It was the eighth of December, and most of the island had decamped to the mainland, as was customary on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Culchie shopping day, her housemates in college used to call it, shuddering at the prospect of ‘those farmers’ arriving to the city en masse to get their last ‘bits’ for the season. Henry couldn’t bear the ferry on a day like today, it would be far too crowded for his liking, so he suggested they put up the Christmas tree that afternoon in an attempt to distract Evie. Their daughter had soon grown bored, demanding to watch a DVD before bedtime, and Keelin didn’t have the patience to argue with the girl when she was in one of her moods. She thought of other Christmases, years before, when it was just her and Alex and her mother. Standing on the rickety stepladder and hoisting herself into the attic, sneezing at the dust, stepping from one ceiling beam to the other to find the cardboard boxes stuffed full of garlands and fairy lights. Her mam calling up from the kitchen. Bí cúramach, Keelin, you’ll come through the ceiling if you’re not careful. Her son’s delighted face as the old tree was reassembled, branch by branch; singing along to ‘Jingle Bells’ as he threw tinsel on it with abandon, begging to be the one to place the star on top. I love Christmas, he said as she tucked him into bed and she bent down to kiss him on the forehead. I love Christmas too, she whispered, but not as much as I love you, mo stoirín.
Things were different now. Henry had always had particular ideas about how he thought a home should be decorated for the festivities; tinsel was ‘tacky’, artificial trees were an ‘abomination’, fake snow was ‘preposterous’ – we don’t live in California, darling. We had a real tree in Kensington every year, he told her. Mum says it isn’t Christmas unless there’s a smell of a fir about the house. Her husband preferred ornaments bought at Brown Thomas – Oh, aren’t we fancy? Keelin teased him when she heard this; she’d never stepped foot in the luxury department store before she starting dating Henry – in coordinating shades of creams and golds, and he was amused when Keelin produced the keepsakes she had brought from her parents’ old house – an angel with a splintered wing, the snowman hanging from a glittery gold loop, half his plastic face worn off, a busted Santa with one leg – and he told Keelin to hang them on the back of the tree, where no one could see them. You’re an awful snob, do you know that, Henry Kinsella? she’d said. But you love me anyway? he asked, and she had laughed because it was true.
‘I hardly invited Nessa, now, did I? Alex did – he told me this morning,’ Henry said, standing back from the tree to check the lights were symmetrical. ‘But what’s the problem? It’s only one more person.’
‘For one thing, it’s just family on Christmas Eve. It’s always been family,’ Keelin said, sitting on the sofa, suddenly feeling very tired. ‘And you know my concerns about Alex and Nessa. It’s not going to end well, mark my words. She’s too old for him – he’s still a child, for God’s sake.’
‘He’s seventeen,’ Henry began, but she zoned out as he spoke, a creeping uneasiness moving through her at the thought of Nessa Crowley coming to the party. She was already dreading it, this get-together Henry insisted they throw every year. The housekeeper would be relieved of her duties for the evening, unable to create the kind of hors d’oeuvres Henry’s parents expected, the dates stuffed with honeyed goat’s cheese and walnuts, seared scallops on pea puree, cumin-scented lamb koftas with mint yogurt. Her husband would try on ten different shirts, asking Keelin what she thought of each one, his face falling when the first thing his mother said when she walked through the door was, Goodness, Henry, what an interesting shirt you’re wearing. That would be the start of it, a night where Henry would try to win his mother’s approval, or at least her attention, but Olivia Kinsella would be, as ever, totally fixated on her first-born – what Charlie was up to, what important charities Charlie’s wife was supporting, how marvellously well Charlie’s children were doing in school – while the much-loved Charlie steadfastly ignored her, instead talking to his father about what the hotel industry would be like in a post-Lehman Brothers world, the challenges that lay ahead. Charlie looked similar to Henry, the same dark red hair and strong features, but he was a much more serious man, almost dour at times, and altogether too keen to assert his dominance as the eldest son in the family business. Keelin liked Charlie’s wife, Rebecca, a quietly determined woman who wasn’t averse to sneaking off with her sister-in-law for a sly cigarette and a bitch about Olivia, and their two daughters were lovely, well-behaved girls, but the overall effect of having the entire Kinsella clan under the one roof could be overwhelming. Keelin didn’t want to have to deal with Nessa Crowley making eyes at her teenage son at the same time.
‘Keels?’
Henry was staring at her, waiting for an answer to a question she hadn’t heard him ask. She pushed herself off the couch, bending down to grab another decoration from the hand-carved wooden box. ‘Put that star there,’ he said, nodding at an empty space in the middle of the Christmas tree. ‘And we can’t control Alex or whom he wants to spend time with. We want him to fit in on Inisrún, don’t we? That was partly why we agreed to let him leave boarding school, because he didn’t have any friends.’
‘But won’t Nessa want to be with her own people?’ she tried. ‘She must have friends her own age.’
Keelin remembered Christmas Eves from when she was young – pints of Guinness and toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch in O’Shea’s, shouts of ‘noble call’ later, a shiver running down her spine as Gráinne Breathnach, the best singer on Rún, gave a haunting rendition of ‘Oíche Chiúin’. Swaying in the wooden pews at Midnight Mass, cursing that last glass of whiskey forced upon her by a neighbour with a Nollaig shona! She and Seán and Johanna marching back to the Crowley house, arms linked and singing carols, tumbling into the front living room and demanding Seán’s mother provide them with slices of spiced beef on her homemade soda bread. At three a.m. Keelin said she’d better be heading, her parents would kill her if she wasn’t home soon, and Padraig, one of Seán’s older brothers, went to follow her, grabbing his rain jacket from the coat stand. Where do you think you’re going? Johanna asked, laughing as Padraig said that he wasn’t going to let a girl walk home by herself, especially . . . He trailed off, embarrassed, but Keelin had an idea of what he was going to say. Especially not a girl as timid as Keelin Ní Mhordha, this little mouse, this shadow of a human being. Keels doesn’t need any minding, Jo said, raising her cup of cheap wine in toast to her friend. She’s the bravest person I know.
‘What self-respecting twenty-something-year-old is going to want to spend her night hanging out with people twice her age?’ Keelin said now. ‘Nessa Crowley will have better things to do than making small talk with your parents, surely.’
‘Apparently Alex has already mentioned it to her,’ Henry said, bending down to check how many baubles were left in the box. ‘And she said she’d love to come. Look, better they be here where we can keep an eye on them. Although Nessa is twenty, so I’m not exactly sure what—’
‘What about Nessie?’ a small voice piped up behind them. Evie, balancing on one leg, using the toes of her other foot to scratch her calf. She was in her pyjamas, brushed cotton in a pink polka dot, her red curls mussed.
‘Evie, what are you doing still up?’ Keelin said. ‘You’re supposed to be in bed.’
‘I need water. I’m thirsty, Mummy.’ She touched her throat to demonstrate how parched she was, giving a cough for extra emphasis.
‘OK,’ Keelin sighed, taking her hand. ‘Let’s go, madam.’
‘Mummy,’ her daughter said, looking up at her, ‘did you know Daddy and Nessie have the same birthday? Christmas Day, like the baby Jesus.’
‘Like the baby Jesus, is it?’ She smirked at her husband; he could be so pretentious sometimes. ‘What a coincidence. Who told you that, lovey?’
‘It was—’
‘I was just telling Mummy that Nessa is coming to our Christmas Eve
dinner – isn’t that nice?’ Henry cut across her, smiling as the girl clapped her hands, jumping up and down on the spot in excitement.
‘For God’s sake, Henry,’ Keelin hissed under her breath. ‘She’ll never go back to sleep now.’
‘Nessie is coming to the party!’ Evie chanted, sticking her little bum out and wiggling it in their faces. ‘Nessie is coming to the party!’ She weaved her way around the Christmas tree, waving her arms overhead. ‘Nessie is coming to the party! Nessie! Coming! Party!’
Keelin gathered her daughter up in her arms, ignoring Evie’s flailing limbs as she demanded to be put down again, Stop it, Mummy, you’re a meanie. ‘Bedtime,’ she said, glaring at Henry over her daughter’s head.
‘Nessie is coming to the party!’ Evie bellowed into her ear, causing Keelin to flinch. Yes, she thought, as she carried her daughter upstairs. Nessa Crowley was coming to the party, whether she liked it or not.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Professor Linda Kaplan-Greene, former State Pathologist of Ireland
Linda: It took us two days before we could get out to the island after the body was found.
Noah: Because of Storm Ida?
Linda: Yes, there was no way we could chance the journey until the wind calmed down.
Noah: What impact did that have on your investigation? We know that Nessa was left outside and the party guests were trampling the scene, walking up to and around the body. She had been picked up; her father tried to move her at one point. The scene must have been in a state of disarray when you arrived, Professor.
Linda: It affected the forensics. If left exposed for that period of time, some trace evidence on a weapon can be lost; you wouldn’t get the same sort of results that you’d get if the scene was in pristine condition. But it doesn’t necessarily impact the pathology, which is my job. It just made it harder to determine the time of death, and that isn’t an exact science anyway. Ultimately, it came down to the last time Nessa Crowley was seen alive and the time at which the body was found; we called her time of death somewhere between those two points.
Jake: Did you know immediately this was a murder?
Linda: Any death like this, which involves a young, healthy woman found in unusual circumstances with a wound to the head, is going to be treated as suspicious. She had two sites of impact on the skull, which would have been unusual if she had simply fallen and hit her head. One of the wounds was, to my mind, very irregular; it left a laceration on the scalp that suggested she’d been hit with a blunt object. But head wounds are never as straight forward as, let’s say, a stabbing or a shooting. All pathologists have seen cases where a head injury is complicated but it does turn out to be an accident in the end. We’re always cautious in these cases. We have to be.
Noah: What did you do next? After attending to the body.
Linda: I told the gardaí I wasn’t happy with the two blows to the head. Even if the victim had fallen in an area that was rough, as this was – if I recall, the body was found in some sort of ornamental rock garden outside the Kinsella house – I still couldn’t see how the fall would cause two sites of injury. The body was held in the hospital morgue for five working days, but her parents wanted her back, they wanted to bury their daughter. You need to be sensitive in situations like this; no one wants to make it any worse for the family than it already is. But we still had some analysis that needed to be done. That was when the decision was made to release the body but the brain was retained for our purposes.
Jake: Sorry, can you elaborate on that?
Linda: It probably sounds a bit gruesome but it does happen. The brain was retained at the neuro-pathology centre in Cork University Hospital for further examination.
Noah: How long did that take?
Linda: Around six weeks. When I received the neuro-pathologist’s report, it confirmed my suspicions that this was a homicide.
Noah: And that was when the Misty Hill case became a murder investigation?
Linda: Precisely.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Keelin had long been accustomed to watching the men in her life. Every morning she watched Henry, trying to measure the temperature of his mood, twisting her spine so she could mould herself into whatever shape he needed her to take that day. She was always conscious of where her husband was in the room at any given time, counting how many steps he was away from her, estimating how long it would take her to reach the nearest door. She even slept facing him, a trick she had learned during her first marriage, to give herself a head start if she needed to run in the middle of the night.
But she had watched Alex too, from the moment he was born. She would stare at him for hours, looking to see whose face was forming out of his bones, if she would see herself reflected there or Mark. She had been afraid she would find his father in him, that he would become prone to fits of rage, lashing out with his fists. But he did neither. He could be needy, clingy, he was often possessive of Keelin, but he was a gentle boy, most of the time. Ná bíodh imní ort, Cáit would say to her, but Keelin couldn’t help but worry about Alex. He was twenty-seven years of age now, an adult, and still she watched him. Still she worried.
‘Did you order something from . . . ASOS?’ Henry asked her. Keelin was sitting in bed, listening to a podcast called Indestructible, first-person stories about women thriving after domestic abuse, something she would have gladly recommended to her clients, if she had any left. She pressed pause, waiting for her husband to repeat his question. ‘There’s a charge here from a website called ASOS,’ he said, holding up a credit-card statement. ‘We didn’t discuss you buying anything online, did we? I don’t remember giving you my Visa card.’
‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ she said, taking out her earbuds. ‘Could it have been Evie? She probably wanted something new for the Christmas disco at school.’
‘Evie wouldn’t wear anything like that,’ he said. ‘You know she believes fast fashion is killing the planet. ‘Keelin suspected this altrusim was merely a ploy on her daughter’s behalf to persuade Henry to buy her clothes from Stella McCartney, but she said nothing. He wouldn’t hear any criticism of their daughter, not from her.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I contacted their customer services and they said the package was delivered on 6th December. Here to the island.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, Henry but it wasn’t –’ She stopped. Alex. ‘Maybe it was a mistake?’ she tried, but her husband pulled a sceptical face. He turned to leave, still clutching the statement. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she called after him. ‘I’ll get it sorted out.’
She had given up trying to talk to him about her concerns over Alex. You told me you’d find out where he was going, she said. You promised, Henry. But her husband swore there was nothing to ‘find out’, she was just being paranoid. But what then was the reason for the changes in her son – the new clothes in the laundry basket and the haircare products in his bathroom cabinet, his cheery demeanour when she bumped into him in their small gym. ‘Fancy meeting you here,’ Alex joked when she came in, climbing off the exercise bike, grabbing a hand towel from the wicker basket to dab sweat away from his face. ‘Do you want me to adjust the seat for you?’ he asked as Keelin glanced at the screen – he had cycled twenty miles, she saw. Alex, who for so long could barely manage to walk from here to Marigold Cottage, had somehow, without her noticing, built up enough stamina to cycle twenty miles.
‘I think Alex might be seeing someone,’ she confided in Jake later that day. He’d asked Keelin to meet her in Cupán Tae, waving away her objections that her presence might put the other customers off their food. People hate Henry, Jake argued, but you’re from here, you’re one of them. Keelin didn’t know how to explain that sometimes that meant the islanders hated her even more. She took a sip of her coffee, tasting something sour, but she decided against mentioning it to Cormac, who was glaring at her from behind the coun
ter, half-heartedly wiping the display with a grotty rag. At least it was quiet in the coffee shop today, no one to point at her, whispering, There’s your wan from the Big House, where that poor girl was found. That’s Henry Kinsella’s wife.
‘Hey,’ she said, nudging Jake’s foot under the table. ‘Are you listening to me? I said, I think Alex might have a girlfriend.’ A woman had to be the reason for her son’s behaviour. The last time he’d started taking this kind of care with his appearance had been the day Nessa Crowley had arrived at Hawthorn House, schoolbooks in hand.
‘Oh yeah?’ Jake said, picking up the jug of milk and finding it empty. He half stood, raising his hand to get Cormac’s attention, and his T-shirt pulled up to show a flash of taut abs. Keelin saw the two women at the other table looking at him and she had the sudden urge to reach across and yank his shirt down.
‘Thanks, mate,’ he said to Cormac when he brought over a new jug. Keelin smiled hopefully at the older man, but he avoided eye contact with her, retreating to his beloved counter-top as quickly as possible.
‘Have you heard anything?’ she asked, shaking off the snub as best she could.
‘Heard anything about what?’
‘About Alex.’
‘Yeah, nah.’ Jake shrugged. ‘Hey, Noah told me Henry is off to Scotland this arvo.’ What? Keelin’s head snapped up in surprise. This was news to her. Why would Henry be going to Scotland? Was he visiting his parents? Evie? ‘While he’s gone,’ Jake continued, ‘do you want to do the lighthouse trail? I can’t believe I’ve been here over six months and I still haven’t completed the full thing.’
‘I don’t know.’ Why hadn’t Henry said anything to her about leaving the island? He hadn’t gone away since the miserable expedition to London at the end of August. ‘When was Noah talking to him?’ she asked, attempting to sound casual.
‘Yesterday. Noah’s done a couple of interviews with him since, well, you know . . . Henry still refuses to talk to me.’ He grimaced. ‘Makes things a bit awkward.’
After the Silence Page 16