Stone Heart

by Des Ekin

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said O’Rourke, with feeling. ‘So in desperation, Villiers called you in. He thought that Manus might resurface if you made it clear you weren’t looking to disembowel him any more.’

  ‘Got it, bogman.’

  ‘And did you lift the contract?’

  Geaney glowered. ‘Temporarily. But it’s back on again. Bigtime.’

  ‘What happened?’ O’Rourke leaned forward. This was getting interesting.

  ‘Well, I had my own interests to protect. I figured, since I’m playing such a bigtime role in this, I should get a bigger share of this payout. That way I could pay off the importer in Dublin, make a fresh start, maybe move to Amsterdam and set up in biz there.’ Christy nodded, agreeing with himself that it all made sense. ‘So I made a deal with Godfrey that we’d bypass the Vineys, split the profits from the statue, and get out of the country.’

  ‘You never learn, do you, Christy? There you go, counting your chickens again.’

  Geaney ignored him. ‘We put a lot of messages out, hopin’ one would reach Manus. And eventually, after a long time, the little bastard came out of the woods.’

  ‘And you put the deal to him?’

  ‘We tried. He wasn’t even listening, half time. He was in a world of his own. Animals’ eyes. Flames. Cows burning up. That’s all we could get out of him.’ Geaney stubbed out his cigarette savagely. ‘So we had to give him a little bit of grief, a little bit of pain, just to concentrate his mind. Then we took him up to the farmhouse and told him that if he didn’t go in there and bring the bleedin’ statue out, we’d burn him up. With a blowtorch. Slowly. Bit by bit.’

  He was breathing heavily.

  O’Rourke felt the hair on his neck rise. ‘When was this, Christy?’

  ‘What?’ Geaney seemed distracted.

  ‘Which date? When did he go into the farmhouse looking for the statue?’

  ‘I knew you’d jump to that conclusion, bogman.’ Christy sneered with perverse triumph. ‘Sorry to disappoint you. But it was a week before the murder.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘Nothing at all happened that night. Because Mano just disappeared.’

  ‘He what?’ O’Rourke was incredulous. ‘After taking all that trouble to find him, you just let him go?’

  ‘We didn’t let him go, bogman. He just vanished. We had seven guys there, all around the building. He went into the house to get the statue, and he didn’t come out again. At least, we think he didn’t come out again.’ He sucked his cigarette and sent a cloud of smoke jetting aggressively towards the detective. ‘Coupla minutes later, I thought I saw somebody disappear into the hills. None of us have any idea how he got away. He just seemed to fade away into the night.’

  ‘Just like his father at the funeral,’ said O’Rourke.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Did you check the house?’

  ‘Yeah, it was empty. No Manus. No statue, either, at least nowhere that we could see. We moved a few things around a bit, but not too much. We didn’t want anyone to know we’d been inside.’

  O’Rourke checked his file and stroked out a question mark beside one of his notes. ‘Where did you go from there?’ he asked.

  ‘I went back to Dublin. What’s the point of hangin’ around? But Villiers was hitting the jar, bigtime, and was getting even more desperate. He told me he was going to work on Manus’s brother. Try to persuade him to get the statue. Mad stuff. I didn’t want to know. Jesus, man, I’d enough on my plate without getting tied up in a murder I’d nothing to do with.’

  He spread his palms outwards towards the detective. ‘And that’s all I know, bogman. God’s honest truth.’

  O’Rourke believed him. But he felt more puzzled than ever. Christy’s story hadn’t helped him to build up his case against Manus. On the contrary, he thought, as he silently scanned through his notes of the conversation, it had just muddied the waters further.

  The detective was already confused enough. All his attempts to dig up information about Manus Kennedy’s alleged history of violence had come to nothing. All the promising leads had vanished like froth on a bad pint.

  ‘Let me get it straight, Christy,’ he said at last. ‘You’re telling me that Manus was never involved in this plan to sell the statue?’

  ‘No.’ Christy Geaney shook his head emphatically. ‘Too spaced out. Didn’t know what was goin’ on.’

  ‘And he’s never been involved in drugs or drug dealing?’

  ‘Nope. Too stupid.’

  ‘Never committed any crimes in your presence or to your knowledge?’

  ‘I never even seen him drop litter.’

  ‘What about arson, fire-raising? Any obsession with fire, hanging around fire stations, getting friendly with firemen, anything like that?’

  Geaney shook his head again. ‘Unless you count putting a few peat briquettes into the grate when his arse was freezing.’

  ‘Acts of violence? Assaults? Intimidation? Threats?’

  Geaney’s face twisted into a look of pitying contempt. ‘Watch my lips, you poor muck-savage. Mano was so un-violent he made Mahatma-bleedin’-Gandhi look like Mike Tyson.’

  O’Rourke stared deep into the cruel eyes. There was no doubt about it – Geaney was telling the truth.

  ‘So in your opinion,’ he said at last, ‘Manus Kennedy would not be capable of murder?’

  Geaney laughed again, a hard metallic sound like a Stanley-knife falling on the tiles of a prison shower. ‘In my opinion, bogman,’ he said, ‘Manus Kennedy would not be capable of swatting a wasp if it got under his vest.’

  O’Rourke spent quite some time sorting through his notes.

  He reminded himself that many killers had no previous history of violence. And that around five per cent of murderers were psychotics who killed because killing made sense within the context of their fantasy; most of them didn’t have records of violence, either.

  ‘Did Mano ever talk about demonic possession?’ he asked Geaney.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did he ever claim to be possessed by Satan? Did he do things and blame them on Lucifer? Anything like that?’

  Geaney grinned and shook his head. ‘You mean like in The Exorcist? I never saw his head spinning around, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  O’Rourke sifted through pages of notes until he reached Tara’s statement. The part about Manus’s bizarre remarks in the forest.

  ‘Let me read these sentences to you and then you can tell me if Manus ever talked in these terms.’ O’Rourke directly quoted Manus’s words to Tara. ‘The devil did it. Everyone thought it was my fault, but the devil was the one who really did it.’ He put aside his notes. ‘It seems he has a habit of committing acts and attributing them to the devil. Does that sound familiar in any way?’

  Geaney’s hard face lit up with sudden recognition. ‘Oh, the devil!’ he said, as though recognising the name of an old friend. ‘Why didn’t you say so? That was nothing to do with possession, bogman. Manus used to tell me all about the devil after he’d had a few ciders late at night.’ He snickered.

  ‘Go on, Christy. I’m waiting.’

  ‘He told me his brother Fergal was a really sick bastard who used to do all sorts of twisted, off-the-wall things and blame them on Mano. At school he used to rip the legs off frogs and things and tell the teachers it was Mano that done it. He even set the bleedin’ cowshed on the farm on fire, and blamed that on Mano too. He sounded like a real crazy bollix.’

  He grabbed another cigarette and snapped his fingers insolently, demanding a light. O’Rourke ignored him. The detective sat as though welded to his chair, unable to move.

  ‘Wake up, bogman,’ Geaney shouted into his ear. ‘You hear what I’m sayin’? The devil wasn’t anything that Mano dreamed up out of his head. It was a sort of nickname. That’s what Mano called his brother.’

  Ten minutes before he was due to go on duty, Sergeant Steve McNamara was watering the crimson geraniums in the window-box outside the part-time garda s
tation in Claremoon Harbour. The slugs had been busy, leaving silver trails across the peaty soil and shredding the soft green leaves. McNamara was on his way inside to get some slug pellets when something made him look up in surprise and annoyance.

  A blue Mazda sports car was racing down the hill towards Claremoon, its exhaust roaring as the driver expertly switched gears to negotiate the treacherous bends at high speed. Instead of slowing down at the 30 mph sign at the entrance to the village, the car accelerated. It rocketed along the main street and came to a screeching halt outside the garda station.

  Steve wiped the peat from his hands, stuffed his sergeant’s hat firmly on his head and stalked across to the driver.

  ‘May I see your licence, sir?’ he said with ominous politeness.

  He thought he recognised the driver, a young red-haired man in a sharp-looking suit, but he wasn’t sure.

  Ignoring the request, the man jumped out of the sports car and slammed the door. ‘Where’s Tara Ross?’ he demanded.

  Steve loomed over him threateningly. ‘I said, may I see your licence, sir?’

  ‘Never mind all that. I was speeding, big deal, the office will pay the fine. I need to find Tara Ross. Quickly.’

  There was something in the man’s tone that Steve found immensely irritating. ‘Okay, what’s your name?’ he asked, producing a notebook.

  ‘My name’s Gerry Gellick. I’m a reporter.’

  Steve sighed. Now he remembered. This was the man he’d seen grabbing Tara’s arm outside the Kennedy house at Barnabo.

  ‘You’ll get no information from me, Mr Gellick,’ he said firmly. ‘But I’m going to ask you one more time to…’

  ‘Where is she?’ The words were almost a snarl.

  There was a desperate urgency in his voice that Steve couldn’t ignore. ‘She’s gone out in her father’s fishing boat. With Fergal Kennedy.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus. Jesus.’ The man rubbed his eyes in frustration. ‘This is worse than I thought.’ He made an effort to calm himself down. ‘Sergeant. I promise you that I’ll show you my licence and pay any fine you want. Later. But right now, you have to listen to me.’

  Steve just stared at him.

  Gellick walked ahead of him into the garda station and slapped a sheet of paper on the counter. ‘We haven’t much time. Just read that.’

  The sergeant lifted the paper. It was a flimsy fax containing several closely-typed paragraphs. Some of the words were smudged and illegible.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘It’s a fax message.’ Gellick took a deep breath. ‘Listen, I have a contact in the Garda Technical Bureau who tips me off about forensic evidence as soon as he gets it. This is the latest finding in the Ann Kennedy case. Your detectives in Ennis won’t even see it until the morning.’

  ‘And what are you doing with it?’ Steve was outraged.

  ‘What do you think? I’d planned to stick an exclusive in the Evening Report! tonight. But there are some things that are more important than breaking a story. Even for me.’

  Steve began reading the report. ‘It’s an analysis of the bloodstains on the dead woman’s nightdress,’ he said slowly.

  ‘That’s right.’ Gellick couldn’t hide his impatience. ‘Skip the next couple of pars. Nearly all of it is her own blood, as you might expect, but in a couple of cases, the fabric bears faint traces of another type of blood.’ He pointed to the relevant section. ‘Since it’s confined to areas where the fabric was cut by the knife, it probably came off the murder weapon. In other words, we’re talking about a residue of dried blood that had been on the knife before the attack.’

  Steve’s eyes widened with surprise. ‘You mean, the same knife had been used in other killings?’

  Gellick wasn’t listening. ‘The traces were only microscopic – but the forensic people still managed to identify the species,’ he continued, grabbing the sheet of paper and running his finger down the smudgy lines of type.

  The sergeant leaned over his shoulder. ‘Species? You mean it wasn’t human blood?’

  ‘No, sergeant, it wasn’t human. Look, they’ve got the exact name written down here – Scomber Scombrus.’

  ‘And what the hell is Scomber Scombrus when it’s at home?’

  ‘I’d never heard of it, either,’ said Gellick. ‘But apparently it’s the common North Atlantic mackerel. The weapon was obviously a knife used for gutting fish.’

  Gellick looked up from the sheet of paper, his eyes pleading with the sergeant to understand.

  But Steve McNamara had already gone. He was sprinting towards the harbour, faster than he’d ever run when he represented his county at the football championships in Croke Park. His worried eyes were fixed on the massive outcrop of Chicken Point, behind which the Róisín Dubh lay drifting, unprotected and completely hidden from view.

  Fergal’s hands were like the hands of a skilled surgeon. Rapidly yet with pinpoint precision, he inserted the razor-sharp gutting knife under the pollack’s neck, slid it smoothly downwards, removed the innards, and moved swiftly on to the next fish. Tara, who was used to filleting and cooking fish, envied his speed and dexterity. She knew how to do the job, but she’d never been that good.

  ‘You must give me lessons some day,’ she called to him from the helm.

  He glanced up. ‘You just keep your eyes on the sea ahead,’ he warned.

  She adjusted the throttle to compensate for slight changes in the sea-swell and rechecked the course. Everything was fine and the route ahead was totally clear.

  She turned back to Fergal. His hands were thick with blood, but they still moved speedily and precisely, the guts flying into one bucket and the prepared fish into a container of salt water.

  Tara watched closely, hoping to learn something as Fergal picked up a large mackerel and pierced its skin. She was surprised at the awkwardness of the initial cut, when the point of the knife first penetrated the skin. For all his smooth skill on the downward cuts, Fergal was slow and ungainly at this first stage.

  Then she saw the knife and realised why. It had broken at some stage. There was a big break, a chunk of steel missing, just near the point. It snagged on the fish’s tough skin and slowed things up.

  ‘It must have been broken near the tip. So we’re looking for a knife with a distinctive notch or cut at the end. Incidentally, Tara, we’re keeping that bit quiet…’

  The instant she made the connection, Fergal glanced up, surprised and annoyed that she was still looking at him.

  But Tara’s eyes were locked on the knife.

  His eyes followed hers, down to the ugly, jagged notch of broken steel.

  Then their eyes met.

  She tried to smile, tried to act naturally, although her blood had become as chilled as the steel-grey depths of the ocean that surrounded them. But as his eyes locked in on hers, it became clear that deception was futile. She knew. And he realised she knew. In that fleeting microsecond, friendship died and innocence was lost, and it was pointless trying to reclaim them.

  He set down the knife. ‘I told you to watch where we’re going,’ he said, and there was a cold, hard edge to his voice that she’d never heard before.

  ‘Okay, okay. I’m watching.’ She turned back to the wheel, instinctively looking to her father for assistance. But he still sat like a dead man in his wheelchair beside the controls, his unseeing eyes forever focused on some meaningless point in mid-air.

  Trying not to make it seem obvious, she nudged the throttle forward bit by bit and prayed that the boat would soon emerge from the shadow of Chicken Point into the benign openness of Claremoon Bay. But there was still a long way to go, and both tide and current were against them.

  Meanwhile, smelling blood in the bottom of a dirty black plastic bucket, the thousands of robber gulls and guillemots circled and wheeled and swooped around her. Their harsh keening wails seemed to cry out like the banshee of Irish folklore, venomously screaming, echoing Manus Kennedy’s warning that she was to be the nex
t to die.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  FOR A long time, neither of them spoke.

  All you could hear was the steady throbbing of the Róisín Dubh’s diesel engine striving against the tide and overcoming the swell. The hypnotic surging and splashing of the ocean on its hull. And all around, the frenetic howling and grieving of the gulls.

  The bright, cheerful sun of the early morning had vanished. The sky had turned grey and the surface of the sea had become the colour of old lead.

  Tara’s hands were fixed so tightly on the wheel that her knuckles had turned white as dry bones. Her heart was palpitating in time to the motor. She silently pleaded with the boat and the engine to make faster time. The headland seemed as remote as ever.

  She tried desperately to play down her terror, to rationalise it. There was a knife with a notch in it. A broken knife. So what? How many fishing boats had broken knives? It didn’t mean their crews were murderers. And even – she gritted her teeth – even if it were true, even if that blade had been the same blade that had plunged dozens of times into Ann Kennedy’s thrashing, dying body, it didn’t mean that the same thing was going to happen to Tara. She could easily have misinterpreted that look he gave her, that cold look that said: You know, and I realise you know, and that means things can never be the same again.

  Tara shuddered at the memory and again eased the throttle forward as far as she dared. Once she got beyond the headland and into public view, she was safe. Ten minutes, perhaps. Just ten minutes.

  Looking at the pale reflection in the glass of the wheelhouse window, she saw that Fergal had finished his job and was chucking the fish guts, handful by handful, to the greedy, clamouring gulls. His hands were bloody and sticky. In a minute he would come forward to the wheelhouse and they would have to talk. She couldn’t risk that. She wasn’t a good liar. She could never trust herself to maintain a deception for ten seconds, never mind ten minutes. She must avoid conversation at all costs.