The Book of Killowen ng-4

by Erin Hart

  “And what gave you that idea?”

  Maguire paused for a moment. “I happened to see Martin and Tessa Gwynne, earlier in the day, carrying a wrapped package to a place called Hawthorn House—it’s a private nursing home. Turns out their daughter has been a resident for almost twenty years. Someone told us the daughter had died, but it isn’t true. The girl apparently tried to commit suicide after being jilted by some man. I’m not sure if it’s anything to do with what has happened here, but you did ask how I got the notion.”

  Dr. Gavin said, “I saw something earlier as well, Detective. I don’t know if it’s important, but I was out in back, and I saw Graham Healy park up here beside the house and head down the path to the cottages. Eliana was just coming back that way—”

  “My father’s minder,” Maguire said. “He’s recovering from a stroke.”

  Dr. Gavin continued, “Eliana looked upset as she was coming from the wood, so I asked her what had happened. She said that Healy had been glaring at her. I wanted to see for myself what he was up to, so I went around the back way to the grove, and I saw him preparing a bonfire.” She glanced up at Stella. “He’d set out a can of petrol.” She shook her head. “That’s all I know. But whoever lit the fire in the storehouse tonight used petrol as well, or some sort of accelerant. The thing I don’t understand is, if Lucien and Sylvie did this, if they killed Benedict Kavanagh and Vincent Claffey, was it all for money? Then the elaborate staging, with the gallnuts and everything, that was all just for show. You saw the bodies, Detective. What do you think?”

  Inside that question was the same vague notion that had been bothering Stella for several days. From the beginning, the two murders seemed very personal. Something about this was not sitting right.

  After seeing her witnesses out, Stella called Molloy. “Fergal, can you get Tom Breen to look for a bonfire site in the oak grove, see what he can find there in the way of evidence? And one more thing, did you ever find out whether Graham Healy had experience with heavy machinery?”

  Molloy inclined his head slightly. “Sorry, Stella, meant to tell you about that last night as well. I checked with the art school, like you said. Healy was the head of the sculpture installation crew, operated a small JCB they used for digging foundations. You were dead right about that.”

  The rest of the interviews were unproductive. No one else at Killowen admitted hearing a thing before the fire began. Stella paid particular attention to the accounts of Mairéad Broome and Graham Healy, but they claimed bonfires were a perfectly ordinary occurrence at Killowen, that they’d half a tin of petrol left after starting the fire.

  So many things just weren’t adding up. If Kavanagh had been murdered by the Swiss couple, why would they stick around after his death? Wouldn’t it make more sense to disappear before the body was discovered and suspicion aroused?

  But Maguire and Gavin’s theories about an old book being at the center of this case jibed with what they’d found in Kavanagh’s things from the B and B. Kavanagh could have been here looking for a valuable old manuscript, one that might raise a few eyebrows, give his academic notoriety a nicely timed kick in the hindquarters. What had he said to his wife? This is going to rattle some bones. It would have to be something sensational. But he had to make sure it was real. She could see the notes in his hand: IOH returns to IRL, great work unfinished.

  Fergal Molloy appeared at the door. “Stella, we’ve got something you should see. Come out to the grove. Breen and his lads did find the remains of a bonfire.”

  Out at the bonfire site, Stella got a whiff of woodsmoke with an edge of something acrid, like burned chemicals. She turned to Thomond Breen. “What news here?”

  “No petrol container, but we did find a few interesting bits. Photos and papers, mostly, not completely burned. I’ll have them bagged up and delivered to you.”

  Stella felt a twinge of excitement. Vincent Claffey had made a mistake, squeezed the wrong person. And something in this pile of ashes may have led to his death.

  She was headed back to the house when she brushed past an old man sitting on a bench outside the door at Killowen. She felt a surge of annoyance, realizing that she hadn’t interviewed this man; Molloy hadn’t brought him in. “Are you all right there?”

  “Nan-nanning a wordoo,” the old man said. His diction was perfect, but the words were incomprehensible. “I flang the cubbits snaring.” It finally dawned on her. This was Maguire’s father, the one who’d suffered a stroke. On the ground at his feet were large white cards with black lettering on one side, pictures on the other. Common household objects, as if he were a child again. In her experience, even children noticed far more than people realized.

  The old man seized her hand, a pleading look in his eyes. “I sew the Free Staters,” he said. “You know, the Free Staters.” He kept pointing to an upstairs window and making the same gesture over and over, running his pinched-together right thumb and forefinger over his open left palm. Was it some sort of sign?

  “Sorry, I don’t understand. Do you need pen and paper?”

  “No, no.” He seemed impatient, urgent.

  “Shall I get your son?”

  “My sum?” He seemed worried, confused. “No, my author.”

  “Maguire, the archaeologist, isn’t he your son?”

  “Yes. Yes.” The old man let her go then and sank back onto the bench. No wonder Molloy had left him off the interview list. He had mentioned an author—could it have to do with a mysterious missing manuscript, or was he just talking rubbish? Impossible to tell. And yet behind his eyes, she sensed a kind of light, or intelligence. Or was it only the ghost of the person he had been?

  Just then Graham Healy came through the front door of the house, followed by Molloy. Stella felt the old man grip her forearm. “Free Stater,” he whispered hoarsely.

  She dropped down beside him, so that her face was on a level with his own. He started making the same gesture again, and this time she felt a jolt of recognition. He was lighting a match. She spoke quietly, making sure to keep her back to Healy and Molloy. “You saw that man start the fire last night, didn’t you, from the window upstairs?”

  He nodded, and Stella continued. “Listen to me, was it the bonfire in the wood, or the fire up here, the one in the storehouse?”

  The old man’s eyes darted unmistakably toward the storehouse. She had a witness. “You’re sure it’s the same man you saw? It was dark last night.”

  He focused on her face with intense concentration and said slowly, “I—sawt—rum-rumaway.”

  “All right. Thank you for telling me.”

  As Stella straightened, she glanced up to find Graham Healy staring at them.

  BOOK FIVE

  Gaib do chuil insin charcair,

  ni róis chluim na colcaid.

  Truag insin amail bachal;

  rot giuil ind shrathar dodcaid.

  Take thy corner in the prison:

  thou shalt have neither down nor pallet.

  it is sad, o prince of crosiers,

  the packsaddle of ill-luck has stuck to thee.

  —Verse written in the margin by the Irish scribe who copied Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticae (a Latin grammar) in the mid-ninth century

  1

  Tired as she was, Stella felt an extra adrenaline jolt as she entered the windowless interview room. Graham Healy sat at the table. She took a seat across from him. “Thank you for coming in, Mr. Healy. I just have a few more questions.” She consulted her notes, giving him a little extra time to stew before she began.

  “We found evidence of a bonfire at Killowen last night, out in the wood.”

  “That’s not against the law now, is it?”

  “No, but destroying evidence in a murder investigation is. Burning down a building with people inside it is a crime.”

  “I was asleep in my own bed when that fire started at the storehouse last night.”

  “I have reason to believe otherwise. Let me ask, how far is it from th
e cottage where you stay to the storehouse? Only a couple of hundred yards, right? Easy enough to start the fire and then double back. You could make certain everyone saw you and Ms. Broome coming up the path when the alarm went up.”

  “Why would I want to harm those people? I know nothing about them. We’d barely even met. I’d never seen them before dinner last night.”

  Stella paused for a moment, then tried a different approach.

  “All right, let’s go back to your relationship with Vincent Claffey.”

  “There was no relationship.”

  “But you did work together, isn’t that right? Preparing canvases, other sorts of… how did Ms. Broome put it? Oh, yes, ‘the more basic tasks.’ You’d have to instruct him, surely, explain just the way she wanted them, dimensions and so on, and arrange delivery if he worked on the canvases at his own place, all that sort of thing.”

  Healy offered a grudging glance in her direction. “Yes.”

  “So you did have an ongoing relationship with Mr. Claffey, if he took care of those sorts of tasks for you on a regular basis?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What’s the going rate?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s a simple question. How much did you pay Mr. Claffey for framing and stretching canvases?”

  Healy looked at her for a long moment. “It was a bit more than the going rate; Mairéad was always too generous, especially with Claffey.”

  “How much more? And do you figure that sort of work on an hourly basis, or is it usually piecework?”

  “Hourly.” Graham Healy’s voice was barely audible. “He was paid forty euros an hour.”

  “So he must have put in a lot of time on those canvases. Because the witness statement we have says it was a pretty fat brown envelope you handed over to Vincent Claffey on the day you arrived at Killowen.”

  “He preferred twenty-euro notes, didn’t like fifties. He’d particularly asked to be paid in twenties that time. You can check with Mairéad if you don’t believe me.”

  “So where are the canvases?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Come on, Mr. Healy. If Vincent Claffey spent so much time making bloody canvases, where are they? Is there a special shed at Killowen where you keep a store of materials? We didn’t find any materials at Claffey’s farm, so I assumed he’d been working at Killowen. But there don’t seem to be any supplies there either.”

  Healy sat stone-faced.

  “I have a different theory, Mr. Healy. Would you like to hear it?”

  “I don’t suppose I can stop you.”

  “I think Vincent Claffey spied you with Benedict Kavanagh out at Killowen Bog. I think he didn’t make anything of it until Kavanagh’s body turned up. That was when Claffey saw his big chance to make a bit of money—for keeping his mouth shut.”

  “No.”

  “But maybe he threatened to tell anyway. Or maybe he wanted more money, and you couldn’t see paying again and again, for years. So you had to get rid of him. Or maybe it was an accident. You went to talk to him, things got ugly, you pushed him, and he hit his head. Nothing to be done about it, so you make his death look like Kavanagh’s to distract us.”

  Stella continued, “You knew the bog was protected, that no one was going to be cutting there for a long time. You have experience driving an excavator. The one thing I can’t figure with that whole scenario is how you got Kavanagh out to Killowen. But I have to hand it to you, whatever way you did it, it worked. Maybe it was you who sent him an anonymous message about an old manuscript, something to do with his old friend, Eriugena, the philosopher fella. Some earth-shattering new discovery that would definitely rattle some bones.”

  “I really have no idea what you’re talking about, Detective. I never should have come here. You’re dead wrong—about all of this.”

  “Am I?”

  “I told you, Mairéad and I were staying at a friend’s place in the Slieve Bloom Mountains when Benedict disappeared. We were nowhere near Killowen. If you don’t believe me, ask Claire, ask Diarmuid Lynch—they’ll tell you.”

  “They’re also friends of Mairéad’s. Maybe they were glad to see her get shut of that bastard of a husband, almost as glad as you were.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong. Mairéad would never harm anyone. She was only trying to help—” Healy stopped abruptly.

  Stella knew she’d just witnessed a slip. “Who exactly was she trying to help?”

  Healy had reached his limit. “I’m done talking. If you’ve nothing to keep me here, I’d like to go.”

  It could have happened just as she described to Healy, but there wasn’t a shred of evidence that could prove anything, and Healy knew it. Molloy was lounging against the wall outside the interview room when she opened the door. Healy didn’t make eye contact with either of them as he left.

  “I hate to say it, Stella, but we’re going to have to charge Dawson or spring him. All we’ve got are those gallnuts from his room, which anyone could have planted, and a witness statement from Anca Popescu, who’s conveniently scarpered.”

  Anca’s statement was looking more and more like a fable, Stella thought. She remembered Dawson’s words: Anca might have done for Claffey herself, did you not think of that? The girl had claimed that Dawson pushed Claffey, that the victim had struck his head. Those details had been borne out in the postmortem. But it could have been Anca herself on the other side of that altercation, and Niall Dawson could be telling the truth. They still didn’t know who’d mutilated Claffey’s corpse and wrapped him in plastic.

  “Have we gone over the clothes Dawson was wearing that night? He admitted finding a corpse, for God’s sake. I can’t believe there’s not even a single speck of blood on his shoes. We’ve no physical evidence that can place him there?”

  Molloy shook his head.

  “Fine,” she said. “Let him go. Christ, this whole case has me round the bend.”

  Stella could hear the clock ticking, could feel the hot breath of Serious Crimes on her neck. They were going to lose this case in the next day or two, she could feel it.

  2

  Cormac shook his head. “It’s no use, I don’t know what you’re saying.” He threw up his hands and turned away from his father, who sat on the bed, refusing to get up or dress himself. They’d let him sleep late after the excitement over the fire last night, and now he was adamant about not leaving his room.

  “I sew the Free Stater. Tolder pleaseworum.” He kept repeating the same phrases, over and over again, about a Free Stater. There was a screw seriously loose today, and no mistake. “Will you just please put your clothes on?”

  The old man shook his head. “No.”

  “If you’re not going to get up, I’ll have to get someone to sit with you.”

  “No—” He started to stand. “Does she havunn? The Free Stater?”

  Cormac said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.” He knelt down in front of his father once more. “What is it? What are you trying to say?” He searched his father’s eyes, looking for clues.

  Joseph shook his head and spoke slowly, distinctly. “I sew the Free Stater. I sew.” He held his fingers up, pointing to his own eyes. “Bollocks. But she… she knows I sew it.”

  “Who knows?” Cormac asked. “Who the hell are you talking about?”

  “Her! The worum.” He let his head drop into his hands. “You can’t hear me.”

  “I’m trying. I’ll keep trying, if you will.”

  “I’m an awful bosom.”

  Cormac struggled to keep a straight face. “Well, an awful something, and no mistake.”

  Joseph reached out to touch Cormac’s face, letting his fingertips brush the eyebrow that had been singed in the fire last night, the edge of the bandage that covered a small burn on his forehead. “My poor lad,” the old man said. “My sum.”

  He helped his father to stand and brought his clothes from the bedside chair. “Time to put these on and face the day. Elia
na is downstairs waiting for you.” The mention of the girl’s name drew an unexpected response.

  “Can’t look. Spuh-puh-puncture of pass. Pass. Peas. Ah, I’m a fool of bad words.”

  Cormac tried to hear what his father was saying. “Has Eliana upset you in some way?”

  “No, no. She’s a goose to me.”

  What must it be like, every day facing a barrage of meaningless words that hemmed him in, imprisoned his thoughts? She’s a goose to me. What could that possibly mean?

  The old man was finally dressed. Cormac led the way downstairs, already exhausted before the day had begun. He made tea and buttered some brown bread for their breakfast, though it was nearly two in the afternoon. A strange morning after a strange night.

  But both he and Nora had work to do today; he was back on the bog, and Nora had said she’d lend a hand. Bringing the old man out here, even for a few days, had been a mistake. What if he never regained his faculty of speech? Once in a while, some word would come swimming to the surface, stay anchored to its meaning for a few hours, and then recede again. Most days the image he carried was of the two of them, himself and his father, in a coracle, paddling furiously in a vast sea of alphabet soup.

  3

  By half-two in the afternoon, Stella Cusack felt her energy flagging. Between Molloy’s late-night visit and the fire, she’d slept only about two hours, and a heavy fatigue was beginning to settle upon her. But there was no question of taking any rest, not now when the case was in disarray. They had no leads, no suspects in custody. The whole thing was a bloody shambles. She’d been staring at the whiteboard for twenty minutes with no flash of insight.

  Molloy set a cup of steaming tea on the table beside her.

  “Just got a call back on Claire Finnerty,” he said. “Remember, you asked me to look into her background, like I did with Lynch? I checked public records for the birth date listed on her driving license. There was a Claire Finnerty born at the Mater Hospital in Dublin on the fourth of January 1968. I was able to track down the parents, Roger and Sheila Finnerty of Beaumont Road, Dublin. Just got off the phone with them, and get this—their daughter was eight weeks premature; she only lived two days.”