Camouflage

Chapter 8 Serial killers when interviewed, often complain that the most difficult part of the kill was not the act of taking of life, but the disposal afterwards. She had studied so many criminology, forensic and mass produced tomes on serial killers, most recently anything that could give her the edge on modern day forensics, she had expanded her book collection to entomology, psychology, chemistry and kept her mothers’ well thumbed copy of Grey’s anatomy for reference. Shows like CSI had given the public false hope in modern forensics, in reality the tests required to give any clues were expensive and punitive on any police budget, and no, the results didn’t pop up on the screen while they sat sipping lattes. The illusion of an ultra modern lab, complete with uber intelligent models, all of them clip clopping around in designer high heels was simply that, an illusion. She had weighed up all the disposal options available to her. She had laboriously studied the tides in Dublin bay and decided that the chances were; body parts dumped in the polluted bay would wash up in a frothy scum, bumping onto the wave lapped shingles in one of the urban inlets or the east coasts’ many beaches, rather than decompose on a long watery voyage in the Irish Sea. Dog walkers were notorious beach combers too, so that didn’t help. The tides and currents were notoriously fickle; anyway, she didn’t own a boat, nor did she intend to. Childhood memories of mackerel fishing with her family in a hired boat from Bullock harbor haunted her still, the irrational fear climbing down the quayside on a creaking slimy rope ladder, ever closer to the scuttling crabs in the shallow harbor water below. Being lifted by a rough, callous handed fisherman into a fragile, lobster tainted wooden row boat, complete with a puttering outboard motor. She shuddered at the memory, leaning over the side, seaweed and winkles dotting the encrusted paint sparse shiplap, her mothers’ vice like grip on her waistband, sick as a dog, salty spray splashes stung her eyes and giant translucent jellyfish taunted her, bobbing in the passing swell, daring her to jump in to the green abyss. she hated that unsafe feeling when the boat was moving, swells thumping the bow, side sweeping currents lifting the whining outboard until the trough allowed it to bite in again and move forward. Fond memories flooded in though, of anchoring in the sheltered waters off Dalkey Island, this was the only time her sea sickness passed. Her sister was content to torment her and hum the famous music to “Jaws” even though she was scaring herself doing it. Her father gingerly unraveling the lines and weights, and the final prize of being given the wooden handle, watching the line slice the water at an awkward angle, disappearing into the green depths, and not waiting long until a pull let you know a fish had eagerly impaled itself on the myriad hooks, another tug on the line, and another until the handle was trembling and vibrating in her grip, her terrified juvenile brain conjuring images of sharks or Dun Laoghaire’s infamous giant conger eel on the end of the line. She recalled her father, legs braced like a prizefighter for balance against the sides of the rocking boat, reeling in the taught, spraying line, wet shimmering line, pooling in the bottom of the little row boat before finally hauling up a chandelier of flapping metallic fish. The sea breeze carried her mother’s frenzied clapping with pride at the spectacle, waving to people watching from the Dalkey Island Hotel and her sister feigning aloof indifference peering above her copy of some teenage magazine. She could remember the struggling, unhooked fish, battering themselves in defiance against the bottom of the boat, the cold feel of them with their spiky, slimy scales as she gripped each tail, following her fathers’ lead, and bashing them against the “Y” shaped oar locks, silent now, eyes glossy and staring at the alien sky, sheets of newspaper draped across the spare seat board, sharp knife at the ready, copying her fathers’ surgical knife strokes. Gangs of noisy sea gulls, scrabbling in mid air, waiting for the feast of guts at each throw of her fathers’ strong arms. Her mother laughing, with the warm breeze catching her long blonde hair, and billowing it like a golden bridal veil behind her narrow shoulders, sun dappled, happy faces, and the joy of pouring sweet tea from a red tartan flask, adding the milk from a “Chivers” jam jar, the danger of leaning overboard to wash the sticky scales from their hands in the swell, silver specks tumbling down into the bottomless depths below like shiny pennies or glitter into a wishing well. Her father carefully tidying away the lines into the plastic shopping bag, snaring the lethal hooks into the spool of line till the next trip. They feasted like kings on a well earned egg sandwich, a packet of “Tayto” cheese and onion crisps, all downed with a cooling gulp of TK red lemonade. Her memories were anchoring snapshots of happiness. Once the fish were wrapped in newspaper and put in the cool box for home, her sea sickness would return, and so would her misery at being on the bobbing swell. She had ruled out using the Bay to dispose of waste and knew that flushing bits of a body down the Dublin sewer system were equally hazardous, so if you wanted to get caught courtesy of the Council or a company clearing a blockage you deserved to be locked up, for nothing if sheer stupidity.