Coffin Maker , livre ebook

Pneuma Springs Publishing - Mccarthy James

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164 pages

English

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From behind the headstones the laser beams from the machine guns settle on the target; coffin maker, Pat O'Donnell. He is unwillingly digging a grave in the old colony cemetery on Achill Island for these thugs, and they will not hesitate to use their fire power. Who is he digging the grave for and why are they pointing their guns at him?This nocturnal grave digging puzzles him, but he might well be digging his own last resting place if the information has leaked out that he is working undercover with Garda Detective John O'Neill trying to identify the reclusive drug lord, The Big Fellah. Pat has a score to settle with him; his gunmen had forced Pat's pregnant wife off the M50 to her death. He has had other traumas in his life, an adopted orphan who suffered abuse, but the loss of his wife is the most devastating event that has ever happened to him. He misses her everyday.Midway into the dig a man and a woman alight from a jeep. Even in the half-light he can see she is beautiful, but what is she doing here with these killers? She is a stranger, yet, he feels drawn to her and her mysterious background. Reluctantly he finds himself caught up in a web of fear, intimidation, drug smuggling, and murder.Book reviews online @ www.publishedbestsellers.com

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Thriller

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Publié par	Pneuma Springs Publishing
Date de parution	26 juillet 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781782282280
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0195€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

James McCarthy
First Published in 2012 by: Pneuma Springs Publishing
The Coffin Maker Copyright © 2012 James McCarthy
James McCarthy has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work
Pneuma Springs
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
McCarthy, James. The coffin maker. 1. Ireland--Fiction. 2. Suspense fiction. I. Title 823.9'2-dc23
Kindle eISBN: 9781782282396 Epub eISBN: 9781782282280 PDF eBook eISBN: 9781782282501 Paperback ISBN: 9781907728440

Pneuma Springs Publishing E: admin@pneumasprings.co.uk W: www.pneumasprings.co.uk
Published in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written consent of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, save those clearly in the public domain, is purely coincidental.
This book is dedicated to
Carmel and Richard
The Novel
1
‘Ah-ah, that was a sore one.’ He hit his knee on the revolver stuck with duct tape to the underside of the dash when he reached forward for the remote control to open the gates. He should move that pistol somewhere else, but it wouldn’t be as easy to grab when he needed it.
This gun, a Glock 17 had a reputation for reliability, and it was a hell of a lot better than his previous gun which he bought in England as a deactivated firearm. A dodgy gunsmith in Dublin fitted a new firing pin, and that restored it to working order. It didn’t come with any safety guarantees, and he was sure one day it would blow up in his face. He was glad to be rid of it.
It was near midnight, and it had been a long drive in the hearse back to the island, although he had some luck on this trip, the customs officer didn’t search the coffin. He felt tired, and it would be a relief to take off his undertaker’s uniform; everything black except a white shirt.
He pressed the red button on the remote control, and the wrought iron gates creaked open. When he got time he would spray WD40 on the pivots. It wasn’t exactly a hard task, but recently he had become careless about maintenance jobs like that.
The green button on the remote for closing the gates didn’t work anymore. He’d shut them later.
He drove forward and the security lights came on, lighting up the house and, behind it, the coffin showroom, the workshop, morgue and crematorium. On the other side of the yard, the Chapel was in darkness.
In the showroom window, he had four different priced coffins on display, like grand pianos with their lids open. He had watched a TV documentary on American funeral parlours, and he copied this method for putting them on show.
The neon sign over the showroom read: ‘ACHILL ISLAND FUNERAL UNDERTAKERS. Hand crafted coffins a specialty. Owners Pat O’ Donnell and Son.’
That sign was up there over 50 years, when his father first started the business. Pat missed him since he passed away as a sounding board for all the difficult decisions he had to make about the business.
He halted outside the morgue, switched off the engine, and got out. He might as well shut the gates, and he walked back across the yard. Before he got there, two SUVs with North of Ireland registration plates drove in. They stopped alongside him with the blast of heat from the engines.
Three men in boiler suits carrying machine pistols got out. This didn’t look good. He had read somewhere that new boiler suits didn’t leave any crime scene evidence.
‘What can I do for you gentlemen?’ he asked pretending there was nothing strange about armed men in boiler suits calling to his undertaker business at midnight.
A short man with a beer belly stepped forward. The front of his boiler suit bulging out was making him look pregnant.
‘Are you Pat O’Donnell?’
‘Pat O’Donnell junior. My father died a few years ago.’
It wasn’t the time for a smart answer like, ‘who is asking,’ ‘or what is it to you.’
‘We want a coffin.’
‘You’ve come to the right place. What size.’
‘Your height.’
‘Average then.’
Pat had heard that in this situation, it was a good idea to talk to your captors, if that’s what they were. He thought about making a run for it, but his knees were shaking so much that he wouldn’t get far before they shot him.
‘I have to take his Lordship out of the hearse first. That’s what I call the male corpses, and the females are all princesses.’
This was the time for elaboration to try to get some of his power back. Followed closely by Chubby, surely that was his nickname, he opened the mortuary door and switched on the lights. The inside looked stark and clinical with whitewashed walls, marble tops and stainless steel furnishings. He pulled on a white lab coat stained with embalming fluid that looked like blood and searched around for a face mask. Hanging on a nail, he found a mask used for spraying red paint and he put it on. A pair of red gloves completed the outfit. He was being theatrical, and he hoped it would unnerve them.
He pushed the heavy-duty trolley used for moving caskets, from the morgue to the back of the hearse, opened the tailgate and slid the coffin onto it.
‘His Lordship needs some air.’
Time for more drama, he removed the lid of the coffin slowly as if he was afraid something would jump out. The head of the corpse had fallen sideways during the journey, and he walked around the coffin a few times before he bent forward and straightened it.
‘Don’t touch anything, there could be bugs about.’
The gunman stepped back. He was doing all right in unsettling him, but these men were dangerous, and he didn’t know how many more were in the SUVs. No one offered to help nor did he expect it as he pushed the coffin into the morgue and onto the chain rollers. They started automatically and moved the coffin along to the refrigeration cabinet. He could have put the lid back on the coffin but decided to leave it open for effect. He closed the cabinet doors.
Next on the agenda was a coffin for the thugs. It didn’t look like they would pay for a hand crafted one. He selected a cheap Polish import and pulled it down from the rack. Normally, it would need preparation like padding, polishing, attaching handles and a name plate, but he would forgo that chore to get rid of Chubby and his mob as quickly as he could.
‘Will this one do?’
‘Get on with it,’ Chubby said in his deep Northern accent.
‘Will you take it in one of the Jeeps?’
‘Put it in the hearse and take whatever you need to dig a grave.’
‘The digger is in the cemetery down the road. I can tow it behind the hearse.’
‘Dig it by hand and get a move on.’
Chubby was getting impatient, and it was better not to push him too far. Pat poured embalming fluid into the coffin before he put it into the hearse. That would give off the stink of death and sicken anyone travelling with him. Alone in the hearse, he would have better chance of escaping from this lot, although the hearse wasn’t exactly a racing machine. The heavy diesel engine he had fitted to give more pulling power for taking coffins from England made it even more sluggish.
He hadn’t dug a grave by hand for a decade or more since he started in the undertaking business. They had employed gravediggers in those days, and he worked with them for a time, as his father insisted he should experience all aspects of the undertaking business.
He had stacked spades, picks, and shovels under the coffin platform of the hearse in case the digger broke down. That never happened. Chubby climbed into the passenger seat and sat rigid, holding the barrel of the gun in his hands and the butt between his knees. It was the way Pat had seen soldiers carrying weapons in jeeps on the TV. Maybe he’d had military training. Pat reversed the hearse into the roadway.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Colony cemetery.’
‘Do I need my embalming kit?’
‘Drive.’
It was an unusual place to go. The community hadn’t used the cemetery for hundreds of years. Maybe this lot wanted to exhume remains. He drove towards the cemetery followed by the two SUVs. The smell of the embalming fluid would have overpowered him if he hadn’t been wearing a mask. Out of the corner on his eye, he saw Chubby holding a hand over his mouth and nose.
‘Go faster!’
‘At this hour, a speeding hearse would attract attention.’
‘Stop.’
Chubby jumped out, vomited on the roadway and walked around for a few minutes taking in large gulps of air. He hoped Chubby would opt to travel in one of the SUVs.
2
‘Give me that mask,’ said Chubby, roughly gabbing Pat’s mask and trying to yank it from his face.
He took the extra mask from the glove compartment and gave it to Chubby who had difficulty getting it to seal across his nose. In Pat’s experience once exposed to the sickly smell of embalming fluid it somehow stayed in your nose for hours.
Eventually, they drove over the crest of the hill leading to Dugort village, and the spectacular view of silver strand framing the sea emerged. Pat slowed slightly. He usually enjoyed the scene. His passenger showed no interest; he wasn’t here for the view. Over to their left the outline of St. Thomas’s church surrounded by the cemetery was bright in the moonlight.
‘Park behind the church,’ barked Chubby.
The jeeps pulled in behind them. Years ago, the caretaker had secured the cemetery gates with a chain and padlock and after his death no one could find the key. It had remained unopened since.
Normally Pat scrambled over the wall when he needed a name from the headstones for one of the John Doe corpses he brought from England, but he wasn’t going to tell them about that. Chubby looked at the chain and padlock for a few seconds and went to the rear of the SUV and searched around until he found a bolt cutter. He cut through the rusty chain and the gate