by Erin Hart
“So you were often out at the excavation site.”
“Fairly often, yeah.”
“Did you look for opportunities to be out there, to help Ursula whenever you had the chance?”
“No. I only did what I was asked to do.”
“Was there any change in how you got on, between last summer and this one? Any difference in her that you noticed?”
“Not really. She liked to get people to do things for her. She was always asking me to help her out, and I did.”
“Why?”
Brazil didn’t answer immediately; he looked away and pulled at his lip. His voice dropped a notch or two in volume. “I suppose I felt sorry for her.”
“What?” Brennan’s voice was incredulous, and Ward flashed his eyes to tell her to tread lightly here.
“It seemed like she needed attention,” Brazil said. “I helped her when she asked me.”
“I see.” Brennan opened her mouth to ask another question, but this time Ward jumped in: “Did you ever see Ursula away from the job, Charlie?”
“No. Never.”
“Did you ever have a sexual relationship with Ursula Downes?” Ward asked.
“No!” The lad’s nostrils flared as he raised his head, and his chest heaved as if he couldn’t take in enough oxygen. “I never. I swear.”
Ward remembered the comment from one of the archaeologists. “What were you doing in the archaeologists’ shed a few days back?”
Charlie Brazil stared at them with a new wariness in his eyes. “I was looking at a map they’ve got in there, trying to see where the next cuttings were going in.”
“Ursula found you in there, didn’t she? Why was she upset or angry to find you there?”
“No, she wasn’t—”
“You left in quite a hurry,” Ward said. Charlie couldn’t understand how they knew all this. He was unsure of himself, and they kept the pressure on.
“When was the last time you saw Ursula?” Brennan asked.
“At the excavation site a couple of days ago, about five o’clock. They were finishing up for the day. I didn’t speak to her.”
“That’s not what we heard,” Ward said. “We have a statement from someone who overheard you talking with Ursula. She said she’d been watching you, didn’t she? She threatened to expose what you’d been hiding unless you did something for her. There’s a word for that sort of proposition; it’s called blackmail. What are you hiding, Charlie? And what did Ursula want from you in return?”
Charlie’s fingers gripped the metal cylinder more tightly, and his eyes hardened into steely blue stones. “Whoever told you all that was a liar. It never happened. Who was it told you that—Cadogan? He’s the one you ought to be asking about his relationship with Ursula Downes.”
“Are you saying you’ve seen them together?”
“If he denies it, ask him about the pipe shed on the back road to the old power station. I’ll say no more about it.”
“Where were you last night, Charlie?” Brennan asked.
He didn’t respond immediately, and his feet shifted nervously. He couldn’t look either one of them in the eye. “I had nothing to do with Ursula’s murder. I swear it.”
“Just tell us where you were. Start from the time you left work.”
Charlie finally looked up at Maureen. “I finished my shift at four and went home to get my dinner. After that, I fed and watered the cattle and mended a fence across the road where my mother keeps her sheep. One of the posts was a bit wobbly, so I had to see it was mended straightaway.”
“And what time did you finish all that?”
“About half-eight, I suppose. I don’t really know. I don’t wear a watch.”
“Well, what time did you get home?”
There was a brief silence. Charlie’s voice was low as he answered. “I didn’t.”
Ward saw Brennan glance over at him before she proceeded. “So where were you?”
“Up the hill behind the house. I had a big pile of dry scutch I’d been saving for a bonfire that night. It took a while to get the fire going well and I stayed beside it all night. I didn’t want it to burn out. I got home around half-six to do the foddering.”
“Where was this fire, exactly?”
“Top of the hill directly behind the house.”
“Did anyone else see it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t build it for anyone else. It was my own thing.”
“What was the occasion?” Ward asked.
Charlie’s eyes remained downcast. “Midsummer’s eve. It’s supposed to bring good luck, putting ashes from the fire over the cattle.”
Brennan said, “So you’re telling us you just sat and poked at a fire all night? All on your own?”
“That’s all.” Charlie colored deeply. Was it something that innocent and personal, Ward wondered, or was he concealing something darker? Whichever it was, the boy couldn’t seem to raise his eyes from the floor. It wasn’t just luck for the cattle he’d been after. There was something more, something he wasn’t saying.
“I don’t know if you remember, Charlie, but you and I have had dealings before,” Ward said. “The business about some animals killed out on the bog. It’s a good few years ago now. I talked to you a couple of times about that.”
The young man’s voice was low and adamant. “I remember. And what are they saying now? ‘It must have been Charlie Brazil, he knew her, and remember what he did to those poor creatures.’ They all think I’m half cracked, but I’m not, and you know it. I didn’t do those things back then, and I did not kill Ursula Downes. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
They had reached a stalemate. It would be useless to go on, at least for the moment.
“Can I get back to my work now?”
Ward nodded, and Charlie Brazil switched on the grinder, ignoring them as they made their way back out through the workshop.
8
When they reached the Garda station, Cormac hesitated for a moment before they went inside. He pulled his car keys out of his pocket and handed them to Nora.
“Just in case you need them,” he said. He might as well have said what he was really thinking: Just in case they arrest me. “You can wait here for a while if you like, but I’m betting it’ll take more than a few minutes. Maybe I should just ring you when they’re finished with me.”
She took the keys, letting her fingers rest lightly on his upturned palm; then he turned and walked through the door. “Cormac Maguire,” he said to the officer at the front desk. “Here to see Detective Ward. He’s expecting me.”
Just a few moments after Ward had taken Cormac away to an interview room, Detective Brennan stuck her head through the inner door. “Dr. Gavin? If you’d come with me, we can have you sign your statement upstairs.”
They passed through what appeared to be a squad room and turned into a stairwell at the building’s rear. Their feet clattered on the concrete stairs, making a hollow, metallic echo in the stuffy stairwell. More desks, more phones upstairs, then a nondescript room with a table and several chairs—an interview room. Cormac was probably just next door. Nora knew they would not have brought her here just to sign a statement; they weren’t finished with her yet, and it was this woman’s job to get something more out of her.
Brennan set a sheaf of typed papers on the table, just out of reach. “We have your earlier statement here ready for you to sign, Dr. Gavin, but we wanted to give you the opportunity to add to it, if you wish to do so.”
Nora studied Detective Brennan’s face: broad, with a generous mouth; thick hair cut in a style that said she was a woman who tolerated a minimum of fuss.
“I’m not sure what you’d like me to add.”
“You live in Dublin, but are staying out here for the moment at—” She checked the typed sheet. “—the Crosses, a house owned by Evelyn McCrossan, is that correct?”
“Yes. You know all this; it’s in my statement.”
“Just want to make sure there’s nothin
g you’ve inadvertently left out. Now, as I understand it, you’re assisting with the excavation at Loughnabrone, and the archaeologist in charge of that excavation was Ursula Downes.”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that. Ursula was in charge of the bog road excavation, and in the course of that work, her team found the remains that the National Museum team was recovering over the past few days. I was consulting with the National Museum on that secondary excavation.”
“I see. And Ursula’s crew also found the body of Danny Brazil, who apparently was murdered at Loughnabrone Bog twenty-six years ago.”
“Yes.”
“All rather strange and coincidental, isn’t it? It’s also coincidental that your fellow houseguest up at the Crosses is an archaeologist and knew Ursula Downes—knew her quite well, according to our information. Working with her must have been a bit awkward.”
Nora said nothing, but she felt her hands tightening into fists under the table. Brennan, despite her pleasant appearance, was quite good at this.
“Whose idea was it for you and Cormac Maguire to spend time here?”
“I don’t remember, exactly. When the body turned up at Loughnabrone, the museum asked me to come down and consult on the recovery, and when I mentioned it to Cormac, he suggested that we stay at the Crosses.”
“You came out here together from Dublin? When?”
“No. Cormac drove out here on his own last Sunday, and I came out on Monday morning. I wanted to have my own car while I was here.”
“And why did you say he came along on the trip out here?”
“I didn’t. But he told me he was working on some writing and thought a few quiet days in the country might help his concentration.”
“I see. Or maybe he thought it would be interesting to put the two women he was seeing within reach of each other? Maybe the danger of that situation appealed to him. Surely he’d seen Ursula Downes being interviewed on television about the bog body. Surely he’d heard she was working on the site. Isn’t that why he came out here?”
He’d never said anything to her about Ursula before they’d made their plans. “No. I had to be here for the excavation, and he came along to write.”
“Did he mention anything to you about Ursula Downes visiting him at the Crosses on Sunday evening?” Brennan asked.
“Yes, he told me she stopped by just after he got in.”
“This was something he volunteered on his own when you arrived?”
“No, he told me this morning—” Only this morning, after he’d found out Ursula was dead. But what Detective Brennan was suggesting could not be true.
“Can you tell us where Dr. Maguire was last night?”
“He was with me.”
“All night?”
Nora hesitated slightly, trying to feel her way through this minefield, to tell the truth without damning Cormac. “We were together all evening. I fell asleep about eleven-thirty, and he was with me. When I woke up at seven this morning, he was there as well.”
“And in the intervening hours, from half-eleven to seven a.m.?”
“I told you, I was asleep.”
“You didn’t wake in the middle of the night?”
“No, I was very tired.” She felt the calm gray eyes survey every inch of her face. Brennan switched gears again.
“I suppose all archaeologists have their own gear that they bring to an excavation—do you know anything about that? I’d no idea they actually use bricklayers’ trowels; I suppose I thought it would be something more sophisticated than that. And everyone all done up in waterproofs. I suppose the weather doesn’t make all that much difference out on a bog. Wet above, wet below.”
“Yes. It’s very soggy work.” A whirlwind of images swirled in Nora’s brain: all the genderless figures out on the bog, Cormac’s waterproof jacket hanging on the hook above his wellingtons last night, and the empty peg she’d seen this morning, the arterial blood spray on the wall at Ursula’s house, and, though she tried to resist it, the image of an arm encased in a yellow rubber sleeve pulling a blade in a sharp motion across Ursula’s slender throat. She knew Detective Brennan was watching these visions pass in front of her eyes.
“Cormac kept his waterproofs outside the back door of the house. Anyone could have taken them.” She realized her misstep a second too late.
“Kept them outside the door? So you’re saying they’re not there now? When did you notice they were missing?”
“This morning as I left the house to go to the bog.”
“So just before you discovered Ursula Downes’s body?”
“Yes.”
“And when did you last notice Dr. Maguire’s waterproofs hanging in their usual place?”
“Yesterday evening, when we got home from a walk after dinner. He wore his wellingtons on the walk, and put them back under his waterproofs when we got home.”
“What time was that?”
“It was almost dark—about ten-thirty, I suppose.”
“So between approximately ten-thirty last night and half-seven this morning, Dr. Maguire’s waterproofs went missing.”
Nora had the sinking feeling that she was digging Cormac in even deeper, but she couldn’t lie without making things worse. She couldn’t hear the rest of Brennan’s words. The world had gone pear-shaped in front of her eyes. Was there anything Cormac had not told her about his visit to Ursula? Stay calm, urged the voice in her head. They’re doing this on purpose, to get at you. It’s all part of the interrogation technique, to get you to question Cormac’s word, tell them something you shouldn’t tell. But you’ve told the truth. Who had told them Cormac had been involved with Ursula? Had he told them himself, or was there some other evidence? Or maybe it was just speculation on their part. The police had to sort fact from fiction all the time, and they, like all humans, made mistakes, and jumped to conclusions, too eager to find connections where there were none.
“Put yourself in my position, Dr. Gavin,” Brennan was saying. “We have to follow all possible leads, and when we see a past relationship with a victim, physical evidence at the scene, and an eyewitness account, we have to look into it.”
Nora tried to focus, to slow her racing thoughts. “Of course you do,” she said. “I understand perfectly. But I hope you’re looking into all the other possible suspects as well.”
“Oh, we are. But did I happen to mention that Ursula put up quite a struggle, and that we found blood and skin under her fingernails? We ought to be able to match that with the person who strangled her and cut her throat. I’m encouraged by that news, but I’m afraid Ursula Downes is beyond encouragement.”
“You don’t have to tell me, Detective Brennan. I found her body, remember? I couldn’t be more aware of a victim’s plight. But Cormac Maguire is not the one you’re looking for. He’s not, and I’d stake my life on it.”
“Well, Dr. Gavin, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” She pushed the statement in front of Nora and offered a pen. “Just sign and date the statement, if you would. Then I can see you out.”
Emerging from the station, Nora felt as if the world had changed while she was inside. The faces of the people passing by looked harder, more sinister; the very light looked harsher and more unforgiving than it had less than an hour ago. She had two talismans, the car keys Cormac had handed her and her mobile phone. She checked the phone’s battery—still good, for another while at least. He’d said he would ring as soon as they were finished with him. Surely they wouldn’t—no, she couldn’t let herself imagine that they would keep him in custody. But if they tried, he might not kick up enough fuss about it, thinking that everything would come right somehow.
Gazing across the busy street, Nora saw another little whirlwind like the one she’d seen out on the bog, only smaller, more compact, and remembered Owen Cadogan’s words: The fairy wind. They say nothing good comes after. A strong gust suddenly pulled a spout of dust and leaves several feet up into the air, where it lost cohesion and fell apart, onc
e more becoming just a harmless heap underfoot—the stuff we tread through day after day, she thought. And it’s the same with evil; it comes from nowhere, from the things and people around us every day, and recedes back into them. How else to explain lynch mobs, death squads, mankind’s cruel history of spontaneous, senseless slaughter? Ancient people everywhere had explanations for it: tricksters, evil spirits, ill winds; the eyes they saw everywhere, leering, grimacing, taking glee in the disruption of order. Nora found herself offering up a tiny, wordless prayer for Cormac’s safekeeping, and for her own.
Another thought struck her as she walked toward the jeep. They might just take a cheek swab or blood sample for typing and DNA analysis, and be finished with him within a few minutes. It would be silly to go home if that were the case. Nora crossed the street and pushed open the door of Coughlan’s Hotel, then the door under a sign with three carved wooden knots that read “Lounge Bar.” Inside was a rather old-fashioned blend of burnished wood and brass, tapestry-upholstered stools and benches. Nora ordered a cappuccino and sat at a table near the bar, stirring a sugar lump into the coffee hiding beneath the white foam.
Three knots. There had been three knots in the cords that strangled both Danny Brazil and Ursula Downes. Maybe that wasn’t the only connection. If only she could get her thoughts to order themselves. She needed a logical plan of action, not this chaotic jumble of half-drawn connections and questions.
She wondered whether the certainty she felt about Cormac’s innocence was the same certainty felt by people whose loved ones maintained their innocence when they really were guilty. Cormac might be guilty of other things—guilty of gallantry laced with stupidity in venturing over to Ursula’s house that night, without a single witness to support his story. Why hadn’t he brought her with him, if he’d only gone to assuage Ursula’s fears? Detective Brennan had done an excellent job of raising all the unanswered questions that had been lying dormant in her mind.
She looked across the bar and saw a half-familiar figure. The man from Ursula’s house this morning—Quill. When people said a man looked distinguished, they meant he looked like Desmond Quill, who had the sort of face that weathered nicely over time. He was probably over sixty, but broad-shouldered and trim, with well-defined, even features, a square jaw, and a full head of silver hair. Something in his upright posture suggested an elegant wading bird, a gray heron. Nora didn’t know the man, but as she approached, the set of his shoulders and the double whiskey in front of him filled her with a spreading ache.