The Lost Traveller

by Sheila Connolly

  Niall spoke up then, and he sounded angry. “And who’s to say we can’t? Nothin’s holding us here.”

  “Apart from the fact that we have no money?” Sophie shot back. “And no plan, and nowhere to go? We came back to Ireland to sort things out, not to make things worse.”

  “And look how well that’s worked out,” Niall shot back.

  “That was not our doing!” Sophie protested. “Or at least, nothing we asked for.”

  Maura slapped her hand on the table to get their attention. “Hey, you two, why don’t you stop arguing and start at the beginning? I haven’t been in Ireland very long, but I can tell your accent is Irish, but maybe with something added? Are you Irish?”

  Niall looked at Sophie, and nodded to her to go on.

  “We are. Or at least, we were born here.” Sophie stopped.

  At this rate, this discussion was going to take all night. “Are you here legally?” Maura prompted.

  “Not exactly,” Sophie said, then stopped again.

  Niall jumped in. “We are by birth Irish citizens. But our parents took us abroad when we were very young, and we never came home. For the past several years, we all lived together in Syria. Our father taught English at a small school in a rural area, and nobody bothered him. Our mother simply followed him, dragging us along.”

  “Why there?” Maura asked. “Isn’t there a war going on?”

  “There is, but we were there well before that started. When it all began, our father believed that the conflict would be resolved quickly. He was wrong. But he was there legally, with all the appropriate papers.”

  “Couldn’t you have gotten out earlier?”

  “We might have done, but it was difficult. And our father held on to the belief that things would get better. And paid the price.”

  “What happened?” Maura asked.

  “One of the many local groups attacked the village where we were living—it’s hard to say which group. The small house we lived in was torched, and our parents were killed in the fire. Everything we owned was burnt, including our documents. We had no way to prove who we were, and we didn’t know who to trust, and that included the so-called authorities. So we started looking for ways to get out of the country. We thought coming to Ireland would make it easier to replace our documents, and we could sort things out when we were here, but we’ve had little luck so far. And that was before … the death.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “A few months. We took what little money we had, and we begged from the friends who were still talking to us, and then we headed toward the coast. And that’s where we met Paddy Creegan.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “How did you find him?” Maura asked.

  “We got to the nearest port and started asking around. Carefully, you know? We’re not stupid. When we found Paddy, he wanted Sophie.”

  “For the obvious reason?” Maura asked.

  Niall looked disgusted. “Yeah. He wanted to sell her, uh, favors. We led him on a bit, and said if she went with him, I did too. He wouldn’t charge for her passage, since he figgered he could make money off her, but I paid my way. And after that I wouldn’t let her out of my sight. Pissed him off, all right.”

  “He had a boat?”

  Niall shook his head. “He knew a man who had a boat. They were mates, and it looked like they’d worked together before. And there were other girls on that boat.”

  “Where did he take you?”

  “Limerick.”

  That matched Sergeant Ryan’s suspicions. “There’s a port in Limerick?”

  “Yeh haven’t been here long, have yeh? There is—a small one on the river. Good place if yeh want to keep yer business quiet.”

  “So you arrived in Limerick with this Paddy. What happened?”

  “We gave him the slip when we got off the boat,” Niall told Maura, not without pride.

  “After you knocked him down and bloodied his nose,” Sophie protested. She turned to Maura. “He didn’t know that we knew our way around here. So we just fled, and made our way here.”

  “Why here? You have family here?”

  Sophie shook her head. “No, we’ve no family anywhere. But it was near, and we were guessin’ that Paddy Creegan wouldn’t be lookin’ fer us in the country—he figgered that we’d head for Cork or Dublin.”

  “How’d you get by?”

  “A bit of farm work and the like,” Niall said. “Day jobs. We tried to stay out of sight as much as we could.”

  “Until you got to Skibbereen. Why’d you stop?”

  “We were tired and dirty and we needed a bit of a rest,” Sophie said. “If I was goin’ to find a job, I had to look clean, at least. I was lucky to find a place at Sinéad’s café—someone had left only the day before. I told her I was visitin’ fer the summer but my cash was low.”

  “So she didn’t know about Niall?”

  “Not by name, nor that he was connected with me. She paid the goin’ rate, and she let me sit in on her classes. That was all a coupla months ago.”

  “Where were you staying?”

  Niall took up the story. “We found a group of people … like us,” he said carefully. “They’d found an old house that still had runnin’ water from a well, but we didn’t dare cook for fear that someone would notice the smoke. But it was summer, right? Didn’t matter much, and Sophie brought us some of the food that was left over at the cafe.”

  “How many more of you were there?” Maura asked. When she saw the distrust on their faces, she added quickly. “I told you, I’m not working for anyone else. I just wanted to know how big a group there was. Three? Ten?”

  “More like ten, I’d say, but people came and went. We stayed the longest of any of ’em.”

  Maura had never noticed a group of ten people skulking around in this general area, but she did know there were plenty of abandoned houses down dead-end lanes. Maura looked at the time and saw it was getting late—and her guests, if she could call them that, looked exhausted. “Look, I know there’s a lot more to tell, but you two look wiped out. I’ve got a spare room and a couch—why don’t you stay here tonight and we can pick this up in the morning?”

  Niall and Sophie exchanged glances, and Sophie won the silent battle. “That’s kind of yeh, Maura. If it’s no trouble. And I’d kill fer a bath.” She realized what she had said and put her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

  “Yeh won’t turn us in?” Niall demanded.

  “I’ve said I won’t, haven’t I? And so far I don’t know that you’ve done anything wrong except enter the country illegally, but you tell me you have the legal right to be here, and I believe you. So let’s leave it at that. I won’t tell anyone you’re here, and I’ll feed you breakfast, and you can tell me the rest tomorrow. But early, since I have to be at the pub by ten. You think you’ll be going back to your job at Sinéad’s, Sophie?”

  “I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I didn’t go in this mornin’, which wasn’t fair to her, after she’d been so kind.”

  “We can sort it out in the morning. I think she’d understand.”

  After doling out sheets and towels from her pitiful supply, Maura followed Peter outside. “You were quiet in there,” she said.

  “Do yeh know what yeh’re lettin’ yerself in for?” he asked in a low voice.

  “No, of course I don’t. But what I said was true: I don’t know of any crime they’ve committed, except for sneaking into Ireland. I’m sure there’s a lot more to the story, and we haven’t even gotten to what happened to Paddy Creegan, but I was worried that they’d clam up or just leave if I pushed it. You think I should be handling this differently? I won’t tell anyone that you found them and brought them to me, in case anybody asks. I’d ask you where they were, but I probably wouldn’t know what land or house you were talking about. So I guess sometimes being ignorant helps.”

  “This is dangerous business, Maura. I know yeh think it’s safe here, but
if the Creegan man was involved here, there’s others that may follow him. You don’t take the Limerick gangs lightly.”

  “Why would they come chasing after Niall or Sophie? Maura asked. “So what if one girl gets away from him? There are plenty of others, aren’t there?”

  “Maybe this one was special to this Paddy. Maybe it was his first run, and he looked like a fool to his mates for letting her get away from him. Or maybe he was related to someone important—they take family seriously. I can’t tell yeh what the answer is—most Travellers I know steer clear of drugs and trafficking and all that. We may not be completely honest, but we’re not involved in the really bad stuff. And Limerick’s not a good place.”

  She seemed to be getting in deeper and deeper without even knowing it. “Thank you for the warning, Peter. Will you and the rest be moving on soon?”

  “It’s time. Yeh’re worried the gardaí will come lookin’ fer us?”

  “No, I hadn’t thought of that. And you’re not involved in this other thing, and I can tell them that with a straight face.”

  “And they’ll believe yeh?”

  “I’ve earned that much from them. Will you be back next year?”

  Peter smiled. “Will yeh be here next year?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then I hope I’ll be seein’ yeh then. Good-night.” He turned and vanished into the dark.

  Maura went back inside. She could hear splashing from her bathroom, so she retreated up the stairs to her bedroom, wondering what she’d find in the morning.

  * * *

  She heard the sound of movement in the kitchen below her bedroom before she opened her eyes. After a brief spurt of panic, she remembered the night before. It had to be Sophie, although for all she knew Niall was as good a cook. At least one of them hadn’t disappeared during the night, leaving things as unsettled as they had been before she found them. Her clock read seven o’clock—plenty of time yet to hash out the rest of the Paddy Creegan story. She hauled herself out of bed, pulled on some clothes, and went down the stairs.

  Sophie heard her first, and turned to smile at her. “Good mornin’. Yeh weren’t kidding when you said you had little food here. How do yeh keep yerself alive?”

  “Most people who visit me here ask the same question, but I seem to have survived for a year. Of course, mostly I eat lunch and supper at the pub. Your brother awake?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. He thinks he needs to look out fer me, so it’s harder for him to get to sleep, and I’d like to let him sleep in this mornin’. Coffee?”

  “Please.” Maura sat down, and Sophie presented her with a full mug. “Listen, Sophie, are there some things you don’t want to talk about in front of your brother?”

  “Yeh mean the sex stuff? He knows what goes on, but the two of us haven’t talked about it. Creegan wanted me to use me for, well, you know. Niall stayed close and kept me safe. But Creegan wasn’t going to wait forever. I was worth money to him, and he figgered I owed him.”

  “And it was worth it to you to risk … all that, just to get back here?” Maura asked.

  Sophie nodded, watching the bacon in Maura’s lone frypan. “It was. We’ve no family, apart from each other. Syria was never home to us, and we didn’t want to stay, even before all the fightin’. This was where we wanted to be—as much a home as we ever knew. We knew it might be difficult, but we thought we could fix it once we were here. We never counted on anyone dyin’.”

  “Do you know what happened?” Maura asked carefully.

  “We do. Mostly. Can we wait fer Niall before we start in on it?”

  “Sure. I’ve got plenty of time. And I’m starving!”

  Sophie presented Maura with a full plate and she dug in happily. “Sinéad said you were a good cook,” Maura told her after swallowing her first bite.

  “She’s a kind woman, but I do like the cookin’. I used to do it fer the family, before. It’s funny—fer most people the food there would be exotic and strange, but fer me it’s the other way around. I don’t recognize half the things I see in the shops here, much less know what to do with them.”

  “But you enjoy it. Have you talked with Rose much?”

  “When I see her. She has only her da now, right?”

  “Yes, and he’s just gotten married and moved in with his wife—she has a farm. She was doing all the cooking for him, and I think she’s not sure whether she’s enjoying her freedom. She keeps making noises about serving food at the pub. Hey, where did Niall learn to tend bar?”

  “There’s bars in Syria, particularly in the cities. It was hard fer him to find work sometimes, and he picked up a lot of things. And he likes bein’ around people.”

  “Well, I can tell you that we all noticed him when he filled in at Sullivan’s. What was he doing there?”

  “He shouldn’a been there, but he wanted to know if there was any word about Paddy and he figgered a local pub would be a good place to listen.”

  “It was a crazy night. We had a band playing but we were way overbooked, and nobody could see or hear much of anything,” Then the coffee kicked in and Maura realized the timeline was wrong. She’d found dead Paddy on the Monday, although it had taken a few days to identify the body. Niall had showed up at the pub and filled in before that ID had been made. Had he known or suspected the dead man was Paddy? Maura decided to wait until Niall was part of the conversation to ask awkward questions like that. “How would Paddy expect to find you, camped out in the country?”

  Sophie shrugged. “Mebbe he knew people around here. Or mebbe one of the people he’d brought over had let something slip. The guys at the farm, they’d paid their way, so maybe Paddy already knew where it was and pointed people in that direction. You found us, did you not?”

  “Yes, because I asked Peter. I don’t know this area well, so I wouldn’t have found you on my own. And Peter said he trusted me. Well, I trust him too, from what I’ve seen of him. I figured if he didn’t want to tell me he’d found the two of you, he wouldn’t. In fact, he never did—he just brought you here. I’m not very good at all this sneaking around and trying to remember who knows what about who.” Maura took another sip of coffee. “Were any of the people you were … camping out with come over from Syria with you?”

  Sophie shook her head firmly. “No. We never met them till we got to this part of Cork.”

  Maura smiled ruefully. “There is so much going on around here that I don’t know anything about.”

  “Where is it yeh’re from?” Sophie asked.

  “Boston. In America. My father was born right about here, but I don’t remember him. My gran raised me, and fixed it so I’d inherit the pub, and this house. All that was over a year ago. So in a way I’m homeless too. I never thought of Ireland as a place to come home to.”

  “Are yeh goin’ back to Boston?”

  “I don’t think so. I like it here. I’ve got friends, and work, and it’s all new and interesting. Sophie, if you could go anywhere you wanted to—forgetting about how much it cost—where would that be?”

  “Here. In Ireland. We’ve lived in a foreign country, and that was fine. But our mother was always talking about the farm and the cows and her friends.”

  “Sounds like she was homesick,” Maura said.

  Sophie nodded. “She was that. She loved our da, and she agreed to go with him when he went to Syria, but it never felt right to her. And then the place changed, of course. She would have left if she could, but I guess you’d say our da was a dreamer and always hoped for the best.”

  The door to the parlor opened, and a rather scruffy Niall was standing in the doorway. “Givin’ away all the family secrets, are yeh?” he asked Sophie, but he softened it with a smile. “Shower available?” he directed at Maura.

  “It is. All yours.”

  “Yeh wouldn’t happen to have any clean clothes, would yeh?” he asked.

  “For a guy? Not hardly. Although you could look in the loft up above the bedroom. The guy who lived t
here before might have left something. Of course, he was in his eighties when he died, so I can’t claim the stuff will be fashionable.”

  “I’ll take a look. Right now clean sounds a lot better than fancy.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Sophie ate her own breakfast in silence while Niall poked around the rafters upstairs, then came down and took a surprisingly fast shower. Maura didn’t say anything, trying to work out in her head what questions she needed to ask now. She figured Paddy had found the pair of them wherever they’d been hiding—that was clear enough. But what had happened next?

  Niall emerged from the shower looking significantly less scruffy than he had going in. He seemed to have found a moth-eaten sweater of Old Mick’s and a pair of shapeless cloth pants that barely clung to his slender hips. He looked younger now, with his curly hair wet and tousled. He nodded toward the empty plates on the table. “There more of that?”

  “On the stove,” Sophie said.

  Maura corralled her patience and waited until he had filled a plate for himself and sat down. Finally she said, “Are you ready to tell me the rest of the story?”

  Niall glanced at Sophie, who nodded, then answered. “We are. Then yeh can decide what yeh need to do.”

  “Fair enough. But I promise I won’t do anything without talking it over with you two first.”

  Niall nodded once, swabbed up the last of the egg on his plate with a piece of bread, and sat back in his chair. “Yeh can guess that Paddy managed to find where we was camped out. It was night, and dark. Most of us were there, and some were sleepin’.

  “Hold on—how did Paddy find you?”

  “We figgered he knew someone in the town, someone he’d brought over, who ratted us out. Mebbe even led him to the place. Or mebbe he’d sent people there before. We didn’t stop to ask him.”

  That was more or less what Sophie had guessed. “Okay. Go on,” Maura said.

  “So Paddy shows up and wants to know where Sophie is, because she owed him. She stands up and faces him, and he tried to grab her. So of course I stand up and get between them, but Paddy, he was bigger than me, and tougher, and it didn’t take much to push me down. But I wasn’t about to let that stop me. Sophie’s me sister, and what he wanted from her was wrong. So I came at him again, and he shoves Sophie away and pulls out a knife. ‘She goes with me’ was all he said.