BENEATH LOST GROUND

by G. D. Higgins

  She inhaled softly and blinked slowly, her head swaying gently. A thought crossed his mind that she was drunk, then it hit him like a hammer, the shock of his current reality. He was writing his letter of resignation tonight, and there he was, making a promise to her he most likely couldn’t keep. He felt like a fraud, the type of man he despised, who would say anything a woman wanted to hear so he could get his way. His shoulders felt like a ton of pressure crashed down on them.

  “I know you will. And that brings me great comfort. But I do know how these things can play out. With every day that passes, the chances of him coming back safely quickly diminishes.”

  “We have a great team at the station who will stay as committed to it as I do.” Another lie. He hated himself. “I really should be getting on now.”

  Her shoulders slumped, her head tilted as she expressed her disappointment. “Oh, I thought maybe you could stay a little longer. How about one more glass?”

  He clenched at anticipating the next words coming out as a stutter that would give away his deceptions and false claims. “I really shouldn’t. I have an early start tomorrow.”

  He barely held back the shudder when her hand landed on his leg. “I understand. Thank you so much for all you’ve done. I feel a lot better to know someone like you is on our side. A lot of people will see my family as pariahs now.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he said and stood up. Her hand dropped from its position. They were almost face to face, albeit he a foot higher. Her head tilted up, and an unutterable silence pervaded the space around them.

  “When this is over-” He stepped back as she spoke, and she reached out and held his forearm, lightly pulling him back. “When this is over, I’d like to get to know you.”

  “I’ll try not to get in the way of that.” A long pause followed. It took an embattled quenching of his will to hold back from moving in closer, her full lips like gravity dragging at him.

  “Thanks again,” she said close to a whisper. The scent of wine and lavender smothered his good sense. He edged in close, then a shock of clarity brought strength back to his legs. He pulled back.

  “Thanks for the wine. I’ll pay you back some time.”

  She nodded but didn’t say a word.

  “Well, bye. I’ll let you know as soon as I find out anything.”

  Brophy headed for the door, glanced back once as he left.

  Outside he got back in his car and sat in deep contemplation for a minute. Then he banged on the steering wheel, furious for thinking something could come of this, taking advantage of a bereaved family member of murder victims.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The towering occidentalis that flanked the long driveway were as overgrown as he remembered them as a child. The taller native trees that guarded the perimeter wall swayed overhead, creating a shadow dance atop the newly resurfaced tarmac on the balmy night. Having reached home and three glasses of gin into his drowning of self-pity and sorrow, on a whim, he went outside, got into his car, and made a speedy journey to his hometown. The events of the last week awakened in him the self-doubt that had followed him from childhood, doubt that he could see something through without cracking under pressure and letting everyone down, doubt that he was deserving of such opportunities. And now the meandering driveway also awakened in him the sense of adventure and danger he cherished as a child.

  Gaining entry to the house was way easier than it should have been. A large window beside the back kitchen door was left ajar and easy to reach an arm in and unlock the deadbolt. Never his intention to make this visit in any way subtle, he gave no caution to entering quietly. He took in the room, had always wondered what the inside of the house was like, obsessed with it when he was young. An old, well-maintained redbrick fireplace stood on one end. Two armchairs faced it behind a glass coffee table. The floor, made of red quarry tiles, was coarse from over a hundred years of the giant room being the likely centre-point of the house. Three high sash windows filled the place with an outdoor quality, patches of sky, and stars visible beyond the trees.

  Brophy walked to the fireplace and looked at a couple of old photos on the mantel. He only recognised one person in the family snaps, and that was his mark for the night.

  A ceramic biscuit jar with a loose-fitting lid on top sat in the centre between the photos. He reached his hand up and cupped it behind the jar. With a flick of his fingers, he shoved it forwards and sent it crashing to the floor, smashing into a hundred pieces and sounding off an unmerciful clatter that echoed around the room. Within seconds, he heard shuffling around upstairs. Judging by the creak of the ancient floorboards, the bedroom was towards the front of the house.

  Moments later, a rumbling sound rolling down the stairs was followed by a long silence that he guessed should have taken for someone to reach the door into the kitchen. Perhaps he was scoping out the situation before entering, or maybe he was calling the guards, in which case, Brophy would have a lot of explaining to do. At that point, he wasn’t concerned. The resignation letter seemed almost to write itself in the half-hour it took to down the three gins. It wasn’t like they could fire him for this stunt.

  The door creaked open behind him, out of view from his position sitting in one of the armchairs. From the smooth sound of the footsteps, he assumed the person to be barefooted. The heavy breathing was louder. The figure passed three metres back from the chair, and the first thing to come into focus in his peripherals was the double-barrel shotgun the homeowner was holding firmly in two hands. He moved towards the back door, mesmerised and mistakingly not checking the rest of the room on seeing it wide open.

  “The firearm won’t be necessary, Mr Phelan.”

  He spun around frantically, his eyes dark and bulbous with fear. The gun was pointed straight at Brophy’s head. “Who’s there, and what do you think you’re doing in my house?”

  “Don’t worry, Mr Phelan. I’m only here for a little chat.”

  Brophy’s top half was in shadow, the moonlight from the large windows not quite reaching him at the far side of the room.

  “What are you on about, a chat? You can’t break into my house like this,” he shouted, obviously gaining confidence in having the upper hand. “Now, who are you, and what do you want?” Louder that time. Then he brought the shotgun up to his shoulder and aimed it in a well-trained stance.

  “I’m a little offended you don’t recognise me.”

  Phelan sidestepped three times to get a more direct look at the diagonally faced intruder.

  “Jesus Christ. Conal Brophy. Is that you?”

  “Why don’t you have a seat here beside me, and we can have that chat,” said Brophy in a deep low voice, becoming of the situation.

  “I’ll do no such thing,” said Phelan, sharpening up on his aim after easing off a bit on discovering it was who it was. “What do you want, Brophy? Are you drunk or something?”

  “I won’t lie. I’ve had a few, but that’s not why I’m here.”

  “Why are you here, then?”

  “I need to straighten something out with you, something that’s been plaguing me ever since I was very young.”

  “I’m not in the mood for this shit, Brophy. Out the way you came, or I’m calling the local lads in to sort you out,” he said, waving the gun in the direction of the open door. “I’m sure they’d take great pleasure in busting an arrogant knacker like you.”

  “Now, is that any way to talk to someone who’s kept you safe and your reputation intact for many years?”

  Phelan’s hardened stance showed signs of abating. “What are you going on about? You don’t have a thing on me.”

  “Please, have a seat, Mr Phelan. I’ll be out of your hair soon enough, I promise. Just a few minutes of your time.”

  “Couldn’t you have done this at a reasonable hour and used the doorbell? You had no problem ringing my bell when you were a kid, gallivanting around with those wild friends of yours.”

  “That was never me. I didn’t want to
fuck around with you like some of the others. I just wanted to see what this place was like. For some reason, this place was mysterious to me all those years ago. But now I know it for what it is.”

  “What’s that, then?”

  “It’s a hiding place.”

  Phelan scoffed and lowered the gun. “What is it you’re hiding from then?”

  “More like what was I hiding from. I was hiding from the truth.”

  “What truth? That you’re a thug cop, who can’t hack the big moment?”

  That stung Brophy, but he decided not to react with emotion as he’d ordinarily do if someone openly mocked him. “No. Not that. I’ve known that for a long time. So has everyone else.” Phelan’s face dropped at the unexpected answer. He lowered the gun to his side. “The truth I’ve been hiding from for a very long time is what happened to me here when I was a child. I’m sure you remember, I was locked into your coal bunker for over a day.”

  “Of course, I remember. You fell in there when you were trespassing on my property.”

  “Yes, yes. Everyone bought the story. I was running around like a wild tinker, couldn’t keep my nose out of things, and I fell in there, and the door mysteriously closed down on the hatch and blah blah blah... The thing is, Mr Phelan, I don’t remember it like that. I never did.”

  “What do you want me to do about it? Or did you just come here to have a whine about your childhood traumas? Coming from a family like yours is trauma enough, I’m sure.”

  Brophy didn’t take the bait yet again. “What I want you to do about it is admit what you did to me.”

  Brophy thought he detected a slight twitch in Phelan’s scowl but couldn’t be sure given he was back-lit by the bright moonlit night.

  “Listen, Brophy. I’m giving you one last chance to get the fuck out of here.” He quickly brought the gun back up to his shoulder.

  “Put the gun down, for God’s sake. You’re not going to shoot me.”

  “Are you sure about that? I could easily make it look like I had no choice. You came at me crazed and drunk, shouting about all the victims you’ve fucked over, coming to get you.”

  Brophy sprung up from the chair and beelined to Phelan. Phelan’s finger clenched over the trigger, and the barrel began to shake in swirling movements.

  “Go on then,” shouted Brophy at the top of his voice, clearly sending the shakes down Phelan. “Do it. Finish me off.”

  Phelan shouted back. “Get out ye bastard. Would you ever just get out.”

  Brophy felt his face twist up in a salivating snarl. “Not until you confess to what you did.”

  “I didn’t do a thing, right. You fell into that bunker and cracked your head off the ground. I don’t know if I closed the door or not, okay. But I didn’t know you were down there.”

  “Okay. We’re getting warmer now. Because you definitely closed the door. And locked it too. But you knew I was there.”

  “I didn’t know, I swear to God.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Yes, you are. I remember it clearly. I was looking around the side of the house, trying to look in the window to see the living room, and you caught me. You flipped out and dragged me by the arm, and you threw me into that bunker, didn’t you?” Brophy’s eyes were bloodshot and frantic by now.

  “So what if I did? You can’t do a thing about it now.”

  Brophy dived at him, his arms outstretched, to grab the gun. He got his hands to it, and they tussled for control. Phelan fumbled to get his index finger on the trigger, so Brophy twisted it back and forth to make it more difficult. He changed tack and heaved forward, pushing Phelan back against the wall, knocking a framed picture off in the process.

  Brophy whipped his arms downward and managed to get the gun loose from one of Phelan’s hands. He then drove multiple shoulder charges at his right arm, and after three direct hits, Phelan cried out in pain and dropped the gun. It clattered off the tile floor. Brophy got his free forearm on Phelan’s neck and pushed him into the wall with all his force whilst he kicked away the gun. Phelan let out an agonising scream, and his body seemed to wilt with the struggle. Brophy was momentarily impressed with the strength and stamina of the seventy-year-old man. It must have been a lifetime of working with horses.

  “Tell me why you did it?” screamed Brophy.

  “Because you were always pestering the life out of me, and I fucking hate children. I always have.”

  “And what were you planning on doing with me if they hadn’t found me?” he said in a much more subdued tone, realising that was the question that had tormented him for years.

  Phelan didn’t answer him. He just stood there, resigned to his defeat, pinned against the wall, a look of terror on his face.

  Brophy pushed him back even harder. “Tell me what you were planning to do with me?”

  “The thought crossed my mind to kill you,” answered Phelan, now starting to sob. “I might have even had a plan. But I couldn’t go through with it. I wouldn’t have been able to carry it to my grave. As much as I hated you, I’m not a monster.”

  Brophy eased up on his grip. Relief loosened his whole body, and a thought he couldn’t quite discern threatened to surface. “I was a lost nine-year-old boy who you threw into a coal bunker and left for a day, Phelan. That’s a monster in my books.” He took a step back. “And I’m going to let you off with it but be warned that I’m going to be looking into you properly, and if I find any similar kind of incident around you, I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  “You won’t find a thing,” said Phelan, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I never did another thing like that in my life...I’m sorry.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  Brophy made for the open door, an idea nagging at his mind. He’d almost forgotten about Phelan by the time he got back in his car.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Freed of the burden of not knowing, Brophy was energised by finally getting a confession out of Phelan. A paralysing chip had been removed from his shoulder, and he revelled in the thought of having a proper night’s sleep. The windows rolled down; he took massive gulps of the night air whilst snaking through the streets of his hometown. Soon he hit the N25 and was ready to cruise home on the twenty-five-minute journey. Yet something that festered inside him as Phelan was admitting to what he did gathered momentum as he drove past miles of farmland.

  The full moon glimmered behind the top of the Comeragh Mountains to his left, creating the illusion of a vast wall of darkness bearing down on him. For a moment, he thought the image would break the ease of his current wellbeing, so he deigned not to look that way if he could avoid it. The inclined winding roads gently swayed him into a state fit for sleep, a calm repose before he changed the course of his life for good tomorrow. Maybe he’d return to university and finish his law degree. It’s never too late for a change, as they say. Or perhaps something completely different. Sell the house and buy a thirty-five-foot sailing yacht and live off the grid as he’d always dreamed as a young man. The thought made him smile, and for a brief moment, he lost concentration and swerved the car on a bend in the road just before the village of Lemybrien. He regained control easily and audibly told himself to snap out of it; he could plan his life tomorrow.

  To his dismay, the dark tunnel began to close in on him again. How foolish he had been to think it wouldn’t happen anymore just because Phelan owned up to his crime. His lips tightened, he took in a long gulp of air, trying to fend off the attack by breathing, as had usually worked. A massive green road sign with five town names etched on, caught his attention. One of them was informing drivers to take a forked left turn onto the R676 heading for Carrick-An-Suir. Without thinking about it, he bore left, getting off the N25, his way home.

  His breathing became heavy, his head fuzzy and light. Tim Phelan’s words rang in his ears. “I wouldn’t have been able to carry it to my grave.”

  Maurice Scully was on his last legs and carryin
g around the cross of knowing where Mel Fanning’s body was hidden. Maybe Brophy could change his approach with him and plead to his conscience, to unburden himself of the cruelty that befell that young girl in the prime of her life. Maybe he could convince him that freeing his soul of such darkness would allow him some guilt-free last moments.

  Over an hour later and on the verge of sleep, Brophy pulled into the long driveway of Kilkenny General Hospital. The hospital looked almost abandoned, the car park empty, devoid of medical personnel running in and out like when he had arrived a few days before.

  The third-floor windows were bathed in shadow, a few of them emitting faint green and yellow glows from some of the lifesaving equipment the patients were hooked up to. As he reached the main entrance, he contemplated how he would get past the reception nurse, and as soon as he began to think about it, he felt embarrassed at the decision to go there at that time of night. Of course, he wouldn’t gain access to Scully’s room. A stranger off the street at four in the morning with a smell of booze off him. They’d call security on him in seconds, or sooner if they recognised him as the trouble maker from the other day.

  He entered the huge revolving door and shot out straight in front of the reception desk. Relieved it wasn’t the nurse that was on duty the last time, he was greeted with curiosity by a heavyset woman with red hair, heavily freckled, and looked to be at an age near retirement. Her curiosity soon turned to suspicion as Brophy realised he’d been standing there for half a minute, staring at her without saying a word. What must he have looked like to her? A bum off the street looking for a place to lay his head down?

  “Can I help you, young man?” she said in a tone that showed equal parts empathy and scorn. He hesitated for a long while, and the walls of the dark tunnel were not far off. “I see you’ve a bit of a limp. Have you hurt your leg?” she said with more compassion this time.