“Only I read about it on some law enforcement news thingy. I saw Long Island, like, and wondered if it was anything to do with you.”
I take another breath, feel him hearing it. “Yeah. That was a crazy one. How did you and Laura meet, again?”
He glances over. “Ah, it was a couple years after … well, after you left, after everything. You might remember I always liked to keep my flat nice. I went along to this decorator’s showhouse and there was a room that I loved. I just walked in and I thought to myself, I’d like to live here. A few months later, I started chatting to her at the pub, we started talking about our jobs, she said she was an interior designer and, trying to impress her, I told her all about the showhouse and the room I loved.”
I interrupt him. “And she’d done the room?”
“Ah, you bollixed my story. That’s right. That was it, but. I knew that night I was going to marry her. I didn’t tell her for a couple days.” He winks at me. “But I knew that night. Love at first sight, like.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me how my love life is going, Roly?” I grin at him from my reclining position.
“Since you bring it up, how’s your love life going?”
“It isn’t,” I say. “Not so’s you’d notice.”
“No? You’re not a whaddayacallit, cougar?”
I laugh. “I don’t think so. The only guy I’ve dated seriously since the divorce was like fifteen years older than me.”
“Really? An oul’ fella?”
“He wasn’t that old. I was thirty-five then. He was fifty.”
“Sure, I’ll be fifty in a few years,” he says soberly. “There hasn’t been anyone since then?”
“No,” I say. “Not really. It’s sad, isn’t it?”
“Why’d you get divorced? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“We got married because I was pregnant. It was okay for a bit, but … there wasn’t enough there to go the distance.” It’s the best way I can think to say it, but it doesn’t quite capture the sadness of my last couple of years with Brian. “It’s actually so much better now. We get along pretty well. Lilly’s doing great.”
Our conversation slows and I fall asleep for a bit. When I sit up we’re already well south of Dublin, into green fields and sheep. I feel something wash over me, despite everything. Awe. It’s so beautiful here, it fills me up with a kind of glorious recognition. Ireland.
“Good kip?”
“Mmmm.” I take a long sip of the coffee Roly got me, rub my eyes and fix my seat.
“Okay,” I tell him. “I’m awake now. What can you tell me about Niamh Horrigan without putting yourself in the shit?”
He looks over at me and winks. “The family rang up the local lads in Galway Monday morning. Niamh Horrigan, age twenty-five. She’s a teacher at a school there. She had planned to walk part of the Wicklow Way at the weekend. She was staying at the youth hostel in Glendalough, and on Saturday morning she woke up and left early. They think she was going to try to walk to Glenmalure as she was booked at the hostel there for Saturday night. Then she was to take the bus from Roundwood back home. Her family expected her home Sunday evening, started ringing her mobile. She didn’t answer. When she wasn’t home by Monday morning, they got the Guards involved.”
“Phone?” I ask.
“It’s not pinging, wherever it is. Could be the battery died, could be someone switched it off. You know yourself. Anyway, so, they were out looking for her, with the dogs, and they found the scarf. I’ll show you on the map when we get there. It’s fairly far away from where you found the necklace, up in the trees. As I told you, one of the lads remembered the description and they rang me up. Techs started excavating the site yesterday.” I try to figure out what he’s not saying. My instinct tells me that Roly’s urgency yesterday means there’s something else.
“Bad luck about the phone. Anything else? Is the bed-and-breakfast still there?”
“Your woman’s not running it as one anymore, but the local lads made sure Niamh hadn’t been there. I’ve a bad feeling, D’arcy. As for the excavation around where they found the scarf, it may be a few days. They have to do it very carefully. If there are remains, they don’t want to disturb the evidence. Ah, you know all that shite.”
I look out the window for a long moment. “Remind me about McKenny and Talbot.”
“All right. This has all been in the papers. My team had taken a look at the cases a couple years ago, even recommended to the local lads they interview some witnesses again. But there wasn’t really anything to go on. Teresa McKenny, twenty-two when she disappeared while walking from Aughrim to her job at the golf course in Macreddin Village in June of 1998. Tiny little places, so they are. Normally her brother drove her but his car was knackered and so she set off walking. She never made it. Two weeks to the day after she was last seen, her body was found by a farmer in a streambed in some foothills about fifteen kilometers away. She’d only been dead a day, from blunt force trauma to her skull. She’d been raped. Repeatedly. But the fella who did it must have used a johnny. Condom. There was nothing for the techs to look at. The stream was full from recent rain and washed away any trace evidence.
“Then June Talbot in 2006. She was English, thirty when she disappeared. She’d been over here for a few years, living with her Irish boyfriend in Cork and working as an early childhood teacher at a crèche in Frankfield. Her friends said the relationship wasn’t going too well. Maybe she had a fella on the side, but no one knew or would say for sure. She went on a bit of a walkabout, just to think things over. Boyfriend swore he didn’t know she wasn’t planning on coming home, but she checked herself into a guesthouse near Baltinglass for a couple of nights and told the woman who owned the guesthouse that she was going walking at Baltinglass Abbey.
“It took them a while to figure out she was actually missing, but two weeks after the last time she was seen, her body was found in the river Slaney by a woman walking her dog. Same details as McKenny. Blunt force trauma, sexual assault, no evidence to speak of. They looked at the boyfriend but he was well alibied and … that was it. As you know, since McKenny went missing in 1998 we’ve considered your … Erin’s case a possible link with them, but the fact that her body was never found … Maybe now we’ll have something. I’m awfully sorry to get you over here under these circumstances, D’arcy.”
I push the emotion down. Not now. “I know. Tell me more about Niamh Horrigan.”
“Lovely girl, everyone adored her. Excellent teacher, nice to her granny. Wasn’t seeing any particular fella but she wasn’t against the odd shag now and again, I’d say. That’s the feeling I get. They’re looking there, of course. She was an experienced mountaineer and hillwalker. One of her friends said she could take care of herself, had in fact once fought off a pervert when she was walking in Killarney. We’ll get some more about that now. But that’s it. Nothing to suggest she was going to take off.” He looks over at me. “She bred Angora rabbits.”
“Rabbits?”
“Rabbits.”
“She went missing Saturday?”
“Yeah.” Today’s Thursday. Five days.
We drive in silence. The landscape is familiar but new, too, greener and fresher and wetter than I remember.
“Ah, it’s a lovely day now,” Roly says.
It is. The hills are purple and green, bright yellow gorse blooming all along the road. I open my window and breathe in the cool, fragrant air.
We’re in Laragh by eleven and Roly turns left and then hangs right to stay on the old Military Road.
“It hasn’t changed a bit,” I say as we climb past little cottages and fields of white sheep, then start down the other side into the Glenmalure Valley.
“Some parts of Wicklow have,” he says. “But you’re right. It’s a bit remote for commuting, I suppose. The trees have probably grown up.” The plantations on either side of the road seem to have expanded. The hillsides are greeny black with conifers.
They’ve set up
a staging area in a little parking area and clearing off the old Military Road. I can see the uniformed guards moving around in their reflective vests and the white vans that likely belong to the crime scene processors. “It’s Coillte property,” Roly says. Queel-cha. “The state forestry service. There’s a track that goes up through the forest not far from where the scarf was found but they’ll still be walking for a bit.”
The detective in me recoils at the task they’ve got up here. From an evidence preservation standpoint, this is a nightmare. The wind, the weather, the inaccessibility. They may have to come in with helicopters if they find anything, depending on where they find it.
I walk back toward the road, away from the marked cars and crime scene vans, and stand there for a moment looking back across the valley. In my memories of this place, the hills are socked in, obscured by clouds, the air cold and heavy with rain. But today the sun is shining over the valley, the greens are brilliantly green, the purply browns rich and dark. It’s beautiful and wild. The wind moves across the near-distant mountains. I think about the search for Niamh Horrigan. The search for Erin. It seems impossible you could find one woman in all this vastness.
Tell us, Erin. Tell us who. But the only sound is the wind through the trees. The long sweep of golden grass by the road, edged by the rows of conifers, the bright blue sky and smudgy clouds, everything is rich and strong and brilliant.
Ireland.
When Roly comes back, we stand there letting the sun warm our faces for a few minutes, and then we drive down to the crossroads.
7
THURSDAY, MAY 26,
2016
I remember the long, whitewashed hotel from before. It’s close to the road, making its stand in the landscape. A few people are clustered around the door, and one of them, a big guy with a ponytail, calls out, “Detective Byrne!” Roly waves but ignores him and mutters, “Fuckin’ reporters.” The pub is exactly the same, warm and low-ceilinged, with lots of wood and stone and knickknacks on the walls.
The waitress takes our drink order and leaves us with menus. She’s young, too young to be the girl I remember. They’re playing a CD of traditional music, instrumental only, “Caledonia,” then “Skibbereen,” then “The Fields of Athenry.”
“I’m glad they haven’t changed it,” I say. “I read an article about how all these Irish pubs are getting turned into fancy wine bars and bistros.”
“Well, you know some of those old places could use a bit of updating,” Roly says. “Better décor and that.”
“I think they should keep them just the same. I love this kind of thing.” I breathe in the peaty, smoky air, the delicious must of old pubs.
“Ah sure, Americans like all that old Ireland shite. I have a theory about it. Do you want to hear it?”
“I have a feeling I’m going to whether I want to or not.”
“You want Ireland to stay the way it was so you can come over here and feel good that your piss-poor ancestors got out. You can indulge in a wee bit o’ nostalgia for the mother country and then go home to your high-quality Italian marble countertops.”
I burst out laughing. “You may have something there, Roly. But truthfully, I don’t really like Italian marble. When I redid my kitchen I used wood.”
“Ah, for your piss-poor ancestors, I bet.”
I order leek and potato soup with a piece of brown bread and a pint of Guinness. Roly orders a half pint of Heineken and a ham sandwich. There’s a nice wave of heat coming from the fireplace against the wall behind us. As I take my first sip of the Guinness, I sigh happily. “Why you drink that yellow crap when you have the best beer in the world, I’ll never know,” I tell him.
“Well, that’s why you Americans are all so overweight,” he says seriously. “Not you, like, but I hear it’s a public health epidemic over there. Myself, see, I like to watch the figure.” He pats his middle.
The soup is good, thick and a little sandy, with a strong taste of leeks and butter. I spread Kerrygold on my bread and dip the bread into the soup. Ahhh.
“All right,” I say, once we’ve both finished eating. I can feel the emotion that started welling up at the scene starting to build again. I can push it down by doing my job. “I’m okay. I really am. What can you tell me about the review of Erin’s case?”
“You know yourself, D’arcy, not a lot. The updates I’ve given you and your uncle over the years, I can go over those with you. As I said, I’ll bring you in tomorrow and they can ask you some questions about Erin, about her mind-set and that. But I’ve to take care.”
I wait a second, figuring out how to come at this. “Didn’t you tell us at one point that you did some interviews a few years ago, someone who thought he had seen Erin at the bus station?”
“Yeah, there was a fella who rang us after RTÉ ran a special about cold cases. He said he wasn’t sure, but he thought he remembered seeing someone who looked like Erin at Busáras on the eighteenth, the Saturday of that weekend after she went missing. He was taking the bus home to Galway for the weekend and he noticed her, thought she was nice-looking, etc. But he couldn’t be sure.”
“I imagine there have been reported sightings?”
“Sure, a good few over the years. They usually spike after RTÉ or one of the UK stations do something on outstanding missing persons cases. Nothing that’s amounted to anything, though.”
“Can you give me anything on Niall Deasey? He show up on your radar at all over the years?”
Roly sits back in his seat. I can see him thinking, sorting through what’s public information and what’s not. I’d do the same, but right now my job is to get him to tell me more than he wants to, and it makes me feel guilty all of a sudden, that I’m not on Roly’s side.
“Niall Deasey has kept his nose clean,” Roly says. “Now, that’s not to say I haven’t heard … rumors. My pals on the drugs squad mostly. But nothing that we could use. As you know, he moved to London in the late nineties. So he was out of the country when June Talbot went missing. His alibis checked out. He returned three years ago and he’s kept his head down.”
“Anyone else who wasn’t one of the original persons of interest?”
He thinks for a minute. “Few fellas with sex charges who lived on Gordon Street or nearby, a few tips called in. That’s all I can tell you.” Roly takes a long sip of his lager and pushes his chair back. “Nothing good.”
We’re finishing our food when the waitress looks up suddenly, caution on her face, and Roly and I follow her gaze.
One of the uniformed gardaí from the site is standing in the door, and she crosses the room and gestures for Roly to stand up. I can see the reporters behind her, trying to sniff out why she’s here.
“We tried to ring you on your mobile,” she says. “But you must have the ringer off.” Roly scrambles in his coat pocket as she looks at me and leans in to whisper something to him. She doesn’t keep her voice low enough. I hear her say, “They found something.”
My stomach tightens. This is it. I think of Uncle Danny first.
I have some news, Uncle Danny. I have something to tell you. Are you sitting down?
“Lads wanted you to know,” she says, just loud enough for me to hear. “They’ve got a human skull. And that’s not all. Whoever dug the grave and buried her threw his spade in after him.”
* * *
We spend a couple of hours back at the site. The skull and shovel—spade—are four feet under, not far from where they found the scarf. Roly goes up with the techs and I wait in the car. When he comes back he tells me they’re doing another large-scale search for Niamh Horrigan tomorrow. The family will be coming back from Galway. Everyone’s worried about coordination, jurisdiction. Roly, who they know is working the cold cases, is putting everyone on edge, now that they’ve found the remains.
“What do you want to do?” Roly asks me once we’re back in the car. “I can drop you at the hotel. I can take you home to Laura. She’d love to make you a cup of tea and some toas
t and put you right. Sure, I don’t like thinking of you in a hotel room.”
I watch the orange vests, still moving up in the hills.
I imagine the excavation site suddenly, a dark hole, up among the trees. I push it away but something else comes to me, unbidden—Erin’s face, alive, laughing, her blue eyes fixed on me, her brown curls falling across her face, running away from me on a beach. Sun on the water. The smell of suntan lotion and salt. Erin’s nose peeling from her sunburn. I push that away, too.
I look over at Roly. “I know you have to be careful, Roly. I know you can’t tell me everything. But I want to help you work this case, however I can. I know things about Erin no one else knows. I was here. I have a sense of her. I found the necklace.”
I can see him getting ready to protest, to tell me that there are procedures and rules and protocols for a reason, that you have to keep a line between the family and the investigation, that you have to keep details back from the public.
I meet his eyes and stare him down. “If I can help you find the fucker who killed Erin, they might be able to find Niamh Horrigan before he kills her. I want to help you work this case, Roly. I want to do whatever I can.”
8
FRIDAY, MAY 27,
2016
I wake up at five a.m. in the hotel, disoriented, jet-lagged, a caffeine headache starting. Friday morning. I’m longing for Lilly. It’s been years since she snuck into bed with me in the morning, curling her little warm body against mine, tangling her fingers in my hair. It was a habit she got into after Brian moved out and she kept it up until she was ten or eleven. I can distinctly remember a morning when she came in and lay down next to me but didn’t snuggle herself around me.
I’m grieving for that Lilly now, wishing I could go back and have that small body next to mine one more time.
It’s what people say when someone dies: “I’d kill for one more minute with him.” I remember feeling that way about my mother after she died. Days after that last moment of stillness, it hit me that I’d never feel her hand on my head ever again. And because I’ve been thinking nonstop of Erin, I remember the feeling of her hand in mine. Let’s go, Maggie. Let’s run!
The Mountains Wild Page 5