by Des Ekin
‘Wait.’ He seemed agitated at her attempt to close the subject along with the book. He gestured at the small sculpture on the carpet. ‘I haven’t told you about this particular sheela-na-gig.’
‘What about it?’ A thought suddenly occurred to Tara. ‘This isn’t the one that was stolen from the abbey a few years back?’
He laughed. ‘I may be a rogue, but I’m not a thief.’ He lifted up the sculpture. ‘No, I was just giving you the background. This is a typical sheela-na-gig, but it’s not ancient. It’s a modern interpretation of the same theme, sculpted by a talented artist less than thirty years ago. By the same talented artist whose picture you were admiring in the dining-room.’
‘Michael de Blaca?’
‘Yes. It’s part of a series of twelve sheela-na-gigs he made. He didn’t exhibit them or sell them, because he felt Irish society wasn’t ready for that, and he was probably right. But he gave them as gifts, to people who were very special to him.’
Realisation began to dawn on Tara. ‘And he gave one to Ann,’ she said slowly.
‘Close. He gave it to Ann, to hold in trust for me. It was a gift to celebrate my birth just over twenty-nine years ago.’
Tara put down her empty wine glass. She had an idea where all this was headed. But she was terrified of leaping to the wrong conclusion.
‘Okay,’ she said at last, seeking refuge in forced humour. ‘Some people give babygros to celebrate a birth. Some people give changing-bags. Some people even lay down a case of fine vintage port. But Michael de Blaca thought it would be a good idea to give a dirty sculpture of a naked woman. It’s different, I’ll grant you that. But I can’t see the trend catching on.’
He watched her with studied amusement. He was in no hurry.
‘That sculpture,’ he persisted, ‘was a gift to me. From my father.’
So he had come out with it. But still, her professional instincts warned her to tread carefully, to check everything twice.
‘Let me get this straight,’ she said. ‘Are you telling me that Michael de Blaca is really your father?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Oh, come on, Tara. The whole of Claremoon Harbour knows Martin Kennedy was not my father. You must be the only one who hasn’t heard the rumours. And I know why – your father would never have allowed gossip to be repeated in his house.’
Tara felt suddenly out of her depth, like a person who had been invited to a coffee morning and had found herself in the middle of an intensive group-therapy session instead. ‘Can I have another glass of wine, please?’ she asked weakly.
He ignored her. ‘Now do you understand why I have such a passion to paint? Why painting means everything in the world to me?’
She nodded. But she didn’t want to be side-tracked down that road – at least, not just yet. ‘Did your father – Martin, I mean – know about this?’ she asked.
‘He knew.’
‘And when did you find out about it?’
‘Oh, it started very early. I heard schoolyard taunts and innuendo I didn’t understand, about my mother having an affair with an artist, and sometimes the drunks outside Sluther’s would shout the same sort of thing across the road at me as I walked home from school. I asked mom about it, but she just told me they were stupid, spiteful people and that I should ignore it.’
Tara laid her hand on his arm. She knew how cruel people could be in a small village.
‘Don’t worry, I’m fine,’ he assured her. ‘Those were the earliest indications. After that I began listening more closely. To things Martin said when he was drunk. To things that the grown-ups in the village said when they thought I wasn’t listening, or that I was too young to understand them. But I was absorbing it all, taking it all in. And eventually I was able to piece together the whole story – how de Blaca had had an affair with my mom, and how he’d run out on her when she became pregnant. I learned it all. And you know how it made me feel?’
‘I can imagine.’ Tara’s voice was sympathetic. ‘You were devastated.’
‘No!’ His face was lit up with pleasure. ‘It made me feel…whole. Fulfilled. At last I knew who I was. I wasn’t the son of a pathetic drunk – I was the son of a brilliant artist. I didn’t belong here on the farm. But I belonged.’
‘Was it official? I mean, on your birth certificate?’
He shook his head impatiently. ‘This is holy Ireland we’re talking about here, Tara. I was registered as Martin Kennedy’s son even though everyone knew it was a lie. The truth is that my veins don’t contain a single drop of blood from that sad white-trash lowlife creep, and if it weren’t for my mother, I’d shout the fact from the cliff tops.’
His eyes flashed with fury. Tara spoke soothingly. ‘Fergal…Fergal.’ She held his hand between hers. ‘I understand how you must feel. But you obviously realise it would destroy your mother if you were to turn a rumour into a fact, in a small community like this. Does she talk about it at all?’
‘No. I’ve tried to talk to her, but she would never open up to me.’ Fergal’s hand was stiff, still tense with the coiled-up anger that had been trapped inside him since his teens. ‘She just kept repeating that some things about the past were better left alone.’
He removed his hand brusquely and refilled their glasses. ‘When I pressed her, all she would say is that her conscience was clear before God. She was certain God would understand, and she hoped her family would. I couldn’t get another word out of her.’
There was a long silence. ‘How long did their affair last?’ asked Tara.
‘Who knows? By its very nature it had to be kept hidden. We’re talking about three decades ago, Tara,’ Fergal pleaded, his anger turning to a fierce urge to explain and justify.
‘How did he get within a mile of your mother? They seemed to inhabit totally different universes.’
Fergal passed the sheela-na-gig between his hands, almost as if in a private ritual, as he told her how he believed it had all happened. He could never know for sure, he explained, but, again, he had pieced together the story from local gossip, and information dropped by both his parents in times of anger.
De Blaca had begun by painting the fishermen at work down by the harbour, but had rapidly tired of the subject and moved further up the hill to get a wider view of the bay. The best viewpoint of all had been from the roadside just outside the Kennedy household, and that’s where he had planted his easel. Like some modern-day Turner, he painted outdoors in all weathers, trying to capture the constantly changing moods of the volatile Atlantic Ocean.
It had been Martin who had encouraged the artist, regarding him as a potential drinking buddy whose bohemian nature would allow him to join him in early-afternoon drinking sessions. But that illusion was soon dispelled. De Blaca was fond of his Jameson, but painting was his all-consuming passion and he allowed nothing to get in its way.
Once or twice Martin had gone to watch him paint on the cliff top, offering him a hip-flask to keep the cold at bay. De Blaca had accepted politely but had returned to his task. After that he had responded with curt monosyllables to the farmer’s attempts at conversation.
Martin wrongly interpreted de Blaca’s self-absorption as bad temper caused by discomfort and cold. He took a few more slugs of the whiskey and arrived at what he thought was the perfect solution.
‘Why don’t you come in to the house, and paint?’ he offered after they had finished the hip-flask between them. ‘Better than freezing your arse off out here in the middle of a heap of sheep droppings.’
De Blaca had turned his penetrating stare on him. ‘The word around town is that you should never invite me into your house,’ he said. ‘You never know what I might steal.’
Fergal slowly set down the sheela-na-gig. ‘It was a fair warning, man to man,’ he told Tara. ‘But Martin still insisted on bringing him back home and giving him the freedom of his house.’
‘But why…?’
Fergal shrugged and said nothing.
Tara lifted the statue and looked at it with distaste. ‘And de Blaca was as good as his word,’ she said. ‘He did steal something from him.’
‘The only thing de Blaca stole from him,’ said Fergal, ‘was something that was never his in the first place.’
Chapter Four
TARA’S OLD school echoed to the clatter of size-twelve boots and the cackle of communication radios. It was the day after the murder. The children were on summer holidays, and the empty building had assumed a new role as a garda incident centre. A note on the blackboard read: ‘See you all in September.’
Two detectives were in the headmaster’s study, explaining the case to a superintendent from Dublin who was due to address a press conference at eleven-thirty.
After a hot shower and a good breakfast, Tara felt her spirits rise as she walked through the familiar corridors. Whoever had committed this murder, it was not Fergal. That would very soon become obvious, if it hadn’t been made so already. His release was probably imminent.
But at the same time, she couldn’t take any chances. She searched the building for Steve McNamara, the local sergeant, and finally found him drinking a mug of tea in the junior infants’ classroom. She was relieved to find that he was alone.
It was no secret in the small village that Steve had a soft spot for Tara. Although he was in his late thirties, he had never married. For her part, Tara had grown very fond of this gentle Kerry giant who had played football for his county, and whose generosity and kindness were legendary. They were good friends, but Tara had to send out regular tactful signals to the sergeant that their relationship was no more than that. He seemed to accept the hints good-naturedly, and their friendship continued to grow.
Tara stole quietly in and closed the door behind her. ‘Steve, I really need to talk to you,’ she whispered. ‘It’s important. It’s about…’
‘Oh, feck it, Tara.’ A guilty expression flickered over Steve’s rough-hewn face and he clapped his huge hand to his brow. ‘I was supposed to call around to your house last night, wasn’t I? We were due to get extra men in at nine, but they didn’t turn up,’ he explained. ‘I was on overtime ’til midnight.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Steve. This is as good a time as any.’
The door burst open, striking Tara painfully between the shoulder blades. ‘Oh, Jesus, sorry,’ said a woman garda with a Donegal accent. ‘Steve, the Super wants you in his office right away. He needs to check something before the press conference.’
‘Oh, shine a light.’ Steve sprang to his feet and drained his mug. ‘It’ll have to wait, Tara. Hey! Don’t look so dejected.’ He clapped her on the shoulder. ‘I’ll talk to you immediately after the press conference. I’ll fill you in on everything. And that’s a promise.’
The press conference was being held in the assembly hall, a large room decorated with road safety posters and surrounded by cardboard boxes of gym gear. There were about twenty journalists perched on wooden folding chairs. Most of them were from Dublin, one was from the Examiner in Cork, and two or three were from local print and radio outlets. TV crews from RTÉ and TV3 were setting up their equipment directly in front of a low platform containing three empty chairs, a table and a large backdrop cloth bearing the crest of the Garda Siochána.
Tara took a seat near the front, nodding hello to a few of her colleagues. She glanced at her watch, checked the time, and wrote it at the top of a fresh page in her notebook.
She closed her eyes and tried to fight off the feeling that she was some sort of impostor. It was her job to be present at this press conference – at least three papers were depending on her for their coverage. And yet, she felt she had no right to be impartially reporting on a tragedy in which she was so closely involved. If only she’d had a chance to talk to Steve…
‘Good morning. Do you mind if I protrude and take this seat?’
Tara glanced up, puzzled. Oh, she realised suddenly. He meant ‘intrude’.
‘No, not at all,’ she said, shifting the handbag she’d thoughtlessly abandoned beside her on the only empty seat in the row.
‘Thank you.’ The tall stranger sat down. Behind the slight hint of CK aftershave, he carried with him a fresh smell of wind and open air, like sheets that have just been brought in from an outdoor clothesline on a gusty day. ‘Have I missed anything?’
Tara stole another glance at him as she shuffled her chair to give him more room. He was obviously a journalist of some sort, but he stood out from the rest of the press corps as distinctively as Tara herself stood out among the pale-skinned redheads in her native village.
For a start, his clothes were different. Most male reporters she knew dressed either in chain-store suits or smart-casual gear with Polo logos ostentatiously stamped all over them. This man wore a black leather jacket over a well-worn olive green shirt and black cotton trousers. His sturdy leather boots obviously had a lot of miles up on them. He looked as though he’d hiked across Ireland to get here.
And then there was that odd accent – what was it? Scandinavian? German? Or just that strange, almost Chinese, intonation that Donegal people developed when they’d been living in London for years?
‘No, nothing’s happened yet.’ She pointed up at the empty platform. ‘It was due to start at eleven-thirty, but there seems to be some delay.’
He smiled. ‘It’s par for the court in Ireland. Nothing ever starts on time.’
Par for the course, she wanted to tell him. It’s par for the course.
Instead, she was distracted by his dark, intense eyes. They were not old eyes – he was probably in his mid-thirties – but they seemed experienced, almost war weary. Yet they were warm with friendly humour as he smiled back at her.
‘I’m trying to place your accent,’ she confessed after a moment’s silence. ‘It’s not Swedish, it’s more…Eastern European or something.’
‘Well, it’s what you would describe as Eastern Europe, but it is really closer to central Europe. I come from Estonia. It is one of the Baltic States…’
‘North-east of Poland, north of Latvia, just across the gulf from Finland. I know. I’ve been there.’
His eyes opened in surprise. ‘You have?’
She nodded. ‘A few years ago. Just after the collapse of communism.’
‘And what the Dickens took you there?’
What the Dickens. He spoke like a character from one of those old black-and-white movies they showed on Sunday afternoons. She decided to leave him guessing.
‘Oh…a spying mission, of a sort,’ she said mysteriously. She didn’t divulge the more prosaic truth that she’d been sent by her editor to spy out the pubs and restaurants as an advance guide for Irish soccer fans on their way to World Cup games in the Baltic. ‘And what brings an Estonian to Ireland?’
He smiled. ‘That would take a very long time to explain. I fled Estonia in the mid-eighties because I didn’t like being ordered about by the Russians. After a while I settled in West Germany and got a job with Magnus, the news magazine.’
Tara glanced up at the platform. Still nothing happening.
‘Are you based here in Ireland?’ she asked politely, although she didn’t really care. She had the impression that the Estonian was using their meeting as an opportunity to polish up his atrocious English. Admittedly he was very good-looking, and under any other circumstances she would have been tempted to play along, but today she just didn’t feel in the mood. She was too worried about Fergal.
‘Well, I’ve recently been appointed as their correspondent in Ireland, so, yes, I have a home in Dublin now,’ the man was saying. ‘But for the last few years, I have not been based in any one place.’ He gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘My editors were good enough to let me travel the world playing cowboys and Indians at their expense. I was given the job of reporting on wars and conflicts all over the world.’
Tara nodded guardedly. ‘I’ve always admired the great war correspondents,’ she said. ‘People like Robert Fisk a
nd Maggie O’Kane. I’ve just finished a book by that German journalist Andres Talimann about his experiences on the war fronts. He’s covered everything from the Chechen uprising and the Rwandan massacres to the Drumcree riots last summer.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘His writing is so damn good, you want to just give up and go back to journalism college.’
His face remained impassive. ‘Not German. Estonian,’ he corrected her. He stuck out his hand. ‘It was terribly rude of me not to introduce myself. I am Andres Talimann.’
‘You wrote that book?’ Tara was so astounded she forgot to give her own name. ‘You wrote Unholy War?’
Andres nodded. ‘Well, I wrote the original version in German. The version available here is a translation, but I am told it is a very good translation. I am determined to improve my English – that is one of the reasons I came here.’
‘Wow. I really am delighted to meet you,’ she said genuinely. ‘That article you wrote about Nelson Mandela in Robben Island Prison is one of the classics of modern journalism. I’ve read it and reread it so many times…oh, I’m sorry.’
The hand was still outstretched and Tara suddenly realised that she hadn’t shaken it yet. ‘My name is Tara Ross. But I’m afraid my own life isn’t nearly so exciting,’ she admitted. ‘I’m a cyberhack. I edit an online newspaper, the Clare Electronic News, but, to tell you the truth, at this stage most of my income comes from working as a freelance stringer.’
Seats shuffled and notebooks rustled. The press conference was about to begin.
‘I know who you are and what you do, Tara,’ whispered Andres, staring up at the platform where a uniformed garda superintendent was taking a seat. ‘I also know that you have more than a professional interest in the fate of Mr Fergal Kennedy. But we must be silent. The gentleman is about to speak.’