by Erin Hart
“I’m a very light sleeper,” she said, “and normally would have been awakened by the slightest noise in the yard, but I hadn’t slept well for a couple of nights previous, and decided I’d take one of my tablets to see if I couldn’t get a decent rest. I’m very sorry not to be more help. Have you any idea who would do such a thing?”
“Have you?”
“The local villagers are nothing but ruffians, the lot. I wouldn’t put this sort of thing past any one of them.” She got up to leave the room.
“You do a lot of gardening, Mrs. Osborne?”
“Flowers are my passion, as you may have gathered.”
“I suppose you always get a few animal pests disrupting the beds—moles and birds and the like.”
“A few. We manage to deal with them. The crows are a terrible scourge. I had to resort to poison, but that seemed to take care of them.”
“Poison? So what do you do when a dead crow turns up in the garden?” He watched for any change in her demeanor but saw nothing.
“Jeremy takes care of it for me.” Then she stopped, puzzled by his line of questioning. “Why are you asking me all this?”
“Just routine. I want to make sure I speak to all the potential witnesses. If your son is outside, would you mind sending him in?”
“I’m afraid he’s not here, Detective. He was running an errand for me this morning and hasn’t returned yet. But he should be back any time now; I’ll tell him you’re waiting to speak with him, shall I?” Devaney now understood why Lucy Osborne had so eagerly volunteered: she hadn’t a clue where her son was. Just then the library door opened slowly, and Jeremy Osborne’s dark head peered cautiously around it.
“Hugh said you wanted to see me—” When the boy saw his mother, he turned his face away automatically, but the movement was not quick enough to keep her from seeing the cracked, swollen lip and the darkening bruise on his left cheek. Lucy Osborne’s alarm was instinctive; she stepped protectively between Devaney and the boy.
“Jeremy, what on earth happened? Did someone hurt you?” Devaney could see her inspecting her son’s face and frame for any other injuries. The boy’s face and clothes were clean, as were his hands, though the knuckles were swollen and abraded.
“I’m all right. I slipped climbing over an embankment when I was out.” As Lucy searched her son’s face, Devaney saw ordinary motherly concern, but something else as well: wordless entreaty, supplication. He realized that at this moment, for the first time since he had met her, Lucy Osborne seemed completely bereft of her usual and formidable lines of defense.
“Thank you for your statement, Mrs. Osborne,” Devaney said. “I’ll just finish up with Jeremy here, and then be on my way.”
“I’d like to stay, if you’re going to question my son,” she said. The boy looked pained.
“There’s no need. This isn’t a formal interview, just a couple of routine questions.”
“Nevertheless—”
“I’ll be all right, Mum, don’t worry.” Devaney thought they’d have a harder job getting rid of her, but Lucy Osborne withdrew without another word. He gestured for the boy to sit on the sofa, and placed himself in the chair facing. Jeremy’s eyes traveled nervously to the door a couple of times, as Devaney began jotting down a few brief notes in his book.
“Sore head?”
The boy’s eyes snapped toward him. “Sorry?”
“I asked if you had a sore head.” Jeremy studied him curiously. “You have to watch yourself with the whiskey,” Devaney continued. “Only takes a few before you’re stone mad. You’re better off on the beer at your age.” Jeremy took this fatherly advice with a trace of suspicion, but Devaney could see that underneath the brusque exterior, the boy craved this kind of attention.
“Why don’t you tell me what you were up to last night, Jeremy? Don’t worry, it’s strictly between ourselves at this point.”
“You’ll have to put it down in there,” Jeremy said, looking at the notebook.
“That’s right. But nothing goes into any file except a formal statement, if that becomes necessary. You may be sure I don’t pass this round for people’s mothers to read. Were you down at Lynch’s again last night?” Jeremy shook his head wordlessly, and Devaney could see the dim memory of the evening coming back to him in the successive waves of shame, anger, and disappointment that washed over his face. Devaney leaned forward and spoke as gently as he could. “Where were you, Jeremy?”
The boy’s eyes were on the patterned carpet, his voice was barely audible. His long fingers picked at a thread coming out of the seam of his black jeans, and Devaney could see that his nails had been bitten to the quick. “I nicked a bottle Hugh keeps in his workshop. I remember having a few drinks from it, but I don’t know what happened then. I woke up this morning in the woods.”
“So what you told your mother about slipping on the embankment—”
“I couldn’t tell her I’d been out all night.” The pathos in his voice was sincere. “I’m not supposed to be drinking. She gets worried enough as it is.”
“So you don’t know how you happened to get those—souvenirs?”
“No.” Jeremy gingerly touched his broken lip, and winced. Well, fuck me if he isn’t telling the truth, Devaney thought. If he did do it, the scene-of-crime boys might soon have the evidence; drunks weren’t normally careful about not leaving prints.
“And you know nothing about a dead crow turning up last night in one of the bedrooms upstairs?”
“No!” The boy appeared genuinely taken aback, even horrified by this bit of news, and Devaney pushed a little further.
“Maguire tells me you’ve been helping him with the excavation at the priory.”
“Well, I’m finished with it.” Hurt and anger flashed in the boy’s eyes.
“And why’s that?”
Jeremy Osborne looked down, and tried valiantly to regain control of his emotions. When he’d succeeded, he raised his face to address Devaney once more: “Bloody boring work, isn’t it?”
17
Devaney wasn’t sure what he expected to find out by speaking to Brendan McGann. He remembered what Maguire had told him, of McGann’s veiled threats at the priory. The information didn’t surprise him; everyone knew Brendan had a short fuse, and bickered with his neighbors—over livestock gates left open, property markers and fences, the usual small irritations between farmers. Devaney would wager that every perceived indignity, every slight that Brendan McGann had suffered over the years had been banked and kept alive in his belly like the embers of a turf fire. Eventually, those things either ate away at you from the inside—he had seen it happen to his own father—or they came bursting out. On the murder squad, he’d seen the consequences of the latter far too often.
Brendan’s statement in the Osborne case file had been true to form: few words, grudgingly delivered. He’d offered no alibi for the time of the disappearance, said he’d been driving cattle home from pasture. Devaney pulled into the drive, feeling the Toyota vibrate dangerously as it rumbled over the cattle grid. Jesus, something was going to fall off the fucking car any minute. No one answered when he rapped at the door, which was shut, and locked, when he checked the handle. Something popped under his foot, and he looked down to see several shards of dark brown glass on the footpath. Looked like a piece of a broken Guinness bottle. He flipped it aside, and was just stepping away from the door when he saw Brendan McGann round the corner of the house, wiping his hands on a bit of a rag.
“Devaney,” he said curtly. It was a greeting.
“How are ye, Brendan? Thought I might have a chat with you about what happened last night at Bracklyn House.”
“What happened there? I’ve not been to town today.”
Now there was a strange thing, Devaney thought. For all his roughness, Brendan McGann was known as a regular churchgoing man, and he’d been to confession last night. “Bit of a shemozzle over a couple of motorcars.”
“And I’m meant to know something
about it, am I? I’ll tell you once and for all, anything going on at that house is nothin’ got to do with me.” Brendan jerked a thumb in the direction of the shed. “D’ye mind? I’m in the middle of something here.”
“Maybe I can give you a hand,” Devaney said. Brendan’s face was expressionless; he said nothing, but turned on his heel and headed for the shed. When Devaney reached the door, he could see that Brendan had been struggling to get a new tractor tire on a rim and could probably use his help.
“Fine collection of old tools you have here,” Devaney said, kneeling to hold the wheel rim steady, and looking about him at the astonishing assortment of hay forks, scythes, thatching tools, and sleans that hung from the walls and rafters of the shed. “By Jaysus, I haven’t seen a billhook like that in years. It’s the very same as the one my father had. You still use all these?”
“I do. Lift.”
As they wrestled the tire upright and laid it down again, Devaney’s nostrils took in the smell of turf mold and damp, and yet Brendan’s tools seemed wondrously untouched by rust. Given the right provocation, Devaney imagined any one of these gleaming metal blades could cut a person’s throat as cleanly as they severed slender stalks of oats and hay. Brendan strained to pry the tire over the rim, and Devaney was close enough now to smell the sour reek of sweat that came off the man, mingled with his stale, beery breath. Strange. Everybody in town knew McGann wasn’t much of a drinker. On the rare occasions he was seen in the pub, he had a quiet pint or two on his own, and then went home. It took more than a couple to leave you stinking like a brewery the next day. As he held the tire in place, Devaney looked around the shed once more. His eyes grew accustomed to the dim light that made its way through the one tiny window, and he could see a makeshift cot in the corner, with an ancient straw mattress. His eyes returned to Brendan, registering the creases in the man’s clothing and the few bits of dirty yellow straw that clung to the back of his shirt.
“I stopped to see if you saw or heard anything out of the ordinary last night,” Devaney said.
“No,” Brendan replied. He must have seen Devaney’s chagrin at the curt answer. “I stopped for a jar at Lynch’s last night. Left around nine. I saw no one coming or going, and went straight to bed when I got home.”
“Is there anybody who might vouch for you? Your sister wouldn’t be at home by any chance?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s all right, I can talk to her later. She’s fairly involved with Osborne’s new craft workshop, isn’t she? But you’re not too keen on it yourself, I understand.” Brendan just looked at him, and Devaney’s eye was attracted to a stack of plastic bucket lids that stood on the workbench behind him. These plain, white rounds were identical to those used in making the signs that had appeared on the roadsides around Dunbeg.
“Some people say you have good reason to resent Hugh Osborne,” Devaney said. “They say—”
“It’s no secret I don’t like the bastard,” Brendan interrupted, the volume of his voice rising ever so slightly. “That’s not against the law, and the reasons for it are me own. But I was home in bed last night, Detective.” Brendan gave the iron another mighty push, and the massive tire finally snapped into place on the rim. “And you’ll never prove otherwise. I’m obliged to you for helping me here. But I’ve nothin’ more to say.”
18
After the cars had been towed away, Hugh Osborne proposed a trip to the excavation site.
“I’ve been so busy, I hope you don’t feel as though I’ve been ignoring your work,” he said as he drove them the short distance to the priory. “I’m really interested in how you’re getting on, that is, if you don’t mind showing me around.”
“Of course,” Cormac said. They each took a hand carrying some of the equipment, and when they reached the site, Nora began to set up for the day while Cormac gave Hugh a guided tour of the several trenches they’d dug so far.
“At the moment we’re working on an area that appears to have been some sort of midden or rubbish dump. Archaeologically speaking, middens are like treasure troves. They have so much information, not just for the purpose of dating a site, but about what people ate, what kinds of tools and vessels they had, all kinds of details about their everyday lives.” Cormac jumped down into one of the pits just barely within earshot, and Hugh crouched above him to have a look.
The day was overcast, with a strong wind pushing billowy, moisture-laden clouds eastward. Between gusts of wind, Nora heard Cormac’s murmuring voice and watched him point out for Hugh the dark layer of a charcoal deposit, and the brown stain that marked where a wooden support had been sunk into the soil. He also showed Osborne the sheets they used for describing what turned up in each test pit.
“What we’re doing here is really keyhole archaeology,” Cormac was saying. “It’s like trying to do a big three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle without any picture to go by.” Hugh was standing with his arms crossed, asking the occasional question and nodding appreciatively. Nora could see that they had become friends, and worried what would happen if it turned out that Hugh Osborne had been involved in his wife’s disappearance.
She hadn’t even told Cormac the worst part of her story last night. That her parents wouldn’t do anything to help convict Peter Hallett, despite the suspicions and the intensive police investigation, despite everything she told them about what the man had done to their own daughter. Her father simply refused to listen, and had taken an adamant position on his son-inlaw’s innocence. Nora could see that her mother had instinctive doubts, but wouldn’t allow herself to contemplate any action as long as Peter had sole custody of their only grandchild. Please try to understand, Nora, she’d said. We’ve already lost Triona. If we do anything, anything at all, he could take Elizabeth away from us as well. Forever. And then what would we have? But he had taken Elizabeth away. So what did they have now?
Nora watched the two men deep in conversation in the far trench. Cormac was right: they knew little about Hugh, and still less about the circumstances of his marriage and family life. He seemed like a decent guy on the surface. But so did a lot of disturbed people. What was that expression her gran had? She could see the old lady’s shrewd eyes, the set of her lips as she pronounced the words: street angel, house devil. The first time she heard those words was the moment Nora realized there were plenty of things grown-ups never told children. Who could say that Hugh himself hadn’t lost it and smashed up their cars? He said he’d only returned this morning, but the guy looked like hell, as if he hadn’t slept at all. It was all very well to go about their work and to keep telling themselves that they weren’t really involved here, but they were involved. Deeper and deeper, it seemed, first with the anonymous phone call, and now with all the events of last night.
Hugh took his leave, and a few minutes later, Cormac was in the trench they’d begun at the rubbish dump, about four feet down, wielding the pickaxe with a ferocity Nora hadn’t seen before.
“Cormac, did you tell Devaney about that light you saw out at the tower? I couldn’t really say anything; you’re the one who saw it.”
“No. That is, not yet. I’m not sure it’s significant.”
“He’s supposed to decide what’s significant. That’s his job.”
Cormac was silent for a moment. “I asked Hugh about the tower.”
“What?”
“Just now. I asked him about the tower. Why it’s locked up. He said he didn’t want kids climbing around in there and getting hurt.”
“Did you tell him you’d been out there?”
“No.” He stopped digging and looked up at her. “I’d like to go back. Just to have another look.”
“I’m coming with you this time.”
He pressed his lips together and nodded briefly. Nora could see the clash of conflicting emotions in his face, doubt and curiosity battling his sense of loyalty and fair play. He had obviously thought about everything she said the night before. She felt somewhat guilty for tarnishing his o
pinion of Hugh Osborne, but as she studied the warring impulses that passed over Cormac’s dark features, a sense of elation washed away any regret.
19
Delia Hernan’s house was on a small lane off the main road about a mile past Drumcleggan Bog. As Devaney approached he observed the general air of neglect about the place. The whitewashed stones that lined the path were out of place; the choppy hedge in front was overgrown, and thick moss grew on the tile roof. He knew Mrs. Hernan had been widowed over the winter, but it looked as if the place had been suffering for at least several years. Devaney had heard there were a couple of sons off in England who didn’t often get home.
Mrs. Hernan didn’t seem at all surprised to find him at her front door. While he took a seat at the kitchen table, she began to fuss about making tea, and Devaney used the opportunity to look around. The house had a look of hire-purchase shabbiness about it: the loud wallpaper, the wobbly chairs, the cracked oilcloth on the table where he sat, the cheap, faded souvenirs from Ireland’s holiday spots, even the new strip of flypaper that hung from the smoke-stained ceiling next to a bare lightbulb. The patterned linoleum on the floor was worn away in places, and the lace curtains that hung in the windows had not been white for many years. A yellow enamel cooker in the corner had been scrubbed clean in spots, but remained blackened with sooty grease around the edges. Three pots of busy lizzies on the windowsill pressed their faces to the light outside and shed their shriveled blossoms onto a growing pile on the floor. The room felt closed in, its warm, damp air permanently flavored by decades of cigarette smoke and the sour smell of cabbage. He spoke over the sound of running water as she rinsed the teapot in the tiny makeshift scullery off the kitchen.
“I’m here to ask about your work at Bracklyn House. How did you first come to be working there?” Mrs. Hernan emerged from the scullery with the teapot, into which she spooned a great quantity of loose tea from a tin, and then filled with water from a huge steaming kettle that rested on the corner of the cooker. She was a plump, full-bosomed woman of about sixty, with a frizz of mouse-brown dyed hair about her face. The fingers of herright hand were stained and leathery from nicotine, and she was apparently unaware of the cigarette ash that clung to the front of her shapeless woolen skirt. As she spoke, Mrs. Hernan went about slicing several cuts of brown bread and thickly slathering them with butter.