Mathew

 

The Plough Pub, Near Enniskillen.
Spring, 1981.

​

 

Mathew sits in a quiet corner of the Plough, nursing a pint of Light and Bitter beer. He has drunk less than a quarter of its contents which is just about all he will allow himself. He resists the urge to rub at the itch that dwells beneath the woolen cap he wears because it might disturb the fake, black hair that is stitched into its lining.
The pub smells of sweet pipe tobacco, brewed hops, and of damp earth which he assumes emanates from the well-trodden flagstone flooring. The room is noisy and jovial. The sort of place that is the stuff of fairy tales.
He fingers the steel barbecue skewer that is attached to the underside of his left forearm, secured by two elasticated wristbands, the type favoured by squash players. It helps him refocus his sense of reality. He raises the beer glass to his lips which enables him to look towards the bar where Donny Robinson sits on a wooden stool, surrounded by two men and two pretty, young women, all of whom listen to him intently.
Donny is a squat, toadish man with lank, greasy black hair, and he must have inherited most of his genes from his mother’s side, as he looks nothing like his infamous father. But his status and rank lend him a celebrity that Mathew doubts he would enjoy in another world, in another time.
Having only wet his lips with the beer, Mathew carefully replaces the glass on the table and looks at his watch.

Time to go.

He gets up smoothly and unobtrusively, and he leaves by the main entrance, ducking out into the damp, mistiness of the night. There is a light rain falling, and he digs into the small rucksack he is carrying to retrieve his waterproof jacket and his silk under-gloves, and he dons the items before shouldering his way into the rucksack. Having adjusted the straps to his satisfaction, he crosses the gloom of the carpark and passes between a row of glistening car roofs before ducking down low and doubling back along the fringe of the parking area until he locates Robinson’s white Ford Capri. He squats beside the car that’s parked next to it, in a position that allows him a view of the front of the pub, and he waits.
Mathew can remain sitting on his heels, in absolute stillness, for more than an hour but he knows he won’t have to wait that long. Robinson’s Wednesday night routine is to leave thirty minutes before the pub’s closing time so that he is at the front of the queue to collect two portions of curried chicken, two portions of fried rice, and one portion of sweet and sour prawn balls from Lee’s Kitchen, which he will then take home to share with his wife, Sandra.
The carpark is quiet and subdued. The din from the pub is blanketed by the mist and by the worsening rain. Mathew breathes in the damp air. He concentrates on his pulse and blood pressure. He holds his breath for five seconds and lets it go along with any tension that he might be unconsciously holding.
Light from the inside of the pub momentarily floods the mist, and a gush of joviality escapes with it as Robinson makes his exit, and then all is subdued again as he slams the door shut in his wake.
Robinson saunters across the carpark towards his car, whistling a tuneless ditty, and Mathew makes himself small in the shadows of the neighbouring vehicle, waiting for Donny to extract his keys from his pocket and open the driver’s door to his Capri.
But instead, the man passes the door, goes to the front of the car, and starts to urinate into the ditch that separates the carpark from an unlit pathway.
It matters not to Mathew. Having scanned the area for passers-by, he is already at the rear of the Capri. He pauses momentarily as Robinson exhales blissfully, and then he takes four measured, silent paces, sliding the skewer free from its hiding place as he moves into position behind Donny’s back.

Donny’s grateful sigh and the splashing of his urine mingle with the concert of the other nighttime sounds.

Mathews reaches forward with his left hand and grabs a handful of Robinson’s lank hair, jerking his head in a well-practiced manner to the left, exposing the right-hand-side of the man’s thick neck. Even as the roar of complaint erupts in Donny’s larynx, Mathew sticks the steel of the skewer up behind his right ear, just above the top of his jawbone, and slides it up smoothly into the frontal lobe of his brain.
It feels exactly like inserting a thermometer into a slab of beef to check its doneness.
The angry complaint stored in Robinson’s throat turns to a muffled cry of surprise and utter terror as Mathew slides his left hand around the front of Donny’s face to cover his mouth, and he retracts the steel from the side of his neck.
He steps backwards and rolls downwards onto his back, allowing Donny’s body to follow him to the ground, obscuring them both in the cover of the parked cars. Mathew wraps both his legs around Donny’s body in a judo-style hold and he braces the man’s head, his right hand now covering the mouth.
Donny’s body convulses. The heels of his boots kick at the tarmac, his hands clench and spread wide as if they are trying to reach out to something. It takes about seven seconds for the man’s body to realise that its brain no longer influences it.
And then it lets go and allows Donny to finally relax.
Mathew rolls the body away from him and raises his head above the line of parked cars, checking that they are still unobserved. He reaches down and touches the cornea of one of Donny’s staring eyes, and Donny does not flinch. He is dead.
Mathew retrieves his steel weapon from the wet ground, and he wipes the thin blade of the skewer on Robinson’s jacket before resecuring it in its original hiding place on the inside of his forearm. He stands up. He steps over the body and slithers his way down the side of the ditch in a standing position. He’s not worried about leaving signs. The ditch is scared by years of similar abuse. He gains the footpath, turns to his right, readjusts his shoulder straps, and commences a slow jog.
He heads west for three minutes which connects him with the main road that he crosses without having to worry about passing traffic. On the other side of the road, he takes a marked walking trail that heads up into the hills. The combination of gloom and rain is making it difficult to see, but he knows the way intimately. He stops briefly to replace the fake cap and its associated hair with his own, green balaclava, and then he continues upwards, jogging at a pace he can maintain all day long. Even uphill. Even in the dark and the rain.
The discovery of Robinson’s body is imminent. Deducing that a crime has been committed is probably days away. But even if it’s not, very few would have cause or capacity to follow Mathew’s trail. A smart detective would see the folly in attempting to close the roads.
The horse had bolted.
It takes him an hour and a half of careful jogging to reach the top of the hill, and another half an hour descending the opposite side until he is free of the trees, and he can just about make out the B52 in the distance, made obvious by the lights of the occasional, late-night traffic.
Forty minutes later, he passes the cattle gate of a carpark where he knows that Peewee is waiting for him. He taps on the window before opening the door to Peewee’s car and, having thrown his sac onto the rear passenger seat, followed by his soggy jacket, he slides gratefully into the seat next to Peewee.

‘All good?’ Peewee asks.

‘Good enough. Any traffic?’ Mathew replies as he extracts his wallet and ID from the glove compartment. He’s referring to radio traffic.

Peewee shakes his head slowly and purses his lips. ‘Nada,’ he confirms.

Mathew nods his approval, and the two men sit in silence as Peewee drives them back to barracks, passing control with barely a flick of their ID’s.
Before going to his quarters, Mathew makes a visit to the Naafi canteen. Thankfully, it’s deserted. He goes to the small woodstove that burns perpetually in the lounge area so as to welcome the various day and night patrols, and he adds two logs to the fire and throws his silk gloves in after them.
He sits and watches the sudden combustion as the gloves are lost forever.
He has no sympathy for Donny Robinson.
Yet he still feels wretched.
This is not what he’d signed up for.
And yet, at least for the time being, he has few options available to him.
After a while, he enters the kitchen where he carefully washes his hands and the steel barbecue skewer before replacing it in the cutlery drawer along with the rest of the skewers, exactly as he’d found it.