‘That fish is probably the most valuable thing anyone’s found since we got here,’ McCann said, drawing my attention back to him. ‘I’ll give it another week, I think. Then I’m packing it in.’
Wishing him good fortune, I headed on to Orcas, and a meeting with seemingly the only man to really profit from Ireland’s gold rush.
Weston suggested we walk to the site where a group from the museum were lifting the bog body from the ground and transporting it to Dublin. He walked with his suit jacket slung over his arm, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. I faced twin reflections of myself in his sunglasses as we discussed the discovery of the body, which, to Weston’s mind, could only be good for business.
‘We’re perfectly happy to stall production for a few days, helping the museum services to process this discovery. Far from trampling on tradition, we’re helping to preserve it,’ he said in a manner that made me believe the spiel had been scripted.
I couldn’t help but suspect that Weston worked hard to get me to like him – though I didn’t flatter myself to believe it was particular to me. He seemed to need people’s approbation; or perhaps he was so used to being criticized that he was now automatically politic in his conversation, arguing his defence before an attack had even been made.
‘Of course,’ he added, ‘I might ask them to sell the body back to us; put it on display in the reception area.’
I looked at him and he laughed, though, with his sunglasses shielding his eyes, I couldn’t assess the sincerity of the emotion.
‘Maybe just a loan then, eh, Ben?’
We reached the site slightly out of breath. Linda Campbell was there, though no longer in charge. I noticed that her paper suit from the previous day had hidden a slight frame.
‘Back again, Inspector?’
‘Can’t keep away,’ I said. ‘Even if I wanted to.’
‘Ben Devlin!’ a voice boomed, and I turned to see a man my age and size struggle his way out of the pit. ‘Jesus Christ, Ben Devlin in the Guards!’
He stood before me. His face was jowly, his eyes narrowed by the pudginess of his cheeks. His hair was receding, though still naturally black. He held out his arms, as if to give me a hug, and I instinctively stepped back.
‘Jesus,’ he said, turning to Linda Campbell and lowering his arms. ‘Four years together at college and the blackguard pretends not to know me.’
And then it struck me. ‘Fearghal Bradley,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Good to see you.’
‘Benny,’ he said, smiling broadly, clasping me to him in a bear hug. I patted his upper arms lightly in return and extricated myself from his embrace.
‘Fearghal, what brings you to Donegal?’
‘Kate, of course.’
I smiled a little uncertainly and looked at Linda. ‘Kate?’
‘Kate Moss,’ he explained, laughing at his own joke. I vaguely remembered that a body found several years ago in a bog had been named Peat Moss by some wag in the press. It hadn’t taken a massive leap to christen this new find.
‘Except she’d need to lose a few pounds to look like the real thing,’ I added.
Fearghal guffawed loudly. ‘Ben Devlin,’ he repeated, as if for the benefit of those standing around, who looked as bemused as I felt.
‘Are you in the museum now?’ I asked.
‘Professor Bradley is the museum,’ Linda Campbell said.
‘Listen to her,’ Fearghal laughed. I wondered for a second if there was something going on between them.
‘So, what happens with her next?’ I asked, nodding towards ‘Kate’.
‘Full forensics, Benny,’ Fearghal said. ‘Same as you’d do yourself. We’ll find out when she lived, how she died, maybe even why she died. It’s the discovery of a lifetime.’
‘I see,’ I said.
‘Ben Devlin in the Guards!’ Fearghal repeated, as much, I suspected, for something to say. ‘Who’d have thought it?’
We struggled to make small-talk for a few moments, having not seen one another in over a decade. Finally we parted with the half-hearted promise to meet for a drink sometime. As we shook hands to part he said again, ‘You a Guard!’ Then he added darkly, ‘Did they know about your criminal record?’
Linda Campbell looked quizzically at me. I laughed as good-humouredly as I could manage.
After returning to his office, Weston and I discussed the arrangements for the following week. He ran through Hagan’s itinerary with me, and details of the security he would be bringing with him. I in turn outlined the arrangements Patterson and I had discussed. Satisfied with our plans, Weston thanked me for my work and walked me to the door.
‘I have to ask,’ he said, smiling. ‘What’s the criminal record your friend mentioned?’ Before I could even respond he continued, ‘I shouldn’t pry, but I’m guessing it’s nothing serious or he wouldn’t have brought it up.’
‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘When we were students we broke into the admin building of the university. It was a student prank thing.’
‘You’ve a bit of the Irish rebel in you, Ben,’ Weston said, slapping me lightly on the back and laughing as if we were old friends. I was reminded again of how I felt on the day he had given me a gold necklace for Debbie. ‘Keep me posted,’ he said, patting me on the upper back once more, then turned back into his office, allowing the door to swing quietly closed behind him.
Chapter Five
Wednesday, 4 October – Thursday, 5 October
On Wednesday I attended the funeral of Ruslan Almurzayev. Karol Walshyk had helped make the arrangements, finding the priest in Derry who said the Polish Mass in the cathedral and persuading him to lead the service.
The turn-out was tiny. Clearly most of the other immigrants were fearful of Immigration Control attending the event. Natalia Almurzayev stood flanked by two female companions. She wore a simple floral summer dress and a pair of plain shoes. Her face was bleary with tears throughout the service.
She stood alone by the graveside as her husband was laid to rest, and I wondered how this woman, alone in a foreign country, having lost her unborn child and her husband within the space of a few months, had the strength to even stand. I was certain that, as she had huddled in the back of a lorry making its way across Europe, she must have held her breath and dared to hope that the future could only bring good things.
Before leaving, I went over to see her to express my condolences in a language she did not understand. Still, she held my gaze with dignity, her jaw set. But behind her strength I could sense a fear of what was to come. She must have realized that the rent collector would be calling on Friday for money she did not have.
I leant close to her, kissed her lightly on a cheek still damp with tears. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll not let them hurt you. I promise.’ I handed her my card, on which was printed my mobile number. ‘Call me if you need anything,’ I said.
She looked me in the eye and smiled lightly, as though she understood the sentiment, even if the words meant little to her.
‘Anything,’ I repeated.
The rest of the day passed with meetings to discuss security arrangements for Hagan’s impending visit. Patterson had relieved me of all other duties to focus on the event; my preparations required a visit to Dublin on Thursday with Patterson, to meet with a number of other regional commanders. It was the first such meeting since Patterson had taken over as Superintendent and he took advantage of the opportunity to go for drinks with his new colleagues during the afternoon. For my part, I decided to visit an old friend.
*
The girl at the desk of the museum phoned through to Fearghal Bradley for me and as I waited for him to come up from ‘the bowels’, as his message relayed through her put it, I examined the nearest display cases.
One in particular stood out: a massive torc – a golden neckband – which had been discovered in Meath in the 1920s was the centrepiece of the biggest display, surrounded by smaller gold pieces discovered in the same dig. The infor
mation sheet beside the cabinet related details of the find and the fact that the jewellery had been fashioned from Irish gold during the Bronze Age, when mining had been a common feature of life in Ireland.
A few minutes later Fearghal appeared by my side. I was a little surprised to see him wearing a white medical coat.
‘Benny, boy, good to see you,’ he said, continuing his hail-fellow-well-met routine.
‘Fearghal,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘I was down for a conference; thought I’d drop in and see how Kate is doing.’
‘Great to see you,’ he said, pumping my hand in his but noticeably toning down his voice. ‘Come and see her.’
As I followed him to the door, I asked about his family. His parents had both been architects, and I remembered them as kind, good-living people. They were both well, he assured me, as was his younger brother, Leon, who had been friendly with my younger brother, Tom, when Fearghal and I had known each other. Leon had been a computing expert, then had thrown it up and had gone off to some commune, apparently. Tom, meanwhile, had become a mechanical engineer.
‘That’s how people change,’ Fearghal concluded as he led me down several flights of steps to a basement laboratory not unlike a surgical theatre.
Kate’s body lay curled on top of a stainless-steel table, her features much clearer now that all the dirt had been cleaned from her. Her hair was red, her teeth almost golden in colour.
‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’ Fearghal said.
‘Considering her age,’ I said.
‘Two and a half thousand years,’ he said. ‘Carbon dating will give us a more accurate date, but we suspect early Iron Age.’
‘Have you been able to verify cause of death?’ I asked.
He smiled. ‘Typical cop,’ he said. ‘The how’s not really important, Benny. It’s the why that’s interesting.’
‘Why then?’ I asked, and then, perhaps through pure contrariness, he answered the ‘how’ anyway.
‘She was strangled,’ he said. ‘Garrotted.’
‘Miss Campbell thought that,’ I nodded. ‘And why?’
‘We think she was a sacrifice. She was probably a criminal who was to be executed anyway so they offered her as a sacrifice instead.’
‘A sacrifice to whom?’
‘Probably Aine,’ he said. ‘Goddess of love and fertility.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Detective work, Benny,’ Bradley said. ‘And a lot of guessing.’
‘That’s mostly the same thing,’ I said.
‘There’s a whole load of things we’ve picked up on,’ he said. ‘Firstly, the fact that she was buried at all. Early Iron Age man cremated his dead. If they buried someone, it was probably as a gift to the bog or to the gods.’
‘Why do you think she was a gift to the gods then and not the bog?’
‘Two reasons,’ he said, clearly enjoying discussing his work. ‘Linda examined Kate’s stomach contents, her last meal. She ate, or was forced to eat, a gruel or soup of flowers: barley, linseed, knotgrass, gold-of-pleasure. The fact that she ate a mixture of flowers and cereals suggests either the harvest or the spring.’
‘Forced?’
He beamed broadly. ‘C’mere.’ He beckoned me over to a shelf where a tupperware container sat, half filled with a thick yellow substance. Bradley lifted a spoon from the desk, wiped it on the tail of his white coat and spooned out some of the yellow mix.
‘Taste that,’ he said, offering me the spoon as I backed away.
‘No thanks,’ I said, raising my hand.
‘Go on,’ he persisted, raising the spoon to my mouth. ‘It won’t kill you.’
‘Is this her actual stomach contents?’ I asked, trying hard not to gag.
‘Jesus, Ben, we’re not mad, you know. One of the botanists here made it up from modern ingredients. It’s as close as she can get it to the original. Try it.’
I took a small mouthful of the gruel. The initial taste was malty, though very quickly a bitter aftertaste developed. Suppressing the urge to spit, I grimaced and swallowed.
Bradley laughed loudly, tapping the remains of the gruel off the spoon back into the container. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Would you eat that voluntarily?’
‘Fair enough,’ I said.
‘So that’s that. Plus, of course, the fact that she’s a woman suggests something to do with fertility – which is why I think she was sacrificed to Aine. Which, in turn, would suggest that she was killed on her feast day, Midsummer’s Eve.’
‘What age was she?’
‘In her early twenties. She’s measuring in at 154 centimetres, though she’ll have shrunk in the bog. Plus it dyed her skin and her hair; she may not have been a redhead in real life.’
‘Linda told me it would have been a great honour for someone to have been sacrificed.’
‘She was right,’ Fearghal said. ‘Her family would have been very proud. Her death would have been one of great dignity.’
‘Any damage to her hands?’ I asked, angling my head slightly to examine them.
‘Nothing much,’ he said, interested now.
‘If she were strangled, you’d imagine her fingers would be damaged from fighting against the noose. You’d expect her fingernails to have broken at least. She didn’t fight it.’
‘She may well have been drugged beforehand.’
‘Maybe,’ I agreed. ‘Might be worth doing toxicology.’
He laughed. ‘This isn’t a murder case, Ben.’
‘You’d just like to know, though. Wouldn’t you?’
He nodded. ‘I guess you would, Ben,’ he said.
We stood by her body for a moment in silence, then I announced I’d better get back to Patterson.
‘What did you say had you down here?’ Fearghal asked as we mounted the stairs back up to the street.
‘Security conference,’ I said.
‘Must be big,’ he said.
‘Cathal Hagan, the US senator, is coming to Orcas next week to officially open the place.’
‘Hagan,’ Bradley said. ‘Isn’t he the one that—’
‘Yep,’ I said, glad to see the final flight of steps ahead. ‘He’s that one.’
‘Good luck to you,’ he said. ‘You’ll need it with that bastard,’ he laughed, standing on the top step, hand held aloft in a farewell salute.
Chapter Six
Friday, 6 October
Friday morning dawned to blue skies, with a thick bank of white cloud low to the east. The forecast promised rain by evening, but until then a fine day stretched ahead.
Natalia Almurzayev had told us that the rent collector, whom I had christened Pony Tail, would be calling to collect his payment after 8 p.m. on the first Friday of the month. I had mulled over the problem all week; to tell Hendry would almost certainly result in the immigrants being shipped back to Chechnya. To say nothing would leave them at the mercy of whoever was exploiting them. I figured if I could trace whoever the rent collector delivered to, I might be able to direct Hendry towards him without necessarily landing Mrs Almurzayev in trouble with the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Not for the first time, I missed my old partner, Caroline Williams, who had left both An Garda and Donegal following our last case together. I needed help – in particular a woman’s help. My plan was to have Natalia Almurzayev removed from the house before the collector arrived. I would then watch the house and follow him when he left.
In the end, I contacted Helen Gorman. She had proved herself hard-working and sensible enough; plus she was involved to some extent in the case already, having mistakenly broken the news of ‘Mackey’s’ death to his wife. I didn’t know how discreet she would be, but I had little other choice.
I caught up with her in Letterkenny over coffee. She agreed to help in any way she could, but in fact all I needed her to do for now was baby-sit Natalia for an hour or two.
I met Helen at 6 p.m. in Lifford and we drove in two separate unmarked Garda cars to the hou
se in Strabane where Karol Walshyk had brought me the previous week. The man who opened the door to us immediately tried to slam it shut again, perhaps thinking we were Northern police. With luck and speed, I managed to wedge my foot in the doorjamb, then used my considerable weight to force the door back. Realizing he was on to a loser, the man let go of the door and scuttled into the house shouting a warning. I, in turn, fell through the doorway and found myself sprawled on the floor.
I was aware of a number of people running to the kitchen to escape through the back door. A hand helped me to my feet and I turned, assuming it was Helen Gorman. Instead, Natalia Almurzayev stood before me.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
She nodded as if she understood, not just what I had said, but why I was there. I pointed to Helen. ‘Go with her,’ I said. Natalia looked at Helen who, in turn, smiled sheepishly and waved from the doorstep.
Natalia looked from Helen to me and spoke in Chechen, then rubbed her fingers together in a gesture of money, before pointing at her watch. She was referring to the money collector.
I pointed to my chest. ‘I’ll take care of it,’ I said. ‘Go with Helen.’
She looked doubtful still, but finally called to some of the others in the house and a few faces peered out from the kitchen. One woman called something back and, whatever Natalia’s response was, it seemed to placate them, for they began to move back into the body of the house again.
Natalia placed her hand on my arm as she walked past. She nodded and said something approximating ‘Thank you.’ She smiled sadly, then lowered her head and allowed Helen Gorman to guide her out to the car.
I followed them and watched as they drove away. In my turn I went over to my own car, broke open a new packet of cigarettes, and sat and waited.
At just after 8.15, a silver Ford Fiesta pulled up outside the house. From where I was sitting, I could make out two men in the car. The passenger door opened and Pony Tail climbed out and shuffled up towards the house. His accomplice, who wore a baseball cap, remained in the car. Exhaust fumes continued to escape from the back of the car – the engine was still running. The visibility of the fumes also suggested the engine was cold; the men had not driven far. Unfortunately, the driver was facing me, which made it difficult for me to watch him openly, not to mention follow them unnoticed. I could, however, jot down the registration number.
Bleed a River Deep (Inspector Devlin Mystery 3) Page 5