‘You might get a better understanding of my brother’s state of mind if I show you round the place.’
He took Daly on a guided tour of the farm, as though it was some sort of monument, heavy with the weight of history. Certainly, Daly found the place oppressive. The wind strengthened, unsettling the trees that bordered the outhouses, lifting their heavy branches, agitating the twigs. Reid’s face looked raw and strangely elated in the cold air. A form of emptiness radiated from his watery eyes, magnified by the pride and fear he felt surveying the bleak landscape.
He guided Daly through the yard and to the burnt remnants of an outhouse.
‘Another sign of poor Sammy’s carelessness,’ he said. ‘He let this shed go up in flames earlier in the week.’
Daly surveyed the charred timbers, the blackened hay and, beyond, the backdrop of ruin. The rankness of mud and decay, and the wildness of the hedges were advancing from all sides.
‘Weren’t you worried about your brother? Living on his own, so far away from his neighbours?’
‘My brother could defend himself, so I wasn’t unduly worried. Between you and me, he still had my old army rifle and a box full of ammunition. He kept it in good condition, polished to a shine, ready to use if trouble visited him.’ He grinned at Daly’s look of alarm. ‘In this part of the world, we’re farmers at times of peace, members of a staunch militia when there’s violence.’
He showed Daly the ladder that his brother had climbed before his death, and the collapsed bales of hay that had failed to cushion his fall. Daly walked back and forth, inspecting the scene. He checked the sturdiness of the ladder and began climbing it. Reid stood still and waited. When Daly returned he was carrying a loose length of binder twine, which he showed to Reid.
‘I found this loosely holding one of the bales on top. Someone has sliced through it with a knife.’
A transformation overcame Reid’s face as he studied the cut twine. The wild eyes stared at Daly again and then at the twine, as he tried to work out what had happened on the night of his brother’s death. His mouth gaped open and his eyes blazed in a moment of intensity. Daly realized that the politician was staring at him with an expression of mortal terror. Slowly Reid recovered his poise, his eyes flicking around the hateful circumstances of his brother’s demise until they rested by default on a pair of crows attacking some rotten sacking in the nearby barn. The wind picked up, lifting the sacking into the air and unsettling the birds.
‘The twine leaves an unanswered question,’ said Daly. ‘Who cut it?’
‘I can’t help you with that one.’
‘But it’s making you think.’
‘I already told you that Sammy was growing confused and preoccupied. He might have cut it himself.’
‘How can you be satisfied with that answer? Shouldn’t your doubt make you more determined to find out how exactly he fell to his death?’
Reid’s press officer stuck her head around the corner and flashed him a warning look. The politician walked after her. Daly put the piece of twine in his jacket pocket – a loose end in more than one sense. He doubted that Reid knew who had cut the twine, or whether or not his brother’s death had been the result of sabotage. However, he had an inkling that the politician knew more than he was letting on. He would have liked to peer into Reid’s mind and into that of his brother, but how do you access the secrets locked away in the heads of political heavyweights and their dead relatives?
In an effort to take control of the conversation, Reid began reminiscing about the past. The gates clanged at the bottom of the yard with a mad musical discord that made the pigs squeal in their enclosure.
‘My brother and I grew up herding pigs on this land,’ announced Reid. He looked on firmer ground with his press officer flanking him. ‘In those days, travellers passing through were likely to steal a pig or a few hens. We used to climb a tree at the bottom of the lane and wait for them with our father’s shotgun. That was when we learned to handle a weapon. Then when I was eighteen, I left and joined the army. We had to protect our people and our property against IRA gun attacks, midnight ambushes, car bombs, snipers…’ A burdened look came over his face. His tired eyes blinked as though trying to rein in an inner vision. ‘Later I got into politics, while Sammy stayed at home with these black hills and the herd of pigs.’
The wind hushed and the storm in the trees fell away.
‘My brother believed he had enemies, but he never told me their names.’
‘Did they belong to the IRA or some criminal group? Someone from the past?’
Reid shrugged. ‘He said it was “them people down there”. He never said who they were or where exactly “down there” was. I assumed he was talking about the travellers.’ He stared at Daly with a look of impatience. ‘He’s being buried tomorrow. The faster you get your work cleared up the better for all of us.’
‘This other investigation that I’m working upon, it’s to do with the disappearance of a boy.’
Reid looked at him shrewdly. ‘And you think the travellers are to blame?’
‘The same ones who’d been harassing your brother. We’re questioning a man called Thomas O’Sullivan.’
The mention of the name brought about another visible reaction in Reid’s face. His eyes were luminous under the gloom of the sky as he stared and stared at the detective, paralysed by fear. The moments passed. Whatever Daly hoped to get out of the interview, it was not his intention to terrify the politician into this state of abject silence.
‘Do you know the name?’
Eventually Reid recovered. ‘No, not at all.’ He pursed his lips primly. ‘I suggest you keep that investigation as far away from my doorstep as possible. We don’t want the press making the wrong connections and stirring up suspicions about the travelling community. Lord knows, they’ve suffered enough down through the years.’
‘Your brother’s complaints are a logical place to start. He may have met the people behind the boy’s disappearance. Perhaps the camp was hiding a dangerous predator, someone trying to avoid detection.’
Reid grimaced. ‘My brother never gave me a list of suspicious individuals, if that’s what you’re hoping to get.’ He strode off. ‘Be very careful how you proceed with this case, Inspector,’ he said.
The politician’s voice was calm and cordial, masking the threat, but the edge of menace still showed through. Daly could see that Reid was a seasoned negotiator. His mind was sharp and ranged far beyond this closet of grief, the bleak farm, and his brother’s vacant life, like a falcon scouting the paths that lay ahead.
‘Remember, Sammy’s death was an accident,’ said Reid. ‘Nothing to make a fuss about. These things happen to elderly farmers all the time.’
‘When a person dies after threats are made against him, then naturally there will be suspicions.’
This time Reid flashed Daly a look of irritation. ‘I wish I could help you more, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Right now I have to bury my brother. In the meantime, I’d be obliged if you would keep me informed of your investigation.’
‘It’s very likely that I will need to ask you more questions at some point in the future.’
‘I’ll do my best to answer them,’ he said stiffly, before leading Daly back to his car. A cold glint appeared in his eyes. ‘The more I think about it, the more I believe Sammy’s death was an abomination.’ He leaned close to Daly. ‘It was wrong for him to die in this way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘To die out of carelessness. It seems more of a sin against God and nature.’
Daly watched Reid through his rear-view window as he drove away. The fêted politician with his press officer skulking at the back door, and his BMW waiting for him. He looked like the temporary caretaker of a doomed building, eager to flee back to his gilded world, where political success would whisk him away from the troubling burdens of the past.
*
Daly sought a shortcut back to the motorway, travelling through a series
of border villages that were like garrison points, the derelict Protestant churches with their Union flags anchoring each stronghold amid streets of humble-looking shops and houses. He glanced at the broken silhouettes of abandoned police stations and the military fortifications that had once given these communities a sense of political prestige, but now, with the Troubles over, they looked in a much worse predicament. Their world was dying and these abandoned police stations and churches were icons of their extinction, whose ruin they were doomed to follow.
Daly drove on. He did not know if he was on the right track to get back to Lough Neagh. The landscape changed around him. The vague malaise that hung over the interlocking border parishes, the sense of a history and a people in flux, evaporated. The trees and little farmhouses seemed more rooted in place, contented and sane. The road veered south, and for miles there were no turns left or right. At first, he did not understand what the road meant. Why this melancholy feeling that it promised deliverance, a safe passage to a land without fracture or fraught history? He tried to get a grip on his surroundings but could not work out where he was.
He stopped the car, rolled down the window and listened to the hushed countryside. Which country was he in? Northern Ireland or the Republic, north or south? He drove back the way he had come. He passed a white X daubed in the middle of the road. It was a warning sign for army helicopters, marking where the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland ended. Inadvertently, he had slipped over the border into a different police jurisdiction, a different state, but somehow, deep down, he had known that he was leaving behind the wounded landscape of the North, where a frozen peace had covered over the troubling secrets of the past.
He found his way to the motorway and drove homewards, deep in thought. Back at his cottage, the wind had knocked his gate ajar and blown old leaves and twigs into the porch. The sound of crows settling down to roost formed a raucous backdrop to the silence of his home. There was no sign of his hen anywhere.
Entering the cottage, he heard a banging noise from the darkness within. He felt uneasy, detecting a chill in the air, a sense of trespass. He stepped around the shadowy furniture and found his torch. He flashed the light about and rested the beam at the trapdoor to the attic, watching spellbound as it shuddered with regular thuds as if a trapped and desperate intruder were jumping up and down upon it. He waited. The black hen crept in behind him, leaving muddy marks on the floor. He stared down at her and she looked straight back at him with unblinking eyes, as if to ask: What secrets have you kept hidden up there, what ghosts have you locked away from view? The trapdoor shook with even greater force, and the hen, startled into flight, stabbed itself at possible escape routes in the darkness. Daly found a sweeping brush and gingerly used the shaft to push open the trapdoor. It fell back with a bang and a strong breeze wafted on to Daly’s face. He stuck his head through and found the attic was empty. However, a large hole had appeared in the roof, through which the wind was blowing fiercely.
He crept under the rafters and inspected the extent of the damage. The action of repeated storms and roosting birds had been to blame, he surmised. He could see where the rain had also got in, forming a serpentine track of damp and mould along the attic floor. The bitter stench of decay filled his nostrils. He grimaced. He had too many things on his mind to deal with organizing repairs. It would probably mean moving out and living in a caravan on site while workers replaced the roof and fixed the ceiling. The house also needed insulating and replastering in places. The idea of the disruption left him feeling tired and depressed.
Later, lying on his bed, listening to the rain falling outside and leaking through the roof, he understood why, year after year, he had put off the idea of renovating the cottage or moving out completely. How could he rid himself of the one security he had left in his life, his link with the past and his parents? And now he risked losing even that, the very roof over his head. He had sentenced himself to be a prisoner of the house’s slow decay and collapse, unable to leave its cramped warren of rooms. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine a future in a brand-new house, one filled with the sound of playing children, but instead of reassuring him, his thoughts plunged him into a deeper anxiety. Whenever he willed his mind to dream up a more fulfilling life for himself, he kept returning to the same image. He saw himself trapped within the hedges of his father’s farm, confused and wandering, not knowing what age he was, whether he was a man or a boy, a troubled detective running after a wayward hen or a grieving child still searching for his dead mother.
The rain stopped and the wind picked up, churning through the trees that overshadowed the cottage. Daly’s mind settled eventually, listening to the branches toiling in the storm. The big oak tree in the garden sounded as though it was carrying an impossible load, its branches groaning with the force of the wind. He drifted off, thinking about his childhood, remembering lying on his little bed at night, his hands clasped behind his head, listening to the same trees lashing in the darkness. He had a sudden longing for the simplicity of those days, his boyish thoughts floating up, carefree and adventurous, with the sound of the tireless branches, all his adult worries and doubts drifting away, disappearing into another country entirely. His final thought, before he was carried off to sleep by the flights of his boyhood imagination, was what would his mother and father make of his absence when they awoke in the morning?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jack Hewson woke in the cold caravan after a poor night’s sleep. The traveller dogs that had been so friendly and docile during the day had barked viciously all night long, haunting his dreams with images of fanged mouths and wolf-like eyes. For a while, he lay under the heavy duvet, listening for sounds from the encampment as the dawn light crept under the curtains. A smell he had never experienced before filled his nostrils. The smell of outdoor skin and hair exposed to the sun and rain, a fugitive sense of not belonging that wafted through the cramped bedroom, and something else, darker and more thrilling: the scent of trespass. He thought about home, his bedroom packed with toys, gadgets and books, the enclosed walls, and the silent rooms below where his mother paced every evening, waiting for his father to return. Everything was different about his new abode, not least the fact that he had several sleeping companions.
He parted the curtains so he could see them more clearly. The arms of the other boys were brown and freckled, entangled together. He listened to their regular breathing, feeling envious of their easy sleep. From what he was able to understand, they were all brothers and cousins, nestled together, their bodies realigning in sleep with occasional kicks and groans. He had never before seen so many children share the one bed. This was his new family now, a ramshackle tribe hiding in a lonely corner of the border countryside. How long would he be able to stay with them? he wondered. How long before the police caught up with them?
Too unsettled to return to sleep, he slid from the bed and slipped out of the caravan. All was quiet outside. The travellers had parked along a dark winding lane that did not look as though it was going anywhere. Beyond the caravans, a mouldy-looking path disappeared into a pine forest. He walked past the slumbering dogs that now resembled perfectly behaved house pets. The only traveller awake was an old woman, who had been filling a black kettle with water from the river. When she saw him creep out of the camp, she blocked his path and grabbed him by the arm. Her dark eyebrows twisted across her wrinkled face, and a slight scent of urine wafted from her clothes. She squatted down in front of him, her lips hissing in anger, her eyes agitated.
‘I know why you’re here,’ she whispered in a venomous voice. ‘You’ve come to curse us all.’ She cuffed him over the head. ‘I’m taking you back to your own people, where you belong.’
He broke free from her grasp and ran into the forest. He hurried along a faint path, checking that she was not following, and eventually slowed to a rest. The darkness amid the pine trees was tinged with his fear over what the day might hold. However, in spite of his anxiety, the morni
ng felt more complete than any he had experienced in the company of his mother and father. The path resonated with mystery. This was the first time he had seen dawn breaking in a forest and he was awe-struck. He breathed in with relish, wading through deep shadows dappled with light that resembled an otherworldly path hovering above the actual trail. He hauled himself over the slippery trunk of a fallen tree into a secret patch of sunbeams. No one knows I am here, he thought. No one can see me. I am safe. His third night away from home was over, and he wondered with anticipation what adventures the forest might bring him.
The path joined a stream and then parted ways, breaking up in places with large rocks and the humps of old roots. His feet stumbled into crevices draped with spiders’ cobwebs. The gauze of sunlight hovering in the air fought with a deeper darkness below. In the contrast of shades, he found it difficult to make out the path. At one point, he saw a dark shadow detach itself from the columns of tree trunks, but he looked away and hurried on. The air was damp, filled with a mossy smell and the sound of hidden streams gurgling through the pine roots.
He walked on, feeling hungry. He had not had breakfast and his belly felt cold. He began to think of when he might see his mother and father again. At first light, the forest had felt like a refuge, but now, the more he thought about home, the more it began to feel like a trap, a maze to stop him from finding the way back to his parents. He stopped and, for a long while, looked behind at the route he had taken, memorizing every detail in case he got lost. He contemplated the possibility of finding his way home, thinking that somewhere beyond the forest the police would be roaming the roads along with his mother and father, searching desperately for him.
The sight of a gypsy teenager resting against a fallen-down tree startled him, even though the youth was gazing at him in an unthreatening manner. Jack looked all around, scanning the rows of tree trunks. If there were others, he could see no trace of them, but for all he knew, the forest could be hiding hundreds of invisible travellers in its gloom. The teenager smoked the butt of a cigarette, pulling a face as he took each drag, all the time gazing at the boy. The mirage of a path gleaming in the air disappeared, leaving Jack with a sense of abandonment. He approached the youth slowly, feeling the forest darken, the tentacles of its shadows reaching out towards him, a chilly spasm shooting through his body.
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