No Comebacks

Murphy was bombing along between two stone walls when he discerned the looming mass of the tractor and trailer coming the other way. He hit the brakes rather sharply.

One thing about articulated vehicles is that although they can manoeuvre round corners that a rigid-frame lorry of similar length could not get near, they are the very devil when it comes to braking. If the cab section which does the towing and the trailer section which carries the cargo are not almost in line, they tend to jackknife. The heavy trailer tries to overtake the cab section, shoving it sideways into a skid as it does so. This is what happened to Murphy.

It was the stone walls, so common in those Wicklow hills, that stopped him rolling clean over. The farmer gunned his tractor clean through a handy farm gate, leaving the straw bales on the trailer to take any impact. Murphy's cab section began to slither as the trailer caught up with it. The load of fertilizer pushed him, brakes locked in panic, into the side of the bales, which fell happily all over his cab, almost burying it. The rear of the trailer behind him slammed into a stone wall and was thrown back onto the road, where it then hit the opposite stone wall as well.

When the screech of metal on stone stopped, the farm trailer was still upright, but had been moved ten feet, shearing its coupling to the tractor. The shock had thrown the farmer off his seat and into a pile of silage. He was having a noisy personal conversation with his creator. Murphy was sitting

in the dim half-light of a cab covered in bales of straw.

The shock of hitting the stone walls had sheared the pegs holding the rear of the artic shut and both doors had flown open. Part of the rose fertilizer cargo was strewn on the road behind the truck. Murphy opened his cab door and fought his way through the bales of straw to the road. He had but one instinct, to get as far away from there as possible as fast as he could. The farmer would never recognize him in the darkness. Even as he climbed down, he recalled he had not had time to wipe the interior of the cab of all his fingerprints.

The farmer had squelched his way out of the silage and was standing on the road beside Murphy's cab reeking of an odour that will never really catch on with the aftershave industry. It was evident he wished for a few moments of Murphy's time. Murphy thought fast. He would appease the farmer and offer to help him reload his trailer. At the first opportunity he would wipe his prints off the inside of the cab, and at the second vanish into the darkness.

It was at this moment that the police patrol car arrived. It is a strange thing about police cars; when you need one they are like strawberries in Greenland. Scrape a few inches of paint off someone else's body work and they come out of the gratings. This one had escorted a minister from Dublin to his country home near Annamoe and was returning to the capital. When Murphy saw the headlights he thought it was just another motorist; as the lights doused he saw it was the real thing. It had a Garda sign on the roof, and this one did light up.

The sergeant and the constable walked slowly past the immobilized tractor-trailer and surveyed the tumbled bales. Murphy realized there was nothing for it but to bluff the whole thing out. In the darkness he could still get away with it.

'Yours?' asked the sergeant, nodding at the artic.

'Yes,' said Murphy.

'A long way from the main roads,' said the sergeant.

'Aye, and late too,' said Murphy. 'The ferry was late at Rosslare this afternoon and I wanted to deliver this lot and get home to my wee bed.'

'Papers,' said the sergeant.

Murphy reached into the cab and handed him Liam Clarke's sheaf of documents.

'Liam Clarke?' asked the sergeant.

Murphy nodded. The documents were -in perfect order. The constable had been examining the tractor and came back to his sergeant.

'One of your man's headlights doesn't work,' he said, nodding at the farmer, 'and the other's covered with clay. You would not see this rig at ten yards.'

The sergeant handed Murphy the documents back and transferred his attention to the farmer. The latter, all self-justification a few moments ago, began to look defensive. Murphy's spirits rose.

'I wouldn't want to make an issue of it,' he said, 'but the garda's right. The tractor and trailer were completely invisible.'

'You have your licence?' the sergeant asked the farmer.

'It's at home,' said the farmer.

'And the insurance with it, no doubt,' said the sergeant. 'I hope they're both in order. We'll see in a minute. Meanwhile you can't drive on with faulty headlights. Move the trailer onto the field and clear the bales off the road. You can collect them all at first light. We'll run you home and look at the documents at the same time.'

Murphy's spirits rose higher. They would be gone in a few minutes. The constable began to examine the lights of the artic. They were in perfect order. He moved to look at the rear lights.

'What's your cargo?' asked the sergeant.

'Fertilizer,' said Murphy. 'Part peat moss, part cow manure. Good for roses.'

The sergeant burst out laughing. He turned to the farmer who had towed the trailer off the road into the field and was throwing the bales after it. The road was almost clear.

'This one's carrying a load of manure,' he said, 'but you're the one up to your neck in it.' He was amused by his wit.

The constable came back from the rear of the artic's trailer section. 'The doors have sprung open,' he said. 'Some of the sacks have fallen in the road and burst. I think you'd better have a look, sarge.'

The three of them walked back down the side of the artic to the rear.