“By now everybody in the place is awake and comes out to see what’s happenin.’ Turns out more than one of ’em had come over thanks to Paddy, and had paid dearly for it. But Sophie was the only woman in the lot of ’em. So Paddy’s wavin’ his knife around, and trying to grab Sophie again and back away, and somebody in the crowd says, ‘Leave her be.’ And Paddy’s gettin’ more and more angry, but he’s not backin’ down—thinks he can scare the whole lot of us, at least long enough to get away from ’em.” Niall fell silent.
“And then?” Maura prompted, although she was already pretty sure things weren’t going to end well for Paddy.
To her surprise, Sophie spoke up. “I picked up a log and hit him over the head with it.”
“Sophie! Keep out of it,” Niall said urgently.
“I will not! He came fer me! I wasn’t going to sit back and let him hurt any one of you because of me. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to go with him. I didn’t stop to think—I just wanted to stop him.”
“Was he dead?” Maura asked softly.
Niall shook his head. “Nah. He got up right fast, and now he was mad, ’cept he couldn’t seem to make up his mind who to take it out on first. He tried to grab Sophie again, but she was standing well away, still wavin’ the log at him. And then … it’s hard to say what happened. Like I said, it was dark. And it was like the guys, or most of ’em, saw Sophie, a young girl, defending herself, and they figgered they should help her out, and everybody grabbed somethin’ or mebbe nothin’ and went for Paddy. They got the knife away first, and then they all kind of piled on him with whatever they had, and minutes later he was layin’ on the ground and not movin’.”
“Were you part of that? Either of you?” Not that it would have mattered much, Maura thought.
“Sophie was well out of it, but I might have gotten in a blow or two. We were all angry and lashin’ out. It’s a wonder more of us weren’t hurt.”
“Then what happened?”
“Took us a bit to calm down and back off. Then someone took a hard look at Paddy and said, ‘I think he’s dead.’ He was right.”
“And?”
Niall shook his head. “We didn’t know what to do. Go to the gardaí? We’d all be taken in fer it then, even if we explained, and then we’d end up in a cell or sent back to wherever we came from. Hide the body? Mebbe. There’s plenty of places where a body’d never be found, you’d think. Leave him where he was and go our separate ways? We could’ve done that. Sophie here was the only one of us who had anything like a real job, and the others could find more short-term work elsewhere.”
Had Sophie convinced Niall to stay? Maura was getting impatient. “Okay, I get it: Paddy is lying there dead, and nobody’s quite sure who killed him, or maybe you all killed him. I understand why you didn’t want to go to the gardaí. Maybe dumping him in a ditch somewhere would have been a good idea, and that’s sort of what you did. But how the hell did you decide to dump him in my backyard?”
“It wasn’t personal!” Niall protested.
“Well, it sure felt personal to me, when I found the body. So what happened?”
“Well, we blathered on fer a while, and finally one guy—mebbe the oldest among us—stepped up and said, ‘The man’s dead. It’s best if nobody knows about all of yiz. If yeh leave him here, and mebbe some of his mates from Limerick know about this place and come lookin’ fer him, you’d best be gone by then. I’ll take care of gettin’ rid of him.’ And nobody had a better idea, so we gathered up what little we had and went our separate ways. It was a different place where yer pal Peter found us—I guess he knows the places round here to lay low.”
Maura still wasn’t satisfied. “So unless this mystery guy of yours was a bodybuilder, how’d he get the body away? Did he tell you?”
Niall shook his head. “He was the only one of us who had a car, an old junk heap but at least it ran. He had us help him roll Paddy up in an old blanket and stuffed him in the boot of the car before we left. He didn’t say where he was takin’ him. Seems like he saw your bridge and thought it’d be a good place to dump him, without knowin’ the lay of the land, like. Then Sophie heard there was a body found in Leap, but we couldn’t be sure it was Paddy. That’s why I came to yer pub, after a bit, to see what the talk was about the man. And it turned out nobody had figured out who it was yet, and I thought we were safe, or mebbe it was some other body.”
“Hey, Leap’s a quiet place—we don’t get a lot of bodies,” Maura protested. “So you thought it was safe enough that Sophie could keep her job, except then Rose and I came along and spooked her by asking questions. Right, Sophie?”
Sophie nodded. “That’s so.”
Maura thought for a moment. “You probably don’t want to hear this, but if you could find this guy with a car, or even some of the others in your group, it would help if they could support your story. You don’t know where they went?”
Niall shook his head. “We didn’t really trust anyone, yeh know. At least Sophie and I knew we had a chance here, but the others had no ties and no money. They were desperate, and they couldn’t get tangled up with the gardaí and a murder. We didn’t know more than their first names, and we don’t know where they scattered to.”
“So all we have is you two and one bloody body. Who did in fact get identified, purely by chance, by a local garda who happened to have been stationed in Limerick. At least he can back up your story about smuggling people.”
Maura tried to think through the details of their story. The worst part was that everybody and nobody had killed Paddy Creegan, who from what she’d heard had not been a particularly nice man and probably already had a criminal record. No loss to anyone, except maybe his mother, but his death was still a crime. Could the gardaí find the anonymous guy with a beat-up car who had dumped the body? Would anyone even try? But should she—and the gardaí—worry that if Paddy’s Limerick pals found out what had happened, they would want some kind of revenge? What form would that take? She shuddered to think.
This was beyond her abilities to fix. The logical thing would be to tell the gardaí—or at least Sean or Detective Hurley—and figure out what the legal channels were. The problem was, she kept asking them for … well, not quite favors, but to bend the law, or look the other way in some cases, and she really didn’t have the right to do that, certainly not if it involved a lot of other people plus violent gang members. She was pretty sure that the right and just thing had gotten done in the end, but she was an ordinary citizen messing around with the laws in this country, and that didn’t seem right either. So what now?
She realized that Niall and Sophie were both staring at her, waiting for some kind of answer. She didn’t have one. She wasn’t a wise old woman—heck, she probably wasn’t more than five years older than these two. And she couldn’t ask the wisest people she knew—Bridget and Old Billy—because these were modern problems. Their experience in smuggling people probably ran to IRA members and such, not thugs looking to make money from people to get away from wherever they were. But she had to say something.
Maura took a deep breath. “Sophie, Niall, I wish I could tell you what to do. Or hand you a wad of money and send you on your way, and keep my mouth shut. That last part I can do, if it makes sense, but I don’t have a lot of money. I should tell you to talk to the gardaí, but I can understand why you don’t want to. They’re good people, and I think they can help you, but you don’t know them and you can’t trust them. I can look into getting your papers replaced, which might help a little, but it wouldn’t solve the bigger problem.”
“Paddy,” Niall said bluntly.
“Exactly. Look, even if you admit he brought you here illegally, and then you tell them, gee, it was some guy whose name you never knew who killed Paddy and dumped his body in Leap and disappeared into the night, I don’t think they’ll be convinced. Unless they have proof, or a very good reason to believe the story. I believe you, but I’m not in charge here. You have any ideas?”
> Sophie and Niall looked at each other, and finally Sophie spoke. “I think yeh’re right—I should go to work and act like nothing’s happened. I can make up some excuse fer Sinéad, and this is the first time I’ve messed up with showin’ up fer work. As fer Niall…”
And then Maura had a brainstorm. “Niall can hide in plain sight. I’ll hire him part-time to work at Sullivan’s. He, or both of you, can have the rooms over the pub until we sort things out.” She was surprised when she realized that both Sophie and Niall were looking at her as if she’d gone mad. “Let’s think this through. Did anyone else around here ever see either of you and Paddy together? I know there might be people in Limerick who did, but here?”
Both shook their heads mutely.
“Okay, that’s a start. Rose saw you and Niall together on the street in Skibbereen, but she didn’t know who Niall was, except that he helped us out here that one night. I’m not saying this fixes anything permanently, but it gives us two things: one, we can see what direction the murder investigation goes, and two, we can find out if anybody from Limerick is going to come looking for their man and cause trouble here.” Maura paused to study their expressions. “You don’t expect any of your buddies out at whatever farm it was will come back—ask you for money, blackmail you, whatever?”
“No,” Niall said. “They were decent people who’d somehow gotten themselves into a mess. They wouldn’t come back lookin’ fer a handout. I’d bet they’re as far away from here as they could get.”
“So that leaves us with a couple of different outcomes. One, the gardaí don’t push hard on solving the murder and it goes away quietly. You two get your papers sorted out and go on with your lives, here or somewhere else. That’s the easy ending. Two, the gangs of Limerick ride into town and threaten to tear the place apart until they find out what happened to Paddy, and then we’re going to have to come clean, at least with the local gardaí, because that’s too big for us to handle on our own. Three, maybe—we all spend the rest of our lives, or at least a few years, looking over our shoulder waiting until it all blows up in our faces. I don’t have a four.”
“We can’t ask yeh to do that fer us,” Sophie protested. “Yeh’re puttin’ yerself at risk—and yer pub, and yer friends.”
Sophie was right, Maura knew. “Then let me talk to the gardaí—off the record, no names. I can get a sense of what the Limerick guys might do, and maybe what the charges would be against you and anyone else they could track down.” Damn, but that would be a tricky conversation, Maura knew. Telling Sean didn’t worry her so much, but he was kind of inexperienced and probably hadn’t had much to do with gangs. Conor Ryan would be the best person to ask, but he didn’t know her well, and from what she’d seen, he was a harder man and kind of went by the book, and he was still trying to make his mark in the Skibbereen station. But he knew Limerick and the gangs there. Did she have a choice?
“You’re right, Sophie. So I’ll say it again: this is too big for me or us to handle. Let me find out what the gardaí think is the best way to go, and I’ll tell you what they think. That’s the best I can offer. Will you stay around long enough for me to get some answers?”
“We owe yeh that much, fer bringin’ this trouble down on your head,” Niall said.
“Thank you. Let me make a phone call.” Maura stood up and retrieved her phone from where it was charging, then walked out the front door. Such a beautiful sunny summer day, and now she was supposed to be consulting with the gardaí about how to avoid being attacked by angry gang members. How had that happened?
She hit Sean’s speed dial number, and he answered quickly. “Maura? It’s early yet—I’m not at the station. Somethin’ wrong?”
“Kind of. Look, I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Can you meet me at the pub, say by nine? And can you bring Sergeant Ryan with you?”
“Why…” Sean began, then said. “I’ll do my best. See yeh in Leap.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Maura dropped Sophie and Niall in Skibbereen—Sophie to go to the café, Niall to go somewhere, anywhere—and then she headed for Sullivan’s. Along the way, she wondered how she had come to be in the middle of this mess. A bloody murder, angry gang members, human trafficking? She’d been minding her own business, and blam, there was a body. One that had nothing to do with her. And yet that, coupled with Niall’s unexpected appearance behind the bar, had started the whole thing. And now she was supposed to explain it to the gardaí in order to keep Limerick thugs from attacking her and maybe burning down her business and killing most of her friends. Okay, that was the worst case, but the other cases weren’t much better, and somebody could get hurt or even killed.
She parked and walked toward Sullivan’s, where she found the door unlocked. She was getting ready to panic when she saw Mick inside, cleaning up. Damn, she hadn’t counted on having to explain—or not explain—everything to someone else, much less him. But if they were together, whatever that meant, she owed it to him to tell him what was going on, particularly if he might be at risk in some way.
“You’re in early,” she said as she closed the door behind her.
“I could say the same to yeh,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
Was she so obvious? Now she had to tell him. “Sean and Conor Ryan will be here soon. I have news about the dead man, but I don’t know that I want to go public with it right now, so I thought I’d run it by them first, off the record. I don’t have time to explain it all to you now, but I think—no, I want you to hear it too, so you might as well sit in. And I want your opinion, because I don’t know where to go from here.”
He studied her face for a moment before speaking. “Thank you. Yeh think yeh know what happened, with the death and all?”
“I do, but it’s complicated. I can’t not say anything, because too many people are involved, but I don’t want to make trouble for people either, not if they don’t deserve it. It’s a mess.”
“So of course yeh’re right in the thick of it,” Mick said with a half smile.
“Funny thing about that—it seems to keep happening.”
Maura looked up to see Sean and Sergeant Ryan—Conor. She still had trouble thinking of him on a first-name basis. She went to open the door, let them in, and locked the door behind them. They both saw Mick leaning against the bar, and all the men nodded silently at each other.
Maura was surprised when Sean spoke first. “Yeh sounded worried on the phone, Maura, so I figgered whatever it was, it was important. This is a private conversation, am I right? Not official?”
“Yes, and I’d rather talk in the back room, without an audience. But I want Mick to hear this too, and I’d rather say it all just once. Anybody want coffee?”
Conor Ryan shook his head. “We’ve got to get to Skib—let’s just get this over with.”
That suited Maura, so they trooped into the back room and settled around a table. Maura began, “Let me tell you what I know—which I’ve only just learned—and you can ask questions at the end.” And with that she launched into the whole story, beginning with finding the body—had that been only last week?—and helping the sergeant put a name to the body, and trying to track down the mystery bartender, only to find that he and Rose’s friend were connected, and then searching for him and finally finding them together, with Peter’s help, and through what Sophie and Niall had shared with her at breakfast only an hour earlier. It took half an hour to cover it all, and Maura was exhausted by the end of it from trying to keep the timeline and the details straight in her head. She was both surprised and relieved that Conor Ryan had listened intently throughout, without interrupting. Maybe the story made more sense than she had thought.
“And that’s all I know,” she finished, “and I’ve barely had time to digest it. Your turn, guys. What now?”
Sergeant Ryan took the lead. “We’ve had the name of the dead man only since the weekend, as yeh know, Maura. And I told yeh I recognized him. From all I’ve heard since I arrived, your
lot in Skibbereen and the villages live in a bubble, where there’s little crime or even danger. I spent years at the big station in Limerick, and it’s like another world. Maybe not as rough as it was a few years ago, but there’s still plenty of trouble. Paddy Creegan was kind of attached to one of the gang families, trying to break his way in, but he didn’t have the smarts to rise very far or fast, though he was impatient. He’s been nabbed fer a few smaller crimes, but he’s done no serious time yet. From what I’d been hearing before I was transferred here, he saw this trafficking thing as his territory, but he was still feeling his way into it.
“If yeh don’t know it, there’s two lots of people comin’ in—women and workers. But the transport’s the same. Paddy knew guys with boats, and he could get people to Limerick, which is a small port. Then they split off from there. Seems he made a mistake takin’ on this Niall and Sophie—maybe he took a personal interest in Sophie and was planning to dump Niall along the way. But Niall and Sophie were smart to keep things back from him—they weren’t your typical scared refugees. Could be they could have come into the country legally, but I can see that it would be complicated fer ’em, so they took the shortcut to get here, with Paddy.”
Maura nodded. “And they told me they got away from him as quickly as they could, in Limerick, but they got only as far as Skibbereen, and then they kind of hid out in a place that was probably too well known to others in their situation—including Paddy. And he found them.”
“And yeh’re tellin’ us that because he was makin’ a grab for Sophie—a young and pretty girl—the men hidin’ out there all took up against him to defend Sophie, and Paddy died at their hands. Is that the story they gave yeh?”
The Lost Traveller Page 23