Heart Stopper (18 page)

Priya decided to go early to Michael’s apartment. Reyna and Catherine had left taking the box of financials and they had arranged to come back to Priya’s house the next day. Reyna was going to try to find out what she could at the dinner with Gerry and Valerie that night. Priya could not sit, could not study the figures. The thought of Reyna with Valerie kept intruding. Priya had gotten ready automatically and decided as she was leaving to stuff her PhD papers in with the other papers in her briefcase. The car would be locked and closer to her.

It was the last Saturday evening of the Arts Festival and the weekend before the Galway Races, one of the busiest nights of the year in Galway. She could not find a free parking space in town despite driving around the Spanish Arch area for twenty minutes. There were spaces available at the Jury’s hotel, which hulked at the end of Quay Street, in its underground car park with its corners that a bicycle would have difficulty navigating. She hated the car park, but she had no choice, she knew she was lucky to find a space at all. She left the car there and walked the hundred yards to Michael’s apartment building her jacket slung over her shoulder. The main street through Galway, Shop Street, trailed off and became Quay Street, which had become the Latin Quarter of Galway, a street lined with tourist shops and bars and cafes and restaurants with their maroon and blue and yellow awnings over the stone buildings, the creams and reds of the painted facades. The packed street was starting to empty into the pubs and restaurants.

She turned into the alleyway that ran along Michael’s building. She tried the door expecting him to have left it unlatched for her. A little surprised to find it locked, she used her key. The staircase was ancient, its two ends twisted in opposite directions. She felt for the light switch in the relative gloom of the stairwell. The light bulb sprang to life shoving away the shadows and she relaxed. As she turned in the twist of the staircase she saw that Michael’s door was closed as well. She was fumbling for the key as she climbed the last few steps. The key turned and she pushed the door open.

It was quiet. She found that strange and she felt reluctant to break the silence. The lights were not on in the apartment. The late evening sun sneaking in through the windows cast its fading light onto the dark wood floors and carried in the sound of laughter from the street below.

She was about to step into the apartment when she saw a shoe sticking out from behind the couch. Which was also strange as Michael was so tidy. But it looked like it had a foot in it. She moved slowly towards the couch and around it. Michael was lying on his back, his eyes open, his lips blue, his hair clumped brown around his face. Her eyes continued to take in impressions; the knife sticking out of his chest, the handle familiar, the stain on his concert shirt. She’d given him that too. Funny, she seemed to have gotten him many things that he wore, or used. Her heart had slowed and she felt every painful thud like a stone dropping into a well, heard her heart beat in the deep well.
So this is what my patients feel, bradycardia, a slow heart rate, am I going to faint?
Another part of her mind was wondering how she could be thinking of such things when Michael lay there. And the smallest part of her mind just screamed his name over and over and over. And then over the roaring hiss of the screams in her head, her ears suddenly became aware of sounds from the bedroom. Her head turned and her eyes moved, still and sluggish, towards the bedroom. Her body was backing away, closer to the open door of the apartment. A man appeared at the door to Michael’s bedroom. He was short and tanned and he was wearing luminous yellow rubber gloves. His expression went from searching to shocked when he saw her standing half-in, half-out of the apartment. It was only a fleeting expression of surprise. The look in his eyes changed to those of a predator catching its first glimpse of its prey and the searing jolt of adrenaline jump-started her heart and she turned and ran.

Priya seemed to stumble over every narrow step; she registered more than one set of footsteps behind her as she almost fell down the staircase. She unlatched the door feeling the noisy wave of presence behind her and staggered out into the alleyway and ran towards Quay Street slipping into the heaving crowd.

She glanced over her shoulder and thought she saw the top of his head; he was pushing his way through the crowd less than a hundred yards behind. She was at the bottom of Shop Street now, at the clearing where it forked into Quay Street and Mainguard Street. A band of boys was playing Rod Stewart’s ‘Some Guys Have All The Luck’, the drum kit perched on the edge of the pavement, the guitarists treading the cobbles, a thickening of the crowd surrounding them. Priya pushed through and found herself funneled up Shop Street, further away from her car and from the Mill Street Garda Station. As she ran, the strain of the boys’ song was drowned out by the wail of a didgeridoo, the busker breathing heavily into the long windpipe.

On bad days, Shop Street was clotted and clogged up, sluggishly spilling its excess into narrower tributary streets. On good days, its flow is fluid, with occasional pools forming around pubs and cafes to enable fueling with coffee or alcohol, or a dip into the minds on sale in its bookshops.

This was not a good day.

Priya fought her way through the crowd, twisting to avoid the jabs of rucksacks wielded on the backs of unseeing tourists, top-heavy and dawdling. She fought the urge to cry, the even stronger urge to push them over. She couldn’t ask for help, couldn’t risk the slash of a knife in the press of the crowd. Slicing through her, or through anyone who she dragged into this nightmare. She drew in a deep breath, struggling for breath. Her mouth filled with the scent of perfumes, wafting from the people and from the shops mixed with the beer from the pubs, the grease smell of pizzas, fish and chips, and burgers as well as the delicate flavors coming from the finer restaurants.

She reached the top of Shop Street where it flowed out from Eyre Square, the heart of the city. There were still crowds of people, but they were more dispersed. She felt the loss of the protection from the crowd and looked behind her again.

The man was disentangling himself from a buggy, its little boy screaming and red, his mother trying to quiet him. Priya started to run towards the tourist information kiosk nestled in the corner of the Square. A large 50-seater tour bus was just pulling out from on the street and she changed direction and jumped through its closing doors landing with a heavy thud on the steps leading up to the driver. He braked in surprise, and then jerked the bus forward again as the horns of the cars behind sounded.

“Are you that eager for the tour, love?” He was trying to keep an eye on the road and didn’t seem too put out by her arrival.

She stayed seated on the step and tried to appear eager, tried not croak the words out.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to miss it, my last day in your beautiful city, you know.”

“Ah sure, just find yourself a seat back there, you can pay me when we stop.”

She kept her head down, peering through the glass panes of the door as the bus drove down towards the entrance to Shop Street where she’d last seen her pursuer. He was standing at the corner by the pedestrian posts that blocked Shop Street to traffic, looking up at Eyre Square and then to his left at the road where it continued onto Eglinton Street. She scrambled up realizing that if he looked he would see her crouching at his eye level as the bus passed him. It was too late, his eyes widened as he caught sight of her just as the bus started its arc around the corner. She saw him read the signage on the bus that proclaimed its destination and many stops in large white lettering on its green shamrock covered exterior. And then he gestured to another man, and yelled something at him. The second man turned and they ran back down Shop Street.

She walked through the seats and found one at the back window. The bus was almost full just about ten seats vacant. There seemed to be a large number of American youths and they looked at her with curiosity as she passed.

The drone of the driver’s voice came over the speakers, welcoming them onboard, his practiced spiel provoking the required laughs from the young passengers.

She slumped down in the seat. This was the second dead body in as many weeks. Shock had transformed into chaos in her mind. She would normally turn to Michael at times like these not that there had ever been times exactly like this. This time it was Michael,
her
Michael. She was struggling to see him as not there, as gone.

Priya couldn’t understand why she didn’t say anything to the driver, to the passengers. Why she didn’t scream and cry. She had a sure sense that if she spoke somebody else would get hurt. The coldness of the stare, the sureness of the feet on the stairs behind her, the silent chaos of the chase through the crowded street all weighed in; into a chant in her head that kept her mute. She had never asked for help from anyone except Michael before.
And where had that gotten him?
The voice of guilt was cruel.

Priya sat up with a jerk. She didn’t have her jacket. She tried to remember when she had it last. She had gotten out of her car, put her keys in her jacket pocket along with her phone, and then slung the jacket over her shoulder. She remembered getting her keys out of her jacket at the door to Michael’s building and using another key at Michael’s door. The jacket had been over her arm, the keys in her other hand. She had dropped her jacket beside Michael’s body! Her phone was in it. She thought she might have dropped her keys on the stairs or at the door to the alleyway. So if the men went back, they would have her keys and her phone, and her ID. She checked her pockets. She had a twenty-euro note and some coins, a pitiful total of 26 euro and 30 cent.

The bus was heading in the direction of Connemara. She was hoping it would take the road past her house and when it turned in the direction of Barna she got up and walked down to the driver.

“Where’s the first stop?” she asked him, waiting for a break in his patter and leaning over his shoulder.

“Just one stop for the moment, Spiddal. You do know this bus doesn’t return tonight, right? This crowd are booked into the hotel further on. Do you want to change your mind?” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Where are you from, love? You sound very Irish to me, though, no offence, you don’t look it.”

“I might just get off before Barna; I didn’t realize it wasn’t coming back tonight. How much do I owe you?”

“Listen, we won’t fight over it, give me what you can, and we’ll say no more.”

They were coming up to her house and she was just about to ask him to stop when she saw the car parked on the road a hundred yards after the entrance to her house. It was the same car that had followed her the other evening. This time there were two men in it and as the bus passed the car, she saw them look at bus and then pull their car out behind it.

The bus was heading further into Connemara.
Catherine and Reyna were in Connemara
! Priya knew the general direction; she only recalled the initial part of the journey, somewhere after Spiddal and after the turn to the Aran Island ferries they had turned, she couldn’t even remember if it was to the right or the left. She had to get off the bus without being seen by the men in the car behind. Connemara was vast and barren, she could hide in the bog, but only if she got there without their knowledge. If they saw her enter, she would be an easy target in the open landscape.

The bus was approaching Furbo and she made up her mind. She took out the three two euro coins and said to the driver, “Will 6 euro get me to the turn off to the Aran Islands ferry? I’ll give you the rest when I can. I know it must be a lot more usually.”

“I wouldn’t want to drop off a young lady like yourself in a place like that. There’s nothing out there. I tell you what. We’re stopping at the pub in Spiddal for a meal and a few drinks, how about I drop you off there and you can get me another time.”

Priya thanked him, aware that he wanted to ask her more and grateful that he didn’t. She went back to her seat and peered through the headrests through the back windows. There was a line of cars behind the bus and in the dimming light of the summer’s night, she could see that the dark car had let a few cars pass and was now five cars behind the bus. The car was far enough away that she couldn’t see the occupants, but close enough for them to see the bus as its bulk heaved its way along the coastal ribbon road through the changing landscape, lined by gorse and trees, stone and sea to the entrance to windswept boggy depths of Connemara.

∞

Twenty minutes later, the bus stopped, whistling its air out and jiggling itself into a comfortable squat. They were in Spiddal, parked on the side of the road in front of a hotel. The chalkboard outside advertised daily specials of seafood and live music in the pub. She tried to see what was on either side of the hotel, but she couldn’t see through the kids gathering their belongings. She looked out through the back seat again and saw the car. It was parked on the other side of the road. She decided to follow the crowd into the pub and then figure out a way to get out without the men seeing her.

She hid in the bottleneck of people at the door to the bus. It squeezed and sprayed them out onto the street and into the hotel. The noise in the pub was deafening even from the lobby of the hotel. The band was playing traditional Irish music that battled for a place beside the loud conversations. The smell of sweat was a solid wall and she closed her eyes and allowed the crowd to carry her into the warmth of the bar, their American accents creating a memory of Reyna’s voice.