Stone Heart

by Des Ekin

  Tara finished her glass of lager and tried to explain. ‘Andres Talimann always works with Bach playing in the background, no matter where he is in the world,’ she said. ‘It’s a quirky habit of his. He mentions that in his book.’ She chewed her lip thoughtfully. ‘And there was Bach music playing in the background in that phone call.’

  ‘Suddenly you’re an expert on Bach?’ Melanie smiled.

  Tara shook her head. ‘It was the whatsit, the cigar-ad tune. Everybody knows that.’

  ‘The Air on a G-String?’

  ‘That’s the one.’ Tara’s brow furrowed. ‘What did he want? Andres may be a bit eccentric from time to time, but he doesn’t seem the type to make nuisance phone calls. Maybe he was trying to tell me something.’

  ‘Maybe he dialled your number by mistake and then hung up when he realised,’ said Melanie, more practically. ‘Or maybe this is all just wishful thinking on your part. Aural hallucinations. We shrinks learn all about it at college. Recognised treatment is another round of beer.’

  ‘Don’t start all that,’ said Tara. Taking Melanie’s hint, she summoned the barman and ordered two more lagers. She set the mobile phone on the table and peered at its dial to make sure it was functioning. ‘Do you think he’ll call back?’

  ‘He never phones, he never writes…’ Melanie teased. ‘That’s the fourth time you’ve checked your phone. You’re like a sixteen-year-old hoping her boyfriend will call back after a first date.’

  ‘Oh, shut up.’ Tara paid the barman. ‘I haven’t changed my mind about Andres Talimann. He’s still a bit of a pain in the neck.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Melanie argued. ‘I had a bit of a chat with him earlier. He doesn’t mean to sound arrogant or intrusive. It just comes across that way because of his accent. Underneath it all, he’s okay.’

  Tara pushed the cellphone across to her. ‘Then the two of you can have another chat if he phones back.’

  Melanie shook her head. ‘I did a bit of research on him,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘On who?’

  ‘Andres. I rang up my publishers in London. They’re the same people who publish Unholy War.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, it seems he’s had something of a tragic personal life, although he’s never written about it. I talked to Carla, who does his publicity. She says he married a Mexican schoolteacher during his travels abroad and took her back to Estonia with him. But she died suddenly, five years ago. Some sort of accident or something. Carla says he never talks about it, but it seems to have been some tragedy that could have been prevented if he’d been there. But he wasn’t, and he feels he let her down. And he’s been blaming himself for her death ever since.’

  Melanie raised her voice to a holler as the latest summer holiday hit blasted out of the jukebox. ‘Carla got the wrong end of the stick, as usual,’ she shouted. ‘She thought that, just because he happened to be a good-looking man, I had designs on him.’

  ‘Perish the thought.’

  Melanie ignored her. ‘But what intrigued me was the advice she gave me. She said: “Don’t waste your time, honey. Sure, he’s plenty photogenic and all that, but as far as steady relationships are concerned, the guy just can’t be trusted to commit. As soon as he gets close to anyone, he jets off to the other side of the world and leaves her in the lurch. He’s left a trail of broken hearts from here to the Urals.” That’s what she told me.’

  Tara said nothing.

  ‘But then Carla always was prone to exaggeration,’ shouted Melanie. ‘I’m just passing it on for what it’s worth.’

  Chapter Ten

  TARA STEERED her rickety Fiat down the hill towards Claremoon Harbour. The very experience suggested a vortex, a return to a gravitational base. The worst of the nightmare was over, she thought. Things might never be the same, but at least her life would return to some semblance of normality.

  It had been a restless, unsatisfactory, disjointed week: too many days pacing the claustrophobic, maze-like streets of Galway like some neurotic polar bear trapped in a cage; too many late nights at pub sessions with Melanie, building up a sixty-a-day passive-smoking habit, carefully constructing hangovers that lasted all morning and caused time to blur and smudge beyond recognition.

  In the main street, she double-parked her tiny car on the outside of another motor, a twenty-five-year-old Mercedes that had a haybale serving as its rear seat. She slammed the rusty door and paused for a second to let the road-tension leave her body as she breathed in the sweet air of sea and hillside. It was a heady combination of salt and half-rotted seaweed and grass and dung and gorse-blossom. It was home.

  She knew this feeling of peace and contentment couldn’t last, but what surprised her was that it was shattered almost instantly.

  ‘Hey, you. You can’t leave that thing there.’

  Tara turned quickly. ‘Oh, hello Steve,’ she said. She wasn’t sure whether the aggressive tone was a joke but felt she’d better play it safe. ‘It’s great to see you again. I’m just nipping across for a pint of milk. I’ll be right back.’

  Normally, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Double and triple parking was almost part of the highway code in rural villages. It created a sort of acceptable level of chaos from which tractors and lorries disentangled themselves with continental bravado.

  But today was different.

  Sergeant Steve McNamara responded with all the warmth and flexibility of an Albanian border guard. ‘Your vehicle is causing a serious obstruction. Please move it.’

  ‘Steve!’

  ‘Very well.’ He reached into his pocket and removed a black notebook.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Tara jumped back into the Fiat and revved up its engine more than was necessary.

  He leaned on the window. The vast bulk of his head cast a shadow over the front seat. ‘You’ve also got a defective silencer.’

  She searched his features for any human emotion. There was none. This had once been the face of a close friend, but now she was dealing with Robocop.

  ‘So has everyone in bloody County Clare. It’s the potholes in the roads. Nobody fixes them. Remember?’

  But Steve was determined to do it by the book. He handed her a slip of official paper. ‘Please have it fixed and report to your nearest garda station as soon as it’s done.’

  Tara didn’t care about the ticket, but she did want to repair a damaged relationship.

  ‘Steve. Listen to me.’ She was almost pleading. ‘I realise that things have gone badly wrong between us and I’m sorry that you feel the way you do. Let’s meet up for a drink tonight and sort it out, friend to friend.’

  ‘Move on, please. You’re still causing an obstruction.’

  His head suddenly vanished from the window, and the summer sun seared her eyes like a laser beam. She winced. It was almost as though he had struck her physically.

  Angered by the cold rejection from Steve, Tara was more than ready for the abuse from the drunks at Sluther’s pub. Unfortunately, they were not ready for her.

  As she walked past the grubby bar, with its nauseous smell of Jeyes Fluid and recycled slops, she saw two of the pub’s regulars hanging around its doorway.

  ‘Here she comes,’ sniggered Zip-Down Seanie, loudly enough for her to hear. ‘The town bicycle.’

  ‘And not just the town, either,’ wheezed his mate Davy. Davy had lost one lung and still smoked forty a day. ‘I hear she makes sixty quid a night around the Limerick docks.’

  ‘Jaysus,’ said Seanie. His weasel face twisted in mock concentration. ‘At a fiver a time, that’s some goin’, even for her.’

  He flicked a lighted cigarette end into the street. It hit the hem of Tara’s cream lambswool skirt and bounced off in a shower of sparks.

  She knew what was about to happen. As she drew alongside the doorway, Seanie stepped out in front of her. It was early in the day, but already his breath smelled of stout and the cheap wine he’d consumed before opening-time.

  ‘Hey, lov
e. What about giving the local fellas some of what you give to the Yanks? Eh?’

  Davy was alarmed by this development. ‘Come on, Seanie. Slagging’s one thing, but for God’s sake don’t be hassling her.’ His remaining lung thumped hollowly with the effort of producing the rush of words.

  ‘She’s lovin’ it, aren’t you, me oul’ flower? Eh? Eh? What?’

  ‘Come on in out of that, Seanie. I’ll buy you a pint.’

  ‘Excuse me, please. I want to pass.’

  ‘Okay. Okay.’ Seanie pretended to search in the pockets of his filthy jacket. ‘How much is it? A tenner? Twenty? How come murderers get it for free? Eh? What’s that? Eh?’

  His unshaven face was close up against hers, his bad teeth at eye level. They looked like broken headstones in an untended cemetery and smelled like an uncleaned rabbit-hutch.

  ‘Seanie. Seanie. Give it a miss.’ Davy was looking around frantically.

  Tara side-stepped, but Seanie was surprisingly agile.

  She knew he was about to assault her, and she was prepared. When his bony, blackened hand swooped towards her breast like some predatory vulture, she reacted swiftly.

  She hardly moved, but her knee raised itself just a fraction. Her leather boot connected side-on with his left leg, and immediately skidded painfully down along his shinbone. Her heel, perfectly aimed, landed hard on his ankle-joint with every single ounce of her body-weight behind it.

  Seanie hadn’t expected it. He staggered backwards in agony, not sure which wound was hurting the most – the bruise just beneath his knee, the savagely skinned bone of his shin, or the damage to the soft tissue and tendons of his foot.

  Tara glanced quickly at Davy to see how he would react. If he had attacked, she would have been ready for him, too. But Davy had disappeared. He was one of this world’s born pot-stirrers, a man who delighted in provoking others into action and then vanishing into the shadows at the first sign of trouble.

  Tara calmly circumnavigated Seanie, who was in no position to pose any threat to her, and walked on towards her waiting car.

  She felt good again. Really good. And then she felt bad about how good she felt. And after that, she didn’t really care.

  ‘Very impressive, Tara.’

  The voice came from behind her. A different sort of voice. Cooler, calmer, with no hint of aggression. No sarcasm or irony. Just a normal voice. It sounded wonderful. She could have hugged him just for his neutral tone. Whoever he was.

  ‘Thanks.’ She didn’t turn around, but kept walking. Take no chances.

  ‘Basic Self Defence, one of the classic moves. Book or evening class?’

  The way he said ‘class’ gave him away. It was more of a Limerick city pronunciation, with a wide and elongated vowel. She recognised the deep, gritty, furnace-shovel voice and felt her muscles relaxing slightly. But she didn’t answer his question.

  If she had, the answer would have been ‘neither’. She remembered the long night-town shifts in her Dublin newspaper office where, during quiet times when they were both bored, a friendly security man named Ciarán would patiently teach her a series of simple moves that were guaranteed to disable a much heavier opponent in case of sudden attack. He would watch and criticise as she practised them over and over again. One day, he told her, this move could get you out of serious trouble, or that move could save your life. Don’t think about how much it will hurt him. Just do it, quickly, without delay. Surprise is everything.

  Ciarán himself was a burly six foot three martial arts champion. Ironically, his only recorded defeat would come at the hands of a five-foot-nothing junkie wielding a syringe filled with his own HIV-infected blood. It’s the only thing you can’t fight, he’d told her philosophically as he’d sat in a clinic awaiting the results of the Aids tests he’d have to keep taking for years.

  Now, as she reached her car, Tara wrenched open the faulty door and simultaneously wrenched herself back into the present.

  ‘I’ve already been done for double-parking and for breach of noise abatement by-laws,’ she said. ‘What are you going to bust me for, Inspector?’

  The detective, Phil O’Rourke, smiled thinly. ‘You’ll have to excuse Steve McNamara,’ he replied. ‘He’s been taking a lot of slagging from his colleagues. The usual juvenile stuff, but it gets to you after a while. And you did make a bit of an eejit out of him, Tara.’

  ‘Whether I did or I didn’t, and I don’t think I did, it’s none of your bloody business.’ Steady on, she told herself. You’re becoming incoherent.

  ‘Don’t worry about the traffic ticket. I’ll sort that out.’ He held out his hand.

  Tara looked him squarely in the face for the first time. Then she handed him the ticket. ‘Okay. Thanks.’

  Over his shoulder she could see Seanie. He had stopped rubbing his ankle and was standing upright, glaring at her with an expression of pure hatred.

  Phil O’Rourke noticed but didn’t even glance around. She realised he’d been monitoring the whole scene through the reflection in her rear window.

  ‘And especially don’t worry about Zip-Down Seanie. I’ll be having a word with him tonight. We’ll have a drink together and I’ll remind him about certain little episodes he’d rather forget. He won’t bother you again. Unless, of course, you want to press charges?’

  Tara shook her head.

  ‘I think that’s a wise decision. After all, it’s not as though he hasn’t received some degree of punishment. He’ll think twice before pulling that sort of stunt again.’

  As he talked, Davy edged warily out of Sluther’s and handed Seanie a small spirit-bottle. Seanie swiped him aside peevishly, keeping his eye fixed on Tara, then appeared to change his mind. He took a swig from the bottle, and then both men walked back towards the pub. Tara noticed with satisfaction that he was limping painfully.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose he will.’

  O’Rourke lit a cigarette. ‘It’s not generally known, but Seanie has a special interest in this particular case,’ he said, still staring at the reflection in the window. ‘At one stage, his unsavoury personal habits included molesting his twelve-year-old daughter. The authorities either couldn’t or wouldn’t act. Nobody did anything about the problem until Ann Kennedy intervened and persuaded his wife to move out with her family to one of her Safe Houses. Then they had him barred from the family home. At a single stroke, Seanie’s power over them was broken. He’s one of the few people in the world to have harboured a grudge against Ann.’

  Tara glanced back towards Sluther’s pub. Seanie had gone inside, but she could still make out his bitter, twisted features staring at her through the grubby window.

  ‘Is he a suspect in the murder investigation?’ she asked, unable to keep the note of hope out of her voice.

  ‘No.’ His voice was sympathetic but firm. ‘Seanie has many vices, most of them highly unpleasant, but they do not include murder.’

  ‘So how can I help you, Inspector?’ Tara’s tone became formal.

  ‘Call me O’Rourke. Everyone else does.’

  She didn’t respond but continued asking the same question with her eyes.

  ‘Let me buy you a coffee.’

  She thought about it for a moment and then shrugged her shoulders. ‘Sure.’

  They walked in silence to a roadhouse just outside the village. They passed through the crowded lounge bar and made their way into a deserted disco room marked ‘Closed’. Its huge dancefloor looked sad and empty in the meagre amount of daylight that was managing to filter through the dusty windows.

  O’Rourke steered her to a table well out of anyone’s earshot. Then he walked back out to the bar and returned with a pot of black coffee, a cream jug, a fork, some sugar and two large beakers.

  From his overcoat pocket he removed a double-measure bottle of whiskey, of the type served on aeroplanes. ‘Want to make it an Irish?’ he asked.

  She nodded wearily. ‘Why the hell not? I’m the town slattern after all.’

  T
he adrenalin buzz from her encounter with Seanie was fading fast and was being replaced by an enervating mental fatigue.

  He poured the whiskey, added some sugar and coffee, and whipped up a creamy head with polished expertise. ‘Four years as a part-time barman in the States,’ he explained. ‘You never lose the technique.’

  Tara was amused. ‘I think the idea is that you buy their whiskey, and they mix it for you,’ she said.

  O’Rourke made a contemptuous noise with his lips. ‘They’re used to me here,’ he said. ‘They don’t mind. I get the miniatures from a friend at Shannon Airport. I do him favours, he does me favours.’

  ‘I thought policemen never drank on duty,’ she said. She was curious rather than judgmental.

  ‘I’m not on duty.’

  Tara stared at him and tried to imagine what sort of home life or social life he must have.

  ‘Sláinte.’ He raised his cup. Tara responded, and they sat for a moment in silence, appreciating the smooth comforting mixture.

  ‘Tara,’ he said at last, ‘I want you to listen to me. Have you ever heard of ASPD?’

  ‘Anything to do with the NYPD or the LAPD?’

  He smiled. ‘No, nothing to do with police departments. It’s a relatively new concept in psychiatry – Antisocial Personality Disorder.’

  ‘And what on earth is that?’

  ‘You already know about psychopaths,’ he explained. ‘Remorseless, cold-blooded, aggressive criminals. You could call people with ASPD “socialised psychopaths”. They’re not necessarily criminals, but they exhibit all the classic symptoms of psychopathy – they’re cold, manipulative, deceitful, impulsive, superficially charming, blameful of others, unable to sustain relationships and totally lacking in guilt.’

  He took another slug of his Irish coffee and leaned forward. ‘We all know someone with ASPD,’ he said. ‘The kind of person we might describe as “a cold fish” or “a real sonofabitch”. You know the sort of man who endlessly uses people, who talks at you rather than to you, who has about as much emotional depth as a cardboard cut-out? Chances are he’s got ASPD.’