by Erin Hart
“According to Donegan, the fella who found him, the legs and feet are at the left side, the head and torso toward the right side of the boot,” Dawson said. “At this point we’re not sure if he was dismembered before he went into the bog, or if he was pulled apart by the digger that buried the car. We know a digger was used from the backfill around the car. But whoever dug the hole wouldn’t have been best pleased to find a body—must have decided to chuck the bog man into the boot with his spoil.”
Nora stared down at the protruding bone, now seeing the folds of flesh and connective tissue that surrounded it. The usual procedure for remains found in situ was to remove the whole block of peat containing the body and return it intact to the lab at Collins Barracks for processing and examination. Since this body had already been disturbed, the usual protocol was out the window. Instead, they would have to extract the body parts right out here on the bog and go through the rest of the spoil in the car boot one handful at a time. They’d already been robbed of a whole range of important clues—the body’s position in the bog, composition of the original surrounding material, proximity to any artifacts that might have been nearby.
Niall Dawson said to Cormac, “I’ve got some boards and a roll of polythene in the back of the Rover. Give us a hand?”
Cormac climbed out of the hole and the two men ducked around the tarp again, leaving Nora alone with the body.
No matter how many times she encountered a human being preserved like this, it was impossible not to feel dumbstruck. She stepped down into the drain and sank slowly until her face was level with the bone, trying to let the minute details sink in. These moments of silent observation were not exactly prayerful in any traditional sense, and yet she felt something sacred in them, something reverential in the acknowledgment of a common thread of humanity. She tried to imagine the quicksilver thoughts, the fears and desires that had once coursed through these limbs, this heart, this brain. How had he ended up here, separated from the rest of his tribe, floating alone in the middle of a bog?
If they were fortunate, all that would come; his story would begin to emerge, little by little, as they dug into the peat. Nora pulled a camera from her bag and zoomed in on the shod foot and its cutwork shoe. Very like one discovered in a Westmeath bog fifty years ago—she’d seen it in reserve collection storage at the National Museum last year. She set the camera down and began removing peat from around the shoe, only to discover a second foot—this one bare—a few inches removed from the first. A few more handfuls and she could see that the ankle was fully flexed; a few inches below the furrowed arch, five toes lined up neatly, one tucked under the next, like peas in a pod.
Was it possible to read a part of this man’s life story in a thickening of his rounded heel, the flattening of his metatarsal arch? It was apparent that he had walked—a lot. His feet offered a record of the accumulated miles of a lifetime. Not at all like the sacrificial victims of the Iron Age, who were more often strapping young men who went to their graves untraveled and uncalloused. This man was different. His knobby toes and the sole of his foot bore proof of experience, of a long life, fully lived. She would be wise to linger over details like this now, while she had a chance. Once they’d removed the remainder of the peat, there wouldn’t be any time for leisurely study; they’d have to get him into the container and packed off to the fridge at Collins Barracks. In some ways, finding a body like this was like opening the pages of an ancient book, getting a direct glimpse into another time.
Nora climbed out of the trench and started snapping photographs of the drain where it met the buried car. A grave often told more about the person who dug it than the person buried there. She could see the toothmarks of a mechanical digger and places where the spoil had clearly been backfilled around the car. It occurred to her that whoever had buried this car might be here right now, watching the police and archaeologists at work, worrying about what they might find.
She climbed back into the cutaway and moved on to the area beside the bog man’s feet, carefully picking away the wet peat with gloved thumb and forefinger, reserving the spoil in case they had to go through it again. Bit by bit, the outline of a head and upper torso began to emerge.
If Killowen Man’s bare foot had made an impression, his distorted face, with its gaping mouth and unblinking eye sockets, formed an image that was utterly unforgettable. He had a high forehead; his cheeks had apparently been shaved a few days before he died, and the extra folds of skin about his neck seemed to confirm what she had guessed earlier about his rather advanced age. Tucked around his torso were folds of a thick woolen fabric, perhaps a cloak. There were the slits Dr. Friel had seen as possible stab wounds. Beneath the material she could trace the outline of a shoulder and flexed arm, following the curve of the elbow until she saw, nestled in the folds of the cloak, a curled fist, the right thumb and first two knuckles of the forefingers on his hand clearly visible. Reaching for her camera, Nora focused in on the thumbnail and pressed the shutter release, capturing the image. At least this portion of the body seemed intact. If they could manage to extract the head and torso without doing any further damage…
She snapped a few more pictures and glanced at the framed image on the camera’s small screen. One more shot. This time, as she zoomed in on the curled fist, something stood out from the glistening peat beside the bog man’s elbow. Another half-moon shape, almost like another thumbnail.
She peered into the boot and pushed aside the surrounding peat. This seemed like an awkward spot for his left hand. Then again, she reminded herself, if poor Killowen Man was indeed in pieces, there could be body parts crowded every which way in the boot. She could be looking at a toenail rather than a thumb.
Nora set aside the camera and her pulse quickened as she began scraping away the peat from around the second nail. She hadn’t been mistaken. Definitely a thumb, and then a whole hand. Another right hand.
Killowen Man was not alone.
8
Cormac hefted two sheets of plywood near the edge of the cutaway, wondering how much weight each would bear and calculating the full weight of a bog man with his swaddling of soggy peat. Might be better to take him in sections, if he was already divided that way. They had to be able to lift the bloody things. Nora was standing in the trench beside the half-buried car, camera resting in her left hand.
He set down his load a few paces from the cutaway. “How are you getting on?” he asked. When she didn’t respond right away, a spark of fear flared inside him. “Nora, is something wrong?”
She stepped aside without a word, and he looked into the boot. The bog man’s right fist lay curled against the peat. Beside it was a second hand, this one poking out of a sleeve that sported three knotted leather buttons at the cuff.
“Jesus.” He quickly jumped down into the trench to get a closer look. Nora handed him a magnifying glass, which he used to examine the sodden sleeve and the oblong signet ring that seemed to wink at them from the peat. The block capitals of a monogram were upside down but clearly visible: BKA.
When Nora spoke, her voice was calm. “You’d better fetch Cusack.”
They could hear Niall rounding the corner of the tarp wall. As soon as he saw their faces, Dawson grasped that something was wrong. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Complications,” Cormac said.
Dawson came to the lip of the cutaway and looked down into the boot. He swore softly. “We’ll have to get Cusack and her crew back in here. Do you want to go, or shall I?”
“I’ll go,” Cormac said.
So the car was a crime scene after all. They’d been here less than a full hour, and already he was starting to have a very bad feeling about this place. Once again he and Nora were unraveling connections between the living and the dead. Some of those connections were to be expected in their line of work. But some could be dangerous, particularly when people preferred that they remain buried.
He began to make his way across to the road, feeling the eyes of the bystan
ders upon him—and the landowner, Vincent Claffey, in particular. Why was Claffey giving out like that when they arrived, and what exactly did he imagine they would find here? He was obviously unfamiliar with the law on treasure trove. The government had claim on any artifact found on Irish soil, even on private property.
Cusack was still on her mobile as he approached. He could hear her end of the conversation: “Benedict. And the last name, is that with a C or K?” A pause. “Right. Kavanagh with a K it is. Thanks.” Cusack snapped her phone shut. “Well, we’ve got a registration on the car’s owner, but nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him for the last four months.”
“I think we found him,” Cormac said.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a second body in the boot. Clearly not as old as the—”
Cusack held up one hand. “Wait. Back up just a minute. Another body?”
“Looks like he’s been pushed into the back of the boot.”
Cusack paused for a moment, trying to get her mind around this new information. Her joyriding theory had suddenly vanished, replaced by something much darker. All the tumblers that had begun lining up in her brain would have to be recalibrated.
“We’ve stopped the recovery work, obviously,” Cormac said. “At least for the moment. But we can offer our assistance if you need it—”
Without a word, Cusack began marching over the bog once more. Cormac had to jog along beside her to keep up.
“Did I hear you say the owner of the car was Benedict Kavanagh?”
Cusack gave a sideways glance. “Why? Do you know him?”
“Not personally, but I remember thinking when he went missing that someone must have done him in.”
Cusack pulled up short. “Why would you think that?”
“You never watched his television program?”
She kept walking. “No.”
Fair enough, Cormac thought. Spending a Friday evening watching tweedy intellectuals lock horns in epistemological debate was not everyone’s idea of a good time.
“It was a chat show, but not like the usual—philosophy was Kavanagh’s hobbyhorse. He’d spend the first twenty minutes teasing out his guests’ ideas, grilling them about their latest book or whatever. You could feel him digging the ground out from under their feet. Then in the last few minutes, he’d prove his guests not just sadly mistaken but wrong on every possible level. He was brilliant. But I couldn’t help feeling there was something a little sadistic underneath it all. I’m amazed that anyone ever agreed to be on the program. I mean, surely they knew what was in store for them. Or they imagined themselves somehow able to fend him off, unlike the last poor sod.”
“So you think he may have been murdered by a disgruntled guest?”
“Well, perhaps not—that would be too bizarre. But I’ll admit it was my first thought when I heard the name.”
9
Stella Cusack wished that her instinct about this case had been wrong. But there was no mistaking the age of the second body; she stared at the three buttons on the tweed jacket, the gold signet ring a few inches from them. There was no mistaking the initials on the ring either: BKA. She spoke to Molloy. “Give Dr. Friel a quick ring, Fergal. We’ll need her back as soon as she can manage. The crime scene detail as well. And ring up central records in Harcourt Street, tell them we need everything they’ve got on this man.” She reached for her notebook and ripped out the page on which she’d written the name of the car’s owner. “Missing person case.”
She turned back to the archaeologists, who were standing above her at the edge of the cutaway. “I understood there was some urgency in getting your bog man out of here.”
Niall Dawson rubbed his chin. “There is. I was just going to say, we’ve got to extricate him sooner or later. So I was thinking, it’s probably better for all concerned if we just press on.”
Stella knew that the decision—and the consequences, should something go wrong—would be on her.
Dawson looked at her hopefully. “Dr. Gavin has been an official consultant to the state pathologist on bog remains, and Dr. Maguire has extensive crime scene experience, documenting mass grave sites in Bosnia. They’re both well up on the protocol for clandestine burials.”
Stella knew she had to make a decision. “All right, carry on, then. But I want all your photos and drawings. And I want scene-of-crime to go through everything you’re planning to take away.”
“Done,” Dawson said. “And we can see about keeping our bog man on ice at the local mortuary until you’re ready to release him.”
As she stepped around the edge of the tarp again, Stella found herself scanning the faces in the small crowd that still lined the perimeter of the site, thankful that at least she’d not chased them off. They were bound to guess that something was up when the state pathologist made a return appearance. The new body changed everything. Vincent Claffey claimed to own this parcel of bogland, but what exactly was he up to here? He’d hired Kevin Donegan to cut a drain, but there were no milling machines or baggers lined up to turn this bog into garden-grade peat moss or extruded turf. Whatever he was doing, it had to require planning permission, so had he filed the necessary paperwork, or was he trying to get away with something?
Would Claffey be giving out like this if he’d known about the car and the two bodies—if he’d actually put them there, for instance? Feigning ignorance could just be a way of pointing suspicion away from himself. Stella was familiar with Claffey’s form; he’d never been what you might call a hardened criminal, just a small-time schemer who always walked a fine line when it came to the law. Probably due up in court next month for not paying his television license. Claffey and his moneymaking schemes were the stuff of local legend. There was the time he tried offering stump removal with an ancient Massey Ferguson tractor. He ended up rupturing a gas line, barely escaping with his life. The tractor had been blown to smithereens. Or that December night a few years back when the Christmas turkeys he was rearing in a heated shed had all escaped and perished out in the frosty fields. It wasn’t just where did he get such hare-brained notions, but where on earth did he get the money? Somehow there was never a shortage for the next big project. Burying a car in the bog was exactly the sort of thing Vincent Claffey might do, but was it in him to cross over the line into something like murder? Still, it was possible to underestimate the man.
Then again, it might also be significant who was not standing around at the perimeter of the crime scene. This bog bordered on three farms: Claffey’s place, Anthony Beglan’s property, and Killowen, and yet neither Anthony nor Claire Finnerty had even ventured over to see what was going on. Might be wise to leg it over there soon.
Stella’s phone began to vibrate, then she heard that wretched Lady Gaga song her daughter Liadán had programmed in as her personal ringtone. Bloody teenagers. She fumbled for the phone, trying to shut off the embarrassing noise as quickly as possible.
As usual, Lia didn’t bother with a greeting. “I’m going to stay at Da’s tonight. He said we could get an early start on the weekend, if it’s all right with you. And before you ask, I’ve collected the mail, folded all the laundry, and finished the washing up.”
Jesus, Stella thought, did she really sound like that to Lia? Had the past twelve months of single motherhood turned her into a total nag and a killjoy?
“So, is it?” Lia prompted.
“Is it what?”
“Is it all right with you if I head over to Daddy’s tonight instead of waiting until tomorrow?” Lia spoke each word distinctly, as if her mother was suddenly deaf as well as clueless. Stella heard the note of exasperation and could imagine the eye rolling going on at the other end of the phone. She considered the alternatives. Lia would be seventeen next Tuesday week. She had begun to spend every other weekend with her father these past few months, though they hadn’t worked out any sort of formal arrangement. In fact, Barry hadn’t pressed for specific visitation—probably just as glad not to have his daughte
r around, especially as he was busy bedding women closer to his daughter’s age than his own. The very thought made Stella ill. But as it turned out, Barry had very little to say about his part in their daughter’s custody; Lia had latched on to the idea of weekends at her father’s place when she learned that she could get away with murder. He let her eat what she liked, never made a fuss about her staying up all hours. She understood that if she said yes, she was being overly permissive; if she said no, she was being too hard. Those were the choices; there was no middle ground.
She had dragged out the decision as long as possible. “Well, since you’ve got everything in hand, I suppose it’s all right. But you’ll be back by five on Sunday, as usual?” Stella heard the subtle note of pleading in her voice and hated it, hated herself for allowing it to creep in. She had no doubt that Lia heard it, too.
“Yes. See you Sunday. Thanks, Mam.”
A loud click told her Lia was already gone.
Stella snapped her phone shut. It wasn’t as if she’d be home all weekend anyway, not with another dead man in the boot of that bloody car.
Fergal Molloy approached. “I got on to the revenue crowd about the property records. This bog is split into three turbary allotments, one for each of the adjoining properties, as you might expect. One belongs to Anthony Beglan, one is part of the Killowen parcel, and the other is attached to Vincent Claffey’s land.”
“So Claffey is the legal owner, as he says?”
“Looks like it. But here’s the thing he didn’t mention. This bog was designated as Special Area of Conservation two years ago. Claffey and his neighbors are getting compensation for not cutting here—a thousand euros per annum, each. I suppose Claffey wanted to be having his cake and atin’ it, too, probably counted on nobody checking.” Molloy jerked his head in the direction of the car. “Is it really him in the boot, Benedict Kavanagh?”