‘Murphy?’ I tried to yell out. Trapped momentarily behind the expanded airbag I was winded but feeling no pain. Where was he? Then I heard what I assumed were the brakes of the BMW as Murphy stopped suddenly on the hill some way back up behind me. I pushed the bag out of my way I tried to unbuckle my seatbelt; succeeding with some difficulty. Anything broken? I wondered – No. No apparent injuries noticeable. It was just as the manufacturers had promised would happen in a 55mph head-on crash into a stationary object like the solid stone wall I had just driven into. I reached for the door-handle and pushed it gently at first. It actually opened a fraction with just the slightest of hesitations. God those krauts know how to make cars - I thought. I was also able to move my legs. The cage hadn’t collapsed in on me. That was the main fear I had – that my knees would get caught in the wreckage and the car would catch fire with me in it. Having made sure that I could move I started to yell without getting out of the seat and still shrouded in slowly deflating airbag.

‘Murphy’ I yelled ‘Help - my legs’ I lied but Murphy wasn’t in a position to tell that I was lying.

Murphy yanked the door wide open and started to push the bag out of the way to get a look at my legs under the dashboard. He leaned in to see what was trapping my legs. I pulled out the wrench I had stashed carefully in the door pocket and clunked him as hard as I could on the back of the head.

‘Ouuh!’ he grunted as he slumped over my knees.

I hit him again for good measure – ‘to be sure to be sure’ – as they say. And then with great difficulty I managed to extract myself from beneath him. Now I had to place him behind the airbag in the driver seat. I adjusted him as best I could.

That done; all I needed now was a bit of a fire. The boot had flipped open and I grabbed a holdall with some items of clothing and a petrol can. I put my wallet with my ID card and ATM card and credit cards (now useless anyway thanks to the judge in the court today) into Murphy’s pocket and threw the clothes onto the back seat. I had intended to smash Murphy’s teeth in order to destroy his dental records but I drew the line at this. I knew where my dental records were kept so they could be dealt with when I got hold of a certain fire-setter later. In the meantime I did some fire-setting of my own. I quickly shook the petrol can dousing the liquid from the petrol tank and over the body of the car and into the upholstery in the back. One match did the trick. Whoooosh! The whole thing went up like a Halloween bonfire lighting up the darkening evening sky. I took off my watch – the one my wife Mary had given me with my name inscribed on the back and threw it into the inferno too with what I thought was a slightly theatrical gesture appropriate to this moment of revenge. I had never removed the CD plate from the back of the old Merc when I had lost my cabinet seat, so that provided another form of indirect proof of identity. Ex Minister O’Ryan had just perished in a car crash!

No time to lose now - the whole world will be up here soon wondering what the racket was. Back to my BMW that Murphy had so kindly driven down for me. As I raced back up the hill to where Murphy had left it a horrible thought struck me. The Keys!! Surely he hadn’t remove the keys from the ignition had he? I almost stopped half way between the burning Merc and the BMW back up the hill wanting to go back to where Murphy was by now resembling Mahatma Ghandi on his last voyage down the Ganges, but seeing the pyre I realised the point of no return had been reached. But relief - Whew! The keys were still there in the ignition and the engine was running.

Another violent U-turn and off like the clappers back to the house where I quickly pulled up a loose floorboard and retrieved the package with a nest egg that old McHale had accumulated in the years before his death. His nest egg was now part of my, much larger, nest egg which I had been building up steadily now over the past few weeks. Got to finance my new life somehow – no future for me in Castlebar now – now that I was ‘dead’!

Back in the car I cut across some back roads over the Clydagh River and emerging onto the N5 not too far from Ballyvary. I didn’t want to risk running into any police or emergency services heading for the scene of the bad traffic accident that had just occurred near Turlough Village. Forde the bastard dead. Murphy the lying traitor blackmailing bastard also dead. Two for the price of one. Not a bad day’s work.

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