Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (19 page)

‘All right, all right!’ she called out. ‘Take it handy, would you, I’m coming!’

She opened the door and found three men standing in the porch. Two of them looked as if they could be nightclub bouncers, huge and fat and hard, almost ball-shaped, with shaven heads and pug-like faces. They were both wearing short black overcoats and open-necked white shirts. The third, who was standing further back, wore a long tan trench coat. His face was almost dead white and he had a mass of orange curls, like a bunch of Chantenay carrots. He looked as if he just stepped through a time warp from 1922, a young gunman from the Old Brigade.

‘Mrs Pearse, is it?’ he said, harshly. He sounded as if he was suffering from a sore throat.

‘That’s right. What do you want?’

‘And would that be your auld feller out at the back there, blowing the leaves?’

‘What if it is? Who are you?’

The breeze was ruffling the young man’s curls and he pushed them back out of his eyes. ‘We’re friends of a friend, Mrs Pearse, and the thing of it is, he’s very concerned, this friend, that you and your auld feller might have been talking to the law.’

‘We haven’t been talking to the law, or anybody else for that matter.’

‘But you do know a feen called Derek Hagerty? Grey hair, like, pure badger, and no front teeth? Most people call him “Denny”. You picked him up by the side of the road near Ballynoe, that’s what my friend says. Picked him up and brought him back here.’

Meryl was beginning to feel seriously frightened. ‘Derek Hagerty? No. I don’t know anybody of that name.’

Norman’s leaf-blower had suddenly fallen silent while he emptied the bag, and so she said, ‘Why don’t you talk to my husband? He’ll tell you the same.’

‘What, the same untruth that you’re just telling us? You picked up Derek Hagerty and brought him back here and then your auld feller ran him into the city. The only trouble is, your auld feller notified the law, and believe you me that’s caused a nojus heap of inconvenience all around.’

‘I don’t have anything more to say to you,’ said Meryl. She tried to close the door but one of the bouncer-types stuck his foot in it and pushed it back open.

‘Just go away,’ she said. ‘If you don’t go away I’ll ring for the guards.’

‘Oh, your very good friends the guards! They were here yesterday, weren’t they? So what did you tell them?’

‘We told them nothing. We don’t know any Derek Hagerty or any Denny and that’s an end to it.’

‘Oh, our friend says different. Our friend says the
law
thinks different, too, and they’ll be coming back to ask you some more questions. Our friend thinks that sooner or later you’ll likely be coming out with information that will place our friend in a very embarrassing situation. Right in the shite, in fact, and we can’t be allowing that to happen.’

‘Is this some kind of a threat?’ Meryl demanded, trying to sound challenging, even though ‘
threat
’ came out much shriller than she had intended.

‘Threat?’ said the carroty-curled young man, imitating Meryl’s high-pitched screech. ‘Not at all, Mrs Pearse. Me and my friends are not the kind to go around making threats! What’s the good of a threat? A threat is only a promise, like, and everybody knows that promises always get broke.’

With that, he said, ‘Call for your auld feller, would you, before he starts up that smingin again?’

One of the bouncer-types gave her a serious nod and said, ‘Go on, girl.’ From the tone of his voice, he didn’t have to add ‘if you know what’s good for you’.

‘Norman!’ called Meryl, weakly. Then, much louder, ‘Norman! Can you come here a minute?’

‘What?’

‘Can you come here a minute! We have visitors!’

Norman appeared through the archway in the hedge that led to the back garden. He was wearing his oldest brown tweed jacket, corduroy trousers and green rushers. He approached the porch slowly, taking off his gardening gloves and looking warily from one of the men to the other.

‘What’s going on, Meryl?’ he asked, when none of them spoke. ‘Who are these people?’

The carroty-curled young man said, ‘Mr Norman Pearse, is it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, Mr Norman Pearse, I’m sorry to say that you’ve caused a whole rake of trouble for a friend of ours. You were specifically requested to keep your mouth shut about Derek Hagerty, you can’t deny that, but you couldn’t resist tipping off the law, could you?’

‘Who are you?’ Norman demanded.

‘That’s no concern of yours, Mr Pearse. You’ve caused enough grief already without you causing any more. All you had to do was drop off Derek Hagerty in the city and say nothing, but you just couldn’t resist blabbing, you tout, could you?’

‘That’s because we didn’t think that he was telling us the truth,’ Norman snapped back. ‘He was mentioned on the TV news this morning. They said he’d been kidnapped for ransom, quarter of a million euros. He told us the same story. He said he’d been kidnapped by criminals, but he’d managed to escape. The only thing is, we didn’t believe him, and I think we had good reason not to.’

‘Whether you believed him or not, Mr Pearse, you still had no business ringing the law.’

‘And what right do you have, to tell me not to? I thought it was my civic duty. Now – I’d consider it a favour if you’d get off my property and leave me and my wife in peace.’

‘Oh, I so wish we could,’ said the carroty-curled young man. ‘It would save an awful lot of bother and grief. But sometimes a situation arises and you can’t just leave it as it is, uncorrected, like.’

‘I have no idea what you mean,’ said Norman, and now Meryl could hear fear in his voice.

‘I mean like you’ll be coming with us for a kind of a mystery tour. So if you’d care to close your front door behind you, Mrs Pearse, we have some transportation waiting in the road outside.’

‘We’ll be doing nothing of the sort,’ Norman retorted. ‘Meryl – go inside and call the guards.’

Meryl turned around, but the bouncer-type who had his foot in the doorway seized both of her arms from behind. He lifted her bodily out of the house and into the porch. She let out a breathless scream and struggled against him, but when she realized that he was far too strong for her, she let her legs give way, and sagged, so that he would have to carry her full weight. It didn’t trouble him at all; he kept his grip on her arms and almost danced her down the front steps as if she were a puppet.

Norman bustled his way forward, shouting, ‘Leave go of her! Leave go of her, you ape!’ but the second bouncer-type grabbed the sleeve of his tweed jacket, swinging him around so that he almost lost his balance and fell over. Then he grasped Norman’s right hand between both of his, crushing his knuckles so hard that the bones audibly cracked.

‘Ah! Ah!
Aaaah
! Jesus!’ Norman shouted. He lifted his right hand, supporting it with his left, grimacing in agony and disbelief. ‘You’ve broken my fingers! You’ve broken my whole fecking hand!’

Meryl tried to twist her head around, shocked. She had never heard Norman swear before, ever. But the bouncer-type continued to frogmarch her down the garden path towards the front gate and there was nothing she could do. The other bouncer-type gave Norman a hard shove on the shoulder as if to tell him to get moving, and so he did, keeping his hand pressed flat against his chest. His face was grey and his eyes were glistening with tears.

The carroty-curled young man shut the front door and then followed them, blowing his nose on a crumpled tissue.

***

A black Volkswagen Touran people carrier with tinted windows was waiting for them by the kerb.

‘I’m not going anywhere!’ protested Meryl, as the bouncer-type opened up one of the rear doors and started to push her inside. ‘You can’t make me!’

The carroty-curled young man finished wiping his nose and then he leaned very close to her and said, ‘Oh, no? And who’s going to stop us? The Lord God Almighty and all of his angels can’t stop us! You’ve heard of divine retribution, Mrs Pearse? “It is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you.” Two Thessalonians, chapter one, verse six.’

‘Where are you taking us?’ she asked him. ‘You’re not going to hurt us, are you? Norman only did what he thought was right.’

‘Oh, we’re only going for a little trip to the seaside,’ said the carroty-curled young man. Close up, Meryl thought that he even smelled of carrots. ‘You like the seaside, don’t you?’

‘Please,’ said Meryl. ‘Please don’t hurt us.’

The carroty-curled young man looked down and sideways. For a moment Meryl thought he was going to say something, but then he simply shrugged and turned his back on her. The bouncer-type said, ‘Go on, missus. Get in. You’ll be all over bruises if I have to force you, and you don’t want that.’

Shivering with fright, Meryl climbed into the back seat of the Touran and the bouncer-type squashed himself in beside her. The door on the other side opened and Norman climbed in, still holding his hand against his chest. The carroty-curled young man sat in the front passenger seat, while the second bouncer-type got behind the wheel and started the engine.

As they pulled away from the kerb, the sun came out. The carroty-curled young man leaned back in his seat and said, ‘How about that, Mrs Pearse? A perfect day for the seaside, wouldn’t you agree?’

Meryl didn’t answer him. She knew that whatever she said to him, it wouldn’t make any difference, and that he would simply mock her.

They drove through Ballinlough and around Douglas village, and then they joined the main N28 and drove due southwards. The sky was pale blue with broken cloud, and apart from three or four trucks and a camper van they had the road to themselves. After a few minutes of driving the carroty-curled young man switched the radio on. There was a blurt of local news, but then he changed the station to folk music, the Bothy Band playing ‘Old Hag You Have Killed Me’. Meryl reached across and gently squeezed Norman’s left hand. Norman’s eyes were closed from the pain of his fractured right hand, but he nodded to acknowledge her. The bouncer-type saw what she was doing and jerked his head as if to tell her to take her hand away.

Once they had passed through Snow Hill, the road narrowed, with dense hedgerows on either side. There was hardly a house in sight, only freshly ploughed fields and distant green hills, and hooded crows perched on the telegraph wires. The sun brightened and faded and brightened again, and the shadows of the clouds scurried across the fields as if they were terrified.

At last they saw the sea glittering between the hills. It was startlingly blue. They turned down a side road and into a deserted car park.

‘That’s it, journey’s end,’ said the carroty-curled young man. ‘Let’s take a stroll on the beach, shall we?’

‘What are you going to do to us?’ Norman asked him.

‘Well, it’s kind of a surprise, like. But considering the trouble you’ve been causing, and the strong possibility that you might be causing a whole lot more, you’ll have to admit when you find out what it is that it’s totally appropriate.’

‘You’re not thinking of drowning us, are you?’ Meryl said.

‘Wait and see,’ the carroty-curled young man said, giving her a thin, lipless smile, and climbed out of the Touran. Although the day was so bright, there was a stiff breeze blowing from the sea and when Meryl climbed out, too, her hair was whipped across her face.

The five of them walked down the concrete path and on to the beach. The tide was out and jagged granite rocks were sticking out of the sand like weathered monuments. Meryl remembered this bay now, or one very much like it. Her parents had brought her here as a child and she had spent a blissful afternoon building a sandcastle for her dolls.

Seagulls screeched overhead as they walked along to a wide, flat stretch of sand. A stocky middle-aged man was sitting on one of the rocks not far away, smoking. A spade was stuck into the sand close by, and next to the spade stood a khaki jerrycan. Meryl could see that the sand had been dug up in two different places, about twenty metres apart. She had felt anxious from the moment she had answered the front door to these men, but now she felt a deep, cold sense of utter dread. She turned around, wondering if she could possibly manage to escape, but both bouncer-types were close behind her and she knew that they would grab her as soon as she started to run.

The stocky middle-aged man stood up and came across the sand to meet them. He was wearing baggy jeans and a thick cream fisherman’s sweater with brown stains down the front of it. His hair was grey and close-cropped and he had a broken nose and eyes that were no more than slits, so Meryl found it hard to tell if they were open or closed.

‘What’s the craic, boy?’ he asked the carroty-curled young man, with smoke leaking out of his nostrils.

‘Everything went like clockwork. No bother whatsoever. How about you? Are you all ready here?’

‘Ready and waiting.’

The carroty-curled young man came over and took hold of Meryl’s wrist. She let out a whimper and promptly wet herself, soaking the front of her stonewashed jeans. The carroty-curled young man shook his curls and tutted.

‘First time I take you to the seaside and you do a wazz in your pants. No Mr Whippy for you, Mrs Pearse!’

Meryl’s legs could barely support her as the carroty-curled young man tugged her across to one of the places where the sand had been dug up. As she approached it, she could see that the stocky middle-aged man had excavated a hole about a metre and a half deep. The sand was dark and damp and there was a small pool of water at the very bottom.

‘What are you going to do? Bury me? You’re not going to bury me, are you?’

‘Not completely, Mrs Pearse. But if you’d care to climb in, we’ll be able to estimate the depth of it much better, won’t we?’

‘Please, no. Don’t do this. I swear on the Holy Bible that Norman and I won’t say another word to the guards or anybody. I promise you! I’ll pay you! Norman has money, we can pay you.’

The carroty-curled young man sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘It’s all very well for you to be saying that, like, but you could easy change your mind once we’d let you go, and then where would we be? Sorry and all, but we can’t take the risk.’