Stone Heart

by Des Ekin

  Tara raised her eyebrows inquiringly.

  ‘You see, Christy Geaney was spotted in Claremoon Harbour about a week before the murder,’ Gellick explained. ‘According to my dodgy sources, he met a guy called – let’s see – Godfrey Villiers outside the Kennedy home at Barnabo. Who is this guy Villiers? Do you know him?’

  Tara took a giant leap of faith and told Gellick all she knew about Villiers and his money laundering. She told him about his reckless skimming of funds to feed his gambling habit. And how, as a result, he was now in big trouble with the vicious Viney drug-dealing clan in Limerick. ‘For some reason,’ she concluded, ‘the art dealer seems to think that Manus can get him off the hook. He’s managed to persuade the Vineys to launch a full-scale hunt for him.’

  ‘Meanwhile, Christy seems to be searching for him, too,’ said Gellick. ‘And it can’t just be for the money. Three grand’s a lot of dosh, but it’s not worth that amount of trouble.’

  Tara looked puzzled. ‘So we’ve got two major criminal organisations searching for Manus Kennedy.’

  ‘Yes. The Vineys in Limerick, none of whom will get out of bed for less than twenty grand, and the bigtime Romero gang in Dublin. Both expending a lot of time and effort to find one flat-broke, jobless no-hoper who’s so crazy he can hardly tell what day of the week it is.’

  He turned to Tara in bewilderment. ‘Just what the hell has this guy got that everyone wants so much?’

  Fergal didn’t hear her come in.

  He was sitting with his back to the door in the empty waiting-room, surrounded by posters promoting needle-free injections and well-woman services, idly leafing through a six-year-old edition of What Car? magazine. He seemed somehow smaller, his sturdy frame weighted down by trouble. He was hunched and deflated, and the sight tore at her heart.

  She stood behind him silently for a few seconds. Then she softly said his name.

  Fergal sprang to his feet. ‘Tara! Thank God you’re all right.’

  He grabbed her in a bear hug, leaving her almost smothered. She tried to respond, as best she could with her arms pinioned to her sides. At last he released her and she was able to return his embrace.

  ‘I’m okay, I’m okay,’ she smiled. ‘At least, I was until you cracked my ribcage.’

  She examined his face. It was anaemic and ghostlike. The horrific experiences of the past two weeks had aged him by years. ‘You’re looking very pale,’ she said with concern. ‘You’re not ill, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. I’m terrific. The worst part was worrying about you.’ His relief at her safety was rapidly being replaced by indignation. ‘You had us all worried sick, disappearing for days like that without letting anyone know where you were. Why didn’t you phone?’

  Tara was fed up being told how inconsiderate she was. ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she said. ‘All that matters is that I’m back and I’m okay. More importantly, it looks like Melanie’s going to be okay, too. All that matters is that you’re okay and you’re innocent and the police know you’re innocent, and it’s only a matter of time before they catch Manus and jail him for life for his mother’s murder. That’s all that matters.’

  She took a deep breath and immediately felt her head swim with dizziness. The flow of words had come out without a pause, delivered with such passion and intensity because, she realised, she was willing it all to come true.

  Fergal stroked her hair. ‘You’ve been through a lot, I know,’ he said kindly. ‘Sit down for a moment. I’ll fix us both some coffee.’

  She sat down on the worn tweed sofa and put her head in her hands to block out the merciless fluorescent light for just a moment. Down the corridor, she heard two coins rattle into a vending machine and the sound of liquid pouring into a plastic cup.

  ‘Here. Drink this.’

  The beige plastic cup was filled with a stomach-churning watery brown liquid topped by loose granules of brown powder and a foam that looked like dishwashing solution. It tasted like dishwashing solution as well. She drank it anyway.

  ‘Thanks.’ She motioned at him to sit down beside her. Then, choking back tears, she told him everything about her strange odyssey around Ireland – from the mental hospital at Inismaul, through the flats at Bernietown and to the drug den in the tower-block at Ballymahon. She said nothing about Paris or Michael de Blaca. Finally, she told how she had arrived back late to find her best friend lying bloody and unconscious on the floor in an attack which had been clearly aimed at her.

  For a long while Fergal sat silently, staring at the false tiling on the vinyl floor. He sat quietly for so long that she began to wonder whether he had fallen ill. At last he spoke.

  ‘That little bastard,’ he finally said, with an ice-cold calmness that surprised her. ‘That bastard. I’ll kill him.’

  ‘Fergal. Stop. I know you don’t mean that literally, but it’s not the smartest thing to say in the circumstances.’ She glanced around, even though she knew the room was empty.

  ‘The hell I don’t mean it literally. I’m going to tear him limb from bloody limb.’ He looked at her, eyes burning with a righteous fury. ‘What do you expect me to say? He murdered my mother and now he’s come back to kill you. The two women I love most in the world.’

  She laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t do this to yourself, Fergal.’

  He moved away irritably. ‘Can’t you see what this is all about? He’s getting back at me for all the years he’s been put away in a nuthouse. He thinks I’m responsible for it all. He knows that if he attacked me face-to-face I’d make dog-meat out of him. So he’s taking the coward’s way out. He’s trying to kill me indirectly – by killing the people I love.’

  Tara stared at him in bewilderment. Then she shivered involuntarily. His words, finally making sense in her tired head, chilled her to the bone. Up until now, she’d assumed that Manus was targeting her in a temporary fit of anger over the Ballymahon drugs episode, or simply because he wanted to stop her asking questions about him. She could somehow cope with that. It was understandable. It had its own warped logic. But the idea that Manus had calmly and deliberately set out to kill her, as an insane act of revenge on his elder brother, filled her with dread.

  ‘But why?’ she managed to blurt out.

  ‘You know about the bad blood between us. We have different fathers and nothing in common. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about the time he tried to take revenge on Martin by setting the cowshed ablaze and killing all the cattle. I was the one who ruined his plan by catching him in the act and forcing him to go on the run. He’s never forgiven me.’

  Fergal looked at her accusingly. ‘Don’t look so surprised. You’re bound to have heard the story. Your father was one of the men who brought the blaze under control.’

  Tara averted her eyes and nodded. She remember that peaceful evening down at the harbour, a few weeks and several centuries ago, when her father told her the story for the first time.

  ‘Yes, I heard,’ she admitted. ‘But there’s no point opening up the old wounds of the past, Fergal. It’s out of our hands now.’

  He looked at her tiredly. She wondered whether her own eyes were as dark-ringed as his own.

  ‘What do you mean, it’s out of our hands?’ His anger was passing and his voice sounded dejected.

  ‘The police are combing the countryside for him. They’ve got roadblocks everywhere. They’ll have Manus in custody within forty-eight hours.’

  He walked slowly away and stood at the window, looking out at the early dawn.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he said at last. ‘Roadblocks are pointless. Manus doesn’t travel by road. He takes laneways and boreens and forest trails and even mud-filled roadside ditches when he has to. He’s tough and he’s fit. He can cover twenty, thirty miles across rough countryside in a single night. He can spend weeks on end living off the land. It doesn’t bother him if he has to forage crops from a farmer’s field, or raid a henhouse, or sleep under a hedge. He’s used to it. They’ll never cat
ch him.’

  Tara followed him to the window and put her arms around him. ‘Leave it to the police,’ she said. ‘They’re putting everything they have into this hunt. They must know by now that they were wrong to suspect you, and they’re directing all their energies into hunting for Manus. It’s a full-scale murder hunt now, Fergal, not just a search for a missing person. Once the news goes out on the radio tomorrow morning, we’ll have every farmer and every landowner looking for signs of him in their fields. It won’t take long to narrow him down to a small area. But whatever happens, however long it takes, you shouldn’t forget that there’s been a major development tonight – the cloud of suspicion isn’t hanging over you any more. You’re free, Fergal. You’re free to start all over again.’

  Still looking away, he took her hand and squeezed it gently. ‘Thanks to you, Tara. It’s all thanks to you. If you hadn’t smoked Manus out of hiding, forced his hand, and made him carry out a blind attack that he hadn’t planned out properly, they’d still be convinced that I was the killer.’

  Tara hadn’t thought of it that way. An innocent woman lay bruised and beaten in hospital, but at least something good had come out of this dreadful business. What had she said to Andres in the taxi in Paris? ‘We’ve achieved nothing. We’re back to square one.’ How wrong she’d been. Fate moved in strange ways.

  ‘Perhaps all my crazy travels weren’t wasted after all,’ she mused. She hugged him warmly. ‘I’ve a feeling it’s all over, Fergal,’ she said with a confidence she didn’t feel. ‘It’s all over.’

  Fergal’s eyes were fixed on the horizon, beyond the civilised, ordered rooftops of Ennis town, beyond the disciplined ranks of the suburban housing estates, toward the fields and forests and rock-strewn wildernesses of the vast County Clare countryside. ‘It’s not over, Tara,’ he said quietly. ‘Until he’s dead, or I’m dead, it won’t be over.’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘NETWORK RADIO news at nine o’clock. Gardaí in County Clare have named a man they wish to question in connection with last month’s murder of Mrs Ann Kennedy in Claremoon Harbour. He is twenty-seven-year-old Manus Kennedy, of no fixed abode, who is believed to be have been living rough in the County Clare countryside following another attack on a young woman in Claremoon Harbour three days ago.

  ‘He is described as being five feet seven inches tall, of stocky, powerful build, with brown curly hair and a heavily pockmarked face. He may have grown a beard.

  ‘Detectives at Ennis say that anyone spotting the man should inform them as soon as possible, but warn that he should not be approached by the public as he may be dangerous and could possibly be armed.

  ‘Another man who was previously arrested in connection with the murder, and subsequently released without charge, is no longer at the centre of their inquiries.

  ‘Now some political news, and it seems certain that the Government will survive today’s vote on…’

  Tara leaned over and switched off the radio. She whipped up a mixture of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon and, as they cooked, put several rashers of bacon, some fat sausages, and half a dozen tomatoes under the grill. The sun poured in through the window of her cottage, making the old pine dressers and the waxed wooden table glow like home-made honey. Even the simple routine of cooking a full Irish breakfast lent its own comfort. It was a long time since she’d felt so much at peace, so relaxed.

  ‘They say they’ll have him caught soon,’ she told Fergal and Melanie as she passed round a large jug of freshly-squeezed orange juice and a plate stacked high with warm toast. ‘They’ve got him pinned down in a forest near the Galway border, and the place is practically surrounded.’

  ‘It can’t happen soon enough,’ said Melanie. She wore a black Atlanta Braves baseball cap to hide the stitches on her partially-shaven head. With her red hair spilling out of the back of the cap in a cascading ponytail, she looked more like a perky teenager than a woman recovering from a serious assault. ‘Speaking as a caring social worker,’ she continued, ‘I hope they shoot the little putz.’

  Tara glanced at her, relieved to see that her friend had made a total recovery. Melanie was regaining colour, and the headaches had gone. Plenty of rest, recuperation and gentle exercise, her doctor had instructed her, and you’ll be as right as rain.

  (‘Mind you, he did warn me there was a slight chance I might suffer from disorientation, euphoria, lack of concentration and poor co-ordination,’ she’d told Tara on the way home from hospital. ‘And I told him: More than a slight chance, doc. It’s a cert. I’m going out partying tonight.’)

  Tara served the first portions of scrambled eggs. ‘Easy on. We are talking about Fergal’s brother,’ she said.

  Fergal poured himself some orange juice. ‘I agree with Melanie,’ he said. ‘I just hope they get a good clear shot at him and get it over with quickly.’

  Tara placed a third plate in front of Garda Sergeant Sean Gurrane, who had just joined them at the table.

  ‘Go raibh míle maith agat,’ the policeman said gratefully, his round, friendly face splitting wide in a smile of appreciation. ‘I wish all the people I was assigned to protect were as good a cook as you are, girl.’

  ‘You’re welcome, boy.’ She mimicked his Cork city accent good-naturedly. It had become something of a running joke between them since he’d begun guarding her and Melanie as part of a twenty-four-hour protection roster. ‘And we’ve even got some Barry’s Tea as well. Get it down you, boy, you never know where your next meal of spuds is coming from.’

  ‘You never said a truer word, girl.’

  Tara made a meal of invalid-food for her dad and left it to cool while she ate her own breakfast. John Ross had still not recovered from the sudden and devastating illness that had robbed him of speech, but Tara was convinced there had been some improvement. Hospital tests had shown that both brain and bodily functions were undamaged, and Tara believed, without any real evidence, that he was aware of his surroundings. Although he didn’t seem able to communicate in any way, Tara would still sit with him for hours, stroking his hands and talking quietly to him as though he understood everything she was saying.

  ‘Oh – there was a phone call for you while you were in the shower,’ Melanie said through a mouthful of toast. ‘Andres. Again.’

  ‘Really.’ Tara’s voice was flat.

  ‘He wants you to ring him. I wrote the number down. It’s a mobile. He says he’s out of the country but you should be able to reach him on the digital system.’

  ‘He can wait.’

  ‘That’s the fourth call he’s made,’ Melanie reminded her. ‘He says it’s important.’

  ‘If it’s so urgent he can leave a message.’

  ‘I’ve suggested that. He won’t. Why won’t you talk to him? Fergal, tell her to talk to him.’

  Fergal said nothing.

  Melanie shrugged. ‘So don’t call him. It’s none of my business. It’s not as though you owe the man anything. After all, what’s he ever done for you? Apart from saving your life.’

  ‘And I saved his, so we’re even.’

  ‘But Tara…’

  ‘Don’t want to talk about it, okay?’ She was smiling, but her tone was firm. She looked down and concentrated on buttering her toast. She had no time for fair-weather friends like Andres who deserted her when the going got tough, and then had the nerve to phone her from some beachside bar on the other side of the world to boast about his suntan while he ordered another Pina Colada.

  I have to go abroad on a matter of great urgency. A couple of days later, she’d heard the truth about Andres Talimann’s movements. She’d been chatting generally on the phone to Jean Murphy, her former colleague at the Evening Mercury, when Tara happened to mention that she’d met the famous war correspondent.

  ‘Oh, yes, I saw him the other day,’ Jean said. ‘Was it yesterday or the day before? Anyway, he was sitting in the most pricey restaurant in St Stephen’s Green drinking wine at thirty-five quid a bottle with the most classy
strawberry blonde I’ve ever seen. Face like Claudia Schiffer and legs so long they seemed to start somewhere around her neck glands. They obviously knew each other very well. She was all over him – popping petits-fours into his mouth and hanging on his every word. They seemed to be having a great laugh about something or other.’

  I have to go abroad on a matter of great urgency.

  No wonder they were laughing, Tara thought sourly. They had plenty to laugh about. She was lucky to have her real friends here – friends who had stood by her through thick and thin, friends she could depend upon.

  But why had everyone gone so quiet?

  She looked up. Melanie was sticking out her tongue at her, the way she always did when Tara got stroppy.

  Tara burst into laughter and twisted her own face into a schoolyard grimace.

  ‘Now, girls,’ warned Sergeant Gurrane, ‘this may constitute conduct likely to lead to a breach of the peace. I must caution you to desist.’ He cleared his plate first, the way he always did. ‘God, that was grand altogether. It was as good a meal as you’d get in the Arbutus Lodge, and that, as you know, boy, is the best restaurant not only in Cork city or county, but in the entire universe.’

  Tara returned his smile and studied his pleasant, man-in-the-moon face. She liked him immensely but she had serious doubts about his ability to protect her. He looked as though he would have trouble dealing with a pushy encyclopaedia salesman, never mind a psychotic murderer. He was highly experienced and well-trained, without a doubt, but he was definitely overweight and out of condition and unable to walk very far without panting and running out of breath. She just hoped that Sean was handy with the .38 that he kept tucked in his belt-holster on his ample rear, just under his tweed sports jacket. If he didn’t, they were all in big trouble.

  Tara jumped and clutched involuntarily at his sleeve as the phone and the doorbell both rang at the same time.

  There was no question about who should answer the door. The sergeant was already on his feet and heading for the hallway.