The Lost Traveller

by Sheila Connolly

  Peter seemed to relax just a bit. “Ah, now yeh’re makin’ sense. You think they’re camping out or squatting or call it what you will, and you’re wonderin’ if I or any of the Travellers might have seen them around here, or know the good safe places?”

  Maura felt a surge of relief. “Yes! Exactly. And I hope I haven’t offended you by thinking you’d know something about them. I know there are people who think badly of Travellers, but I’m not saying that you or your friends are involved in any sort of crime, or even know about it. I’m sorry—this is all new to me.”

  Peter finally smiled. “If yeh’re trying to offend me, yeh’ve a long ways to go. Yeh’re guessin’ that the two of them are a couple, or going around together, mebbe fer their own protection?”

  “Yes, I think so. Is there a settlement or a camp or something nearby, where they might be?”

  “And all yeh want is to give them a job? One or the both of ’em?”

  “Yes. I need people to work at the pub. Sinéad tells me there aren’t a lot of people looking for jobs around right now. These two might be available—and the guy is very good at serving drinks, from what I saw. That’s all. I don’t want to get anybody in trouble, and if they’re not interested in working for me, that’d be the end of it.”

  “How wouldja square it with the gardaí, if they find out?”

  “Peter, I’ve helped them out before, and they’ve helped me. I trust them, or at least the ones I know best. But I’m not ready to tell them about this—I need to know more before I say anything to anybody.”

  “I doubt it’s so simple as that.” Peter leaned back and looked up at the sky for a few long moments. “I can’t say as I know of a camp right now, but I know others who might. Let me ask around a bit and get back to yeh, all right?”

  “Thank you—that’d be great.”

  “I can’t say as I’ll find ’em, either, but if I do I’ll tell them yeh’re no threat to them.”

  “That’s all I’m asking for. Thanks, Peter. I appreciate your help.”

  “Not a problem. Yeh’re off to Leap now?”

  “Yes. You want a ride? Or does Nan?”

  “I might. I need some nails and other supplies. If it’s no trouble.”

  “Of course it isn’t.”

  “Then I’ll let Nan know where I’m headed. Half a minute.” He stood up, then disappeared into the caravan, while Maura admired the view. There was a trickle of smoke coming out of Bridget’s kitchen. Bridget had no interest in a modern hot pot and still boiled her water on an old stove each day. But why not? It worked for her, and it saved clutter in her small kitchen. She didn’t have time to see Bridget today—and then she realized she hadn’t told Gillian that her sketches had done the trick with the gardaí. She hoped Sean had called her to tell her, because she didn’t have time right now.

  Peter came out again, still alone. “Shall we go?”

  “Sure, I’m ready.” They walked back to Maura’s cottage.

  “Nice place, this,” Peter said. “Did Bridget tell me you’d inherited it?”

  “Yes. Long story, and nothing I ever expected. I never met Old Mick—he’s the one who left it to me—and I haven’t changed much of anything since I moved in. It still doesn’t feel quite real. What’s it like for you, moving all the time?” Maura climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car.

  Peter settled himself in the passenger seat. “I’ve never known any other way of life. And we—by that I mean Nan and the kids—are not alone, nor lonely. We Travellers tend to travel together, and we know others like us wherever the old paths take us. Our extended families are strong, and we stick together. We raise our children to be strong, and fair and honest as well.”

  As Maura navigated the lanes toward Leap, she said, “Why do some people think you’re dishonest and shifty?”

  “They don’t understand our way of life, mostly. To tell the truth, there are those among us who’ve been known to help themselves to things that weren’t theirs. Maybe more than in the general population, like. But we don’t steal—and we don’t kill, if yeh’re wonderin’ that.”

  “I can’t think of any reason why you’d have anything against a guy from Limerick. Are there Travellers near there?”

  “There are, and they’re no more popular there than anywhere else.”

  Maura kept her eyes on the road. “I feel like I should apologize, although I’m not sure for what. There’s nothing like you back in the States, or at least, not in Boston, although maybe I just never noticed. But I have heard that in the cities, there are groups that people call gypsies, and mostly they pick pockets and mug tourists. And there are a lot of homeless on the streets, so the lines are kind of blurry.”

  Peter didn’t say anything, so Maura asked, “Where do you want me to drop you?”

  “Skib’ll be fine—say, at the corner at the Drinagh Road? I’ll find me own way back.”

  “No problem. And thanks for talking with me. I spend so much time working that I don’t know half of what I should about the rest of this part of the world, and that makes me feel stupid.”

  “If yeh don’t mind my sayin’ so, yeh’ve got a good heart. Wantin’ to help those two.”

  “Hey, we’d be helping each other. I need people to work for me, and I’m guessing they need work. And the guy certainly knows how to handle a crowd in a bar.”

  Maura dropped him off at the intersection of the two main roads, then turned toward Leap. Would Peter get the word out? Would it make a difference? She was fast running out of ideas. She’d give Peter some time to ask around, and try to figure out what her next step might be.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The day proved to be the most boring one yet, Maura thought, checking the clock for the seventeenth time since lunch. No one had stopped by bearing important or even trivial news—no sign of Sean or Seamus or anyone else. She wondered if the slow business was due to something other than finding what Sergeant Ryan believed to be Paddy Creegan’s body next to the pub. From all she’d read or been told, West Cork was a hot area for both celebrities and tourists—so where were they? Maybe she should do a tour of local pubs, to see how well-filled they were and how they were attracting business these days. Or maybe it was her engaging personality—that thought made her snort—that was driving them away.

  Then she was struck by a new thought. Maybe she and the rest of the local population hadn’t known who the dead man was—but maybe his pals in Limerick (if Conor Ryan had it right) did, and they were sniffing around the area themselves. She’s have to find out just how important Paddy was to them, or if he was no more than a junior member of the gang who had somehow messed up and gotten himself killed. The rest of the gang wasn’t about to ride in and avenge his death, were they? She hadn’t seen many unfamiliar faces on the streets of Leap recently, and certainly no one who looked like a city gang member.

  “Somethin’ yeh ate?” Mick said. He had come up behind her without her hearing, and his questions startled her.

  “Huh?”

  “Yeh’ve a sour expression on yer face.”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that. I’m just trying to figure out where all the customers are.”

  “Business’ll pick up soon enough,” he said.

  “And how do you know that?” Maura demanded, turning to face him.

  “It always has.”

  “But we haven’t always had a body in the back yard,” Maura countered.

  “That’s true enough,” Mick said, then turned and started polishing already-shining glasses. Maura debated about swatting him but decided it wouldn’t help anything. It wouldn’t even make her feel better.

  Rose came in about noon. “Sorry, sorry,” she said breathlessly. “After class, Sinéad asked if I could help out with lunch prep, since Sophie didn’t come in today.”

  One more complication. “Do you think she’s gone for good?”

  Rose shrugged. “I don’t know her well, so I can’t say. But Sinéad said she’s a
lways been on time before. Maybe Sophie thinks we’ve turned her in to the gardaí. Yeh didn’t say anythin’ more to Sean, didja?”

  “No, I haven’t seen or talked to him since we met with him. Look, Rose, you’ve lived around here all your life. Do you have any idea where people go to hide out? Seen any strangers in unexpected places?”

  “That I have not. Yeh’re thinkin’ about Sophie and Niall? No one’s ever really talked about the illegals, but I’d say it’s because there’ve never been many, not that people are lookin’ the other way. The odd man who passed out on his way home, or the young tourist who didn’t bother to book a room anywhere—you’d see them sleepin’ in a field now and then. But now there’s so much goin’ on with politics and such in so many places, and you know well how easy it is to land in a quiet cove, if yeh can find yerself a boat to bring yeh across. So it might be there’s more than there was.”

  “But do people land here and keep going, or do they settle in and look for work here? Try to fit in?”

  Rose shrugged. “Maura, if I don’t know if they’re here, I can’t tell yeh what they’re doin’, now, can I? I’m not hiding anythin’—I simply don’t know.”

  “I’m sorry—I’m not accusing you of anything. Or Sinéad. And we aren’t even sure if the dead man was involved in anything like smuggling people in—we could be completely wrong about him too. And Mick hasn’t been any help either.”

  “Why could he? He spends most of his time here or at his grannie’s. Or at yer place.” Rose flashed a brief smile.

  Maura still wasn’t comfortable with everybody knowing what felt like her private business, like how often Mick stayed overnight. But as he’d reminded her, Rose was family in a way, and a smart girl as well. “There’s a family of Travellers camped out in Bridget’s field—they’ve been there a few days.”

  “They come round every year,” Rose said.

  “That’s what they told me. I asked if maybe they knew where people could camp out.”

  “They might not be willin’ to share that information—they keep to themselves.”

  “I know. It’s a long shot, but I keep feeling I have to do something to get business back on track. I’m hoping that I can prove that the dead man has nothing to do with us.”

  “People will forget—give ’em time,” Mick said. Apparently he’d been listening all along.

  “Maybe,” Maura muttered. She decided to talk with Old Billy, who never seemed to mind if business was busy or slow. She walked over to the fireplace and dropped into the old chair next to his. “Anything new with you, Billy?”

  “Ah, Maura, me days don’t change very much, from one to the next. So yeh’re stuck on findin’ out about yer dead man?”

  “He’s not mine!” Maura snapped, and then added quickly, “Sorry—I didn’t mean to bite your head off. We—and the gardaí—think they might know who he is, but that doesn’t explain why he was here and why somebody killed him. What can you tell me about Limerick? I’ve never been near there.”

  “It’d be the third-largest city in the country, and one of the worst fer crime. Mostly the lads from up there don’t come down here and bother us—there’s not enough profit in it fer them. Which is not to say they aren’t after looking fer new opportunities.”

  Maura laughed briefly. “Well, I don’t see many here. And Sean didn’t seem to think there was much to worry about in Skibbereen.” She glanced quickly around the nearly empty room, then leaned closer to Billy. “We were wondering if he might be smuggling immigrants into the country. Have you ever heard anything like that?”

  Billy smiled to himself. “Ah, Maura, there was many years when people were more eager to leave than to sneak in. Mebbe that’s changed, but I haven’t been going around as much as I used to, so I could’ve missed it. The world’s a different place now. Smaller in some ways, but bigger too. But you’d know yerself—a foreigner would stand out around here, and I’m not talkin’ about tourists. He’d be more like to travel to one of the cities, not stay in the country. He’d fit in better.”

  “Makes sense. So if somebody sneaked in, or was helped to, he’d just pass through and keep going?”

  “If he looked—or sounded—out of place. I don’t mean to say that we don’t trust strangers, only that we’d remember them.”

  “And it’d be hard for them to hide or find work. Do a lot of farms need extra hands this time of year?”

  “They might do. In the past, there were always enough sons in a family to take care of the farm, but now families are smaller, and the lads may be lookin’ fer somethin’ more than life tendin’ to the cows. So it could be that a farmer would welcome some help, if only fer the summer, and wouldn’t ask too many questions.”

  “That makes sense,” Maura said. A lot of things seemed to be changing fast in Ireland these days, even in the short time she’d been here. Wars and conflicts often drove innocent people out of their homes, and no doubt Ireland looked like a safe, peaceful place to head for. But that offered an opportunity for illegal business, getting them into the country—for a fee. She herself had come in legally, with all her papers in order. But what about the others? What documents did they need to have to come in legally, or how could they get them if they arrived under the radar? What were the penalties if they were caught? That was a question for Sean.

  Maura stood up. “Thanks, Billy. I don’t always understand how things work around here, but I’m learning, and you’re a big help. You need another pint yet?”

  “I’m fine fer now, but yeh can ask me again in a bit.”

  It was a couple of hours shy of closing time when Mick told Maura, “Go on home—there’s little happenin’ here.”

  “But I feel guilty doing that. It’s my pub, right? If anyone should be here, it’s me.”

  “I think Rose and I can manage. If yeh want, yeh can take the early shift tomorrow.”

  “Fine. See you then.”

  Outside it was still barely light. Near the summer solstice, she’d been told—something that nobody in Boston had seemed to care about. Maybe a few Druids, but she couldn’t swear to it. There didn’t seem to be any weird ceremonies around Leap, so the only clue was the length of the days. Past nine o’clock and it was still light.

  She drove back to her cottage, enjoying the weirdness of the late light, but when she approached the building, she saw someone leaning against her front door. It was only when she got fairly close that she recognized him as Peter. What did he want with her? Did he have news?

  She parked, got out, and walked toward the door. “Hey, Peter. What’s up?”

  “I’ve found the people you were lookin’ fer.”

  “You mean Sophie? And the guy? That’s great. Where are they?”

  “Right now they’re inside yer cottage.”

  It took Maura a moment to process that. “What? Wait—didn’t I lock that door?”

  “You did. But a child could open it. I thought it might be best to keep the two of ’em out of sight until you could hear their story, and then you can decide amongst yerselves what to do.”

  “Oh. Well, okay, I guess that makes sense.” She was miffed that Peter had gotten in so easily, but no doubt he was right, and her lock was more for psychological purposes than any kind of security. But instead Peter had brought in people and parked them in her house. “So let’s go talk to them. You coming?”

  “If yeh want. I’ll let them tell yeh their story—I’ve nothin’ to do with it.”

  Well, it was her home, so she should take charge. She pushed past Peter and opened the door. Inside, Sophie and the guy she recognized as Bartender Niall were sitting stiffly at her table, but they jumped up as soon as the door opened.

  “Hi, Sophie. Hello again, Niall.” Maura nodded toward the man. “Good to see you.”

  Sophie spoke quickly. “Yeh might have got the wrong idea, Maura—Niall’s my brother.”

  “Ah.” A new and interesting fact. “Niall, I recognize you from the pub the other night—t
hanks for stepping in.”

  “Happy to help,” Niall mumbled.

  They both looked wary. Maura went on, “Look, you know I own the pub in Leap. I talked with Sophie yesterday and told her why I was looking for you, Niall. I don’t work for the gardaí but I know some of them, and I trust them to listen and be fair. So I’m not going to turn you in or report you or anything like that if you’re not quite legal here. But I’ve got to figure you’re in some kind of trouble, or you wouldn’t be hiding. And I’m guessing it’s got to do with the dead man that somebody dumped next to my pub. Am I right?”

  Niall and Sophie exchanged a glance, then both nodded, looking miserable.

  “Okay, who’s going to tell the story? But first, you want something to eat? Drink? I don’t have a lot, but you’re welcome to it. Tea, maybe?” She thought maybe doing something so ordinary might help them to settle down and make them more willing to talk.

  “That’d be grand,” Sophie said.

  “Okay, let me put the kettle on.” Maura turned her back on all of them and went over to the stove, where she went through the familiar ritual of tea-making. None of the others spoke, and she began to feel like she was in some sort of weird avant-garde play—one without words. She tried to sort out what questions she needed to ask, fast, before they disappeared again.

  When she’d assembled everything, she put the pot, cups, milk, sugar, and spoons on the table, then took a seat at the head of the table. “Okay, who wants to start?”

  She was surprised when Peter spoke first. “Maura, Bridget said you could be trusted, and I have faith in yeh. Bridget’s always done right by me and my family. She doesn’t know about these two yet, though. Nor does anyone else. I respect the secrets of others. If they want me to leave, I’ll go.”

  Sophie reached out a hand. “Peter, no. Please stay. It’s time we got all this out into the open. We can’t keep on hiding forever.”