Irish End Games, Books 4-5-6

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  Dr. Heaton readjusted his attention to the test tube in front of him but Dr. Lynch continued to stare at John. He’d been taught that staring was impolite and now he knew why. If Dr. Lynch’s face revealed anything about what she was feeling, it wasn’t very nice.

  *****

  Dinner was a festive affair that night. Gilly had quite outdone herself, what with her joy over her father’s new good mood—and the fact that John was still in Oxford. John knew the doc’s discovery was a game changer for him. Not only would his colleagues have to look at him differently now, but the discovery would mean more money and more research opportunities. The doc was even talking about visiting the States. There would be all kinds of invitations now.

  After dinner, Gilly and John did the dishes. Gilly planned to spend the evening studying for a geography exam. They were headed to London in the morning and she didn’t want to get behind in her studies.

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to hit the books, too, you know,” she said to John.

  “Why? I won’t be here long enough to get a grade. After London your dad says we’re heading straight to Belfast.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, there doesn’t seem much point in studying.”

  As they were finishing up with the dishes Dr. Heaton came into the kitchen. He had his coat over his arm.

  “Darling, will you be all right if John and I pop down to the Horse and Queen for a quick one?”

  “Absolutely,” Gilly said, tweaking John’s cheek. “Have one for me.”

  The walk to the pub was a half mile of mostly residential sidewalks with enough salt dumped on them to prevent slipping on yesterday’s snowfall. The blast of cold air as they stepped out of the townhouse mixed with the excitement that both of them felt. John had never been to London before and was excited about being there for Dr. Heaton’s great triumph when he handed over the details of the cure to his brother and the government authorities.

  “Does your brother know why we’re coming to London?” John asked as they walked toward Alfred Street. Knowing the doc as he did, it was entirely possible he had told his brother this was just a visit.

  “He knows I have a breakthrough.”

  “Did you tell him it’s Moonflower honey?”

  “All in due time, John. All in due time.” Dr. Heaton smiled, his eyes twinkling as he clapped his gloved hands together in unrestrained delight. John guessed there was more to Dr. Heaton’s relationship with his brother than he was letting on. Adult siblings tended to have complex interconnections. Or, as Mike used to say, it wasn’t all skittles and beer.

  “And you didn’t tell Dr. Lynch?”

  “Oh, she was keen, wasn’t she?” Dr. Heaton laughed. “She wanted to know so badly she could taste it.”

  “After the break-in a couple weeks ago, I figured she wasn’t the only one who wanted to know what you were doing.”

  “Aye, that was upsetting. Sandra would’ve had nothing to do with that.”

  “Maybe not. But the day before the break-in I had some notebooks rearranged and one of the pages ripped out.”

  “Really.” Dr. Heaton didn’t appear upset by this information.

  “You think Dr. Lynch could’ve done it?”

  “Hmmm. Well, I suppose. You know, John, hyper curiosity is one of the bedrocks of the scientific mind.”

  John shook his head in frustration. Was the doc really saying it might’ve been Lynch and that was okay?

  “Won’t be long now, lad,” Dr. Heaton said as they waited to cross the street to the pub on the other side. “You’ll be home in the bosom of your family. I’ll be on my way, well and truly. And the people of the UK and Europe can finally begin to heal.”

  “How soon until the medication is disseminated to all of them?”

  “Well, it will take time to manufacture it in large quantities. But once that’s done, I’d say just as soon as Daniel’s pushed it through all the red tape.”

  “You’d think with everybody dying left and right that they’d dispense with the bureaucratic barriers.”

  “You would, wouldn’t you? Don’t go into politics, John.”

  “What made you want to go to the pub tonight?”

  “Funny you should ask. When I was a boy, my father used to take me and Daniel to the village pub for a pint on Christmas Day.”

  “Oh, that’s cool”

  “It’s true we’re well past Christmas but the sentiment is the same. And as you’ll be leaving us soon and I don’t have any sons except yourself…”

  John felt a warmth well up inside his chest. He knew the doc was fond of him. But to realize the doc felt toward him almost as if he were his own son…John struggled to contain his emotions.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said and hoped the doc didn’t hear the catch in his throat.

  “Call me, Finlay. I should’ve insisted on it weeks ago.”

  John thought he detected a similar catch in the doc’s throat.

  Thirty minutes later, John sat at a scarred wooden table in the Horse and Queen pub while the doc went to the bar to get their drinks. John recognized it as the same pub they’d stopped at on their way to Oxford nearly three months earlier. John stretched his hands out to the fire. Tomorrow this time he’d be in London. And two days later he’d be back in Ireland. Dr. Heaton was working to arrange ground transportation to the south but even if John had to walk the entire way, he’d be home by the beginning of February.

  It wasn’t goodbye. He’d make sure it wasn’t. Some day he’d get back to Oxford and the doc was right, now that the medication was soon to be distributed, Ireland would ease its border restrictions. John thought of traveling back here for next Christmas with his mother, Mike and Gavin. The thought gave him a warm flush of happiness.

  It had been an amazing adventure. One he’d never forget. But now it was time to go home. Back where he belonged.

  *****

  At first Ethan didn’t recognize Heaton. He hadn’t expected to see him in this pub. Seeing him here felt like such an intense invasion that Ethan actually looked around to see if anybody else felt the same way. But the people around him appeared oblivious to the fact that Heaton was even there.

  Heaton went to the bar and began joking with the man behind the counter. Ethan could see the barkeep grinning and nodding like a sort of lower classes ape hoping for a tip to be thrown his way. And Heaton was slapping his hands on the bar and laughing as if this was his bar and he’d been coming here every night for months.

  Unbelievable!

  Ethan looked around the bar again. Surely to God people were seeing the fucking injustice of this! The bastard took Cynthia and then when Ethan had lost his own wife, after she walked out because she couldn’t forgive him, Heaton and Cynthia had stayed together. That contradicted the one thing he’d counted on. Heaton would throw Cynthia out and she’d run to Ethan. Only Heaton didn’t throw her out. He forgave her and the only one whose life went totally to shit was Ethan White’s.

  His plan to expose Heaton’s incompetence by infecting his daughter never got off the ground. The girl was rarely alone and any attempt he made to approach her had been unsuccessful. She looked at him like he was the fucking bogeyman. Not surprisingly, Heaton had probably told her that her mother’s death had been Ethan’s fault.

  It’s what I would’ve done.

  His eye fell on the back of the young teen sitting alone at a table near the fire. It was the American boy who lived with Heaton. The one who spent all his afternoons at the lab. The eyes and ears for Heaton, telling all the news and all the secrets from everyone else in the department. Heaton’s spy. And now Heaton steps up into academic glory for a nonexistent cure that nobody believes he really has and he keeps his daughter and he gets a brilliant son too?

  Is anything about that fair?

  Ethan bared his teeth and stood up suddenly, knocking his glass of lager over. All heads turned to look at him. Heaton grimaced from the bar and looked away in disgust.

  No. You d
o not get to feel superior to me. Not after everything I’ve lost because of you.

  The knife was out of its sheath and in his hand. His feet moved. There was no way he could stop this. The rightness of it was absolute. Heaton’s back was to him at the bar.

  Two steps from him now.

  *****

  At first John wasn’t sure what he was seeing. He turned to check on what was taking so long with the beers and saw Dr. White behind Dr. Heaton, holding a knife high in the air.

  “Dr. Heaton!” John shouted.

  White slammed the knife down into a solid punch into Dr. Heaton’s back. Once. Twice. Two men standing nearby grabbed White’s arm. The bartender held up a long truncheon in both hands but the men were already pulling White away. White screamed in frustration.

  Dr. Heaton slid down the front of the bar, the two glasses of beer he’d held falling to the wooden floor. John bolted from the table, pushing onlookers aside. White was ranting, screaming that Heaton had ruined his life. The knife, coated with blood, lay next to Heaton’s head. John turned to the bartender.

  “Call 999!” he yelled. The bartender, his face white and shocked, dropped the bat on the counter and bent to grapple for the phone under the bar.

  John put his face to Finlay’s ear.

  “Hang on,” he said. “Please just hang on. Help is coming.” But when he pulled back, he saw Dr. Heaton’s eyes were open. And unseeing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The memorial service was held at St Andrew’s Church in the village of Old Headington, outside Oxford. It had been built in 1160 and to John it looked more like a Norman fortress than a church. The snow had begun to melt and the rolling kirkyard that surrounded the church resembled a muddy motor cross track littered with headstones. All throughout the service and the drive there and back, John felt like he was in a dream.

  A really bad dream.

  Gilly had lost it. John knew she would. Everything since the moment Ethan White stabbed Finlay Heaton to death in front of fifteen more or less sober witnesses had been a whirl of pain and tears. John’s and Gilly’s. He listened now to the silence in the townhouse where Dr. Heaton would never come, not looking for his supper, not ready to report his day at the lab.

  Not ever again.

  The police had arrested White of course. It was amazing how uninterested John or Gilly were in what happened to him. Put him in jail, hang him or let him go. What difference did it make?

  Nothing could reanimate Finlay Heaton.

  Daniel Heaton, Finlay’s brother, had come down from London for the service. John was surprised he didn’t come down sooner but Gilly said he was very busy running the country and she hadn’t expected him to. Daniel Heaton SMP looked very much like Finlay, John noted. He couldn’t remember which one was the older sibling and nobody was talking about that sort of thing. Daniel, John, Gilly and Dr. Lynch drove back to the townhouse together after the memorial service as some of the college wives had gotten together with the neighbors to set out a table with casseroles and roasts and drinks.

  Gilly hadn’t let go of John’s hand almost since the moment he’d delivered the bad news to her. He didn’t mind. Right now, he needed her as much as she needed him.

  He still couldn’t believe the doc was gone. It was impossible to fully gel in his mind that he’d never see him again, that he’d never go back to the lab. That Dr. Heaton was not going to be a part of his life going forward. When he thought of it in terms like that—words that took him step by step though his grief and the future he’d have now without Dr. Heaton—then and only then did he want to take a metal bat to Ethan White.

  As soon as they got back from the church, Daniel Heaton could be seen standing by the front door to greet people like a one-man receiving line. Geordie was in the kitchen with two large pies from the commune—and a hug for Gilly. He was in and out in a flash though. John didn’t blame him. It was almost harder dealing with the bereaved than being the bereaved.

  When he noticed Daniel pull Gilly over to stand beside him, John frowned. Gilly needed taking care of right now, not being forced into service. But she smiled bravely and shook hands with everyone who walked in the door. After a few minutes, John saw that seeing all the people who’d loved Dr. Heaton and were so sad, well, it actually seemed to be helping. Gilly looked like she’d pulled herself together.

  “It’s a terrible thing,” Dr. Lynch said as she stood next to John, a plate in her hand, the two of them watching Gilly and Daniel greet everyone.

  “I still can’t believe it,” John said.

  “Well, I can well believe that tosser Ethan White did what he did,” Dr. Lynch said, her mouth twisted in a moue of distaste.

  “You knew he was capable of this?”

  She hesitated and then put her plate down, uneaten. “No,” she admitted. “Not this.”

  “It was you who ripped out the page of my notebook, wasn’t it?”

  She looked startled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, turning to go into the living room where she began talking to one of the teachers at the college. She kept her back to John.

  Today was the day John was supposed to be on his way to Ireland. A cold finger of dread traced down his spine as he thought of his mother still having no clue where he was, if he was alive or dead. And now, how would he be able to get back to her after all?

  Gilly broke away from Daniel at the door and came to John. Without thinking, he drew her into his arms and they held each other. She smelled like lemons and lilacs. She felt firm and strong in his arms, not like she was about to fall apart and John was reminded of how she was when he first met her. Tough, playful, resilient. She was going to be okay.

  She pulled back and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Some. You?”

  “I will in a bit. Uncle Dan wants me to come live with him in London.”

  John nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “I asked him about getting you back to Ireland. He said he can’t help us. Not even medical transports are going across right now. I’m so sorry, John.”

  “That’s okay.” But it wasn’t. It felt like a block of ice had formed in the pit of his stomach. He was stranded here. After all these months of believing he had a way home, now the truth was he was trapped.

  “Uncle Dan asked me a lot of questions about Dad’s work,” she said. “I told him Dad had a major breakthrough.”

  “Did you tell him about the wasp honey?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know why I didn’t.”

  John looked at Daniel Heaton smiling and talking to two elderly ladies who had just come into the townhouse. He looked like he was campaigning, John thought. When Heaton looked over unexpectedly and caught John looking at him, he gave a curt nod but no smile.

  He doesn’t want me here.

  Gilly tugged on John’s arm. “Come on, let’s eat something. I will if you will.” As John went into the kitchen with Gilly he looked back in time to see Daniel moving into the living room and tapping Dr. Lynch on the shoulder. The pair then quickly moved into the foyer and closed the glass door behind them, their heads were close together in private conversation.

  *****

  Daniel stepped into the back bedroom alone. The dresser top was clean of all personal effects except a silver framed photo of Finlay and Cynthia. Daniel’s lip twisted into a grimace. That was classic proof of his brother’s immensely poor decision-making abilities. The woman was a whore who married him because she’d gotten preggers. Because Finlay was too sentimental he wouldn’t dream of insisting on a DNA test but now that Daniel and Gilly were the last ones standing, it was probably in order.

  He walked over to the bed and sat down. Bloody bad timing although he couldn’t blame poor Finlay for that. That stupid wanker White had gone and lost the plot and mucked everything up. The only good news was that—White’s paranoia and rampant and unwarranted professional jealously aside—Finlay had still been no where nea
r a cure. Lynch just confirmed that Finlay hadn’t found anything. And if anyone would know, she would. Gilly on the other hand said her father had recently made a significant breakthrough. Probably with his buckets. Daniel had been sorely tempted to bury him with one.

  His phone rang right on schedule.

  “Cheers,” he said, answering it. “It is as I believed. There are no breakthroughs, so no worries. There is no cure.”

  “But don’t you have a team working on it?”

  “Of course we do. But my brother was the lead.”

  “Well, what about the others on his team?”

  “He wasn’t working on a team. He had little to no interaction with the supposed members of his team.”

  “I thought you just said—”

  “Look, the point is we’re no closer to a cure and isn’t that what we all want?” He lowered his voice although there was little chance of being overheard. “I’ll have to reassign someone else as lead. Rest assured things move slowly in the world of scientific research. And for God’s sake, settle down. I did just lose my brother two days ago, you know.”

  *****

  Daniel and Gilly’s goodbye was short if not particularly sweet. Gilly clung to him at the door and Daniel had to eventually pry her fingers from his jacket.

  “Now, steady on, darling,” he said, his eyes going to Dr. Lynch over Gilly’s shoulder as if making a silent request. Dr. Lynch remained seated in the living room. Everyone else had left and it was just the four of them again. Before Daniel had shrugged into his overcoat he’d taken John aside to tell him without any confusion that he wouldn’t be able to stay.

  “I don’t know what arrangement you had with my brother,” he said, raising an eyebrow at John as he prepared to depart back to London. “But it’s over. The townhouse will be made ready to sell. You’ll need to move along.”

  Now, as John watched the man physically attempt to disengage himself from Gilly, he couldn’t help think how unfair it was that the wrong brother had died.