Taken for Dead (Kate Maguire) (20 page)

Meryl tried to twist her arm away from him, but he kept a tight hold on her sleeve and dragged her closer to the edge of the hole. At the same time, he turned his head around and let out a piercing whistle between his teeth. One of the bouncer-types immediately crossed over and seized her with both of his hands around her waist. With a snort, he lifted her up and held her over the hole, trying to force her down into it. She kicked and struggled, but with a sudden lurch she slipped down to the bottom and found that her shoes were filling up with cold water. She jumped up three or four times, trying to pull herself out, but the hole was so deep that it came right up to her chest, and even if the sand hadn’t kept sliding down when she clawed at it, she simply didn’t have the strength or the leverage to lift herself up.

‘Get her out of there!
Get her out of there
!’ Norman shouted, his voice cracking with anger; but the second bouncer-type slapped him hard across the back of his head and said, ‘Whist up, will ya, or I’ll puck the fecking neck o’ ya!’

In spite of that, Norman continued shouting over and over, ‘Get her out of there! She’s my wife! You can’t hurt her! Get her out of there!’ until the bouncer-type yanked him around to face him and punched him so hard in the stomach that he instantly collapsed to his knees.

‘Leave him alone!’ screamed Meryl, scrabbling even more frantically at the sand all around her. ‘He won’t tell anyone, I swear to you!
Leave him alone
!’

‘You can shut your mouth, too, missus, unless you want some of the same,’ snapped the carroty-curled young man. He slapped the shoulder of the stocky middle-aged man and said, ‘Go on, Phelim, get to filling in, would you, boy, before this fecking weapon gives me a headache.’

Meryl stopped screaming. She could see that the bouncer-type who had punched Norman in the stomach was now bundling him bodily into the second hole. Norman was still whining for breath and for a few seconds he disappeared completely. When he eventually managed to stand up straight, chest-deep in sand, as Meryl was, his eyes were still bulging and his mouth was agape, like a stranded mullet.

Phelim went over at a leisurely pace to the rock where he had been sitting and waiting, and returned with his spade. Meryl looked up at him with what she hoped was a pleading expression, but his eyes were such slits that it was impossible for her to tell if he was moved or not. Without a word he began to shovel up some of the sand that he had excavated from the hole, and drop it back into the hole all around her.

‘You can’t do this,’ she said, shakily. ‘Do you hear what I’m saying to you? You can’t do this. If you leave us like this the tide is going to come in and we won’t be able to get out and we’ll drown!’

Phelim said nothing, but kept on dropping sand around her until the hole was filled right up to her underarms. Not only was she panicking now, but the weight of the sand against her chest was making it hard for her to breathe.

‘I’m making one last appeal to you as a Christian and a human being,’ she said. Still Phelim remained stony-faced, and now he began to bang the sand flat all around her with the back of his spade. Meryl tried to snatch it, but he simply gave it a sharp, vicious twist and she had to let go, with blood welling out of a deep diagonal cut on the side of her thumb.

When he had finished he walked over to the hole where Norman was half buried, and without any hesitation he started to shovel sand into that hole, too.

O merciful God in Heaven how can this be happening?
thought Meryl. It was worse than a nightmare because she knew that she wouldn’t wake up and find that she had dreamed it. It went on and on, and it was so real. The tireless shushing of the sea, and the
hark-harrk-harrking
of the gulls, and the monotonous chopping sound of Phelim’s shovel as he filled in the hole to make it impossible for Norman to escape.

Who could have imagined that my life would end like this? Perhaps it was God’s punishment for my going out with Eoghan again, and realizing that I still had feelings for him. But I wasn’t unfaithful to Norman, not even in my mind.

She looked around and she could see from the dark brown seaweed that was draped on top of the rocks how high the water would rise when the tide came in. She had never liked swimming in the sea, and she could already imagine the cold, salty brine slapping into her face, and then splashing into her mouth, and filling up her lungs.

She saw that Phelim had finished flattening the sand around Norman and it was then that she started to cry. Not loudly, because she was finding it so difficult to breathe, but a thin suppressed mew, like a kitten left out in the rain. Tears slid down her cheeks and gave her a foretaste of seawater.

She pressed her hands together and closed her eyes, and whispered all that she could remember of the prayer that Father Dolan had recited when her grandmother was on her deathbed.

O most merciful Jesus, Lover of souls, I pray thee, by the agony of Thy most Sacred Heart and by the sorrows of Thy Immaculate Mother, cleanse in Thine Own Blood this sinner who is to die this day.

Heart of Jesus, once in agony, take pity on the dying.

She knew there was more, and she wished she could recall it, but she was in too much distress, and in any case the carroty-curled young man was walking back towards her and she didn’t want him to see how frightened she was.

‘Well now, there’s the two of you both ready,’ he said. ‘I told you that we didn’t make threats. Only the weak and the cowardly make threats.’

‘So you’re just going to leave us here to drown?’

The carroty-curled young man blinked at her in mock-surprise. ‘Is that what you think? Of course we’re not! What kind of eejits do you think we are?’

‘Then what?’ she said, with her lower lip trembling.

‘If we left you here, Jesus, we’d never get to see that justice was done, would we? And what if somebody was to chance along the beach and saw you here and dug you out?’

‘Then –
what
?’ she repeated, and now she couldn’t stop herself from sobbing. ‘What are you going to do to us, tell me!’

‘Show her, Phelim,’ said the carroty-curled young man. ‘The auld feller first, so that she can have a preview.’

Phelim went back to the rocks and picked up the jerrycan. It was obviously full and heavy because it hardly swung at all as he carried it over to the place where Norman was half buried in the sand. As he levered the lid off it, Meryl realized what he was going to do, and her sobs became a low, continuous moan.

‘Come on, Mrs Pearse,’ said the carroty-curled young man. ‘There must be worse ways of going, although for the life of me I can’t think what they are, like. Not off the top of my head.’

The two bouncer-types both stepped well back while Phelim lifted the jerrycan and poured petrol all over Norman’s head and shoulders. Norman held his hands up in front of his face to prevent it from stinging his eyes, but he didn’t utter a sound. Meryl kept on keening with grief, as if he were already dead – and in a way he was.

She didn’t want to watch what was going to happen next and she didn’t want to hear it, either. Although they were only metres apart and Phelim had buried them so that they were facing each other, she could have closed her eyes and pressed her fingers into her ears, but she didn’t. These were going to be Norman’s last few seconds of life and she had to be a witness. Even if these men were going to kill her, too, she could take her testimony to Jesus, so that when their time came, they would be punished as they deserved to be.

‘Any last words, Mr Pearse?’ the carroty-curled young man called out, above the screaming of a seagull that was swooping low overhead.

Norman said nothing, but stared at Meryl with pity and sadness in his eyes. Then Phelim took a purple plastic cigarette lighter out of his pocket, flicked it alight, and calmly touched it to the back of Norman’s hair.

Still Norman said nothing, and still he didn’t flinch, even as flames were flickering in the wind from the top of his head and turning him into a human candle. For a few moments the flames died down, and smoke drifted towards the car park, and for a moment Meryl thought that God might have heard her and extinguished the fire with His merciful breath. Then, however, Norman’s petrol-soaked jacket suddenly burst into flames and he was engulfed. He let out a single hoarse scream, but then he must have breathed in blazing petrol vapour, and all he could do was flap his arms.

Meryl could only watch him as he burned. Sometimes he was barely visible through the sheet of flames, but then the wind would blow the flames to one side, like a waving yellow banner, and she could clearly see his face blackening and his jacket turning into tatters of carbonized wool, clustered with tiny orange sparks.

Gradually his blackened face cracked, revealing the scarlet flesh underneath the skin, and then that blackened, too. He stopped flapping his arms and instead they began to stiffen. After a while the flames died down and his head and shoulders were left smouldering. Parts of his skull were exposed and he was baring his teeth in a hideous grin. Only then did Meryl lower her head and close her eyes.

The carroty-curled young man came back to her and said, ‘There … what did I tell you? Not one word of a threat, but we won’t have
him
blabbing to the law any more, will we?’

Meryl opened her eyes and looked up at him. She wanted to curse him, and call him the devil incarnate, but her stomach tightened and all she could do was bring up her breakfast, watery shreds of scrambled egg and pulpy blobs of half-digested toast.

‘The state of you la,’ said the carroty-curled young man. ‘First you piss yourself and now you’re puking your ring up. If your dear mother could see you now.’

Meryl wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
If
your
dear mother could only see
you,
you murdering little bastard
, she thought, but she was too sick to speak, and what good would it do?

Phelim brought the jerrycan over. Meryl realized now that within the next few minutes she really was going to die, and that she was probably going to suffer greater pain than she had ever suffered in her whole life. All the same, she felt detached and calm, almost as if she weren’t here on this beach at all, but somewhere far away and long ago, on a hillside overlooking Blarney Lough, and the cries that she could hear weren’t seagulls at all but the sounds of children playing.

The first splash of petrol came as a shock. It was stunningly cold and it smelled so strongly that she coughed and spat and inadvertently sniffed some up her nose, which made her retch.

‘For feck’s sake,’ said the carroty-curled young man. He tugged the jerrycan out of Phelim’s grasp and emptied it over Meryl’s head himself. She gasped and choked and felt that she was drowning. She even swallowed some, which made her retch yet again, but all she could do was stay where she was, imprisoned in sand, with petrol clinging to her eyelashes and dripping from the end of her nose.

When he had finished, the carroty-curled young man gave the jerrycan one last shake and then slung it aside. He held out his hand to Phelim and said, ‘Lighter.’

Phelim passed him his cigarette lighter and the carroty-curled young man snapped it alight. The flame was blown out by the wind so he had to snap it alight a second time.

‘Well now, like I said to your auld feller, any last words?’

She didn’t answer him. Her eyes were closed now and she was sitting on the hillside overlooking Blarney Lough. He waited five more seconds, and then he leaned forward and held the lighter underneath her chin.

She jerked her chin upwards, but then her whole face burst with agony. She was blinded instantly, and the world went black. Even though she couldn’t see, she could hear a crackling sound as her hair caught alight and her skin shrivelled. Then her sweater started to burn and the pain in her shoulders was so intense that she felt as if her whole being was on fire, her soul as well as her body. She tried to struggle herself free from the sand but it was hopeless. All she could think to herself was that nothing had ever hurt her like this, ever, and please God, take me now.

Soon, however, the worst of the pain began to subside, as her nerve-endings were burned away. She was still aware that she was alive, and alight, but she began to feel peaceful, as if she were a huge autumn flower with yellow petals, rather than a burning woman. Even as her skin flaked away and her tendons tightened, a strange calm filled her mind, like the tide coming in – a feeling of acceptance.

The carroty-curled young man and the two bouncer-types and Phelim all stood around until her head dropped on to her chest and it was clear that she was dead. She looked like a bald shop-window mannequin painted in patchy orange and brown and red. Her fingers had left deep furrows in the sand in front of her, but the sea would soon wash those away.

Phelim took out a packet of Carroll’s and passed them around, and they all lit up with the same lighter that they had used to set fire to Norman and Meryl.

Katie was standing in the living room finishing her coffee when she heard a car horn tooting outside. She went to the window and drew back the net curtains. David was sitting in his silver Range Rover outside her front gate. When he saw her, he gave her a wave and blew her a kiss.

She raised her hand to acknowledge that she had seen him, but then she let the curtain fall back. The sight of him had made her feel faintly nauseous, and she went through to the kitchen and emptied the rest of her coffee down the sink.

In the light of day, she couldn’t think how she had let herself give in to him. Now that she had slept, and had time to think how she was going to deal with Acting Chief Superintendent Bryan Molloy, as well as the High Kings of Erin case, she felt much less vulnerable. She still thought that in his lean, wolfish way, David was strikingly handsome, and she had to admit to herself that he was one of the most charming men that she had ever met, but she recognized him for what he was. It had been the taking of her that had aroused him; he wouldn’t be interested in a long-term relationship, and she was sure that he wouldn’t leave Sorcha for her. Something kept him tied to Sorcha, although she couldn’t think what, if she was so violent and such a header. He had told Katie that he felt duty-bound to stay with her, but that didn’t ring true.