Aisling stopped to eat two hours into the hike. She hadn’t made it to the halfway point, but her breath was coming in hard gasps, and she was high enough that she had a view out over the quarry. She found a place, a little protected from the buffeting wind by a scrubby tree, and sat. The cold settled about her like a cloak, chilling the sweat on her brow and stiffening her hands. The sun was still out, but it was a winter sun – all show and no substance – and clouds were gathering. She was grateful for the warmth of the soup in her thermos as she ate and took in the view.
The water below was ice-cold perfection, reflecting the sky overhead. When they had come in summer the water had looked so inviting that she’d suggested a detour, and a swim, but Jack had told her that what she was admiring was a flooded quarry, and the water was toxic.
‘If you were closer you’d be able to see,’ he’d said. ‘There are warning signs all around it, because people did come here to swim. There are fences too. There’s a farm down there, and the fences keep the livestock from drinking the water.’ He made a face. ‘You’d never think it was toxic. Up close the water is bright blue and incredibly clear. Clear enough to see the car wrecks and mattresses that have been dumped in it.’ He’d grinned at her. ‘Looks great from here though, doesn’t it?’
Now Aisling sat far above the quarry, and enjoyed the illusion. She let herself relax, felt the lightening of the weight on her shoulders, the first loosening of the tension she’d carried in her muscles since Jack had died. She felt so close to him here. She smiled through eyes that were suddenly filled with tears, and drank again from her thermos.
All at once, Aisling was distracted by movement from the treeline at the far side of the quarry. She squinted. Leaned forward. It was a car, must be a four-wheel drive, making its bumping way towards the quarry. Another followed a little behind. Both vehicles stopped, and people got out. They walked towards the water, seemed to consult, then two of the figures returned to the cars.
Curiosity got the better of her. She pulled Jack’s backpack towards her and looked through it for the mini-binoculars he’d carried. He’d had two pairs, but the small set that she’d bought him for Christmas two years before was usually in this bag. Yes. She pulled them out and unfolded them, put them to her eyes and adjusted the focus. The figures swam into view. They were gardaí – two in uniform – and they were unloading diving equipment from the cars. She watched as two men put on drysuits, then one of them tied a rope around his waist and they both approached the water. The taller of them walked straight in, took a moment to adjust his mask, then started to swim. The other followed a few metres into the water, and stood there, paying out the rope until there was about twenty metres between them. The swimmer gave a thumbs up, then went under. They were searching for something. The diver swam a full arc, using the rope to control his position. He resurfaced, another thumbs up, the rope was payed out again, and down he went. Aisling’s sandwich was abandoned, her soup rapidly cooling. She was utterly absorbed in watching them, and might have stayed longer if the sun hadn’t disappeared behind a cloud, and she’d suddenly become aware that she was shivering.
Aisling checked her watch. Shit. It was almost four-thirty. If she didn’t hurry she wouldn’t get back to the car before dark. She took a bite from her sandwich, one last swallow of cold soup, then stowed everything and started back down the trail.
What could they be searching for? They were hardly there for illegally dumped mattresses and car wrecks. So, what? A body? Drugs? Whatever it was it was something illegal, something serious enough to get eight gardaí with divers out here. What if Jack had seen something, seen someone? What if whatever the police were searching for was what had gotten Jack killed? She stopped walking. Thought about the Timeline map, about where Jack’s phone had stopped recording his progress. It had been below the fork in the path, hadn’t it? What if someone had been at the quarry that day, and Jack had seen them on the trail? She could almost see Jack greeting someone, giving a nod, a smile, a roll of the eyes that said, Aren’t we mad to be walking out here in winter. Shit.
Aisling started running. She slipped twice, landing on her arse. The third time she twisted her ankle, but she ignored the pain and kept going.
She got to the fork before dark, but the sun was setting and the light was going. She cast about, but the narrow trail was floored with leaves and twigs and mud and she saw nothing. Breathing hard, she kept her head down, and walked slowly ahead. She pushed at clumps of leaves with the toe of her boot. Nothing. She kept going until she was twenty metres below the fork, then she stopped and turned back again, retracing her steps. She did that twice more, as the sun set, until she could barely see the ground in front of her. Then she dropped to her hands and knees and started feeling her way through the leaves. Wet soaked through the knees of her jeans. The ground was hard enough that there was no mud, but her hands froze in the cold, until she could barely feel anything. It was so quiet, so still. Had Jack been killed here? Was this the last place he saw?
She started to shake, from cold, and from fear. She heard a twig break, and looked up and around, her breath coming faster. An animal? A deer? She saw nothing, and returned to her search. She wanted to run, wanted to get out of there, but she couldn’t leave. She searched again, and again, until the knees of her jeans were filthy and her hands were so cold they felt numb, like prosthetics attached at the wrist. And that was how she nearly missed it. Her right hand touched something, bumped against it under its blanket of leaves, but her hand was numb and she kept moving. Had that bump felt any different from the small stones she had picked up and discarded? She returned to where her hand had been, felt around, then again, and finally, her hand closed around something. Smooth plastic. She picked it up, and despite the dark, realised that she was holding Jack’s phone.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Sunday afternoon saw Cormac take the coast road out to Strandhill. McSorley’s bar was very close to the water, only three buildings back from the beach. The place was packed; cars were parked either side of the street and it took him some time to find a spot. When he got out of the car he looked around, taking in the smell of salt and vinegar chips, the tang of the ocean, the waves crashing in the distance. A voice came over a loud speaker, muffled from where Cormac stood, but he heard enough to realise that a surf competition was going on. The sun was going down. The competition would end soon, and the pub would be packed. Cormac crossed the road and walked to McSorley’s, then walked around the back to the carpark. Fisher was already there, parked and waiting. Cormac walked to Fisher’s car, opened the passenger door, got in.
‘Why not Lanigan’s?’ he asked.
A beat. ‘Pub was already named,’ Fisher said. ‘Guy called Tom McSorley sold it to him. Suppose Lanigan didn’t see the point of making the change.’
Fisher had done his research, in fairness to him.
‘What do we do now?’ Fisher asked.
‘How long since his last fag?’ Cormac asked.
Fisher checked his watch. ‘He’s due one.’
‘Then we wait,’ Cormac said. ‘I want a look at him.’
They were far enough back not to be noticeable, but it wasn’t quite dark, and Cormac held his phone to his ear when Lanigan appeared at the back door. If Lanigan did see them he should assume that the two men were sitting in a car in his carpark because one of them was making a call. Lanigan had no reason to be suspicious; after all, no one had spoken to him about either murder in three decades.
Timothy Lanigan lit up, leaned against the wall to the right of the back door, and smoked. He took his time, and there was nothing unusual about him, except maybe that he looked at the sky as he smoked, instead of down into a mobile phone. When he was finished he stubbed the cigarette against the wall, dropped the butt on the ground, and went back into the pub. The door swung shut behind him.
‘No one else comes out here?’
‘I think it’s the door to the storeroom,’ Fisher said. ‘The barmaid doesn’
t smoke. Or she didn’t yesterday.’
‘Come on so,’ said Cormac. ‘And bring your brush.’
The ground around the back door was littered with cigarette butts. There was an old planter to the left of the door, but whatever had once grown in it had long since died, and Lanigan had been using it as a bin until it started to overflow. At some point he had stopped pretending and started dropping the butts directly on the ground. There must have been a couple of hundred of them.
‘Clean it up,’ Cormac said. ‘We need everything gone and the place photographed before he comes back.’ He gestured for Fisher to hand over a bin bag, and when Fisher did, slowly, not yet understanding, Cormac took it from him and lifted the pot, putting it inside. Fisher caught on and started to clean up the cigarette butts that were littered all over the ground. When he’d gathered the lot, he stood and looked around.
‘Good enough?’ he asked.
‘It’ll do,’ said Cormac. He gestured Fisher back, then using the evidence camera he’d slung around his neck, he took photographs, quickly but methodically. He wasn’t a crime scene photographer, but these did not need to be technically perfect. It was getting dark as they returned to the car.
‘Stay here,’ Cormac said. ‘Make a note of what time he comes out, what time he goes back in. How many cigarettes he smokes and how long it takes him. Make a note of everything and for God’s sake do it in the dark.’
‘Where’ll you be?’ Fisher asked.
‘I’m going inside for dinner,’ Cormac said. And he left Fisher to it.
Cormac thought about what might have attracted Lanigan to Strandhill as he walked around the pub to the front door. The reasons not to return to his last home were obvious – he’d basically been run out of the place. Was there something about this particular town that attracted him? Plenty of teenage girls taking surf lessons now. But what would the surf scene have been like when Lanigan came here? Had it existed at all? Maybe it was simply that the pub had come up for sale at the right time. Cormac reached the front door, pushed it open, and paused for long enough to see that the pub was a big space, contemporary not traditional. The kind of pub that served specialty brews and focaccia sandwiches. It wasn’t full yet, but there was a happy buzz of conversation, and an atmosphere of anticipation for the night ahead. Cormac approached the bar, angling for the young woman serving pints. Lanigan was at the other end of the bar, no longer the handsome, open-faced young man of the photographs. He was in his sixties now, balding, and with the grey skin of a long-term smoker. The barmaid tilted an inquiring face in Cormac’s direction, and he ordered a pint he had no intention of drinking and picked up a menu.
He took it to a corner table and sat at an angle that would allow him to keep an eye on Lanigan without being obvious about it. He was about to order food when he realised that he recognised someone sitting at the far end of the bar. Liam Hearne, reading a newspaper, a coffee cup on the table in front of him. Strandhill was his hometown, of course, but it hadn’t occurred to Cormac that he would bump into him here.
When Danny had told him that Liam had turned to the drink, Cormac’s first thought had been of an old mentor of his who’d gone exactly that way, bitter and broken and searching for solace in a bottle. His second thought had been surprise that it would happen to Liam. He’d never seemed the type. Liam was smart enough and hard enough to go as far as he wanted in the guards. The fact that he’d never wanted to be more than a garda working a small seaside town didn’t take from the fact that he was one of the best Cormac had ever met.
Liam looked up from his newspaper, calmly caught Cormac’s eye, and returned his attention to the paper. He took a sip from the coffee cup. Well, it didn’t look like he was drinking tonight, unless that coffee was Irish.
Cormac glanced at Lanigan – still there, serving shots to a group of girls who were probably legal. He stood and went to Liam’s table.
‘Not talking to me, Liam?’ said Cormac. He’d meant it as a sort of light-hearted opening, and it was only as he finished the sentence that it occurred to him Liam might have heard the rumours too. Liam, who knew everything that went on from Donegal to Cork.
But Liam folded his newspaper. ‘I thought you might be on the job,’ he said. ‘You have that look about you.’ He nodded to the seat opposite him.
Cormac grimaced as he took the seat. He was that obvious. Better then that he was chatting to Liam than sitting alone, if Lanigan happened to observe him. ‘I hear you finally retired. What are you doing with yourself?’
Liam seemed mildly amused. ‘A bit of this, a bit of that.’
‘How’s Cáit?’ Cormac asked.
‘She’s grand. Busy. Sinéad has started in UCD so that’s the last bird out of the nest, but they still manage to keep Cáit running.’
‘Fair dues to her.’
Liam nodded, and glanced towards Cormac’s left hand. ‘No sign of you settling down? Not getting any younger, you know.’
‘I’m seeing someone,’ Cormac said. He felt awkward. He liked and respected Liam, and he wanted him to know that. ‘You’ll have to meet her. Will you and Cáit come out for a night in Galway, next time you’re down?’
Liam was watching him with his cool, careful blue eyes. ‘We’ll do that, Cormac. If you give me your number, I’ll call you next time we’re coming down.’
Liam’s coffee cup was empty. ‘You’re not drinking?’ Cormac asked.
‘Driving. Sinéad’s home for the weekend. She’s in the competition. I’ll wait for her, drive her home. But I’m about to eat, if you’ll join me? Or are you tied up?’ Liam’s eye turned to the bar.
They ordered food, waited, ate together. Lanigan showed no signs of leaving the bar. He brought their sandwiches, served them with professional indifference. Cormac and Liam ate and talked and Cormac found a collegial ease with Liam that he hadn’t felt since he left Dublin. He finished his pint without meaning to, and found himself talking about the Blake case. He trusted Liam Hearne. He’d always been one of the good guys.
‘There’s someone pushing this thing, Liam. Maybe Murphy, maybe someone pulling his strings. The mother died twenty years ago, with a needle in her arm. Did Maude put it there? I don’t know. Maybe she’d just had enough of the abuse, but if she’d taken it for fifteen years you’d think she could take it for a few more months. Then the kids would have been fostered and Maude wouldn’t have had to run.’ Cormac stopped for a second, but Liam was listening carefully. ‘The thing is, even if Maude did kill her mother, I can’t see how we can ever prove it. The nearest thing we have to evidence is a statement from a drug addict who wants to get out of prison. And even she doesn’t claim to have seen it happen. So why was Maude Blake charged?’
‘And you’re asking me because you think I’ll have some sort of blinding insight into your case?’ The look Liam gave him left him nowhere to go.
‘I’m asking you because I can’t get a grasp of the politics. And I can’t run my case if politics get in my way.’
‘You think she’s innocent?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. Hesitated. ‘I don’t know.’
Liam studied him for a long moment. ‘Go back to the last interview. That woman, Keane. She gave you a name?’
‘Simon Schmidt, but I think that was bullshit. We ran a search, and got nothing.’
‘Not Schmidt,’ Liam said. ‘Schiller. I think she’s talking about Simon Schiller.’
Cormac said nothing, raised an eyebrow.
‘This happened when? You said twenty years ago, so 1993?’
Cormac nodded.
‘Simon Schiller was a teacher at An Ceathrach National School. That’s only about twenty miles from Kilmore. He wasn’t a priest, but he was a Minister of the Eucharist and was involved in some sort of children’s group. They arranged holiday camps for children in care. Schiller was a paedophile. We got him in 2005. He died in prison two years ago.’
Cormac stared at him.
‘Schiller went after li
ttle boys. The youngest victim that we know of was six years old. Schiller was very into his religion. That Keane one sounds like his sort of person. She may have given you a name because she thought you were close, and didn’t want to be charged with obstruction. She could always claim she got the names mixed up. Blame it on old age.’
Cormac closed his eyes involuntarily. He saw little Jack again. Saw Maude with her hand pressed gently to his back as the squad car bounced over ruts and potholes. Saw the little boy’s bruises.
‘Jesus,’ he said in the end. He felt an ache through his whole body. ‘She did it. She did it to get Jack out. To get him away. Because her mother couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.’
Liam was watching him, his eyes unreadable. He didn’t speak for a long time, and when he did he looked away. ‘I’ve met a lot of victims, Cormac. A lot of families. Most of them had no idea, no clue what was happening to their children. They’re broken by it, even decades later. But there are a few, a very few, who knew and turned a blind eye. If you talk to them now they will plead ignorance, claim that no one suspected anything in those days. If the bastard was a priest they’ll claim shock at the very idea. But you can always see it in their eyes. The ones who knew, and did nothing because it was easier. Or maybe because they were afraid, or just couldn’t accept it. If this girl was willing to do what it took to save her brother, when her mother gave him up, I say give her a fucking medal.’
‘They’re not giving her a medal, Liam. They’re charging her with murder. They want her locked up.’ And Danny had been right all along. Cormac had had blinkers on about this case, he’d wanted Maude to be innocent to the point where he hadn’t accepted evidence that had been handed to him on a plate. She’d murdered her mother. And for twenty years he’d failed to see it.
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