A sudden rap on the front door took us abruptly away from our evening tea. The smell of fried sausages wafted down the hall from the kitchen. A tall shadow visible through the frosted glass put me on edge. The brim of his hat hit me between the eyes as I pulled open the door, followed by a six foot something in a sea of navy.
‘Good evening,’ came the booming voice of another as he neared the porch, fumbling in his shirt pocket before pulling out a biro. I immediately recognised him as Sergeant Boyle but before returning the greeting, my mother’s words bet me to it. ‘This looks serious,’ she remarked with a slight hint of levity.
‘Oh, but I’m afraid it is’, came the stony reply.
They shuffled inside to the room we kept for visitors. It was always immaculate, apart from the odd speck of dust that pooled around the many ornaments on the mantelpiece. The curtains, unpulled, revealed flashing lights just a stone’s throw from the house. The autumn sun was now setting in the sky and it caused me to squint a little at first.
‘A body has been found’.
A lump formed in my throat. My eyes narrowed on the two squad cars abandoned at the side of the ditch on the lane up ahead. Tape had already been erected in the bushes.
‘Who is it?’ my mother asked, beating me to it.
The sergeant gestured for my mother to close the curtains. I supposed it was meant to protect our own privacy as much as out of respect for the dead. After all, the world and his mother would soon descend on the place for a gawk and it wouldn’t do to have it known that we were the first port of call for the gardaí in their enquiries but in that moment I couldn’t help growing uneasy as my mother tugged on the pinch pleat curtain.
The leather sofa suite squeaked as the sergeant shifted his weight on it. His assistant flicked through pages of his notebook for what seemed like an eternity before settling on a clean sheet. Despite the drawn curtains, the strobe effect lit up the room in rhythm with the ticking of the grandfather clock. Tick tock… Tick tock.
‘Who is it?’ asked my mother again, growing impatient.
‘It’s young John-Joe from up the road.’
‘John-Gerard’s son!’ added the other garda but we didn’t require clarification. We knew John-Joe. The entire town knew John-Joe. He was what one would call a character. Half-mad and half-genius or was that fully mad and an unequivocal genius? It was hard to know but he was blessed with a set of soulful brown eyes and a crooked smile that was quite endearing. His laugh was infectious even though most of the time we didn’t know why we were laughing. He didn’t even tell good yarns but he had a magnetism about him all the same.
A twenty-something with a full life ahead now lying dead.
I shuddered at the thought of his scrawny torso slumped against the briars or worse – bits of his tattered blood-stained clothes strewn across the bramble like a discarded plastic bag.
‘What happened?’
My mother was good at getting the words out. The best I could muster was a pitiful murmur.
‘Well, that is what we want to know,’ came the sergeant’s hardened response. ‘Where were you between the hours of 1a.m and 4a.m. this morning?’
‘Bed’, my mother said without the slightest hesitation.
‘I, who was most certainly not in my bed, immediately echoed her words.
