Murder on Clare Island: A Garda West Novel (A Garda West Crime Novel Book 3)

by Valerie Keogh

  Putting his phone away, he stood a moment looking out across the sea. He bit his lip at the unfairness of it, an unaccustomed bout of self-pity that he shook off before returning to the room where Kelly still sat, her hands wrapped around her cup, her hair slightly dishevelled.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, taking his seat. ‘That was Morrison.’ He quickly explained, watching as disappointment flashed across her face before being hidden by a shrug.

  Kelly managed to rustle up a half-hearted smile, and said, ‘It can’t be helped, can it? After all, you were half-tempted to offer assistance earlier, weren’t you? And I think, if I hadn’t been there, you would have.’

  West grinned. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. His grin faded quickly and he reached for her hand. ‘This wasn’t what I wanted for this week away, Kelly. I didn’t want to be a policeman, not this time.’

  ‘Well at least this time, I’m not the victim,’ Kelly said, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘You didn’t plan this, Mike, so stop fretting. Anyway, you said it was an accident. It won’t take you long, will it?’

  ‘It shouldn’t,’ he agreed. ‘Hall is coming to pick me up and take me to the scene of the accident. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  Kelly’s eyebrows rose. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  West shook his head. ‘You’ll be in the way, Kelly. Seriously. And anyway, it’s against policy.’

  ‘Seriously,’ she mimicked, ‘I don’t give a toss for your policies. They’re taking you from your holiday; it doesn’t mean they have to take you from me. After all, it’s not like I haven’t seen a dead body before, is it?’

  They were still arguing when they heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. Moments later, Eamonn Hall appeared in the doorway, his face pale.

  ‘You’ve heard from your Inspector?’ he asked West, getting straight to the point. ‘My apologies; I mentioned your name in passing never thinking they’d involve you. I thought Duignan would let me deal with it alone. It’s not as if it’s complicated. Strange but not complicated.’

  West nodded to a chair. ‘You’d better sit down and fill me in since I’ve been press-ganged.’

  Hall threw a glance at Kelly. ‘Hi again,’ he said and looked back to West, one eyebrow raised in silent question.

  ‘She’s ok,’ West said, deciding suddenly that giving in to her request was the least he could do. After all, as she said, she’d seen dead bodies before.

  The garda shrugged, and, ignoring Kelly, he concentrated on filling West in on what had happened. ‘The man who came into the pub earlier was Finbarr Breathnach,’ he began, ‘he found the body. His father’s body. Eoin Breathnach. There’s no phone at Toormore House and no mobile coverage. He had to come here to ring for help. It was just a lucky co-incidence that I was here.’

  Toormore House. West recognised the name, the car that had almost run them off the road the day before, it had come from there. ‘How was he killed? You told Inspector Duignan that it looked like an accident.’

  Hall closed his eyes and gulped. ‘It seems he had a weird habit of dipping his toe into the fish pond to see if they were hungry. I think he slipped into the water...’

  ‘And drowned,’ West finished when, once more, Hall closed his eyes and gulped.

  But Hall shook his head. ‘I don’t think so...or maybe indirectly...I’m really not sure which came first.’ Realising he was babbling, he took a deep breath and said, ‘Lamprey eels,’ and then nodded as if that was sufficient explanation.

  Puzzled, West looked at Kelly who shrugged and shook her head. He tried again. ‘Garda Hall, you need to be a bit clearer with the information. What do Lamprey eels have to do with anything?’

  Hall took another deep breath, and let it out slowly before continuing. ‘The owner of Toormore House, Eoin Breathnach. He was interested in exotic fish and kept a pool full of Lamprey eels. Somehow, he fell in. They ate him.’

  West met Kelly’s wide eyes. ‘You still want to come?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘I’d just be here thinking about it if I didn’t go. And I’ve a very vivid imagination.

  They retrieved their coats and climbed into Hall’s car, Kelly squeezing into the back and finding a seat among a variety of paraphernalia, moving a lifebuoy, a bucket and raincoat out of the way.

  ‘Sorry,’ Garda Hall threw over his shoulder; you never know what you’ll need in this job.’

  They took the road back the way they’d gone earlier, heading right rather than left at the junction, staying on the road until it ended at Toormore House.

  An intricately carved wrought-iron gate opened as they approached, Hall drove through, and down a short drive. Parking the car, he nodded toward the modern one-storied building that stretched before them.

  ‘I expected an old house,’ West said, disappointed.

  ‘It’s only two years old,’ Hall told them, he didn’t seem in a hurry to get out of the car, instead continuing, ‘It’s hard to get planning permission to build on Clare Island but despite objections from a variety of groups, they were allowed build this. It helped that Eoin Breathnach’s wife is the artist, Sylvia B.’

  ‘Sylvia B,’ Kelly said, impressed. ‘I’ve seen her work at a gallery in Dublin.’

  West hadn’t heard of her but wondered if it was her idea to live in what was a very isolated and fairly desolate place. In the winter, he guessed, it would be even more so, this part of the island faced the Atlantic, and there was no shelter from the wind and rain.

  Even today, when Hall finally moved to get out of the car, the wind almost pulled the car door from their hands.

  ‘It’s through here,’ he said, leading the way through a gap in a stone wall that extended from both sides of the house. It curved in on itself, enclosing a large courtyard area on both sides, the walls tall enough to keep out the wind so that here, it was quieter, and felt warmer.

  In this artificial microclimate, large exotic trees flourished, their leaves obscuring the view and hiding the boundary, making it difficult to see exactly how big the area was. The pathway through the trees was narrow, forcing them to walk single-file. Hall took the lead. West hesitated, caught between having Kelly between them, safe, and being in front so he could see how bad the situation was and to, somehow, protect her from it. He’d suggested she stay in the car, but she’d shaken her head. ‘Imagining monsters is far worse than seeing them,’ was all she said, and he’d had to concede defeat.

  Minutes later, the pathway ended in front of a large rectangular pond. Hall turned, stopping them, and looking over West’s shoulder to where Kelly stood said, ‘This isn’t pretty, are you sure you want to see?’

  West, seeing the look of resignation on the man’s face, knew she had nodded. There was no point in delaying things any longer. ‘Let’s take a look, Eamonn,’ he said, and waited a whisper as the man swallowed and with a nod turned and stepped out into the open area around the pond.

  A rough, wide stone path ran around it, a sign to one end warning of deep water. Stepping closer, West peered in, but the water was dark, murky and he couldn’t see the bottom.

  Eoin Breathnach lay in the water at the far end of the rectangular pond, his head bobbing on the water like a cork, his body submerged. Hall had said the man had been eaten. West felt his blood go cold. Was his body gone, his head floating unwanted?

  ‘It’s the Lampreys,’ Hall said, ‘they’re still attached.’

  Having no idea what he was talking about, West decided to ignore him for the moment. Moving around the pond, forgetting for the moment Kelly’s presence behind him, he made his way to the man’s body.

  The water was opaque, but even so when he came alongside he saw exactly what Garda Hall was talking about. Attached to the man’s body were several long eels holding the body submerged.

  ‘What are they?’ West asked, trying but failing to keep the note of fascination from his voice. ‘Eels, did you say?’

  Hall shrugged. ‘Lamprey eels although to be accurate they’r
e not eels at all, they’re jawless fish.’

  ‘I’m not too sure which sound worse,’ Kelly said, staring at the gruesome sight. ‘They must be about three feet long. Are they attached with some kind of suckers or something?’

  Hall dragged his gaze away from the sight of Eoin Breathnach’s body and looked at her. ‘I did an internet search on them the first time I saw them. There are about thirty-five types of Lamprey, but only a small proportion is parasitic. They attach their mouthparts to their target and use their teeth to cut through tissue until they reach blood and body fluids. Finbarr said his father had insisted on buying the parasitic variety. He liked to starve them and then watch them attack the live fish he threw in to them; they’d swim around in a frenzy trying to attach their mouths to them.’

  ‘So they’re still feeding,’ Kelly muttered, aghast.

  They looked at the man’s body, he was corpulent, a lot of fluids to be eaten yet.

  West walked around the edge of the pool. ‘Definitely not going to be suicide,’ he said, ‘are you thinking he might have slipped in?’

  Hall sighed. ‘Finbarr said he hadn’t fed them for a few days. He’d ordered some live fish from the fishermen at The Quay and kept them alive in a tank in an outhouse. He liked to see them eat. When he dipped his toe in, if they all came swimming toward him, they were hungry, if they didn’t, he’d leave them for a few more days.’ He pointed to a shoe that lay nearby. ‘It looks like he lost his balance and fell in.’

  It was possible, West agreed. Possible, and nice and tidy. He could get back to his holiday. He walked around the pool again. They were losing the light; soon it would be too dark to see anything. Already, they might be missing something that may not be there tomorrow. ‘Do you have a torch?’ he asked.

  Hall, nodding, took a torch from one of his many pockets and handed it to him. Flicking it on, West hunkered down and shone the light on the edge of the pond behind the man’s head, trying to ignore the sucking, slurping sound of the Lampreys as they fed. He didn’t see anything for a moment; the stone at the water’s edge was mossy, damp. He was just about to give up when he saw it. ‘Look,’ he pointed, and both Hall and Kelly bent to stare at the circle of light made by the small but powerful torch.

  ‘Ah,’ said Hall, ‘you’re right. I see it.’

  ‘What?’ Kelly asked, bending down to get a closer look.

  ‘There,’ West said pointing, ‘see where the moss is disturbed there, and there.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, seeing it now, ‘he tried to climb out?’

  West stood. ‘Possibly,’ he said, ‘we’ll see if they find evidence of moss under his fingernails. Assuming,’ he said, ‘that he has any left.’

  With a shudder, Kelly looked into the water.

  ‘We need to get him out of there,’ West said, ‘have you any idea how we can detach those creatures?’

  ‘I do,’ a voice said, approaching from the house down a different pathway.

  Eamonn Hall made the introductions. ‘Finbarr Breathnach, this is Detective Garda Sergeant West, from Dublin, and Kelly Johnson.’

  Finbarr was a thin, tall man with extremely pale skin emphasised by a messy shock of almost black hair that looked as though it hadn’t ever seen a brush or a comb. ‘Did they not think you could manage, Eamonn,’ he said, approaching them, his eyes darting to the head of his father, his face showing no emotion.

  ‘Garda Hall asked for assistance, Mr Breathnach, and as I was already on the island, I came to help,’ West said, drawing the man’s attention to himself. ‘I’m sorry for your loss; this must be difficult for you.’

  The man smiled sweetly. ‘That’s the problem with being an outsider, Detective Garda Sergeant West from Dublin. You see, Eamonn here knew better than to offer me condolences. He knew I couldn’t stand the old bastard. I’m more than happy to admit I’m glad he’s gone.’ He looked at his father’s body, and sneered unpleasantly. ‘You know I couldn’t have wished for a better death for him.’

  ‘Shush, Finbarr,’ Hall said, but the man merely laughed loudly and took out a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘Right then,’ West said, deciding to take charge of the matter, ‘you know how we can get those creatures away from your father’s body.’

  Finbarr, in the act of lighting a cigarette, nodded but finished the ritual and inhaled before answering. ‘Just let me finish this,’ he said, ‘and I’ll sort that for you.’

  West, about to say sharply that they didn’t have time to lose while he got his nicotine fix, bit his lip. He’d met lads like Finbarr before, too much money, too few manners, there was no point going up against him. So he took a deep breath and waited as the man took puff after puff before, with a final exaggerated inhale, he threw the cigarette into the bushes. ‘I’ll be back in a sec,’ he said, disappearing back the way he’d come.

  It was ten minutes before he reappeared, accompanied by the rattle of equipment. The light had dropped, the pond now virtually in darkness. When he got close enough for them to make him out, he was wearing a grin, carrying a tall lamp and trailing an extension lead. There was something else under his arm that West couldn’t identify.

  ‘Here I am,’ Finbarr said, switching on the lamp and placing it so that it shone over his father’s body, sending the Lampreys into a renewed frenzy, their tails lashing the water. ‘What a pretty sight,’ he said, with a laugh.

  ‘What are you intending to do?’ West said, tired of his warped humour. It was getting late, he was supposed to be on holiday, this wasn’t the way he’d intended to spend it. He reached in the darkness for Kelly’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze before concentrating on the unlikeable young man before him.

  Having set the light in position, Finbarr stood back. ‘Now if you would just switch your torch back on please,’ he asked. ‘I’m just going to switch this off for a moment.’

  West, holding the torch, switched it on just as Finbarr switched the light off. There was the sound of fumbling and then suddenly the sound of a splash followed by sparks coming from the pond.

  Finbarr let out a whoop of glee. ‘Yes, it worked.’ Seconds later, he had the lamp working again and was looking around at them like a child looking for praise. ‘I electrocuted them,’ he explained. ‘The old toaster in the bath trick. Only,’ he pointed to the pond, ‘not exactly a bath but the same concept.’

  West and Hall exchanged glances in the light from the torch, Hall shrugging as if to say he didn’t know what to make of him either.

  West was about to make a comment when the sound of a car was heard in the distance. He looked back at Hall with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘I asked Mick from the garage to bring his van and a tarpaulin.’ Seeing his surprised look, Hall smiled apologetically. ‘Things are done slightly differently here, I’m afraid. The only vehicle I have at my disposal on the island is the car we came in. It’s a matter of making do. We’ll wrap the body in the tarp and I’ll go with it to the mortuary in Westport.’

  ‘What about the evidence here?’ West asked, realising for the first time, how fortunate they were in Dublin.

  ‘I took a lot of photographs earlier and had a look around. There didn’t appear to be any evidence to gather.’

  West shone the torch around. He couldn’t see anything but he knew that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything there. He was about to suggest they come back at first light and do a finger-tip search when his beam caught the grinning face of Finbarr, and he knew there was no point.

  Eamonn went to greet Mick and help him with the tarpaulin, Finbarr trailing behind him offering useless suggestions as to how best remove his father’s body from the pond. West shone the torch over the now floating body. He didn’t have any more useful suggestions to offer.

  ‘How are you going to get him out of there,’ Kelly asked.

  ‘Well, I’m telling you one thing for sure,’ he replied, raising the torch to see her, ‘I’m certainly not climbing in there, not with those eel things. Dead or alive.’

&
nbsp; ‘Lampreys,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Them,’ he agreed.

  Eamonn and Mick arrived, carrying the tarp between them, Finbarr following behind. They dropped it by the edge of the pond, the noise loud in the silence. Mick nodded over to where West and Kelly stood and, taking a powerful torch from his pocket, he shone it over the body in the pond. ‘We need to get him over to the side,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a hook in the van, I go get it.’

  He was back within minutes holding a long wooden-handled hook. ‘It’s a handy old thing this,’ he said. Passing the torch to Hall, he directed the beam over the body and then reached with the hook. The body, free of the Lampreys, bobbed like a fairground duck and it took a couple of tries before Mick managed to catch hold with the hook and slowly drag the body to the side.

  Once there, with West at the head, Mick in the middle and Eamonn at the feet, they managed with a lot of grunting, swearing and false starts to grab hold of the body and haul it out.

  There was little dignity in the man’s death. Once on the ground his body was rolled onto a length of tarp and rolled again to encase him in it.

  Finbarr couldn’t resist. ‘Brings a whole new meaning to roll-your-own, now, doesn’t it?’

  They ignored him, more intent on transporting the body down the narrow, overgrown pathway to the van without causing injury to themselves or dropping the body. Kelly, a torch in each hand, lit the way.

  Eamonn went with the body. ‘You can take my car,’ he said to West. ‘I’ll wait for the post-mortem results and get a lift to your guest-house when I come over.’ He climbed up into the passenger-seat and, with a nod, Mick started the engine and drove off leaving West and Kelly standing in the torchlight.

  Of Finbarr, there was no sign, and West, weary now, decided it was pointless going in search of the man. Tomorrow was soon enough to face that jester again.