The Undivided (17 page)

‘We don’t have a private jet,’ Ren said. ‘It belongs to the studio.’

‘Be quiet, Ren,’ Eunice ordered. ‘You’re not helping.’ She turned back to the inspector. ‘If Ms Kavanaugh could guarantee Ren’s good behaviour —’

‘Then the little smart-arse wouldn’t be sitting here, would he?’ Pete said, glaring at Ren.

‘I’m sorry, Ms Ravenel,’ the inspector said in a tone that suggested she was anything but sorry. ‘Your client will be our guest for the evening and if you want to argue what an upstanding member of society he is, you can do it tomorrow. In court. To a magistrate.’

Eunice looked like she might keep objecting, but the inspector never gave her the opportunity. She turned for the door. ‘C’mon, Pete. I’m sure Ms Ravenel wants a word with her client.’

Pete gathered up his file, gave Ren a serves-you-right-you-little-smart-arse look, and followed the inspector out of the room, slamming the door behind them.

‘I’m very disappointed in you, Ren,’ Eunice said, taking the seat recently occupied by Detective Pete.

‘I didn’t do anything, Eunice.’ Ren stared down at his hands, locking his fingers together until they turned white.

‘A magistrate will go much more leniently on you if you take responsibility for your actions.’

‘I didn’t
do
anything, Eunice,’ Ren repeated in a monotone. He felt like adding
you have to believe me
, but that just seemed like begging, and he shouldn’t have to beg his own lawyer to have a little faith in him.

She sighed heavily. Eunice Ravenel often sighed heavily when she dealt with Ren. ‘I’ve spoken to your mother. She’s tempted to let you rot in here, Ren. So unless I can give her a compelling reason to believe you’re innocent — no mean feat, given you stole a guest’s car from her house — then I’m afraid there’s no stopping the natural course of justice.’

‘How about you just accept it when I tell you I haven’t done anything wrong, and you defend me like you’re supposed to. You know … because you believe me.’

Eunice wasn’t so easily persuaded. ‘Then tell me what you were doing in that warehouse.’

Ren didn’t answer.

‘Are you involved with this O’Hara character?’

‘I never heard of him until ten minutes ago.’

‘Then how is it you happened to be at his warehouse at the precise moment his drug deal was going down?’

Ren was wondering that, too. For a moment, he even thought about telling Eunice everything. About Murray Symes. About where he got the information from about the drug deal …

But he didn’t want to betray Jack until he was certain Jack had betrayed him. The old man had helped Ren too many times, and kept quiet about it, for Ren to hand him over to the police, just to get his own backside out of the fire. Besides, he was more worried about what might have happened to Trása. ‘It doesn’t matter why we were there, Eunice. Can you find out what happened to my friend?’

‘What friend?’

‘Jack O’Righin’s granddaughter. They arrested us at the same time, but now the cops are saying she wasn’t there.’

Eunice let out one of her trademark sighs. ‘Jack O’Righin has no granddaughter. If you’d read more than the dustcover of that shameless attempt to rewrite history that he’s peddling and were less impressed by notoriety, Ren, you’d know Jack O’Righin’s family was killed years ago. Vengeance for their deaths was one of his feeble justifications for the violence he perpetrated on all those innocent people.’

‘If you don’t believe me, ask Murray Symes about her,’ Ren said, sick of everyone trying to convince him that Trása was a figment of his imagination. ‘He’s met her. He even threatened to have me arrested if I tried to have sex with her.’

Eunice stared at him, saying nothing.

‘It’s the truth,’ Ren insisted. ‘If I was lying I’d have thought up something way better than that, Eunice, believe me.’

The lawyer shook her head sadly. ‘You’ve had so many opportunities, Ren. But this time, you’ve crossed the line. Your
mother has spent her life campaigning against drugs. You know how she feels about drug dealers.’

‘God! Aren’t you listening to me? I wasn’t dealing drugs!’

He might as well have remained mute, for all the attention she was paying to him.

She let out another sigh. ‘And now you’re in danger of taking a man’s life. What were you thinking, Ren? Setting fire to that place? Are you so starved for attention you thought you’d give arson a go? Was cutting yourself not getting the results you wanted, so you decided to hurt someone other than yourself?’

Ren closed his eyes, overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness. How was it possible that everybody got him so wrong? This woman was supposed to be defending him, and even she thought he was a lost cause.

‘I swear to God, Eunice, I know nothing about the fire at the warehouse.’

‘The Gardaí tell me that when they searched you, they found another cut on your ribs. Is that true?’

Ren hesitated before he answered, knowing the truth was sure to condemn him. ‘Yes.’

‘I see.’ Eunice rose to her feet, with another sigh. ‘I’ll call your mother and tell her what’s happened. I’m sure she’ll try to be in court tomorrow, but …’

‘I know. She may not be able to get away.’ Ren knew that excuse by heart.

‘She’s still at the hospital with the rest of the family, Ren,’ Eunice told him. ‘I think poor Hayley’s vigil is likely to take precedence over another one of your court appearances, don’t you?’

Eunice had that much right. Hayley’s fate was far more important than his.

The lawyer picked up her briefcase and knocked on the door. She glanced at Ren as she waited for someone to unlock it, but
said nothing further. Pete opened it, looking far too smug for Ren’s liking. He let Eunice out, entered the room and closed the door firmly.

‘What now?’ Ren asked.

‘We’re going to book you into the five-star accommodation of Chez Watch-house,’ Pete informed him, as he pulled Ren to his feet. ‘And it seems there’s nothing your mother’s celebrity lawyer can do to stop it, either.’

‘Can I order room service?’

‘Keep it up, smart-arse.’ Pete shoved Ren toward the door, apparently pleased with the notion that Chelan Aquarius Kavanaugh would spend the night behind bars and that — unless he was kidnapped by aliens — that was where he was probably going to stay for the rest of his life.

The watch-house cells were noisy and brightly lit. There was no window in Ren’s cell, so he couldn’t tell what time it was. The walls were white, made of some sort of laminated material impervious to graffiti or vandalism. A narrow bed was built into the back wall and had a thin, vinyl-covered foam mattress. There was a stainless-steel toilet in the opposite corner. Ren wore overalls made of paper, presumably to stop him strangling himself with his own clothes. Because he was only seventeen and still legally a juvenile offender, Ren was treated to a solitary cell, rather than a communal one full of drunks and addicts. He thought that was something to be grateful for, until he realised he’d been confined to one of the observation cells they used for suicide watch, which meant they cranked up the heating instead of giving him a blanket — again, he assumed, to prevent him making a noose out of it. He wasn’t officially on suicide watch, but he figured he might soon be, if they didn’t stop checking on him every thirty minutes to ask if he was okay.

Despite the regular interruptions, Ren had lost track of the time when they made the next round of checks. He even managed to doze off. It was several hours since dinner — which had turned out to be takeaway from the local fish and chip shop down the road — when he was woken by someone saying his name.

‘Ren Kavanaugh?’

‘Wasn’t that my name the last time you checked?’ he asked, rubbing his eyes. Then he realised that it wasn’t what they’d asked him the last time. The last time they’d called him Chelan Aquarius. He squinted at the newcomers in the sudden brightness. They’d turned on the main light, which he assumed the cops had picked up at a sale of leftover stadium illumination equipment.

‘Are you Ren Kavanaugh?’

‘Yes,’ he said, with a sigh that would have done Eunice proud. ‘I am Ren Kavanaugh.’ He focussed on his visitors and frowned. They were a man and a woman of indeterminate age, both dressed in dark suits. They looked like door-to-door salesmen.

‘Come with us please.’

‘Where?’

‘Please, do not question us.’

Had he been less exhausted, Ren decided later, he might have started to worry when they wouldn’t tell him where they were going. Given Trása had already vanished — seemingly without a trace — he had reason to be concerned. Not until he followed the suits out into the corridor and past the door at the end of it that normally needed a card and a PIN to get through, did it occur to him that something was amiss. The watch-house desk was abandoned, too, and an elderly sergeant was slumped over the keyboard of his computer, where he’d apparently been playing Solitaire before falling asleep.

Ren looked around the deserted reception area. ‘What’s going on?’

‘You are being evacuated,’ the woman said. She seemed to be in charge.

‘To where? For what?’

‘Please. Be patient.’

‘Can I have my clothes, then?’ Ren asked, pointing at the white paper overalls that crackled as he walked.

‘Clothes will be arranged for you when we reach our destination,’ the woman assured him.

‘Destination? What destination? Where are we going?’

‘Your questions will be answered soon enough, Ren.’

‘Has someone called my lawyer? She’ll be royally pissed if she finds I’ve been moved and nobody’s notified her.’

‘Everything has been taken care of. You have nothing to fear.’

‘Who are you guys?’ Ren asked, as they hurried him into the elevator.

Suit One looked at Suit Two for a moment and then the woman smiled. ‘We are with Interpol.’

Interpol!
Ren thought in alarm.
What the fuck have I done now?
‘Show me some ID.’

‘Very well.’

The woman reached into the pocket of her jacket and took from it not a wallet with a badge as Ren was expecting, but a handful of blue powder.

Before Ren had time to turn away, the woman blew the powder into his face and he slumped unconscious into the arms of the man behind him.

Groggy and unsettled by his nightmares, Ren woke to the worst headache he had ever experienced. It was beyond pain. It was as if someone had drilled into his skull through his eyeballs and was digging out the grey matter with a jackhammer. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t speak. He could barely breathe. In the end, he passed out again, with only the vaguest notion of what had happened to him.

He woke again some undetermined time later, feeling much better. The jackhammer had faded to a dull thudding.

Ren jerked awake at the sound of a relentless whooping alarm. He sat up sharply, banging his head on the bunk above. Looking around, he figured he might be on a boat. He was in a cabin — possibly below the waterline, given there was no porthole — the sloped walls of which were painted khaki in places and bare metal in others.

Warily, Ren swung his legs around and put his feet on the floor. There was a slight trembling movement underfoot that indicated they were under way. The alarm was still going, but his headache was easing.

I’m dreaming
, he decided, rubbing his gritty eyes. His hands came away with a fine blue powder on them. He stared at the blue powder for a moment, wondering why it seemed familiar …

And then he remembered the Interpol agents.

Fighting back a sudden rush of panic, Ren took a deep breath, trying to remember what he’d been told about situations like this.

When Ren was eleven, Kiva had acquired a stalker, who was utterly convinced she was speaking to him directly from the screen. He believed she was begging him to save her from the terrible life in which she was trapped, where she was held captive by an evil demon named Norman. The guy was a complete nutter — a paranoid schizophrenic who’d gone off his meds. For over a year — until the security guards had tasered him as he was climbing the wall of their rented house in Prague where she’d been filming a movie about the French Resistance in World War Two — Kiva and Ren had been virtual prisoners.

And not without cause. The stalker — when they’d caught him — was armed, manic, and carried two cyanide pills, which he later told police he was planning to use on the Spawn of Satan — Kiva’s son — whom he believed was an agent of the demon, Norman. Ren was there, the stalker claimed, to guard his beloved Kiva like a Doberman Pinscher, expressly to stop the man she truly loved from coming to her rescue.

For much of that year, they had lived surrounded by high walls, bodyguards and extraordinary security measures. Ren hadn’t been allowed out of the house without an escort, not even to play in the garden with Neil and Hayley. Kiva had taken him out of school and brought in a tutor. In fact, after a couple of months of living on a knife edge, jumping at every unexpected sound, Kerry had hired a local housekeeper to look after Kiva and taken her own children back to Dublin. Ren had been desperate to go with them, but Kiva wanted him close by.

How to behave if he were ever kidnapped had been drilled into Ren during that time. He racked his brains now, trying to remember the rules.

Avoid being restrained
. That was the first rule.
Once you’re tied up, it’s much harder to escape.

Second rule: fight. Do it immediately. The moment they grab you
.
Windmill your arms. Kick. Scream. Punch. Scratch. Go for the eyes … the genitals … Do whatever it takes. You may not get a second chance.

Well, I blew that one …

Rule three. Pay attention
. Ren remembered Kiva’s bodyguards drumming that into him.
Remember as much as you can about your kidnappers — what they’re wearing, eye colour, hair colour, tattoos, scars … If they have guns, don’t look down the barrel. Look at their faces. Look them in the eye.
People generally fix on the weapon when it’s pointed at them, they told him, and later find they can’t describe their abductors at all.

Listen. If they’re speaking a language you don’t understand, try to make out individual words
, they’d urged.
Listen for names. Better yet, never travel to a country where you don’t know at least a few key phrases you might need if you find yourself in trouble
. Ren remembered that rule well, because he could pick up whole languages in a couple of weeks, if he heard enough of them.

Learning of that gift was the only time Ren could ever remember impressing those big, surly, humourless men charged with protecting his life.

Run if you get the chance
, they said,
even if they have guns. Kidnappers motivated by money don’t want to kill you
, the bodyguards assured Ren.
Neither do sexual predators. They have even more reason to keep you alive.

Never run in a straight line.

Make a ruckus.

Get somewhere public as fast as you can.

Ren was surprised how well he recalled the rules. For all the good they were now. Nobody had mentioned phoney Interpol
agents, blue dust that knocked you unconscious or what to do if you found yourself held captive on a ship.

This wasn’t a stalker on the loose, Ren was certain. This was organised. Premeditated. Well thought-out.

Organised crime, maybe? Or perhaps this was about that drug dealer … what was his name? O’Hara? Maybe Ren had been abducted by some drug lord’s enemies.

Bad call if they think I know anything useful
, Ren thought sourly.

He sighed. Would anybody even notice he was gone? With Hayley’s life in the balance, his fate wasn’t that important. Although his abduction was a distraction the Boyles didn’t need right now. Murray Symes would probably accuse him of arranging to get himself kidnapped as some sort of attention-seeking behaviour.

Ren pushed himself off the bunk. Time to get this over with.
Kill me or let me go.
Forcing himself to ignore his headache, he crossed the cabin in two steps.

He banged on the door with his fists. ‘Hey! Who are you guys! Where am I! Let me outta here!’

The door opened almost immediately and the alarm miraculously stopped screaming at the same time. There was a man standing outside in the passage wearing jeans and a plain black T-shirt. Last time Ren saw him, he had been posing as an Interpol agent. He looked much younger without the suit. Not much older than Ren.

‘There’s no need to shout, Rónán. If you’d tried it first, you’d have discovered the hatch wasn’t locked.’ The man spoke in an accent not unlike Trása’s indefinable brogue.

Ren stared at him, stunned into silence by the unexpectedly friendly greeting. What was going on? Were they hoping to win him over? Was this the first stage of their plan to seduce him to their cause? If they were being extra nice, hoping for the
Stockholm Syndrome — which had been explained to him in excruciating detail by Kiva’s bodyguards — to kick in by giving a bit of a push, they were very optimistic.

‘My name’s not Rónán.’

‘You’d rather we called you Ren? As you wish.’

‘Where am I? What was that alarm?’

‘You’re on a barge,’ the young man said pleasantly. ‘The alarm was … well, I’m not sure. Mechanical things aren’t really my area of expertise.’ Then he smiled and shrugged apologetically. ‘I realise you’re probably used to better treatment than this. Sorry we couldn’t come up with anything more salubrious, but it won’t be for long. Did you want to bathe? Have something to eat?’ He was staring at Ren intently, almost as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. But whatever it was about Ren that seemed odd, it was making this kidnapper very happy, because he didn’t seem to be able to wipe the smile off his face.

Ren studied him warily. He was talking as if they were old friends. ‘I want to call my mother,’ he said.

The young man nodded, still grinning stupidly. ‘Why don’t we get you cleaned up and have something to eat, first? Follow me.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To the showers.’

Ren didn’t budge from the door of his cabin. ‘That’s what the Nazis said to the Jews getting off the trains at Auschwitz,’ he said.

‘Nazis?’ His kidnapper squinted at him blankly for a moment. Then he nodded and smiled even wider. ‘Ah, yes! A regime that achieved some notoriety in your twentieth century.’

Your twentieth century
, the man had said. Not ‘the twentieth century’ or ‘our twentieth century’, but
your
twentieth century.

Brilliant. I’ve been kidnapped by a bunch of … what? Looney conspiracy theorists
?
Aliens?

‘The Nazis killed millions of people,’ Ren felt compelled to point out. Whatever crackpot theories these people held about time, there were certain facts here that couldn’t be disputed. ‘A lot of them in showers, incidentally.’

The kidnapper seemed amused. ‘I can assure you, Ró— Ren, our showers are quite safe, if a little temperamental. Much like the rest of the ship.’ He turned and headed down the corridor. He didn’t bother to check if Ren was following.

Ren debated staying put. He didn’t debate it for long, however. There didn’t seem much point. Whoever these people were, they didn’t seem hostile. It was probably just about money.

Whatever
… Ren thought. He wasn’t in handcuffs and they were offering him a shower and food and hopefully a change of clothes. He might as well play along.

I wonder what they think I’m worth?

‘Do you people have names?’ Ren asked, as he followed his kidnapper down the rusty companionway.

The ship creaked and groaned alarmingly. If these people had abducted him in the hopes of making money out of him and had hidden him on a rusty barge, they clearly thought the negotiations were going to take time, despite his captor’s assurance he wouldn’t be here long. Were they planning to move him? Or were they chugging across the Irish Sea, about to meet up with another ship sailing under a foreign flag and he’d never be heard of again?

They didn’t seem bothered about him being able to identify them. That could mean they were confident of not being caught. Or that their politics were such that getting away wasn’t an option …

Ren hoped the latter wasn’t the case. People with political agendas weren’t squeamish about death, or about taking their hostages with them when they died.

‘
Brógán is ainm dom
.’

Ren stared at the young man in surprise. His abductor was speaking Gaelige. Or a strangely accented version of it. That meant they were locals. Irish.

Oh God, no … I’ve been kidnapped by the IRA.

Aliens might have been better.

‘Brógán is my name,’ the kidnapper added in English. He glanced over his shoulder, and pointed to a metal staircase leading upward. ‘My … colleague’s name is Niamh.’

‘Ah … the lady with the deadly blue powder.’

Ren grabbed hold of the cold handrails, which left flakes of paint on his palms, and began to climb the gangway after Brógán. ‘What was that shit, anyway?’

Brógán glanced over his shoulder and grinned at him. ‘A deadly blue powder.’

‘Great,’ Ren muttered. ‘Not just a
cheerful
IRA grunt … this one thinks he’s a comedian, too.’

‘It’s called
Brionglóid Gorm
,’ Brógán added.

‘Blue dreams, huh?’ Ren translated, to make certain he’d heard right.

‘Brógán!’ a tinny, female voice called over a loudspeaker. ‘You’d better come up here.’

The woman, too, had spoken Gaelige. It was a somewhat different dialect to the one Ren was used to hearing, the one they taught at school, but alike enough for him to make sense of it. Maybe they were from one of the Gaeltacht regions outside Dublin, Ren thought, where the locals spoke Irish first and English as an afterthought. That would account for the difference between the formal language Ren was used to, and the much more colloquial version these people spoke.

‘I guess this means we’re going to the bridge first,’ Brógán said with a sigh. They reached the next deck and headed up another set of rusty metal stairs. There was no sign of any other crew. Were these two and he alone on this rusty old barge? The idea
gave him hope. How hard could it be to get away from only two of them? Particularly as they didn’t seem to be armed.

Ren followed Brógán silently, wondering what the temperature of the Irish Sea was at this time of year. If he jumped overboard, would he get away? Or would he drown before anybody could rescue him? Die of hypothermia?

When they finally stepped onto the rain-swept deck a few moments later, Ren guessed the answer was ‘
you’ll die of hypothermia
’. The sea was dull and relatively flat, but a steady, icy rain was falling, making the deck slippery and treacherous. Ren shivered as he grabbed the slick rail and followed Brógán forward, doubting he’d last even ten minutes if he tried escaping over the side. A quick scan of the horizon confirmed his suspicion they were out of sight of land.

Jesus … where are they taking me?

Wherever it was, Ren consoled himself with the idea that people would already be looking for him. Kiva would be calling in every favour she was owed. And there was the minor matter of appearing to have escaped police custody.

Shit … what if they don’t realise I was kidnapped? What if they think that O’Hara simply busted me out of gaol …

Ren was still worrying about that when they reached the bridge. It was warmer inside. Brógán slammed the sliding door shut, before fighting with the lock for a few moments to ensure it stayed that way. Niamh didn’t look up. Her gloved hands were clamped to the wheel, her eyes fixed on some point on the misty horizon through the rhythmic thump and squeak of windscreen wipers in need of new rubber. She didn’t realise, Ren thought, that Brógán wasn’t alone.

‘This rain is going to make it almost impossible to —’ she began. She stopped abruptly when she saw Ren and actually paled a little. ‘
Leath tiarna!
’

Half-Lord
she’d exclaimed. ‘Excuse me?’

Niamh recovered herself quickly. ‘I am sorry, Rónán,’ she said in English. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’