Stone Heart

by Des Ekin

  The driver shook his head. He was obviously making some sort of facial gesture, but all Andres and his woman companion could see were his dreadlocks shaking from side to side and a fragment of his cheerful brown face in the driving mirror. ‘Can’t be done, man, can NOT be done. This a car, not a helicop-TER. Who you think I am, James Bond?’

  He broke into a brief burst of Desmond Decker’s reggae classic, ‘Shanty Town’. ‘Oh-oh-seven…oh-oh-seven…’, banging his hands on the steering wheel in ska rhythm. It didn’t seem to bother him that the radio was simultaneously blasting out an REM song in three-four time.

  The driver gestured at the traffic which was locking him in on all sides. ‘Rush hour, man. You must have heard of the rushhour where you come from in the United States of Ameri-CA.’

  ‘I’m not American.’

  ‘However. You get too much traffic, they build better roads, the cars fill up da roads and they become big car parks. It makes no sense, brother. No sense at all.’

  ‘And there’s no other route you can take to the airport?’

  ‘Not unless you want the pleasure of my sweet company even longer.’

  The six-lane highway had become gridlocked. Angry drivers blasted their horns for no good reason other than to relieve their tension. Lights turned from red to green and back to red again with nobody moving. Dense clouds of exhaust fumes pumped into the air from trucks whose drivers were revving up their engines in frustration. Anything more than fifty feet away was lost in a shimmering haze of smog and heat.

  Andres looked at his watch and sighed. ‘We’re going to miss the flight.’

  The woman looked out the window and said nothing. She was a pretty, dark-skinned brunette who wore her hair in a short bob. Her eyes were brown and enormous. Her mouth was wide and voluptuous. Her attractive snub-nose usually gave her a pert, cheeky-urchin expression, but right now she seemed apprehensive and jittery. She wore a black woollen miniskirt and sheer black tights on long, slender legs which she kept crossing and re-crossing nervously. She was a chain-smoker, and the no-smoking rule in the cab was driving her crazy.

  ‘Damn. Damn. Damn.’ Andres was looking at his watch again. ‘We should have left more time.’

  Silence. The lights turned green, and this time the traffic began to move sluggishly. Then, just after the car in front got through, the signals turned red again.

  Andres gave a grunt of annoyance. Then: ‘Why on earth won’t she take my phone calls?’ he asked the woman.

  She shrugged and resumed her silent study of the traffic jam.

  ‘She won’t even phone back. God knows how many times I’ve left the number.’

  ‘Hey, I been there too. You want my advice on dealing with women?’ The driver was about to launch into a spiel.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The less you phone them, the more they want you, man. My rule is, never phone them. They come runnin’ to your door.’

  ‘Just concentrate on the road, friend.’

  ‘Okay, but you missin’ out on lessons from the best teacher in town. Wasn’t it Desmond Decker who said, “You Can Get it if You Really Want”?’

  It took another hour of frustrating stop-start driving to get to the airport, but the taxicab driver was still smiling and seemed as calm and fresh as though he’d just come back from a relaxing spin in the countryside. The grin widened even further when Andres paid the extravagant bill and added on the banknote he’d proffered earlier. ‘Thanks. Take it easy, man.’

  They dashed to the terminal only to find that the flight had been exactly on time and had left seven minutes beforehand. Andres never ceased to marvel at the great cosmic rule which ensured that flights for which one was on time were always delayed, and flights for which one was late were always on time.

  ‘No more flights and no connections. What do we do now?’ he asked in near-despair.

  ‘Find somewhere we can have a cigarette,’ said the brunette pragmatically.

  ‘What do you mean, she’s gone?’

  Fergal was almost speechless with outrage. He paced up and down the hallway of the cottage like a caged animal, banging his open palm with his fist. Sergeant Sean Gurrane was in no doubt about whose face was represented by the palm into which the fist repeatedly smacked.

  ‘Mr Kennedy, I share your frustration, but please don’t take it out on me,’ the Corkman said with dangerous politeness. His attitude was coldly formal. ‘Sit down. We’ve done all that can be done.’

  ‘You’ve done damn-all except screw up the only job you had to do – keep guard on Tara.’

  ‘You’re not being helpful with that attitude, sir. Ms Ross was not under arrest. If she wants to secretly leave her house, for whatever reason, without notifying us, there’s not much we can do to prevent her.’

  ‘Leave the house? How do you know she wasn’t abducted?’

  Sean Gurrane sighed. ‘It’s a small village, as you know, Mr Kennedy. At least two witnesses saw her running up the hill towards the forest, wearing jogging gear. I think her intentions were perfectly clear.’

  Fergal looked at his watch. ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Around three-thirty this afternoon.’

  ‘But that’s three hours ago. She should have been back ages ago.’

  ‘I am aware of that, sir. I’ve notified headquarters and we’re arranging a search with the help of local volunteers.’

  ‘Well, I’m volunteering too.’

  Sean Gurrane didn’t respond. ‘So you see, sir, we’re doing everything in our power to find her.’

  Fergal glared through the window at the top of the hillside, where the trees stood rank upon rank like an advancing army.

  ‘I know you are,’ he said at last. ‘But it’s not enough. He’s going to find her first.’

  ‘We’re running out of time. For all we know, she could already be dead.’ Andres pressed another series of numbers on the mobile-phone and talked urgently down the line to the downtown travel agent. At times he had to shout to make his voice heard over the airport tannoy announcements.

  Outside, jets were being refuelled and loaded with baggage under the blasting heat of a sun that baked the asphalt and cooked the air into a simmering soup.

  The brunette sighed and placed a fourth cigarette butt into a polystyrene cup half-full of cold coffee. They floated there like repulsive insects. She brought out a soft pack of Marlboro, shook a new cigarette directly into her mouth, and lit it with a small gold lighter. She looked around the airport nervously, as though expecting to be attacked from behind at any minute.

  ‘Thanks. That is a confirmed booking, yes? Okay.’ Andres pressed the off-button on the mobile and smiled for the first time that day.

  ‘Good news?’ asked the woman.

  ‘Well, the best we can hope for. In thirty minutes, we can catch an internal flight to here’ – he pointed to an airline map – ‘where, if we wait for three hours, we can get the last two seats on a chartered flight to Belfast.’

  The brunette looked at him blankly.

  ‘Belfast, capital of Northern Ireland. Then we have a choice. We can either fly to Dublin and then travel to Clare on my BMW, or we can hang around Belfast Airport for several hours, take a direct flight to Shannon, then hire a car, and drive to Claremoon Harbour. Knowing the standard of the roads, I am not sure which would be faster. Either way, it’s a long haul, but it is the only option we have. The only alternative is to wait until tomorrow.’

  The woman took a deep drag of her cigarette. ‘One question,’ she said.

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Do they allow smoking on Irish planes?’

  Inspector Phil O’Rourke arrived at Tara’s cottage pale-faced with fury.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he whispered angrily to Sean Gurrane as he hurled closed the door of his car with a resounding slam. ‘What the hell can she be thinking of, running off like that? I tell you, if Manus Kennedy doesn’t kill her, I bloody will.’

  ‘Keep your voice down, Phil. Everyone’s
a bit highly-strung in there.’ Gurrane nodded his head in the direction of the cottage.

  ‘I’ll bet they are. They’ll be even more highly-strung when they hear the worse news.’

  Gurrane looked at his feet. ‘I have the feeling I’m not going to like this.’

  ‘Manus Kennedy gave them the slip along the Galway border. They had him pinned down along the shores of Lough Derg, with nowhere to run. Trouble is, he didn’t run.’ O’Rourke patted the pockets of his Donegal tweed jacket angrily, looking for cigarettes. ‘He swam.’

  Gurrane shook his head disbelievingly. ‘He swam all the way across Lough Derg?’

  ‘Across it, along the shoreline, out to one of the islands, whatever. The only thing we know is that he’s escaped, and that he’s had plenty of time to travel across country since.’

  Gurrane watched his boss pat his pockets some more, then placed a hand on his arm and pointed to the packet of cigarettes lying on the passenger seat. ‘Worst case scenario?’ he asked.

  ‘Worst case scenario is, he’s in Claremoon Harbour again.’ O’Rourke opened the car door again and grabbed the packet. ‘He can travel across country like a bloody fox. I’m telling you, if he ever gets out of jail they should sign him up for the SAS.’

  He lit a cigarette and looked around at the two uniformed gardaí who had travelled with him from Ennis and who were now standing outside the cottage awaiting orders. ‘Okay,’ he said to Gurrane. ‘We’d better get things moving before nightfall. Give me an update.’

  ‘We’ve had three gardaí searching the woods for the past hour. There are half a dozen members of the Civil Defence up there, too. All good men. The only problem is…’

  O’Rourke clapped his hand to his head. ‘Oh, Holy Divine. Not more problems.’

  Gurrane pointed up at the hill. ‘Part of the forest is sealed off. There are about a dozen armed members of a local gun club hunting for an injured deer.’

  The inspector stared at him blankly. ‘An injured deer,’ he repeated flatly.

  ‘Yes. A deer. They’ve got authorisation from us and from the OPW. Nobody’s allowed into that part of the forest because they’re likely to stop a bullet if they do.’

  ‘Well, I sincerely hope they’ve told Manus Kennedy that,’ said O’Rourke with heavy sarcasm. He flicked his cigarette on to the ground and stepped on it aggressively. ‘Call them off.’

  ‘We’re doing that at the moment. But they’re spread out all over the place. The good news is that we’ve talked to the club chairman, Dr Charles Lifford, who encountered Miss Ross and stopped her from wandering into the protected zone. He showed us the path she took, but we’ve checked every inch of it and she’s not there.’

  O’Rourke was silent for a few moments. ‘What a pig’s breakfast,’ he said at last. ‘Why can’t anything be simple and straightforward with this woman?’

  ‘Because she’s not a simple and straightforward type of woman,’ said Gurrane in irritation.

  They both looked up beyond the treeline, studying the terrain and working out tactics. But as they watched, a frantic cloud of birds suddenly emerged from the forest and scattered in all directions.

  A split second later they heard the shot. It cracked sharply, almost like a snapped twig, and then rolled and echoed around the hillside.

  O’Rourke signalled to the waiting policemen to follow him up the hill. ‘For all our sakes,’ he said to Gurrane, ‘let’s hope that was aimed at your deer.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  FOR A long time they just stared at each other, Tara Ross and Manus Kennedy.

  He was smaller than she remembered him, but brawny and sturdily-built. His hair had grown longer and hung down over his eyes in greasy, matted hanks. His heavily pockmarked face was disguised by mud and several days’ growth of beard, but his blue eyes still burned and glowed like those of some Old Testament prophet as he glared at her, measuring her, assessing her.

  ‘What exactly do you want from me, Manus?’

  Tara was surprised at how steady her voice sounded. Inside, she felt petrified, sick with terror. Every cell in her body screamed at her to panic, cut loose, run. But she knew she wouldn’t get far. Instead, she willed herself to remain calm. Her only chance was to stall, bluff, engage, wait for an opportunity that might never come.

  She leaned casually up against a tree, trying to look as though she had all the time in the world to stay and chat. But the main purpose was to stop herself shaking.

  To her relief, Manus did not move any closer. He stood stock-still, watching her with slow, wary eyes.

  There was a long, long silence.

  Tara bit her cheek inside her mouth until it hurt. She must not break the silence. If she did so, she would sound panicky and afraid. She had asked a question. It was his turn to speak.

  Finally, he replied. If you could call it a reply.

  ‘You’re to be next to die,’ he said.

  His voice chilled her. It was the quiet, soft, unhurried voice of a rational man. But its pitch was unnervingly high and the tone was shattered and unnatural.

  It was the same sort of voice she had heard dozens of times, from the people who would drift in to the front office of her newspaper in Dublin on cold winter nights, claiming they had an important story to reveal. The sort of people who looked like your kind uncle or your friendly neighbour and sounded fine until they suddenly started shouting about the Stone of Destiny or Satan’s Children and began overturning chairs and grabbing you by the throat. She had learned to spot such people in advance by looking into their eyes. And listening carefully to their voices.

  Voices just like this.

  The sweat from the run was cooling rapidly on her skin, and suddenly Tara felt very cold. She tried to stop the crawling of her flesh turning into a shiver which would be obvious to the man in front of her. What she had to do now was put on an act. She had to deliver the performance of her life. But which act would keep her alive longer? Fear and submission? Anger? Indifference?

  As his relentless eyes continued to bore into hers, she forced herself to wait for a few long seconds before she spoke. And when she did, it was with a careless shrug.

  ‘What do you mean, I’m going to die, Manus.’ She kept her voice light and matter-of-fact, the voice of a nurse tucking in the bed sheets and reassuring a patient on the morning after a nightmare. ‘Sure didn’t I go to school with you? We’re both only young pups. Neither of us is going to die for a long time, I hope.’

  That’s right. Keep it light. Keep it easy. Two friends having a bit of a chat.

  ‘It makes sense when you think about it,’ he said, and he could have been discussing the weather or the economy instead of her imminent death. ‘First the beasts of the field, then the mother, then the lover. That’s how the devil thinks. That’s how he works.’

  ‘The devil?’

  ‘That’s how he thinks, that’s how he does things.’

  ‘What did you mean about the beasts? What beasts?’ She was desperately stalling.

  ‘The beasts of the field. The cattle. The ones who died.’

  Suddenly she knew what he meant. ‘Manus, are you talking about the time those cattle died on your farm? The time the cowshed burned down?’

  He looked at her slyly. ‘You know about that? Yes, the devil did it. Everyone thought it was my fault, but the devil was the one who really did it.’

  He fell silent, as if everything had been made clear. The afternoon air hung heavy with thunder. Nearby, a huge bluebottle buzzed angrily around the decomposing carcass of some tiny forest creature.

  Far away, from down below in the village, voices drifted up in the hot summer air. A child’s excited cry of pleasure. A man’s spontaneous laughter. Here, time had frozen into one endless, terrifying moment. But elsewhere, life just went on as usual. In the middle of this long, lingering dance of death, this slow-motion horror, life still went on as usual.

  ‘That must have been terrible for you,’ said Tara, realising too late th
at her sympathy sounded forced and false.

  All the time her mind was in freefall. What way would it happen when it happened? When he finally attacked, would it be with a razor-sharp knife clutched in his dirty, pudgy hand? Or with a crude stone snatched from the forest floor and raised and lowered, raised and lowered, again and again? Or would his fingers lock around her throat and keep squeezing until her thrashing body became limp and still?

  She forced herself to stop the pointless speculation and concentrate. Keep him talking. The longer he talks, the longer you stay alive. Simple as that.

  But he had picked up on the tone of her voice. ‘What would you know about it? You have no idea what it was like!’ For the first time, his voice registered emotion.

  Bad move, Tara. Talk him down.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ she agreed, taking time to think about it. ‘Yes, how could I know? Nobody could possibly know unless they were there.’

  Get ready, Tara. Ready for whatever it takes. But not ready to die. Not yet. Please God, not yet.

  ‘You don’t understand, you don’t understand at all. First the beasts, then the mother, then the lover. That’s how it’s going to be. First the animals, then the mother, then the lover,’ he repeated as though reciting a verse from scripture.

  Tara tried to keep up her rational-nurse act. But inside, she was a frightened child longing to scream with terror and run away.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be that way, Manus,’ she said. ‘Nothing ever has to be. We can change anything we want.’

  ‘No, no, no.’ He shook his head in vehement denial. ‘The devil doesn’t change. He killed those animals in the cowshed. He killed my mother. And he will kill you, too.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to happen, Manus.’

  ‘You didn’t see those cattle die,’ he said. ‘You didn’t look into their eyes as they clambered over each other to try to get away from the flames. I’ll never forget it, not ever, not as long as I live. It gives me…scary nightmares, awful dreams. I couldn’t stand it and they put me away and gave me medicine and it stopped for a while and the devil went away. But then they let me out again and the nightmares started. Every time I went to sleep, I could see them…their eyes…staring at me. And the devil came back to me again, and my mother died too.’