Heart Stopper (21 page)

She raced out of the bedroom and down the stairs trying not to let her momentum push her into a fall. Her shoes flapped off the flagstones in the hall echoing her rapid breaths. The large iron key was in the front door and her fingers tangled as she turned it in the lock, but it opened smoothly on her second attempt. The rain was now heavier than a drizzle. She ran to the edge of the clearing where the cream stones stopped and the ground dipped down into the trees. The stones had shifted under her feet, but they were steady compared to the wet grass and bushes on the slope. She grabbed on to the rough branches hanging from the bushes as she slid into the forest.

She could not see the sky above her, the trees crowded, fighting against the light shining through. The ground was a yellow green mush of leaves, her feet slipped and she fell as she stopped to listen. The forest was still and damp and dark, like the inside of a thermos flask of day old tea. Rain droplets clung to leaves then hurtled down onto her face.

All she could see around her were trees. Lines and lines of trees, their trunks bare and smooth, lifeless and slippery. She heard rustling, then silence. She heard a drumming and realized it was her heart thumping. She fought past the fear and scanned the surroundings for a hiding place.

Then she noticed a cave, formed by the roots of a large tree twisted into the air and then sweeping down to create a dark empty space. She looked around at the other trees. The larger ones she could see had the same arrangement of roots, but there were no spaces beneath them. This cave was only visible because of the angle at which she had fallen.

She heard the crunch of shoes on the stones behind her and made up her mind. As quietly as she could she crept into the moss-lined darkness beneath the thick roots. The shoes had stopped at the slope into the forest and the wearer seemed to be standing still, listening as she was. She wondered if he could also hear the shadows cry from the rooted lairs. The water smelt of mould and mist as it ran back out of her nostrils.

 
In the distance she could hear nothing. Just forest, miles of it. The trees stood lonely in it, in the loneliness of the crowd. She tried to sink below the leaves. Into the soil. She tried to slow her heartbeat, to quiet her breathing. The darkness was suffocating, but welcome.

Footsteps approached and she guessed there was a second person joining the first. The tread was heavier, firmer. She had only made it to the edge of the forest and was lying a few yards from the track. She prayed they would assume she’d go further into the forest. She had gambled on that.

She wanted to see their faces. For the first time in her life, she wished she had a weapon. Something she could use to smash those people, no, they were not people, those monsters into the ground. And she would stand over them screaming her rage into every blow. But it was Michael’s voice in her ear, calming her, urging her preservation. He had never believed in revenge, he’d always felt the avenger lost more in the process. She wondered if he’d changed his mind.

“No-one in the house. What do you think?”

The accent was Irish, but she couldn’t pinpoint from where in Ireland. She knew she would recognize the extreme accents like the ones from Cork or Donegal and then she realized, it sounded like the people around her, from the West of Ireland, like her accent.

“We have about two hours. If she’s here, they won’t leave her for too long. We need to be gone by…” He paused. “2 p.m. at the latest. That’s an hour and a bit.”

This accent was American. She didn’t know anything about American accents, even from which coast. It wasn’t like Reyna or Catherine’s accents. It was the smoothness of his speech that terrified her, the confidence, even arrogance.

The American continued, “Search in there. Until 1.45. I’ll be in the house.”

The crunch of footsteps diminished as he walked away.

“Search in there. Meet me here. Yessir. Stay nice and dry, why don’t ya?”

The grumbling was low, but she heard the words and the giggle as the second man mimicked the American accent. He wasn’t a good mimic and it came out flat. He was passing the tree under whose sprawling roots she lay and she pushed her soaked body further into the ground. She prayed again, that he wouldn’t look under the roots of her tree and that there were no other caves visible under the trees to give him the idea. He was moving fast, probably scanning the ground level and between the trees. His passage was fitful; he paused often as he crackled through the trees, occasionally grunting probably from a low-lying branch. But he was moving away, in the direction of the lake.

Priya figured from what the American had said they needed to get out before Reyna and Catherine got back. So the two women were not at risk from him. Which meant if she could just remain unseen for the next hour or so, the men would have no choice but to leave. She thought this time they might kill her. Strange how she didn’t want to die now, considering the long nights over the last few years when she had.

As she lay there, the cold seeping into her heart, the reasons to live came trickling. Reyna’s face smiling at her as they sat on a timeless rock and watched an undying river flow by. Priya’s futile well-buried dreams of a family, and belonging. But most of all, the surfacing desperate wish to hold her father’s hand and say that she was sorry. To convince him of her regret and shame. To make him believe that she hadn’t meant what she’d screamed at him in her helpless rage beside her breathless mother.

That he had killed her mother.

Like his eyes, that died twice in the two seconds that circled the space of a minute. The one second it took to nod at a nurse because he could not speak the words, to permit her to switch off the life of his everyday partner of forty-six years, followed by the 60 seconds of rasping, grasping breaths that withered into silence, followed by the one second in which his only daughter turned away from the silence and screamed his guilt.

Then the minutes and hours and days and months of seconds in which he and she flailed uselessly lost without their oars, drowning in tears yet too guilty to cry.

Yes. She wanted to live. If only to see if life could live in their eyes again.

The footsteps were running and the noise startled Priya out of the trance into which she had crept. The noise stopped.

“Priya!”

The questioning voice was Reyna’s and fear filled it. Priya’s heart jumped at the sound. She heard Catherine’s voice too, calling her name, calmer, but with an edge of anxiety, and Priya realized time had passed and the men had left.

Priya crawled out of her haven. The rain had dried out and the sun broke through the tops of the trees in bright silver shards that hung in the air and lost their intensity by the time they reached the forest floor. The sweatshirt was damp and heavy with mud and the moss crumbled off as she swiped her jeans.

“Priya?”

Reyna’s voice was reaching into panic. Priya moved as fast as she could through the undergrowth and blinked in the sunshine at the bottom of the slope up to the clearing where the women stood. She tried to speak, but her voice failed her. She raised her arms and Reyna saw her and rushed over to the edge. Reyna slid down the short distance, grabbed Priya, and hugged her, tight, close.

 
“What happened? When you weren’t in the house, I thought…” Reyna’s voice was shaking.

Priya raised her head, saw, over Reyna’s shoulder, Catherine sink onto the edge of the slope, and sit there with a look of relief in her eyes.

Priya stayed in Reyna’s arms. She related what had happened. She felt Reyna’s arms tighten slightly when Priya described the American, at least the impression of him she had gotten from her hiding place.

Priya said, “They didn’t want to be here when you got back. They’re looking for me. I don’t know if they knew I was here or if they were just searching in case.”

“Let’s go back into the house.” Catherine’s voice had regained its strength. Reyna looked as if she didn’t trust herself to speak. She took Priya’s hand, but it was Priya who helped her up the slope and into the house.

∞

Priya took a shower and joined them in the living room. Catherine had lit a fire and the flames were dancing, the occasional spark lighting and fading as a fiber of turf burnt bright then burnt out. Reyna was standing looking out of the window; Catherine was sitting on the couch. The cold had eaten its way into Priya and she tried to warm herself by the fireplace, holding her palms out to the heat for a few seconds. When she turned from the fire, Catherine patted the couch beside her. There was a cup of tea steaming on the little table beside the couch.

Michael handing her a coffee like he had done so many times. The knife from his kitchen sticking out of his chest.

Priya’s legs buckled and she sank onto the couch.

“Drink up, get some warmth into you.” Catherine said.

Reyna turned from the window. She looked startled out of her thoughts and her eyes were lost in worry. She smiled when she saw Priya, then seemed to draw a veil over her eyes, the usual control back in place.

“The phone is not working. Don’t know if they cut the line or it’s just a temporary glitch. Seems too much of a coincidence though.” Reyna’s voice had also regained its control.

Priya swallowed a gulp of tea and welcomed the heat that burned her throat and stomach. Her voice was shaky when she spoke.

“I get the feeling that they are not going to come back while you two are here. The American guy went back to the house instead of looking for me with the other guy. We need to see if anything is missing.”

Reyna shook her head.

“I don’t think anything is gone. The papers from the Research Company are all spread out on my bed, but there seems to be the same amount. I can’t be sure of course. Not yet. And your papers and Daniel’s were with us.”

Priya said, “So, they were looking for the stuff Daniel sent us.”

“Why not your stuff?”

“Because they are probably the ones who searched my house and they would have seen the papers on the Controller Mark II, which they left behind. They also left the financials today. That leaves Daniel’s envelope.” She paused. “Actually, the only other things are the Excel sheets from my original PhD.”

Priya put down the cup of tea and got up.

She said, “Have you got them? We need to figure out what the hell they are looking for?”

Catherine asked, “Priya, are you sure you’re okay to do this right now?” Reyna was already at the door and she disappeared into the kitchen, appearing a moment later with Priya’s tightly stuffed briefcase.

Priya said, “Right now it feels like I’m never going to be okay to do anything again. But I’m going to find out what those bastards think is worth killing Michael for.”

Reyna said, “And Daniel.”

Priya sat down on the floor and pulled out the folders with her PhD work. She took out the printouts. One set of Excel sheets had the voltage readings and the other had the battery readings. She had obviously transcribed these figures while she was at the research company. She didn’t remember. She grabbed a pen and starting highlighting every voltage or battery reading that was low.

Michael’s foot encased in his brown shoe, its laces undone, sticking out from behind the couch
.

Priya caught her breath as the image flashed into her head. She pushed it away and tried to concentrate.

Three hours passed in a daze of figures. Priya had drawn out a graphical representation of the figures she had questioned before. Reyna had dragged down the box of financials and joined her on the floor. She was studying every sheet of paper, every brochure, every file contained in it and was and was scribbling notes in an A4 notepad.

They could hear Catherine in the kitchen and she came in every few minutes to check if they had found anything. The radio was on in the kitchen and they had put on the small television in the living room. There were no news programs on the TV, but it was coming up to 6 p.m. and Priya knew that most Irish stations showed the news at that time. Catherine came in and sat on the couch.

The reception was terrible and they had to switch off the sound, but they all gasped when the picture of Priya flashed onto the screen. It was the picture she had taken nine years before when she’d renewed her driving license. She had just met Kathy and the face that laughed out of the square box looked younger than 27 years even with the white lines of interference. That youthful innocence so pronounced that she had often been carded going into the discos whose age of entry, and age for drinking, was 18. She still looked younger than her 35 years though the last two years had reduced the gap in perception from a decade to a couple.

The footage showed Quay Street, the alleyway leading to Michael’s apartment, the activity at the door, a female garda standing at the door, her hands behind her back, the blue peaked cap pointing straight at the crumbling stone wall across the alley. The yellow tape with blue writing stretched across the entrance to the alley, the white van with the stark blue writing, Garda Technical Bureau. The men in their white cotton spacesuits. There were shots of the clinic; only exterior shots, the clinic lay deserted for the weekend.

“I wonder what the guys at the clinic are thinking. I wonder if they think I went mad and killed Michael. They thought I was with Daniel, well, some of them did. The gossips. The ones I never told I was gay. Now they’ll know I’m gay and they’ll think that I was fooling around with Daniel for…, God knows what?”

Reyna looked away from the TV and looked at her.

Priya said, “I didn’t mean you.”

Reyna frowned. She said, “I know, though I was as guilty of that.”

Priya sighed. “Okay.” She paused then asked, “Why are they targeting me? And not you?”

Reyna said, “They must think that Daniel gave you the information that he actually posted here to the house. He did give you some of the other papers. Who would have known about that?”

“Well, James knew, but that was when I told him after my house was searched. Some people at the clinic thought I had a thing going with Daniel so maybe they thought he had shared information during our pillow talk. Except Tara, she knew there was nothing going between us. And Valerie and Gerry might have known, but they also knew Daniel was very security-conscious and any information I was given by the Research Company was restricted to what I needed to know to help with the coding and clinical side.”

Reyna started to pace again. She said, “We have got to work it out before they decide to come after you even when we are here. And I can’t call off the use of the Controller in every clinic, not physically, and I have to speak to James and Gerry and Valerie. Which I’m going to have to do first thing tomorrow.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked at it. “Blasted signal!” She threw the phone on the armchair.

Reyna looked at Priya and said quietly, “I think the safest thing would be to go to the cops. Tell them everything. Get them to protect you while they investigate.”

Priya said, “Why would they believe me? They’ll probably think I killed Daniel as well as Michael. Surely I would be a prime suspect considering my background. That we were in some kind of abusive relationship that I got my revenge, and then with my mum dying, I went crazy and killed Michael. I mean I
know
I didn’t, but looking at everything that happened I’m beginning to wonder myself.” Priya continued in a quieter voice, “You know, all I did for years was try and remain on the sidelines, private. I didn’t want anyone to know anything about me. And now, everything about my life plastered over the news. And in the worst possible way, as a killer, a crazy woman. And I can’t even get angry about that because I
feel
crazy now, I
feel
like I could kill.”

Catherine turned off the TV. She said, “I’ve always been a pacifist, but if I find out that Daniel was killed…” Her face twisted up and then relaxed and she asked, “We can’t hide out here for much longer though. I think you’re both right. We need more to protect Priya, more proof. But we also need to make contact with the police. Try to find out what they are thinking. Have you found anything?”

Priya said, “I’ve highlighted all the dips in voltages and I’m putting them together with the low battery readings.”

She sat back and thought.

What would cause the lithium battery in the pacemaker to kick into action?

If the main source of energy dried up.

The main source of energy was the electrical activity around the natural pacemaker. Actually, it was the electrical activity from the heart cells that self-fired. The voltage readings were low from some patients between 2003 and 2006. But those had been blips in the vast sea of readings.

She needed to see the battery readings from the patients who were undergoing the checks when the technicians had died or had a heart attack. If they were low…

She said, “The figures in my Excel sheets didn’t have times and dates, but the figures Daniel gave me on the Controller II and the ones he sent you on the Controller I do have dates and times. From the figures, it looks like there were more incidents than there should have been. The problem is that there are so many readings. And the battery ones don’t show up as low until they go below 95%. But obviously, in some patients the unexpected reduction in electrical activity which would have been used to power the pacemaker led to the utilization of the lithium battery.”

She pointed at the sheets of notes on the coding and said, “The algorithms I wrote seem to have been used in the development of the software patch. I can’t be certain because I had to leave the copies in the clinic; I’m just going on my notes. If they were used, it would have been to provide a shield of some sort against stray frequency patterns, as a kind of jamming signal. It makes sense that my algorithms were used, they were obviously needed otherwise I wouldn’t have been requested to write them. However, the specification I got wasn’t clear about the application just the frequencies.”

Both Reyna and Catherine looked confused.

Priya said, “I was handed a detailed spec that basically said ‘if a frequency pattern emitted within a certain distance by a transmitter is detected then transmit a jamming signal’. That’s a real simplification. I wrote the code, but it was complicated by the type of signal, the pattern of frequencies and distance. And Gerry kept pushing me to go further and try different things. It was actually quite inspiring.” She looked embarrassed for a moment. “For me, anyway. It was a challenge and I guess I thrived on it. Gerry is incredibly smart and had been trained in the States and had all that experience and the fact that he couldn’t code that bit and I could, well, it was a sort of validation.”

Priya smiled, but there was a look of loss in her eyes. She shook her head. “I guess I’m a prime example of the heart screwing up the head. Anyway, I wrote the code and if it was used as a software patch for the Controller II and if the attacks stopped after that, then…” Priya chewed her lip as she thought.

“What?” Reyna leant forward.

Priya spoke slowly as she drew it out on her notepad. “It means that the Controller I and II emitted some kind of stray frequency pattern that caused heart attacks in people on certain occasions. Actually, it caused the attacks in people who were within a certain distance at the time. And the software patch based on my work was applied in 2008 to jam that frequency pattern.”