Stone Heart

by Des Ekin

  He kicked aside the empty bucket and lumbered forward towards her. Perhaps it was just as well that the reflection in the dark glass showed only his silhouette – she couldn’t see the expression on his face and she didn’t want to.

  As he came closer, she faked a shiver – it wasn’t hard to do – and abandoned the wheel. ‘Take her for a bit, would you, Fergal?’ she called out casually. ‘I’m going to get my jumper from the cabin.’

  She didn’t meet his eyes. She turned her back on him and went down into the tiny cabin. Once inside, she closed the door behind her and slowly, silently, eased the inside-bolt into place. She glanced out the window. Fergal hadn’t noticed. His eyes were still fixed on the sea, checking that he was on the correct course.

  If she could just stay in here until the boat rounded the point and entered the safe haven of Claremoon Bay…

  The inside-bolt on the cabin door had been Tara’s own idea. The Róisín Dubh had no proper sea-toilet, just a ‘bucket and chuck-it’ in a tiny alcove. The privacy bolt had been John Ross’s only grudging concession to civilisation.

  Sensing Fergal’s eye upon her, she opened the rickety plywood storage locker and mimed the action of searching for her pullover. It didn’t take much searching – it had been the last item she’d put in – but she searched anyway. The shaky locker creaked and flexed and shifted on the wall as she moved her hand. After a few minutes she couldn’t prolong the process any more. She hauled out her jumper and pulled it over her head, hoping it would quell her shivering.

  Before moving in to the hidden alcove, she mentally rehearsed how she would react if Fergal were to try the cabin door and find it bolted. What would she say? I’m feeling sick. I’m spending a penny, darling, can you hold on a moment? Could she fend him off long enough for the Róisín Dubh to round the headland and get within sight of the village?

  Then, with terrifying suddenness, something happened that made it all irrelevant.

  The deck beneath her feet seemed to rise up and corkscrew at the same time, hovering for a stomach-heaving instant before plunging downwards again. It was a groundswell – a powerful surge of energy erupting from the ocean depths and sending the craft into a dizzy roll. Unprepared, Tara stumbled, lost her balance and reached out for the nearest thing to hand. For a fleeting instant she thought it was too late, that she would be sent sprawling across the cabin, but she managed to grab hold of the wooden strut of the storage locker and hold on tight, practically swinging on it like a primate on a tree branch, trusting it with her entire weight.

  And then it gave way, as she somehow knew it would, screws tearing out of the wood like tin tacks as the whole structure ripped off its flimsy foundation. Tara fell backwards on to the opposite wall, the locker crashing down on top of her, and then she was flung forwards again as the groundswell surged past them and shattered itself into icy shards of spray on the granite cliff-face.

  Tara was unhurt – but she couldn’t see. Something had fallen off the wall and on to her head. Something made of cloth but unnaturally heavy. It had wrapped itself around her eyes and face. Parts of it were dry and hard and parts of it were sticky-wet. It felt unpleasant and smelled nauseating. She fought to get it off her face and saw to her horror that her hands were dark-red. She held the material at arms’ length and screamed and screamed and screamed as she recognised it as a lumberjack shirt that had once been tartan and a pair of denim jeans that had once been faded blue. Now they looked as though they had been worn on the killing floor of a slaughterhouse. They were stained, matted and stuck together with blood. A huge amount of blood.

  And suddenly there was Fergal, alerted by her screams, looking through the window, witnessing the horror in her face, realising the import of her stomach-churning discovery.

  And then he was at the cabin door, trying to turn the handle as her hysterical screams became louder and louder, drowning out the shrieks of the bloodthirsty seabirds that were still circling greedily overhead.

  Fergal, face distorted with anger, stepped backwards and landed his size-twelve boot square on the door, smashing the steel bolt aside like a piece of tin. He pushed through the broken door, past the devastation of the cabin, and grabbed Tara brutally by the hair. He pulled her upwards and out on to the open deck, and savagely spun her around so that her long hair twisted tighter around his fist and almost tore itself from her scalp. He held her face up close to his until they were only a couple of inches apart.

  ‘Why?’ he roared, his voice rising above her own hysterical screaming. ‘Why could you not just leave…things…alone.’ The last three words were emphasised by painful tugs at her hair. ‘All you had to do was do nothing. But you had to go around pushing…your nose…in…’

  His saliva spattered her face. His face was twisted and black with rage.

  ‘Stirring up things. Turning up stones that should have been left alone. Why? Why?’

  He paused, seeming to expect an answer. But the screaming from the deep pit of her soul had assumed its own identity, taken a life of its own. It was like a frightened animal running amok inside her. She couldn’t have stopped even if she’d wanted to. Her breath came inwards in harsh, rattling moans and immediately expelled itself in cries of sheer anguish. She was out of control.

  ‘They had nothing on us! Nothing! All we had to do was sit it out and call their bluff. They would all have gone away and we would have ended up in that big house, the one you always wanted, set-up for life! People could talk all they wanted, but there was no proof. We would have been up there, you and me, laughing down at them all!’

  It was the excruciating pain from the repeated tugs on her scalp that forced Tara back from the brink of hysteria. Somewhere deep down within her, she discovered some burning instinct for survival. It cooled, found its shape, and became hard as steel. She forced herself to stop screaming, take deep steady breaths and concentrate on staying alive.

  ‘But you had to destroy everything. Everything. It’s all gone, now. Everything’s in ruins.’

  The survival instinct within her began assessing, compiling, analysing. The first thing it computed was that this was no meaningless rant. Fergal was working himself up to a fever of self-justification, stoking up a righteous anger that would give meaning and purpose to whatever terrible action he planned to take.

  ‘When I think of what I did for you. I did everything for you! I even killed my own mother for you. For us! And what do you do, you stupid ungrateful bitch? You throw it all back in my face!’

  The admission had been made, but it had lost all its power to shock. Tara had stopped listening. She felt the crazy lurching of the boat and realised that there was yet another threat to her survival. The Róisín Dubh was still under power, but out of control. Rudderless, she had abandoned her striving against the swell and had taken the course of least resistance, wallowing with the waves instead of pushing through them, heading straight towards the cliffs and towards the treacherous rocks that lurked just beneath the surface.

  But Fergal was lost in his own world of righteous, white-hot fury. ‘What do you do? What do you do? You lie to me. You cheat on me. You betray me. I know all about your trips to Paris with that Russian guy. I know all about your nights in his apartment. Don’t try to deny it, you two-faced whore!’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. It’s not what you think,’ Tara tried to blurt out. But in Fergal’s world of stark black and white, there was no room for grey.

  He hauled her across the deck towards the side of the boat. ‘You did this,’ he said with cold fury. ‘You brought this on yourself.’

  And suddenly she was knocked backwards across the gunwale until her lower back hurt like hell against the hard wooden edge, and his fingers were closing around her throat, strangling her, choking the life out of her.

  She grabbed at his wrists and tried to pull them away, but it was hopeless. His grip was locked as solidly as bolted metal.

  As the blood pounded in her temples and she felt herself beginning to black
out, a voice came into her head, as cool and clear as it was unexpected. She recognised the voice of Ciarán, the security man and martial arts expert who’d taught her so many street-survival techniques:

  ‘If someone’s got his hands around your throat, Tara, you’re in big trouble. You’ve got to break the hold, but it’s no good going for his wrists. You go for the vulnerable parts. And what’s the most vulnerable part of the hand?’

  Obeying the inner voice, her frantic, clutching hands left his wrists and moved swiftly forwards along the bone to locate Fergal’s little fingers. Working blind, she grabbed each of them in a firm grip. Then, with one strong coordinated wrench, she hauled them outwards and backwards.

  ‘Son of a bitch!’

  He hadn’t been expecting resistance. He didn’t like pain. The hold was broken and the shock sent him reeling backwards, his arms crossed and his maimed hands stuffed under his armpits as he tried to block out the all-engulfing wave of agony.

  Tara struggled to her feet, dizzy, disorientated. Standing upright on the deck, the first thing she saw was the black cliff-face, immense and implacable, bearing down on them.

  There were less than a hundred yards of water between boat and cliff. She had no choice, no time to think. She dashed forwards and spun the wheel to port, pushing the throttle to full speed to avert the catastrophe. The Róisín Dubh’s bow swung around and ploughed back into the waves, heading out to the open sea. Tara saw the water churning and swirling on the evil rocks on either side as the craft struggled to reach safe water.

  And then, without a single moment to pause and catch her breath, Fergal was upon her again, grabbing at her, spinning her around. She skidded and landed on the hard wooden deck with a crash.

  Through a miasma of white fog from her air-starved brain, Tara could just make out the glimmer of steel a few feet away from her. The gutting knife. It had been knocked out of the bucket and it was lying on the deck. No time to lose. Go for it…

  She rolled over twice. Her hand reached out towards the knife, but it was just beyond her grasp. Her fingertips could touch it, feel the warm wooden handle beneath them. She scrambled frantically to pull it within reach. She’d almost made it when Fergal’s boot came from nowhere and kicked the blade away.

  As it clattered to the far side of the boat, Tara slumped to the deck in exhausted defeat. She saw Fergal’s boot rise again. But this time the toe was aimed directly at her head.

  The garda sergeant’s eyes were fixed on the horizon, desperately willing the outline of the Róisín Dubh to emerge from behind the jagged rocks of Chicken Point. But, as Steve McNamara knew only too well, willing something with all your heart was not enough to make it happen.

  He barely noticed the helicopter as it appeared on the horizon, flying low over the Burren from the northeast, its dark shadow pursuing it across the white limestone hills. Dogs barked and sheep scattered in terror as it circled the cliffs near the harbour, looking for a landing point. And then the streets of the sleepy village were filled with the scything, buffeting roar of its rotors as it descended slowly, warily, to settle on a grassy outcrop near the harbour.

  At any other time, the sergeant would have gone straight across to investigate. And at any other time Steve – like any other red-blooded male – would certainly have been transfixed by the mini-skirted brunette who climbed out of the back seat of the Jetranger. But he ignored her, just as he ignored the tall dark-haired man who shepherded her, crouching, away from the helicopter and raised a thumb to the pilot.

  The sergeant briefly considered commandeering the aircraft, but he didn’t have time. Within seconds of the thumbs-up signal, the machine had soared into the sky, heading southwards to Shannon for refuelling.

  Steve’s eyes scanned the harbour. He rejected the rowboats and the tiny sailing dinghies and the slow, round-bottomed fishing skiffs. Instead, he settled on a nineteen-foot Orkney Fastliner with a semi-displacement hull and a punchy forty HP Yamaha motor capable of powering her along at twenty knots or more.

  ‘Excuse me. Sergeant!’

  McNamara looked around. It was the tall, sun-tanned man who’d alighted from the helicopter.

  ‘Can’t talk to you right now, sir. Urgent business. Later.’ Steve was jumping down the harbour steps two at a time and leaping into the Fastliner.

  ‘This is urgent, too, actually.’

  Steve stared at him. He recalled that accent from somewhere. Yes, now he remembered. That strange Eastern European who’d been hanging around with Villiers.

  ‘Yes? Can it wait?’ Steve was already starting the engine.

  ‘It’s about Tara. Tara Ross.’

  Steve hesitated. He couldn’t afford to ignore this man, and yet he couldn’t risk standing around.

  ‘Jump in,’ he ordered curtly.

  The two passengers leaped into the Fastliner just in time. With Steve’s next attempt, the motor kicked into life and the boat surged through the water, its bow rising sharply into planing position long before it left the crowded little port. Shouting above the nasal roar of the engine and the rhythmic sluicing of the water, Andres began telling the sergeant everything he knew.

  A convulsive shiver brought Tara back to consciousness. Unexpectedly, her first sensation was of physical comfort. She was no longer lying on the hard wooden deck. Her battered, pain-racked body was stretched out on something soft, yielding and yet supportive.

  For a fleeting instant, as she lay with her eyes closed, she thought her nightmare was over – that she was lying on a hospital bed or an ambulance stretcher. But she could still hear the shrieking of the gulls and feel the cold sea air. Cautiously, she put out an exploratory hand and encountered the familiar texture of mesh netting.

  Keeping her eyes closed, she feigned unconsciousness while she took stock of her situation. She realised she was stretched out on the netting at the stern of the boat. The Róisín Dubh seemed to have returned to the open sea and the engine was idling, out of gear – she could tell by the tone of the motor and the wallowing motion of the boat on the ocean swell.

  ‘Come on, Tara. I know you’re awake.’

  She opened her eyes. He was squatting beside her on the deck, staring down at her. His anger seemed to have subsided. But his face and voice registered no emotion at all.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly.

  Tara felt an irrational surge of relief. She knew the circumstances hadn’t changed, but at least she was no longer dealing with a man consumed by a violent and unreasoning fury. Fergal was himself again.

  ‘Let’s go back, Fergal,’ she pleaded, her voice weak and hoarse. ‘Give yourself up. The courts will give you credit for that. If you plead guilty to manslaughter, you’ll be out in six or seven years.’

  But Fergal didn’t appear to hear her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated, in exactly the same tone. ‘I’m sorry that you have to die like this.’

  The relief that had surged inside her soul subsided like a retreating wave on the shoreline, leaving her empty and drained. She felt her eyes swell and fill with tears.

  ‘But why?’ she whispered weakly. ‘Why?’

  He misunderstood her. ‘Because you’re too good a swimmer,’ he explained patiently, ‘and I’m too good at handling boats. You wouldn’t just fall overboard and drown in a calm sea. Nobody would believe that.’

  She stared at him, speechless and nauseated. This man she had grown to know so intimately, this man whose lips she had caressed with her lips, and whose body she had loved with her body, was dispassionately explaining how he intended to murder her.

  He pointed to the net that lay folded beneath her. ‘She fell in as we were shooting the nets,’ he said distantly, assuming a frank, honest gaze that seemed fixed on an imaginary face on the other side of a desk. ‘Just slipped and fell over. She’s a strong swimmer, but she got tangled up under the nets. And you know how it is – once those nets fly out across the stern under the weight of a four-stone concrete block, nothing can stop them.
’

  Tara’s tear-filled eyes opened wide with dawning comprehension and terror. She knew Fergal was absolutely right. If he managed to get her entangled in the strong meshes, the impetus of the shooting nets would carry her deep beneath the waves where no amount of swimming or struggling could free her.

  Her body shuddered involuntarily. Like most people in fishing communities, she’d always had a primal, atavistic terror of drowning. She often had nightmares about it. The swelling pain in your lungs as you tried to keep the air trapped inside you for as long as possible. The knowledge that you couldn’t hold on for much longer. The inevitable gasp, the explosion of bubbles, then the relentless surge of cold salt water into the mouth, nose and airways, the horrific final seconds as your lungs pounded hopelessly like broken bellows and your body thrashed and convulsed and died.

  Fergal’s eyes focused on her again, but if they noticed her tears at all, they showed no emotional response. His expression didn’t even flicker. His impassive tone didn’t waver in the least.

  ‘Accidents like that do happen,’ he said distantly. ‘Nobody can prove any different. They’ll suspect. They’ll question. But I’ll be there, leading the mourning at your funeral. Just the way I was at mom’s.’

  She stared disbelievingly as his expression changed for the second time, this time crumpling into a totally credible one of tortured grief. ‘I wish I could talk about it,’ he said emotionally, ‘but there…just…aren’t…any…words…’

  Then, just as suddenly, the expression changed, as though a mask had been removed, and he was smiling coldly down at her.

  Tara felt her weakened body become taut with anger. He was repeating the same words he’d said to her when she’d comforted him on the day of his mother’s funeral.

  The bastard was mocking her.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said as he stood up and began the routine of shooting the net, ‘they can gossip all they want. I’ll be out of this shit-kicking little dump by the end of the month. Australia, perhaps. Or maybe Paris. But then, you know all about Paris, don’t you, Tara?’