic struggle between man and nature.

    “Goodnight, Guard,” said Wilson.

It was the last time Crowe ever spoke to him.

Jackie had been found the following afternoon dead on their bed. Her features smashed in; she was unrecognisable from the beating. Once Wilson had finished with his fists, he’d switched to a heavy bible as if her dying immersed in her own blood hadn’t been enough. Wilson had then been found hanging in the shed. Several hours apart according to the autopsies. 

The shiny sturdy padlock was the only article in his blood-stained fleece. No suicide note, no explanation, just gore and wasted lives.

Murder suicide was the coroner’s verdict. Rumours flew around the town like harpies at a feast. Talk of depression, infidelity and misappropriation. In the end, no-one knew really what drove Wilson to turn his wife into a cubed steak, or why he decided to use his favourite tie to check out from planet earth with.

As Crowe, Brougham and Brennan left the church service, all the retiring super could say out of the corner of his mouth was,

    “At least there were no kids,”

That January Crowe was transferred without warning to a South inner city beat. He smoked his cigarettes in memory of Jackie. They were always B&H. A continual reminder that he should have followed his first instincts. Should have kicked in the door and raced up the stairs.

Maybe he could’ve done something.

But that he would never know….

… and he would have to live with that for the rest of his life.

 

END

 

Author Note - I'm often asked does my character P. J. Crowe have an origin story. To find out more visit my website 

https://www.robert-cravenauthor.ie