Stone Heart

by Des Ekin

  Tara laughed. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t be criticising it before it’s finished.’ She shivered in the chill sea wind that swept through the open door. ‘Anyway, it’s getting dark. You should take a break soon. Come inside and I’ll make us some coffee.’

  ‘Artists don’t take coffee breaks. We’re not civil servants.’

  ‘Fergal,’ she said, ‘why did you make a phone call to New York from my house?’

  Fergal turned around slowly. ‘Say what?’

  ‘You phoned Manhattan. At around five am that Sunday morning. The day your mother died.’

  He gave a relaxed grin. ‘My God, you’ve caught me out. Technology? Isn’t it great?’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled fiver. ‘Sorry. I meant to pay you later on Sunday but, well, I had other things on my mind.’

  ‘It’s not the money.’

  He pushed the brush into the paint and resumed his task. ‘I know five am sounds an unreasonable time to call anyone,’ he called over his shoulder, ‘but remember, it was only midnight in New York. I had to make a quick business call, so I took the opportunity while you were in the bathroom. I didn’t tell you at the time because…well, it’s not exactly the most romantic thing to do during a night of passion, is it?’

  She felt her face begin to redden. Trust O’Rourke to make a big issue of such a little thing.

  He turned around to face her again. ‘Are you serious about searching for Manus?’

  She nodded, grateful for the change of subject. ‘Yes. Why not? The police are doing nothing to find him. And if there’s the slightest chance of proving your innocence, we’d be crazy not to take it.’

  ‘Well, then, I’ll have to come with you.’ He loaded the brush again and described a giant spiral on the canvas. ‘You’ll need all the help you can get.’

  Tara shook her head. ‘You haven’t been listening, Fergal. Having you with me wouldn’t be a help. In fact, it would be a disadvantage.’

  He bristled. ‘You saying I’m useless?’

  ‘I’m saying it wouldn’t make sense. Think about it. Everywhere you go you’re being followed by the police. If I’m going to find Manus I’ll have to go into a lot of shady areas and talk to a lot of dubious people. That’s fine – I’ve done that sort of thing before. But imagine how far we’d get with a squad car in tow.’

  ‘Then we’ll lose the squad car.’ He stuffed the brush aggressively into the red paint.

  ‘And that would play into their hands. Make you look even more guilty. For once in your life, Fergal, just stop for a minute and think things through.’ She grabbed his paintbrushing hand and held it firmly before it could return to the canvas. ‘Just think. What if we actually find Manus? Is he more likely to talk to me, or you?’

  He glared at her until she released his wrist. Damn, she thought. Now her own hand was plastered in paint as well.

  ‘It doesn’t matter who he talks to,’ he said, applying the brush to the canvas with a loud slap. ‘If I find that he’s guilty of murdering my mother, I’ll kill him.’

  ‘You don’t mean that.’

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘I can understand why you should feel that way,’ she said softly. ‘And that’s one more reason why you shouldn’t go.’

  Fergal grunted and turned his back to her.

  Tara found a sink in the corner of the outhouse and washed the red paint from her hands, trying to avoid associations with Shakespearean tragedies.

  ‘I’m going, Fergal,’ she said as she dried herself on a paint-spattered towel. ‘And I’m going alone.’

  He didn’t turn around. Silently, she left the outhouse and walked through the darkened farmyard towards her waiting car.

  Fergal didn’t even notice that she’d gone. He carried on painting.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Tara,’ he said at last, when he’d become uncomfortable with the silence. ‘You’ll never find Manus by yourself. Where would you even begin to look?’

  Chapter Eleven

  MARBLE STATUES of gloomy-eyed saints stood guard over the bleak entrance of Inismaul Psychiatric Hospital. Inside, the hallway was dominated by an enormous Victorian painting of the Crucifixion – the type that depicts the torture and mutilation in gruesome detail. Above the door of the cafeteria, framed by sickly green plaster, another faded canvas portrayed the Martyrdom of St Stephen.

  Tara stared around her in disbelief. If you weren’t depressed and suicidal before you came here, she thought, you certainly would be as soon as you walked through the door.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Oh, pardon me.’ Tara turned around to face the blue-rinsed receptionist. ‘I have an appointment. With Dr Ian Westwood.’

  The receptionist nodded. ‘Be with you in a moment. Hello, Inismaul Hospital. Hold on, please. Hello, Inismaul Hospital. Hold on, please. Hello, Inismaul Hospital. Which ward is he in? Hold on and I’ll check.’

  It took a full five minutes before the constant flow of phone calls eased long enough for the receptionist to contact Dr Westwood. ‘He’s in Group,’ she explained at last. ‘He’ll be with you in ten minutes. Would you like to wait in the restaurant?’

  She motioned across the hall to the door marked ‘Cafeteria’.

  Tara thanked her and walked into a large open-plan room with a self-service counter at one end and a piano at the other. Patients in dressing-gowns and cardigans sat at melamine tables with their visitors. Other patients sat alone, mumbling quietly to themselves. At the far end of the room, an elderly woman with an acute curvature of the spine sat hunched at the piano stool. Her physical affliction placed her head below the level of the keyboard, but her hands reached up and played nonetheless. They danced across the keys with surprising agility. Tara recognised the second movement, the Romance, from Mozart’s Twentieth Piano Concerto. From this combination of twisted bones and afflicted mind, warped wood and overstretched metal, was emerging a clear beauty that transcended them all.

  She ordered a coffee and sat down at a table near the door, hoping that she would be able to spot Dr Westwood when he arrived.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  She paused in the act of stirring her coffee. A tall young man dressed in a dark-brown bathrobe was hovering over her, shifting uneasily in his tartan slippers. He was about twenty-three, she estimated, with tousled black hair and eyes that were sleepy with sedative. They were focused somewhere behind her head.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘I’m William.’

  ‘Good morning, William.’

  He looked around. ‘Would you mind doing me a great service?’ he asked in a soft voice. The accent was southside Dublin. Tara guessed he was a university student.

  She was about to say yes, but checked herself. ‘It depends. What is it?’

  ‘Would you post a letter for me?’

  Her body, already tensed, relaxed a little. ‘Of course I will. I’ll do it just as soon as I leave the hospital.’

  William edged back and forward restlessly. ‘It’s just…it’s just that I’m not really supposed to be in here. I have to get word out to my friends.’

  Tara smiled understandingly. ‘Of course.’

  He looked around again. ‘Here,’ he said, handing her an envelope from his pocket. She saw an address but no stamp.

  ‘That’s fine. I’ll see to it.’

  He kept hovering. His brow was knitted with concentration. A thought was trying to swim through the miasma of chemicals to the surface of his mind.

  ‘It has no stamp.’

  ‘That’s okay. I’ll put one on.’

  He nodded. ‘I’m not supposed to be here, you know. I just studied too hard.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Without another word, he shuffled away, slippers brushing along the ground as though he were afraid he might lose contact with the surface of the earth. How long had he spent in this limbo, she wondered? Would he remember any of it later? Or would it all seem like a hazy dream?

  She stuffed the envelope into h
er jacket pocket.

  ‘Poor William,’ said a voice at the next table. She glanced over. An older man, late-thirties, spectacles, cardigan, cord trousers. He had sandy hair and sharp fox-like features. He spoke in a north Louth accent, fast and clipped, the words from the side of the mouth.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Poor William. He thinks he doesn’t belong in here. He’s not the only one. Most of us think we don’t belong in here.’

  He flashed a set of white angular teeth. ‘But William, he’s been diagnosed schizophrenic. He’s going to be here for a while. At least until the voices stop. At least until he stops throwing fits. It took four male nurses to hold him down last time.’

  He snickered. Tara noticed that the words came out far too fast, like an audio tape on fast-forward. She remembered reading something about the manic stage of manic depression.

  ‘He wants to get back to his studies. Big deal. I want to get back to my wife and kids. It’s what I want more than anything. Things to get back to normal.’

  He lit a low-tar cigarette with fast, lizard-like movements of his hands. He didn’t offer her one, she noticed; presumably the custom was that you smoked your own.

  ‘Funny how you never think of things as being normal, good.’ The voice was increasing in speed, words spattering out like a machine-gun. ‘You only think of things as normal, bad. Like “boring, boring, boring”, like “nothing’s happening, I’m bored”. But it’s only in here you realise that normal, good is pretty-damn good. Normal, good, like you’re not sick and you have a job and you have a wife and kids and there’s nothing wrong.’

  He stared at her, as though waiting for a reply.

  ‘Mmm,’ she said.

  ‘And then one day it all goes wrong, it all gets screwed up, and there’s no warning, it just happens, and you don’t have a job any more and you’re in here and you’d give anything, anything, just to be back in your nice boring house with your wife and your kids. Your lovely, lovely kids.’

  He fished in his trousers pocket and brought out a dog-eared colour photo. It showed two carrot-haired little girls, not particularly attractive, grinning at the camera from the doorway of a Wendy house.

  ‘They’re gorgeous.’ Tara handed back the photo. She took a sip of her coffee and looked around for Dr Westwood, spending longer than necessary scanning the room. She didn’t know why, but she wanted this conversation to stop.

  ‘You visiting?’

  He wouldn’t give up.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well…I’m looking for Manus Kennedy.’

  He grunted nasally. ‘You won’t find him here. He’s gone. Long time gone. Woah…round Christmas, maybe.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Shared a room with him. On and off. Strange guy, if you don’t mind me saying so. Didn’t talk to me much.’

  I’m not surprised, Tara thought.

  ‘My name’s Larry.’ His hand shot out rapidly like an anteater’s tongue.

  ‘Tara.’

  ‘You family?’ he asked.

  ‘No. A family friend.’

  ‘Girlfriend?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Cop?’

  ‘No, not a cop.’

  ‘The cops have been round asking about him, you know. His brother’s been done for the Claremoon Harbour murder.’

  ‘Yes. I’m a friend of his brother’s.’

  ‘Hold on a minute.’ The darting green-brown eyes lit on her like restless wasps. ‘Yes, I remember. You’re the girl that was on the front page of the Evening Report!’

  ‘We didn’t want it that way. Excuse me.’

  She got up to leave.

  ‘If you’re looking for Manus, I know where you’ll find him.’

  Tara stopped in her tracks.

  ‘Least, I know who can tell you where to find him.’

  Tara walked back slowly to his table. But at that moment, with the sort of precise ill-timing that happens only in matters of vital importance, a hand tapped on her shoulder.

  ‘Ms Ross?’

  She turned, almost in irritation, to find a tall, bearded man staring at her impatiently. He was wearing a battered grey suit. He looked hassled and overworked.

  ‘I’m Dr Westwood. What can I do for you?’

  She explained as concisely as she could.

  ‘Mr Kennedy was discharged from here nearly six months ago. I’ve already explained all this to the police. This is really too much. Really.’ His voice hovered just on the right side of high-pitched hysteria. ‘I am trying to do my job here, Ms Ross. I have patients waiting for me. Patients who need help. They won’t employ more staff. They won’t even replace the staff who leave. Those of us who are left have to cope with it all.’

  His eyes, red with lack of sleep, glared at her accusingly as though it was all her fault.

  ‘I am genuinely sorry about your staffing problems,’ Tara said, meaning it, ‘but it is vitally important that I locate Mr Kennedy. Vitally important. If you have a forwarding address or even a phone number…’

  ‘Good God!’ He slapped his forehead in frustration. ‘How many times do I have to explain? We don’t know where Manus is. We arranged a flat for him, a sheltered accommodation, here in Inismaul, where we could monitor him for six months. That was the plan. That was our intention. But there was no court order, no requirement for him to stay there. We fulfilled our obligations.’

  ‘That’s not an issue,’ Tara reassured him. ‘All I want to know is, when did he leave and where did he go?’

  ‘He left the flat around Easter. He said he planned to find work in the United States of America. He left no forwarding address. That is all I know, Ms Ross. Now, if I may please get back to my patients…?’

  Without waiting for her to reply, he turned on his heel and walked off with giant, hurried strides.

  And good-day to you, too, Tara thought. She felt sorry for him. She wondered how much longer it would be before the stress, the sleepless nights and the impossible burden of responsibility forced him to the edge of nervous breakdown. He must know the signs, the warnings. Yet he would be driven on by a sense of duty. And then there would be yet another good doctor less, another doctor who wouldn’t be replaced.

  She sat down again, feeling angry that her two-hour journey to this remote midlands hospital had been wasted.

  She took a swallow of tepid coffee, feeling the eyes of the red-haired man flickering across the side of her face like rapid-flashing disco lights.

  ‘I can tell you,’ he said again, as though there had been no interruption. ‘I can tell you who can tell you where Manus is.’

  She turned to face him. ‘Okay, who?’

  He smiled and his arms leaped into fast bargaining gestures, like a market trader on speed. ‘You do me a favour, I’ll do you a favour. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.’

  Oh no, thought Tara. Here we go. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, shaking her head.

  ‘I don’t want much.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘I don’t have any money. Nothing,’ he said.

  She waited.

  ‘I don’t want much. Just buy the kids a surprise present, that’s all. A doll or something each. Barbie, Sindy, whatever, leave it up to you, you know best.’

  She recalled the two little girls in the photo. They would be in that age-group.

  ‘She doesn’t bring them to visit me any more, you see? Just a couple of dolls, that’s all. Wrap them up in nice paper, keep them separate, one present each, and just send them to my home address and mark it “Love from daddy”.’

  She looked at his face. His fast-talking street-trader’s expression had been replaced by one of near-desperation. How long had it been since he’d had a visit from his wife and children, she wondered? What had happened to make them abandon him so completely?

  She tumbled the ethical dilemma over and over in her mind. For the life of her, she couldn’t see what harm it could do. She was only
doing what he himself would do if he had the money.

  ‘Okay,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Good, good. Great.’ He was back on turbo-drive again. He scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to her. ‘Here’s my address.’

  A house in one of the giant Dublin suburbs. She’d been in the estate many times. It was a soulless place, nothing to alleviate the acres and acres of bleak grey concrete.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you have to come with me. Don’t say anything. I’ll do all the talking. Okay? I’ll talk, you just stick with me. Okay? Right?’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘St Sebastian’s Ward. It’s the secure unit.’

  He led her out through an unmarked side door and up a labyrinthine staircase which was marked at several stages ‘Strictly No Admittance To Public’.

  The crumbling green plaster was in even worse condition than in the rest of the building and the naked stair-boards, which hadn’t seen varnish or stain for decades, were badly affected by woodworm. They passed several doorways through which Tara could hear the sounds of sobbing, unnaturally animated laughter, and the muted music of a TV set.

  ‘This gets you right past security,’ said Larry, darting up the stairs like some nervous rodent. ‘You can get up this way, but you can’t get down. Better security on the way out.’

  Somewhere around the third floor, he left the stairwell and led her down a long corridor. At the end stood a modern glass-and-metal fire door. Larry paused for a while, peering through the glass to ensure that no one was on the other side, then pressed down the metal bar to open the door.

  ‘Public area again,’ he explained. ‘You’re a visitor. By this stage you’ve already gone through reception and security.’

  He closed the fire door carefully behind him. It wouldn’t open again without a key. The key was in a glass case with an alarm fitted to it.

  Larry led her up to a desk beside another door marked ST SEBASTIAN. A large male nurse was trying to cope with three things simultaneously: an inquiry from a visitor, a constantly ringing telephone, and a complex-looking log which appeared to monitor the dispensing of medicine.