Ruthless (3 page)

She wanted, so badly, to breathe. Her head felt like a balloon, pumped full of air she ached to release. Just to inhale one wonderful mouthful of air . . . only she wouldn’t. If she breathed in, she would draw the savagely cold salt water into her lungs and that would be the end of her.

Somehow she reached the windscreen. Fighting against the downward plunge of the little plane she wrestled her way out through the gap and was suddenly in the open ocean, her ears hurting with the pressure, a strong current pulling her. All around her she saw only Stygian milky-green gloom. Above her . . . was it possible? . . . she thought she saw fainter light.

She glanced down in sick horror and saw the plane sinking, sinking, sinking down to who knew what monstrous depth. She turned, and kicked for the surface. She knew she wouldn’t make it. Her lungs were exploding with pain. Soon she would have to suck in that last, fatal breath. And Redmond was gone, swept away; he must be dead.

Despair grabbed her as she swam upward. She could see nothing, hear nothing but the bubbling rush of the sea. The current buffeted her. Soon she was too tired even to kick. Her limbs were frozen with the cold. She stopped moving and hung in the water, rising inch by inch. Heart bursting, lungs screaming, she surrendered. She lifted her head and opened her mouth and gave herself up to death.

But when she breathed in, she breathed in
air.

She was on the surface, the wind knocking her from side to side, the churning waves tossing her left and right, slapping her in the face.

Orla gasped in mouthful after mouthful of incredibly sweet salty air. Shivering, sobbing, she looked around her. The moon was still up there, still casting its placid silvery glow over the turbulent white-capped sea.

She was alive.

But where was Redmond, where was her twin?

She tried to scream his name, but all that emerged was a breathless croak. The sea was too cold, the currents too powerful, constantly dragging at her, numbing her, filling her mouth with sickeningly strong salt water.

From time to time, over the pummelling waves and the relentless power of the sea, she could make out a low shape to her left, an outline of black against the dark grey of the skies. A long way away. Two hundred yards, maybe?

It took a while before she understood what it was.

‘Oh shit.’ She wept with weak gratitude, spitting out water, shivering with shock and cold.

It was rocks.

It was
land.

Minutes later, the sea flung her on to the shore. Scraped and bloodied by rocks, she lay there as the foam surged over her, trying to lift her head, failing, gulping down mouthfuls of salt. She was gagging, vomiting, coughing. Slowly, painfully she dragged herself up the beach until at last she was lying on wet sand, and the water couldn’t reach her any more. Its roar, like an angry lion, filled her head. But she had survived. By some miracle, she had been spared.

Finally she was able to raise her eyes, look around her. The moon plunged behind clouds and then emerged again, illuminating the landscape. What she longed to see,
prayed
to see, was another form lying here – Redmond, her twin, her life.

There was no one.

Away in the distance, inland, she could see lights. A house. People who might help. But she was alone on the beach and for the first time she realized in panic that from here on she would be alone in
life
too.

She broke down and cried then, unable to believe that he was gone, that he was lost to her. How would she go on without him? Sodden, shivering, bleeding from many small cuts, she pushed herself to her feet and stood there, taking in the thundering sea, the ghostly moonlit sand and glossy wet pebbles, the sheer vast
emptiness
of it all.

‘
Redmond!
’ she screamed.

But no one answered.

No one came.

6

Walking away from the beach felt like a betrayal, but Orla knew that if she was to survive, she would have to get out of the chilling wind that was flattening her wet clothes against her skin. And she might yet find him alive. She clung to that hope as she stumbled through the dark, trembling and falling and crying, towards the lights of the house. Her shivering had intensified, and she knew that hypothermia was setting in, it was all she could do to resist the overwhelming desire to simply lie down and surrender to the cold, to sleep and never wake again.

The massive roar of the sea sounded a counterpoint to her frenzied heartbeat as she forced herself to walk on, to survive this. She passed a stack of lobster pots, a pile of nets and old chains, ropes and weights. Tripping over something in the sand, she sprawled head-first on to a narrow walkway beside an upturned rowing boat, its paint peeling off. Using the boat for support, she pulled herself upright and staggered painfully on. Her shoes must have fallen off in the sea; when she glanced down her feet were bloodied and her tights were in shreds. Her feet were so numb she couldn’t even feel the pain of the gravel biting into the soles.

Redmond.

She was at the cottage now, gulping, trying to compose herself. An old bike was propped against the wall. There was no sign of a car. Instead of a doorbell there was a miniature brass bell suspended on a bracket, a brass gnome crouched beneath it, holding a chain. She yanked at the chain, and the bell rang.

Nothing happened. She yanked it again.

Jesus, please, please, will you open the fecking door?

It seemed like an age before she heard movement. Bolts being thrown back. Then all at once a small man was standing there. He was sixtyish, with a thick mop of springy grey hair. His face was as gnarled and weathered as driftwood. Bright hazel eyes stared out at her in surprise from under dark brows. He wore a white shirt, pulled up to his elbows to show sinewy workman’s arms, red braces, and black trousers shiny from wear.

‘Can you help?’ said Orla in a cracked voice that was high with strain. She knew the one thing she couldn’t afford to tell anyone was that she’d been in a plane crash. The flight hadn’t been authorized for take-off. It wouldn’t take the Garda long to realize that something was amiss, and they would be on to the English police before you could say knife. ‘My brother and I were out in a dinghy. It capsized. Can you help me look for him please?’

The man stared for a long moment. Then he stepped back and said, ‘Come along in.’

Orla entered the warm cottage interior. It felt unreal, this cosy normality, like a dream. A woman was watching TV at the kitchen table. The newsman was saying that British troops had sealed off the Catholic Bogside area in Londonderry after clashes with rioters. The woman looked up in wonder at this half-drowned young woman standing there dripping all over her clean floor.

‘What . . .?’ she breathed, coming to her feet.

‘There’s been a boating accident,’ said the man. ‘Cissie, get the brandy out.’

Orla was shaking her head, hard.
Brandy?
Desperation was making her eyes manic. ‘There’s no time for that. We have to go and find him. Fetch torches.’

‘But I—’

‘We haven’t
time
for this. For the love of God, fetch the torches and let’s go.’ But she was trembling so badly that she could no longer hold herself upright. She fell forward almost delicately, and found herself on her knees with her head humming so loudly she was sure she was about to pass out. The cottage lights seemed to flicker in and out of focus and suddenly everything was very far away, even their clucking anxious voices as they got her off her knees and on to a chair.

‘Get that brandy, Cissie,’ she dimly heard the old man say. ‘I’ll go out and check the shoreline.’

Orla refocused to see Cissie crouching in front of her, watching her with concern.

‘Yes, that’s the thing for a shock like this.’ Cissie hurried away and returned with a glass brimming with amber liquid. ‘Here, here,’ she said, putting the glass against Orla’s lips. Orla sipped, felt it warming her all the way down. She coughed, sipped again.

‘Don’t you worry,’ Cissie was chattering on, ‘Donny will find your brother if anyone can, he knows this stretch of coast inside out. Now, let’s sort you out some dry clothes . . .’

The old man was putting on wet-weather gear, picking up a heavy-duty torch from the dresser. ‘I’ll be away then,’ he said, and went out into the stormy night.

Donny never found Redmond. He scoured the headland, the beach, all around to the next bay, but there was nothing, no one. He was out for well over an hour. By the time he got back, Cissie had taken Orla’s wet clothes off her and dressed her in a winceyette nightie and a thick dressing gown. She had disinfected and covered the worst of the cuts on Orla’s feet, dried out and untangled Orla’s hair, forced a little soup down her, saying she must get warm and take some food.

The soup only made Orla gag. Her stomach was a knot of fear and dread. She could not yet comprehend the full enormity of this disaster. Could not even begin to believe that she was never going to see Redmond again. But when Donny came in, grave-faced, shaking his head at her pleading eyes, she knew that the worst had happened.

Redmond was gone.

She was never going to see him again.

It was as if the soul had been ripped out of her, right then and there.

‘You’ll sleep here tonight,’ said Cissie, while Donny removed his outdoor gear and carried it into the scullery to dry off. ‘Tomorrow, when the storm eases, Donny’ll take the bike into the village and telephone the Garda. They’ll alert the Coastguard.’

Orla shook her head. Much as she wanted the Coastguard searching for Redmond, she knew that it was hopeless. And she couldn’t afford to alert the Garda. If they came round asking questions, she would have a hard time coming up with answers.

‘It’s far too late for that,’ she said, and tears poured down her face as the sheer weight of it all struck home. He was gone from her: he truly was.

‘Still, we should do it,’ persisted Donny.

‘No. It’s no use,’ said Orla flatly, and refused to discuss it further.

The storm raged on, making it impossible for Donny to reach the village the next day. At dawn the following day, Orla got shakily out of bed and knelt on the window seat in the spare bedroom where she’d passed a sleepless night. She stared out of the window at the waves pounding the shore beneath an angry red and purple sky, wondering where Redmond was. Given the ferocity of the storm, the current would probably have swept his lifeless body miles away.

I should be dead too,
she thought.
I am a dead woman walking.

Her mind kept returning to the crash. Fergal tapping the dial. The propeller juddering to a halt. The heart-stopping plummet into the ocean, into the grip of ice-cold waters that should have claimed her life, not just the lives of Redmond and poor Fergal.

Cissie had kindly washed out her clothes the day before, and now Orla snatched them up. Throwing off the borrowed nightie and dressing gown, she dressed hurriedly then went to the door and listened. The house was quiet; the old couple weren’t awake yet. She crept downstairs and took a small amount of cash she found in the dresser drawer, then crammed her feet into a pair of Cissie’s shoes. They were a size too small, and chafed her sore feet, but she was too intent on getting away to notice.

Pulling on a coat, she silently unbolted the front door and stepped out into the blustery morning. She took up the bicycle, and started pedalling in the direction she had seen the lights of a village the night she arrived. From there, she could catch a bus to the nearest town. And then she would make her way home, to Limerick.

7

The Delaneys had started out in a modest house in Moyross. That was until Davey Delaney, tired of scraping a living on a factory floor, decided feck this and went to try his hand in London.

Old man Delaney had done pretty well there. After a spell as a bookie’s runner, he’d got into scrap dealing. And as soon as the money started to roll in, he’d set up a few sidelines – hijacking goods lorries, operating a couple of illegal gambling dens, and of course running prostitutes.

It hadn’t taken him long to carve out his niche among the London faces. And having established a little pocket of power for himself and his kin in Battersea, he defended it ferociously, coming down hard on anyone who tried to muscle in. He even managed to expand his territory, seizing control of a stretch of dockland across the river in Limehouse.

Life in the teeming dog-eat-dog city suited the brutal aspects of his nature. And the family thrived too. While in London, the wife dropped him some children: Tory first, then Patrick, then the twins – Orla and Redmond – then the baby of the family, Kieron. But they never forgot their roots. The proceeds of gambling, robbery and vice paid for a grand farmhouse a stone’s throw from the Shannon, and his wife was always nipping across, checking on the renovations and furnishing the place.

Eventually the old man admitted to his age, decided it was time to retire, let the boys take over. They leapt at the chance. And all went well, until the apple of his eye – Tory, his eldest, his most beloved son – was cut down in his prime.

Davey was never the same after Tory’s death. He withdrew to the farm, leaving the business to Pat, to Redmond and Orla. Kieron wasn’t interested, he fancied himself an artist. When the family came to visit, Davey would sit staring at the wall, making no attempt to join the conversation. Suspecting a nervous breakdown, his anxious wife steered him to the doctors. Within a year, they came back with a diagnosis: dementia. There was no question of Davey moving into a nursing home; he stayed on at the farm, the dream home declining with each year in fading grandeur, Davey losing his mind, his wife nursing him.

Now, Orla approached the farm. She paused outside to gaze around her. It was exactly as she remembered. Dad had been so proud of the place when he’d bought it, giving out about the thirty acres of land that came with it, and how old the place was.