The Lazarus Bell, an Irish Murder Mystery

by Patrick Dunne

  ‘How long had the body been in the water?’ I asked.

  Malcolm shook his head. ‘Hard to say exactly. The stream’s quite shallow, so the remains had also been exposed to the warm weather and to insect infestation. As well as which, her gross injuries would have accelerated the rate of decomposition. At first sight, I would have said she’d been dead for a week to ten days; but given the factors I’ve mentioned, I’d say she was killed early this week.’

  Malcolm’s mobile phone rang. I noted it was still playing ‘Tubular Bells’, which amused me in a way – I associated it with The Exorcist. He squinted at the number coming up on the screen and glanced at his watch. Then he took the call.

  ‘Malcolm Sherry, who’s speaking?’ Malcolm frowned at me over his phone. ‘Darren Byrne? How did you get this number? You know I don’t give statements to the press.’

  I could clearly hear Byrne’s hectoring voice even from where I was sitting. He used the word ‘voodoo’ several times.

  Malcolm shifted in his chair. He was clearly agitated. ‘No, I won’t confirm or deny anything about her injuries. Address your queries to the Garda Press Office. And don’t ring me again.’

  He put away the phone. ‘Can you believe that? Ringing me at this hour of the night and asking me to comment on the victim’s injuries.’

  ‘Byrne lives locally, so I suppose if he can get the story going he won’t have to travel to Dublin for a couple of days,’ I said.

  ‘Well, he’s entitled to do his job, but ringing a State pathologist is way out of bounds. I can’t say anything that could jeopardise the investigation or a subsequent court case.’ Malcolm was being unusually prickly – a sign that the implications of the murder were worrying him. ‘But I don’t think we can keep the ritual angle out of the papers. Not with the amount of information he seems to have already.’

  ‘What about alerting community leaders here first?’ Finian suggested.

  ‘That’s up to the Gardaí. But I suspect the entire country will hear about it before anyone has had time to call a meeting in Castleboyne.’

  ‘What if it’s not a ritual killing?’ said Finian.

  Malcolm sighed. ‘I know. That’s another reason why I’m reluctant to say anything, in case I’ve got it wrong. So I’m calling in help: an investigator called Peter Groot. He used to work with a special unit for detecting ritual crimes, in the South African police force. If he confirms it, then he’ll also be able to advise us on what kind of people we should be after. He’s on his way from Cape Town as we speak.’

  I looked at my watch. ‘I’d best be on my way too.’ Given the amount he had drunk, I guessed Malcolm had been invited to stay the night at Brookfield. It could turn into a late session, which didn’t appeal to me just then. And on Saturday mornings I had breakfast with my mother, so it suited me to get home.

  ‘One thing before you go, Illaun,’ said Malcolm as I stood up to leave. ‘Something you were about to say earlier about the Black Death. Wasn’t it proven at least a century ago to have been bubonic plague – transmission by rat fleas and all of that?’

  ‘Bubonic plague is certainly spread that way. But it doesn’t compare with the speed and kill rate of the Black Death. And it doesn’t replicate all the symptoms described in the chronicles of the time.’

  ‘But nobody’s proven it to have been anything else.’

  ‘No. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t. By the way, did either of you notice that while Terry was lying on the grass he recited “Ring-a-ring-a-rosy”, the nursery rhyme associated with the plague?’

  ‘So? The subject was on his mind,’ said Finian.

  ‘He also happened to be out of his tree,’ said Malcolm.

  ‘Maybe so, but you didn’t hear what he said when he was being carried out past me. He said, “It’s not what you think. It’s worse, far worse.”’

  Malcolm shrugged; Finian seemed unimpressed.

  I said goodbye to Malcolm, and Finian walked me to the front door. ‘The weather forecast’s good, so it’s going to be a busy weekend,’ he said, looking up at the sky.

  I knew what he was saying. Finian preferred me to leave him be when he was under stress. Not that he turned into a Mr Hyde character, but the habit of years had convinced him that he worked better without interference. Roll on marriage!

  ‘Shout if you need help. When are you hoping to hear from the National Trust?’

  ‘In the next few days. I’ll set aside time to go through it with you.’

  We kissed and said good night.

  I arrived home as my mother was coming back from a walk by the Boyne with our Great Dane, Horatio. It was amusing at times to see them out together, especially when he was on the lead – she was so diminutive that it looked like he was the one bringing her out. I parked beside her red Ka at the side of the extended bungalow we share, near where the River Boyne bends alongside the Dublin road. I went around the front of the house to meet her and say good night. There was still a ribbon of blue on the hem of the western sky, but it was dark at ground level and I was glad to see she had taken a flashlight with her on her walk.

  She told me she had paid a visit earlier in the day to Summerhill Nursing Home, where my father, a victim of Alzheimer’s disease, was being cared for. ‘I didn’t like the look of him,’ she said. ‘He’s not well at all.’

  We had seen a deterioration in his physical health since Christmas. But there was little one could ask about his mental condition; his mind had slipped away from him – and us – long before that.

  We stood for a moment admiring the sky before we went our separate ways. She headed for the front door, while I turned to go around the back to a separate entrance into the larger part of the house, which also contained the office of Illaun Bowe, Archaeological Consultant.

  I had just turned to go when my mother said, ‘Oh, I forgot. I had a visit from Tom Geraghty this evening.’

  ‘Councillor Tom Geraghty?’

  ‘Ah, we’re old friends, you know,’ she said with a twinkle in her eye. Sometimes I wondered if my mother’s ‘old friends’ had done more than shared cups of tea with her. Tom Geraghty was an elected political representative and the chairman of Castleboyne Town Council.

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘You, among other things.’

  ‘Me? Why were you talking about me?’ Don’t worry, Illaun, she’s your mother, she’s proud of you.

  ‘Oh, he was just asking me when you were getting married, if you planned to have children – that kind of thing.’

  ‘Mother!’ Worry? I wanted to pull out my hair – or, better still, my mother’s tight little perm. I suspected she was relaying that part of their conversation in order to elicit information for herself.

  ‘I think he was really sounding me out about you,’ she continued, oblivious to my reaction. ‘He’d heard you’re looking after this statue that was found today, and he was wondering where you stood on the issue of whether it should stay in the town. I said I had no idea, but if it were me, I’d be on Father Burke’s side. He made his intentions clear at May devotions tonight.’

  I kept as calm as I could under the circumstances, but I’m sure my teeth were gritted. ‘And what exactly did Father Burke say?’

  ‘He told us it’s the miraculous image of Our Lady of Castleboyne and he’s started a campaign to have it released into the care of the parish for the Corpus Christi procession on Sunday week.’

  Chapter Nine

  In Taaffe’s newsagent’s, the tall stack of Saturday’s Ireland Today with its block headline was hard to miss:

  HEADLESS WOMAN WAS VOODOO VICTIM

  Gardaí are considering the possibility of ritual murder after the gruesome find of an African woman’s headless body in a stream near Castleboyne yesterday. Other mutilations to the body included the removal of the woman’s hands and breasts and a bone from the top of her spine. Some African witch doctors use body parts to make medicines believed to have the power to win success, ward off ev
il or cure disease.

  Officers say they have little chance of establishing the victim’s identity in the short term unless someone who knew her comes forward. But, since she has not been reported missing, they are speculating that she may have been an illegal immigrant living and working among others who will not risk deportation by making themselves known to the authorities.

  As Malcolm had predicted, the investigation had not disclosed the detail of the purple nail polish. Nor had Byrne revealed that she had been genitally mutilated.

  I bought Ireland Today and a couple of other papers, then sat in the car leafing through them for any news of the finding of the statue. But, as no journalist had contacted me, I wasn’t expecting to see anything. I hadn’t counted on Darren Byrne. It took up just half a side-column here. But it was a good opening to Father Burke’s campaign.

  PARISH PRIEST WANTS ‘MIRACLE STATUE’ TO REMAIN IN TOWN

  Father Louis Burke, parish priest of Castleboyne, Co. Meath, is resisting attempts by the National Museum to lay claim to a statue of the Virgin Mary unearthed yesterday in the town. Father Burke claims the wooden artefact is the medieval miracle-working image of Our Lady of Castleboyne, which once drew pilgrims from all over the world. The defiant priest insists it should remain in the town. ‘Look at what happened to the Book of Kells,’ he said. ‘Once a religious work of art leaves its place of origin, it becomes impossible to get it back again. And why should objects of great spiritual significance end up in glass cases solely for the pleasure of tourists?’

  Father Burke is asking people with a devotion to the Blessed Virgin to pray for a successful outcome to his campaign and to lobby their local representatives. As the statue depicts the Infant Jesus in his mother’s arms, Father Burke said it was appropriate for the statue to be carried in the Corpus Christi procession on 2 June.

  I thought, Father Burke: 1. National Museum: 0. But this was Muriel’s battle, not mine. I was relieved to see no reference to the spill at the Maudlins cemetery.

  I phoned St Loman’s from the office while my mother was preparing breakfast – it was the one morning of the week we ate together. Cora Gavin was not on duty, but a Dr Hadi Abdulmalik took my call.

  ‘Mr Johnston has a severe infection, which is making him slip in and out of consciousness. He’s being kept in isolation and we’re treating him with a broad-spectrum antibiotic. OK?’

  ‘Have any further plague symptoms developed? Buboes, for example?’ The characteristic swellings in the neck and groin give the disease its name.

  ‘No. Although there is some ulceration of the skin.’

  ‘Has the Health Service been notified of his illness?’

  ‘Without any evidence of a notifiable disease, our consultant microbiologist has decided there’s no point. Should it be identified as a Level Three risk, we will of course alert them. We also have plans to move the patient to Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, where there are better containment facilities including a negative pressure room.’

  Level Three would indicate bubonic plague.

  ‘So nothing like that has shown up in his blood tests yet.’

  ‘No, and it’s too soon. Although we have detected a low CD4 count.’

  ‘What does that—’

  ‘That’s all I can say on that for now, Miss Bowe. OK?’ Dr Abdulmalik seemed anxious to get back to work.

  After a lighter than usual Saturday breakfast I prepared for a visit to my friend Fran McKeever, with whom I’d arranged a painting picnic earlier in the week. Fran, like me, was a native of Castleboyne. She worked as a geriatric nurse while also rearing two teenagers, Daisy and Oisín.

  When we were at school together, she and I were frequent rivals for drawing and painting prizes, and although her more slapdash approach often deprived her of first place, I was secretly envious of her effortless ability. As time went on, I found my sketching ability and eye for detail of great value in my career, but Fran had little outlet for her talent. And, while I treated myself to the occasional painting holiday to develop my skills as a watercolourist, Fran’s interest had declined completely. But with my encouragement she had enrolled in a spring course with a local artist, and in return I had promised to go out painting with her occasionally.

  There was another part to the deal, and I had the easy bit: she provided the food. I brought the wine.

  As I arrived at the house, Fran’s daughter Daisy was coming out the front door. She had her mother’s height and the same long red hair. She was wearing a tight, lime-coloured T-shirt with a metallic green mini-skirt that looked like a sweet wrapper and was about the same size. Out of this her legs emerged like a Barbie doll’s unnaturally elongated pins.

  ‘Hi, Daisy,’ I said with a smile.

  ‘Hi,’ she said curtly, avoiding my eyes as she passed me on the path.

  I turned to watch her as she went out through the gate and across the road towards a bright-red motorbike. The rider was wearing a full-face black helmet and a white singlet that showed off a large tattoo in a woven pattern running down his upper arm. He revved the throttle several times as Daisy climbed onto the pillion-pad behind him and hitched her skirt up to the tops of her legs. There were no grab-rails that I could see, so she had to hunch over with her arms wrapped round him as he assumed a racing position and roared off.

  It only struck me when they had sped past that she wasn’t wearing a crash helmet.

  Daisy had left the hall door open, so I went inside, calling out to Fran, who answered from the kitchen. I found her standing at the table, hunched over the picnic basket. I knew something was wrong.

  ‘What’s the matter, Fran?’

  She turned to me with tears in her eyes. ‘It’s Daisy,’ she sighed. ‘I don’t know what’s happening between us, except I’m the enemy, that’s for sure.’

  Fran was divorced, her alcoholic ex-husband last known to be living in London. For the past five years she had managed on her own, rearing her two children while working in a private nursing home near Navan. Daisy and Oisín were like my own niece and nephew, but of late I had found Daisy becoming increasingly distant.

  ‘It’s just the age she’s at,’ I said. ‘Remember what you were like at sixteen?’ An image of a white-faced Goth in torn fishnet tights flashed into my mind.

  ‘She’s still only fifteen, Illaun.’ Daisy’s birthday was coming up in July. ‘And sure, I could be obnoxious. But she seems to hate me. Apart from which, she got drunk again last night.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘It’s been happening at weekends. Especially when I’m on night duty. I got it out of Oisín without him realising it. God, he’s such an innocent compared to her.’

  Oisín, a year younger than Daisy, was conventionally rebellious, but he still had respect for his mother and retained a sense of humour. The easiest way to get through to Oisín in one of his angry moments was to make him laugh. But over the last six months Daisy had changed from a neo-hippie chick fond of scented candles and folk music to a sullen, humourless brat who played music only so long as it was loud. A typical teenage girl, in many respects. But the drinking was more worrying. And I knew that, because she had inherited half her father’s genes, Fran was concerned about the long-term implications. But I was determined to take her mind off the problem, for a while anyway.

  ‘Hey, let’s just get going,’ I said. ‘The sun is out, the sky is blue. There’s not a cloud to spoil the view.’

  ‘But it’s raining in my heart, eh?’ Fran managed a smile.

  I drove. On the way I distracted Fran by calling on her medical knowledge. ‘Tell me, what’s a patient’s CD4 count?’

  ‘CD4 cells help to defend us against disease. A low count ain’t good news. Leaves you open to overwhelming infection. Why?’

  ‘A worker on the Maudlins dig has come down with an unknown illness. St Loman’s said he had a low CD4 count.’

  ‘Hmm. It happens to immuno-compromised individuals – people with HIV, for example.’

  I had no
knowledge of Terry’s medical history. But, assuming he’d been referring to plague when he said, ‘It’s not what you think,’ then what had he meant by ‘It’s far worse’? That he had HIV or Aids? Terminal cancer? Or perhaps he had simply meant that the organism infecting him was not Yersinia pestis, but something far more dangerous.

  Chapter Ten

  Within twenty minutes we were nearing our destination – a view we had chosen on the north side of the Boyne, at a place called Oldbridge. To reach it we had to park the car and then, lugging our equipment and picnic items, walk along a path on the perimeter of a cemetery, past the ruins of a medieval church – the partial skeleton of what had once ranked as the cathedral for the diocese of Meath – then over a wall and into a meadow sloping down to the river. From here we had a view of an ancient stone humpbacked bridge that spanned the river and would be the subject of both our paintings.

  We set ourselves up at the top of the sloping field, under a thorn bush that was growing out of the base of the graveyard wall. Unrolling a plastic-backed rug to sit on, each of us laid out more or less the same art materials: a B2 pencil, a paintbox of half-pan colours, three brushes, a collapsible water pot that looked like a little Chinese lantern, a litre bottle of tap-water and an A3 pad. Sitting with the pads resting on our raised knees, we began to lightly sketch in the main points of the scene. Both of us were wearing shorts and T-shirts, intent on getting some sun on our arms and legs if not on our faces – we had donned baseball caps to shade our eyes. Direct sunlight could also dry out our paints too fast, but the leaves overhead provided just about enough shade.

  Between us and the Boyne, hip-high grass dotted with buttercups was swaying in the warm breeze, like the skirt on a hula dancer. Swallows were skipping low over the meadow, allowing us to see flashes of blue off their backs as they performed their aerobatics. Bordering the top of the field on the far side of the river was a hedge of hawthorns, each one weighed down with white blossoms that seemed to have been piled onto the branches. The river shallowed on its approach to the bridge, where there had obviously been a natural ford at one time. There it was studded with rocks and stones scattered across the river bed, adding more features and texture to the surface for us to capture.