Frank noticed she was blushing again, as she walked around the counter and began to rinse the glasses.
‘They’re like little reminders of what happened here.’ She stopped for a moment. ‘Like little whispers from the past. You never know what the lake is going to reveal.’
They stood looking at each other for a moment. Then suddenly, the door behind Peggy opened and Carla walked through from the house. Frank noticed her face was scrubbed clean and her hair was tied back from her face in a severe ponytail.
‘Detective. You’re still here.’ She took a beer bottle from the shelf and opened it in one fluid movement.
‘I’m just leaving, actually.’ Frank looked at Peggy. ‘Thank you for your hospitality. It’s likely I’ll be back in the morning with Garda O’Dowd. We might have a few questions for you. Or your brother, if he’s around.’
‘You’ll be lucky,’ Carla said from behind her sister, and she swigged from the neck of the bottle. Frank tried to ignore her.
‘Nothing serious. We’ll be asking the same questions of all the business people in the area. Nothing to worry about.’
‘Of course, Detective, of course. I’ll be here all day. Jerome should be in around lunchtime. We will be serving lunch. From noon. Just … just if it suited you, of course.’
Frank smiled at her. ‘Thank you, Peggy.’
Carla snorted into her bottle.
‘Ms. Casey,’ Frank said to her, and turned to leave. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said in the direction of the two men at the bar, and walked halfway across the room before stopping. He turned back around and addressed Coleman, who didn’t lift his head from his pint. ‘You’ll be around tomorrow, Coleman?’
‘I will,’ Coleman said into his glass. ‘Sure amn’t I always around?’
‘You might walk with me to the lake in the morning? You may perhaps be able to cast some light on the situation? Or at least give me your own take on the matter. You having all the local knowledge, and such.’
Coleman turned stiffly on his seat. ‘I will, of course, assist An Garda Síochána in whatever way the Detective feels I might be in a position to.’
Frank nodded. Something was still bugging him, and he couldn’t think what it was. And that was bothering him even more. Something someone had said earlier. He lifted his hand in recognition of Enda O’Shea who, seeing him leave, had raised his pint to him, and he walked past the yellowing photographs of grinning men holding dead fish, and out of The Angler’s Rest.
He was glad to get out into the cool night air. He needed to think. He sat in his car for a moment, looking up at the front of the pub, with its whitewashed walls and glass lanterns hanging either side of the wooden front door. He thought of the two women inside. Crumm was not the place for a woman like Peggy. She was so much more than Crumm. He could see what a great job she was doing with the family business, but even so, it must be a lonely existence for her. And she seemed to him like the kind of girl who was meant for bigger things. Better things. But then, who was he to say? Maybe running her family business was what Peggy wanted from life. He knew plenty of girls who had never left his own village in Galway. Maybe everything Peggy wanted was here in Crumm.
Frank turned the key in the ignition and put the Capri into reverse. His thoughts turned to the body at the lake. He’d go down there now. Check on Garda O’Dowd and the young O’Malley lad. Maybe he should have moved the body today, but something had told him to wait. There could be clues to the mystery in the mud on the shoreline, and he was loath to disturb it. Better to let the doctor examine the lot before removing her. The Doctor. Frank shook his head, thinking of the other dirty, unkempt man holding up the bar in Casey’s. There really is one in every village, he thought, as he drove off through the darkness in the direction of the lake.
EIGHT
‘Goodnight, lads. Goodnight.’ Peggy pushed the old door closed behind the last few customers to leave. There were always the same few left till the end, nursing the dregs of their pints, the same few who apparently would rather sit in an empty bar well past midnight than meet with whatever waited for them at home. Belligerent wives in some cases, Peggy knew. But in others, there was only the quiet of the four walls waiting, and for those, mostly older men, Peggy understood the dread her calling time brought on. Still, it had to be done. She could hear them standing, talking, outside the door as she heaved her shoulder against it, pushing a worn brass bolt across at the same time. She stood back and kicked at another bolt closer to the floor. Walking back through the bar, she collected the last few empty glasses and brought them to the counter. Maura could do them in the morning. She still had the whole kitchen to clean, and she was tired. She rattled a window lock, and took one last look around the place before flicking the light switch on the wall.
She hoped Carla had gone to bed. She didn’t know what to say to her. As it happened, it was Carla’s back she saw on entering the old kitchen, as she stood near the sink rubbing something with a tea towel. She seemed not to hear Peggy as she came in. Peggy looked round the room. All evidence of the stew and the accompanying mess had miraculously disappeared.
‘You cleaned up!’ She realized a second too late that her tone would not be well received.
‘It’s not like I’ve never cleaned this kitchen before,’ Carla spun around, jolted from her reverie, her eyes glaring. She might have noticed the exhaustion in her sister’s eyes, or been startled by the pallor of her usually ruddy cheeks, but Carla seemed to pause, before setting the plate she was drying down on the worktop with a sigh. ‘Want a mug of tea?’
Peggy sensed the olive branch being offered and she took it.
‘Yes. I would love a mug of tea.’ She pulled a heavy wooden chair from beneath the large kitchen table that dominated the room, and sat down. It was only when she took the weight off her feet that she realized how exhausted she was.
Carla busied herself at the range. ‘I was going to have a sandwich. I haven’t eaten all evening. Do you want one?’
Even if Peggy hadn’t been hungry, she wouldn’t have turned her sister down. Carla rarely went out of her way for anyone, least of all Peggy. And a sandwich meant her time and company, possibly even her conversation. ‘That would be great,’ she said and watched as her sister put ham and tomato on slices of white, buttered bread. Carla put the teapot and the food on the table and sat down opposite Peggy. They ate in silence for a moment, the ticking of the clock and the odd creaking from the old Aga the only other noises in the room.
‘So Jerome will be back in the morning?’ Carla said, at last.
‘Lunchtime,’ Peggy said, her mouth full.
‘Hmm.’ Carla was disapproving. ‘He shouldn’t leave you here on your own so much.’
‘You were here.’
‘Yeah, today. But how long is he gone?’
Peggy didn’t want to get into this. ‘Wednesday,’ she said, hoping the confession would get lost in her mug of tea.
‘Since Wednesday?’ Carla’s eyes were wide. Peggy noticed that the heavy eye- liner she was never seen without in public seemed to have been washed away.
Carla looked as if she wanted to say more, but had thought the better of it. She swallowed a mouthful of tea instead. ‘He shouldn’t leave you like that,’ she muttered.
Peggy waited, unsure what to say. She worried about Jerome too. She wanted to talk to someone about him. But Carla could be so critical. And she could do without her brother and sister spending the weekend at each other’s throats.
‘He can’t go on like this,’ Carla seemed to be talking to herself now. ‘I don’t care what he … ’ she stopped suddenly, and looked up at Peggy across the table.
‘He’s getting the television,’ Peggy blurted.
Carla looked unimpressed at this piece of information, but then she leaned back in her chair and sighed. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ Peggy was acutely aware that her enthusiasm was not shared by her sister, but there was little unusual in that. ‘I think it’ll help. Yo
u know, there are plenty in the village with no television themselves. They’ll all come in to watch the big things. It’ll pay for itself, I know it will.’
Carla stared over at her sister, scorn contorting her face. ‘What big things?’
‘You know,’ Peggy played with the handle of her mug. ‘When there’s a big news story. Like Dev’s funeral. They were all crowded into Bridie Hennessy’s for that. Or … or the big matches.’ She looked up at Carla, vindicated. ‘If we had a television this Sunday, we could show the All-Ireland. Can you imagine the crowd in for that?’ Peggy’s eyes glazed over as she pictured Casey’s crammed with punters in to see the match, some standing outside looking in the windows for lack of space. She’d have to hire one of the local lads to help her behind the bar; the place would be so busy. They could have sandwiches made; ready to sell at half-time, or perhaps after the match concluded. She pictured it all, and glowed with satisfaction as she sat in the quiet kitchen. Then she realized that Detective Sergeant Frank Ryan was in her daydream too, sitting at the bar, shouting at the imaginary television, cheering the Dubs on. She shook herself from her fantasy. What was she doing? Frank wouldn’t be there. Even if by some miracle Jerome did bring the television back with him tomorrow, Frank wouldn’t be here on Sunday. She glanced up at Carla, almost expecting her to have read her mind and be ready with another taunt, but Carla seemed to be lost in her own thoughts. Peggy summoned all the courage within, and attempted to transform it into words in her mouth. There was so much she wanted to talk to Carla about. What exactly was going on? Why was Tom Devereaux calling her on Friday night, drunk? Tom Devereaux, her boss? Tom Devereaux, a married man? She willed Carla to look up, to see the questions in her eyes so that she wouldn’t have to articulate them. But Carla’s gaze didn’t move from the mug in front of her.
‘So,’ Peggy said.
Carla looked at her hard. ‘So?’
Peggy opened her mouth but closed it again. ‘The body thing’s weird, isn’t it?’ she said, at last.
Carla looked back down at her mug, and Peggy exhaled heavily.
‘Yeah. I suppose it is.’ Carla picked at a piece of nail varnish that was flaking off her thumbnail. ‘I wonder who it is. Was.’
‘Could be an IRA thing,’ Peggy said. She was glad to have some neutral topic of conversation to discuss with her sister, even if it was a dead body. ‘Maybe it’s a Loyalist. Or a snitch. They’ve killed people like that before, and buried their bodies.’
‘Ah Peggy. Don’t be daft.’
Peggy shrugged her shoulders. It was well known that the hills around Ballyknock and Crumm had been notorious during the civil war, littered with safe- houses, and scenes of infamous skirmishes between the Staters and the Republicans.
‘Maybe it’s older?’ she said. ‘From the twenties?’
‘Huh.’ Carla stood suddenly, the scraping of her chair legs on the tiled floor shattering the calm of the room. ‘It’s probably just some fool that refused to move when they flooded the valley.’ She brought her plate over to the sink. ‘Some stubborn eejit that sat in her house as the water rose around her ankles until she had no choice but to go under with the rest of it.’ She stood at the door leading to the rest of the house and pulled her cardigan tightly around herself. ‘Or some idiot, like Coleman Quirke, who thought that a moonlit walk over the bridge after ten pints was a great idea.’
The gentle banter was evidently over. Peggy just sipped her tea and let her sister rant and bluster.
‘There’ll be no great story. It’ll be no one famous or important. And your Detective Sergeant will go back to Dublin, and you’ll never hear from him again, Peg. So don’t get your hopes up. Right?’
Peggy tried her utmost to keep all expression from her face. ‘Right,’ she said.
Carla paused a moment, and for a second, Peggy thought she was considering sitting down again. But then her sister yanked the door handle and turned on her heel. ‘Goodnight, so,’ she said as she disappeared into the house.
Peggy sat unmoving for a moment. She had read in one of her magazines that it was good practice to breathe slowly and count silently to ten when you wanted to stop yourself from screaming and punching someone. She almost had to marvel at how Carla could, without a word having been spoken on the matter, find the fontanel of her thoughts, and stamp up and down on it unabashedly.
Frank. Of course, she had thought him attractive. Any normal girl would. She was fairly convinced that Carla herself had had an appreciation of his presence in The Angler’s Rest that evening. But had she really thought more of it? Maybe Carla had been one step ahead of her subconscious. She seemed to have worked through their attraction, affair, and Peggy’s broken heart before Peggy herself had had the chance to mull over the possibility of it.
Well, maybe Carla was right. This was Crumm, after all. Not the type of place where handsome men from Dublin came to find love. It was Crumm, where nothing ever happened; a village forever anchored to a painful and brutal past, the truth of which seemed to cast a lake-shaped shadow on the people who lived there.
Peggy sat in the quiet kitchen and thought about Coleman. It was rare to get more than a few sentences out of him on any occasion, and she had never heard him tell the story of the evacuation before. She had, of course, been aware of the history of the place; how their pub had once stood more than half a mile from the river water that now lapped less than one hundred feet away. But that is what it had always been. History. Before her time. She had only been a baby when the valley was flooded, and she could remember it no other way. Her own family had not been adversely affected by the dam; indeed, the new lake had brought opportunity and business to her father. But although she had known that some of the older people living in Crumm had once lived in the valley the lake now filled, she had never really stopped to consider what it might have been like for them to pack up their belongings and walk away from their houses and farms, knowing they were soon to be destroyed.
The washed-outs, they had been dubbed: Coleman and his older brother, old Mrs. King, Mr. Murphy out the Ballyknock road; there were very few left, really. But then, who would want to live next to a lake, knowing that your home was at the bottom of it?
Peggy drained her tea. It was ironic, how so many had been forced from the place not a quarter century before, and yet she had somehow managed to get tethered here herself. And while some days Peggy loved being the proprietress of The Angler’s Rest, on others she worried that’s all she would ever be.
She thought about Hugo, and how apparently easily he had set down the reins of the place and walked away into a new life. There was no stopping her doing the same.
She thought about Frank. Sometimes it took an outsider to illuminate the familiar, to show it up for what it was. He reminded her of a boy she had studied with in catering college. They shared the same fair hair. There had been a time when she had entertained the idea of going away with him, to London maybe, or even America. They might have found their own place. Their own story. She hadn’t thought of that boy in months. He’d gone to Boston not long after her father had died, and she had moved back to Crumm to manage the bar. He had sent her a postcard from a very fancy looking establishment called Parker House, where he was working as an assistant manager in housekeeping. It had sounded very grand to her. It had sounded a long way from Crumm.
She stood and brought her empty plate and mug over to the sink. She could smell smoke wafting from her clothes and her hair as she moved. She needed a bath, but she was too tired. And the smoke never went away anyway. Her lasting memory of her father was his warm, comforting smell of beer, and tobacco, and turf fires. That smell never shifted. It became part of you. It had become part of him. And as long as she ran The Angler’s Rest in Crumm, Peggy knew that she would be no different.
NINE
Saturday, 27th September 1975
Frank could feel Bernie O’Shea’s homemade black pudding swilling around in his stomach. Crouched below him, the State Pathologist, Dr
. Aloysius McKenna was using what looked like a metal spatula to push back the wet sand from the area of the body already exposed. He muttered to himself as he worked; nothing Frank could decipher. Every now and then he would stop, lean back, and gesture at Garda O’Dowd, who would move in a little closer and take a photograph with a Nikon 35mm. He said nothing to Frank as he worked; indeed, he had hardly uttered two words to Frank since they had met for the first time at the station that morning. As one of the youngest Detective Sergeants in the force, Frank knew he looked just a little too young to be taken seriously on the job. Respect came with age in this game. In that, he and Michael O’Dowd had common ground, he thought, looking at the guard as he held the doctor’s camera as if it was made of eggshell. Dr. McKenna stood up and scribbled in a hardback notepad, which he leaned on his upper thigh. He continued to mutter all the while.
Frank used the opportunity to take in the changing scenery around him. When they had arrived that morning, the early sun had cast shadows on the lake and the shore where they stood, but now, under the clear sky of late morning, there was nowhere to hide. The still air sat heavy on the lake water, the tall evergreens towering silently above their heads. It felt to him as if the whole place was holding its breath, waiting to see what awful truth might be disinterred from its bleak beauty. Downstream, he could make out what looked like a line of boulders, disappearing into the still water. The arrangement made no sense to him. He made a mental note to examine it more closely later.
Across the other side of the lake, he could make out a dilapidated estate house, partially hidden by trees. The old manor. Its windows resembled eyes, peeking out across at him through the branches, half afraid of what it might see. There was certainly no way the body that lay here, ten feet from where he now stood, could have been from the old graveyard near the estate.
‘It’s P and T.’ Dr. McKenna suddenly addressed Frank. He was kneeling on a piece of cardboard he must have brought with him. He pointed at the body in the sand. ‘Jute. It appears the deceased was buried here in a post bag.’ He used what looked to him like a wire brush to remove some of the wet sand further down the length of the body. ‘You might be able to make out the lettering here?’ He glanced up at him. ‘The deceased, female it would seem at this stage, appears to have been put, post-mortem, into a Post and Telegraphs sack, and buried here.’
The Lake Page 6