‘But you have no way of telling for sure if they’re bones?’
‘Not until we dig them up and see them with our own eyes. That’s the only way to tell for certain.’
‘I’ll see that we bring in somebody to start trench digging first thing tomorrow morning,’ said Katie. ‘What area will you be scanning next?’
‘Underneath that vegetable bed next. You’ve already discovered several bones there, close to the surface, so I should imagine that the bodies there weren’t buried nearly so deep.’
Dermot switched the ground-radar machine on again and began slowly to roll it across the grass. Katie watched him at work for a few moments and then she said to Eithne, ‘How’s it going with the septic tank? How many have you managed to fish out so far?’
‘Come and see,’ said Eithne. Then, as they walked across the lawn, she said, ‘That bombing today at Spring Lane, that was terrible. You were there, weren’t you? Holy Mary. Are you all right? You weren’t hurt at all, were you?’
‘I’m okay, but I’m still slightly deaf,’ said Katie. ‘Bill Phinner hasn’t left the halting site yet, has he?’
‘No. As a matter of fact, he called me only about five minutes ago. It’s probably going to take them most of tomorrow before they’ve finished combing the ground around the caravan. Then they’re going to tow it in to Anglesea Street examine it. He says he has a strong suspicion about who built the device, but he’s not one hundred per cent sure yet.’
‘Oh, Bill’s very good at that,’ said Katie. ‘He only has to smell the residue from an IED and he can tell who put it together. He’s better than a sniffer dog when it comes to Semtex. Anyway – these bones.’
Since her last visit to the convent garden the brightly lit blue tent had been extended towards the eastern wall and more groundsheets laid out. She stopped at the entrance to the tent and she could hardly believe what was laid out in front of her. There were now eight rows of tiny skeletons arranged on the groundsheets, close together, and in each row there must have been more than thirty.
‘We’ve counted two hundred and seventy so far,’ said Eithne, snapping off her black forensic glove so that she could push her hair out of her eyes. ‘Of course, we can’t be sure that all the individual bones belong to the correct skeletons, but we’re being very careful to photograph them in situ before we move them. We’ve measured every bone, too, and that’s given us quite an accurate idea of how old they were, taking their poor diet into account.’
‘So what ages were most of them, when they died?’ asked Katie. She couldn’t help thinking of the small white casket that her late husband Paul had carried by himself into the church, with little Seamus inside it, in his best blue romper suit.
Eithne said, ‘This is only the roughest of estimates, but so far we think that about twenty-five were stillborn, while the majority of them were eighteen months to two and a half years old. Some are obviously much older, though. You see that skeleton on the end of the second row there? That child was at least seven when she died, although her growth was well below average for a girl of her age, almost certainly because her diet was badly lacking.’
‘You know it was a girl?’
Eithne nodded. ‘It’s her teeth that give her away. Up until the age of five or six, there’s no difference between the dental development of boys and girls. After the age of six, girls start to outstrip boys, particularly in the growth of their mandibular teeth.’
Katie walked over and crouched down beside the girl’s skeleton.
‘You sad, hard-done-by little girl,’ she said. ‘I wonder what your name was.’
Two middle-aged reservists in blue anoraks came waddling up to Eithne and said, ‘We’ve finished sifting through that end of the flower bed now. We’ve found no more bones, like, but Sergeant O’Farrell says he wants us back tomorrow morning.’
‘Okay, grand, thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow so,’ Eithne told them.
Katie stood up and together she and Eithne left the tent. Stephen and Dermot were still plodding slowly up and down the lawn with their ground-radar machine, occasionally stopping to frown at the screen.
‘By the way,’ said Katie. ‘I paid a visit to the Begleys regarding Roisin’s suicide note.’
‘And?’
‘After a whole lot of huffing and puffing, Jim Begley finally admitted to me that he had written it himself.’
‘Serious? He actually admitted it?’
‘He didn’t have much choice, did he? When Roisin went missing there was nobody else in the house, only the Begleys. He said that he had written it so that it would look as if Roisin was penitent for working for Cork Fantasy Girls and hadn’t wanted to shame her family any further.’
‘That’s fantastic,’ said Eithne. ‘I mean, it’s tragic, but it’s fantastic. But it doesn’t help to explain how she died, does it? It makes it more of mystery than ever.’
‘I asked Jim Begley outright if he’d drowned her. He gave out with a whole lot more bluster, but he wouldn’t give me a straight answer. I told him that I’d be consulting Detective Dooley and that we’d almost certainly be wanting to question him further.’
‘My God. Do you think he did drown her?’
Katie looked back at the children’s skeletons lying on the groundsheets. As she did so, one of the reservists untied the tent flap and hid them from view, and she was glad of that. They had been given little enough respect when they were alive.
‘Oh, I think he’s quite capable of it,’ she said. ‘He’s like thorny wire and he’s very protective of his family’s good name. In other words, he can’t tolerate people looking down their noses at the Begleys during Mass because their daughter’s a slapper.’
‘But to actually drown her? What kind of a father would do that to his daughter, even if she was a bit of a slut?’
‘I don’t know, Eithne, to tell you the truth. I stopped speculating about people’s motivations a long time ago, especially when it comes to religion.’
As if to emphasize her point, Mother O’Dwyer appeared around the side of the chapel and stopped and stared at her. Her eyes were bright and hard, as if two steel nails had been hammered into her face. Katie considered walking over to tell her the latest count of infants’ skeletons they had lifted out of the septic tank, but she decided that she would rather keep her in suspense until they had all been recovered. Unless, of course, she knew already how many there were.
35
Riona was riding Saint Sparkle around and around the back field when Andy Flanagan came driving into the stud farm in his dusty green Range Rover. Dermot was leaning on the fence watching Riona and smoking a cigarette and Andy stopped beside him and climbed out.
Riona rode over to them and dismounted. She handed the reins to Dermot and said, ‘Take him back to his stall for me, would you, Dermot? The vet will be here soon, anyway.’
‘He’s looking in real fine fettle,’ said Dermot. Then, turning to Andy, ‘What’s the craic, boy? Keeping you busy are they, all those adulterish husbands?’
‘Oh, it’s the wives, they’re the worst,’ grinned Andy. ‘They’re all doing the messages online these days and having the delivery fellows from Tesco and SuperValu around when their husbands are at work. It’s like the milkmen used to be in the old days. Tesco Direct? Tesco Erect, more like!’
It was a grey, overcast morning and the clouds were moving only slowly, although there was enough of a chilly breeze for the lime trees to be whispering to each other. Dermot smacked Saint Sparkle affectionately on his shiny brown flank and then led him away. Andy took out a packet of cigarettes himself and offered them to Riona, but she shook her head.
‘Handsome-looking horse,’ he said, flicking his lighter three or four times before he got a flame. ‘He didn’t do too well on Sunday, though, did he?’
‘You didn’t bet on him, did you?’
Andy blew out smoke and shook his head. ‘I only bet when it’s a fix and I’m in on it. Since you declined to tell me where he
was going to finish, like, or if he was going to finish at all, which as it turned out he didn’t, I wisely decided to keep my money in my wallet.’
‘He wasn’t mentally hyped up for it, that’s all,’ said Riona. ‘He’s physically strong, Sparkle, but he’s a pessimist. He’s like a lot of people... if he realizes that he’s not going to make it past the post first, he gives up. But he’s entered into the BoyleSports Tied Cottage Race Day at Punchestown the Sunday after next and I can tell you for sure that he’ll run away with that one.’
‘He’ll be up against Jezki, though, won’t he, and Tiger Roll? What’s his price?’
‘Paddy Power are giving an early bird of tens.’
‘But you think he’s going to win it easy?’
‘God willing, yes.’
Andy looked at her with his eyes narrowed so suspiciously that he appeared to have no eyes at all. He was a huge man, at least six foot four inches, with a head that looked too big for his brown trilby hat. His cheeks were blotchy and embroidered with fine crimson veins, his teeth were all brown and crowded, and his nose was broken. He wore a flappy white trench coat and raspberry-coloured corduroy trousers that didn’t quite reach his ankles. If he were a building on Adelaide Street he would be well past derelict and ready for demolition.
‘You said that you’d located Sister Aibrean Callery,’ said Riona.
‘I have, yes. It wasn’t easy, I can tell you, but I’ve found her all right. She’s living with her eldest granddaughter in Waterfall Road, Curraheen. Up until last February she was being looked after in the Marymount Hospice, but her granddaughter’s husband died of a haemorrhage about a year ago and so she offered to take her in, for the company, like.’
‘Well, that was good work, Andy,’ said Riona. ‘Can I ask how you found her, or is that one of your trade secrets?’
‘No, it’s no secret. It’s knowing the right people, that’s all. I talked to Canon O’Flynn, who used to hold Mass at the Holy Family Church on Military Hill, and he knew all of the penguins up at the Bon Sauveur. He visited Sister Aibrean when she was in hospital with her kidneys and he kept in touch with her afterwards, too. The one critical thing he told me about Sister Aibrean was that she always insisted on wearing the full penguin outfit, even after she left the convent.
‘One of the porters I know at the Wilton Hilton tipped me off that after she was discharged from there she was sent to the Marymount. The trouble was, the Marymount refused to tell me where she had gone to after that. But I reckoned that if she was still wearing the full penguin outfit, like, she must either be sewing it herself, like a lot of the nuns do, or else she was buying it from one of the very few places that still supply religious clothing. Since she’s so old, and she has the arthritis, I doubted that she was doing her own sewing, so I checked with some of the suppliers of holy vestments.
‘You wouldn’t believe it. Most church stuff is sold online these days – copes, albs, candles – even the fecking sacramental wafers. All on the Internet. I’m surprised they don’t supply choirboys, too, with their bums ready-buttered. But after I’d tried ars.sacra.com and churchsupplies.ie, I got third time lucky with Mary Fitzpatrick who runs her own vestment business in Carrigaline, called GloryBe.com. She’d been making habits for Sister Aibrean for years, and when I explained to her with tears in my eyes that I was Sister Aibrean’s long-lost cousin Conor from Australia, she told me at once where she lived.’
‘And you’ve checked that she’s actually there?’
Andy produced his iPhone from out of his raincoat pocket, jabbed at it with a dirty fingernail, and then passed it over. Riona could see a white-painted detached house with a hedge outside and a tall elderly woman in a nun’s habit standing in the open doorway, her face as pale as a plateful of porridge. She had one hand lifted as if she were waving somebody goodbye.
‘I took that myself this morning,’ said Andy. ‘Right near the corner of Waterfall Road and Bandon Road.’
‘And you’re certain that’s her?’
‘I talked to the girl behind the counter at Mac’s Cafe in Bishopstown Road. She knows her. She’s in there as soon as they open every morning. Tea, no milk, no sugar, and two plain oat biscuits.’
‘That’s good work, Andy. How are the other two coming along? Sister Virginia and Sister Nessa?’
‘I think I have a break on Sister Virginia. The other one’s a little more knotty, like. But don’t worry. I’ll track them down, the both of them. They don’t call me Find ’Em Flanagan for nothing.’
‘Who doesn’t?’
‘Well, nobody. I just made that up. But it sounds good, what do you think?’
Riona looked totally unamused. For some reason Andy found himself staring at the pink face powder that clung to the very fine hairs on her upper lip. Perhaps he didn’t have the nerve to look her straight in the eyes. Although he would have found it hard to explain why, she was one of the most frightening people that he had ever met, and that was including a Slovakian drug-dealer called Vicki who had once threatened to cut his mebs off with serrated kitchen scissors.
‘Come into the house and I’ll pay you for finding Sister Aibrean,’ said Riona. ‘You do understand, don’t you, that the second that money passes from my hands into yours, you have never heard of anybody called Sister Aibrean and nobody has ever asked you to find anybody of that name and you have never been looking for her?’
‘Mother of God, Riona. For what you’re paying me, I’d be happy to forget my own name, let alone hers.’
‘I wanted to make that crystal-clear, that’s all,’ said Riona. ‘I wouldn’t like you to end up as the victim of a misunderstanding.’
Andy left his Range Rover where it was and followed Riona across the stable yard and into the house. As they approached the back door he didn’t know what to do with his cigarette, so he nipped it out between finger and thumb and tucked it behind his left ear.
36
Almost as soon as she had returned to the station and hung up her coat, Katie’s phone rang. It was Garret MacTeague, from Scully & MacTeague, who were Jim Begley’s solicitors. He spoke with a thick lisp, almost as if he were half langered, but Katie had faced him many times in the district court and she knew that he always sounded like that, and that he was a very formidable lawyer.
‘My client informs me that you may want to interview him regarding the tragic death of his daughter.’
‘That’s correct, yes. Has he told you about Roisin’s suicide note?’
‘He’s admitted that he wrote it himself, if that’s what you’re referring to. I know you have the necessary evidence so there’s no point in us beating about the bush and trying to make out that he didn’t. However, he totally denies any responsibility for her drowning.’
Katie sat down and slowly rubbed her stomach. She had been suffering from indigestion ever since she had left the Bon Sauveur Convent. Not only that, she had the beginnings of a headache. Her normal painkillers contained caffeine as well as paracetamol and she knew that she shouldn’t be taking those now that she was pregnant.
‘Why don’t you bring your client into the station about eleven tomorrow morning?’ she suggested. ‘I’m very tied up at the moment, what with the Spring Lane bombing and all.’
‘Of course, yes,’ said Garret MacTeague. ‘You have my firm’s sincerest condolences for that. I’ll contact my client, but I don’t think there’ll be any problem with him coming in tomorrow. He’s very anxious to get this matter resolved as soon as possible. So is Mrs Begley, as I’m sure you can imagine.’
Katie hung up and then rang for Detective Dooley, who had also returned to the station only a few minutes before. When he came up to her office he looked almost as if he had been in a brawl. His brushed-up Jedward hairstyle was windswept and his jacket collar half turned up at the back.
‘State of you la,’ she said, and she couldn’t help smiling. ‘How’s it going up at Spring Lane?’
‘Oh, slow – painful slow. The technical experts are
still picking up all of the doonchie little bits of human flesh and aluminium with tweezers. They have the patience of Job, those people, I tell you. But me and Brennan have finished interviewing all of the residents, which is why I’ve come back. We talked to every one of them, even the kids.’
‘So what did they have to say for themselves, the residents?’
‘They’re Travellers, what do you think? The politest response I got out of them was, “Go wash the back of your bollocks,” if you’ll excuse my language, and that was from a little girl of six.’
Katie raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh well. Maybe Inspector O’Rourke will have more luck. He has very good connections with the Pavees. Meanwhile, I’ve just had Jim Begley’s solicitor on the phone. Jim Begley’s coming in to the station tomorrow morning to answer questions about Roisin’s drowning.’
‘He’s coming in voluntarily, like?’
‘Yes. Voluntarily. At eleven. I want you there, too, please.’
‘If he’s coming in voluntarily he must be feeling confident that we can’t stick it on him. He totally denied that it was him who drowned Roisin, didn’t he, when you went round to see him? If he goes on denying it, it’s going to be fierce problematical for us to prove it.’
‘He’s very religious, so maybe his conscience will get the better of him,’ said Katie. ‘That’s always supposing that he really did do it.’
‘We don’t have any forensics, that’s the trouble,’ said Detective Dooley. ‘There was no bruising on her to speak of, and none of her fingernails were broken or had skin under them, like if she’d been fighting somebody off. All right, Jim Begley might have confessed that he forged her suicide note, but what’s that proof of? Only proof that he was ashamed of her, nothing else.’
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