Death on the Green

by Catie Murphy

  Heather gave her a brittle smile in the mirror. “I can’t imagine anyone in Lou’s life being unable to publicly mourn him. But really, that’s all I can talk about him right now. His death is a huge blow to us and . . .” Her smile fractured. “And I have a game to play, one that he wanted me to do well in. He was going to caddie for me this week, between his own games. Can you believe that? He used to do it all the time when he wasn’t competing himself, but can you imagine taking the time when he had a competition of his own?”

  Megan smiled. “He must have thought very highly of your skills. Who will caddie for you today instead?”

  “Anthony volunteered.” Heather shook her head. “He knows Martin’s game inside and out, but I don’t know if he’s as conversant with mine. Martin doesn’t like to share, you know.”

  “Yes,” Megan said softly. “You mentioned.” She had taken the longer way around, adding almost a whole kilometre to their journey, in order to drive along the coast. As they approached the wooden bridge, she glanced at Heather in the rearview mirror. “I’ll drive up the causeway instead of the wooden bridge, if that’s all right, Mrs. Walsh? It’s closer to St. Anne’s.”

  “Yes, of course.” The road ran straight along the sea-walled coast, as unnatural a front as Bull Island’s, until Megan turned onto the double-lane causeway, crossing mud flats and marshy wetlands before reaching the sandy body of the island. The gated entrance to St. Anne’s was nestled in the very middle of the island, an unobtrusive little turn that led to the quiet green.

  Megan liked Bull Island’s second golf course better than its first, although she’d been given to understand that the Royal Dublin was the superior course. Not being a golfer, that didn’t matter much to her, but the clubhouse design at St. Anne’s had struck her with its low, rounded roof, shaped much as if the wind itself had swept down and formed it along with the sand dunes. Enormous windows and balconies lined most of its upper floor, making it look open and more part of its environment than the older, more formal buildings at the other club.

  Besides, St. Anne’s encouraged women to be members, so even if the clubhouse had been nothing more than a firepit with some marshmallow sticks stuck in the sand beside it, Megan would have liked it better for that reason alone. She pulled into the parking lot on the eastern side of the clubhouse and got out to open the door for Heather Walsh, who gave her a tired smile of thanks.

  There were more personal cars and fewer media vans at St. Anne’s than had been at the Royal Dublin the day before. Megan, counting the media vehicles, made a face, and Anto, approaching from the clubhouse to escort Mrs. Walsh inside, said, “Isn’t it always the way,” as if he understood Megan’s unspoken complaint.

  Megan, mimicking a pundit or sports announcer’s voice, intoned, “As you know, Bob, there’s never the audience for women’s sports that there is for men’s, which couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the media focusing over ninety percent of its sports coverage on male-dominated sports, and don’t get me started on the shocking pay gap between male and female athletes!”

  Anto laughed, a big sound that bounced off the sand dunes, and even Heather smiled. “It helps to have people like Aibhilín in the sports room, though. I’m glad she’s covering today’s game.”

  “Is it different?” Megan asked. “Having a woman sportscaster? Do they ask different questions?”

  “They ask questions at all,” Heather said dryly. “I’ve been in postgame interviews where every question was either directed at my husband, or about him. But that’s not useful to think about right now.” She turned her attention to Anto. “Has anyone dropped out, Anthony?”

  The big man met Megan’s eyes briefly, then shook his head, addressing Heather. “No, ma’am. The course is as hard and dry as it gets this morning, and the wind has fallen off, so there’s not much danger in the parallel holes.” He caught Megan’s quizzical look and pointed down the course. “St. Anne’s is narrow, for a green. A load of the holes are more or less next to each other, separated by some low dunes. On a windy day a ball can fly over and crack somebody in the teeth.”

  “Well, that’s horrible.”

  “Bystanders get injured, sometimes badly,” Heather said matter-of-factly. “Not often, but often enough.”

  “Yeah, Anto mentioned that. Wonderful. I think I’ll go for a walk on the beach, or stay safely in the car while you all hit tiny, deadly weapons around a field.” Megan pressed her lips together, belatedly aware that although she meant to be funny, her client had reason to find such commentary upsetting. Fortunately, Heather smiled faintly and shook her head.

  “You can, of course. I don’t need you on the green with me, and I’m afraid there’s no one as exciting in today’s game as the men’s tournament featured yesterday. But the odds of injury really are very low.”

  “And yet . . .” Megan said.

  Heather chuckled. “And yet. Well, I certainly won’t need you back before one, and the island isn’t very big. You can probably explore most of it before I need you again.”

  “I’m looking forward to it. And you have my number if you need to leave early, Mrs. Walsh. I won’t be far out of reach.” Megan was ready to set off as Anto and Heather went into the clubhouse, only remembering at the last moment, and with dismay, that she had to wait on Aibhilín Ní Gallachóir.

  The RTÉ News van pulled up just as she got comfortable in the Lincoln. Megan scowled at the cameramen getting out, checked the time, and set her phone for a wake-up in forty-five minutes.

  About two minutes later Aibhilín knocked on the car window, shouting, “You don’t seem busy, Ms. Malone!” through the glass.

  Megan, both annoyed and incredulous, sat up and unrolled the window. “I was resting, which is a kind of activity. Our appointment isn’t until ten, Ms. Ní Gallachóir.”

  “You made it for ten on the chance Mrs. Walsh would need something from you. She doesn’t seem to, and I’ve a game to cover. It’d help me along to do our interview now.”

  “Brilliant.” Megan muttered the word and pulled her coat and tie off, leaving them beside the driver’s seat of the car, and unbuttoned the collar of her shirt as she got out. Aibhilín watched with visible amusement and a trace of inquiry. “The only reason I’m doing this is to keep my boss happy,” Megan said. “Wearing the company logo during the interview wouldn’t exactly keep it on the down-low.”

  “Ah, sure, grand so. Here, up here on the hill. Most people won’t know we’re not at the Royal Dublin, with the coastline in the background.” Aibhilín drove Megan up the hill like she was a sheep and scampered up after her like a goat. Megan supposed that made the cameraman, coming lumbering up behind them, something like a bison. “Look at me, not the camera,” Aibhilín instructed. “Try not to blink too much.”

  “Blink too much?” The request became clear when the cameraman turned on a filming light that shone brilliantly white in Megan’s eyes. “Jeez, is that necessary in full daylight?”

  “It never hurts to have extra lighting. Besides, the light wash will make you look younger.”

  Megan, offended, said, “I don’t need to look younger!” and received a dubious click in response. For a furious moment while Aibhilín continued setting up, Megan considered stomping off and letting Leprechaun Limos fend for themselves, but before she had, Aibhilín brought a microphone up and spoke into it brightly.

  “This is Aibhilín Ní Gallachóir here on Bull Island with American immigrant Megan Malone. RTÉ Sports have learned that Ms. Malone was with legendary pro golfer Martin Walsh when he found the body of his best friend, golfer Lou MacDonald. Ms. Malone, can you take us through the discovery?” Aibhilín put the microphone under Megan’s chin. Megan, disconcerted, tucked her chin and looked down at it, eliciting a huge sigh and “Cut” from Aibhilín. “Don’t look at it, Ms. Malone. Look at me.”

  “Don’t shove it into my collarbone!”

  Aibhilín rolled her eyes, turned back to the camera, and gave exactly the same speec
h she’d done before, her inflections and enthusiasm identical. Megan blinked at her in astonishment and forgot to answer when the sportscaster put the question to her, and, exasperated, Aibhilín had to start all over again.

  A wicked impulse to keep messing it up crept over Megan, and she broke into giggles twice at the idea, ruining the takes again. “I’m sorry!” she caroled, not very sincerely. “I’ve never done this before.”

  By the seventh try, Aibhilín had given up on doing the opening spiel, which Megan assumed would be edited in properly later. Megan finally stopped flinching at the microphone and, prompted by Aibhilín’s impatiently elevated eyebrows, said, “We came over the hill. We saw a body in the water. Martin and I pulled it out. It was Lou,” in a not deliberately mechanical voice, but even she could tell she sounded stiff as a robot.

  Aibhilín lowered the microphone incredulously. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know! I’m not a TV personality! This isn’t my kind of thing!”

  The sportscaster took a deep breath. “Let’s try again.” She coaxed answers out of Megan with leading questions—”What did you feel in the moment of discovery?” —and grew increasingly tense-jawed as Megan’s absolutely honest answers—”Cold”—failed to give her the revealing human-interest story she was going for. Aibhilín finally put the microphone away and folded her arms, frowning at Megan. “I know you’re smoother than this, Ms. Malone. You bamboozled me yesterday with that nonsense about my name. Are you stonewalling me on purpose?”

  “I didn’t have a camera in my face yesterday.” Megan shrugged stiffly. “Maybe I’m only quick-witted when it’s not being recorded for posterity.”

  A glimmer of frustrated recognition came into Aibhilín’s eyes; apparently Megan had hit on a thing that really happened, although she knew perfectly well she wasn’t trying to charm and delight just then, either. “All right,” Aibhilín said with a sigh. “One last time. Jerry, can you back off a bit? It might help Ms. Malone relax.”

  The cameraman moseyed back several steps, adjusting his camera lens so, Megan assumed, the fact that he was farther away wouldn’t make any noticeable difference to the quality of the recording. She kept stealing glances at him as Aibhilín asked questions, until the sportscaster burst out with, “For God’s sake, woman!”

  “I’m sorry!” Megan half-shouted back. “It’s just that I know he’s still there!”

  Aibhilín all but threw her hands in the air as she faced Jerry. “We’ll have to cobble something together from what we’ve got. It’s not going to get any better.” She took a couple of audible breaths through her teeth, then turned a professional smile on Megan. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Malone. I appreciate your effort.”

  Megan, sounding much more sincere than she felt, said, “No problem, Ms. Ní Gallachóir. I’m sorry I’m terrible on camera.”

  Ní Gallachóir, tightly, said, “I suppose if we were all good at it, everyone would be TV personalities or actors. Good morning, Ms. Malone. I’d better get onto the green now.”

  Megan, trying hard to look apologetic, nodded and scooted down the grassy knoll. A cheek-splitting grin worked its way across her face by the time she reached the dunes and the beach beyond the golf course. Windswept and cheerful, she pulled out her phone to text Detective Bourke, and tripped over a body.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Megan’s hands splayed as she stumbled. Her phone went flying, but she caught herself before falling, instead lurching a few ungainly steps past the black-clad legs sticking out of the sand dune. She stood there a few seconds, staring blankly at the distant Poolbeg chimneys across the water, waiting for her heartbeat to slow a little. Waiting to see if her mind decided it had gone on an overactive rampage and that she’d really tripped over an unfortunately shaped piece of driftwood.

  She was pretty sure she hadn’t.

  Carefully—very carefully, as if great caution would unwind the last half minute and return some degree of normalcy to her world—she bent and collected her phone, brushing sand off it and making sure it was undamaged. Her last session of texts with Detective Bourke were on the screen, and the three lines of accented characters seemed very frivolous just then. She moved her thumb to the little receiver icon, pretty certain she would have to call the detective as soon as she turned around, and then, as prepared as she could be, she turned.

  A man’s slacks-wearing lower half lay a few feet behind her. There was not, to her relief, a huge, brownish-red stain in the earth around his buried waistline, suggesting that the rest of him was also there, just hidden from sight by drifting sand. He wasn’t wearing shoes, and his feet, grey-white with death, had no visible chunks missing, which meant no wildlife had really had a go at him yet. He probably hadn’t been dead long. Beyond him, the beach swept toward the distant wall, its rough blocks of stone and concrete a dark shadow making up the island’s southern end; light blue skies riddled with high, quick-moving clouds met earth and sea all around them, with the century-old chimneys jutting up from the mainland at the decommissioned Poolbeg Stacks. An admiring murmur of voices rose and fell on the wind as the golf game went on just over the ridge, and the deep, rich scent of salt water and marine life washed over everything. Megan saw and heard it all unnaturally vividly, as if nature, presented with death, felt she should capture the surrounding life in an indelible image. Wind rifled seagrasses, still green in September because Ireland’s greens never faded, and seagulls, annoyed that she stood between them and a meal, shrieked at her from above.

  Megan, mechanically, pressed the call button on her phone and brought it to her ear, the electronic tones of the call going through a surreal contrast to the endless break of surf against the changeable shoreline. Bourke picked up with a friendly, “What’s the story?” and, after Megan’s silence drew out longer than normal, said, “Megan? What’s wrong?”

  “Well, the good news is I gave Aibhilín the worst interview imaginable.” Megan sounded wrong even to herself.

  Bourke’s voice became very serious. “What’s the bad news?”

  “I just tripped over a dead man.”

  “What? Where? Are you all right? Are you sure he’s dead? Who is it?”

  “I’m fine, I’m grand so.” Megan doubted the truth of that—she was rattled, at the very least—but in the grand scheme of things, she was well enough. Not, for instance, dead and buried in a sand dune. “I’m on the beach at Bull Island, on the northern end. I don’t know who it is—he’s half-buried—but I’m sure he’s dead. This is not normal, Paul. People don’t just keep stumbling on dead bodies.”

  “No kidding,” he said grimly. “Stay where you are. If anyone comes along, shoo them off. I’ll get a team together and we’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “There’s a golf tournament going on,” Megan warned. “You’re going to have rubberneckers all over the place.”

  “Grand. Deadly. Brilliant. All right so. See you soon.” Bourke hung up, muttering, and Megan folded her arms around herself, wishing she’d put her jacket back on. Of course, she’d expected to be walking briskly, not standing in the sea breeze making sure no one disturbed a dead body. A couple of brightly colored kites rose into the air farther down the beach, and Megan watched them swoop while hoping their owners stayed put. They did, but dog walkers, too many of whom didn’t follow the leash law, appeared, too. She was trying to figure out how to head them off when police vehicles drove down a stretch of beach clearly marked vehicle free zone, and made a barricade around her as they parked.

  People from farther down the beach immediately headed their way, but at that point it wasn’t Megan’s problem. Detective Bourke got out of one of the cars and strode over to her, his long coat flapping in the wind and orange galoshes kicking sand up as he came. “Are you well?”

  “I’m fine. He’s not so great.” Megan nodded at the body, shivered, and accepted Bourke’s coat when he handed it to her. It came to his knees and her ankles. Remembering he’d lent her a coat after the Darr mu
rder, she said, “This is getting to be a habit.”

  “I wish it wasn’t.” Bourke, having taken her at her word, left her alone to go crouch beside the body as a forensics team began photographing and recording details that Megan didn’t have the expertise to recognize at all. After a minute of discussions, he rose and returned to her side, this time with a notepad—this one dun brown—in hand. “All right, what’s the story?”

  “I told you literally everything I know on the phone. I came down the hill after talking to Aibhilín. I got my phone out to text you, wasn’t looking where I was going, and tripped over his legs.”

  “‘His’?”

  “I assume so. Those look like man feet to me. Then I called you.”

  Bourke sighed. “You were a soldier before you moved to Ireland, right?”

  “Yeah, twenty years in the army. Combat medic and driver.”

  “Tell me. How many bodies a month did you personally average in the military? More or less than you’re averaging here?”

  Megan ducked her head. “Heh. More, while I was on tour, Detective. And a lot more wounded. On the positive side, at least with me finding them, you can be sure you won’t hear about it through social media before it comes in through official channels.”

  “Yeah,” Bourke said sourly. “Because you’re very concerned with hierarchical escalation and not at all interested in finding things out for yourself.”

  Megan’s gaze, and eyebrows, rose in mild offense. “I was a good soldier, Detective. I followed the rules and I went through the proper channels. But I’m not a soldier anymore, and of course I’m interested in finding things out for myself, especially when people keep dropping dead at my feet. Obviously you’re interested in finding things out, too, and furthermore, I am going through the official, hierarchical channels, so I’d appreciate it if you’d back off on insulting me.”