by Des Ekin
She shrugged, unconvinced.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let me try a little test on you.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Which two of these words would you link together: “warm”, “loving” and “cold”?’
Tara didn’t hesitate. ‘Warm and loving.’
‘There you are. Most of us would say the same. But people with ASPD tend to link “warm” and “cold”. They’re totally incapable of understanding how an emotion like love could be “warm”. They’ve grown up to believe that the world is a bleak and hostile place where, in order to survive, you either have to trample on everybody else, or else use superficial charm to manipulate them. Of course, they don’t make many friends that way – but it only reaffirms their view that they are outsiders in a world where it’s every man for himself.’
‘Every man?’
‘Yes. Men are five times more likely than women to have ASPD. No one knows why. But when they grow up and realise that they’re not quite like other people, they do one of two things. They can become hardened criminals and spend the rest of their lives in and out of prison.’
‘Or?’
‘Or they can camouflage their disorder. They learn to fake sincerity and act out the emotions that they see in other people. Their relationships are equally spurious and short-lived. They seek out jobs where their talents are in demand – think of Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street, for example. Anywhere that greed is good and ruthlessness is an asset, you’ll find no shortage of high-flyers with ASPD.’
Tara fell silent. ‘You obviously think Fergal Kennedy has ASPD,’ she said at last. ‘Or you wouldn’t be telling me all this.’
He paused, long enough for her to realise that his true answer was yes. ‘I don’t know,’ he said finally. ‘I’m not qualified to say. All I know is that people with ASPD are unreliable, unpredictable, and prone to sudden bouts of aggression and even violence.’
‘But Fergal’s not a bit like that.’
O’Rourke was silent, then he leaned forward and looked directly into her eyes. ‘There’s no cure for this disorder, Tara. And women who get into relationships with ASPD men always end up regretting it. The only problem is that they don’t find out until it’s too late.’
She met his gaze without flinching. ‘Thanks for the warning, O’Rourke. But I’ve no immediate plans to get into a long-term relationship with Fergal Kennedy. If I do, you’ll be the first to know.’
He finally looked away. ‘There’s been a lot of wild speculation about Ann’s murder,’ he said. ‘You’ve heard theories about robbery and sex attack. We’ve dismissed both. Ann was not sexually assaulted in any way. And anyway, sex murderers tend to strangle their victims. As for robbery, the idea that she was mugged by some Dublin drug addict is a non-starter. Of the three sightings of this alleged junkie, we can’t get one that’s totally reliable. No cash was stolen. No saleable goods taken either. Video, TV, even jewellery, all intact.’
‘That’s easily explained. He’s surprised in the act. He knifes her and runs.’
‘Without taking anything?’
‘He’s in a panic.’
‘So why did he spend at least three minutes stabbing her?’
‘Did he?’
‘Yes. Even as she lay on the ground. Long after she’d stopped struggling. Probably long after she was dead. At that particular moment, the killer hated Ann Kennedy very much indeed.’
She shook her head. ‘Well, that clinches it, then. Fergal loved his mother. He was absolutely devoted to her. I’m certain of that.’
‘Blind rage can overcome all sorts of positive emotions. Read up on your criminology: rage is the reason for most domestic murders. Rage, often fuelled by alcohol. Cheers.’
O’Rourke raised his cup and drank. She didn’t.
‘And remember,’ he said, ‘that people with ASPD are accomplished actors. He led you to believe that he loved his mother very much. That’s all you can say with certainty.’
She waited for him to go on.
‘Listen, Tara,’ he said, ‘I brought you here for three reasons. One, to ask you if you know anything else at all about that night. Any little thing, however insignificant, about his demeanour. Anything he said or did.’
Tara thought long and hard. ‘No. I’ve told you everything,’ she said truthfully.
He checked his notebook. ‘You said he was wearing jeans and a checked shirt.’
She nodded.
‘We’ve checked the house. His entire wardrobe seems to consist of jeans and checked shirts.’
Tara frowned. ‘So?’
She saw him make a conscious effort to slow down his mental processes to match hers. ‘So it’s important. After an attack like that, we would expect him to have had blood all over his clothes. But he hadn’t.’
Tara gasped incredulously. ‘Excuse me if I sound dense, but isn’t that a sign of his innocence?’
‘Could be. Could also be that he disposed of his blood-soaked clothes and changed into other ones that were almost identical. Can you describe the ones he was wearing when he left your house?’
She gave every detail she could remember.
‘Okay,’ he said, writing them down. ‘Point two is the murder weapon. You’ve already heard the description – a very sharp knife with a wide, curved blade and a wooden handle. But it will be easily identifiable. The forensic guys have established from microscopic examination that it must have been broken near the tip. So we’re looking for a knife with a distinctive notch or cut at the end. Incidentally, Tara, we’re keeping that bit quiet to discourage cranks and false confessions. Now, we’ve searched the entire area and we can’t locate the knife – any more than we can locate any bloody clothes. Anything you can think of that would match that description, in your house or his? Think hard. It’s important.’
‘I have been thinking, for over a week. No, there’s nothing I know of.’
O’Rourke produced another miniature bottle and poured it into his empty cup, this time neat. ‘Why bother with the coffee?’ he asked. He fished for another bottle. She touched his arm lightly and shook her head.
‘Why did Fergal phone New York from your house that night?’ he asked suddenly.
‘What?’
‘You heard me, Tara. Why did he make a phone call to a Manhattan number at around five am? Just two hours before his mother was found dead?’
She shook her head in bewilderment. ‘I haven’t the remotest idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You’ve no knowledge of that call? Yet you were with him all the time?’
‘Yes…well…’ She searched her memory. ‘Well, I did go to the bathroom a couple of times.’
‘For how long?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes or so.’
‘Around five am?’
‘I don’t know, O’Rourke. I honestly don’t know. I might have. What’s all this about?’
‘I’m not sure yet. But I’ll tell you as soon as I do know.’ He swirled his whiskey restlessly. ‘Do you know a man called Andres Talimann?’
His relaxed mannerism had disappeared. The questions were coming thick and fast.
‘Yes. He’s a journalist and writer. He works for…’
‘I know all that. Any idea why he should have spent Sunday afternoon drinking vodka with Godfrey Villiers?’
‘You mean after Ann’s body was discovered?’
O’Rourke nodded.
Tara shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea. He was probably just trying to pump him for info. He’s a reporter, after all.’
O’Rourke said nothing. He was obviously unconvinced.
‘Why shouldn’t he talk to Villiers?’ Tara demanded. ‘I know his gallery is a bit shady, but…’
‘It laundered over a hundred grand for the Viney family in Limerick last year,’ O’Rourke stated flatly. ‘Admittedly that’s only a small fraction of the money they earned from distributing cannabis around the south-west, but it’s still an important outle
t.’
‘But Villiers himself isn’t into dealing drugs.’
‘No. But he’s a lush and a gambler. From what I hear, he’s been skimming a bit off the drugs money to fund his high-rolling poker sessions. Always a dangerous thing to do. The last guy who crossed the Vineys was trussed like a chicken and buried up to his neck in mud in the Shannon estuary. He had to wait six hours for the tide to come in and drown him.’
Tara shuddered. ‘But what has all this got to do with Andres Talimann?’
O’Rourke reached into his inside pocket and produced a folded photograph. It showed Andres about to enter a pub with a fresh-faced young man who was dressed in a golf-club blazer and slacks.
‘That’s one of the Vineys’ main distributors,’ he said. ‘He shifts most of the gear in the Cork area. No heroin. Hash from Asia, some home-grown grass.’
Tara studied the picture. ‘When was this taken?’
‘A couple of days ago. While you were in Galway. It was part of a general surveillance by the National Drugs Unit.’
She handed the photo back to him. ‘And what do you make of all this, O’Rourke?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Talimann was just spotted once. There’s no evidence that he’s broken any law. But if we see him again, he’ll go on to our files for further investigation.’
Tara drained her cup. ‘Well, I’ve told you everything I know,’ she said. ‘I’m not holding anything back. You see, O’Rourke, I genuinely believe in Fergal’s innocence. And I’m convinced you’re after the wrong man.’
‘The right man being…?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not in the habit of making assumptions.’ She waited for the barb to sink in, then continued. ‘But surely you should at least investigate Fergal’s brother Manus? From what I’ve heard of his past, he fits your description of a classic psychopath.’
He turned to her. ‘We are, Tara, we are. We’re still searching for Manus. As I’ve told you, he was discharged from Inismaul Mental Hospital around six months ago. We’ve heard he could be in Boston, but we’ve had no luck with US immigration; if he’s in the States he’s there illegally, so he’ll be hard to track down. Our inquiries are ongoing, even as we speak.
‘But what do you suggest we do if we find him? Arrest him because he’s had psychiatric treatment? We haven’t even the slightest shred of evidence that Manus was even in this country at the time of Ann’s death, never mind in County Clare, never mind near the scene of the murder. If we tried to extradite him from America on that basis, the judge would still be laughing come Thanksgiving.’
‘But if you could find him?’
‘Well, yes, I’d be keen to put some questions to him. Very keen.’
‘You wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand? It could help clear Fergal?’
He seemed taken aback. ‘It would depend on what he had to say, Tara. If there were any suspicions at all, well, yes, it would shift the focus of our inquiry.’
She nodded. ‘That’s all I wanted to hear.’
He looked at her. ‘You’re not planning on doing anything stupid, are you, Tara?’
‘It all depends what you mean by stupid. Standing by and doing nothing while an innocent man suffers is hardly intelligent. Point three.’
‘What?’
‘You said you had three points to raise. We’ve had two.’
‘Okay.’ He seemed off-balance, no longer so completely in control. ‘Point three is more personal.’
She stiffened.
‘Point three is a warning, Tara. A woman who stands by a murderer has her own life ruined alongside his, when he finally comes clean and admits the offence. It’s particularly wasteful if she does it out of a misplaced sense of loyalty rather than…love, or passion.’
He seemed ill at ease with the words.
‘Nothing you’ve told me indicates that you are deeply in love with this man. Don’t throw your life away because of him. Socialised psychopaths don’t love and they don’t feel friendship. They just pretend to.’
‘Fergal isn’t like that. He doesn’t have…whatever it is, ASPD. And he is not a murderer. I’m convinced of that.’
‘But if he is.’
‘He’s not.’
‘But if.’ He came in hard, like an unexpectedly aggressive return on a tennis serve. ‘If, Tara. Just consider the possibility. In that case, you could be in grave danger. You could even be his next victim. A man who can kill in that manner could easily kill again. All I’m asking you to do is to be careful.’
‘You saw how I handled Seanie today. I’m a big girl now. I can look after myself.’
‘So was Ann Kennedy. Kind, sweet, but tough as nails after everything she’d been through. Besides,’ he finished his whiskey and grabbed his coat, ‘boots aren’t much defence against a frenzied knife attack.’
He scribbled two numbers on a beermat. ‘This is a direct line. This is my mobile number. If anything worries you, or if anything occurs to you that you didn’t think of before, give me a call immediately. Promise?’
She nodded. But she felt O’Rourke was getting off too lightly. ‘And what will you lot be doing in the meantime?’ she asked. ‘Besides following Fergal around twenty-four hours a day and booking me for dropping litter?’
He winced. Perhaps he’d been getting the same criticism from his superiors.
‘There are things going on behind the scenes. Things I can’t tell you about. We’ve a lot of forensic still to go through, and we still have to find the murder weapon. But as far as I’m concerned, Tara, the killer has been found.’
He stood up. The flush on his face could have been from the whiskey or obsessive determination. ‘You can tell him from me that I’ll be on his case for as long as it takes.’
They left the bleak disco and re-entered the lounge. O’Rourke strode over to the bar and slapped some money down on the counter. The young barman looked at it and his face brightened. ‘Thanks, Mr O’Rourke,’ he said with a wide grin.
O’Rourke gave him a don’t-mention-it wave and rejoined Tara at the door. ‘For however long it takes,’ he continued with deadly seriousness. ‘Weeks, years. Decades.’
Tara was speechless.
‘It may seem crude,’ he said, ‘but it’s the only way to crack cases like this. And when he finally does break, and when he finally comes grovelling into court pleading for mercy, where will you be, Tara? Down on your knees with him? Or standing on your feet without him? It’s entirely up to you. But act quickly before it’s too late.’
He stared at her challengingly.
She stared back at him, trying to project an aura of certainty and confidence while, inside, her mind was a deafening babble of contradictory voices.
Tell this pushy cop to get lost, one voice was telling her. Tell him you’ll stick by Fergal, through thick and thin. Tell him you’re prepared to go through hell with him. Because you know in your heart that he’s innocent.
But what if O’Rourke is right? another voice kept asking. What if Fergal really does suffer from this frightening disorder, this ASPD? Wouldn’t it explain a lot of things that had been bothering her, all those concerns that had kept her tossing and turning in uneasy sleep each night for the past week? Fergal’s bullish determination – was it fortitude, or just selfishness? The impulsiveness, the rebelliousness, the scornful independence she’d found so attractive – were they really qualities to be admired, or just manifestations of a mind untrammelled by conscience or guilt?
‘Unreliable. Unpredictable. Prone to sudden bouts of aggression and even violence…’
Her mind flicked through the events of the past few weeks. His reaction outside the courthouse when she’d laughed at him and he’d seemed almost on the verge of striking her. His hectoring, almost bullying behaviour towards his own mother. Ann’s concern for Tara, and those words of caution that were almost, but not quite, a warning…
Stop it! For God’s sake stop, she screamed inwardly. If I keep on like this, I’m going to go crazy.
The squabbling voices fell silent.
O’Rourke continued to stare at her, his bloodshot eyes demanding a response.
It was at that instant that she decided it was time to stop herself being swept along helplessly on this chaotic flash-flood of events. It was time to regain some sort of control over her life.
‘I intend to act soon, inspector,’ she said, choosing to address him formally. ‘I’m going to do your job for you.’
‘And just what the hell do you mean by that?’ He was more intrigued than offended.
‘I’m going to find Manus Kennedy.’
Before he could reply, she was gone.
‘Dad, I have to head off for a few days to do a bit of research,’ Tara explained.
‘Okay, love.’ John Ross looked up from his newspaper. ‘Where are you off to, this time?’
‘I don’t know. I realise that sounds stupid, but it’s true.’ She kissed him on the forehead. ‘I’ll probably be out of touch for a while. But I’ll phone you as soon as I get back.’
A flicker of concern passed across her father’s face. He was used to Tara’s business trips, but he seemed to know there was something different about this one.
‘Tara,’ he said simply, ‘just take care of yourself.’
She smiled reassuringly and patted his shoulder. ‘You, too.’
‘Then I’m coming with you,’ said Fergal.
‘No, you’re not.’
‘The hell I’m not. Just try to stop me.’
They faced each other off. Tara was first to look away.
‘What on earth are you painting?’ she asked at last.
He stepped back from the giant canvas that covered one entire wall of the farm outhouse. Red paint dripped from the overloaded decorating brush. It covered his hands and spattered his clothes.
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, surveying the half-completed work with a critical eye. ‘I’m just trying to work all this angst out of my gut and on to the canvas. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know about angst.’ Tara studied at the writhing shapes of red, black and green. ‘It looks more like a bout of indigestion to me.’
‘Thanks for the insight.’ He attacked the canvas again. ‘Good job Picasso didn’t have you around when he painted Guernica. “Forget all those twisted faces and horses’ heads, honey. Just take a dose of Bisodol and you’ll be fine”.’