Whispers in the Mist

by Lisa Alber

  “And you just happened to have Dermot McNamara with you?”

  “Yes.” Clarkson didn’t need to know they’d been driving back from the morgue when Alan called.

  “Right. And where’s the missing girl? I thought you were bringing her in.”

  “Looks like it will be a while before she’s fit to communicate. She’s had some kind of relapse.”

  Clarkson stood in the middle of the jumbled desks with hands on his hips. His eyebrows formed a consternated line. “And your good friend, Alan Bressard, who found her?”

  “At the vet. His dog got caught in the middle of it.”

  “Oh, for the love of—” He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. “Okay, let’s get on with what we have here, shall we, gents? I’ll be with Malcolm Lynch in room two. O’Neil will remain with Nathan Tate. Whatever else those two have to say, we know Tate whacked Lynch a good one.”

  With that, he was gone, leaving Danny at loose ends while around him uniformed guards on the end of their shifts gathered their belongings and saluted him on their way to the pubs or their cozy homes. With a pang of guilt, Danny remembered the novel and lavender spray he’d promised himself he’d bring Ellen.

  Had she sprayed her sheets for Malcolm?

  He shook the unwelcome images away and launched himself toward interview room one. Inside the monitoring room, the barrel-chested officer from Ennis glanced up and away again. “Eh?”

  “Ignore me. I’m just here to see what Nathan Tate has to say.”

  Nathan was in the midst of explaining why he had followed Malcolm into the forestry lands. Under the fluorescent lights, his skin was the color of a fish belly and the bags under his eyes stood out like purple flotation devices. The cool-cat artiste of few words wasn’t in evidence at the moment.

  “I already told you that I followed Malcolm because tonight was the night I meant to have it out with him. He killed my father.”

  O’Neil remained silent while Nathan rubbed his side as if in pain. His voice, when he spoke again, was low, completely done in. “I meant to catch up with Malcolm outside the pub and invite him to have a chat with me in the plaza, there to tell him what I know.”

  “Know or suspect?” O’Neil said.

  “Either way, close enough for me.”

  “Go on.”

  “Malcolm had left the pub in a huff because Seamus spilled beer on him. It was earlier than usual for him and for once he wasn’t chatting his way out the door with one of the other crows. Seemed a good time for a word, so I followed him. Only, he didn’t go to his flat as usual. Off in his car.” He shrugged. “So I followed him some more.”

  “You’ve lived here for some weeks now so what was the hurry?”

  “No hurry. Just seemed a good time, like I said, because he was already out of sorts. I thought I might catch him off guard and get a chance to say my piece. It’s like pissing in the wind with that man most of the time.” He straightened up, twisting in his chair to stretch out his back. “In the forestry, he came after me with the branch first, not the other way around.”

  “That’ll have to be your word against his. Right now I’m more interested in the story of your father’s death. Malcolm must have had something against your father.”

  “No. That’s just it. He didn’t. My father fit a type, that’s all.” Nathan lapsed into silence, staring at his feet.

  Danny itched with impotence and with the urge to call O’Neil out of the interview room and deposit himself with Nathan instead. Come on, O’Neil, do me well, Danny thought. Ask the right questions. Get Nathan talking again.

  “And what type was that?” O’Neil said.

  Pretty good, pretty good. Danny pulled up a chair and sat forward on his elbows. There had to be something here he could use against Malcolm.

  Nathan disappeared out of camera range, reappearing with a glass of water. He gulped it down and set the empty glass on the ground beside his chair. “John McIlvoy’s type, of course.”

  O’Neil’s tone sharpened. “John McIlvoy?”

  “Ay, that’s the whole bloody point. My dad fit the approximate height and appearance of McIlvoy, well enough anyhow. I don’t know how they met, but I’m sure Malcolm had been keeping an eye out. My dad had the misfortune to catch his attention.”

  “You’re accusing Malcolm Lynch of planting McIlvoy’s identification on your father after killing him. You’re saying that McIlvoy is actually alive.”

  “Exactly,” Nathan said. “Except, McIlvoy could have been the one to kill him. Either way, those two were in it together. Malcolm, the seducer; McIlvoy, the throttler.”

  Danny rocked back on the chair. What the hell? This case was more muddled than a herd of sheep in a garden maze. Quickly, he checked his email. And there, a message from the Firebird Designs email address awaited him.

  At least you’re right about one thing: I am a man of many talents. —The Talented Mr. McIlvoy

  Cute. But at least Danny had received a reply. It was a start.

  “Now I know why they killed my father,” Nathan was saying. “McIlvoy is still wanted for murder. So my poor father was misidentified and his body sent to the incinerator without a proper investigation. Just another waste of space living on the streets. What did he matter?”

  “If it was murder,” O’Neil said, “there was an investigation.”

  “Yes, murder, but if there was an investigation it didn’t last long. I was told no one came forward to claim the body.”

  “You skipped an important bit,” O’Neil said. “How did you discover that Malcolm Lynch—or McIlvoy—allegedly killed your father?”

  The words seeped out of Nathan, slow and steady. “My father used to visit me in my studio if his voices weren’t too bad. He was a paranoid schizophrenic, to put the label on it, but what was I going to do? He was my dad, so I listened to him as he ranted about the CIA, the IRA, Al Qaeda, even the Queen of England. One day, he talked about how he’d finally got an ‘in.’ He’d cracked the code of silence, so help him, with the help of a new friend.”

  Nathan paused for a moment as if to replenish the verbal well. “His description of his friend sounded like another one of his delusions. A fella with no hair—at all—and a great big smile, but it was the only fact I had. When my dad first went missing I gave the guards hassle, trying to light a fire under their arses to find him. Weeks later the guards fetched me. A homeless man had died—neck broken—but his identification said John McIlvoy. They showed me photos, and I’m all but shouting from the rooftops, ‘No, you bloody eejits, that’s my father, Sean Tate.’”

  Nathan sat back, breathing hard. So did Danny. With or without Malcolm, McIlvoy had left devastation in his wake. Many years ago with Gemma’s family and three months ago with Nathan’s. And in the present with his own, if Danny’s gut was correct on the matter. And now here they all were, the results of the devastation flung together with perfectly timed, one might even say sublime, chaos. Father Dooley would probably have something to say about this—fate or destiny or God’s will. Danny liked to think in terms of karmic retribution.

  “I wanted to identify my dad,” Nathan continued, “but it was too late. He’d already been cremated. The guards didn’t pursue the case in what I would call an in-depth manner. So here I am, having to do the confronting myself.”

  “But how did you connect your dad’s death to Malcolm Lynch?” O’Neil asked.

  Good lad. Keep Nathan focused.

  “They had the decency to give me his effects, including a necklace. A nice thing. It took me a while, but I found a jeweler in Limerick who recognized the designer. Guess who? John McIlvoy of Firebird Designs. Easy enough to find the website even though McIlvoy was supposed to be dead.”

  Indeed. But then, anyone could keep a website up and running.

  “The website lists Malcolm Lynch as an agent of sorts. So I came to Lisfenora to meet him and—what do you know?—he was the spitting image of my father’s description. That’s when I decided
to move here for a while. I move around a lot anyhow, so it was no problem.”

  “Have you met John McIlvoy?” O’Neil said. “We’d like to find him ourselves.”

  “Wish I could say that I have. But I did talk to him. His accent was pure Dublin.”

  “What did he say?”

  “The website listed a phone number. Unfortunately, I went at it all wrong. Couldn’t keep my temper. I didn’t give him my particulars—I’m not that stupid—but I threatened him. A few days later the telephone number was out of order and not listed on the website anymore. That’s why I was so intent on getting Malcolm to talk. He was my only connection to the man.”

  Danny had heard enough. He slipped out of the room and into the loo to slap cold water on his face. The story was so bizarre it had to be true. Or perhaps Danny wanted it to be true. Either way, he’d go with it. Coarse paper towels caught on his stubble, and he smiled at his sorry self in the mirror. Malcolm had some explaining to do. At minimum, regarding aiding and abetting the main suspect in Siobhan McNamara’s murder. And from there, Malcolm would lead Danny to McIlvoy.

  Buoyed by the thought, Danny combed wet fingers through his hair and settled it off his forehead.

  The door opened and Clarkson entered. Danny tried to ignore the sound of Clarkson’s piss hitting porcelain. “What’s Malcolm saying?”

  “You need to stay out of it. Are we square?”

  “As a bathroom tile.”

  Back in the desk warren, Danny unclenched his hand from around a wadded paper towel. He tossed it onto O’Neil’s desk, and then thought better of that and reached for it over a mess of paperwork. He caught sight of a crime scene photo of Blackie’s Pasture with assorted houses and shops lining the far side. Danny squinted.

  Jesus. How could he have forgotten? Danny grabbed up his jacket and jotted a quick note to O’Neil.

  Tell Nathan Tate to call me as soon as possible.

  FORTY-SIX

  DANNY HADN’T BEEN TO O’Leary’s Pub in a few years. Smaller and darker than the Plough, the O’Leary clan favored a nautical motif. A giant Captain’s wheel hung over the bar and prints of galleons on stormy seas covered the walls. The effect wasn’t cheery, so all the better that Theresa O’Leary graced the bar with her presence most evenings. Codgers and young fellas already filled the stools, all vying for attention from the girl. Her regulars appeared to be a well-behaved lot compared to Alan’s.

  Rumors that she had all the lads quivering appeared to be true. She laughed at something a business type said and fobbed him off with a, “You’ve got all the finesse of a kick to the balls, haven’t you then?”

  She was just feisty enough, and she sported a red bra beneath her mannish button-up blouse so she was also just sexy enough. In other words, she knew what she was about even though she was all of twenty years old. Her alert gaze swept over her customers, and she mixed drinks with a sure hand. Surely such expertise came from growing up in the pub.

  Danny waited at the end of the counter. A few patrons raised their pints in homage to Ellen. Theresa plunked a pint of the black stuff down in front of him. She had kind eyes, grey-rimmed with dark blue and perceptiveness.

  “On the house. How are you getting on?”

  “As you’d expect. If you have a few minutes, I’d like to ask you about a lad you may know.”

  She beckoned him to an empty table with a “keep your peace” lobbed back at the codgers and fellas. “You’re here about the lad in the paper? Disgusting, what happened.”

  Danny swallowed his surprise along with a mouthful of Guinness. “His name was Toby Grealy.”

  “I know. Brendan Nagel introduced us.” She smirked and rolled her eyes, the first time she’d shown her young years, only to catch herself up with a grimace. “Sorry, that was tacky. I shouldn’t smile, but Bren was a right lovable goof, but a goof all the same. He fancied me something terrible.”

  “If I were his age, I would too.”

  She raised a shoulder in a gesture somewhere between dismissive and flattered. “His friend, though, Toby, now he was more my type.”

  “Friend?”

  “By the end of the night you’d have thought they’d known each other since the nappies.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Theresa settled herself in the chair across from Danny. She had a languid way about her, with one crossed leg swinging and a hand drooping off the edge of the table. “Bren had been coming in more often, seeing as how he fancied me, poor sod. He tried to be charming, but you couldn’t get him to shut his trap about Malcolm Lynch. Crap boss, sounded like.”

  Danny’s couldn’t help himself when he asked whether she’d ever seen Malcolm in her pub with dates.

  “Oh no, not the likes of us. According to Bren, Malcolm considered this side of Blackie’s Pasture the wrong side of Lisfenora, which is another reason Bren liked to come here. Malcolm sounds like a right tosser. Lisfenora isn’t big enough to have a side.”

  “True.” Much as Danny wanted to gather as much vicarious dirt on Malcolm as he could, he kept to the point. “So Brendan came in one night—”

  “Week before last, yeah? The usual. Moping around the bar and trying to catch my eye. This other bloke, Toby, comes in and sits down next to Bren. Didn’t have a choice, seeing as it was the last open spot. He smelled ripe, but he’d tried to clean himself up in the bathroom. I could tell because he’d wet down his hair.” Theresa pointed toward the end of the bar. “They sat over there where I make drinks, so I overheard them. I hear a lot anyhow. Comes with the territory.”

  “Alan over at the Plough says the same.”

  “He’s a good one. I like him even if my father’s got it against the French.” She sipped on a Coke she’d birought over with her. “That night Toby looked to be pretty grim. He probably would have kept to himself if Bren hadn’t noticed his earrings. It’s not like you could miss them. I would have commented myself but Bren got to it ahead of me. ‘Hold on now,’ he said, ‘where’d you get those sorry things?’”

  Danny was transfixed. This girl was bloody perfection. If only all witnesses were this observant and coherent.

  “Then Bren couldn’t help himself. He went on to make the saints weep about some blighter named John and how something was fishier than a selkie’s twat—his words, not mine. As soon as he mentioned the name—”

  “John McIlvoy?”

  “Ay, that’s it. As soon as he mentioned the name, Toby jerks up like a puppet on a string. ‘You know John McIlvoy?’ he says. I lost the conversation there, but when I returned they were still at it, whispering like a couple of girls. I’m just that curious so I pulled my special smile.” She pulled it, a hint of teeth, lips just this side of pouty. “Daft really, but it works.”

  She laughed, and Danny joined in. She was an antidepressant, this girl; he’d have to come back for a fix now and then. He thought Ellen would like Theresa, which comforted him past the jolt of guilt. He shouldn’t be enjoying her company even for these few minutes.

  “I tell them there’s no secrets at my bar,” she continued, “and Bren’s off the rafters about how he’s going to help Toby find this John character.”

  “How was he going to manage that?”

  “Not sure. Just that he knew a man who knew McIlvoy.”

  Malcolm.

  “Did you see Toby after that?”

  “That was the last I saw of them, that night.” She gazed unseeingly at the bar, where one of her patrons signaled her with an empty pint glass. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I miss the sorry blighter. Bren would have grown up to be a proper fine boyfriend for some lass.” She rose. “Cheers then. I hope it helps.”

  Danny finished his pint and left before anyone had a chance to commiserate about Ellen. Across the lane from O’Leary’s, Blackie’s Pasture lay quiet and dark. A faint scent of wet grass tinged the air. Danny could just make out a footpath that skirted the silage bundles and disappeared into the dark. The fog would have hidden the strugg
le and murder. The bundles stood near the center of the pasture, beyond the light cast by the dimmed shop lights. After the pubs closed, there would have been no one to see and no way to see anyhow, with or without the fog.

  The door opened behind him. “I’m glad I caught you,” Theresa said. “I forgot something.”

  And conscientious too. Perhaps he did fancy her a bit.

  “Bren was that polluted he insisted Toby come along to meet his dad, that his dad would love to hear his story about John McIlvoy. They left together.”

  For the first time since Danny had known him, Alan joined him at the bar, arse planted on the stool, pint in hand. The crowd buffeted them from behind, an elbow here, a shoulder there. Danny couldn’t hear himself think over the laughter and low roar of conversation. Only one week left of September, which meant one more week until the pub became a locals’ haven once again.

  “Bijou’s sleeping in my office,” Alan said.

  “She’s okay?”

  “Ay, she’ll be alright.” He gulped at his Guinness. “Word on Gemma?”

  “Nothing yet, but you’d better believe I’m going to visit her in the morning.”

  “Oh?”

  “This investigation needs Gemma.”

  “Alan!” came the exasperated voice of the junior barman.

  Swearing under his breath, Alan rose. Danny rose along with him, Alan to go about his work and Danny to his.

  Seamus sat at his usual spot at the other end of the bar along with a few crows. His head bobbed on sagging neck. His face was puffy yet slack, the skin under his jaw so loose that it gave the impression that his jaw might clatter to the floor. His mouth moved with a strange, gummy clacking sound. Danny shooed Elder Joe and Mickey away, and sat down next to Seamus.

  Seamus blinked at him. His voice slurred past the consonants and rolled over the vowels. “What of it then?”

  Footsteps stopped behind them. Danny turned around to wave off their visitor. Mackey held out a carry bag from the Spar.

  “Pardon a second, Dan-o. Got something here for Seamus.” Mackey patted Seamus’s shoulder and went on as if he’d received a response. “Bought a few things today, and you take them home and you eat, you sorry old sack. And then tomorrow morning you eat something else before you return to drink yourself to death.”