“‘Anxious to get on their way.’” Daly repeated the words. They hung in the air for a long time.
The two men stood, peripheral, numb, as the fire intensified.
“The smoke will have done them in first,” remarked Daly.
Two fire engines arrived at the scene. The darkness grew dense with moving bodies and shouts. Jets of water and billows of smoke illuminated by searchlights screened off what remained of the house. Soon the sound of gushing water began to replace the roar and crackle of the fire.
After about an hour, the firemen managed to smother the flames. Daly scanned the ruins, the drenched wreckage steaming in the artificial light.
It was dawn before the firefighters, searching under the collapsed walls, found a body. The morning sun drained away the darkness, but the burnt corpse remained as black as the night. It was the body of a middle-aged man. He was neither small nor big nor deformed in any way, but the fire had made a monstrosity of his corpse. It lay slumped in the charred remains of a chair, its mouth agape like an astonished spectator at the fire’s pyrotechnics. They said that Owen Sweeney had been untouchable as a politician because he knew more dead colleagues than living. Unfortunately, he had crossed to the wrong side of that line himself.
40
It was the nature of Terence Grimes’s job that he remain hidden on the sidelines. After all, that was where he did his best work. A light rain fell on his head as he ambled along the fence and examined the building. He had circled the grounds several times in the past few days and had learned all he needed to know about the nursing home’s routines—what time the nurses changed shifts, when they did their handovers, how long visiting time lasted. He was carrying a basket of fruit and a box of chocolates to help him carry out his mission. The gun in his shoulder harness represented plan B.
There was a sun room by the front door where three people sat, strapped into wheelchairs—all old men in pajamas. He raised a hand to signal a greeting and in response got three vacant stares. There was no one to stop him at the front door. That was the thing about nursing homes, he thought, designed to keep people in rather than out.
He smiled to himself. The concept of the nursing home was a useful one. A business based upon caging the old. And very necessary, too. Contrary to first impressions, the elderly were a dangerous and troublesome lot. Take David Hughes, for example. All that time on his hands with only his memories to keep him company. They should have tied the old bastard in a wheelchair and shoved him in a corner, thought Grimes, rather than let him wander the country, stirring up all kinds of anxieties. If only he’d had a stroke and lost the power of speech.
At the far end of the corridor, an Indian nurse sat at a desk, her head bent as she read. Grimes presented the basket and chocolates to her. “I’m here to see Mrs. Jordan. These are from the family. We want to thank you for her care.”
The nurse smiled at the gifts, glancing only briefly at Grimes.
He hovered for a second. In the mirror behind, he examined the cold features of his face, his mouth and eyes, the helmet of blond hair combed back immaculately. It was a face grafted onto the nightmares of countless paramilitaries with secrets to hide.
“Is she in the sitting room?” he asked, smiling at the nurse.
“No. She’s in her room. Number 6,” said the nurse in halting English.
Rita Jordan was sitting in an armchair as though expecting his visit.
She appeared calm, serene. Had the boy been talking to her recently? he wondered.
“Nurse?” she asked, staring in his direction.
“I had to tell her to leave,” he whispered. A staff member passed the door, and he squeezed the old woman’s hand fleetingly.
“I came to see you, Rita Jordan,” he said, unable to resist a mock formality. “All the way from Her Majesty the Queen, just to see you.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
He ignored her question.
“I’ve come to find your grandson. I’ve looked for him at home. I’ve searched for him at school. I’ve visited all his little haunts, chatted to his friends, the few that he has. They tell me he has run away. And so, finally, I’ve come here to see you.”
“What do you want?”
“I’ve come a long way to see you.” He sighed and sat back wearily in a chair.
“Well, you’ve seen me now. I’ve had better days, but I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me.” She adopted the tone of someone addressing an insincere relative.
Grimes looked around the room. A smile played on his lips.
“You’re not hiding him under the bed, are you?”
“I’m not hiding anyone. What do you want Dermot for? He’s not done anything wrong, has he?”
Grimes allowed her question to hang in the air. He wanted her to remain in a state of uncertainty for as long as possible. Allow her imagination to apply its own pressure.
“He’s safe, isn’t he? Nothing has gone wrong. Has it?” Her cracked voice trembled.
“I hear that he has got himself mixed up in bad business. He’s keeping the local police force, not to mention Special Branch, very busy.”
“He’s in bad trouble.”
“What about Hughes, the old man, have you seen him?”
“No,” she lied.
“Did he sing for you? I hear he has a lovely singing voice. Especially for strangers.”
The old woman didn’t answer. She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. Grimes sighed. She was well into her eighties. Almost a decade older than Hughes. People of that age became stubborn and unyielding, even if their judgment day was close at hand. He stood up. Nothing of their conversation would be of any use to him. He glanced at his watch. Visiting time was over.
The old woman opened her eyes and watched Grimes draw closer. Her voice quavered, high-pitched and defiant.
“Dermot will never give up until he has found the truth. His father’s grave matters to him, and to me. It matters because we’re of the same blood. We’ll never give up looking for him, as long as we’re still alive.”
“I came all the way to see you because I wanted to leave Dermot a message,” said Grimes. He had a pillow in his hands.
“What sort of message?”
Grimes squeezed the pillow over her face.
“This is his message: It’s going to be dark very soon.”
In the quietness that followed, he could feel a throbbing beneath the pillow, her muffled cries and the submerged struggle of her breath as it faltered and slipped away. After a few moments, he lowered the pillow to check her eyes. They grew dark. Whatever light was left in them was being wiped away and stamped into the darkness of death.
Something caught his eye. He removed a loose strand of hair from the pillow’s cover sheet. Then he smoothed its creases. It was the minor points like this that repelled him, the untidiness and inattention to detail, which tended to distract him from an important task at hand. A nurse walked by the door and glanced in.
“The old dear’s fallen asleep again,” he said, smiling. Hurriedly he placed the pillow behind the old woman’s limp neck and walked out of the room.
41
When Dermot got the message from his mother that his grandmother had suddenly slipped into unconsciousness at the nursing home, he and Hughes sped off in the jeep. He approached the sharp bend at Maghery and thought he had come to a dead end. It all happened quickly. He lost control of the vehicle and the hedge loomed toward him so abruptly he did not have time to brace his body. He steered to the right but the jeep did not answer his touch. Instead, it slewed to the left, and he struck a tree, side-on. A shifting weave of vegetation, shattered glass, and torn wood enveloped him. There was something sharp and singular about the tree as it ripped through the vehicle. In his mind’s eye it was as hard to look at as the sun. He felt the air zipping around his face, surprisingly fresh and clean, and heard, all around him, a horrendous smashing noise. He could not remember his flight through the windscreen o
r recall encountering any stiff resistance but somehow he blacked out and came to consciousness lying at the side of a wet ditch.
There was a humming noise like a giant bee above his head. It took him a while to realize it was the still-spinning tires of the jeep. There were other sounds, the tinkling of broken glass and water dripping, and the willing combustion of diesel and plastic. The radio was playing loudly, the jagged nighttime voice of Bob Dylan floating through the shredded windscreen. Something about the soothing tone of Dylan’s voice made him feel that everything was fine, and that he would be safe soon. Sinking back into blackness, he heard someone sigh, and opening his eyes briefly saw the gaunt face of Hughes hovering above him, a tenacious presence, his dark eyes like a pair of sea creatures sucking at the final threads of his consciousness. The last thing he remembered was a snarl forming on the old man’s lips.
When he returned to consciousness again, it took him a while to work out what had happened. He tried to focus on the event in which he had been a central protagonist. A scene of higgledy-piggledy violence lay before him—upended thorn trees, twisted metal, lumps of glass etched with a spidery delicacy. His impression was vaguely of a flogging, of a lumbering metal beast having succumbed to the scratching intensity of thorn trees. His mouth felt dry, and when he rubbed his lips there was spittle hanging at the corners. He stood up. A fit of dizziness made him stagger.
The swish of unseen cars passing on the road above alerted him to his whereabouts. The jeep had ended up on the far side of the hedge, below the level of the road. He moved back to the jeep, which was heavily crumpled along the driver’s side, and removed the ignition key. He brushed the glass from the leather folder containing the map of the bog.
There was something else that should have been there. An important piece of evidence. He checked for his mobile phone and found it in his pocket. He stared at it for a moment or two, hoping that it would help him organize his mind. Something vital had exited the accident scene, somehow floating away through the mesh of thorns and cracked glass.
He tried to coordinate his memory, running through the series of events, the jeep skidding, the flight through the branches, and then he remembered. The old man. He recalled Hughes’s face hovering above him and wondered if it had been some sort of vision. Had he survived the crash and simply wandered off? He took in the accident scene with greater intensity now, saw the scars in the earth where the tires had slithered, the snapped branches and skinned bark, the jeep destroyed beyond repair. He had been lucky to survive the crash, but what about Hughes?
His panic widened in concentric circles from the crashed jeep, spreading outward as he searched for a sign of the old man’s body, in the ditch, along the roadside, in the field, until he was scanning the near horizon in all directions.
42
When his mobile rang, Daly was trying to find some peace and quiet by digging up the potato patch in his father’s front garden. His spade hauled up stones and the previous year’s rotten tubers. After stooping for an hour or so he straightened his back and thought of having a lie-down. Not for him, his father’s epic daylong efforts with a spade. He fumbled to find his phone. He checked the screen but it was smeared with clay.
“Hello.”
“You said you would help me,” said the voice. “Does the offer still stand?”
“I never go back on my word,” said Daly, recognizing Dermot’s voice.
“I can’t talk for long. My battery is going to run out. Do you have a pen and paper?”
Daly hurried back into the house. “I’m writing this down as we speak.”
“I crashed the jeep at Maghery corner. I can’t remember what happened but when I came to, David was gone. He must have wandered off.”
“What do you want me to do?” asked Daly, playing for time to think.
“Organize a search party or something. He can’t have got far. There’s a man called Grimes. He’s tried to kill us already. I had to rescue David from Sweeney’s house. Before it went up in flames.”
“Hold on a minute,” said Daly, trying to conceal the concern in his voice. “There’s a lot of things need sorting out. First, you might be injured from the crash. It’s my duty to bring you to hospital and inform your mother.”
“I have to find Grimes first.”
“This man sounds dangerous. You need help.”
“And where would that come from? Special Branch? The PSNI?”
“You can’t do this by yourself.”
“I’ve already found my father’s grave. Something you people have been trying to do for the last fifteen years. At least Grimes is aboveground. I have to hang up now. I want to save the battery.”
“Wait,” said Daly. “You haven’t given me a proper description of Grimes. I want to launch a manhunt for him. Plus it’s getting dark. Where will you sleep tonight?”
There was pause at the other end of the phone. Daly pressed on. “I’ll be at Maghery as soon as I can. Twenty minutes.”
“OK. Thanks.”
“You don’t need to thank me. I’m just doing my job. Anyway, you and I need to talk. I want to know if you’re hiding any other secrets from me.”
When Dermot climbed into Daly’s car there was a remote fugitive’s smile on his face. He turned to face the windscreen, revealing a jagged cut above his ear, fragments of glass and congealed blood matting his hair. The blood ran down the side of his ear and stained his T-shirt.
“That needs looking at,” said Daly. “And your mother’s going to ask questions when she sees that T-shirt in the laundry. But that’s the least of your worries right now.”
Dermot touched his wound gingerly. “You could call it Sweeney’s revenge.”
“Sweeney is dead.”
“I know. He was dead when we escaped the fire.”
Dermot looked away as shadows swung over the recesses of his face, his features too gaunt for an eighteen-year-old. Daly felt the acid rise in his stomach and wondered to himself if his passenger had brought more dangerous excitement than he could handle on his own on a Saturday evening.
“What the hell’s been going on? I never thought it possible that a schoolboy could cause so much aggravation. Special Branch is trying to finger you for Sweeney’s murder.”
“Is this an interrogation?”
Daly held his impatience. “I’m not trying to incriminate you. But it’s clear a lot has been going on that I know nothing about.”
A spasm contorted the boy’s face. “Why should I trust you?”
Daly glowered at him and sighed in exasperation. “Don’t you see? We’re both too deep in this to hold back any secrets. For Christ’s sake, I’m breaking the law right now to save your skin. That jeep is a stolen vehicle. Right now, I’m aiding your escape from the scene of an unreported accident. Not only that, but you’re also wanted in connection with arson and possible kidnap charges. I would think it’s clear I’m the only friend you have right now, apart from a seventy-six-year-old man with Alzheimer’s, and he’s just run off on you.”
Dermot shot him a look of sullen fright. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“No doubt. But I need you to answer my questions truthfully.”
“What do you want to know?”
“You could start by telling me what happened at Sweeney’s house.”
Dermot threw a cigarette lighter onto the dashboard. “I set it alight. There’s your evidence. Now arrest me.”
Daly shook his head in annoyance. Driving a suspected arsonist to a place of safety was hardly normal procedure for a police detective.
“Let me assure you that if this was a proper investigation you’d be in handcuffs right now and on your way to a prison cell,” he said.
A tight-lipped smile formed on Dermot’s lips. He lifted the lighter and put it back in his pocket.
“I risked my life going back in to rescue Hughes,” he told Daly. “We were at Sweeney’s house, digging for information. Sweeney said he would introduce us to someone who could hel
p. Then this man called Grimes arrived. He spoke with an English accent, and he was angry. He accused Sweeney of not following his instructions. I knew he wasn’t to be trusted.”
“An English accent?” remarked Daly. “Then he definitely wasn’t to be trusted.”
Dermot paused, wondering if Daly was being prejudiced or ironic.
“I managed to escape but realized I had to save David. They were holding him captive. The only thing I’m good at is lighting fires. I needed a diversion and there was fuel in Sweeney’s garage. There was nothing else I could do. I’m not the SAS.”
“So you set the place alight and managed to get Hughes out?”
“Yes. When I went back in, the fire had taken hold. David was tied to a gas cylinder. Sweeney was sitting in a chair, shot in the forehead. Hughes told me that Grimes hadn’t wanted them to burn to death. He’d just wanted their guts blown sky high.”
Dermot paused. “Fortunately I got in with my act of arson before Grimes could blow the place up.”
“Why was Sweeney shot?”
“Grimes is trying to tie up all the loose ends from Dad’s murder. That’s why Hughes is still in danger.”
They drove on in silence for a while.
“Grimes is one of your guys, isn’t he?” said Dermot. “He’s working for Special Branch.”
“Let’s not try to jump to any conclusions just yet,” replied Daly.
“It’s the only explanation that fits.”
“Somehow I don’t buy it. Not yet, anyway. I need more proof that Special Branch is prepared to kill Hughes. Or wanted Sweeney dead.”
“Sounds like you don’t know Special Branch very well.”
“I can’t see Special Branch killing its own people.” Daly was resolute in rejecting the theory.
“The only person I know who has a motive for killing Sweeney is you, Dermot.” Daly looked at him.
The boy was silent.
“Here’s my theory for you,” continued Daly. “This Englishman called Grimes doesn’t exist. Just like the men who were supposed to have burnt your house down on Woodlawn Crescent don’t exist. Neither your nor Hughes’s lives were ever in danger. You set fire to Sweeney’s house to kill the two remaining people who had a hand in your father’s murder.”
Disappeared Page 24