But there’s a small dead bird she’s noticed on the pavement, pale feathers scattered, a wing bone torn and straggling, the bones of its legs so delicate you feel you could see through.
“The bird died, Grace,” she says.
“Yes, sweetheart.”
“Try and think, Sylvie,” says Adam.
She’s peering at the blue, translucent bones. Her face is shuttered.
Then she turns to me, pulls at my sleeve. “I want to go off now. I want to look at the boats.”
She’s impatient. I know that now she won’t say anything more.
“Okay, sweetheart.”
She runs off to the jetty with rapid, confident steps. The salt wind tangles her hair.
I turn to Adam. “Is that the death we’re looking for? Could it be Alice Murphy or her daughter?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“It’s scary,” I say.
“Grace, there are lots of ifs about it. We don’t know for sure if Alice and the little girl died. We don’t even know if Sylvie really recognized Flag Cottage, or just liked it because it reminded her of her dollhouse . . .”
He’s reticent in what he says, but he has that look, his eyes wide-open, like everything amazes him.
“It gives us a place to start from, though?”
“Absolutely,” he says. “And that woman at Barry’s said there’s a garda station in Ballykilleen. I think we should go and talk to them.”
“But if we go to the gardai—what on earth shall we say?”
He grins. “We’ll be devious.”
We sit there quietly for a moment. The sun is coming out through the cloud, and the sea holds every color you can think of—turquoise in the shallows, giving back the sky color, and farther out a richer cobalt shade. There’s a line of deeper blue where the sea meets the sky. A sense of the strangeness of what we are doing here surges through me.
“When I was a kid,” I tell him, “I used to wonder about the horizon. It bothered me. You know—what happens there? What happens over the edge? Did you ever think that?”
He grins. “I guess you were deeper than me, Grace. I was far too busy worrying about my stick of rock. How they’d managed to write ‘Whitley Bay’ inside it.”
I smile. I like to think of him as a child. When everything was ordinary, before the wreck, before it broke apart. I have an image of him in my mind—lanky, vivid, a little unpredictable.
“I used to try and work it out,” I tell him. “What happened at the horizon. And I couldn’t get my mind round it. That there’s this edge, this limit to your sight, but if you got there, there wouldn’t be an ending, there’d just be still more sea . . . There are places where your mind stops.”
“Yes, there are,” he says.
“And when you get older, you don’t think things like that so much. But it’s not that you’ve understood them now, it’s just that you’ve given up trying . . .”
I have a sudden sense of loneliness, of our separateness from one another—here in this place among strangers, at what feels like the rim of the world. I glance at Adam, wanting someone to pull me out of this sadness, but I can’t tell him, can’t express it.
37
I GO INTO St. Vincent’s with Sylvie. It’s lunchtime now, and the bar is filling up. Noise spills out through the half-open door—laughter and talk, a saxophone on the sound system.
We’re just at the foot of the stairs when the door swings wide behind us. A man is leaving the bar. I turn, intensely aware of him. There’s something about his self-assurance, his rather patrician manner, that brings Dominic instantly back to me. I can tell he’s not a visitor; he moves as though he belongs here. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, his hair touched with gray, his face just starting to age. He’s wearing a jacket that looks like it’s made from the softest cashmere, his linen shirt is the color of wheat, and he has a scarf of dark velvet that he wraps around his neck as he steps out into the cold. No one else in the village dresses so expensively.
He catches my eye, and his face relaxes into a slight, charming smile. I feel the blood hit my face.
“I hope you’re enjoying your stay here,” he says. His voice is cultured and deep.
“Very much, thank you,” I say.
Sylvie pulls away from me. She runs toward the staircase. I hear the rapid drumbeat of her footsteps on the stairs. I’m surprised she didn’t wait for me.
The man walks out through the doorway and turns to go up the hill. I realize I have turned, that I’m following him with my gaze.
There are footsteps behind me. Brigid has come to her desk. I give her a small, tight smile, feeling I’ve been caught out doing something illicit.
“You’ve met Marcus, then?” she says.
“Well, not met exactly . . .”
“I’ll introduce you properly sometime. He’s Marcus—Marcus Paul.”
It’s as though she expects me to recognize his name.
“Oh,” I say.
“You’ll have seen Kinvara House on the beach road?” she asks me.
“The house with the beautiful garden? The garden with all the flowers?”
She nods.
“That’s Marcus’s place,” she tells me. “Though he’s often away in Dublin. He has his businesses to run.”
“His businesses?” I’m intrigued by this.
“He has a gallery there,” she says. “Though, to be honest, some of the artists he shows are really too cutting-edge for my taste. And then there’s his designer boutique. He sells the loveliest things, though of course it’s all on the pricey side . . . Look, I’ve got a picture.”
It’s a page she’s cut out of Vogue. The article is about Dublin as a mecca for the fashion conscious.
“There you are. That’s Marcus’s shop,” she tells me.
The shop is called Papillon. It has scalloped blinds the color of vanilla ice cream, and bay trees flank the doorway. There are mannequins in the window, all clad in elegant black.
“There,” she says. “What a shame I got here too late to introduce you.”
When I go up to the landing, at first I can’t see Sylvie. I feel a flicker of panic. Then I find her in the farthest corner, sitting on the carpet with her back to the wall. She’s hunched, arms wrapped around her knees.
She looks up at me, and her face is pale and accusing.
“Where were you, Grace?” she asks me.
There’s an edge of outrage in her voice.
“Just talking to Brigid,” I say.
I unlock the door of our room, we go in. Her eyes are huge in her white face. It’s as though I have failed her in some terrible, total way.
“I hate it when you talk to people. You should have stayed with me, Grace.”
I wonder if the real reason she’s cross is because I spoke to Marcus. I remember what happened with Matt and feel a flicker of irritation at how possessive she is, how she always tries to stop me from doing anything independent.
“Honestly, Sylvie. I can’t not talk to people.”
“I don’t like people,” she tells me. “I don’t like people one bit.”
I feel an urge to shout at her. I try to swallow it down.
There are stains of chocolate around her mouth from the KitKat. I find a tissue and wipe her face. She must have got chilled on the seafront; her skin is very cold.
38
NEXT DAY WE drive to Ballykilleen.
“Aren’t we going to my house, Grace?” says Sylvie as we turn down into the village.
“Not this morning, sweetheart. We’re going to talk to the gardai. We’ll ask them about the house, about Flag Cottage.”
“Are you going to find my family? Are you going to?”
She’s leaning forward toward me, pushing against her seat belt. Her face is full of light.
“We’ll try to, sweetheart. We’ll ask them. But I don’t know what will happen.”
Her expression clouds over. “But what if they can’t find them? What if they can’t find my family?�
�
“Let’s wait and see what they say. Policemen often know things . . .”
The garda station is just down the hill from Joe Moloney’s, past a trailer park that’s all shut up for the winter and a lonely little cemetery where the flowers heaped on the graves are covered with netting to stop them from blowing away. We park, go in. There’s a foyer with chairs and a desk with a sliding window, and through the window an office, where a man in uniform is talking on the phone.
Adam rings the bell. The man looks up. He’s forty-something, tall and thin, with a long, narrow nose and a thatch of graying hair. In profile he has the look of a melancholy bird. He nods at us and finishes his conversation. He unfolds himself from his chair and comes to the window and pushes up the glass, studying us with interest.
“We’re sorry to bother you,” says Adam.
“That’s what I’m here for, to be bothered,” says the man. He’s leaning on his elbows, so his face is level with ours.
“There was something we wanted to ask you,” says Adam.
“Ask away,” says the man.
“It’s about a house in Coldharbour that’s coming up for sale.”
The man nods.
It’s my turn to take over. We’ve decided on our story, but it makes me so uneasy, lying, pretending we’re a couple. And I’m very aware of Sylvie hearing everything we say.
“Somebody told us—the woman at Barry’s . . .”
My voice seems to come from somewhere else.
“Erin, you mean?” He pushes one hand through his mop of thick pale hair.
I nod. “She hinted that there was a story about it, that something bad had happened there. The thing is, I’m quite superstitious, and I don’t want to live in a house where anything really bad happened.” I attempt a shy, apologetic smile, yet I know I’m no good at subterfuge.
But he seems to take me at my word.
“That’s perfectly understandable. Myself, I don’t believe in all that. I don’t think things that happen can leave any trace behind. But of course if you do, then it’s going to worry you, isn’t it?”
I nod gratefully.
“I’ll see what I can tell you,” he says. “You know the address of the house?”
“It’s off the road north out of Coldharbour. It’s called Flag Cottage,” I say.
To my surprise, the man nods slightly. “I wondered if you’d say that. You’d better come through.”
He lifts up a section of the desk. “I’m Detective Sergeant Brian Ennis. You can call me Brian,” he says.
We tell him our names. He smiles at Sylvie.
“Could Sylvie stay out here with her books, where we can see her?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says.
I have a comic and felt-tips in my handbag. Sylvie sits on one of the chairs in the foyer. I find her a picture to color in.
She reaches up and whispers in my ear. “Ask him about my family, Grace.”
“Yes, sweetheart.”
She presses up against me, and I feel the fizz of her heart.
“Promise you won’t forget. Promise.”
She’s radiant with hope, and I’m so frightened for her.
Brian ushers Adam and me into his office, pulls out chairs.
I glance around the room. There’s a photo of two girls on his desk: they’re in their teens, in vest tops bright as fruit gums, and the older girl has exactly Brian’s smile—self-mocking, a little laconic. Through the window there’s a car park, with a line of dustbins and a palm with jagged leaves that clash together in the wind. You can hear their rattling through the glass.
Brian sits.
“So. Flag Cottage,” he says.
“We heard that something happened there,” says Adam.
“Something happened, too right,” says Brian. He leans toward us, his elbows on his knees. “It was seven years ago now,” he says. There’s a solemn, portentous tone to his voice as he starts to tell his story. “Their names were Alice and Jessica Murphy. They vanished without a trace, just simply disappeared. It happened on a Tuesday. They must have left Flag Cottage about half past six in the evening. Erin at Barry’s in Coldharbour saw Alice driving down the street with Jessica beside her.”
“How old was she—the little girl?” I ask him.
“Jessica Mary was nine years old,” he tells me. His face darkens. “Just the same age as my Amy was then.” He gestures toward the photograph. “Anyway, no one reported them missing till the Wednesday afternoon.”
He pauses to let us digest this.
I look around to check on Sylvie. She’s sitting quietly, drawing, a slice of sun from the window falling across her. The bright light seems to take all her color away.
“But somebody must have realized, surely,” I say.
“Nobody knew,” he tells us. “Alice’s husband was off on the road. He’s a computer salesman. I got the call at three. It was one of Alice’s friends. They’d been due to meet for lunch at Foley’s—that’s the seafood bar in Coldharbour. When Alice didn’t turn up, the friend went round to the house. She got no answer. So she called us.”
He has a mug of coffee on the desk in front of him. He stirs it with a Biro, staring into the mug.
“Sometimes you get a case,” he says, “and it’s like there’s just no way through. No body, no evidence. What can you do?” He gives his head a little shake. “It wasn’t for want of trying, believe me. We had the big guys down from Dublin, picking over everything. But there simply wasn’t anything to go on.”
“But what about Alice’s car?” says Adam. “Didn’t they ever find it? Wouldn’t there be some clue in that?”
“The car was found burnt out, a few miles south of Coldharbour,” says Brian. “So any forensic evidence was destroyed.”
“Maybe somebody killed them,” I say, “and then set fire to the car. So there wouldn’t be any evidence left.”
He shrugs. “Or maybe Alice set fire to it—before she did whatever she did. Or it could have been kids just playing about. Say they found the car abandoned there and torched it for a laugh. Kids from the Hazeldene Estate in Barrowmore, most likely,” he says. “There’s a load of budding arsonists up there.”
“You said . . . before Alice did whatever she did,” says Adam.
Brian nods. “Alice Murphy wasn’t a happy woman,” he says. “She’d had a lot of treatment for depression. In fact, she’d been an inpatient up at St. Matthew’s in Barrowmore—that’s the psychiatric clinic.”
“Suicide, then?” says Adam.
“That was one of the theories,” says Brian.
“But you never found them?” I say.
“We looked. But you know how it is round here. There’s so much empty country—places where a body might lie hidden for years.” He gives a small, defeated sigh. “Well, as I say, we don’t know, but that was always the theory I favored. That Alice took her own life, and took the little one with her.”
I glance around at Sylvie, feel crazily afraid for her, as though she might be snatched away. Everything suddenly feels unsafe.
“You think that Alice killed Jessica?” Instinctively I lower my voice.
“Could be,” says Brian. “Could be she took her off up the mountain and gave her some ground-up pills to drink in a bottle of Pepsi. There have been cases like that.”
I think about this, how it would be to kill your child—her pulse slowing, her eyes glazing over because of what you’d done. My mind shies from the horror of it.
My thought must show in my face.
“I’m sorry, Grace,” says Brian. “I didn’t mean to upset you. To be honest, we all found it hard. We had a psychiatrist in to help us. He said—what happens in these cases—the mother gets too identified with the child, she sees the child as part of her, so if she tries to kill herself, she will also kill the child. It’s still sick, if you ask me. Beyond forgiveness, really.”
For a moment nobody speaks. I listen to the quiet of the office. The wind in the palm outside the
window has a cold, harsh sound. I feel slightly nauseous.
“And the other theory?” says Adam.
Brian shrugs. “Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as that. Perhaps she just walked off into the sunset. There could have been a lover that we didn’t know about. People do sometimes just walk out of their lives. Some of us favored that notion. But I couldn’t see it myself, and Alice did have depression, and it maybe wasn’t the happiest marriage in the world. So I’m sticking with my first theory . . . Well, I hope I’ve answered your question.”
“Yes. Thank you so much.” I pick up my bag. “We’re very grateful,” I say.
Brian gives me his card. “If there’s any other way that I can be of help, just ring.” He has a slight knowing smile. “I’m sorry if I’ve put you off Flag Cottage.”
“It’s as well to know,” I say vaguely.
He goes to open the lift-up flap in the desk. His eyes are on our faces. He gives us a sudden penetrating look.
“And maybe sometime you’ll come and tell me what this is really about . . .”
We go back into the foyer. Sylvie jumps up and tugs at my sleeve.
“Did you find them?” she says. “Did you find my family?”
There are feverish pink patches in her face.
I glance back at Brian, wondering what he will make of this. But he’s gone into his office. I collect the comic and felt-tips.
“We’ll get in the car, and I’ll tell you about it,” I say.
In the car she doesn’t immediately fasten her belt. She leans forward over our seats. There’s a blue bruised smudge on her lip, where she’s been sucking an inky finger. Her warm breath brushes my face.
“Did you find my family, Grace?”
I glance at Adam. I don’t know if I should leave this to him, whether he’d handle it better, but he nods slightly.
“I’m not sure, sweetheart,” I tell her. “We asked about the house—about Flag Cottage.”
“Yes. Where my family lived,” she says.
“He told us something happened. To the people who lived there.”
“Yes, Grace.”
She’s watching me intently. Her eyes are fixed on mine.
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