The Torso in the Canal by John Mooney

being haunted by the memory of Noor—which drove her to return, under the cover of darkness, to where they had buried his head in the Sean Walsh Memorial Park.
    Though it may have been because she didn’t trust Charlotte, and didn’t want her to know what she was about to do, she decided to move it to another location.
    In a statement she later made to gardaí, she recalled sitting on the bench close to where the head was buried. Here, she prayed and prayed, hoping that somehow the nightmare would end. More than anything, she was terrified that someone would notice the head buried in the ground. The truth was that someone already had.
    A member of the public had seen the head when he sat on the bench in the park some days after the discovery of the headless, dismembered body. Laurence Keegan, a retired army private, went to the park alone every day to drink and smoke. He sat on the same bench in the same location. A few days after the discovery in the Royal Canal, he was sitting on his usual bench in the park when he noticed what he thought was the top of a head with short dark hair protruding from the ground. He tried to dig it out of the ground with the toe of his boots, but failed. It occurred to him that what he was looking at may have been the head of the body from the canal.
    He told his daughter what he had seen and asked her to return to the park to help him dig it up, but she didn’t believe him and refused. He saw the head there for a few more days and then it disappeared.
    At the time, this was unknown to Linda. She put her hands on what appeared to be a rock but was in fact Noor’s head. It was now smooth and hairless. As she lifted the body part from its resting place, she tried not to look at it; she simply couldn’t. What went through her mind can only be surmised.
    According to her own statement, she placed the head into a black plastic bag and concealed it in bushes in Killinarden Park until the next day. When she returned, she brought her son’s empty school bag on her back.
    Carefully, she put the head into the school bag and walked as far as Brittas. She had lived in Brittas for a while, so she was familiar with the area. She trembled as she walked and tried to remain in control, though it was clear that she was in fact beginning to lose her senses.
    Once she took possession of Noor’s head, she found that she couldn’t function without alcohol. So on that morning, she brought a litre of vodka with her, which she hoped would give her the strength to do what she needed to do.
    Once she had walked through Brittas, she made her way out into the countryside and away from the sprawl of the housing estates. She then walked deep into a field until she was out of sight.
    Here, she fell to her knees, kissed the bag and told Noor that she was sorry. In many ways she was. At that moment, she wanted all the pain that she was experiencing to go away.
    She was now beyond grief and despair. She drank the bottle of vodka and spent a few hours sitting with the head. She spoke to the victim, pleaded with him to forgive her, and said she wished she could go back in time. Her mind was full of suicidal thoughts which she dared not admit. She then took the hammer out of the bag and began to smash what remained of the head, trying to break it up into smaller pieces.
    In her drunken state, she fell asleep with the smashed head lying beside her. When she woke up, she was cold, and it was getting dark. She saw a mucky patch on the ground beside her and once again attempted to hide the head. She covered the evidence with soil, and said a prayer over it.
    Linda was filled with remorse as she whispered to what remained of Noor: ‘I’m sorry. It should not be you.’
    When she had covered the head as best she could, she lit a small fire and burned the black plastic bag and the schoolbag there in the field. She ran all the way home, where she fell into bed, exhausted and emotionally wasted.
     
    *****
     
    In the days