Whispers in the Mist

by Lisa Alber

  “I watch,” Dermot said, more to himself than Danny, “and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top. Our granny, she loved nothing better than to wash her hair nets in the kitchen sink while Toby sat on the counter watching her. She’d quote that psalm like it meant something, and maybe it did.”

  Dermot reached out as if to pat Toby’s head but dropped his hand. “She used to call Toby ‘sparrow,’ and I used to get jealous because she said it with such pride. But then one day a sparrow entered her house and perched on the piano, staring around until it flew at Toby’s head. Later I heard Gran tell Aunt Tara that when a sparrow enters a house, a death shall come. She was an eerie old thing with her lores and fables.”

  He choked a little but continued. “That day, the day the sparrow swooped at Toby’s head, Granny said, ‘There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow,’ and never spoke of sparrows again. Maybe she knew Toby’s fate.”

  “From Shakespeare,” Benjy said. “That quote.”

  Danny stepped away from the rolling cart upon which Toby lay. Toby, in the air, in his imagination—it didn’t matter—seemed to hover around them. He resisted the urge to check the room for fluttering feathers. Don’t be daft, he told himself. There wasn’t even a window.

  “Do you confirm that this is Toby Grealy?” Benjy said to Dermot.

  Dermot nodded and stumbled out of the room.

  “Didn’t I tell you this was a strange one?” Benjy said.

  Danny led the way along various corridors until they reached the hospital’s staff lounge. They sat in the quietest corner away from the vending machines. The artificial glow from the overhead lights leached the color from Dermot’s already green complexion.

  Danny left him sagged over the table and returned with tea. “Let’s talk about Toby. You weren’t what I’d call coherent yesterday.”

  After a few forced swallows, Dermot said, “I can’t remember what I told you.”

  “Start with the reason he came to Lisfenora.”

  Dermot groaned.

  “Okay,” Danny said, “start with your mother then, Siobhan. She was widowed, divorced—?”

  “Widowed.”

  “And then?”

  Dermot spoke in a robotic voice. “She married John McIlvoy, but don’t get excited. I went through all this with your lot back in Dublin. They couldn’t find anything on him, and what family he had didn’t want anything to do with him. He fell off the Earth after he killed my mother. The investigators figured him for crossing into Northern Ireland and then who knows where.”

  Dermot shoved his teacup aside. The brown liquid sloshed over the edges.

  “Go on,” Danny said.

  “What do you want to know? My mother was the trusting sort, and lonely and overworked and susceptible. She didn’t need any man’s money, not that McIlvoy had any. He was a rough sort, looking for his ticket to the good life. After my father died—heart attack—my mother became sole proprietor of a high-end tourist shop on Wicklow Street, just off Grafton.”

  Danny nodded his understanding, Grafton Street being the prime pedestrian thoroughfare between Trinity College and St. Stephens Green. Excellent hotels and restaurants and shops jammed the warren of lanes off Grafton Street, as Danny well remembered from his honeymoon, that joyous time in his marriage.

  “Give me the timeline,” Danny said. “What year was this? How old were you? How old was Gemma?”

  “My dad died in 1990 when I was seventeen and Gemma was seven. I hate to say this about my mother—God rest her—but she didn’t fare well without a husband. I tried to help, but she wouldn’t hear of me not going to university. I had my heart set on business, hoping to get out of being just a shopkeeper.” He fiddled with the teacup, sloshing more liquid over the sides. “I had dreams and plans. Maybe I still do—sometimes I can’t tell anymore. It’s been difficult to grow my life what with Gemma—not that I regret it, not at all.”

  But he did. Danny caught a whiff of resentment and conflicted loyalties.

  “Your mother was lonely,” Danny said.

  “Utterly. She ended up at the matchmaking festival in 1991. She was determined that I not worry about her or the shop while I completed my education. She returned with McIlvoy in tow, as jolly and beer-laden as you please.” He shuddered. “But he didn’t seemed bad at first. By then I was away at the UCD School of Business, my first year, living on campus and quite the little man. I managed to get through most of that school year without laying eyes on McIlvoy, except for Christmas, but the bastard still seemed okay then, or maybe he was on good behavior while I was home. In fact, I know he was, because Gemma has since told me this was the case.”

  While Danny listened, Dermot related how it became obvious once his mother had died that she’d been protecting Dermot from the true McIlvoy, whose opportunistic nature became apparent over time.

  “Mom and Gemma would take to coming up with day trips or Sunday brunches rather than have me visit the house. Mom didn’t like to worry others, you see, and Gemma is that way also.” Dermot stuck his finger in the tea and flicked out a few droplets. “Are we done now?”

  “No.” Danny’s mobile vibrated in his pocket. He forwarded it to voicemail with a quick click. “How was your mother killed?”

  “By rage. McIlvoy had her by the neck.” He stopped to take a deep breath. “He banged her head against the kitchen counter as he was choking her.”

  Danny waited until Dermot nodded the okay before continuing with the next question. “Fast forward many years and Toby arrives in Lisfenora. What day was this?”

  “Saturday. And then Gemma and I arrived Monday. I thought he’d spoken to Liam. The story had always been that he matched McIlvoy to my mom.” He slumped in his chair. “At least, that’s the happy story my mom told.”

  Danny nodded, thoughtful. Toby landed in Lisfenora without knowing a soul and four days later he was dead, perhaps by the mysterious McIlvoy. If Toby had found McIlvoy without Liam’s help, then they were missing the link between Toby and McIlvoy.

  “And where is McIlvoy, I ask you?” Dermot said. “He must live in the area.”

  “Why must he?”

  Dermot grimaced at the cup as if he wanted to pitch it against the wall. “Because Toby as much as said so.”

  “Why did Toby take it upon himself to find McIlvoy?” Danny said.

  “The crux of it, that.”

  Danny’s phone vibrated again and stopped. “Go on.”

  “Toby was—”

  The mobile started up again. “Oh, bloody hell. You hold that thought right there. Ahern here. Make it fast.”

  “Call came in to the station,” O’Neil said. “We’ve got Brendan Nagel.”

  Danny sagged with relief. “At the station? I’m on my way.”

  “No, face-up in Blackie’s Pasture. The same as Toby Grealy.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  GEMMA SIPPED HER PINT and let Dermot’s words flow over her. In front of her, beef stew glistened in brown sauce. Onions and potatoes sat like spongy lumps between mounds of meat.

  You could have told me that you were coming to fetch Toby back, she signaled.

  “I wouldn’t have to lie, if you’d just—” Dermot stopped himself before saying the obvious out loud.

  If only she could live on her own. If only she weren’t dependent on him. If only her mind would unlock itself so she’d start talking again. Dermot had had a few girlfriends through the years, but they never lasted long after they met Gemma. In fact, she would have believed Dermot’s initial lie about attending the matchmaking festival except for one thing: no way would he lark off at the last minute without a hotel reservation. Dermot was a planner. He’d have made reservations months in advance and he’d have discussed his trip with her.

  So something had happened, something to do with their mom’s murderer. John McIlvoy. The man she should remember, but didn’t. The man who had changed everything. Seemed her instinct had been correct.

  I deserve to know what’
s going on too.

  Dermot clanked down his steak knife. “I don’t know if I can bear too much more of this—you need to just—”

  She raised her eyebrows at him.

  “Don’t look at me like that. It’s more important than ever that you get better.”

  Dermot bowed his head. That’s right, feel like a toad, Gemma thought. About everything, down to contriving lunch in a public space so she couldn’t throw a silent tantrum, so she’d feel trapped in place by the humanity pressed in around them, so she’d have to listen to him turn everything around on her—as if Toby’s death were her fault, which she knew somehow that it was—and so she’d have to stuff down her grief to a soft spot beside her heart.

  At least Dermot had had the grace to tell her that he’d identified Toby earlier in the morning. That, yes, the sketch she’d seen in Ellen’s newspaper was their dear, sensitive, headstrong cousin.

  She forced down a swallow, thinking about Toby. She couldn’t stand herself sometimes, the way her head worked. She was too aware of the stringy contour of the beef in her bowl and the way bits of parsley stuck to the potatoes like mold, yet after the initial shock of seeing Toby’s picture in the paper, she no longer felt the reality of his passing. It felt like a continuation of the bad dream that lived inside her bottomless well. Something to be consigned below surface reflections.

  And there sat Dermot, trying to act strong when he wasn’t, while around them a happy crowd ignored them in favor of listening to a traditional band playing in the corner of the room. The band members used their violins, tin whistles, and accordion to rousing effect. For once, she was glad for the ruckus, which gave her a chance to gather her thoughts.

  She pushed aside her soup bowl. I know you want your own life. I want mine too. That’s why I followed you—at least in part. I need to face the truth about our mom’s death, whatever it is. But now Toby is dead too.

  Back in Dublin, she’d begged a ride from a friend who worked at the shelter with her. He was on his way to Galway for an Animal Rights Action Network protest against the fox fur trade. Once she’d arrived in Lisfenora and texted Dermot, he’d had no choice but to pick her up. Too bad his car had broken down right afterwards.

  “I’ll make arrangements for you to get back to Dublin,” Dermot said. “Can you handle the train?”

  Damn him. First he wanted her to get better faster. Now he wanted her gone. Her dear brother was going mental on her.

  She stood. If you’re staying, I’m staying. I’ll find my own answers.

  Pulling her hoodie up as a makeshift blinder, she hurried out of the restaurant toward Alan’s pub on the other side of the plaza, where Bijou would greet her like an old friend. Petty though it may be, she decided not to tell Dermot about the opal earrings that Ellen had given her and that reminded her of those their mother used to wear. She felt the shock of memories wanting to emerge whenever she touched the box she kept in her pocket.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHIRPS AND FLUTTERS FOLLOWED Danny across Blackie’s Pasture. He imagined a feathered messenger cocking its head back and forth as it tried to watch them out of one side of its head, then the other. Mad though it may be, the hovering presence wouldn’t let Danny go.

  Toby’s sparrow. And maybe now Brendan’s sparrow too.

  Brendan Nagel lay not far from where Toby had died. Unlike Toby, however, his peacefulness was already marred by the smell of decay. Danny tried not to associate this shell with the Brendan he’d known. Sorry hapless lad. He’d gotten caught up in something, all right, and what did he get for his troubles but slug trails across his face and eyeballs already half eaten away?

  “Neck broken. He died quickly, unlike our Lost Boy,” Benjy said. “Also, the wallet and mobile are still on him. Our man didn’t give a rat’s arse about this one’s identity.”

  Benjy pulled a battered cigarette out of his shirt pocket and rolled it between his fingers. “I predict one killer. You’ve got your very own Grey Man.”

  “Grey Man,” seconded several of Danny’s men at once.

  Not the name Danny would have chosen for their unknown subject, but it was too late to change it now.

  Wind off the Atlantic gusted. Through thinning fog, rock walls appeared beyond the edge of the village, undulating toward the ocean. Closer still, the plastic-wrapped grass bundles that stood sentry over the field rose out of the dissipating murk. Danny squinted, catching sight of a color that shouldn’t be there, and walked part way around one of the bundles to get a better look at it.

  Scrawled across the black plastic, magenta words appeared as if lit in neon: come home.

  A sparrow glided low over them and landed on top of the bundle. Feeling an uncustomary need to vacate a crime scene, Danny pointed out the words to O’Neil, told him to check it out against the other graffiti, and announced he’d best notify Seamus Nagel about his son’s death. He turned away from the sparrow’s mournful presence and the sight of another boy who couldn’t go home.

  Thirty minutes later, Danny sat at Alan’s bar. Nathan Tate had notified him that Seamus had wandered out of the pub but was sure to return soon because he’d left his pint behind. Danny didn’t mind the wait. He’d already sucked down one pint fast. He signaled Alan for a second one while reassuring himself that someone had to notify next of kin. Before leaving the scene, Superintendent Clarkson had arrived and in his usual fashion sidelined Danny anyhow.

  Alan handed him a Guinness. Danny swallowed half of it in one go. Good man Alan walked away without asking; he knew when to stay silent.

  Pint cradled between his palms, Danny watched Alan change the chalkboard quote while the crows hectored him. Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superman—a rope over an abyss.

  Nietzsche. Lovely. Just the philosopher to brighten their day. Elder Joe echoed Danny’s thought: “Ay and you’re a font of sunshine, aren’t you? It’s enough to send me tits up.”

  Alan’s expression remained closed, but his gaze swept over Gemma, who sat on Bijou’s pillow, reading.

  Danny beckoned Alan over and in a low voice revealed the latest news.

  “Ah Christ.” Alan’s mouth drooped. “Brendan was a good lad.”

  “Have you heard anything interesting from behind the bar?”

  Alan rubbed chalk dust off the back of his hand. “Only the usual shite. Malcolm slagging him for forgetting to shake out the welcome mat and Seamus lobbing the shite right back, telling him he’d best leave off Brendan. Brendan sometimes fled to O’Leary’s Pub to get away from them.”

  “The O’Leary girl works behind their bar now. Grown to a fine thing, I hear.”

  “Got all the lads quivering, that one.”

  Alan pushed off from his elbow-stoop on the counter with a grunt. A moment later Seamus entered with a book under his arm and without his usual boisterous hello to the crows. His mates tried to rouse him, but he only responded to the prods with a wan smile. Drunk but not completely ossified, and Danny was grateful for that as he slipped into the cheeky flock and excused both himself and Seamus out of the pub.

  “I need to take a look at Brendan’s bedroom,” Danny said.

  Seamus bumped along beside him like a half-deflated wheel. He held up a novel, The Three Musketeers. He was after borrowing it for Brendan, he said, who was quite a reader, like his mother. Danny didn’t interrupt Seamus as he explained that he didn’t put much store in reading books himself, but so it went—his son liked his adventure stories and had lately moved on to what some called the classics.

  “Deacon Fitz offered up the lending and best to grab him on a Sunday, isn’t it?” he said. “I kept meaning to get around to the borrowing. Promised Brendan, I did.”

  They were cutting through the church green’s back gate as Seamus said this last. He saluted Fitz’s windows. “Fusty bloke but generous.”

  Danny let Seamus natter on about Brendan’s start at reading the Bobbsey Twins tales, his absurd tendency to read through the night, his stabs at wri
ting adventure stories of his own. “He’s smarter than Malcolm gives him credit for.”

  He voiced his hope through a veil of hopelessness. At Seamus’s house, Danny stepped into the comfortable habitat of a couple of bachelors with shoddy domestic habits. A pile of newspapers sat next to a leather lounger. The matching sofa stored a collection of glasses and plates and magazines with buxom girls on the covers. Danny imagined Seamus on his lounger and Brendan on the sofa, telly’s glow bright in a dark room. They ate on their laps, no doubt, and muted the sound on commercials to flip through their respective reading material.

  “Seamus, I’m sorry to inform you we’ve found Brendan, deceased.”

  Seamus staggered out of the room and up a flight of stairs to Brendan’s bedroom, where he collapsed onto his son’s bed. After settling The Three Musketeers on the nightstand, ready for no one now, he pulled the covers over himself. “It was inevitable,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “Just when I think I’ve got life figured out for the both of us. Overstepped meself and God punished me.” A bitter snarl transformed his face before melting back into misery. “Ah, Danny, you didn’t need to tell me.” He tapped his chest over his heart. “I feel it here.”

  He closed his eyes. Within a minute, Seamus had slipped out of his bereaved reality. Danny set about prying into Brendan’s young life while Seamus’s hitched breaths filled the room. The leftover hand of a mom’s presence was evident in the ruffled curtains and color-coordinated bedding; otherwise the room was all boy, down to the smelly trainers tossed into the corner.

  The room yielded nothing except for a stash of handwritten pages. Brendan had made serious attempts at writing adventure stories, more so than he’d probably admitted to his father. Danny sat at the desk and browsed a tale about a boy going off to sea on a haunted pirate’s galleon. The pages oozed with secret yearnings. Perhaps Brendan had attempted a real-life adventure that betrayed him in the end.

  Danny replaced the pages in the bottom desk drawer and hovered over Seamus, who slept with a frown and spittle soaking into the pillow. Danny pulled off the man’s old boots.