Kathy felt Wynn Nugent stiffen beside her. With trepidation, they made their way towards the water.
“Stand clear now, make way,” barked a policeman.
It was heavy, whatever it was. Kathy could tell from the way they were dragging it. It was wrapped in tarpaulin and heavy plastic sheeting. Kathy could feel the blood slowly draining out of her. She watched not daring to breathe. The police bent down and started to untie the thick blue rope binding the tarpaulin together.
“What the hell…” they heard a mutter.
A policeman let out a low whistle.
Kathy and Wynn Nugent edged a bit closer. It looked like a small dump of heavy-duty weaponry. Edging even closer, Kathy saw roughly about fifteen to twenty large automatic-type weapons and other assorted equipment. As Kathy stood there taking it all in, Sarah’s voice came to her. ‘I’m telling you – they were up to something… talking about the movement… the Brits…’ Had Sarah’s instincts been right all along? Was this the business of Sean and his companions?
The Blue Pool was rapidly losing its charm. It no longer seemed the rural idyll where they’d spent a few happy days. Kathy was distraught. She was the one who’d attracted those caving guys. She was the one who’d invited the guys into their company.
As Kathy stood there feeling miserable, uniformed police huddled together talking, while the divers awaited their instructions. Waves of relief were washing over everyone. The find hadn’t been a corpse.
“It’s not her,” whispered Wynn Nugent eventually. “It wasn’t my Sarah.”
“No, Dad. It’s not Sarah.” Ava Nugent came up and patted her father’s arm.
“I think I’ll go back to the car, Ava. I don’t feel good.”
“It’s too much, Dad. You shouldn’t have come. I’ll walk you back. Maybe Kathy can carry on with Penny?” Ava looked enquiringly at Kathy.
“Sure. Of course.”
Kathy was feeling pretty shook up herself. She’d have jumped at the chance to go back to the car and hide there until all of this was over. Instead, she found herself with Penny Nugent, listening to stories and sharing confidences about her sister, Sarah. Penny desperately wanted to talk.
Penny and Ava had been the sensible sisters, the ones who’d done the schoolwork, the ones who obeyed the curfews. But not Sarah. She’d spent her teenage years bunking off school, getting drunk, climbing out of windows after midnight and going to parties. At fifteen, she’d taken her mother’s car-keys and crashed her brand new Mercedes into the garage wall. She’d been completely wasted. As Penny and Kathy traipsed now through the mud, shouting over the roar of the helicopter, they traded stories about Sarah. Sometimes laughing, sometimes wiping a silent tear.
“Sarah never ever wanted to do Pharmacy, you know,” said Penny. “Even this summer, for example, in our pharmacy, Sarah was bunking off at every opportunity.”
“She mentioned that alright,” said Kathy.
“Mum was going insane,” continued Penny. “Sarah’d get a phone-call and off she’d go for an early lunch, or a late lunch, or whatever – skiving, and never coming back. Never explaining where she was.”
“She was probably with Luke,” Kathy blurted, and felt herself immediately go scarlet. She hadn’t meant to say that. “You knew about Luke, right?” It was too late to back-track now.
“It’s okay, Kathy. Ava and I knew about Luke,” said Penny, seeing her discomfort. “We told the police everything we knew about Sarah the first morning that they called. So Mum knows about Luke now as well.”
I wonder how that went down, Kathy thought. “I’m sure she wasn’t too happy when she found out that Luke was the one keeping Sarah from her job,” Kathy ventured. Kathy was sure that there was plenty about the fisherman that wouldn’t make Mrs Nugent happy.
“Getting Sarah home is Mum’s priority,” said Penny.
Kathy’s remark suddenly felt insensitive and stupid.
“Although, I don’t think Luke is what Mum has in mind for Sarah,” said Penny carefully. She allowed herself a little smile. “Anyway, it wasn’t Luke that Sarah was meeting. He told the police he’s been away for the last three months, out in the North Atlantic, fishing.”
How appealing that sounded now. Kathy would love to be anywhere but here. The North Atlantic would do just fine. “The re-sit results are out next week,” she said. It suddenly occurred to her how the four girls had planned to meet in the Quad at college.
Penny didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Kathy, but the four of you in the same house, all four doing re-sits – it must have been one hell of a year.”
“It was,” said Kathy, feeling both uncomfortable and embarrassed. It had been one hell of a year alright, but not in the way that Penny thought.
At two p.m. the search paused for lunch. Kathy once again marveled how the normal rhythms of daily life carried on. Sarah had disappeared. They’d found a cache of arms that Kathy hoped had no connection with her disappearance. And yet life went on.
College life would resume again in October with or without Sarah Nugent. The Nugent pharmacies would remain open for trade. Life would go on. Nothing would stop. It seemed wrong. Disrespectful. Hard-hearted. But Kathy shouldn’t be surprised. The world hadn’t stopped when Lawrence had died. Why should it stop for Sarah?
* * *
“Sandwich, love? Tomato and cheese only…” One of the divers was wandering around with a tinfoil package.
“Thanks.”
“You knew the… you knew Sarah?” he said.
What had he meant to say? ‘The deceased ’? ‘The victim ’?
“Yes, we’re in college together. We share a house.”
“This must be tough on you,” he said gently.
“It is.”
“Mind if I sit down?”
“No, not at all.”
Kathy made space on the lichen-covered boulder.
“You know what? Today is a first for me. It’s the very first time we’ve pulled a stash of weapons out of the water. We’ve had other weird and wonderful things but never guns.”
“How do you do it?” asked Kathy.
“The job?”
“Yeah…”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, somebody’s got to. It’s important to retrieve… it’s important for the family you know… it’s important… the remains –”
“She may not be in there,” said Kathy.
Any hope was worth clinging on to. He seemed to think about this.
“That’s true. But if she is, I’ll tell you one thing – we’ll find her.”
As they finished their sandwiches, they sat and made small talk about Galway, about the Arts Festival and some show he’d seen over the summer. Kathy pondered the incongruity of discussing festival productions with a diver who was dragging the lake for the corpse of her friend.
Someone yelled out that the search was resuming. A few feet away, Ava and Penny were looking in Kathy’s direction. Ava must be back from depositing her father at the car. Kathy gave a half-smile. Penny raised an eyebrow, as if to enquire whether Kathy would be joining them again.
“Coming,” Kathy mouthed.
Kathy looked around. Where were Charlotte and Ruth? And then she spotted them – sucking on the ends of cigarettes, standing under the miserly shelter of a hawthorn tree. Was she imagining it or was Ruth giving her daggers looks? If so, Kathy couldn’t think why.
For the remainder of the afternoon, they continued walking round the lake, tensely watching the divers. Kathy couldn’t relax. The police wanted to speak to them again after the search was over. There was something they didn’t seem happy with. Ruth and Charlotte seemed unnerved as well – some of the questions seemed way off-beam.
Even the simple questions made Kathy squirm. Could they see guilt etched on her face? Could they sense her remorse? Could they see into her soul and see what she had done?
All of a sudden, Kathy felt the urge to get away from there.
Away from the Blue Pool. Away from this Punch and Judy show, where she was a marionette with some crazed puppeteer orchestrating the strings. She looked around her. This once peaceful holiday retreat was now a sinister backwater, harboring a very dark secret.
She didn’t want to be there when they dragged her bloated body from its depths. She’d overheard the divers. Their muttering and puzzling over why the body hadn’t reached the surface by now. Kathy couldn’t bear it any longer.
“Thank you, everybody. That’s enough for today. Back to the cabins for now,” shouted one of the uniformed police.
Kathy heaved a sigh of relief. Thankful the afternoon was over, she walked back up to the cabins, alone. Penny and Ava were linking arms and walking way behind, heads downcast. Behind them was Mrs Nugent with Charlotte and Ruth. All three looked very uncomfortable.
Up by Cyril’s cabin, Kathy spotted a shiny Mercedes car parked next to a fleet of police cars. Slumped inside was Wynn Nugent. He looked ghostly. He was staring out of the window at the scene around him. Kathy looked away, afraid that he would catch her eye. Even though the man was obvious for all to see, she felt she was intruding on a private grief.
Back in the hotel room in Ballyvaughan, Kathy could no longer hold on to her emotions.
“It should have been me,” she bleated in anguish, squeezing a pillow.
Charlotte looked at her, bewildered.
“That’s total crap, Kath!” said Ruth. “Don’t talk such bloody rubbish. Come on now, get a grip.”
“It’s not rubbish, Ruth. You know it’s not. It should have been me,” wailed Kathy.
“It could have been any of us,” said Ruth.
But Kathy was having none of it. “No, it really should have been me –”
“Oh shut up, Kathy,” snapped Ruth.
“Girls, don’t start. I’m not in the mood.” Charlotte too, was tetchy.
“Just ’cause you don’t feel any guilt, Ruth,” Kathy whimpered.
“Of course I feel bloody guilt!” Ruth exploded. “If you must know, Kathy, I feel like shit. But I’m not going to bloody go on about it all the time, looking for tea and sympathy. I saw you today, sucking up to the Nugents. I saw all your antics. I saw you chatting up those divers. Christ, Kath! All you can ever think about is jumping into someone’s trousers. Don’t you know when to stop?”
With that, Ruth stomped out of the room, slamming the door so hard the bedroom walls shook.
Charlotte and Kathy stared at the door, stunned.
“She didn’t mean it,” Kathy said quietly after a few seconds. “She didn’t mean that.”
“I dunno,” said Charlotte carefully. “Ruth’s been really weird all day.” Charlotte paused. “She’s under pressure. But there’s no need to be a bitch. I’m off for a soak in the bath. It’s been one shit day.”
Kathy lay back on the pillows, spent. But she only lay there for minutes or so before there was a knock on the door.
“Tell her to apologise before coming back in here,” Charlotte yelled from the bath-tub.
But it wasn’t Ruth at the door.
It was Richard.
He’d just heard from a policeman colleague. He had news. They’d found Sarah’s placard. It had been spotted in a gully off the road between the cabin and the pub – staked like a cross in a cairn of stones. They’d also found a suitcase. It had been hidden from view by large dog leaves held in place with stones.
“Was there anything in the suitcase?” Kathy croaked, scarcely daring to ask.
“Women’s clothing,” Richard answered.
“Nothing else?” asked Charlotte, who’d now come to the door. She was wrapped in a towel and her hair was dripping wet.
“Not that I know of. Only that the suitcase was covered in stickers. Lots and lots of CND stickers.”
“Jesus,” said Kathy leaning against the doorframe.
“I know.” Richard too looked shaken. “I was really hoping that…” he trailed off. “Anyway, the search is moving away from the cabin and the Blue Pool. That’s really what I came to tell you. They’re going to need everyone on this. It’s going to take a lot of man-power to search that terrain.”
“But there was no sign of a… no body? Nothing else in the vicinity?” Charlotte was shivering in her towel. Her lips had a bluish tinge.
“No, Charlie. Not near the suitcase anyway. There was something in a ditch further along the road. But that may not be connected.”
“What was that?” asked Kathy.
“A blue inhaler.”
Kathy stumbled as Charlotte slumped against her. Richard put out a hand to steady his sister. “I know. It’s awful. Get some rest, girls,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”
Charlotte
Galway, Ireland
Present Day
It baffled Charlotte how much work could pile up in a single day. She suspected it was a ploy to dissuade the lab technicians from taking time off. Having spent yesterday in Adare, Charlotte had been playing catch-up all day.
She found it hard to concentrate. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t focus on work. Her thoughts kept turning to the Blue Pool. She found herself thinking about all that stuff that she had shut away for years. She felt uneasy.
As she mindlessly signed-off test reports, chat went on around her about the farewell-do on Friday night. She cringed. Another bloody farewell-do. She was the most senior and longest serving member of staff in the lab. How many younger staff had she waved off to brighter futures? One of her first protégées was now CEO of a biomedical start-up in the nearby innovation center.
Charlotte had never sought to further her career elsewhere. She’d prized security over the uncertainty of any new job. And it was easy to blame her kids for curtailing any adventure or challenge. Charlotte needed to be on hand for the kids. But she knew it was a lame excuse.
She led a pedestrian, mediocre, and sometimes, downright dull existence. There were days she could scream with the boredom of it all. But she was safe here, she told herself. And that was what she wanted. A safe existence.
Life was a series of trade-offs and compromises she told herself. You couldn’t have it all. That was a myth promulgated by those trying to market something – a car, a property, a younger face or body. As she rationalised the choices she’d made, it was getting harder to keep biting disappointment at bay. That disappointment was growing day by day.
If Charlotte were honest with herself, she’d begun to short-change herself long before the children arrived on the scene. What about all the trips to India and Africa that she’d planned, once she got a job? As soon as she had some finance behind her and paid off her college debts, she was going overseas to do some voluntary work. Those dreams all seemed so long ago.
Swiping her scan-card as she exited the lab, Charlotte remembered how she and Tomas Walsh had planned a future after college. He would work with Medecins Sans Frontiers. She would work with the VSO. She’d tried so hard to keep her dreams alive. Even after Tomas dumped her.
She’d go without him, that’s what she decided. Just as soon as they found out what had happened with Sarah. As soon as it was over, Charlotte was going away. That’s what she’d told herself. She needed a clean break. To put all the sordid business behind her.
Richard had promised her that they’d find Sarah. Sooner or later a lead would crop up, sooner or later someone would say something, let something slip. The force hadn’t forgotten Sarah Nugent. Not by a long chalk. And there were leads alright. Charlotte would work herself into a frenzy at each fresh one, but nothing happened. The leads went nowhere.
Months turned into years. The years had gone by and here she was – her list untouched, intact. For twenty-five years, she’d lived in limbo. There wasn’t a sniff. No corpse, no confession, no witness. And during that twenty-five years, the young adventurous woman inside her slowly withered away. The husk that remained was staring at looming middle-age and troubled by a sense that so much time was squandered.
&
nbsp; “You coming Friday, Charlotte?” yelled a colleague over the roofs of the cars in the car-park.
“I’m planning to, Milly!” Charlotte gave her the thumbs up.
At least the younger ones were still inviting her – the single twenty and thirty-somethings. They thought her cool enough to join them, as they knocked back Mojitos and Cosmopolitans and she sat with her one small glass of wine all night.
Charlotte usually drove everyone. She had to be up early on Saturdays to take the girls to hockey. And it suddenly struck her with dismay. She always ended up ferrying wasted colleagues home. The ones that weren’t going on to clubs. Was that the reason they invited her? Not for her company after all, but the free ride home?
As she reversed out of the parking space, mulling over this depressing thought, she thought she heard her mobile. She pulled back in to the space again and turned the ignition off. It was Richard.
“Hi, Charlie. It’s me.”
“Oh, Richard, just a minute…”
She might as well light up – she’d a feeling that she’d need it and it’d be her last opportunity for a sneaky smoke today.
“Go ahead,” she exhaled. “What’s the latest?”
“You okay to talk? Not driving or anything?”
Charlotte could hear the sound of a police radio in the background. Richard was probably in a squad car.
“No, no. I just pulled in. Shoot away.”
“Just a small update, Charlie. Shaw’s finally managed to get info out of the army dudes. The stuff about the court martial I mean – what Nathan Queally, our boy in custody, was done for.” Richard paused.
“Go on, I’m listening.”
“It’s not good, Charlotte.”
“I kind of guessed it wouldn’t be.” She knew it. The bum was a sicko.
“You remember I said he was on an overseas tour of duty with the United Nations?”
“I remember.”
“After a lot of digging around, Shaw found out that Queally took a weekend’s leave of absence. Got into a bit of an argument with a female NCO in some hotel bar in Cairo, it seems. Queally says she went for him with a broken glass, that he was only defending himself.”
The Blue Pool Page 20