Free Heart Stopper by R J Samuel Page A

the deck would provide answers.
    ∞
     
    The watery sunlight glowed green through the tinted glass of the clinic walls, the cedar wood frame of the building casting long thin shadows on the wood floors of the hallway as she clicked her way to the reception area. The car park was deserted apart from her sky blue Volkswagen Beetle, a car that she had finally purchased a month ago after weeks of deliberation. Cars in Ireland were so expensive, even secondhand ones, that she’d questioned the luxury, but had impulsively taken on the car, and the loan. The finance company were happy to give her the loan based on her relatively well-paid job, relative to the many people that were now jobless in the dying screams of the Celtic Tiger. Trading in her much-used and much-loved 10-year-old car had been a wrench, but she needed something reliable. She was good at DIY, but not with cars.
    She unlocked the car as she approached it and was reaching for the handle when she felt it. A shiver of dread, a feeling of being watched. She looked around the car park. She couldn’t see anyone. She looked back at the clinic. It squatted in the dusk, no signs of movement within its bowels. The car park was edged by tall leafy trees on one side and the Corrib River on the other. The river flowed through the middle of Galway from its source at Lake Corrib and the campus of the university lined it on its course into Galway. The clinic had been built on private land further along the river from the grounds of the university, near the college’s shiny new research facilities. The new building that had been built to hold the Research Company was on the same site, separated by part of the car park, but it wasn’t visible from the clinic. Daniel had obtained funding from the Irish government to pad out the considerable amount he and his grandfather had privately invested in the research company and the clinic. Both he and the government had been eager to share in the millions of euro that would flow from a successful product in the medical devices field and both had been delighted with the results.
    Priya climbed into her car, the keys slipping through her fingers as she tried to get them into the ignition. She flipped the manual locking for the doors and grabbed a look at the backseat and the space behind her seat. Nothing there. This is crazy . She tried to calm her breathing and searched for the keys at her feet. The car started on the first attempt and she sighed with relief. Pulling out of the car park, she noticed a dark car moving up behind her in her rear view mirror. It must have been parked around the side of the clinic under the shade of the trees.
    She turned right, crossing traffic stopped at the red lights, gestured through by the tired wave of a Galway commuter. The traffic was not as heavy at this time as it would have been a few hours earlier when it was usually backed up on the many roundabouts clotting the arteries supplying Galway. The city council was going to replace these roundabouts, themselves constructed at great expense and disturbance, with pedestrian crossings. Crossings that were going to cost another small fortune and cause even more chaos. Right now, she was grateful for the other cars on the road. She looked in the rear view mirror; the dark car had been let through the same gap and was behind her, but not close enough for her to clearly see the single occupant.
    Priya took the circuitous route home and the dark car was behind her the whole way. She pulled into the narrow entrance to her house, but didn’t get out of her car. She sat there looking in the rear view mirror, heart beating a little faster than normal, her stomach feeling queasy. He had been a hundred yards behind her, where was he ? Just as she was about to get out she saw the car. It slowed down almost imperceptibly as the driver saw her car and then sped up to pass her house. Damn , she should have gotten out; she would have had a better look at him .
    She