Stone Heart

by Des Ekin

  ‘Open up! Police! Open up!’

  The door beating, battering, vibrating.

  ‘Gardaí. We have a warrant. Open the door. Now!’

  Christy on his feet in an instant. ‘Jesus. The gear. Ditch the gear!’

  Carl, Christy, diving towards the kitchen. Colliding in the narrow doorway. Dashing out with polythene bags of golden-brown powder. Across the floor to the bathroom. A brief second, then the sound of a flushing toilet. The roar increasing, then subsiding.

  Tara, somehow finding strength, rising, moving. Half walking, half crawling, to the door. Shaking fingers fumbling with the handle, turning it.

  Behind her, Christy, not bothering to pursue, just standing guard outside the bathroom where Carl is getting rid of the remaining heroin.

  The front door flying open. A tall figure, silhouetted against the light, hurtling past her towards Christy, propelling him backwards against the closed bathroom door. Christy’s head contacting the wood with a hollow thud. Then both of them are on the floor, the newcomer on top, grappling, straining, cursing.

  Then, behind the intruder’s head, Tara spots Christy’s hand holding a weapon. One of the ugliest weapons on the street…a razor blade melted into the plastic head of a toothbrush. A weapon designed and forged in prison: light, easily concealed, absolutely lethal. The blade inching towards a vein in the intruder’s neck.

  Tara, moving faster than she could ever have believed possible, diving across the room, grabbing the arm that holds the razor blade, sinking her teeth into the soft flesh of the wrist.

  A yell of rage and pain. The weapon falling harmlessly aside. The intruder’s elbow jerking backwards and upwards, then driving forwards in a disabling blow to Christy’s stomach. The two figures disentangling. Christy doubled over on the floor, gasping for air, out of the fight.

  Tara half crying, half laughing, in hysterical relief. ‘Oh, my God. Are you all right? Thank you.’

  The tall, dark-haired intruder slowly rose to his feet.

  ‘On the contrary, Tara,’ said Andres Talimann, eyeing the ugly blade that had nearly claimed his life. ‘It is I who must thank you.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  THERE WAS only one noise from the bathroom – the repeated hollow clunk of someone trying to flush an empty cistern. Carl was still trying to get rid of the gear.

  Lying on the filthy carpet, Christy was clutching his stomach in agony. His breath came in hoarse gasps. But his pale eyes still glared at them with undiluted hatred. They would haunt Tara’s dreams for a long time.

  This was no time to hang around. Tara and Andres half ran, half fell down the flights of gloomy concrete stairs, finally reaching the main door and bursting breathlessly into the bleak daylight of Ballymahon. Rain had never felt so good.

  ‘This way.’ Andres guided her around a corner to a half-hidden alley where his R1100 leaned on its side-stand. A teenage boy was sitting on it, idly twisting the throttle control. Andres tossed him a handful of pound coins. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Now get off.’

  ‘No problem. It’s safe. Nobody came near it.’

  Andres nodded a curt acknowledgement and got on. The starter motor gave a brief, shrill whine and the engine roared into life.

  Tara didn’t wait for instructions. She hopped on to the pillion, feet barely finding the footpegs as Andres dropped the clutch and roared off. Powerful G-forces pushed her backwards. Her hands found the safety grip just in time.

  As they powered out of the side-alley and into the main road, a bulky figure appeared in front of them. Tara had never seen him before. He was at least six foot three tall, and half as wide. He was holding a mobile phone to his ear and talking excitedly. His face was angry and anxious at the same time. His arm waved at Andres. He was ordering him to stop.

  Tara took only a second to make the connection. This was obviously Christy’s heavy. The man he had posted as lookout. ‘Keep going!’ she yelled in Andres’s ear.

  ‘Don’t worry. Hold on tight.’ He gunned the motor forward, straight at the burly figure in the middle of the road. At the last minute he leaned the bike over at a sharp angle. It changed direction, duping Christy’s lookout and missing him by inches. Andres applied the power-assisted ABS brakes to avoid a row of bollards, and then the precision-built German engine howled as the power surged. Tara couldn’t believe the acceleration – one instant she was here, the next instant she was somewhere else entirely. She glanced behind. Christy’s minder had become a minuscule figure on a grey horizon. Even the tower-blocks were growing smaller by the second.

  The BMW crossed a traffic light on the amber and roared off westwards. Tara recognised the approach to the M50 ring-road, then they were on the motorway doing one hundred and ten miles an hour and the rain was stinging her face like needles. She glanced around. There was no traffic within following distance apart from a tanker and a grain lorry.

  After a few minutes, Andres slowed the machine and took the first exit. Then he turned off the main road and into a housing estate, where he slowly negotiated the bike through a series of streets. He reached a set of pedestrian bollards which separated one section of the huge estate from another. There was just enough room to take a pram through; with infinite caution he steered the giant BMW at walking speed through the gap. Tara realised what he was doing: anyone following them in a car would have to stop at that point and double back all the way through the estate.

  Andres paused just down the road and watched the gap carefully for a while. Nothing came.

  Satisfied, he killed the engine, dismounted and wiped the rain-soaked hair from his eyes. He looked anxious. ‘Are you all right, Tara? Do we need to take you to hospital?’

  She got off the machine. She was soaked to the skin and shivering with cold and shock. The natural painkilling endorphins which her body had unleashed in its fight-or-flight response during her escape were starting to wear off, and her wrist hurt like hell. But otherwise she was unharmed.

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine. I’ve twisted my wrist a bit, that’s all. How about you?’

  ‘I am…what’s the phrase? In the pink. Top-hole.’

  Tara couldn’t stop herself laughing at his unusual choice of English, which at times sounded like the language of some ageing colonel from Tunbridge Wells. The laughter went on too long and began to sound shrill. She forced herself to stop. This was a hysterical reaction. She had to pull herself together.

  ‘Where on earth did you come from?’ she asked. ‘You were the last person I expected to see.’

  He responded with a curt shake of the head. ‘Later. We shall have to get you into some dry clothes. You’re in shock.’

  She bristled. ‘I told you, I’m fine. Before we go anywhere, I want to know how you managed to find me. You told them you were Gardaí. Are you some sort of undercover cop?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not. I knew you were in that flat, I knew you were in trouble, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say that would make them open the door. Come on, you’re shivering. Let’s go.’

  Tara didn’t move. Her earlier paranoia about Andres was starting to reassert itself. If he could lie so convincingly about being a policeman, maybe he could lie about other things, too.

  ‘How did you know I was in that particular flat?’ she demanded. ‘You still haven’t told me how you came to be in Ballymahon in the first place. Were you stalking me or something?’

  He sighed. ‘I was doing exactly what you were doing, Tara. I was trying to find Manus Kennedy.’

  ‘But how did you find the address of the flat?’ Tara couldn’t believe he had stumbled by luck upon the same lengthy, twisted trail that she’d uncovered. ‘You must have been following me.’

  For the first time, he seemed genuinely annoyed at her accusation. ‘Please don’t flatter yourself, Miss Ross,’ he said. ‘I am a busy man and I have better things to do with my time than to follow amateurs who take several days to complete a simple investigative assignment.’
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  ‘Amateurs?’ She was outraged by the sheer arrogance of the man.

  ‘You set out to find Manus,’ he explained. ‘As did I. But while your rambling method took – what? – two days to locate the flat in Ballymahon, my own method took only a few hours.’

  ‘All right, Mr Smart Ass,’ she challenged. ‘You tell me how you did it.’

  ‘Everyone needs money to live,’ he elucidated with infuriating patience. ‘When you set out to find anyone, you should begin by following the trail of money. Manus had left the sheltered housing at Inismaul Hospital, but his social welfare cheques were still being sent to him there. Someone was apparently forwarding them to him in Dublin. I was able to ascertain through various contacts that he had cashed the last few payments in the post office at Bernadette Towers. Having narrowed the field, it was then a simple matter of asking around. They say a good journalist is a person who doesn’t know anything, but knows someone who does. I knew someone who knew. He knew that the unsavoury residents of the flat in Bernietown had decamped to the squat in the Joy McCracken block in Ballymahon.’

  ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be. It was a straightforward process, nothing the police themselves could not have achieved had they wanted to.’

  Okay, you’re good, thought Tara. Very good. But she still wasn’t satisfied. She pressed him further.

  ‘Why are you going to all that trouble to trace Manus Kennedy?’ she demanded. ‘I mean, your German readers can’t be that interested in an Irish murder case.’

  ‘No, but they are interested in anything to do with Michael de Blaca.’

  ‘Michael de Blaca?’

  ‘The artist.’ He glanced pointedly towards the grey sky. ‘Do I have to explain everything while we’re standing outside in the rain, Tara? Can’t we talk later?’

  ‘It won’t take long. Just summarise.’

  ‘As you will.’ He knelt beside the BMW and began to reposition a section of casing that had clipped against the concrete bollards in their dash to escape Ballymahon Flats.

  ‘I’d really no pressing reason to travel all the way to Claremoon Harbour that Sunday,’ he explained as he worked. ‘Although I was interested in the news angle about the murder of a famous women’s rights activist, I could have handled the story from Dublin. But I have always admired the work of Michael de Blaca. It seemed a good excuse to see the town where he’d lived and worked, and to visit the gallery of his paintings there.’

  ‘But it’s not a gallery of his paintings. They just hijacked the name.’

  Andres nodded. ‘As I discovered, to my extreme disappointment. I found a shop packed with cheap rubbish and run by a ridiculous con-artist. Can you pass me a screwdriver from that toolbox, please?’

  ‘Standard or crosshead? What made you distrust Villiers so much?’

  ‘Crosshead. Thank you. When I tried to ask him questions about Michael de Blaca, he simply clammed down.’

  ‘Clammed up.’

  ‘I am sorry. Clammed up. He was so secretive about this artist, the very man he was ostensibly there to promote, that it made me suspicious. It was almost as though he regarded me as a rival bidder for something very valuable. I was intrigued. I noticed that he was drinking, so I brought in a bottle of very special Polish vodka and offered to share it with him.’

  ‘I know. You spent all afternoon sharing it with him.’

  He glanced up and grinned. ‘Your spies are everywhere. Well, I have long mastered the art of appearing to drink heavily while actually taking only a little. I kept refilling his glass. He became more and more inebriated. More and more talkative. He told me about the late Mrs Kennedy and her secret affair with de Blaca. He told me about your relationship with Fergal. It seems he went looking for Fergal on the night before the murder, and found his car parked outside your house.’

  She grimaced. ‘Sneaky little toad. Still, it doesn’t matter any more. Thanks to Gerry Gellick, the whole world knows the story now.’

  He gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘I tried to warn you. But before Villiers finally passed out, he told me a little more than he intended. By the time I left his shop, I knew that Manus Kennedy was suffering from a long-term psychological disorder and that he had been living rough around Claremoon Harbour for several weeks. I knew that he was being hunted by a family of Limerick criminals, the Vineys. I knew it had something to do with drugs. And I knew that it also had something to do with Michael de Blaca.’

  Tara frowned. ‘What a mixture. But remember, you can’t trust Villiers. He could have been trailing red herrings to put you off the scent.’

  ‘Trailing red herrings. I must remember that phrase.’ Andres finished his repair work and replaced the screwdriver in the BMW’s toolbox. ‘Yes, that thought had occurred to me. And that’s why I made some enquiries with sources in the Limerick underworld.’

  ‘Let me guess. With a man in his thirties, fair hair, golf blazer and slacks?’ She remembered the photo O’Rourke had shown her during their Irish coffee session in the roadhouse.

  His eyebrows rose. ‘It is my turn to be impressed, Tara.’

  ‘Not bad for an amateur. You’re aware that he’s the main cannabis supplier in the Cork region?’

  ‘Yes, I know that.’ His face crumpled in mock apology. ‘Alas, in our business, one cannot always deal with gentlemen. In the course of my career I have had to talk to torturers and mass murderers, so I would be foolish to draw the line at cannabis suppliers.’

  She smiled, conceding the point. ‘What did you find out from him?’

  ‘Some very interesting information. That Godfrey Villiers is under extreme pressure to find money, fast. I don’t know why…’

  ‘It’s because he’s been laundering money for the Vineys and skimming some off the top for himself. They want it back.’

  ‘I see.’ He looked at Tara with a new respect. ‘And according to my source, the art dealer has told the Viney family that he can get the money for them if he can find Manus Kennedy. I have no idea why. That is all I know.’ He spread his arms wide. ‘And that is why I want to find Manus. I am first and foremost a journalist, Tara, and this story has everything – murder, drugs, a political heroine and a major international artist.’

  Tara nodded slowly. ‘So you set out to find Manus because he seems to hold the key to this whole mystery. And I set out to find Manus in order to clear Fergal’s name.’ She frowned. ‘But the fact that we arrived at the Ballymahon flat at the same time on the same day? A strange coincidence, don’t you think?’

  He seemed impatient with her objections. ‘No, that was not a coincidence, Tara.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I’ll tell you exactly what happened if you let me. This afternoon I had arranged to meet my friend, the one who knows things, in the bar at Ballymahon Flats. He was giving me some details about the squat – the number of occupants, the purpose for which it was being used, the disappointing fact that Manus is not living there.

  ‘My friend is not a councillor or a community leader, but he is recognised in the flats as a man who gets things done. What is the phrase, a Mister Fix Things?’

  Tara shook her head. ‘Mr Fixit. Go on.’

  ‘As we sat talking, a woman came up to him in a state of some distress. It seems that she lives just above the flat we have just visited in Joy McCracken Tower. She was worried because she had seen a nice, respectable young woman from the west of Ireland go into this notorious flat. She had not seen her come out again. She thought she had heard a girl’s voice crying and a male voice raised in anger. She was especially anxious, she said, because the young woman was not the usual type who might visit such a place. This kind lady is the one who really deserves your thanks. Who was she?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tara confessed. ‘I just helped her up the stairs with her baby-buggy, that’s all. She did warn me not to go to the flat.’

  Andres nodded. ‘That is exactly what she told us. She said she saw no point in contacting the polic
e because there was nothing concrete to report…merely her instinctive fears for your safety. She thought my friend, the local community fixer, might be able to help in some way.’

  ‘And you realised that the woman in trouble was me?’

  ‘Instantly. I didn’t even wait to ask for a description. I grabbed my bike and got there as fast as I could. You know the rest of the story.’

  ‘I do, and I’ll be forever in your debt.’ Tara already felt ashamed over her paranoid accusations. She had obviously misjudged this man.

  She hesitated before asking the next question. ‘On your way up to the flat, did you happen to see a young girl, dark hair, pale face, very thin…?’

  Andres didn’t wait for her to finish the description. ‘Yes, I know whom you mean. She was very frightened, very troubled. Who was she?’

  Tara told him all she knew about the junkie girl. ‘They called her “Madra” – Irish for “dog”,’ she explained. ‘They treated her like an animal and she seemed too terrified to do anything about it. I had hoped that she was the one who had called for help for me.’

  Andres shook his head slowly. ‘I am afraid that there was no help forthcoming there, Tara. I asked her for directions to the flat. She told me there was no point going to that address, that there was no one there, that it was totally deserted. She lied.’

  ‘I see.’ Tara felt a sort of emptiness inside, that sock-in-the-gut feeling that is one step beyond disappointment or disillusionment, and closer to betrayal. She had been in terrible danger. The junkie girl had abandoned her, deprived her of the basic aid that one human being is entitled to ask of another. It was tempting to blame heroin addiction. But deep down in her soul, Tara realised that this was not what had prevented this girl from saving another woman from the torture and violation she knew was about to take place. What had prevented her was fear, and that was so much more disturbing because fear was universal. It dehumanised everybody, not just drug addicts.