Eden Burning by Deirdre Quiery Read Free Book Online Page B

Cedric smiled to himself. He hadn’t finished with Paddy yet. Paddy was hanging naked, upside down from a rafter. Cedric’s rough hands twisted the rope ever tighter around his neck, reducing his panting and intermittent screams to a harsh rasping choking. Cedric tightened and loosened the rope as he lounged back in a rickety chair, lighting a cigarette, resting it hands free on his lips for a few seconds, inhaling; before leaning forward, slowly puffing out hoops ofsmoke, drifting them towards Paddy. When he was about to die, Cedric loosened the noose again. Paddy gasped. He didn’t want to breathe. His body wanted to survive, Paddy wanted to die.
    When a cat chases a mouse, the mouse tries to escape at first. Even if it finds itself in a corner with no obvious way out, it will run around the skirting board, searching. The cat will follow, jumping into the air then falling with its full weight in a pounce. It draws the mouse into the air with its two paws, throwing it even higher towards the ceiling. It watches it fall onto the ground then rolls it with its paw from left to right, from right to left. The mouse still thinks it can escape, it makes a dart north-east but the cat has north-east, north-west, south-east, south-west covered. With a swipe of the paw the mouse is brought back to the centre. There is a moment before the kill, when the cat looks at the mouse, alone on the ground, eyes wide open, brown, bright, sparkling. The look they now exchange is different. It is intense, magnetic, absorbing, hypnotic. It might almost be mistaken as a look of love. In that moment before the kill, the mouse knows how to die. When the mouse lies dead on the cold tiles of a kitchen floor, the cat is no longer interested. It walks away, head in the air, without looking back at the still warm but lifeless body of its prey.
    An hour and a half later Cedric decided that Paddy would be allowed to die. What went through Cedric’s head as he looked at Paddy hanging naked upside down from the ceiling? As Cedric cut the rope and Paddy thumped heavily onto the concrete floor, Cedric muttered to Paddy, “Why did you make me do it? You gave me no choice.” He shook his head. “I had no choice.”
    Cedric stroked Paddy’s hair as he loosened the noose for the last time.
    Dawn broke over Belfast Lough, a thread of gold tracing along the horizon, a misty orange veiling the fading stars.Blackbirds sang energetically, hopping along the top of the yard wall then swooping gracefully onto the pavement. The grass growing through the pavement cracks frozen white. Even the hairs on the inside of Cedric’s nose bristled and froze as he breathed in, dragging Paddy’s dead body from the garage, dumping it in the entry, leaning against a neighbour’s back yard door. Paddy was doubled over like an unwanted scarecrow left for the bin men.
    Cedric pulled on black leather gloves, exhaled deeply, blowing white puffs of vapour in front of his face. He rubbed his arms to warm them as he approached the black taxi. He lifted a small heart shaped solitaire diamond ring out of his pocket. He looked at it under the street light – sparkling, a star fallen to earth, bound in gold. He slipped it into his trouser pocket.

chapter 4
    Monday 3rd January 1972
    “ M um – where are you?” Cedric opened the door into the kitchen. There was no sign of Eileen. He raised his voice and there was a slight sound of anxiety in the second call. “Where are you Mum?” He looked behind the door, remembering how she had hidden behind the door when he was three and how he had cried thinking she had disappeared and that he was alone in the world. He remembered how she laughed at him to see him in such a panic, with his mouth wide open screaming, tears running down his face.
    “You’re OK Cedric. Don’t be silly. I’m here.”
    She knelt down on the floor and hugged him and he felt the fear subside and he looked into her face and mimicked her smile.
    She smiled even more