Arcanum: An Irish Mystery

by Ann Mann

  There was nothing that Clodagh and Silas would have liked better and this encounter had lit a beacon of hope in that the driver’s wife was actually begging them to visit her husband. However, they knew they would have to get permission from the Gardai and that might prove a far more difficult task.

  Silas explained this gently and the woman pulled out a mobile phone from her imitation Louis Vuitton handbag.

  “I know one of them is there now. The Dublin one.” She told them. “We’ve just left and he was there. I’ve got both their numbers.”

  “Would his phone be switched on?” Clodagh asked. “Sometimes in hospitals they don’t allow it.”

  Mrs. Ahearne shook her head. “No, his is definitely on. I saw him taking calls and reading texts just this morning in my husband’s room.”

  She dialled a number while they all waited expectantly for the call to be answered.

  *

  Joe Tierney told them categorically that they would only be allowed in if they told no-one about the locale or about any conversation that might pass between them and Dennis Ahearne. If they did so, he said, he would be unwilling to share any future information with them.

  Silas and Clodagh readily agreed and along with Mrs. Ahearne and her son were shown into the small private room where the driver had been admitted. Joe Tierney had arranged for more chairs and there was very little space for manoeuvre.

  They had scant idea of what to expect but the shock far exceeded what they might only have imagined.

  The man in the bed did not in any way resemble the driver whom Silas had met on the night the coach left Dublin.

  The purple mottled complexion had given way to fish-belly white and in a macabre sense it was like looking at a reanimated corpse. His cheeks were hollows under jutting cheekbones and the eyes sunken, creating the illusion of his flesh having begun to decompose from his skull.

  While Silas and Clodagh struggled to keep their composure, a hospital orderly slid into the room and retrieved a tray containing a soup bowl and plate of half eaten food. He shot a curious look at the group before leaving as quietly as he had entered allowing Silas to wonder nervously if the staff at the hospital had literally been sworn to silence.

  Dennis Ahearne’s eyes were the most chilling thing about him. They were not dead eyes but those of someone who appeared to have gone over the edge into madness.

  His wife was trembling, holding on to her son’s arm, while Joe Tierney maintained an impassive expression despite obviously finding the chair he had been sitting on for hours deeply uncomfortable.

  “Do you want to ask him anything?” The Superintendent suggested to Silas and Clodagh before they took their seats.

  “Okay.” Silas cleared his throat and they approached the bed, carefully trying to draw answers from the patient but without success.

  “Dennis, Silas here. Do you remember anything about the people you say have got my troupe?”

  “Dennis, it’s Clodagh Trevor. Can you remember what happened to the coach? And to our friends?”

  With the minutes passing and nothing forthcoming, Joe Tierney beckoned Silas to join him in the corridor.

  “We’re no further forward.” He told him. “He keeps repeating that someone has got them so we have to look at abduction. His clothes have come back from forensics and simply show grass and mud deposits from around the area where he was found. There were no clues in his pockets either, just some euros, a half packet of fags, a lighter and his mobile phone which hadn’t been used since the day he left. “

  Silas thought he was tilting at windmills and told him so.

  Joe shook his head. “I hear what you’re saying, but in the absence of any other information that is the direction we have to take. They’re still doing tests here and we hope that we can extract more from him in the days to come. But as you see, he’s pretty far gone.”

  “You’ve read what the world seems to be implying on the internet?”

  The detective gave a half smile. “What, that it’s something paranormal? That they’ve disappeared like those planes in the Bermuda Triangle? Yes, I’ve seen it and obviously dismissed it as baloney.”

  Silas shrugged. “Okay. I’m not saying I believe it, but we aren’t left with many other options unless someone comes out of the woodwork making demands for their release. And incidentally, if you look closely at the net you’ll see there are far more unexplained disappearances than something that happened fifty years ago.”

  “And you and I both know how many weirdos are out there in Cyberland.”

  Their conversation was then abruptly halted by a scream and the two men sped back into the room assuming it must be Clodagh. But it was Mrs. Ahearne who had screamed while Clodagh stood silent and calm, locked to the corpse-like figure in the bed.

  Silas rushed towards her instinctively.

  “Stay away.” Dennis Ahearne was clearly terrified but kept his impossibly tight grip on Clodagh’s wrist. “Don’t come any closer. Stay away.”

  “Dennis.” His wife pleaded. “Let her go, Dennis. Please?”

  “What do they want, Dennis?” Joe Tierney raised his voice authoritatively in order to be heard above the din. “What do the people who have the dancers want?”

  Dennis Ahearne’s eyes rolled in his head and with a supreme effort somehow they managed to locate Silas. Releasing Clodagh’s hand he forced out a diabolic cackle causing each of them to feel their blood freeze.

  “You, Silas Murphy. They want you!”

  *

  County Clare.

  1735

  Mick Gilligan, the farmer, was an uneducated man but he considered he had much in the way of what was called common sense and little time for sentiment. Now, even he had to admit there were fewer sadder sights than those which filled his musty barn on that damp September afternoon.

  A long brown rat scuttled across his boot and he observed it without rancour. Normally he would grab the broom and try to beat it into another world but today, if he could, he would have used that same broom on a far more noxious animal. One with red-gold curls and a purple feathered hat.

  The fiddler was scratching out a jig but the mood was anything but joyful. Children in dirty and tattered clothes squabbled as they tried to form themselves into some kind of orderly lines. The older children attempted to guide them and then lost patience, hissing their scorn and contempt before turning their backs and creating their own division of ragged movement.

  A sprinkling of adult couples joined hands in an improvisation which bore no resemblance to the tempo of the music and the few good ones who still turned up in the hope of becoming better pushed the less competent out of the way, their faces carved into masks of frustrated determination.

  None but the oxen had toiled as long and hard as Gilligan to make his farm fertile and productive. He, like his father and grandfather before him, had foresworn his Roman Catholic faith in order that his son would inherit his life’s work, for only the conversion to Protestantism would ensure the passing on to any heirs. But the Protestant ascendency meant also the ascendency of the English gentry, and much Catholic land as well as the best posts in the Church or in high-ranking office was given to newcomers from the other side of the Irish sea thus creating a rich-poor divide that the fortunate few like himself were powerless to revolutionize.

  And now it had come to this and Gilligan’s blood raced with a fire that seemed impossible to quell. He was bewildered by the speed at which this terrible deterioration in dignity, ability and hope had vanished. Why and how? It was as though he could reach out and touch these people’s innocent needs, for this desire to communicate through something primeval had been started here and he was not prepared just to stand by and watch it evaporate.

  A sound, barely audible, though loud enough to distract him floated down with wisps of golden straw from the
loft above and he looked up in surprise to see not the anticipated rodent but the sorceress who had served the past Master. Squatting on a pile of sacks with her eyes closed, her lips were moving silently as she consulted the pack of cards that never left her side. He knew from others that she could speak although in all these years he had not heard her and it crossed his mind that she might be trying to communicate with the man to whom she had given so much of her life. But she was not his immediate concern. Instead he re-directed his gaze to the motley gathering before him and knew he would have to take action today.

  He believed the rumours to be true. That the boy was spending time giving lessons up at the big house and that he was also fucking Kathleen Dooley. He wasn’t sure which made him more angry as Thomas Dooley was an old friend, their families had shared and suffered years of toil and deprivation and he had attended the wedding which had been a merry affair filled with the promise of future blissful harmony.

  If Dooley didn’t know that his wife was cuckolding him then he was the only one in the village that didn’t. Gilligan made the difficult decision to speak to him. He would take his old farm horse there to be shoed and try and engage the blacksmith in conversation about his scubaide of a wife in the hope that he could persuade her to be less generous with her favours.

  Guiding his grey cart-horse towards the long, narrow white-washed cottage which housed the blacksmith’s forge, he found the place quiet and seemingly deserted apart from Dooley’s shaggy black dog who began to bark wildly as they came to a stop at the water trough in front of the house.

  While his horse enjoyed refreshment, Gilligan patted the dog wondering whether its erect triangular ears and anxious eyes were trying to convey some sort of message. He spoke to the dog reassuringly then walked towards the forge to look for his friend.

  Pushing open the heavy oak door, he peered into the darkness where only the last smouldering embers from the furnace offered enough light for him to see there was nobody inside and once again the pungent aroma of sweat, grease and burnt hoof hit him as it always did when he made these visits to Dooley’s place of work.

  The tools of his friend’s trade were a credit to his mastery. The leather bellows were stacked against the furnace next to a table creaking under a variety of tongs, hammers, anvils and horseshoes with only a suggestion of rust visible on any. Axes and chisels lined the old brick walls and row upon row of shiny hooks used for hanging many a copper cooking pot and kettle dangled from the huge cast-iron roof supports, then, caught by a unexpected draught that whistled through the door, rippled together in a peal of percussive harmony.

  He could hear the dog barking again and thought that maybe Thomas had returned or perhaps a customer had arrived requiring his services but when he stepped outside into the pale sunshine of the late afternoon, Gilligan found the cobblestone courtyard and the house still deserted.

  He decided to allow himself one last look around before returning to the farm and made his way to the back of the house stepping through the nettle-high yard where large well-worn sheets were flapping on the line obscuring the view of the fields beyond.

  The dog was at his heels and its intense barking had now changed to a plaintive lament which struck such unease into his heart that he stopped dead in his tracks, squinting into the dappled light which danced on the leaves of the ancient oak tree ahead and whose towering arms seemed to beckon him forward.

  And then the sight that Mick Gilligan would carry with him to the grave. That diligent and most upstanding of men, his friend Thomas Dooley, hung by a rope from one of the giant branches, his neck broken and his tongue protruding from an open mouth. A ladder was placed against the tree and beneath it now lay his faithful dog who continued to howl mournfully.

  Gilligan rushed towards the tree, looking desperately around for a knife or anything that could cut the rope but it was too late to save the man he had known since childhood. What would drive someone of such conscience and character to commit this final and terrible act? A man as sturdy as the very tree he had chosen to assist him in his death. Burning sorrow rose from the pit of Gilligan’s stomach and his spirit felt as bleak as the barren landscape of the Burren. A flock of crows overhead rasped their journey homeward, an eerie and desolate cacophony that did nothing to diffuse the grim horror of his discovery.

  Dooley was dead and Gilligan found himself in a wounded place. A place where events seemed to be spinning out of control. He had come here today to try and discover why such sorrow had visited their village and now misery had heaped upon misery.

  Maybe there was one person who could give him answers. If he could only get her to talk.

  *

  The morning after their traumatic encounter with the coach driver, the day dawned fresh and clear and they each woke wishing their minds might enjoy a similar clarity. It was a Saturday and the weekend before the opening of their show, a time when they would normally have spent rehearsing and brushing up on last minute imperfections.

  Instead they had decided to join the local community in another search organised by Gerry Doyle and his Clare force together with neighbourhood watch groups from Ennis and Newmarket-on-Fergus. This time the hunt would spread out beyond the lake to other surrounding areas hitherto unexplored and which the willing band of enthusiastic locals was determined to attack with all the energy they could muster.

  Clodagh was aware of Silas experiencing some sort of temporary derailment, for it manifested itself in his laughing off the events of the night before. After the initial shock of Dennis Ahearne’s outburst he had put it down to the ramblings of a sick mind and something not to be taken seriously. However, Clodagh knew him well enough to realise that he had resorted to bluff and humour in order to protect himself from suspecting that there might have been a modicum of truth in those words.

  They left their hotel at eight in recently purchased padded jackets and carrying canvas rucksacks which they had filled with bottled water, binoculars and chocolate, and when they reached the Gazebo on Turret Hill inside the magnificent Dromoland estate and the meeting point for the search, they were both startled and encouraged by the enormous turn out. Men, women and children wrapped up against the early frost together with an assortment of dogs, stout walking sticks, flashlights and walkie-talkies scattered across the area chatting and greeting neighbours and others they had never met before.

  A tall, bald man in a navy duffle-coat waved a bright green flag on a stick high in the air and called for attention.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and thank you all for volunteering to help in the search today. My name is Dec and as you are all aware, Superintendent Doyle from the Garda has given his permission for us to look at other areas beyond the Lough where the coach driver was found. We are also grateful to the management of Dromoland Castle for their permission to meet and disband from this point. What I would like to do is divide the groups into four and to the appointed leader of each group I will supply a map of the immediate area.”

  With the assistance of a young, gangly boy with a wild crop of ginger hair and a plump woman in a pink bobble hat Dec divided the party into roughly sixty people per group suggesting that they each choose a leader. While the discussions were taking place, he surprised Clodagh and Silas by announcing. “We are delighted to have with us today Mr. Silas Murphy and Miss Clodagh Trevor whom I’m sure you all know are the two lead dancers in Arcanum and who have offered to help search for their friends and colleagues.”

  A gasp of surprise followed by a burst of applause invited them to acknowledge the crowd with a wave of embarrassment as Dec beamed and continued his instructions.

  “Group One…” He pointed at the first cluster of people. “Will go to Garrauncam Bridge.” He nodded to the bobble-hat who struggled through the mass to pass their leader a map. “Group Two will be in Feakle and if you are going down as far as where the pasture turns to rushes, please do be ca
reful. Group Three will take the area around Bunratty Castle and I shall lead Group four to Quin.”

  A helicopter flew low overhead and drowned out the last of his words. He shaded his eyes and looked up, then turned back to the crowd.

  “Something we have to contend with, I’m afraid. The Gardai and tv news teams will be up there following us.”

  A hand shot up. “What if we find anything? Do we contact you?”

  Dec nodded. “Some of you have walkie-talkies and most of you have mobiles. My numbers are on the map. Call me if there is something significant otherwise don’t bother. I’m sure that the locals among you know that in certain parts we might not be able to get a signal or make contact.”

  “Shall we meet back here?”

  “I will be returning to the hotel but it’s not obligatory if you find it easier to make it back to your homes from your search area. The management has generously offered to supply tea and coffee if you do return here, but I would be reminding you that at this time of the year it starts getting dark around three-thirty so please be away from the remotest areas by then.”

  Clodagh and Silas were in Dec’s group and en route to the village of Quin. They knew little about it and were filled in as they began their walk through open meadows and pastureland steeped in history and encompassing around forty townlands of old Gaelic origin pre-dating the Norman invasion. It seemed that Quin abbey was considered to be one of the finest and most complete remnants of monastic antiquity and the area was also an archaeologist’s paradise having delivered up an important quantity of prehistoric gold.

  Members of the group began to fan out and although their chatter was upbeat it was clear they would not lose sight of their serious objective. Parting bushes, prodding with their sticks, they tried to ignore the drone of the helicopters moving backwards and forwards overhead as they pursued their quest with vigour and determination.