Brian McGilloway - The Nameless Dead (Inspector Devlin #5)

by Brian McGilloway

  ‘What’s that?’ Mrs Collins shifted slightly, as if the backs of her legs were getting scorched. Eventually she moved across to an empty seat in front of the window.

  ‘Resistivity testing, mainly. And magnetometry. Soil displays resistance to electrical current being passed through it. You’d expect all the soil in any one geographical area to have around the same resistance readings. Where a grave has been dug and the spoil returned back into the hole dug, it never goes back in exactly as it came out – the mixing of top soil and deeper soil changes the overall composition and therefore the resistance reading.’

  ‘So you still don’t know if Declan is definitely there then?’

  ‘I can’t say definitely. There is something there. We had a search-dog out again today and he picked up something around one of the sites we’d identified.’

  ‘You said that yesterday, too,’ Sean interrupted, looking between his mother and Millar, as if looking for her agreement.

  ‘There have been other issues with the island and the location we’ve picked.’

  ‘What issues?’

  ‘We found a child’s body in the site we dug today. That had to be excavated and processed.’

  ‘Is it another one of the limbo babies?’ Mary Collins asked, her face creased in sympathy.

  ‘We don’t know. It’s not part of the original cillin, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t buried there for much the same reasons. The find was very close to where we believe Declan to be lying. I imagine there may be some scant consolation in knowing that Declan has not been lying alone these past years,’ Millar added.

  Mrs Collins smiled sadly, her eyes glistening. I marvelled at her composure, having waited thirty-five years to learn what had happened to her partner, to have come this close.

  ‘What happens when he’s found?’ Sean said. ‘What will you do then?’ He nodded at me when he spoke.

  It was Millar who answered, though. ‘When your father is recovered, we’ll have to send his body for formal identification. That may take some weeks. We’ll also want to conduct a postmortem to establish cause of death. Then he’ll be returned to you for Requiem Mass and interment.’

  ‘But what about your lot? Will you be looking for who killed him?’

  I looked quickly to Millar before I answered. ‘I’m afraid not, Sean. That’s not how it works.’

  Millar nodded. ‘The Commission’s role is to bring about the recovery of the Disappeared. We have no powers to gather evidence or attempt to prosecute those responsible for the death of the body we recover. Nor can anything we uncover be used in court. We will not be passing on any information to Inspector Devlin here. This is a recovery operation only. The legislation is very clear on that.’

  ‘That’s balls,’ Sean Cleary said suddenly, shifting forward in his seat and standing. ‘So whoever killed my father can just sit back and watch on TV while he’s dug up.’

  ‘I understand your frustration, Mr Cleary,’ Millar said. ‘But that is the law. If it’s any consolation to you, it was probably one of the people responsible for your father’s death who contacted us in the first place. That that individual felt compelled to tell us where your father rested would suggest that it has weighed on his or her conscience these past years.’

  ‘Except you were contacted in May and you waited until now to look for him.’

  I could sense Millar swallowing back whatever he wanted to say. I imagined that, in his role, he would come across all forms of response to the work he was doing.

  ‘The information we were given in May was that the body was located near Tra na Cnamha. No one we spoke to recognized the name.’ He stumbled over the pronunciation of the name, pronouncing both the ‘n’ and the ‘m’.

  ‘It’s pronounced Crawaa. Tra na Cnamha means the Beach of Bones,’ I translated. ‘But I’ve never heard the name being used for Islandmore.’

  ‘In the eighteenth century, locals called the island Innis na Cnamha. We found it on an old Donegal fishing map in the Linenhall Library in Belfast. It was the name, Isle of Bones, that alerted us to the probability that there might be a cillin on the site,’ he explained, again speaking to Mary Collins.

  She nodded. Sean glanced across at her quizzically.

  ‘We’d only got that name when you told us about the map you were sent. We’ve worked as quickly as we can. And, again, if the same person sent you the map as contacted us, it suggests that he or she is feeling incredibly guilty about what happened. Thirty-five years on.’

  ‘And that’s the best we can expect? That whoever did it feels a bit guilty? My heart bleeds.’

  ‘That’s enough, Sean,’ Mary Collins said. ‘These men are doing their best. They’ll bring Declan home. That’s all I want now.’

  ‘It’s not what I want,’ Sean Cleary said, his voice breaking slightly. He was a big man when he stood, just under six foot, though, I suspected, edging near sixteen stone. Despite being in his mid-thirties, though, his voice and manner were a teenager’s. ‘That’s not justice. It’s not good enough.’

  ‘It’s all we can do.’

  ‘Well, it’s not good enough for me,’ he snapped, standing and leaving the room.

  Mary Collins stood with that, extending her hand to Millar.

  ‘I apologize for Sean. You’re doing very good work, Mr Millar,’ she said. ‘You don’t know how important it is. Thank you.’

  ‘We’ll work as fast as we can,’ Millar assured her.

  She nodded, though the increasing glinting in her eyes suggested she could not trust herself to speak further without tears.

  ‘When will the post-mortem be held on the baby?’ I asked, when we got back into the car. ‘I’ll want to get things moving.’

  Millar stared across at me, his seat belt still gripped in his hand.

  ‘You can’t investigate it, Inspector.’

  ‘But if the PM shows the child was murdered—’

  ‘Even if,’ Millar interrupted. ‘The same rules apply as I mentioned to the son in there. Any evidence uncovered in a dig for the Disappeared can’t be used to prosecute a case, nor can it be investigated or forensically tested. Those are the rules.’

  ‘But the baby isn’t part of the Declan Cleary killing.’

  ‘That’s not the point. It was uncovered as part of our dig; it can’t be investigated.’

  ‘Someone killed a baby. The rules need to be bent a little.’

  ‘No. We rely on people coming to us with information precisely because they know they can do so without fear of prosecution. Considering the proximity of the sites, and the depth the infant was buried at, theoretically there’s the possibility of a connection between the two. If it became known that we were allowing investigations into old killings, our sources would dry up. We’d recover nobody.’

  ‘But this is different.’

  He clicked the seatbelt into place. ‘You can’t investigate the baby, Inspector. That’s the law.’

  Chapter Four

  By the time I got home, Debbie had dinner ready. Following the accident which had injured our daughter, Penny, a year previous, I’d tried to spend more time at home, stopping off at meal times to see the kids. If I was running late, Debs would hold off on dinner until I was home.

  As we sat in the living room after dinner, I mentioned the find we had made on the island and Millar’s warning that I could not follow it up.

  ‘The forensics guy they had with them thinks it was a newborn,’ I concluded.

  ‘That’s horrible,’ Debbie said. She was sitting on the sofa, watching the news. Penny lay sprawled beside her, her head on Debbie’s lap, while she played a game on her iPod. As Debbie spoke, she ruffled the soft spikes of Penny’s hair. She’d had to shave it several times for surgery and it had only now begun to grow out again. In solidarity with her, Debbie had cut her own hair in a gamine style that accentuated how similar the two of them were. ‘Was it . . . natural?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. They thought there were signs of s
omething. The face was badly deformed, so the child might never have had a chance.’

  The comment silenced her for a moment, and I suspected I knew what she was thinking. Finally she said, ‘Even if it was natural causes, imagine not being able to bury your child properly, having to hide them on an island. A miscarriage was hard enough to go through, never mind going full term then having to do that.’

  Penny propped herself up on her elbows and twisted to look up at Debbie. Despite having had her earphones on, she must have overheard our conversation, for she asked, ‘Did you have a miscarriage?’

  Debbie glanced at me before answering and, even then, spoke as softly as possible. Penny was 15 now but Shane was only approaching 10.

  ‘He’s doing his homework in the kitchen,’ I explained, keeping an eye on the hallway in case he should approach.

  ‘When we were first married, we had problems having a baby. It took five years before you arrived. In fact, we bought Frank thinking we couldn’t have a baby.’

  At the mention of his name, Frank, our Bassett hound, lifted his head slightly off the hearth rug, his heavy wattles of skin drooping beneath his throat. He yawned widely then, satisfied that he was not being directly addressed, lowered his head again to his paws.

  ‘Once I did get pregnant, but we lost the baby early on. I was about five months gone.’

  Penny watched her mother as she spoke.

  ‘But, then we had you, so that made everything perfect.’

  ‘If you’d had the first baby, would you have had me then?’

  Debs shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  Penny considered the implications of the response. ‘Do you think about the baby you lost?’

  Debbie looked at me, surprised by Penny’s interest.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder what he or she would have been like. You and Shane are so different, that that baby would have been a completely different person, too. But I’ve never regretted that I had you and Shane.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ The voice came from the doorway. I looked across and realized that Shane had wandered across and was standing watching us.

  ‘What, love?’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  Debbie considered how best to express herself. ‘He wasn’t well. The doctor told us that he’d be very sick when he was born. God must have decided that he was too good for this world.’

  ‘So where did he go?’

  ‘He went back to God before he was born.’

  ‘He just disappeared?’ Shane said.

  ‘Kind of,’ I said.

  ‘What was he called?’

  ‘We don’t know whether it was a boy or girl, honey,’ Debbie said. ‘It was too early to tell. He or she didn’t have a name.’

  The room was quiet. Shane looked from Debbie to me. ‘I need help with my maths,’ he said finally.

  ‘No problem. Then afterwards, what about a movie night?’ I suggested. Debs smiled, though I could tell the conversation was playing on her mind.

  We sat that evening and watched a film and ate popcorn, Debs, Shane, Penny and I, with our phantom child somewhere between us, alive again in our minds for the first time in many years. Debbie had not told the children the whole truth. She had not explained to them that the doctors had told us that our child would suffer severe disability. She did not tell them of the terror that thought had held for us, only married a few years. Nor did she tell them of our resolution to face the future with our child no matter what, and the subsequent heartache that we had felt at his loss. And I had never told Debbie, or anyone else for that matter, that my heartache at his loss had been tempered with a degree of relief.

  And that I had felt nothing but shame for the unworthiness of that reaction ever since.

  Nor could I easily dismiss the thought of the child on the island, the pleading of the hollow eyes, the fragility of the skull. A child deprived not only of sacred burial but even its name.

  I was not the only one who had been thinking on our earlier conversation. I piggybacked Shane up to bed after his supper. After he had said his prayers, I tucked him in and kissed him on the forehead. I was turning out the light when he called me back.

  ‘The baby that Mummy lost? Do you really believe that he was too good for this world?’

  ‘I think he was, buddy,’ I said, going across and sitting by him.

  ‘Does that mean that I’m not as good as him?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘What I meant was that he was too fragile for life. You’re a healthy trout,’ I added, laughing lightly.

  He was not to be deflected from his questions, though. ‘Would you have loved him?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘More than me?’

  I started and sat again beside him. ‘Of course not,’ I repeated.

  ‘But you love Penny more than me,’ he said, slyly, watching me from the corner of his eye, even as he pretended to be settling down for sleep.

  ‘I don’t love Penny more than you. I love you both exactly the same, Shane.’

  ‘You pay more attention to Penny. Mummy even cut her hair the same.’

  I laid my hand on his shoulder, but he did not turn towards me. ‘Shane, we almost lost Penny when she had the accident. It made us realize how important she is to us. And how important you are, too.’

  I’m glad the baby didn’t come along,’ he said, twisting towards me. ‘Then I’d have had to be third instead of second.’

  ‘Shane, look at me.’

  He turned towards me fully, but his eyes did not meet mine, settling instead on my shoulder.

  ‘You and Penny? You’re both the same to me. Don’t ever think differently.’

  He considered the response and smiled quickly, but I could tell that it did not reflect a deeper acceptance of my argument. Then he turned from me again.

  Chapter Five

  Though Debbie and I sat and watched TV together, I couldn’t dismiss the island child from my mind. Finally I decided to visit my old boss, ‘Olly’ Costello. He had been a garda in Lifford for almost forty years prior to his retirement. If anyone knew about the island being used for burials, I suspected it would be him.

  He had aged considerably since last I had seen him. He had been the superintendent in the area for years, until the death of his wife during a murder case prompted him to retire. Neither of us had ever discussed that the case had thrown up his possible involvement in the murder of a prostitute in the 1970s.

  I had visited him sporadically in the months following his retirement, but our conversation tended to be limited to my reporting what was happening in the station, and I gradually realized that, far from making Costello feel still part of the Guards, it served only to frustrate him and remind him that he was no longer a member of the force. In recent years I had visited him infrequently and was, consequently, a little surprised by the change in him.

  He had lost much of the weight he used to carry, his trousers hanging baggily on him when he answered the door. He had not shaved for a few days and his grey stubble seemed to annoy him, for he scratched at his cheek often as we spoke.

  ‘Benedict!’ he said. He leaned forward as if to embrace me, but the movement became muddled and instead we moved briefly closer together and patted one another awkwardly on the shoulder. His breath was stale and smelt of illness.

  ‘How’re things, sir?’ I said, offering him a bottle of whiskey I had picked up in the off license on the way.

  ‘God bless you, son,’ he said, taking the bottle, then waving me into the house. The hallway was in semi-darkness, the blinds half pulled. Costello’s wife, Emily, had been incredibly house-proud and, in the months following her death, Olly had done his best to keep the place in shape. Over time, however, he seemed to lose interest, particularly when his daughter, Kate, moved to England to work. The carpet in the hallway was faded and threadbare in places. A stack of old newspapers sat beside an old bookcase at the end of the hallway, the shelves of the case buckling under the weig
ht of books.

  ‘How’re Debbie and the children?’ Costello asked, moving into the kitchen. ‘Drink?’ he added, raising the bottle before I had a chance to reply.

  ‘No thanks. They’re fine. Penny’s recovering well.’

  Costello nodded. ‘The accident. I forgot. That’s good.’

  He lifted a glass from the sink and rinsed it quickly under the tap, before pouring himself two fingers of the drink.

  ‘You’ll take tea, Benedict,’ he said. Costello is one of the few people I know who insists on calling me by my full name, rather than just Ben. He drained the glass, then set it down and filled the kettle. While he waited for it to boil he set out a cup with a tea bag in it, then poured a second measure of whiskey for himself, which he cradled as we spoke.

  ‘So, Patterson hasn’t destroyed the place yet?’ he asked leaning against the kitchen counter. Superintendent Patterson had taken over running the district following Costello’s retirement. At the time of his appointment, neither Costello nor I had been wholly convinced about his suitability to the task.

  ‘He’s not the worst,’ I said. A typical Irish compliment; never quite a positive.

  ‘And what’s going on there now?’

  ‘The Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains are doing a dig for Declan Cleary on Islandmore.’

  ‘So I believe. Have they found him yet?’

  ‘Not yet. They did find a cillin on one side of the island. They also uncovered a child’s body on the other side today. There were possible signs of violence on the body.’

  ‘Is it not part of the cillin?’ Costello asked.

  ‘It’s on the wrong side of the island, apparently. And there are aspects of the burial that don’t fit the pattern of the cillin burials. I’m told we can’t investigate it anyway, because of the legislation governing the digs for the Disappeared.’

  ‘I’ve never known something like that to stop you before,’ Costello said, laughing. He added, ‘What about Cleary?’