Whispers in the Mist

by Lisa Alber

  Alan excused himself and stepped out of the room. Rummaging sounds issued from somewhere behind her. A cabinet clicked shut, and then he was back with plasters and antibiotic ointment. “Right then.”

  His fingertips tickled when he tapped her skin with ointment. She’d never been as fragile as Dermot had treated her, and now here sat Alan also treating her like she’d break in half. But now she could talk, and with spoken words, maybe people wouldn’t treat her like a porcelain doll. She opened her mouth.

  Alan froze when the first scratchy sound came out. The skin on her face warmed—oh god, that reaction, the hard tap-tap of her heart—but she tried again. It was like her mam said to her all those years ago. Say your words. It’s okay to say what you need, baby.

  Gemma’s eyes watered and the pressure increased in her chest. She hadn’t realized she’d lost her mam’s voice too. Her voice urging Gemma toward becoming her best possible self.

  “I—I—”

  Horrible croaky sounds. Gemma caught her breath, and then the next thing out was a gasp. The pressure in her chest so tight, she almost couldn’t catch her breath. She struggled against every lost moment with her mam, the years spent in silence and despair.

  “I—I—”

  Alan held her hand. “You’re grand, you are.”

  She almost choked on her need to speak the words, almost choked on backed-up tears. The words dribbled out of her. “I’m not that fragile.”

  “What?”

  Her voice. It wasn’t what she wanted. She’d always imagined something low, mellifluous, a cross between an actress and a blues singer. Instead, she sounded, well, girly. Not an ounce of feminine authority or wisdom to it. She sounded like the nine-year-old she was when her lips first glued themselves shut and her vocal cords froze.

  “You can rub the ointment in harder,” she said, louder this time.

  There. She’d said them. Her first words in seventeen years. It didn’t matter what the words were, just that they be.

  “Right then,” Alan said. “I’ll press a little harder.”

  Alan continued where he’d left off. The sting was okay. She could handle it.

  “See?” she said. “Not so fragile.”

  He smiled down at her feet. “You’re a funny odd creature, you are.”

  Yes. She’d always been. She’d have to accept this about herself too.

  “Where am I?”

  “This is where Danny lives right now. Dermot brought you here after the attack and finding you in the forestry lands.”

  Ellen, where is she? Is she okay? Gemma struggled to her feet. I can’t believe I didn’t remember that. We have to go.

  “You’re signing,” Alan said.

  She crawled around the room looking for her shoes. “Ellen,” she said.

  The silence behind her was so loud she turned around. Alan folded a plaster over on itself. “Not good. She’s still unconscious.”

  Gemma hung her head. It had been a repeat performance of her mam’s death. A woman—Ellen—enraging McIlvoy so much that he lashed out. Just like before. This had been the refrain in her head—just like before, just like before—when she’d bolted from Ellen’s house, her terror so vast—vast as the universe—that this time around she hadn’t even had the brains to call 999.

  “Dermot?” She scrabbled back toward Alan and plucked a new plaster from the box. She slapped it and two more on her feet and returned to the ground. “My shoes?”

  She didn’t care how her voice sounded now, or that she couldn’t speak above a whisper. Along with every other emotion that had erupted out of her today, she felt a searing resolve most of all. She had to finish this once and for all.

  “Over here.” Alan led her to the corner of the room where someone had flung their knapsacks and sleeping bags. “Dermot is fine. He drove to Dublin to fetch your aunt. Aunt Tara?”

  She nodded. Aunt Tara didn’t travel well on her own, so that made sense.

  Gemma grabbed the first knapsack, looking for clean clothes and socks. This one was Dermot’s, but it didn’t matter. She found a jumper and pulled it on. Amongst the dirty clothes, a photo caught her eye.

  Her mam, her dear mam. Looking so happy. She remembered this wedding portrait sitting on the fireplace mantel, the hopes Mam had had for a happy family when she married McIlvoy. The image showed just their faces, cheek-to-cheek and grinning. McIlvoy hadn’t seemed so bad. At first.

  She pushed the photo at Alan, not wanting to touch it anymore. “Him. He did it. That’s him.”

  Alan frowned. “I don’t recognize him.”

  She found socks and trainers. She pulled them all on, including a scarf, and her hoodie, and stood without tying her trainers.

  “I can talk now,” she said.

  The statement was a revelation, a small source of power.

  “You mean to the guards?” Alan said.

  She swallowed. “To Danny, please. Not to everybody at once.”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  SEAMUS SWAYED IN A gentle rhythm back and forth. “Now it can end. I’ll gladly rest me head in the gaol to have it all end.”

  “Listen to me,” Danny said. “Can you do that?”

  Seamus continued swaying, lost in his own world, mumbling to himself. The hours of wait inside the Garda station had withered Seamus. His shoulders slumped forward and his head almost bounced against the tabletop. The room stank of him, alcohol mixed with despair. He’d refused coffee and a solicitor.

  “Let’s start with Gemma. Why did you attack her?”

  Seamus swayed faster.

  “The good thing is that you didn’t hurt her. The DPP might not bring charges against you at all. But I’m still wondering about your guilt. It can’t be about Brendan—”

  “My son.” Seamus covered his face with his hands. His shoulders shook.

  Danny scooted his chair so he sat closer to Seamus. “—because you couldn’t have killed your own son.”

  Seamus mumbled something. Danny pulled his hands away from his face. “You need to speak up.” He felt bad but it needed to be done, so he continued with, “Brendan in a field, his neck broken. That wasn’t you—was it?”

  “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  Sometimes the trick was to get witnesses talking. Seamus was a far cry from Malcolm, who now sat in a room enjoying a chat with his solicitor while he waited for the team to return from Blackie’s Pasture. Meanwhile, Seamus was so mired in his own agony that he didn’t know what was good for him. Danny felt like a right bastard, but this was what he needed to exploit—Seamus’s helplessness and despair.

  “I have it wrong?” Danny said. “What do I have wrong—John?”

  Seamus froze. Then a second later he was up and pacing around the room, half leaning against the wall to support himself. “I wish I’d never heard that name. I wish I didn’t know anything about him.”

  “Are you John McIlvoy?” Danny said.

  Seamus knocked his head against the wall. “No, no, no.”

  Danny grabbed him, turned him around, and helped him slide down the wall. “Okay, no ‘John.’ Okay?”

  “It’s all my fault. All of it. I might as well have killed Brendan with me own hands.” Seamus grabbed Danny’s leg, and for the first time since Danny entered the room, held Danny’s gaze. “I let the Grey Man into our lives.”

  Danny slipped down the wall so he was seated next to Seamus on the ground. He’d felt the same thing: that he’d somehow let Grey Man into his life too. Slithering in with the fog and still hovering—but cloaked. Danny was blind, somehow, to the truth of things. But he wasn’t sure which truth he was looking for anymore either. Too many truths had glommed together. Toby. Brendan. Gemma. Ellen. Malcolm. McIlvoy. Seamus. Nathan too.

  And himself.

  He’d missed the sign the sparrows had tried to convey to him.

  “Malcolm said that you gave him Siobhan McNamara’s earrings—the ones that Toby Grealy was wearing when he died. Someone had stolen them off his body. Y
ou can see how it looks between that and attacking Gemma.”

  Seamus stared at the blue wall across the room.

  “You knew Toby Grealy. You can’t deny that. Brendan brought him home to meet you.”

  Seamus closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. “He was trying to be helpful, is all. He knew I had an interest in anything to do with John McIlvoy. Because of Nathan Tate. Nathan was the one to first get me thinking, see, about how I might ensure my son’s future. I had befriended the man when he first arrived. And a most interesting story he had too. One mention of a hairless wanker who surely had a hand in his father’s death, and I knew he meant Malcolm.”

  He spit out Malcolm’s name as if he couldn’t get the sound of it out of his mouth fast enough. Danny sat back, relaxed now. He had Seamus in the sweet spot; all he needed was a little prompting to keep talking. So, Danny prompted.

  “So you pointed Nathan toward Malcolm—”

  “Ay, and then I invited Nathan to be one of us crows at the Plough. Malcolm fancies he’s one of us too, that he does.”

  “And Brendan?”

  “Malcolm is always on about Firebird, how he’s going to expand its brand. So I let him know that I’d gotten wind that McIlvoy was found dead—not giving Nathan away, you see—and that I had to wonder what Malcolm had been up to. But, I could stop wondering if he’d give my lad a job, teach him about business, get him going on a stable future.”

  “As a shop boy? That’s no future, is it?”

  “Of course not, but it were a foot in, and I hoped to see Brendan take over the shop in the future. Malcolm can’t hold on to it forever. I wanted Brendan as safe as possible. That was always the goal.”

  “And how was that going to happen?”

  Seamus grimaced with his eyes still closed. “Oh, I hear you. You think I’m an egg short of a full dozen, but I were thinking more and more that Malcolm hid something big, and I planned to find out what that something was, and when I did, Malcolm would have to let Brendan in on the business. We’d enter into a deal.”

  Danny thought about Brendan in all this: a son who’d almost died as a child; a son trying to please his dad; a son who wrote adventure stories that took him far away from reality. “What did Brendan think of your plans for him?”

  Seamus opened his eyes. They were liquid with emotion. “If only he’d been the rebellious type. The type to tell me to feck off and let him be. The type to run away to make his own way in the world. But he weren’t, and I thought myself lucky for it. Now look at me.” Tears dribbled out the sides of his eyes, but he didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Like I said before, I might as well have killed Brendan meself.”

  “And Toby?”

  “Oh ay, my boy brought him around like a gift to me. And so it went, as soon as that poor lad laid out the earring maker’s blame for his birth mother’s death, well then, I thought myself content indeed. John McIlvoy, that Toby said, he’d be the jewelry maker, he’d be the murderer. And it seemed like Malcolm had his hermit jewelry maker right where he wanted him, didn’t he?” He bounced his head against the wall. “How could I know any better?”

  He cracked his head once more against the wall, harder this time.

  “Go on,” Danny said. “You’re doing great.”

  “We told Toby that Malcolm knew all about McIlvoy. The lad was practically pissing himself he was so eager. He went around to the shop the next day. And, of course, I had a wee chat with Malcolm myself.”

  Danny remembered Malcolm’s description of the visit—the would-be thief with grubby fingernails. “Your plan in all this was to discover something to hold over Malcolm’s head the way he was holding Siobhan McNamara over McIlvoy’s.”

  Seamus continued bouncing his head against the wall too hard for Danny’s liking. He laughed but not quite a laugh, more like a demented cackle. “Ah, Danny, you’ve got it wrong at the same time you’ve got it right. But the outcome was inevitable anyhow. Toby had to die.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Malcolm deemed it so if I wanted assurance of Brendan’s future. Simple as that. But I didn’t think through the ramifications. Had no clue how Malcolm’s mind worked. He’s good, that one. Bent me over like a bare-arsed poof, and I had to take it. Even when it came to that wee Gemma who witnessed her mom’s murder. I knew he had me. If I didn’t off her, McIlvoy would eventually go down, and if he went, Malcolm said that he’d make sure I did too.”

  A smear of blood stained the wall behind Seamus’s head, but he continued pounding.

  “Seamus, stop,” Danny said.

  “I can’t. Why should I? What difference does it all make now? Yes, I knew that Toby was dossing down in Blackie’s Pasture. I couldn’t let him stay with us. Yes, I went there to kill him—”

  Seamus’s head came to a stop.

  “—but Malcolm had gotten there ahead of me. Toby was already dead, see, but now I’ve got the blame. Like I said, Malcolm’s good.”

  He shifted sideways so he was facing Danny. His bleary gaze wandered over the ground and up Danny’s body. “I’ve decided prison isn’t any better, after all.”

  “Better than what?”

  “Than a Devil’s Pact. Malcolm was right about that, anyhow.”

  Seamus’s hand shot out and in the moment Danny blinked in surprise, he grabbed a pen out of Danny’s shirt pocket and jabbed it into his own neck.

  FIFTY-NINE

  “DON’T PULL THE PEN out of his neck!” Danny yelled as he ran out of the interview room. While someone called the EMTs, Danny found a scarf in the lost-and-found cubby under the reception desk and ran back to Seamus, cursing himself for not seeing it coming. Seamus had been hitting his head against the wall hard enough to draw blood.

  He landed on his knees beside Seamus and wrapped the scarf around his neck to hold the pen in place. Beckoning an officer to hold the scarf, he ran back out of the room. The on-duty officers stood in clusters, talking louder than usual. Clarkson, O’Neil, and several others were still at Blackie’s Pasture.

  “Where is Malcolm Lynch parked?” Danny called across the noise.

  Someone pointed down a short corridor to a small conference room reserved for suspects and their solicitors. Danny strode across the room.

  “Danny.”

  Merrit stood near one of the desks, the one composed person in the room. She still wore the flannel pajamas and raincoat he’d seen her in at Blackie’s Pasture. Her stillness could be unnerving, but Danny saw it for what it was—a barrier. A barrier that sometimes allowed her to see things with scary astuteness.

  “You’ve been waiting for me this entire time?” he said.

  She nodded. “Two things, and then I’ll go. Alan texted me. Gemma is awake. She can talk, and she remembers her mom’s death. Alan’s bringing her in.”

  Danny’s fingers tingled with a spurt of adrenaline. This changed everything. “Brilliant.”

  Merrit held his arm as he turned away. “She only wants to talk to you. For now. She’s still … you know.”

  Danny nodded, his brain in high gear, and continued to the conference room.

  “Wait, Danny, that wasn’t the second thing,” she called.

  But he was already entering without knocking first. Malcolm sat with legs crossed and tie loosened oh so artfully. The man at ease, with no worries. As reptilian as ever.

  “Back for more conversation?” He nodded toward the man sitting beside him. “This is Ian Finn, my solicitor. I’ll be in need of coffee soon if this waiting is going to go on much longer—”

  “Shut your bloody mouth,” Danny said.

  “You need to leave, Detective Sergeant,” Finn said. “You interrupted a private conversation with my client.”

  Finn stood, but Malcolm waved him down. “Danny and I, we’re friends now, aren’t we?”

  Danny closed the door and grabbed a chair. He angled it right up next to Malcolm and sat so that their knees brushed.

  Malcolm grinned, looking down at their l
egs, and didn’t shift away. “Come now. Really?”

  “Seamus rammed a pen into his own neck,” Danny said.

  “I’m not surprised. He wouldn’t last five minutes in prison, a man like him. He knows that.”

  “You did something to him.” Danny leaned closer, elbows on knees. The solicitor might as well have not been there. “Put a nasty little bug in his ear.”

  “Don’t say anything,” Finn said.

  Malcolm mimed turning a key to lock up his mouth. “Apologies, good Danny. I must heed his advice.”

  “Oh, that’s quite all right. I relish the chance to get a word in without your endless self-serving blather. I’ve come to various conclusions, you see. You believe that Firebird Designs means something, that anyone would care one way or another about a line of necklaces and earrings. It’s all yours and only yours, to your mind at least, and along comes Seamus and Nathan Tate, ready to out you for killing Nathan’s father.”

  For once, Malcolm kept his mouth shut.

  “What else could you do but accept Brendan as an employee, let Seamus think he was going to get his way, and then bide your time.” Danny needed to speak fast before Clarkson returned. He lowered his voice. “Because that’s what you’re good at, isn’t it, Malcolm? Biding your time. You’ve been doing that all these years with Firebird and with finding a good candidate for McIlvoy’s supposed death. So what’s a few more months when it comes to getting Seamus and Brendan out of your life, eh? Because you don’t share, and besides, the Nagels are beneath you.”

  “Of course they are,” Malcolm said.

  “Mouth shut,” Finn said. “Is this an interview, Detective Sergeant? Because if it is, you must record it.”

  Malcolm was bursting to speak. His skin was starting to mottle with the effort to keep his mouth shut.

  “Then a boy named Toby arrived, a boy who also wanted to pry into your tidy little life with Firebird Designs. Worse yet, he wanted to out McIlvoy as a murderer, and Seamus knew who he was too—McIlvoy’s son—which meant you were even more entwined with the Nagels than before.”