by Des Ekin
John Ross had made that long walk across…and she’d turned him down right away.
‘I wasn’t going to make that long walk back again,’ he said, and Tara could see the glint of determination in his eye. ‘I told her outright that there was only one way I was going to go back across that dance floor, and that was with her in my arms.
‘Christine was absolutely outraged. She said: “Well, I hope you’ve brought your tent and sleeping bag, because you’ll have a long, long wait.”
‘I said: “That’s fine by me.”’
Tara smiled. She could just imagine them facing each other, two hot-headed personalities, equally determined, her father looking like the young Connery, and her mother looking like some haughty Spanish contessa, the way she did when her Latin blood was up.
‘She looked me straight in the eye, and I looked at her, and suddenly we both burst out laughing. Next thing, the band struck up a waltz and we were away.’ He tapped the ash from his cigarette. ‘Well, I’m no dancer, Tupps. Normally I’d move as gracefully as a cow coming off the trailer at a mart, but somebody was looking after us that night, because my feet flew as smoothly as a skater’s on ice. By the time the night was over, we knew we were meant for each other.’
Tara sighed. ‘That’s really romantic. And you were married before the year was out?’
He nodded. Then, reading her mind: ‘But we were lucky, Tupps. It’s not always as straightforward and clear-cut as that. With most people, it needs time to develop slowly.’
Her eyes followed a tourist couple – probably Dutch or German – who were strolling arm in arm along the riverside.
‘But how can you possibly tell for sure?’ she persisted. ‘I mean, I know I’m very fond of Fergal, but I’m just not sure whether…’ Her voice trailed off.
He took her hand. ‘You’ve always been the thoughtful type, Tupps. You question everything, analyse everything. No harm in that,’ he added hastily as she began to object, ‘except that it doesn’t always apply in matters of the heart. When your heart tells you it’s right to do something, then nothing your head says will make any difference at all.’
‘But how will I know when it’s right?’
John Ross shrugged. ‘When it happens, you’ll know.’
She felt like shaking him in frustration. He was behaving like a guru from a bad Kung Fu film.
Instead, she burst into laughter. ‘But how?’ she persisted.
Her father joined in her laughter. ‘When you meet someone you’ll go to the ends of the earth for,’ he said.
She stood up and helped him to his feet. ‘That doesn’t help, Dad,’ she admonished him, taking his arm and leading him back along the riverside. ‘That doesn’t help at all.’
Now, as she tossed and turned sleeplessly, Tara replayed this conversation over and over in her mind. Finally, she gave up on sleep. By five-thirty am, she was searching through the fridge when she felt a presence looming behind her.
She started and looked around sharply.
‘Only me,’ said Melanie quickly. ‘Sorry to frighten you. I couldn’t sleep either.’
She filled the kettle and put it on the range.
‘When I can’t sleep,’ Mel continued, ‘I find it’s a waste of time to toss and turn and count sheep. I usually get up and make myself a cup of tea. If that doesn’t work, I raid the fridge. I see you’re at the fridge-raiding stage.’
Tara smiled. She never stopped marvelling at her friend’s ability to interpret her moods.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Nothing that a good chocolate ice-cream wouldn’t cure. Or an extra-creamy tiramisu.’
‘That bad, eh?’
‘Well, nearly. I’ll settle for a low-fat fruit yoghurt.’
‘Make it two and we’ll form Insomniacs Anonymous.’
The kettle boiled quickly on the hot range, and soon Melanie had produced two steaming mugs of tea.
‘What is it, Tara? Is it Manus? If that’s what’s keeping you awake, you know the answer is to talk it all out, and get him out of your head.’
Tara sipped the strong tea gratefully. ‘No, strangely enough, that’s not what’s bothering me at all,’ she said. ‘I’m more worried about dad.’ She nodded towards the upstairs room where her father lay motionless, still locked in some kind of coma that had left the specialists bewildered. ‘I feel he’s slipping away from us.’
Melanie laid a comforting hand on the arm of Tara’s dressing-gown. ‘No one lives forever, Tara. You may be right, you may be wrong, but there’s no point putting yourself through the mangle over something you can’t control. Take heart from the fact that you’re doing your best and that your father is getting a standard of care that’s second to none.’ She smiled. ‘When trouble comes all at once like this, one giant wave after another, all you can do is body-surf the waves. Go with them. It’s pointless trying to battle against them.’
‘But I still lie awake thinking that there must be something else I could do,’ said Tara in despair. ‘You see, the doctors say there’s nothing physically wrong with him – at least, nothing more than there was a few weeks ago. The brain scan, the hospital tests…they’re all fine. He just seems to have retreated into himself. Up to now I’ve been kidding myself that I’ve been getting through to him, making some sort of contact, but if I’m honest with myself I have to admit it’s just not true. He’s not responding to me at all.’
‘And you feel it’s up to you to shake him out of this…this coma, or whatever it is.’
‘It sounds silly, but yes. I feel I should be at his side twenty-four hours a day, playing his favourite music, reading his favourite books, until I find something that releases the trigger and brings him back to consciousness.’
Melanie finished her mug of tea. ‘That’s an awfully heavy burden to impose upon yourself, love. It’s too much for one set of shoulders to bear. You’re assuming you have a control you don’t have – power over sickness and health, control over life and death. But that’s not within your gift. Change the things you can change, accept the things you can’t. First principle of Insomniacs Anonymous.’
She handed Tara a box of tissues and watched as she dabbed a dampened eye. ‘You’re probably right, as usual, Mel,’ said Tara. ‘But I feel so helpless. If dad is aware of his surroundings at all, it must torture him that he can’t even see the ocean from his bedroom. He lived for the sea. I sometimes think that if he could only get at the helm of the Róisín Dubh for just one hour, and taste the salt wind in his face and feel the swell of the ocean, and hear the breakers pounding on the rocks at Chicken Point, it would do more for him than any medicine the doctors could prescribe.’
She rose from her wooden chair and pulled the curtains on the kitchen window. It was already dawn, and the morning sea was dead calm, its surface moulded around the points and headlands and inlets of the coast as still and flat as though it were made of solid ice. An early-rising fisherman was already checking his lobster pots. His little rowboat left a wake as precise as plot lines on a navigational chart.
She felt Melanie at her shoulder. ‘Well – why not?’ Mel said suddenly. ‘That sea is as calm as a boating lake. Your dad might not be able to take the helm, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take him out in the Róisín Dubh – as a passenger.’
Tara thought about it. ‘Why not, indeed?’ she said slowly. ‘We could put him into his wheelchair and fix it solidly to the deck. It’s not as though there’s any danger, and it just might work.’
‘Don’t build up your hopes,’ cautioned Melanie. ‘But I suppose you’ve nothing to lose.’
Tara checked the big schoolhouse clock on the kitchen wall. ‘Right! As soon as it gets to a decent hour, I’ll phone Dr Maguire and ask his opinion. If he says it’s okay, I’ll ring Fergal. I’m sure he won’t mind helping out.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. But take Steve along too, if he’s off duty.’ Melanie paused as she saw a frown appear on her friend’s face. ‘Okay, own up, Tara. There’s s
omething else bothering you. What is it?’
Tara shrugged. ‘Oh, nothing. I’ve just remembered that Fergal is taking me out to dinner at La Belle Époque in Ennis tomorrow night.’ She glanced at the clock again. ‘I mean, tonight.’
‘Oh, that’s a real problem,’ mocked Melanie. ‘What are you worried about – whether you should choose the Latour at six hundred pounds a bottle or the Lafite at seven hundred and fifty pounds?’
‘It is a very generous gesture,’ admitted Tara. ‘And it will be a wonderful way of celebrating the end of a long ordeal for both of us. It’s just…’
‘Come on, out with it. There should be no secrets at IA meetings.’
‘I’m almost certain he’s planning to propose marriage to me.’
‘And?’ Melanie’s face was blank.
‘And I don’t think I’m in any state to make decisions right now.’
Melanie’s entire body had been tense as a tautened bowstring. It relaxed visibly. ‘I’m glad you said that, because I couldn’t agree more,’ she said. ‘Listen, Tara, if I were in the state you’re in, I wouldn’t trust myself to choose a TV channel, never mind choose a partner for life.’
‘That’s the way I feel. Spaced out. Confused.’
‘Fine. You’ve every right to be.’ Melanie rose to her feet and paced around the table in agitation. ‘I don’t want to be a pain and go on and on about it, Tara, but at a time like this, there’s a danger that he could push you into commitments you don’t want to make. Don’t let it happen.’
‘I’m not taking any decisions either way. I’m just tired, Melanie.’ Tara poured herself more tea. ‘I just need some time to get my head clear, that’s all.’
Melanie was still pacing. She swung around to face Tara. ‘Fergal can be very forceful. I’m just concerned that he might be able to wear you down. And I’m worried that, the way you’re feeling right now, you won’t have the willpower to resist.’
Tara blew her nose. ‘And would that be such a bad thing?’
‘Yes, it would!’ Melanie rarely raised her voice, but this time she made an exception. ‘I’ve skirted around this subject before, Tara, but this time I have to be direct. Fergal is a volatile man. He may be able to pull the wool over your eyes, but he can’t fool me. The man is bad news. If you married him you’d spend the rest of your life regretting it.’
‘Jesus, Melanie.’ Tara stared at her, taken aback by the outburst.
Melanie sat down again, drained. Her face seemed pale and drawn.
‘You need time,’ she repeated. ‘You have a right to ask for time. Just tell Fergal that. He’ll understand.’
Tara looked out to sea again and remembered Fergal’s words of just a few hours ago – his warning that he would leave Claremoon Harbour for ever if Tara gave him the wrong answer to his very important question.
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t think he will.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
A FEW hours after Manus Kennedy’s arrest and appearance in court, Inspector Phil O’Rourke stepped off the late train at Heuston Station and took a taxi to Store Street Garda Station in Dublin’s north inner city. It had been a long, exhausting day and he had a lot of work still to do before his head could hit a pillow.
From the outside, Store Street Station looked like an advertising agency or a computer software firm. But it was often nicknamed Hill Street because it policed one of the capital’s toughest districts. Every day, as a matter of routine, it dealt with vicious muggings, bag snatchings, syringe raids, knifings, and assaults on holidaymakers who’d innocently wandered a few hundred yards off the main tourist beat and ended up in Apache territory. The criminals who passed through its doors ranged from affluent drug barons and career shoplifters, through pathetic alcoholic prostitutes and half-dead junkies, to hard-chaw youngsters whose favourite trick was to lob a live rat into a car at a traffic light, and grab a handbag or mobile phone from the passenger seat as the driver screamed in panic.
Every serious thug, hood, con artist and pimp came through its gates at one time or another – but Phil O’Rourke was interested in only one of them.
The detective introduced himself to the sergeant on duty and was escorted into a tiny upstairs cubbyhole where a tired and overworked plainclothes garda sat among a mountain of paperwork. The Dublin detective shook his hand and led O’Rourke downstairs again, this time to an interrogation room where Christy Geaney waited with his solicitor.
‘He’s all yours,’ whispered the Dublin detective just outside the door. ‘Just be careful. We’ve got him dead and buried on the cocaine dealing charge. But he’s a sharp bastard, and so’s his lawyer. Don’t do anything that might blow our case.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll steer clear of it.’ O’Rourke thanked him and walked into the tiny room. Like all interrogation rooms, it was bare of any pictures or decorations that could distract the subject. A plain wooden table, a few chairs, an ashtray and a couple of polystyrene cups half filled with cold tea and fag-ends…it may have been on the other end of the country, but it was an environment in which O’Rourke felt instantly at home.
Christy Geaney didn’t even look up as O’Rourke walked in. He was a thin, wiry six-footer with close-cropped black hair. His jacket, denim with leather trim, was labelled ‘Smashing Pumpkins On Tour’. His collarless red shirt revealed the purple letters HATE on his neck, and his wrist bore an angry bite-scar that was taking a long time to heal.
Clement Zeicker, his lawyer, sprang to his feet. ‘I sincerely hope this isn’t going to take long, inspector. My client has co-operated fully with the Store Street gardaí in relation to the cocaine charge ever since this afternoon’s arrest – an arrest, incidentally, which we shall be claiming was unconstitutional, which may itself carry implications for this interview.’
O’Rourke said nothing. He was used to this.
‘Well?’ said the lawyer belligerently. ‘I have other cases to attend, you know.’
‘How long it takes depends entirely on your client,’ O’Rourke grunted. ‘Want a fag, Christy?’
Christy Geaney yawned and gave a long, simian stretch. Finally, as though it hardly mattered to him one way or another, he put out a hand and grabbed the proffered cigarette. He didn’t say thanks.
‘Okay,’ said the solicitor. ‘Can we at least be told what this is all about?’
O’Rourke had his strategy carefully worked out. He intended to keep the nature of his business secret for as long as possible, wandering around the crucial issue in ever-decreasing circles until he had learned everything he needed to know.
But Christy Geaney got there first. ‘It’s about the Kennedy murder in County Clare,’ he said, glaring directly at O’Rourke as though challenging him to deny it.
The solicitor stared at the detective incredulously. ‘What? Well, if that’s the case, you’re certainly wasting your time, inspector, and mine too. We have absolutely no involvement in the Kennedy murder and we wish to say nothing about it. Now, that didn’t take long, did it?’ He began gathering his papers together with calculated insolence.
Christy Geaney ignored him. He was still eyeballing the detective. ‘See, I saw Mano Kennedy arrested on telly,’ he explained. ‘I saw you behind him outside the courthouse. Therefore, you’re involved in the case. You think he did it but you don’t have enough evidence. You need motive and opportunity. You need somebody who knew Mano and knew his movements just before the killing. You need to know what was on his mind at the time. Someone’s told you that I hung around with Mano for a bit. Therefore, you want my help. That’s why you’ve come all the way from the bog, from muck-savage culchie land, to talk to me. Well, better bog-off back to the bog, bogman, because unless you can quash a coke trafficking charge for me I’m not even going to tell you the colour of my pee.’
O’Rourke struggled to hide his amazement and frustration. The verbal stream of connections, delivered fast and furious like the stutter of a one-armed bandit dispensing th
e jackpot, was not only logical but undeniably true. O’Rourke felt like an accomplished chess player who has set up an elaborate strategy of attack only to be checked after the first couple of moves.
It was the solicitor who first broke the silence. ‘You’ve said more than enough,’ he warned his client. ‘As your appointed legal representative, I advise you to shut the feck up.’
Phil O’Rourke’s poker face didn’t flicker. ‘You think you’re a hard case, don’t you, Christy?’ he said.
‘They don’t come any harder, bogman. Where I come from, you learn how to snatch handbags before you learn how to walk. It’s the only way you can put food on the table when you ma is lyin’ under it, legless drunk, and your da is doin’ a stretch in the Joy. You get to your teens, and it’s either go out robbin’, or sell your body to the pervs up in the Phoenix Park. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, bogman?’ he sneered. ‘Where you come from it’s all clash of the ash and comely maidens dancing at the crossroads, isn’t it? You don’t know nothin’ about real life in the Mun or the Mansions or Bernietown. Don’t talk to me about hard cases, bogtrotter. You wouldn’t know one if you stuck your turf spade into one.’
He spat the last words out with an intense, deeply-felt contempt. The solicitor looked at O’Rourke with interested amusement. Both lawyer and cop realised that Geaney had turned the established pattern of interrogation – hard cop on the attack – back to front and inside out. What are you going to do now? the solicitor’s eyes challenged O’Rourke.
The detective wasn’t fazed. He had served his apprenticeship in one of the roughest districts of the capital’s south inner city, and had spent five years policing an estate in Limerick where fatal stabbings were just another form of Saturday night entertainment. But he didn’t mention any of this.