Stone Heart

by Des Ekin

  ‘Yes, I think it’s best that we get it over with.’ O’Rourke nodded agreement. He wanted Tara to know all about Fergal Kennedy – all about his background and his lies and why he had become a killer. He wanted her to know it all as soon as possible, so that the healing truth could become firmly established in her mind before the inevitable flood of pointless, corrosive guilt engulfed her.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You asked me what could have driven Fergal to kill his own mother. It’s taken a long time, but at last I think I know the answer.’

  The detective had done a lot of work on the case – a lot more work than he’d needed to. He’d talked to Godfrey Villiers, he’d talked to the owners of the gallery in New York, he’d talked again to the fisherman who’d spotted Fergal down by the harbour on the morning of the murder.

  Connecting these witness statements and filling in the gaps though his policeman’s intuition, O’Rourke was able to piece together almost everything about the horrific twenty-four hours that culminated in Ann Kennedy’s death.

  And his story went something like this.

  Fergal Kennedy had a problem. He wanted Tara from the first time he saw her in the courtroom. He wanted her more than he’d wanted anything in his life before. He knew there was a key somewhere. He knew there was a button to push. It was just a question of being patient until he found it.

  But patience wasn’t Fergal’s strong point. For instance, he knew that, one day, he would be recognised as a great artist. He had to be. It was in his genes. The way he saw it, you couldn’t be Michael de Blaca’s son without inheriting some of his talent. But that day was a long time in coming, and in the meantime he was reduced to earning pin-money by digging drainage ditches and hauling nets.

  All that changed when Godfrey Villiers approached him out of the blue with an offer to buy his paintings. All of his paintings.

  They met in a snug in Breadon’s Bar. Fergal had a pint of Guinness, and Villiers, to Fergal’s mortification, ordered a ‘vodka-tini’. Then they got down to business.

  ‘My dear chap,’ Villiers began, trying to sound calm, although Fergal noticed he was tense and agitated. ‘I am extraordinarily impressed with the quality of your work. Last week I took the liberty of consulting some prestigious colleagues in a gallery in New York, and I amhappy to say they share my faith in your future. The only problem is that, at this juncture in time, you are an unknown quantity. One hates to raise the base subject of finance, but in commercial terms you are a gamble. What I suggest is that we offset the risk by including, in our deal, any works of Michael de Blaca which you happen to possess. That seascape in your dining-room, for instance, and of course the sculpture, too. May I suggest a generous sum of thirty thousand pounds, all-inclusive?’

  Fergal hadn’t come down the St Lawrence River in a bubble. In Canada – at least in the circles he moved in – you learned all about hustlers fast, or you went under, fast. He knew this guy was trying to hustle him. He just couldn’t figure out how or why.

  So he just sat back and let Villiers buy him pints all afternoon while he hummed and hawed and hedged his bets, until finally, around the sixth vodka-tini, Villiers let it slip out. The name Fergal had been waiting for. The name of the New York art gallery that had been so keen to buy his paintings.

  Only by that time, Fergal knew they didn’t really give a damn about his paintings. He knew that all they wanted was the sheela-na-gig.

  Twelve hours later, as he lay in bed with Tara, their limbs entangled, the sweat cooling on their skin, Fergal suddenly made up his mind. He was going to marry this girl.

  The fact that he was married already didn’t pose a problem in his mind. He just had to have this woman. He had to own her, like he owned his Corvette. If that meant marrying her, then he’d marry her. If it meant saying a few empty promises, like he’d had to do in Canada, then he’d say a few empty promises.

  But he had yet to find the right key to turn, the right button to push…

  As they lay there together, Tara began talking sleepily about her dreams for the future. She told him all about the ruined Victorian spa on the hilltop, and her crazy plan to restore it.

  ‘But it’ll never happen,’ she yawned. ‘I haven’t two pennies to rub together, never mind the money it would take to do a proper restoration job.’

  ‘Why?’ Fergal demanded. ‘How much would it cost?’

  She snuggled in to him. ‘Oh, let’s forget it. I tend to waffle on sometimes. But talking about rubbing things together…’

  ‘No, really.’ He extracted himself from her embrace. ‘I want you to tell me.’

  She popped him a kiss, threw on a long white cotton shirt and headed for the bathroom. ‘Forget it,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘I talked to a builder friend and he said that the work would cost at least two hundred grand.’

  A sudden idea came to Fergal, blinding him, like a flash of burning magnesium. When she left the bedroom, he dashed downstairs, picked up the phone and asked Directory Enquiries for the number of the Cedric Maxwell Gallery in New York City.

  It was five in the morning, around midnight in Manhattan, but one of the gallery’s principal partners was still on duty, cataloguing items for an exhibition. Yes, he knew Godfrey Villiers. In fact, he was awaiting important news from him. Had Mr Villiers dispatched the de Blaca sculpture, as he’d promised?

  Fergal wasted no time in putting him straight. He said Villiers was out of the picture. His name was Fergal Kennedy, he was de Blaca’s son, and he was the legal owner of the sheela-na-gig. Other galleries were interested, too. Could he talk turkey? Could he make a deal there and then?

  Within sixty seconds, they had settled on four hundred thousand dollars, subject to verification, bank draft to be made out to Fergal personally.

  He slammed down the phone and bounded up the stairs, nearly colliding with Tara as she emerged smiling from the bathroom. Her sexy, just-made-love smile took his breath away. He swept her up in his arms and threw her on to the bed. This time, their lovemaking was even better. It was more than good sex. It was the triumphant performance of a rutting stag.

  Afterwards, he pulled on his blue jeans and plaid shirt, kissed her goodbye, and almost ran out the door.

  Fergal was convinced he had found it at last. The secret key to turn, the right button to push, that would allow him to possess Tara Ross and have her all to himself.

  He glanced at his watch. Just before six am. Perfect, he thought with satisfaction. His mother would soon be up, making herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. He would tell her all about his plans to sell his sheela-na-gig sculpture and use the cash to buy the spa house for the woman he planned to marry.

  He had made up his mind in an instant, with all the impulsive generosity that characterises people with ASPD, and he wasn’t going to change it. Let anyone dare to stand in his way.

  ‘I can’t stand the sight of blood,’ said Ann Kennedy.

  ‘Sorry,’ muttered Fergal.

  ‘It’s okay, love. But I’ve told you before, when you come home after helping John Ross on the boat, and you have some fish to clean, could you tidy up after yourself? I had a late night, and it doesn’t help my stomach when I come into the kitchen in the morning and see a plate swimming with fish-innards and a dirty old gutting knife.’

  ‘I said I was sorry, Mom. It won’t happen again, honest.’ He kissed her on the cheek and shook his head to decline the proffered cup of tea. ‘Listen, I can’t wait to tell you. I’ve had great news. It’s going to change my whole life.’

  Ann Kennedy listened, and her face grew paler. She sat down and poured herself a second cup of tea without emptying the dregs of the first cup. That was something she never did.

  Fergal didn’t even notice. He bounded into the living-room and returned with the sheela-na-gig clasped in his hand. ‘You don’t think my da will mind?’ he asked. ‘I mean, it was my birthday gift. He’ll love the spa house, once we’ve done it up. He can come and visit us there, me and Tara, and we’
ll all sit on the front deck together and paint the ocean, the way da used to…’

  His voice trailed off. He knew something was dreadfully wrong.

  ‘Mom, you’re not saying anything,’ he said quietly. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Ann’s voice was barely a whisper. ‘It’s not yours,’ she said.

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’ Fergal knew she was going to make petty objections and he could feel his temper rising like lava in a volcano.

  ‘Sit down, Fergal. Please.’

  ‘No, I won’t sit down,’ he said, his face darkening. ‘Tell me.’

  Ann was renowned for her tact and diplomacy, but there was no tender or humane way to tell this man that the very core and centre of his existence was a sham.

  Gently but firmly, she told him the truth. The sculpture was not his to sell. It belonged to his younger brother Manus, because it was Manus who was the real son of the artist Michael de Blaca.

  Fergal stood rooted to the ground in shock. In the course of a dozen softly-spoken sentences, his mother had destroyed his life. In those few minutes, he saw his great self-myth, his reason for living, exposed as a lie. He saw himself revealed, not as the tempestuous rebel artist, but as the good-for-nothing son of a drunken abusive farmer. And worst of all, he saw Tara slipping inexorably from his grasp.

  ‘You’re lying,’ he whispered at last.

  Ann shook her head. She left the room and returned with battered, dog-eared envelope. Her hands were shaking, because she recognised the darkness in her son’s features and she was frightened by it. She pulled out a letter and read it aloud. It was signed by Michael de Blaca, and dated only a few days after the birth of Ann’s second child. It stated clearly that the enclosed sculpture, de Blaca’s first work in stone and marked sng1, was to be given to his son Manus.

  Fergal stood up, knocking over the heavy pine chair. He had taken the path of denial, but it had turned to quicksand. He was floundering. He was gasping for air. He couldn’t contain his anger. It boiled up, spilling out, venting itself in rage and fury against his mother. The world turned red, blood red, the way it had with Manus at the cowshed, the way it had with Mathilde in Canada. He saw the razor-sharp gutting knife. It was in his hand. He plunged it into Ann Kennedy’s body…again, and again, and again, long after there was any need to go on.

  When he came to his senses, he was standing in the shower, hosing his body down. He had no idea how he got there. But the blood-soaked shirt and jeans that lay beside his feet, leaching red stains into the draining water, immediately dispelled his hopes that it had all been a terrible nightmare.

  He moved fast, hardly bothering to dry himself before he pulled on a clean pair of jeans and another plaid shirt. He had only minutes to spare. His brain was focused now, cool and sharp and focused. His mind was a crystal-clear pool. He could see right down to the seabed. He knew what had to be done.

  He walked quickly back into the kitchen, and when he stepped over the body of his mother, it meant no more to him than stepping over a sleeping drunk lying in the gutter outside the nightclub in Montreal. He lifted the knife from the floor. He lifted the letter and stuffed it into the breast pocket of his blood-stained shirt. He walked to the door, scrupulously careful to avoid stepping in the splatters of blood on the tiles.

  The harbour was deserted as he jumped aboard the Róisín Dubh. Quickly, furtively, he stuffed his bloodstained pants and shirt behind the rickety locker in the cabin. It was a temporary measure. Next time they were out at sea, miles into the open Atlantic, he’d put them in a weighted bag and dump them overboard.

  He tested the strength of the locker. It would be okay for a while. It would hold. Finally, he washed John Ross’s gutting knife in the seawater and replaced it in the toolbox under the seat. The whole process had taken only a few minutes.

  As Fergal waited for the police to arrive he felt satisfied, in a strange sort of way. All he had to do was sit tight, put the New York dealer on hold, and wait for all the fuss to die down before selling the sculpture.

  He would have to shed a lot of tears over the next few days, because that was expected, but he had learned a long time ago how to fabricate emotions like that. He didn’t understand words like sorrow or remorse. The way he saw it, deep down inside himself, it had all been inevitable. He had wanted something. And so he had removed the only obstacle that had stood in his way. It was as simple, as terrifyingly simple, as that.

  The Earl Grey tea finally arrived. As the door opened, Tara could hear a faraway speaker piping Elgar’s Enigma Variations through the corridors of the clinic. The smell of bergamot suffused the room as the white-aproned maid poured the beige liquid into four china cups.

  Tara reached for her bottle of painkillers. The ordeal of listening to the full story had left her feeling as though her head were about to explode. And it wasn’t the full story, anyway. No living person knew exactly what had happened in the kitchen at Barnabo on that dreadful Sunday morning, and no one ever would.

  ‘Well, it’s over,’ she whispered at last. ‘Thank God it’s all over.’

  O’Rourke took a mouthful of tea and stood up. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s over. We can close our files on Ann Kennedy’s murder, instead of leaving them open for ever.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Tara objected. ‘You told me you would have had a conviction anyway. You said it was only a matter of time before you got DNA results, and they would have established Fergal as the killer.’

  O’Rourke shook his head. ‘It didn’t work out that way, I’m afraid. Word just came through this morning that the DNA tests were inconclusive.’

  ‘So you’d never have caught him?’

  O’Rourke drained his tea. ‘We had nothing on Fergal,’ he agreed. ‘Nothing at all. We had no idea that he occasionally worked with your father on the Róisín Dubh, and we had no reason to search it. He would have ditched those clothes without anyone knowing. The truth is, Tara, that if it hadn’t been for you and your crazy idea of taking your father out on a boat trip, we might never have found any evidence worth a damn. It’s all too likely that Fergal Kennedy would have lived a long and happy life in a big house overlooking Claremoon Bay, without ever being brought to justice. And if he’d had his way, Tara – you would have been right there beside him.’

  He reached into his pocket, produced a little buff envelope of the type used by jewellers, and handed it to her. ‘We found this in Fergal’s pocket,’ he said. ‘I believe he intended to give it to you that night.’

  The envelope showed the crest of a local goldsmith. Inside was a small black jewellery box. She opened the lid and took out the ring that nestled on a cushion of red velvet.

  It was an engagement ring, wrought from fine gold with a cluster of miniature diamonds. But in the centre of the cluster, where the main diamond would usually be set, was her birthstone. It was a minuscule pearl…spherical, creamy-white, and absolutely perfect, the type you might find concealed within the shell of a mussel during lunch at a seafood restaurant on a mild Saturday afternoon in spring.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  MATHILDE BRESSON’S plane was on time. They saw it land as they sipped cappuccino in the airport bar. At a quarter to eleven, according to the terminal screens, passengers would be permitted to board, and half an hour later the plane would leave Dublin Airport on its journey to Paris.

  ‘You’re positive you don’t want to go back to Montreal?’ Andres asked in French.

  ‘Quite sure.’ Mathilde smiled. ‘The memories are all bad memories. Besides, one cannot be a topless waitress all one’s life. When a woman reaches a certain age, she fights a losing battle against gravity.’

  Her eyes were rueful, but her thousand-watt smile – perfect white teeth highlighting flawless dark skin – lit up the dim lounge. She may indeed have been entering that phase of life which the French tactfully call ‘a certain age’, but the shapely figure, poured into skin-tight leather trousers, still threatened to cause whiplash injurie
s to every head-turning male in the airport.

  ‘That’s one problem you don’t have to worry about,’ said Tara, struggling with her own inadequate French. ‘But you do deserve a better career.’

  Mathilde sipped her coffee and kept a careful check on the digital clock on the terminal screen. ‘Me, I began my career as a hairstylist,’ she said. ‘I enjoyed the work and I was good at it. The only problem was my employer.’ She grimaced. ‘Today, he would be sued for sexual harassment. But in those days, it didn’t work like that.’

  She shrugged as only the French can, and her troublesome employer simply disappeared. ‘I have decided. I will return to Metz, my hometown, and try to open my own salon. It will be hard work, but I will be answerable to no one except myself.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ Tara encouraged her. ‘You’ll be a huge success, I just know it. And I’ll be one of your first customers.’

  She meant every word. She’d enjoyed Mathilde’s company over the past weekend, a fun-filled but hectic two days in which she’d shown her the sights of Dublin and given her a taste of Irish pub life in bars like the legendary Johnny Fox’s. Andres had joined them on most of these outings. They’d shared an embarrassed laugh about Tara finding the insulin syringes and jumping to conclusions. And, yes, Tara had to admit that she’d enjoyed his company even more.

  ‘My heart goes with you, Tara,’ Mathilde was saying. ‘I wish you happiness in whatever you choose to do, and wherever you choose to go.’

  The tannoy announced that the boarding gate was open. Spontaneously, Tara and Mathilde embraced – two survivors out of an ill-matched trio of women whose lives had been blighted by one man. Mathilde dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. She nodded urgently towards Andres, who’d wandered off to fetch her luggage trolley.

  ‘That one, he is crazy in love with you,’ she whispered rapidly to Tara. ‘But you are in danger of losing him.’