Apple Seeds and Murderous Deeds Read online

  “That’s because you don’t want to do anything,” she reasoned. “Where are they anyway?” By now she had seen that her parents weren’t in the room like she’d expected.

  “In the sitting room watching the news.”

  Fiona pulled out her phone and stared at the blank screen. She had made Sergeant Brennan promise to tell her when the suspect had been successfully captured, but there was still no word from him. It would have been all the sweeter to have the matter stitched up before she announced it to her parents and demanded the keys back, but she’d take whatever wins she could get.

  She rushed to the sitting room and threw open the door.

  “They have the murderer,” she announced.

  “We’re watching something,” her mother said sullenly.

  “They have him,” Fiona repeated. “Brennan told me. Give me back the keys.”

  With a pained expression, her father jabbed violently at the remote control and the noise stopped abruptly.

  “Can I not get a moment’s peace in my own home?” he said, sounding very put-upon.

  “Sure you can,” Fiona said brightly. “Just hand over the keys and you can have all the peace you want. Oodles of it, in fact.”

  “We did it for your own good,” her mother said, looking outraged.

  “I don’t care about that anymore,” Fiona said. “All I care about is that this is over and I can go back to running my business. I appreciate your concern, though I wish you hadn’t been so heavy-handed about it.”

  “We’re to take your word for it, are we?” her father said, reaching for the remote again.

  “Well, yeah,” she said, frowning. “I’m not going to lie to you about something like this.”

  “Are you not?” he asked, his eyes boring into hers. “It seems like exactly the kind of thing you might do, say if it was the only way you could get the keys back. Why don’t you just relax and read a book or something?”

  “I don’t want to relax,” she huffed. “I’ve been closed for two days as it is—I need to get in there and prep for tomorrow. If I don’t open I’ll have to throw out a load of fresh ingredients. It’s a total waste of money. I can’t believe I’m having to explain this to you.”

  “Your safety is more important than the bar.”

  “Fine,” Fiona said. “If you won’t believe me, you can hear it for yourself from the horse’s mouth. I’m calling Robocop.”

  “Ah God,” her father said, throwing up his arms. “The last thing I want to do of an evening is talk to that bollix.”

  “Sorry, but it’s the only way I’m going to get you to believe me.” She pulled out her phone and tapped the number at the top of her call log.

  “Sergeant Brennan.”

  “It’s me, Fiona McCabe. You’re on speaker. I’m here with my parents.”

  Brennan groaned faintly. “Lovely. To what do I owe the honour?”

  “No one likes a smarty pants,” Mrs McCabe muttered.

  “I heard that,” Sergeant Brennan said.

  “Good,” she shot back. “I wanted you to. Fiona tells us you’ve caught your man who killed poor Declan.”

  Sergeant Brennan groaned. “I thought I asked you to keep that between ourselves, Miss McCabe.”

  Fiona shrugged, supremely unconcerned. “Well it was a matter of importance for my business. Anyway, can you tell them? You must have got him, right? It was over an hour ago when your SWAT team was outside his house.”

  “SWAT team,” Mrs McCabe gasped.

  “It wasn’t a SWAT team,” Sergeant Brennan said. Fiona could almost picture the sour expression on his face as he said it. “And yes, actually, they were successful in locating the person of interest.”

  “See?” Fiona said, looking at her parents triumphantly. “They got him.”

  She hung up, hoping she’d never have to call Sergeant Brennan again.

  12

  “DO you want some food or are you still sore at us for trying to save your life?” Mrs McCabe called, bustling into the dining room with a tea towel over her shoulder.

  Fiona shook her head and laughed. “Only you two could make a joke out of denying me all of my rights as a tenant. Remind me again why I shouldn’t have called the guards?”

  “Because Robocop can’t stand the sight of you and he wouldn’t have come to your rescue even if you offered him a million euro?” Kate offered.

  “There is that, I suppose,” Fiona conceded. “Still, though. You can’t be doing that. Promise me now—you’ll never pull any funny business like that. I’m renting the pub and I paid for all of the refurbishments. And it turned out your man had gone back to Dublin so there was no need to worry about him lurking around in Ballycashel.”

  “We weren’t to know that,” her father said from behind his paper.

  “That’s not the point,” Fiona said. Her heart wasn’t in the argument—it was all over now so she didn’t see any reason to dwell. Aside from the obvious desire to make sure they never pulled a funny one like that again. Even then, Fiona didn’t see how they could—it wasn’t like murder was a regular occurrence in Ballycashel.

  “What is it with you and Robocop anyway?” Ben asked. “I mean, I know he’s a pain and all, but he seems like one of those jumped up corporate fellas who’re trying to get up the ladder. Why would he have it in for a no-hoper like you?”

  Fiona winced. “Ouch! Less of the no-hoper business if you don’t mind. Especially coming from you.”

  “What?” Ben protested. “I’m working. Well, working on working.”

  “You’re not exactly Richard Branson.”

  “Neither are you.”

  She shrugged. “Don’t want to be. I’d settle for running a successful pub thank you very much.”

  “She’s trying to change the subject,” her mother announced, before leaning in as if she was about to share a fascinating conspiracy with them all. “The reason Fiona and Sergeant Brennan are at each other’s throats, I believe, is because of a lingering attraction to each other.”

  “Ah jaysus,” Ben said, cringing and covering his face as if he’d just been told the intimate details.

  “Mam!” Fiona protested. “There is no such thing. I can’t stand the man.”

  “That’s what people always say when they’re really in love. It’s the attraction between you, see? The chemistry.”

  “Ugh,” Fiona said, staring in dismay at her food, which no longer seemed so appetising. “You’ve been watching too many sappy films. Sometimes when two people are at each other’s throats it’s just a sign that they can’t stand each other. Is that too hard to believe?”

  “Well, yeah,” Ben said slowly, as if he was reluctant to get involved less he hear something gruesome he couldn’t get out of his mind. “You do seem to hate the guy.”

  “So does Dad,” Fiona pointed out. “That doesn’t mean Dad’s about to run off and become Mr Brennan.”

  “Too right!” Francis McCabe bellowed. “I can’t stand the man either. Even looking at his little pea-head makes me start to lose my temper.”

  “All part of the chemistry,” Fiona smiled, enjoying the rage that emanated from her father. He was still hidden behind his paper of course, but it didn’t matter—she could tell from his white-blue knuckles that he was getting madder and madder by the second.

  Then Francis surprised them all. He put his paper down and folded it in that precise way of his. “I believe Fiona is trying to distract us all from the fact that she’s known Sergeant Brennan far longer than the rest of us. They were first acquainted in Coppers, I believe.”

  Fiona glared across the table at her sister, who had the good sense to pretend to be focused on her phone. “What would you know about Coppers?” she asked her father. “Back when you lived in Dublin it was all trad bands and the like. Coppers hadn’t even been invented then.”

  “You think ye young ones invented having the craic? Sure I heard all about Coppers when I was training the minor hurlers. And to think my own da
ughter was in there, gallivanting with that Robocop fella. It brings shame to the family, Fiona.”

  Fiona’s cheeks burned. Her ‘thing’ with Sergeant Brennan couldn’t even be called a thing, but he was so reviled in her household that she could scarcely bear to think about it. “I can’t believe you told them, Catherine.”

  Kate looked astonished. “Of course I told them. It was hilarious. I can’t imagine you with that fella. My skin crawls even looking at him, never mind talking to him… or whatever else.”

  Fiona shuddered. “There was none of that.”

  “Eeeugh,” her father and brothers groaned in unison.

  “For the love of God,” Francis McCabe said with a heavy sigh. “We don’t want to hear the gruesome details.”

  “You were the one who brought it up!”

  “Well your brother wanted to know why there’s such animosity between the two of you. He certainly didn’t ask for a blow-by-blow account of your relationship. No one should have to hear that.”

  Fiona felt like dropping her head into her bowl she was so exhausted by their barrage of questions. “It wasn’t a relationship.” Realising there was no way she could change the subject without them changing it back, she resigned herself to telling them the whole story—if only to satisfy their curiosity and shut them up. “Okay fine. By the way, Kate, I’m never telling you anything again.”

  “Fine by me,” Kate said with a supremely disinterested shrug. “It’s not like you do anything interesting these days anyway.”

  Fiona ignored her. “Okay, I met him in Coppers one night. As you do.”

  “What in God’s name,” her mother interrupted as she sat down. “Is Coppers?”

  “It’s a nightclub in Dublin,” Marty offered immediately. “Where people go to shift guards.”

  Fiona ran her fingers through her hair and beseeched herself to remain calm.

  “You went out one night with the sole purpose of shifting guards?” Mrs McCabe said incredulously.

  “Please, Mam,” Ben said, looking pained. “Can you not say that word? It’s creeping me out hearing it from you.”

  Mrs McCabe looked mortally insulted. “What, you think just because I’m your mother that I’m not capable of having a passionate side too? I’m sure there were places we went when we wanted to shift guards too.”

  “Ah, Mam,” Kate howled. “Please stop. You’ll make me vomit. Sure there were no guards around in your time. Weren’t they established after the civil war?”

  Everyone around the table fell silent. Fiona sent a silent thanks in her sister’s direction, not sure whether to completely forgive her for being the one to bring up the subject in the first place.

  “Excuse me,” Mrs McCabe said in the low voice that she reserved for when she was well and truly affronted. “Exactly how old do you think I am?”

  Kate managed to keep her face calm—Fiona had no idea how she managed it. The others’ faces reflected a mixture of amusement and sheer disbelief. Francis McCabe had wisely chosen to return his attention to his newspaper.

  “I don’t know,” Kate whispered. “I’m not up on the history myself. Wasn’t it around nineteen twenty five they formed the Free State?”

  “Catherine McCabe!”

  “Oh,” Kate said with a frown. “Did I get the year wrong? Sorry. We had that McAleevy guy for Leaving Cert history. He was more interested in sneaking drinks from that hipflask he always carried than actually teaching us anything.”

  That sounded about right, Fiona thought—her sister, though smart, had managed to fail every subject in her Leaving Cert, including foundation maths which no one thought it was possible to fail. She was an even bigger waster than Ben, though she had taken to hair-dressing and now worked part-time at a salon in the town.

  “It’s not the year I’m bothered about,” their mother said in that same ominous tone.

  “Will I make tea?” Marty asked cheerfully, standing and bolting to the kitchen before anyone even had time to reply.

  Fiona would have offered to help him, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the confrontation. What was Kate doing? Surely she knew that referring to their mother’s age never went well, let alone implying that she had come of age in the early nineteen twenties.

  “Ah, I’m only messing, Mam,” Kate said with a grin. “You’re so easy to wind up. Now, Fiona, you were telling us how you met Robocop. Go on there. I want to do my eyebrows before I go to bed. Stop holding me up.”

  Fiona shot daggers at her across the table. So much for sisterly solidarity. Kate stuck her tongue out in response.

  “Mam, are you going to let her away with that? She just insulted you for the craic. So cold-hearted! I worry she’s a sociopath.”

  “Ye’re all a bunch of sociopaths as far as I’m concerned,” her mother shot back. “I’m used to it by now. Don’t worry, she can cook her own dinners from now on and start paying me rent. Go on, Fiona. I’ve stuff to do as well but I’m dying to hear about your fling with Sergeant Brennan. All I can say is thank God he didn’t want to make a go of things—imagine having him over here every night for his tea? We’d all go mad.”

  “Hey!” Fiona cried. “You assume nothing happened because he didn’t want it to happen? After you spending hours of your life giving out about what an eejit he is? What must you think of me so?”

  Her mother waved her hand. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “What way did you mean it so?”

  “Ah, don’t be taking offence all the time.”

  “I’m not, I…” Fiona stopped. There was no point in even arguing, she knew. Only one person was allowed to take offence to everything that was said in the McCabe household, and Fiona supposed it was a fair trade—hearty meals in exchange for having to listen to her mother’s frequent and very vocal outrage. “Fine. Okay.”

  “You’ll tell us?”

  Fiona took a deep breath. It was so long ago now that she wasn’t sure where to start. It had been a regular night out with her friends from the office. They had gone to a few bars and then on to Coppers for a bit of a dance. Drinks had been had and the lighting in that place was low. And she’d met Sergeant Brennan. He had seemed nice at the time; polite even. He’d asked her to meet up again and she had agreed. Readily agreed. The memory filled her with horror—how had she not sensed his pure evil?

  They had met for a drink the following week at a quiet little bar off Grafton Street. Sparks hadn’t flown and Fiona had politely but firmly refused his request for a second date.

  “And that’s it,” she concluded with a shrug.

  “What do you mean, that’s it?” her mother asked. “You two have been at each other’s throats since he moved here.”

  “That’s it. Think about it,” Fiona sighed. “If there was a big drama then you’d have heard about it. As it was, I met him tipsy and very quickly decided I had no interest in another date.”

  “Why do ye hate each other so?”

  That was an easy one to answer, Fiona thought. “I didn’t hate him. I never gave him a second thought until he turned up here. It even took me a while to place him because it was years since our dull date. He recognised me immediately, though.”

  Her father had discarded his paper. Unusually for him, he had thrown it across the armchair behind him and seemed unconcerned by its messiness. “Please tell me this has nothing to do with the objection he put in to the council about the improvement at McCabe’s.”

  “I wish I could,” Fiona said with a sigh. “No, he’s been after me since he arrived. All the speeding tickets and parking fines. All him.”

  “Why didn’t you say?” Marty asked fiercely. “I could’ve gone and had a word with him; made sure he knew not to bother you again.”

  “He’s a Garda,” Fiona said quietly. “And not only that, but his father is high up. There was no point in worrying ye or making you all dislike him even more than you already did.”

  “But what did you even do to him? It doesn’t sound like ye w
ere attached to each other—it’s not like you broke his stony little heart or anything,” Mrs McCabe said, her hand resting on Fiona’s shoulder. “Oh, love, you should have said. That’s bullying, that is. I won’t stand for it.”

  “Yes you will, Mam,” Fiona said through gritted teeth. “Look, I have the dashcam now and he’s eased off on the speeding tickets. I’ve contested them all anyway and never had to pay. He was just trying to get a rise out of me.”

  “Why bother, though?” Ben asked.

  “Ego?” Fiona suggested, shrugging. “That’s the only thing I can think of. I rejected him and he didn’t like it. God, if I’d only known what I was getting into I would never have given him the time of day that night.”

  “You weren’t to know,” her mother said, patting her shoulder. “I’ll make you another cup of tea, love.”

  “And I’ll be sure to have the Land Rover handy the next time he’s out for a walk and it’s been raining,” her father added ominously. “And I’ll put my mind to thinking of other ways to get him. No one gets away with harassing a daughter of mine.”

  13

  MAYBE IT WAS the concern and sweetness her mother had shown her that evening that made Fiona relent, or it could have been a desire to form a new terrible date memory to replace her evening out with Sergeant Brennan. In any case, Fiona had found herself agreeing to meet up with her mother’s friend Mrs Murray’s son-who-was-back-from-Australia.

  He’d gone to school in Newtownbeg and she couldn’t remember ever meeting him. Her mother had worked with Mrs Murray in the bank after Fiona left secondary school, so there had been no playdates or other forced socialising. She wasn’t able to track him down on Facebook either.

  The absence of any memories or other pictures gave Fiona the freedom to imagine what he might look like. Naturally, the fact that he had lived in Australia for so long led her to assume that he looked like Chris Hemsworth.

  She grew more and more excited as she waited for him at the bar in Treynor’s in Newtownbeg. He had offered to come to Ballycashel but she had insisted. She had learned long ago that it was better not to go on dates within walking distance of her immediate family. There had been too many instances of them ‘just happening to walk past’ for it to be a coincidence.