He could still hear the telephone ring. It had been this way for the past month. The doorbell had rung numerous times and remained unanswered. His father had called to check he had not done anything to injure himself. His father had a key. He talked to his son who had  not yet died of grief. And when his father did call, the red blotches around his sons eyes were as ever present. In the 6th week after the event, Ivan went back to work. On reporting in on the Monday, he was greeted by colleagues approaching to offer their sympathies. This was the first time he had been in public since the funeral.

On Sunday the 12th of July, he was making dinner for his lover. This consisted of Tagliatelle with an uovo e formaggio accompanying sauce. A bottle of Chianti adorned the table along with a natural wax candle, two sets of knives and forks and a set of salt and pepper shakers. It was, as he was pouring himself a glass of chianti, that the doorbell rang. Holding the glass of red wine in his left hand and opening the door with his right he began to sing: 

“The very thought of you…..” He quickly stopped seeing 2 police officers standing there. 

“Good Evening, Is your name ‘Ivan MacCarthy’?”

He suddenly became pale as the garda asked him this.

“Yes, Yes I am. Is there something wrong?”

The garda asked him politely:

“Do you mind if we come in?”

Ivan opened the door and made his way to the living room followed by the two gardaí.

He thought as to who was dead and finally settled on the fact that it was his brother. Pete had just bought a motorbike and must have killed himself on it. His heart thumped inside his chest cavity.

“We regret to inform you Mr. MacCarthy that this involves your partner Monica Perrott”

At this point Ivan’s heart skipped a beat and forgetting he was still holding a glass of wine in his left hand, opened both. Like blood the wine soaked into the white carpet the glass lay unbroken, cushioned from the fall. Both police slightly jolted when this happened. Ivan waited for them to say it wasn’t that serious but this reassurance never came. The woman police officer then moved over to the sofa on which Ivan was sitting and took his hand.

“Ivan, I’m regret to inform you that Ms. Perrott was killed tonight.”

At this, Ivan put both hands to his face and began to weep bitterly. Some 5 minutes later, he put his hands down and asked how it happened.

“I’m afraid Ms. Perrott was murdered....”

He was stunned. His grief quickly turned to anger.

“Where is she?” he said with a raised voice.

“I think it better if you not see her Mr. MacCarthy….” she looked towards the other officer who shook his head.

“Where is she?” he said this in exactly the same manner.

After momentarily pausing she replied:

“In the University Hospital morgue.”

“I want see her..” he began to half cry saying this. 

“Please I want to see her…”

As the garda car sped off into the night, Ivan in the backseat, looked out of the window. Zombie like he didn’t focus on anything going by but only looked at the blur of night scenes as they drifted past. Having arrived at the hospital, the police informed Ivan that they could only give him 5 minutes. He gratefully thanked them. He entered the cold room. The white tiles gave it an even chillier feeling. He walked up to Monica lifeless corpse. She was not as she had expected her to be. She was not blue nor pale but the colour of every other living person. She looked as she often looked when she was asleep in bed and he couldn’t  sleep. Often he would simply stare at her as she slept. He never told her this. He could clearly see bruising on her neck. Strangulation. He had been been called to a house on emergency once, only to find the body of a young teenage boy lying in his fathers arms with a washing line rope tied around his neck. There was a very crude knot holding the loop together. His father, obviously in severe shock, was holding him in a pieta like manner. He quickly took him off of the father, cut the loop and began CPR. Blowing and Pressing all he could, he couldn’t awaken the boy. The mark on his neck was nearly identical to that on hers. Whispering in her ear, he said:

“I’ll get the person who did this to you, so help me god…”

He kissed her lips and left the room.

And now he was back at “Dunshannon Clinic”. Home to three GP’s besides himself. Dr. Charles O’Donovan was the most senior amongst the staff and the most irritating. His endless stories of how ‘in the good old days we used to…’ would drive everyone spare. He was also a malicious bastard. He once tried to blame the youngest and most inexperienced doctor (Dr. Benjamin Bennett) with mis-prescribing a certain medicine when it was proved it was he himself who had issued the prescription. Ben was too timid a character to ever stand up for himself and so it was left to Ivan and Dr. Rose Jordan to fight his corner. Rose was the only one in the clinic whom Ivan considered a true friend. She was, as well as being a gifted physician, a wonderful confidant. He would often ask her opinion both on medical matters and private. Exactly 2 weeks before the murder, he had bought an engagement ring for Monica. He had bought it with Rose while they were on lunch break from the clinic. Rose had, on Ivan’s wishes, the previous week complimented Monica on a ring she was wearing and asked her to try it on. As Ivan had theorized, it was a perfect fit. With this knowledge in hand, Ivan got Rose to try on the engagement ring which he had chosen. He put it on with delicacy, as if treading on a frozen lake. She slightly blushed as he moved passed the knuckle and finally seated it on her engagement ring finger.

“Perfect…” Ivan beamed.

“Yes I’m sure that she’ll be delighted, it’s a beautiful ring” she smiled.

She quickly took it off and handed it to Ivan saying:

“I won’t be paying for it though!” 

They both laughed. What Ivan did not know was that Rose was madly and deeply in love with him. She knew it wasn’t infatuation. She had felt this way for 6 years now. But she was married to a loving husband and had 2 wonderful children, she also had a dog. It would have been considered domestic bliss except for the fact that she was not happy. Although her husband was the kindest, sweetest man she had ever met, she had in the 20 years of marriage they had shared, fallen out of love with him. But how, she often thought to herself, how could anything ever come of this. He was a man 15 years her junior, she was married, he was in a long term relationship and lastly she was old and her crows feet were beginning to become more and more prominent everyday.

When she first heard of the murder she was stunned and felt guilty. She felt as though her repressed feelings for Ivan had a part to play in the death. She called his phone many many times wishing to convey her sympathy to him. When it repeatedly rang out, she called by his apartment hoping that he would answer the door...but he never did. When he appeared 6 weeks later in his impeccably ironed dark grey suit, white shirt and red tie, she became light headed. She approached him and duly put her arms around his neck and hugged him:

“I’m so sorry Ivan”

He whispered in her ear:

‘So am I”

She let go and he walked into his office. It remained the same as he had left it those 44 days ago. The post it notes on his desk reminding to call who and who, his diary, the framed photo of Monica on Carrantouhill after they had reached the top. He studied this. Her funny t-shirt printed with the words: 

“I wish my lawn was an emo so it would cut itself” and a print of a lawnmower next to the words. A jibe no doubt at her brother Matt who considered himself one. Her hair. That was when it was short and he would call her Sinéad, as in Sinéad O’Connor. She used to get grumpy and call him an idiot. He missed her calling him an idiot. In this photo she lay next to the large cross which stands atop that mountain. It was in a daydream like pose as she looked past the camera and out over the summery Irish countryside. She had painted her lips red that day and they stood out pert and marilyn monroe like. Her shiny black hair caught the reflection of the sun. Ivan held the photo to his chest as if it would transfer a piece of her into his heart.

On the 12th of September they caught the man. At the trial that followed, the prosecution made it known that as Monica walked down MacCurtain Street, she was bundled into a car, driven to a car park and subsequently raped and strangled to death. The case was built upon DNA evidence taken from Monica and matched to the defendant. Fibres from Monica’s jumper were also found on the backseat of his car. What infuriated Ivan most was the fact that he was smirking throughout the trial. The judge to Ivan’s disbelief handed down a 12 year sentence. He immediately stood up;

“How can you do this? 12 measly years. He should get fucking life! I swear if you ever come out of jail you’ll be sorry” the killer looked at Ivan and smiled.

“I swear you’ll be sorry!” Ivan said this as he was being led away. He meant every syllable.

12 years passed easily and somewhat pleasantly. By this stage Charles O’Donovan had retired, leaving the practice in the capable hands of Rose. It became a much more successful clinic upon Charles’ leaving. Voted the General Practitioners clinic of the year 3 times in those following years. And as the years progressed. Ivan began to see Rose as more than a friend although he knew he could never tell her. They always took lunch together leaving the practice in the less capable hands of Dr. Bennett and an even less confident Dr. Kehoe. Rose had divorced her husband and her children were now earning a crust. Her dog was the only one left in the house from all those years ago. Ivan had seen a number of women in the intervening years but all in some way or another lacked something. 

Ivan also had a past time of whose nature he could tell no-one. This was the elimination of the killer. He had driven past his house several times He talked to his parents on one occasion purporting to be an old school friend. They had told him of their sons plight, he offered his sympathies. They also tried to explain by the fact he was hooked up with the wrong kind of people. Ivan told them he understood. They asked for his name to which Ivan replied’

“Just tell Mark that an old friend was asking after him”.

He also began to frequent a bar that was a popular haunt of the local prison officers. He even joined the darts club there, having perfected the skill at home first.. He became very friendly with Jim Connolly, the head honcho in the prison officers. They would often drink till the early morning with Jim regaling him with stories from inside the prison walls. He discovered from Jim, that the the killer was being released on the 25th of May of that year. For the week preceding that date, Ivan felt excited. This kind of excitement he hadn’t felt for a long time. Christmas Eve as a child, yes that was the last time he had felt this way. He was noticeably cheerful in the clinic and no-one could put their finger on it as to why this was the case. Rose hypothesised that he was in love, her heart sank.

The day of release finally arrived. He sat in his car within sight of the prison gates. The killers parents were waiting outside the exit turnstiles. At 13 minutes past 2 in the afternoon, he observed the killer exit the prison, embrace his parents and leave in their car. Ivan followed and parked 100 yards from their house. He sat in his car for the entire evening, his eyes fixed upon the front door of number 38. At 11:29 in the evening, the door opened and out stepped the killer. He then proceeded to walk in the direction of Ivan’s car. Ivan jolted and put a newspaper to his face pretending to be reading. There was a tap at the window.

“Roll the fucking window down…”

Ivan then pretending to get a shock by noticing him standing outside, rolled it down and asked:

“Can I help you?”

The Killer somewhat rankled replied:

“I want to know who the fuck you are and what the fuck you’re doing outside my house”

He had grown a moustache since the last time Ivan had seen him. Brown coloured like his hair with little flecks of ginger in it. He had a tatoo of a dragon on his neck.

“I’ll just get out of the car and explain..” Ivan got out.

They now stood facing each other. Ivan was about a foot taller. 

“Well I was simply…” just after finishing the word simply, Ivan punched the killer in his face with all the force he could muster. He dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Ivan then began to kick him in the stomach and then the head. Once unconscious, Ivan opened his boot and lifted the limp body into it. He checked his mirrors and indicated before driving off. The blood was ploughing through his body like a freight train. He felt excited, nervous, scared, delerious, happy. He thought of his college friend Texas MacDonald who told him that the best way to win a fight was act normal and talk normal and then to hit them as hard as you can, preferably in the face. Then you go about punching and kicking them until they say sorry. Texas had often needed people to apologise to him over mocking his name. If he hadn’t been a psychiatrist, he would have been a patient. Now Ivan drove out to the country.

Twenty minutes later he opened the boot. The killer was still unconscious. Ivan tied his hands together with a cable tie and did likewise with his feet. He then took out his spare tyre from the boot well so that he could gain access to his emergency tool kit. He took a pliers and a large wrench from this. This was not how he had planned it to play out. It would have been a much more complex Dumas like case had it gone the way he had foreseen. However it was being done and that was the most important thing.

After disposing of the body at the site, he drove home. He felt relieved and jocund. He parked his car at the back of the apartments, he didn’t know why. There were no blood spatters or other distinguishing marks on the vehicle that he could see. Immediately upon entering his apartment, he accessed the internet and booked 2 tickets to Argentina. Transferred half of his local bank account into his cayman account. This ammounted to some 690,000 euro. After doing this, he ate 2 cornish pasties with baked beans and retired to bed. 

In the morning it was raining, heavily. He texted Rose to meet him at 7:30 in the city centre by Merchants Quay clock. He specified it was an emergency. She agreed to come. The hum of the street cleaning machine made him queasy. Once it passed, he felt better. He stood in the rain with neither umbrella nor hooded coat. The ink in the newspaper he was carrying under his arm ran down his finger tips intermixed with rain. This dripped off his fingers in blackened drops. He saw her from afar, as usual impeccably dressed and carrying a pink umbrella. He crossed the wide street and ran towards her. He stood there in front of her. She looked at him:

“You’re soaking..” she smiled awkwardly.

He then moved his face closer to hers. The noise of the rain changed as he put his head under her umbrella. It went from “pssssssshhhhhhh” as it hit the ground to “pip, pip, pip” as it hit the umbrella. He then pushed his lips towards hers, she reciprocated. Their lips met at precisely 7:29:58. It felt right for both of them. 

He drew back from her:

“Will you go somewhere with me now and never come back.”

“Anywhere” she answered.

By 12 noon they were on their way to South America. Within 2 weeks the police had discovered that Ivan was the killer of the man in the countryside. He was by that stage settling into his ranch with Rose by his side. The clinic closed within the year under the management of Bennett and Kehoe.