Death in the Burren

by John Kinsella

  It was very exciting and he almost willed that he be caught in a squall for the sheer feeling of invigoration. No matter what the weather was like in this part of Ireland, stormy or calm, cold or warm, he always felt it was under the guidance of a benign influence which, despite having to oversee and carry out a range, even of violent activities, never did so with malevolence. The demons and alien hordes he had encountered early this morning never seemed totally happy in their role. Their kinder disposition always speedily reasserted itself.

  With this feeling of anticipation he continued his walk and his mind took to wandering again.

  It was a very unsettling experience to have someone invade your privacy and, try as he might, McAllister could not put the thought out of his head. It surely must have been a sneak looking for some easy pickings, he reasoned.

  But what if it wasn’t that simple? What else did he possess which would interest a thief? But nothing had been taken, he had checked the room. What if he had disturbed someone who had hightailed it out through the window? They would have had to move with unnatural speed from the moment he turned the door handle, so he dismissed that theory.

  McAllister narrowed it down to three possibilities.

  An unsuccessful search for money, an unsuccessful search for something else or, finally, what if something had been stolen and he had missed that fact in his examination of the room?

  He strode on. By now his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and he could make out the familiar curves of the hills to his right. The sound of the waves breaking on the shore at the bottom of the slope on the other side of the road could be heard mingling with the sigh of the rising wind. His face was struck by the occasional raindrop.

  As McAllister recalled the scene in his room, trying to account for everything that should have been there, he became uneasy. He felt his subconscious prompting him and went through the list once again. Suitcases, clothes, books, lecture notes ………… he was fairly certain he had seen everything. He had examined the wardrobe, the dressing table, the bedside locker…….

  Here McAllister stopped. The bedside locker! But why was he focusing on it? Then it suddenly struck him.

  Yes that was it! The Swiss knife had not been in the drawer!

  He remembered casually dropping it into the almost empty top drawer and was now quite certain it was not there. He had been checking for his familiar possessions and had forgotten the knife.

  Confused and uneasy McAllister turned abruptly to retrace his steps.

  By now all his instincts were telling him there was something sinister about the knife, and particularly about it’s disappearance.

  What was the crude inscription he had seen on the blade?

  “90A 0L”.

  Then in a sudden flash of intuition he knew it’s meaning!

  His mind raced over the events of the day, the circumstances in which he had found the knife and the events which had followed.

  A pattern emerged.

  “I still do not know what’s happening around here but I know who’s responsible.” he thought, “I must get back quickly and telephone Con Curtis.”

  McAllister quickened his step but he was destined never to make that telephone call.

  He was aware of a sharp searing pain…..and then……total darkness.

  CHAPTER 13

  “HE’S MOVING.”

  The familiar voice whispered quietly but sounded most strange. It seemed to be sounding from the far end of a wide bored tube and developed a booming effect as it approached.

  It died into a long blissful silence …….. then …..

  “John. Are you awake?”

  The voice was a little louder now and it hurt.

  McAllister winced and opened his eyes narrowly, but could only make out a blurred image.

  The image moved slowly from side to side and then came towards him. It was joined by other images. He struggled to focus his eyes on them but they just swam together, and he gave up trying.

  “It’s best to leave him for a while. He’s alright. He’ll come around.” This voice was unfamiliar.

  McAllister tried to move his head but in doing so provoked a stab of pain which sent shocks through his whole body, so he relaxed into the pillow and sank back into unconsciousness.

  “Here he comes again.”

  It was the same familiar voice but this time it sounded more immediate.

  McAllister opened one eye slowly and gently.

  “Lazybones. I’ve come all this way to see you and you won’t even say hello. The last time I spoke to you it sent you off into a three hour sleep.”

  Again the image was blurred, but this time his efforts to focus were more successful.

  “Ann. Where have you come from? Where am I? What’s going on?”

  Even in his semicomatose state McAllister was aware of how weak his voice sounded.

  “Relax now John. Nothing is going on. You’re alright. Just lie there and I’ll talk to you.”

  He felt a gentle kiss on his forehead.

  But McAllister could not relax anymore. Ann! This was Ann he finally realised, his fiancee. But she was in Dublin and he was in County Clare, in the Burren. How come she was sitting on the side of his bed? But this wasn’t his bed either.

  McAllister swivelled his eyes around, not wishing to risk that stabbing pain again by raising his head, and realised he was in a hospital ward. There were three other beds in the room, one beside him and two opposite, all unoccupied.

  “Ann please tell me where I am, and why you’re here.”

  “Do you not remember what happened Monday night?” she asked frowning.

  “Monday night? Let me see. Why do you say Monday night?”

  “Because that’s the night you went walking on the coast road after dinner.”

  McAllister tried to recollect. He often went for a walk after dinner. What was so special about Monday though?

  Monday. Monday…… he wrestled with his memory.

  Then it began to come back. Monday was the day of his field trip to Poll Salach.

  “It’s coming back to me now, Ann. On Monday I brought the students to Poll Salach and I had dinner with Patsy that evening.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” she said encouragingly, “come on keep talking.”

  “Yes now I remember. I went to my room after dinner and noticed that somebody had been nosing around.”

  “Oh?”, she interjected, frowning again.

  “Yes, whoever invaded my room went very neatly and carefully through it. It was only when I was on my way back that it hit me what had been taken.”

  “Hit you is right!” Ann allowed herself a wry grin.

  “What do you mean?” McAllister asked.

  “Never mind I’ll tell you in a moment. Keep talking. What was missing?”

  McAllister remembered quite clearly now.

  “It was the knife!”

  “The knife? What knife?”

  “The Swiss knife. The one I found at Poll Salach earlier that day. I remembered the inscription on it and guessed who it belonged to. Then my memory seems to cut off. No, there’s one other thing. A sudden pain in my head.” He looked at Ann and smiled. “That’s about it. I think you can tell me the rest of the story. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it ?”

  She held his hand. “Someone took a pot shot at you with a rifle and luckily the aim wasn’t accurate.”

  The ward door opened and McAllister was astonished to see Frank Holland, and Susan.

  Frank was obviously in great spirits, “So you’re recovering from your bad imitation of William Tell, I see.”

  “Yes, though I think this particular marksman had more than an apple in his sights. But how come you’re here? I thought Curtis had you under lock and key.”

  “New evidence. He realised he had the wrong suspect and couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”

  The door opened again. A doctor and nurse entered.

  “Well Mr. McAllister, you see
m to have made a good recovery.” The doctor looked around the room. “If you give me a few moments I’ll see how he is.”

  They waited outside until the doctor announced that McAllister could leave, provided he rested for a few days.

  It was when they were leaving that McAllister discovered he had been in Galway Regional Hospital, and that it was Wednesday afternoon.

  They decided to return to Derreen immediately. Frank and Susan went ahead and Ann followed in her new Honda Civic.

  “So somebody tried to finish me off.” McAllister mused.

  “You were very lucky you weren’t shot dead, or run over by a car as you lay on the road.”

  “Tell me what happened, Ann.”

  “It’s quite simple. Not long after you had been grazed by that bullet one of Susan’s guests drove by and fortunately saw you lying on the road. He brought you back to the guest house. Susan rang for an ambulance and notified the police. They decided to take you to hospital for examination, even though the initial check showed there was nothing serious. It was only then that Susan rang me. Naturally, I galloped down on Tuesday morning, and here we are. You know the rest, John.”

  They lapsed into silence, lulled by the subdued purr of the Honda engine, and when Ann glanced at him some time later she was not surprised to see that McAllister had fallen asleep.

  Their journey took them through Oranmore, Kinvara, Ballyvaughan and around Black Head. As they arrived in Derreen McAllister woke from his slumbers. He was grateful that they were at the end of their journey.

  He had still not adjusted to the fact that Ann was actually here with him but her confident and caring manner was exactly what he needed right now.

  “Come on sleepyhead, it’s time to disembark. We’re in port now.”

  McAllister slid from the Honda seat and took a deep breath of bracing Atlantic air. It had an almost instantaneous effect. Acting on him like some miraculous tonic the clean bite of it began restoring him as it’s healing oxygen seeped deep into his bloodstream.

  “Back to the scene of the crime, Ann. But I wouldn’t be anywhere else right now, especially as you’re here.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “YOU CALL THIS THE SCENE of the crime, John?” asked Ann, sitting back and spreading her arms wide as if displaying the dining room, and then pointing to the ocean panorama through one of the large and distinctive elliptical windows. “I couldn’t imagine a more unlikely setting for a crime of any sort, let alone murder, and attempted murder.”

  The four were sitting together enjoying an impromptu meal of lightly smoked salmon and an enormous and highly imaginative salad which Susan seemed to conjure from nowhere.

  McAllister and Holland, who had been the victims of varied misfortune, were recovering and readjusting, and a feeling of “the good old times” was creeping back.

  McAllister nodded in acknowledgement and looked pensively through the window following the direction of the coast road along which he had taken his near fatal walk on Monday night. It was difficult to imagine the truth of what had happened, especially as the pain killers were doing their job extremely well, blotting out the physical discomfort of his head wound.

  “The scene of the crime it certainly is and now that I’ve time to think properly without going to sleep, or being whisked to Galway and back, I must tell you of my suspicions about the missing knife.”

  “What knife?” Frank asked.

  “I remember,” said Ann, “ you were telling me about a Swiss knife when Susan and Frank came into the ward. It was your last memory before your encounter with the bullet.”

  “This sounds very dramatic.” Susan paused, her wineglass suspended. “What’s the story about the Swiss knife?”

  McAllister resumed. “On Monday I was at Poll Salach with my group and just before lunch, as we were making our way back to the road, I spotted a knife lying in a clump of samphire. I showed it around as we were finishing lunch but nobody claimed it and I said I would give it to Curtis sometime. Later that evening as I was preparing to go to dinner it slipped from my coat pocket onto the bed. I had a good look at it and only then noticed that one blade had the inscription “90A 0L” crudely scratched on it.”

  McAllister took a slip of paper from his wallet, wrote down the numbers and letters, and they all peered at them with interest.

  “I put the knife in the drawer of the bedside locker. After dinner I suspected that somebody had been in my room while I was having dinner with Patsy. The lower half of the window was open but I couldn’t remember if I had left it that way myself. Anyway it was a simple way to get in without being seen, once the coast was clear.”

  “What made you so sure that somebody had been in your room?” Susan asked.

  “Mainly a feeling. At first I thought nothing was missing, even though my things had been very carefully and discretely disturbed. Then, later, as I was going over the incident in my mind, it occurred to me that the knife had been taken. After that I thought of the inscription.”

  “It doesn’t mean much to me, I must admit.” Frank mused, staring once more at what McAllister had written.

  “It’s the spacing,” said McAllister, “it’s done so crudely. The interpretation which came so vividly into my mind was that the space between the “A” and the “O” wasn’t intended and if that’s correct then we’re left with “90”, which could be the year 1990, and the letters “AOL”, which are the initials of somebody not too far from here.”

  They looked at him expectantly, at the same time turning the letters over in their minds, although Ann was at a bit of a loss.

  “I’ve thought of one candidate,” offered Frank, “Andy O’Lochlen.”

  “Right first time,” snapped McAllister.

  “But I don’t see the importance of all this, if it is indeed O’Lochlen’s knife.”

  “Somebody thought it important enough to break into my room and grab it.”

  “But that somebody must have known it was there and very few people did. Surely O’Lochlen couldn’t have known about it.”

  “This is the very point,” said McAllister. “When I showed the knife around at our picnic lunch O’Lochlen was there!”

  “Why didn’t he say it was his?” asked Ann.

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” McAllister admitted, “but if I’m correct about his initials then he has something to hide about his knife being found at Poll Salach.”

  “Poll Salach, isn’t that where you found Des Hyland’s body?” Susan asked.

  McAllister nodded.

  “It’s as if a whole new dimension of meaning was being added to the name of the place,” she went on.

  “Very much at odds, though, with it’s beauty, and it’s value for people like me.”

  “It seems that we’ve stumbled into something but I can’t for the life of me think of what it might be,” Frank looked at them expectantly, “ it’s clear, though,” he went on, “ that if we assume the initials on the Swiss knife are O’Lochlen’s it must have been he who took it from your room.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily follow, does it?” McAllister asked, “Anybody in the guest house, or anybody who chose to enter my room by the open window could have taken it.”

  “I would need a lot of convincing that somebody casually took that risk simply to acquire a Swiss knife.” Frank was very positive. “It would make sense, though, if it was spirited away by somebody who saw more than commercial value in it.”

  McAllister had to admit the strength of Holland’s convictions.

  “Look,” Frank went on, “the more I think about this the simpler it becomes. You found the knife, John, on Monday when you were at Poll Salach with your botany group. You showed it to them, and O’Lochlen, and said you might pass it on to Curtis. Later that evening you discovered what might be O’Lochlen’s initials on it and then it is stolen from your room. Nobody else knew the knife even existed other than O’Lochlen and your people from Gregans Castle Hotel who were all safely back the
re.”

  “And then somebody tried to murder you when you were out walking.” Ann shivered and put an arm around McAllister.

  “Who?” Susan asked.

  “O’Lochlen.” Holland affirmed grimly.

  “But for Heaven’s sake why?” she pursued him.

  “Because John found the knife and was the only person who had an opportunity to discover the initials. O’Lochlen realised he had made a mistake in not admitting ownership at Poll Salach and if the truth of this dawned on John then his suspicions would be aroused.”

  “Suspicions of what?” Susan asked.

  “This is the puzzle. We don’t know. But if my line of reasoning is correct, then John’s possession of the knife was regarded by O’Lochlen as sufficiently threatening to him to obliterate all traces of the knife and also obliterate all possibilities of John finding the initials and mentioning them to somebody. Curtis, for instance.” Frank was enjoying his role as sleuth.

  McAllister was now feeling too tired to take part in the conversation but he was fascinated by the possibilities which Frank was opening up, and his theories about O’Lochlen wanting to obliterate him.

  “All of this makes no sense whatsoever until we know why such a trivial item as a Swiss knife and a trivial incident as finding it at Poll Salach would drive O’Lochlen to such extremes.” Susan was equally enjoying her role as “doubting Thomas”.

  “It can be only one thing.” Ann said with a strong sense of conviction.

  “What’s that?” Susan asked.

  “The association of the knife with the place. Poll Salach.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t follow you , Ann.”

  “I think I do!” McAllister was suddenly roused from his torpor. “I don’t know why I’m saying this but if the story is true so far, then the whole business has some connection with me finding Hyland’s body there!”

  At that moment they heard a car stopping outside. They could see, through the elliptical window, the beams of the headlights pointing out to sea, and then being switched off. A heavy footstep approached on the gravel surface followed by a ring on the bell.