Malarkey

by Sheila Simonson

  "Nor in the car park at the terminal. Nor do the customs men at Rosslare remember seeing anyone of his description."

  "Even so."

  "It no good, Maeve," he said softly. "I was mad to listen to you."

  I said, "Wherever he may be, Liam is missing." I knew that because, at some earlier point in the surreal evening, Declan Byrne had called in. He had sweet-talked the landlady into a search of Liam's flat. Liam wasn't there or at the neighborhood pub or at any of his known hangouts. And, as we now knew, not on the Rosslare ferry.

  "He disappeared. The timing can't be a coincidence," I added after an exhausted pause. I was tired to the bone and wide awake. It was past three in the morning. "Maybe Liam's a victim, too." That got their attention, if only because it was a fresh thought. Dad put in a half-hearted vote for the idea.

  He sounded as tired as I felt, and I was, abruptly, reminded of the state of his health. I persuaded him to go to bed on the premise that one of us would have to be functional the next day. I went downstairs myself, took a hot shower, and changed into sweats.

  As I was brushing my hair dry I heard the phone ring again. The bedsprings creaked in Dad's room.

  "It's okay," I hissed. "Just the phone." I tiptoed upstairs.

  Joe was listening and rubbing his eyes with his free hand. Maeve had gone into the kitchen. I joined her. She looked fresh as a jonquil and had spread her ordnance map out on the table. She was working on a bird's eye sketch of the folly entrance, to scale.

  She gave me a smile. "He's in the folly. I'll lay odds."

  "Alive?" I let the question hang between us.

  She laid down her pencil. "You're imagining horrors, Lark. Liam had no reason to kill Jay."

  I said flatly, "He had no reason to kill Kayla either."

  "No reason we know of. Look at this." She tapped the map at a spot where isometric lines indicated a small hillock. "That's the mound. The entrance to the tomb ran along here." Her finger traced a short line. "It's my guess the Stanyon uncle extended the opening northward and roofed over the original earthwork. See? The mound is asymmetrical in that direction. A long north-south passage with the dolmen at the southern end."

  "I'm convinced, but wouldn't later users—the Orangemen and so on—have altered things?"

  She tapped the pencil again. "No doubt they did—and concealed the entry. That's why we need Toss Tierney." She flashed me another smile. "Toss and a pair of thumbscrews." She cocked her head.

  Joe had hung up. He came into the kitchen and looked me in the eye. "They've taken Tommy Tierney into custody at a motel outside Limerick. He was making for Shannon Airport. He's not talking."

  Then make him talk. I felt like screaming that. Instead I cleared my throat. "If he won't talk, how do you know he was involved in the kidnapping?"

  "We don't." Joe pulled a chair and sat. "However, he did have your husband's passport and the Aer Lingus ticket in the pocket of his jacket. Both were crudely altered." He hesitated. "He'd been in a barny."

  "What do you mean?"

  "In a brawl," Maeve translated.

  Joe knuckled his eyes. "The police surgeon thinks one of the cuts on his body is a knife wound. It's a new wound."

  My blood ran cold.

  Chapter 17

  When shaws been sheen and shrads full fair

  And leaves both large and long

  'Tis merry in the fair forest

  To hear the small bird's song

  Child ballad

  At eight in the morning, my mother called from New York. She had watched the eleven o'clock news. There was a story.

  "Jay's been abducted." I winced at the sound of my own voice, as if saying the hard fact made it truer.

  "Oh, my dear!" Ma said good things. She has an instinct for that. Through her verbal facility, I caught the undernote of genuine concern. Both of my parents loved Jay. As I answered, or tried to answer, my mother's questions, I thought how strange it was that they had come round so thoroughly. Both had had reservations about my marriage. As far as I knew, Jay had made no extraordinary effort to win their affection, yet he had it.

  I answered the telephone myself, because Joe had gone, and took it into the kitchen, because Maeve was napping on the couch in the living room.

  At first light, when the police ground-search began, Joe had joined it. In spite of his reservations about Maeve's theory, he wanted to make sure the searchers looked for the remains of the Stanyon folly. He had been gone nearly two hours.

  I listened as Ma worked her way around to asking about my father's health and state of mind. I wished she would hang up. I didn't want to talk, yet I kept making noises.

  "May I speak to George?"

  "He's asleep. He was up until three, and I hate to wake him so soon."

  I could hear in her hesitation that she approved of my solicitude, though she wanted to talk things over with Dad. "Ah. Well, when he wakes, tell him to call me and never mind what time it is here."

  "All right, Ma."

  "I love you, darling."

  "Thanks," I said with stiff lips. "I love you, too."

  "I'm sorry, Lark."

  "I know."

  When she hung up I felt wrung dry. I went into the kitchen, but the thought of another cup of coffee revolted me. I ate a piece of bread. It seemed to calm my stomach. After a while, I went out on the tiny stone porch to see what I could see.

  The sun was bright and the sky an innocent, smogless blue with fat white clouds out of a children's book illustration. A light breeze off the Irish Sea lifted the leaves of the shrubs across the graveled drive. At the far end, where the drive turned down to Stanyon Hall, I could see that the rhododendrons had bloomed at last, blood red.

  The search had taken its way well into the woods and surrounding fields. I saw files of dim figures in the sheep pasture that rose up to the northeast, and, farther to the west, from among the trees, I heard an occasional cry as if someone found something. I could see movement in the woods, but nothing specific, no one identifiable.

  A helicopter rose like a horse fly in the direction of Arklow. It hovered a long minute over Stanyon Hall, the whop-whop of the rotors steady. The noise intensified as the chopper moved toward the cottage and the woods. It was a sound out of Jay's worst nightmares, but I hoped he was where he could hear it, because at least then he would know someone was doing something.

  I ached to do something myself, though I wasn't sure what. My teeth clenched with the effort to keep still, not to run to the stile, leap over it, dash through the trees calling Jay's name.

  Maeve and I were not allowed to enter the woods until the official search for evidence associated with the kidnapping was over. If the searchers found the entrance to the folly, well and good. If not, Maeve could supervise a limited excavation after they left. The site was not registered, and she had permission from the owners to dig, so the only red tape would be crime-scene tape.

  As soon as Joe left, Maeve rousted her assistant, a doctoral candidate, and warned the sleepy student he would be needed and why. At the very least, she wanted her theodolite and the chest of excavation tools. It goes without saying that I eavesdropped on Maeve's conversation. She spoke longingly of sensors that could detect variations in density and magnetism beneath the mound's surface. However, such devices were costly. Locating them and getting permission to use them would have taken too long.

  Too long for what, I wondered, chilled. Jay had been gone more than twelve hours. If the kidnapper had in fact imprisoned him in the folly, did he have water? Air? Was he warm enough? Hypothermia was a frightening possibility. The night had been cold.

  When Maeve finally hung up, she yawned, stretched, and announced she was going to take a kip on the sofa. Fine with me. I was deadly tired but could not close my eyes.

  I sat in the kitchen and tried to read the sf novel I'd bought in Dublin. My mind wouldn't focus on the page. I kept thinking about Jay. I tried to call up recollections of the many good times we had shared, but my min
d returned, over and over, to the image of a man tied to a chair in a cold dark cave, a man, it might be, with an untreated knife wound.

  When the helicopter swung back on its return flight, it flew so low I thought I could feel the prop-wash on my face. I waited outside until it disappeared and the noise dwindled to a distant throbbing. Then I went back into the cottage.

  Maeve slept, curled on the couch like a cat. She didn't move. I retrieved the telephone directory and the printout of useful phone numbers from the desk. If I couldn't do anything to assist in the search, at least I could take care of niggling details. I called Aer Lingus.

  It was the time of morning for business flights out of Dublin. The first clerk heard my woeful story with impatience, but she transferred me to a man who was willing to listen. He had heard of Jay's abduction on the radio, and he sounded both sympathetic and excited. People can't help it. A disaster, especially someone else's disaster, stirs the blood. He agreed to cancel Jay's reservation for the Sunday flight to Seattle—there was no direct flight to Portland—and to place him on standby. Jay would have to pay a fee, of course, but not a large one. I thanked the man, accepted his sympathies, and hung up.

  When I called the embassy, the clerk sounded as if she hadn't had her morning tea fix. Yes, we could pick up the replacement passport Monday. After ten. In view of her evident grogginess, I decided not to tell her the Gardai had retrieved the original passport along with the thief. I assumed Tommy Tierney had been our burglar. At some level, a message to that effect had probably already got through to the embassy, though I supposed it would take days to percolate down to the people who dealt with distressed citizens face to face.

  I decided my third call would have to wait. I ought to notify the Dean of Instruction that Jay was missing. It was not yet two in the morning at home, however. No point trying to get through much before four in the afternoon, Greenwich Time. If I woke him, the Dean would just dither. He had an ulcer.

  Almost as soon as I replaced the receiver after my call to the embassy, the phone rang. Maeve stirred. I said hello, low- voiced.

  It was Alex Stein. He sounded as tired as I felt. He expressed his sympathies and made the vague offer of assistance people make when they don't know what else to say by way of comfort. I thanked him.

  "Barbara and Mike and I have to attend Kayla's inquest this morning."

  "They haven't postponed it?"

  He gave a short laugh. "That would probably disrupt too many official schedules. However, the coroner did move the hearing to Arklow, to accommodate the press."

  I wished him luck.

  "How is George holding up?"

  "Pretty well."

  "That's a relief. We'll come over to the cottage as soon as we can. Barbara says the Gardai suspect Liam. That's insane. He's an artist."

  I didn't comment. So Liam was an artist. Van Gogh had cut off his own ear. Byron had fomented a revolution. Allen Ginsberg had dropped his pants at a peace rally.

  "He's a gentle man," Alex insisted, more to the point.

  I cleared my throat. "That's my impression." It was what prevented me from believing Liam had killed Kayla.

  Reassured that I wasn't baying like a hound for Liam's blood, Alex disengaged.

  Our conversation roused Maeve. She trooped down to the loo and returned for a cup of the very old coffee in the electric pot. "Your father's stirring."

  "Is he? Alex phoned. The inquest on Kayla Wheeler has been moved to Arklow. Were you called, Maeve?"

  She moaned and checked her watch. "It's set for ten o'clock. I'd best get things rolling. But first..." She closed her eyes and swallowed coffee. "Ah, that's more like it."

  My stomach gurgled. I cut a slice of Murtagh's soda bread. "What do I do if they finish the search before you return?"

  "Wait for me." She looked at my face and said, "I'm sorry. The waiting has to be the hardest part."

  "The hardest part," I said grimly, "is imagining my husband weltering in his own blood. Waiting comes after that."

  Rather to my surprise, Maeve's first action was not to contact her excavation team. She called Teresa Tierney, and I was treated to an exhibition of the purest Butler blarney.

  Maeve flattered and soothed the poor woman, sympathized with her over her obnoxious son's plight, and presented her own attempt to find the folly as something of a patriotic duty. She said nothing negative about Teresa's menfolk but didn't hesitate to vilify Liam. If Tommy had been involved in the abduction at any level, it was as the mere dupe of a diabolical and cunning intelligence who had led the innocent lad astray. Finding Jay in the folly, alive, would somehow exonerate Tommy.

  I wondered how Teresa could swallow such blather.

  Teresa spoke at length, and Maeve made soothing sounds. Finally Maeve said, "And how is poor Toss?"

  A blast from the receiver. I had the feeling poor Toss was in deep shite, with his wife as well as the Gardai. Having softened up her target, Maeve moved to her primary text. She wanted Toss to show her the entrance to the folly. She was sure he knew how to get into it, and equally sure he was oath-bound not to reveal the secret, but some things ought to take precedence over out-worn loyalties. Saving Jay's life, for example. Maeve insinuated that Tierney cooperation in the search would sit well with the court when it came time to charge Tommy. Plea-bargaining is an American tradition. Clearly, the concept was not unknown in Ireland, either.

  When Maeve hung up, I said, "Did it work? Will she get Toss to open up?"

  "I don't know," Maeve said soberly. "I hope so. I can find the area where the entrance to the folly should be, but excavation's a slow process."

  "And time is of the essence."

  "It is indeed. At least now the word is out."

  "Word?"

  "That we need to know the way into the folly," she explained, patient. "Teresa will call her best friends and relatives to ask their advice, and they'll call their friends. Every republican in County Wicklow of the right vintage will know what we need by noon. One of them should come through."

  It sounded like jungle drums to me. I hoped Toss would remember Dad's Jameson and weaken.

  Maeve made another hurried call to her assistant, looked around for her handbag and coat, and took her leave. She meant to stop by her father's house and freshen up. She would leave the inquest as soon as was humanly possible, she said, but her assistant would probably arrive at the cottage before she did. His name was John Poole, and he would be driving a Morris Minor held together with strapping tape. He would come as soon as the Gardai lifted the roadblocks.

  Maeve's van rattled off as my father made his way upstairs. He was unshaven and still in his dressing gown, but his color was better than it had been at 3:00 a.m. While I brewed him a fresh pot of coffee, I reported my conversation with Ma. He allowed that he would call her, but not until he'd showered and shaved. He was downstairs with the hot water full on and the Rayburn gurgling away when Joe came in the door.

  "What have you found?" The question burst from me.

  Joe rubbed his eyes. He had been with us all night, so he was as tired as I felt, but he had been short of sleep, I thought, for several days. He looked his age. My age.

  "Is that coffee?"

  I possessed my soul in patience and poured him a cup.

  He sugared and creamed it, sitting at the table with the ease of a friend. "They didn't find the folly, Lark, but I took Maeve's map with me, and she's right. The mound extends northward. There are boulders and a tangle of briars on the north slope, but we didn't find an entrance."

  I swallowed my disappointment.

  He took a sip, grimacing as the scalding coffee touched his lips. "Mahon's lot did find the place where Jay was captured."

  My heart slammed into double time. "Where?"

  "Past the rhododendrons on the drive to Stanyon. He was headed that way, apparently. We found American coins." He set his mug down and withdrew something from the breast of his smudged tunic. "Do you recognize that?"

  It
was wrapped in protective paper. He unfolded the covering carefully.

  My tormented stomach churned. "That's the type of pen the college in Shoalwater stocks for professors. It's not exactly distinctive, though." The pens were cheap black ballpoints.

  "I've not seen a pen like it here."

  I gulped. "Then it's probably Jay's."

  "So we thought." He drew a long breath, and his blue eyes met mine with somber empathy. "There were signs of a scuffle and shoe prints of a trainer in the earth beside the lane. We followed a trail of bent grass and scrape marks to the stone wall around the woods. Mahon is taking the idea that Jay may be concealed in the woods seriously now."

  "Good. That's good."

  "There's a gate on the far side of the woods, though, and a lane that connects with the Killaveen road. The abductor could have carried Jay to the gate and removed him by automobile. We're looking for signs of a car, though McDiarmuid's Saab was found this morning abandoned in Limerick."

  Limerick? That didn't make sense. Perhaps Liam and Tommy had stashed Jay in the folly and headed west together. If so, why had the Gardai not found Liam as well?

  Joe watched me a moment, then said, "There was no blood where we found the signs of struggle."

  "You're sure?"

  "Positive."

  A weight eased from my heart. "Jay's not a small man. Could Liam have carried him through the woods unassisted?"

  "Only with difficulty." He cocked his head. "Your man is tall but not over-heavy. I could carry him." Joe was six feet tall and solid. Liam had to be three inches shorter.

  "Was someone else involved?"

  He gave a short laugh. "Tommy Tierney's neck deep, and he's a big bruiser, takes after his da."

  "Has he talked?"

  Joe shook his head. "They'll charge him this morning with burglary and flight to avoid prosecution. He may change his tune after another day in custody."

  Another day. That was a long time to wait. I shivered.

  "Maeve called Tommy's mother."

  Joe swore. "I'll have Maeve's ears on a platter, meddling with Mahon's witnesses. She's a damned interfering nuisance. "