When he turned toward the pub, he found himself face-to-face with Sean Murphy, who said, “I’d like a word with yeh, Mr. Reilly.”
Chapter 19
As soon as Sean led Tim into the pub, Rose intercepted them. “Tim, are yeh all right? I was that worried! Whatever happened with yeh?”
Before Tim could open his mouth, Maura stepped up. The rest of the customers in the room watched the exchange with interest, but Maura wasn’t offering free entertainment, nor did she want Sean dragging Tim off to the garda station without a chance to collect himself. “Sean, why don’t you and Tim go back to your table. Tim, you look like you could use a coffee. Rose, will you get that for him?”
Sean, Tim, and Rose all did as she had ordered. Maybe I’m getting the hang of being in charge, Maura thought. While Sean and Tim sat, Maura stationed herself between their table and the small crowd, who finally took the hint and turned back to their pints and their conversations, although Maura was sure they were listening. Oh, well, with luck they’d stick around a bit longer and order another pint, just to see what all the excitement was about.
Rose delivered the coffee to Tim and a fresh cup of tea to Sean. Maura was surprised when Sean gestured to Maura to join them. She scanned the room: Jimmy was still enjoying his dinner at home, it seemed, but Mick was in, and he and Rose could handle things for a bit. Maura sat at the table, prepared to listen to Tim’s story.
Sean pulled out a small notepad. “All right, then. Start from the beginning, if yeh will.”
“Are yeh arrestin’ me?” Tim demanded.
“Nothing like that, Tim,” Sean reassured him.
Maura interrupted. “Before you start—Tim, I’m sorry, but when Rose and Sean couldn’t find you, I told Sean what you’d told me last night. I thought it might help. So Sean knows the basic details.”
Tim looked relieved. “No worries. I’m not the only boy who grew up without a father, where I come from.” He turned to Sean. “Look, everything I’ve said about my uni research into this place’s music history—that’s all true. But I guess I also thought my nosing around it might flush a few of the old players out of the woods, so to speak. And it did.”
“And I thank you for that, Tim—it was a great turnout,” Maura said. Sean glared at her for interrupting again.
Tim didn’t seem to notice and went on, “Like I told Maura, Ma said me father was a musician, and Aidan was on me short list. But it was so much more crowded than I’d expected—there was no way to have a proper conversation with anyone. That’s why I asked Aidan to meet me after the pub closed, and he told me to meet him out back.”
Aidan knew the place that well? Maura wondered. Well, he had had a key to the place on him, so it seemed likely. But she didn’t interrupt.
“And what time was that?” Sean asked, in his professional voice.
Tim’s eyes darted at Maura. “Just past closing, which was pretty far after hours. Maybe one o’clock? Or later? I wasn’t looking at the time—I just went out and waited for him. Anyways, we sat outside, and I told Aidan me story, and he said that there were a lot of girls back in the day and he couldn’t remember the half of them. I was disappointed, sure, but I guess I wasn’t really surprised. Then he said he was shattered, so that was the end of it. I went back to me room and I guess he came in here.”
“Did yeh see anyone else about?” Sean asked.
Tim gave a short laugh. “Have you not seen this place in the middle of the night? I might’ve seen a dog, up toward the church. The rest of the village was locked up tight.”
“I didn’t see anyone either when I left after closing,” Maura added.
“Go on, then,” Sean said to Tim.
“So like I said, I went to me room and was feelin’ a bit low and sorry for meself, so I drank myself to sleep. Yesterday I was still hangin’, as you saw me here. This mornin’ I woke up with the sun and felt like the walls were closing in on me, and I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone, so I started walkin’ down along the shore.”
“That woulda been when I first went looking for yeh,” Sean said.
“Could be. Anyways, out by the water it was quiet, except for a lot of birds. I found this old building, where I’d be out of sight, and settled meself inside.”
The old slate factory, Maura thought.
Tim went on, “I sat there for a while, tryin’ to sort things out, I guess. Maybe I’d pinned all me hopes on Aidan. Or maybe seein’ him and the others had showed me how hopeless it was. I had nothing to go on, and I can’t spend all my time runnin’ around the country lookin’ for middle-aged musicians and saying, ‘Are you me da?’ like an eejit. Maybe if Ma didn’t want me to know, she had her reasons. Maybe it wasn’t a musician at all, or she’d been attacked, or it was a boy from her village and she wanted to build the story up. Or maybe she was drunk or high and really didn’t know. Too late to tell now.”
“Then you called Rose,” Maura said bluntly, earning another glare from Sean. “Why?”
“I was thinkin’ that if I was goin’ back to Dublin, I’d want to say good-bye to her. After Rose left I was sittin’ there lookin’ at the water and thinkin’ it was time I just gave this up and go on with me life back in Dublin. And then this fella shows up.”
Maura knew the place he was talking about. While there was a path of sorts, no one would just happen to be strolling along it, since it didn’t lead anywhere. It was also not visible from much of anywhere, other than the water. So whoever the man was, he had to have followed Tim there, because he couldn’t have found it on his own.
“Did yeh recognize this man?” Sean asked.
Tim shook his head. “I don’t think so. But you saw how packed the place was on Saturday night, and how dark. He could have been there but I might never have seen his face. And I wasn’t in any shape to notice faces on Sunday.”
“And yeh didn’t see him hanging around, after yeh met with Aidan?”
“No. Like I said, I didn’t see a soul then.”
Sean made another note. “All right, then. What did the man look like?”
Tim squinted, trying to picture him. “Maybe late thirties? Short hair, hard to tell the color. Heavier than me, but not too tall. Kind of weaselly, if you know what I mean. Ordinary clothes.”
“What happened when he came upon yeh?”
“That’s when things got strange. I didn’t like his looks, so I stood up. Then he says, ‘Where is it?’ And I go, ‘Where is what?’ And he says, ‘Crowley’s stuff.’ And I say, ‘I don’t know what yer talkin’ about.’ Except he didn’t believe me, I guess. He says, ‘Word’s out that Crowley’s dead, and it’s not at his place, so it’s got to be somewhere here. How’d he get here?’ I told him, ‘The bus, mebbe?’ The big guy says, ‘No car?’ And I say, ‘How would I know?’ And then he gets angry and grabs me by the front of me jacket. I tried to fight him off—I mean, it was broad daylight and we were standin’ on the shore where anybody could see, and he wants to get into it right there? But he was stronger than me, and he kind of dragged me back to where he’d parked his car. And I’m yellin’ at him, ‘What do you want? I don’t know anything!’ I don’t think he believed me.”
“Did he physically assault yeh?” Sean said formally.
“He hit me a time or two, mostly to scare me, I think, but then he kind of gave up. Most likely he figured it out that I really didn’t know anythin’, and it wasn’t worth beatin’ me to a bloody pulp as I still wouldn’t know any more. So he shoved me in his car and drove back here and dumped me out, like yeh saw.”
Maura felt chilled. The stranger sounded like a thug, and she hadn’t seen many of those around Leap or in Skibbereen. Was he local? Had he been at Sullivan’s? Tim didn’t look like he’d been hurt by his attacker, but things could have been much worse. Why had the man let him go?
“Why didn’t he just leave you where you were?” Maura jumped in. “I mean, then he could have gotten away without anybody even noticing.”
“Maura,
” Sean cautioned her. Then he turned to Tim. “What she said. Why’d he bring yeh back here?”
“Bugger if I know,” Tim admitted. “Maybe he felt sorry for me. I mean, whoever he was, he didn’t stand to gain anything by roughing up an eejit like me. And he didn’t really hurt me. More like put the fear in me. But I really had no clue what he was talking about, and I still don’t.”
“He never said what he was lookin’ fer?” Sean asked.
Tim shook his head vigorously. “Believe me, if I’d known anything, I woulda told him.”
“Let’s think this through, then,” Sean said. “You left Aidan here, alive, yeh say, sometime past one o’clock. Maura comes in about nine hours later and finds him dead in the back room here. Sometime in between, it looks like someone laid hands on him. We know he had a bad heart, so if he was confronted by the same man who took yeh off, he might have died before his attacker got anythin’ from him. So what was he lookin’ fer?”
“Aidan’s fiddle!” Maura interrupted, which brought a stern look from Sean. “When he came in on Friday, looking for Niall, he had a case with him. But I don’t remember seeing it near him on Sunday.”
“We haven’t found it,” Sean said, almost to himself. He looked at Maura. “We should look more thoroughly in yer back room,” he said, standing up.
Maura stood up too. “Let’s go.” They went over to the bar, where Mick and Rose were dispensing pints.
“What’s up?” Mick asked.
“It’s possible that Aidan left something here,” Sean said. “Yeh didn’t happen to find the odd fiddle case or any other lost items when yeh cleared out the back after the music, did yeh?”
“No, but I haven’t done a full cleanup in there, since we weren’t planning on using the room right away, and your lot wanted us to stay clear of it,” Mick said.
“Can you and Rose handle things while we look around?” Maura asked.
“Sure. Jimmy’ll be in any minute. I take it yeh don’t have anything for me to say to our customers as have seen young Tim here dumped on the doorstep?”
Those customers were obviously all but drooling with curiosity. “Not just yet,” Sean said. “Thanks, Mick.”
Maura, Sean, and Tim went to the back, where Maura opened the door to the room and turned on the lights. Damn, it was dark in there. There were few windows, and the sun was low. The wattage of the lights were good for a party, bad for a search. But at least the surfaces were clear—and there was no fiddle case in plain sight. She pulled the door shut behind her, to keep out nosy customers. “Any instructions?”
“If yeh find anything interestin’, try not to touch it, will yeh?” Sean said.
“Got it,” she replied. “I’ll take this end. Tim, why don’t you check out the balcony? Aidan might have planned to sleep up there.”
“I’ll take the stage and behind,” Sean said.
They split up. Maura wished she’d thought to bring a flashlight—it was so dim that she couldn’t see into the corners. She hadn’t spent much time back here, and she hadn’t realized how unappealing it could be. But the event on Saturday had transformed it, making it come alive. She’d have to think about that.
She could hear Tim banging around over her head, though apart from tables and chairs, there were few places to conceal anything up there. All the electronic equipment had been shifted downstairs to the stage area, and that was where Sean was poking around now. At her end, the surface of the bar was bare and relatively clean, so she went around behind. There were a couple of unwashed glasses in the sink, but otherwise Mick had done a good job—she’d give him a B plus for his efforts. Nothing against the wall but a small refrigerator, which wasn’t even plugged in at the moment—she checked inside it, just in case. Empty. Shelves along the wall held only what they were supposed to—bottles and glasses—and wouldn’t conceal a fiddle case anyway. She turned to face the bar. Sink, a couple of kegs underneath. No luck there.
But there was a low shelf that ran just under the bar for its entire length. She felt along it, and in one corner she felt something bulky and rounded. She pulled her hand out. “Sean, I might have something,” she called out.
Sean hurried over. Maura pointed under the bar. “There.”
Sean knelt down for a better look. “You have a cloth or something?”
She was confused for a moment before she figured out what he meant. “You’re seriously thinking about fingerprints?” Maura stifled a laugh. “What, you don’t carry latex gloves at all times?”
Sean looked exasperated and held out a hand. “Cloth, please?”
Maura found a relatively clean bar rag under the sink. At least it was dry. She handed it to him.
Sean covered his hand and reached under the bar. He pulled out what was unmistakably a fiddle case—covered in battered brown leatherette, with a few odd stickers attached. Holding it by its worn handle, Sean set it on top of the bar.
“Is this the one yeh saw?” Sean asked Maura, as Tim came up to join them.
“The stickers look right. No ID on it?” Tim said.
“Not on the outside.”
“You going to open it?” Maura demanded.
Without answering, Sean released the latch on the case and laid the cover back. Inside was a fiddle, as battered as its case, a bow—and a roll of euros over an inch thick.
Chapter 20
“I’ll take that to the station now,” Sean said crisply. He shut the lid with a snap, then looked confused momentarily as he realized he had nowhere to put it, and nothing to carry it in.
“Do you need a bag?” Maura asked. “We’ve got trash—uh, bin bags, if that helps.”
“It would do,” Sean said. Maura went through the door between the two bars and retrieved a new bag, ignoring the sudden lull in conversation as half the people in the pub, including Mick, turned to look at her, eager for news. She avoided their looks and returned to the back room, handing the bag to Sean, who slipped the fiddle case gingerly into it, then tied it off.
“So you think that guy was looking for Aidan’s dosh but he couldn’t find the fiddle case?” Tim asked. When Maura looked blank, Tim explained, “That money in there.”
“That’d be my guess,” Sean said.
“I’m surprised the guy didn’t find it before, if he was in here with Aidan,” Maura said. “But maybe he wasn’t looking for an old fiddle. And that shelf isn’t easy to see unless you know it’s there. How much cash do you think there is?”
“I’m not about to count it out now,” Sean said firmly. “I’m goin’ to take this back to the station and let our boys there examine it officially. But I’d agree it must’ve been what the man was looking for. Question is, how did he know Aidan had it?”
“Aidan withdrew his life savings and this guy saw him pocket the cash?” Maura suggested. “He stole it from the guy? Or he was planning to settle a debt, but changed his mind? Who knows. Maybe he just hated banks and liked to carry it with him. Or maybe it’s all fivers and really isn’t as much as it looks.”
“We’ll see,” Sean said. “Thanks, Maura. Tim, stay around Leap will yeh, just ’til we sort this out?”
Tim nodded. “I will. Maura, yeh won’t mind if I hang around here fer a bit, will yeh? It’s been a hard day, and I’d feel better bein’ around a lot of people, after this mornin’.”
No doubt Rose’s sympathetic attentions would also help, at least in part. “Sure,” said Maura.
Sean added, “I guess you can talk about getting dragged off by that fella. Anyways, everyone in the pub saw you get dumped outside, didn’t they? Mebbe someone will have recognized the car or the man. But keep quiet about the money in the case.”
“Right so,” Tim agreed readily.
Sean turned and marched out of the room and then out the front door of the building, carefully carrying the fiddle case wrapped in plastic.
Maura and Tim went back to the front room. “What was that about?” Mick asked.
“Hang on, Mick—I’ll expla
in in a minute,” Maura told him in a low voice. All eyes in the front room had looked up eagerly, hungry for information. Maura sighed again—it was beginning to be a habit. No way were they going to be able to ignore what had just happened, when they had disappeared behind closed doors with a garda, who had emerged carrying an unidentified plastic-wrapped bundle. Besides, maybe somebody had seen or heard something that could be useful. She slid behind the bar, then she turned to the waiting patrons. “All right, if you guys will buy a pint we’ll tell you the story.”
Rose had sidled as far as she could toward the end of the bar to be closer to Tim, who looked both scared and excited to be the center of attention. If he wanted to talk about looking for his lost father, that was up to him—he could just say he had been interviewing Aidan, for example. Which was true, although Maura wasn’t sure how much information he’d managed to gather, or even how hard he’d tried. In fact, she wasn’t sure how much he really cared about that project he claimed he was working on. Was finding his father the main reason he’d come here and started the ball rolling?
No, she decided. Maybe that had been part of it, Maura thought, but somehow Tim had tapped into something bigger. She’d seen it: Tim had planted the seed, but Old Billy had somehow sent the word out through his nonelectronic low-tech network, and the results had been amazing. Look at the people who had shown up—they’d included an old rocker who people kept telling Maura had been big news in his heyday. Maybe he was a bit past his prime, but he was still plugged in enough that he’d heard the news and cared enough to show up at the door. And that had drawn Aidan in. And Aidan had brought something with him that wasn’t part of the music, and he’d died for it.
Jimmy Sweeney came in about six and sent Rose home. She was reluctant to go, but Tim was telling his story for the fifth or tenth time to a group of men in one corner of the room, and while he raised a hand to wave good-bye to Rose, he made no move to join her. Maybe it was for the best, Maura thought. Better Rose shouldn’t pin her hopes on a student from Dublin, which was kind of a long way away, practically speaking.
An Early Wake Page 15