by Erin Hart
Owen Cadogan wasn’t completely off the hook either. She’d spent some time thinking about him after they’d gotten home last night. Those things he’d dumped in the canal may have been evidence of his connection with Ursula, or Rachel Briscoe, or both of them. It looked as if he enjoyed tying people up. Maybe things got out of hand, and the whole staged ritual was just a cover-up for an accidental killing. But it was possible that Cadogan was involved in smuggling artifacts as well. His relationship with Ursula could somehow have been connected.
All these elaborate conspiracies were just possibilities—and pure conjecture, really. She knew from bitter experience that what the Guards would need was concrete proof.
Nora suddenly remembered that she and Cormac had been planning to talk to Brona Scully, to find out whether someone had frightened her last night. If Cormac was right about somebody being after Brona, maybe she could identify the person. Charlie Brazil she’d know, certainly; but she might not know Owen Cadogan, except by sight. Nora remembered the picture of Cadogan she’d seen last night in Michael Scully’s file on Loughnabrone. She dived into the jumble of books and papers on the floor, found the file, and flipped quickly past the raft of yellowed newspaper cuttings.
She came to a stack of black-and-white news photos. Most of them featured only the Brazils, with Danny in front holding up a corroded metal blade. One of the pictures was the same shot she’d seen in Cadogan’s office, of Dominic and Danny Brazil accompanied by a third man. This picture had not been cropped, and the lower part of the third man’s face was visible. There was something vaguely familiar about him, she thought—perhaps the posture, the body language; she couldn’t pinpoint it exactly. Was it just that she’d seen him in the other photograph?
Then her eyes fell on the perfectly knotted tie and the unusual pin. The image was minuscule but unmistakable, a testimony to pleasing and deceptively simple Iron Age design: a triskelion.
All this time, they had been so focused on the objects in the hoard that they hadn’t paid enough attention to the people involved. She looked more closely at the hands in the photograph, remembering the elegant fingers arranging coins on a table into triangles and rows of three. The missing link between Ursula Downes and Danny Brazil had been staring her in the face since the day she’d arrived, but now she knew his name: Desmond Quill.
8
Teresa Brazil set her small brown suitcase by the kitchen door. She had packed the case only twice in her life before, once the day before she was to be married, and once—
It was all right to think about it now. The past had been blocked off, dammed up; but the sight of that triple-knotted cord on the policeman’s desk a few days ago had started a slow drip that had grown into a steady flow, and finally into a deluge that she was powerless to stop. The long-dry lakebed of her soul was flooded with images, words, feelings, and sensations long denied. Staying here would be fatal; it would mean drowning in memory.
She had awakened this morning dreaming once more of hard yellow earth, sunlight, and dust, the reverse of this place with its soaking ground and dark drains slowly bleeding life away. Here, lives were confined by narrow roads, closed in by hedges and ditches and ivy-choked oak trees, hemmed in by a place that was perpetually dark, secret, and damp. She would leave this dying bog in midsummer, and arrive at midwinter in a place where the seasons stood on their heads. People said even the water spiraling down the drain went contrariwise. Nothing would ever be the same, and that somehow felt right and necessary.
She had let the sheep out, and sent Charlie to gather them up. She needed to make sure he’d not come back to the house for at least a few hours. She didn’t bother to look into the sitting room. It was where Dominic always was, these days, tied to his oxygen tank and his television. She could hear the noise of the television—bright, false laughter.
The hackney driver would be here any minute, and there was one more thing she must do before she left. She dug through the pile of discarded clothes at the bottom of her wardrobe until she found the square tin box, rusted shut and covered in dust from many years of neglect. She prised off the lid and stood holding the tin in her hands; she stared at its contents, feeling herself at once rooted to the earth and hurtling backward into the past.
Dominic Brazil had not been her own choice. He’d been twenty years older than she was, for a start, with roughly handsome dark features and a manner that was by turns brutal and taciturn. She had been only twenty-five years old, but her own family would keep her at home no longer; they’d made that clear. Dominic was dead keen on having her, her father had said. And she hadn’t had the will, nor the resources, to oppose any of them. It was only years later that she grasped what had really happened; that she had in effect been sold, in a ritual that shared more with animal husbandry than with true marriage. She had crossed this threshold an ignorant girl, led here from her father’s household like a prize heifer. She still felt shame, remembering the way old Mrs. Brazil had turned her around, poked and prodded, practically checked the teeth in her mouth. She had been judged too weak, too thin, too contrary to be of any use.
At first she’d wanted to prove them wrong, to show what she could do, until she realized that it would do no good. Nothing she did would ever be good enough. She was the outsider, resented all the more because she was necessary. The Brazils were a dark family. The darkness didn’t just reside in their coal black hair and sloe eyes, but seemed to emanate from their very souls, from the secretive habits and closed doors, the walls constantly built up between them. Danny had some of that darkness as well, but he was a bit different from the rest. He was the only real ally she’d ever had.
At first what passed between them had been very innocent. About eighteen months after she’d come here, she began finding small gifts in the henhouse when she went out to collect eggs—shiny stones, snail shells, and cocoons—compact treasures that fit in the palm of her hand. She started keeping them in a small box hidden at the bottom of the wardrobe. She knew who’d left them, but nothing was ever spoken or even acknowledged between them. No communication at all but these small, secret offerings and their silent acceptance. On the surface, everything carried on as it had before, but she could feel the current quickening below, threatening to pull her under.
The day that everything changed, she found a strangely formed lump of beeswax in one of the usual hiding spots. She held it to the light, admiring the pale, translucent form—like a tiny cathedral, she had thought; like a photograph seen in a book, something delicate and fine. Suddenly her husband’s dark form had filled the doorway, and she had instinctively folded the wax into her palm. Dominic had asked her something about the eggs, which she’d answered without even hearing the question. When he left, she opened her hand and saw the imprint of her palm and fingers in the ruined, misshapen wax, and knew at that moment that some part of her soul had suddenly been transformed. She could not go back, only forward. Why that single, accidental act of destruction had set off everything that followed, she would probably never fully understand, but she had held the wax tightly in her palm until she reached the apiary.
Danny was sitting on the cot against the wall when she arrived, hands clasped around his drawn-up knees, staring off into the distance. She distinctly remembered simply standing before him, uncurling her fist to show the melted lump of wax. And somehow she had known that he already understood everything she had come to say, and that there was no need to speak. When he finally pulled her down on the cot beside him, the sensation was not one of submission or capitulation, but of long-awaited freedom.
She and Danny had planned to meet early on that Midsummer’s morning. She walked the two miles to the crossroads at dawn. He would come from the apiary; they would meet at the cross and thumb a lift from a lorry driver heading toward Shannon. From Shannon they would make their way somehow to Australia. A dense fog had spread low over the bog that morning, and a frisson of anticipation had bubbled through her, dissipating all fear and fatigue. When the
sun broke across the horizon, she sat on her suitcase under the shelter of an overgrown hedge, listening to a lark’s celebratory chorus. She remembered how the minutes had slid by, but it was difficult to recall exactly when her hopeful anticipation had begun slipping toward disappointment, then apprehension, and finally bitter despair.
She had never seen any tickets. He’d said they ought to wait until they arrived at Shannon. At six o’clock, nearly two hours after the appointed time, she concealed her small suitcase in the hedgerow and began walking home, feeling with every step a heavy inward strike, burying disgrace and humiliation far down in the depths of her soul, never to be acknowledged, ever again.
She had arrived home just in time to put the kettle on. After starting the rashers and sausages for Dominic’s breakfast, she had begun preparing his lunch for the day. He would have to be up in a few minutes for the eight o’clock shift on the bog. The cuckoo clock in the kitchen sang its mechanical song at seven. Everything was as it had been yesterday, and as it would be again tomorrow. There had never been anything else; it had only been temporary madness, an illusion.
And she had remained steadfast in her denial. When the monthly blood stopped and she began to feel the quickening flutters in her abdomen, she had simply accepted the child, never once looking at him in search of some feature that would tell her which of the two brothers was his father. Never once, that is, until Charlie had brought home news of a blackened corpse with a triple-knotted cord about its throat. It had felt like a car crash, that moment, filled with sounds of tearing metal and shattering glass. It felt as if a yawning void had opened in the ground beneath her feet, and everything that existed these last twenty-five years had slipped away, suddenly devoid of meaning.
She carried the tin box outside into the haggard behind the house, where she had made a pile of straw. She lit a match and touched it to the golden stalks, watching the fire falter at first and then take hold. One by one, she dropped the treasures from the tin into the fire, watching as it consumed each one with bright, chemical confidence. When the last object was gone, she turned away from the fire.
As she opened the kitchen door, the hackney driver was just pulling into the yard. She waved to signal that she was ready, and went into the house for the last time. One by one, she unscrewed the valves on the three oxygen tanks that stood in the corner of the kitchen. Then she crossed to the cooker. She had already extinguished the pilots; now she turned the gas on at each of the four hobs, and in the oven as well. Teresa let her gaze sweep the room one final time before she grasped the handle of her brown suitcase and stepped outside, closing the kitchen door carefully behind her.
It was strange how calm she felt, riding in the back seat of the cab—how well she could envision the journey ahead, if not its destination. When it was finally time, she would make her way down the long corridor that led to the departure gate. A few hours from now she would emerge naked and new on the other side of the world. She had tried to keep from feeling each minute seeping into the next, bleeding away, until there was nothing left. But now she felt as if her veins had run dry. She was a husk, light and free. If by chance she should cut herself, nothing would flow from the wound but a meager trickle of dry yellow dust.
9
Nora tucked the photograph of the Brazils and Desmond Quill into her jacket pocket, and set out to find Brona Scully. If Quill had been out here at Illaunafulla last night, and she could get Brona to identify him from the photo, it would be something to take to the police. It still wouldn’t be absolute proof that he was involved in the murders, but it would be one step closer.
Michael Scully seemed surprised to see her when he answered the door. His hair and clothes were rumpled as though he’d just awakened from a nap.
“I’m very sorry to disturb you, Michael, but I need to speak to Brona.”
Scully let her in and called for Brona from the foot of the stairs, but received no response. “I don’t think she’s here at the minute,” he said. “She must have gone out while I was resting.”
Nora saw last night’s dreadful worry creep back into Michael Scully’s face. He might not know about Rachel Briscoe’s murder, and there was no point in making him worry needlessly. “I’ll go and have a look at the place where Cormac found her. But if she does happen to come home in the meantime, would you give me a ring?” She fished a card out of her pocket and scribbled her mobile number on it. “Just ring me on that number.” Scully nodded gravely.
All these paths, Nora thought as she picked her way up the small boreen at the back of the Scully property; all these trails twisting around and leading nowhere. The grass was deep, and there were blind corners everywhere.
If Quill had been part of the Loughnabrone excavation team all those years ago, he could have been involved in Danny Brazil’s murder. And maybe Ursula had found out about his connection, and had been using that knowledge as leverage to get something she wanted—the gold collar? The drawing was documentary evidence that it existed. If it had already been sold, maybe it was a share of the money Ursula had been after.
Nora’s head still ached, and her joints were stiff from the time she’d spent in the broom closet. If she couldn’t find Brona, or if the girl couldn’t identify Quill, then she could try to track his movements last night—find out if he’d left the hotel, who might have seen him in the town. It was impossible to know whom to trust, but she couldn’t stop now. The facts were starting to fall together, piecemeal though they might be, and it would all come out eventually. She had to believe that.
She quickened her pace, scanning the hedges at the pasture’s edge for Brona Scully’s dark head. It was probably crazy to think she could find the girl, but Cormac had done it last night. She climbed through a hole in the hedge and emerged amid a crowd of cattle, heads down at their grazing. A young bullock raised his head to inspect her, his innocent brown gaze raising a host of specters of fatted calves and sacrificial lambs. She had to find Brona, before it was too late.
No figure appeared near the fairy tree. Nora peered up into its swaddled branches, feeling once more the strange intensity in the hundreds of ragged and colorful supplications. She called out Brona’s name, not daring to speak above a whisper, as if the tree might catch and hold her plea in its gnarled limbs.
She crisscrossed the patchwork of fields a half-dozen times, poking at the base of any ditches where a hiding place might lie, skirting any low-lying spots. There was no sign of the girl anywhere. She suddenly realized that she was at a distinct disadvantage. Brona Scully knew this place, every hedge and bush and pile of stones; she could even be watching from some protected place. Nora turned, taking in the vista, the brown bog stretching into the distance, the lake below the hill. She hadn’t yet looked in Charlie Brazil’s apiary. The thought of running into Charlie again after their last meeting was not a prospect she relished, but she had to find Brona. She would advance on the place slowly, circling around it first, in case anyone was there. Brona might run if she was surprised, and Nora didn’t want to meet anyone else.
She traced the edge of the pasture above the apiary, sticking close to the framing hedge and crouching as low as she could. There was the beekeeping shed that she could use for cover. She circled cautiously around the outside of the whitethorn ring that surrounded the hives, and came up behind the abandoned house. No one seemed to be about, but the breeze carried a lazy, intermittent buzzing, depending on which way the wind shifted. Brona could be hiding; she’d have to check inside.
As she turned, she felt a strong hand clamped over her mouth and another person’s wiry strength against her own. Her captor pushed her back against the wall, and it was a moment before she realized that the wide, frightened eyes only inches from her own belonged to Brona Scully. With her free hand, the girl lifted a finger to her lips; then she pulled Nora down into the weeds.
The reason for her urgency became immediately apparent; the grass began to rustle no more than a few yards away and two figures came into vi
ew through the overgrown grass and clover. Nora recognized one of them as Dominic Brazil; the other was Desmond Quill. Brona Scully’s whole body tensed, and she pulled at Nora’s arm as if to beg her to come away. They might be able to get away without being seen, but it was risky. If they stayed put, Nora reasoned, she might be able to find out what was going on. She shook her head. Brona stopped pulling, but remained where she was.
Dominic Brazil was speaking. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to find. I told you a long time ago, there never was any gold. It was something Danny made up to try and get some extra money off you. If there was any gold, why would I have just carried on all these years?”
Desmond Quill followed about five paces behind Brazil, carrying a spade in his left hand, and keeping the right jammed in his coat pocket. “It took me a long time to figure that out. You know, I almost believed you, back when that story was new—about how there was no gold, how Danny had made off with both shares of the reward money. But you ought to know it won’t wash anymore. Give it up. And keep walking.” He prodded Brazil’s back with the spade handle, making him stumble. “I admit that I underestimated your fortitude—sticking to that story all these years, never wavering.”
Brazil marched stoically through the deep grass, but his pace was slowing. “I’ve got to rest for a minute,” he said. “It’s me breathin’. I can’t cover ground like I used to.”
“We’re nearly there,” Quill said. “Keep going.”
“Nearly where? What are you on about? If you know where the fuckin’ thing is, why didn’t you just take it? Why did you have to drag me here?”
“Because I’m a curious man, Mr. Brazil, and you’re the only person who can satisfy my curiosity—let’s put it that way.” Quill’s mouth turned upward into a grim smile; he drew his right hand from his pocket and looked down at the dagger it held. “I understand that you’re a bit worried about this. But consider my position. How was I to know you wouldn’t try the same thing with me as you did with Danny? You seem to be on a downward spiral, my friend. I might have been next.”