Deadly Intent (34 page)

‘Where the hell is Sal, Marcus?' Nessa broke in. ‘I'm terrified that Darina has killed her already—'

‘I haven't the faintest idea, Nessa, I swear I haven't seen her.'

‘Here's the choice,' said Conor. ‘We've one extra garda out in the car, and if he stays here with Marcus as well as Fergus and Nessa, Redmond and I could go down the steps in the dark, and hope to overpower Darina on the boat. But if Sal is with her, the risk of your daughter getting hurt is substantial, Nessa, given what Darina said earlier about using her as a hostage. So the second option is for Marcus to go back down on his own and find out.'

‘And you think you won't hear the boat chugging away to the far horizon?' Redmond found it hard not to shout. ‘He's a lunatic, Conor, just like his cousin.'

‘I understand the risks, believe me. But I don't think we can wait for the
cig
's posse to come over the hill. So this is our best bet, and Marcus knows he's well advised to play it straight.'

‘How will we know if Sal is on board?'

‘Marcus is going to tell Darina that he has to test his supply of flares before setting off on a long journey. That gives him an excuse to check any floor cupboards that Sal could have been forced into. If the coast is clear and Sal isn't
on board, he'll light the flare. Then Marcus will get Darina to us, in whatever way he can.'

‘And otherwise? If Sal is down there?'

‘We'll give it ten or fifteen minutes, and decide then. Meanwhile, we'll see if our Kerry colleagues can send a speedboat out of Kenmare.'

‘Time to split.' Marcus ventured a quick smile. ‘I came up to the house to get a loaf of bread and whatnot, but I'll have to tell Darina that I got stuck on the loo or something.'

Nobody smiled back and Redmond had to stop himself remarking on people who were full of crap. When Marcus had gone, Conor rummaged in a few drawers and found some keys. He handed them to Nessa and told her to try the garage, in case Darina's van was inside, and Sal imprisoned in it.

As they headed out of the kitchen, Conor put his hand on Redmond's shoulder and spoke quietly. ‘If you overheard any of that blather I gave Marcus about his cannabis enterprise, just keep it to yourself. The
cig
wouldn't like me trampling on his prerogatives, especially as there was only a whisker of truth in it, as far as hard evidence goes.'

The sergeant crossed the path to the raised patio while Redmond accompanied Nessa to the garage. Sure enough, Darina's van was inside, locked tight. They found a sharp stone nearby and broke one of its windows. Redmond shone his torch into the rear space, only to confirm that it was empty.

They decided to try the houses, starting with the middle house near the garage. The rooms were almost empty of furniture, but as they raced around trying every door, Redmond noticed a mark on the paintwork in the hallway, where something heavy had hit against it very recently. He scanned the space and saw a second scratch on the paint above his head, at the edge of an attic trapdoor. There was no handle to open the trapdoor, but they soon found a ladder lying under a tree in the garden.

Redmond placed the ladder in the hallway and clambered up to get the trapdoor open. When it finally shifted, light blazed from above.

He hauled himself into the attic, and saw dozens of lightbulbs mounted on stands, shining onto rows and rows of cannabis plants. As his eyes adjusted, he heard a whimper from a hunched figure over by the attic wall. Sal, her face glistening with sweat and tears, lifted her head to gaze back at him.

Redmond heard large drops of rain pattering on the attic roof while he helped Sal down the ladder and into Nessa's arms. By the time he emerged from the house, the skies had opened and sheets of water drenched him to the skin as he ran to the raised patio to tell Conor the glad news about Sal. At the same moment, a flash of light illuminated the small boat tied to the slipway below them.

‘This is our best chance,' he whispered to Conor, as they both backed away from the railing. ‘If we go down now, we'll have them cornered on the boat.'

‘
Whisht
a minute, my friend. I know this is hard for you, but we need to keep Marcus onside, instead of forcing him to defend his cousin.'

‘But he'll spill the beans to her about us being here, I'm telling you, especially now that Sal is out of the picture.'

‘Let's stick to the plan. Another five or ten minutes at least.'

‘Conor, Darina is well able to swim off and hide in some cave, and we'll be stranded up here like fools.'

Conor put his finger to his lips, and they crept back to the railing. When they peered into the watery darkness, they saw flickers of torchlight close to the cliffside. The air was filled with a cacophony of wind and waves pounding the rocks. A violent squall had come in from the ocean in no time, attacking the land with all its force.

Suddenly a new sound reached their ears. Muffled voices from below.

Redmond moved closer to Conor as they strained to listen. Driving rain lashed against their faces and it was impossible to tell whether the two people below were on the boat or the pier. Redmond was assailed by a new fear, that Darina had turned on Marcus with the gun, having realised she could not rely on him. In her desperation, she might try to set off alone in the boat in the teeth of the storm.

He felt Conor tugging at his sleeve and they sidled around to the top of the cliff steps, concealed behind tall shrubs. Redmond's heart was thumping. He felt in his pocket for his torch just as a circle of light appeared out of the greenery. It was Marcus, lighting his way with his own torch, his lanky figure stepping onto the open path. Redmond counted slowly to five, but no Darina. Six, seven, eight. He was certain Conor was counting too, watching and waiting for the right instant to show themselves.

Marcus called over his shoulder. He turned and made as if to go back to the steps. Conor, who was closest to him, shrank back into the shadows.

Redmond was fit to burst from holding his breath. Had Darina pretended to follow Marcus, and then returned to the boat? Would Marcus exclaim out loud if his torchlight picked out a shiny button on Conor's uniform?

And then she came out of the shrubbery like a cat, wary eyes to all sides. Redmond pounced, a half second before Conor. He would make no mistake this time.

‘What the fuck?' Darina shouted. ‘You lying bastard, Marcus!'

Redmond locked his arms around her. He felt her writhing like an eel. ‘You set me up!' she spat again in Marcus's direction. ‘Telling me we'd to get water supplies …'

Redmond tried to push her towards the house but they both slipped on the muddy ground. As his shoulder hit the ground, Redmond felt a wrench of pain where he had been hurt earlier in the day.

He could hear other voices around him. A confusion of memories swirled in his head. Darina's strength that day as she pulled Maureen to shore. Her venomous eyes when she pointed the stun gun at Nessa. Electricity fizzing in the air as two metal prongs appeared out of the gun.

She was still trying to writhe out of his grasp. Something hard came against his shoulder. If she hit the switch she could disable him and make a run for it.

Redmond clenched his hands over Darina's wrists and pushed them up her back. He worked blindly at her fingers to loosen the cold metal object in their grip.

Conor was looming over them. Darina cursed loudly as he slipped handcuffs onto her wrists. As she was pulled to her feet, Redmond saw the glint of her stun gun on the ground. He set his foot firmly beside it, noticing absently that the rain had eased.

‘You had an answer for everything, didn't you?'

It was Fergus who spoke from the doorway of Marcus's house. He seemed to have found a voice he'd lacked for weeks. Redmond scrambled upright, holding on to his shoulder. Wet mud seeped down his neck.

‘It wasn't enough to kill Oscar, was it?' Fergus rushed forwards to confront Darina, pursued by his garda minder. ‘You wanted more. The smell of his dead flesh in your nostrils was so sweet that you had to … You had to make a show of his body for the whole world to see, was that it?'

‘You were lucky I had the balls to do it, instead of snivelling with self-pity like you.'

Fergus winced visibly but his hesitation lasted only a second. ‘You promised you'd bury him where nobody would ever find him, Darina. He could just fade out of our lives, a missing person that we could pretend—'

‘What, we could pretend he wasn't an evil bastard? So you could still hold up your head, proud of famous daddy?'

‘It was enough to end his life, that was all it was to be. But then you couldn't even leave him in peace on the day of his funeral, with your vicious message to a radio station.'

‘I was sick to my fingernails of all the media hacks praising him to the skies. And Jack Talbot started to smear Patrick.'

Darina stopped for a moment as Carraig Álainn was bathed in a wash of headlights approaching from the gate. She and Fergus stood facing each other, tense as caged animals, their pallid features almost translucent in the white glare. She looked around slowly at the surrounding group, and raised her voice as if for a speech from a podium.

‘I did what I had to do. There are hundreds of people whose lives will be better as a result of my actions. Their judgement is what matters to me.'

‘Jesus, Darina, will you get real!' Marcus cut across her in a low hiss. ‘I can't believe you'd kill a man for the sake of people you've never met. I'm bloody sure you'd a better reason than that.'

Darina turned to stare at her cousin contemptuously, as a line of cars began to draw up on the roadway. Redmond was glad to see Conor keeping close to Marcus, and Nessa and Sal huddled together under an umbrella.

‘You must have been seriously in love with Fergus,' said Sal bitterly, ‘if the two of you planned the whole thing together?'

A curtain of fine rain hung in the air, glistening in the bright headlights. Nessa remembered the spotlit scene she had seen earlier that evening on the boreen, and how she had mistaken Fergus for Darina. She looked at them both again, their pale clenched faces and overwrought gestures, and saw with searing clarity what had eluded everyone from the start.

‘I don't believe you were in love with each other, were you, Darina?' she asked. ‘I think your relationship is a different one, and explains exactly why you killed Oscar.'

Her words seemed suspended in mid air. She had the same sensation she had experienced on the Briary, that the world stopped turning while everyone waited for her to continue.

‘You found out that you're half-sister and brother, didn't you?' Nessa asked then. ‘Because you shared the same father?'

A clamour broke out on all sides. Car doors were opening and what Nessa had said was passed on to Patrick, Trevor, Zoe and others who demanded to hear the news. As Redmond looked around, he noticed Fergus shrinking into himself, his moment of defiance ebbing and his eyes like black holes in which every spark of life had been extinguished.

Darina stood stock still opposite him, holding her stomach more tightly than ever. ‘I never had a father,' she said bitterly. ‘That's not what Oscar was to me, but a filthy infection that got into my bloodstream after he'd poisoned my mother's life. She was only eighteen years old when he raped her – the same age as Sal is now, so just think of that, Nessa.'

Darina took on her podium voice again. ‘Just imagine it, all of you. My mother was working as an au pair with an Irish family in France when he came to visit, and then her life fell apart. It made no difference to him that he had a family at home in Ireland, or that my mam tried to stop him. For all I know, that could have spurred him on.'

‘When did you find out?'

‘I knew nothing until she was dying. She'd never said a word before about who my father was, but I knew she'd had to struggle to make a life for me, I'm sure that's what took its toll.' Darina wiped away a rivulet of water streaming from her hair. Her voice changed as she spoke of her mother. ‘Maybe it was the drugs that made her delirious, so that she started talking about him. Or maybe she had to say it out loud before she …'

‘And did she tell you his name?' Nessa asked softly.

‘No, but afterwards, a month after she died, I went through her old diary. I had to do it, I had to know about him. And then I decided to purge his poison from my life.'

‘But you were wrong,' said Fergus, his expression firmer once again. ‘We were both wrong, Darina, because we had other choices. That's what I tried to say at the funeral when I … We set out to remove the stain he left on our lives, but it couldn't be done.'

He lifted his head and looked at her directly. ‘The poison has spread, Darina, that's what we've done. Since his death … I could see you changing over the past month. You became like him, Darina – relishing the power you'd taken over other people's lives, and wanting to get your own way the whole time.'

N
essa put her book face down on the counter. She was in O'Donovan's, sitting on a stool in her favourite corner of the bar. Cosy and secure against the wall, with a good view of the comings and goings. She could hear Caitlín chatting to customers on the other side of the partition between pub and shop. It was a genuinely old-fashioned place, complete with plain wooden furniture, original snuff drawers and a warm unaffected welcome.

Peace and quiet. Relief. A gradual return to ordinary habits, as the claustrophobic fog of public attention lifted day by day. Nessa still felt a little shy as she made her way through Derryowen, wary of a stranger's gaze or a neighbour's guarded comment. For once, she would be glad of winter's arrival, with its short days and stay-at-home routines. Time to gaze at the sky's wondrous expanse, and to be glad of all the good that was possible. Time to mull over everything.