Jack had expected unusual robes, ancient symbols, or ornate statues for the ceremony, but the men had brought nothing else with them, and were dressed in their everyday clothing, their faces sullen, unshaven, and downcast. The only thing that suggested the ritual was about to begin, or had already started, was the silence, so grave that it hung in the air, heavier than the grey smoke drifting from the fire and through which their eyes glimmered and watched Jack.
A rooster crowed and the nearby roar of someone trying to start a motorbike punctuated the air. A shower of sparks rose to the pale blue sky that only a few hours ago had seemed to promise Jack a world washed clean of fear.
One of the older gypsies leaned towards his ear. ‘You’re a brave little bastard,’ he said with a dangerous smile. Through his opened shirt cuffs, Jack could see an ugly set of tattoos roping the sinews of his muscular arms. He squeezed the boy’s neck. ‘You have to stay in sight. We must be ready to move camp at a moment’s notice. The country folk and their police are on edge. If they find you, they’ll lock us all up.’
The man had a thickset neck, and his head moved tightly, peering at Jack’s face like a turtle’s.
‘What were you doing, skulking in the forest?’
Jack tried to squirm away.
‘Next time you try to run away, we’ll lock you in the boot of a car.’
A voice leaned towards his other ear. Another man with a sodden moustache, shirtless in the morning sun, his body oily and hairy. ‘Why did you run away, Jack?’ he asked.
He did not know there had to be a reason.
‘Don’t you understand why you’re here?’
‘No.’
‘Your father has been asking some very dangerous questions. Putting pressure on powerful people. It’s better you stay with us, for your own safety.’
But he had two parents to protect him and a safe home. Why did he need more protection? The men began whispering together, their cheeks flushed and their eyes glinting.
‘What are we going to do with him?’
‘The boy has the key.’
‘The key to what?’
‘The secret that will make us all rich.’
‘He’s the son of country people. He hasn’t been initiated.’
‘But he’s only a child. He’s not ready for the ceremony.’
‘There are things he’s not allowed to know.’
‘What about the father? Shouldn’t he be here, too?’
‘We don’t need the father; all we need is the boy. And his blood.’ The speaker turned to Jack with a smirking face.
‘This is a dark business you’re getting us into,’ said one of the men, spitting. ‘The boy will get in the way. He’ll make us hunted men.’
‘Think of him as business,’ said the one who seemed to be in charge. ‘A new line in smuggled goods. What he can give us is more valuable than lorryloads of cigarettes and alcohol.’
The leader began speaking softly in a language Jack did not understand. He wielded a bottle of spirits in the air and poured the contents on to the ground. The other men looked on with satisfaction as though an important part of the ritual had been conducted.
An old woman appeared through the smoke and squatted in front of the fire. Jack was sure he had never seen her before, but still she looked oddly familiar. She began scattering leaves and a fine black powder into the flames, all the time murmuring some sort of prayer or chant.
‘Where are you?’ shouted the old woman.
There was nothing in the air but dark trails of smoke and the light of the morning sun competing with the blazing fire.
‘Where are you?’
The old woman grew more distressed. Someone should take her away, thought Jack. Stop her from burning herself in the flames.
‘Where are you?’ She stared about her with a blind look of grief, her eyes begging for release.
‘Who are you searching for?’ asked one of the men in a strangely disembodied voice.
‘I’m searching for my daughter,’ she shouted back, her voice cracking with emotion. Tears streamed down her soot-covered cheeks. One of the children next to Jack stared at him through the smoke. He had the disquieting feeling that he was on the brink of some great danger. The child’s eyes seemed to be trying to warn him.
‘Those dark shadows, it’s her.’ The leader was looking at the smoke in a weird way, his features hard and impersonal.
‘Who?’ asked one of his companions.
‘Her spirit.’
‘Who is she?’
A crow hovered out of the leaden air, croaked and then disappeared.
‘The young woman those bastards murdered.’ The gypsy’s voice was hoarse, barely audible.
Jack struggled to his feet, alarmed by the conversation, the growing intensity of the fire, and the overwhelming cloud of smoke. Soot settled like thick black powder on his legs and arms. The ceremony was beyond him; beyond anything he had experienced or could understand.
‘Don’t go anywhere, son,’ said one of the men behind him, placing his meaty hands on his shoulders and neck.
‘They took her away and attacked her,’ said the gypsy leader. ‘When they came back they said she had ran off and disappeared. Those bastards killed her but never owned up to it.’
Jack’s throat burned with the smoke. He did not want to hear any more, but the hands had him clamped in place. He huddled closer to the other boys, feeling the men’s eyes boring into his back. He could not bear the fear that rose within him. The comforting nearness of the traveller children’s skinny bodies was the only refuge he had left. Ashes swarmed out of the blaze like plump white grubs and his eyes began to stream with the sting of smoke.
‘May God take away her killers’ strength and pleasure,’ said the lead gypsy in a murderous voice. ‘May sterility deprive them of children.’
‘May the poisonous winds strike their bellies and make them ill with deadly diseases,’ said another.
‘May they die in horrible agony.’
‘May the earth go red with their blood.’
Jack listened to the disconcerting flow of curses, his vision breaking up under the constant veil of smoke and heat. He tried to stand on his feet but immediately felt dizzy. The face of one of the travellers reeled towards him, his lips curling to reveal dark shiny gums and the stumps of blackened teeth. The air filled with the loud flapping noise of birds’ wings, or was it people clapping in a frenzy?
‘I see you, daughter. I’m following you now,’ shouted the old woman. In a spurt of energy, she gathered up her skirts and disappeared into the smoke-filled forest. One by one, the circle of men rose, too, and followed her path.
‘Your journey has finally begun,’ someone whispered in Jack’s ear and hauled him behind the procession. In his confusion, he thought he smelled his mother’s perfume, the distant smell of home and safety. He found it hard to believe that the world of his parents still existed, that it had not been make-believe or a dream, as he stumbled into the cold hollows of the forest. He did not know his new family at all, or what they had planned for him at the end of this dangerous path, and he feared that by the time they returned he would never be able to find the traces of the way back home.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The interview with Rebecca left Daly hungry, eager to find out more about the travellers and their connections with Harry Hewson. He had not felt so determined to succeed in months, but the intensity of the investigation and the lack of any firm leads as to Jack’s whereabouts also left him vulnerable to old weaknesses, frailties that might break him: guilt, self-blame and his growing emotional attachment to the boy’s distressed mother. He worried that it was his fault the team were no closer to finding the child. He wanted to galvanize his officers, make up for any lack of confidence they might have in him as a leader, feed them with as many clues and as much evidence as possible, forgetting in his worry that a good investigative team needed to be kept hungry and encouraged to think on their own.
Da
ly kept cajoling his team, hauling them through a blur of false leads and misinformation. There had been sightings of the boy reported as far away as Greece and Turkey. Spirits grew low and tempers short as the searches for the McGinns and their camper van became repetitive and exhausting.
To the detriment of his deteriorating mental state, Daly missed his first appointment with the police psychologist. He had been making good time on his way to see her in Armagh but deep down he had not been looking forward to her helpful interrogation. He had visited her six months before and remembered with a shudder the gentleness and patience of her questions, and how his mind, soaked in professional anxieties, had gripped convulsively at silence. She had gently urged his confession, his confidence, encouraging him to talk about the secrets of his heart, his past, his dreams, anything at all, while the real questions bunched up behind her, filling the silence like brooding ghosts. Questions like who are you? Can you be trusted? What makes you want to be a police detective after all you have discovered in your past? What exactly are your allegiances?
When he had come up with replies to her inquiries, his voice cut off before finishing, making his answers sound broken and child-like.
Thus, when he caught a glimpse of Rebecca Hewson in the graveyard of Maghery church, something made him pull his car into the church grounds and park by the gates. He did not mean to spy but a part of him felt powerfully drawn to the sight of her quick figure, roaming along the graveyard’s grid of paths like a caged creature, unable to find a way out. So preoccupied was she that she failed to notice his car, or his hunched figure at the wheel. The sight of her downcast face turned his frustration over the slowness of the investigation into despair, as if he were personally responsible for her sadness. She paused, glanced at her watch and dashed through the doors of the church, as though she might suddenly be late for an appointment. At the holy water font, Daly saw her right hand glide across her chest and shoulders, more a gesture of personal reassurance than the act of blessing, as her head drooped forward. He felt a pang of compassion in his chest, contemplating the sinking weight of her sadness.
He fiddled with his ignition keys, shifted the gearstick in its socket. He ought to make tracks to see the therapist. After all, his attendance had been one of the requirements of his return to full duties, but instead, he slipped out of the car and into the darkness of the church as if drawn on a leash.
It was Lent, and the priest had just finished the Stations of the Cross. An elderly congregation with a few young mothers drifted out of the church. Daly lingered at the back while Rebecca took a pew close to the altar and knelt down, covering her face with her hands. Daly’s eyes slipped away to the sides of the church and the pictures of Christ’s suffering hanging on the walls. He stared at the face of Jesus, full of arresting passion, the eyes demanding promises that he could never keep. Not so different from Rebecca’s gaze, he thought. How did one console someone in her predicament? he wondered. What use were reassuring words or false promises? All he could do was keep his silence in mute adoration, as if she were an apparition of grief, rather than a real woman of flesh and blood.
Rebecca glanced round, checking the empty pews behind her. Daly shifted sideways behind a large pillar, positioning himself as though he were playing a game of hide and seek. She was going through the difficult emotions of guilt and fear, and he felt he should not interfere. Sometimes, detective work was about making oneself invisible. He sat down and waited. The silence within the church felt strange, a towering emptiness. His eyes closed over, and his hearing reached out to the sound of her breathing, which came in rapid gasps. What did he detect in her breathlessness that so intrigued him? Not anxiety, something more like anticipation, as though she were awaiting some sort of revelation.
Trying to hide was what Daly normally did in church, anyway. He sat very still behind the broad pillar, keeping his eyes closed, trying to empty his mind. Was this not the best form of therapy? To make oneself disappear, empty oneself of every thought and attachment, and pretend that one no longer existed. He covered his eyes with his hands and began rubbing them. Like a hooded man, his mind reached out with his hearing, crossing the silent space of the church. A startlingly clear image of Rebecca’s face popped into his mind, her dark eyebrows framing a pair of eyes flaring with emotion, her terrible but beautiful look of loss.
He would much rather stay here, he realized, than hurry to the psychologist’s office, forced to spend the best part of an hour staring at the unchanging carpet, wrestling with the armour of his silence. At least I can do this, he thought, listen intently rather than talk. He was an expert in silences, and the refuge they provided for the troubled and guilt-stricken, and the church, like the courthouse, was full of those little spaces in which people could feel safely alone, even doubting souls like Daly, trapped in the no man’s land between faith and scepticism. For a moment, he thought about returning to Mass to follow this year’s Lenten rites. He glanced up at the Stations of the Cross, and the images of Christ’s final hours of suffering. ‘Come to me,’ the imploring face of Jesus seemed to say to him. ‘Turn your faithful attention back to me. I’ve been waiting all your adult life for your return. Stop putting it off.’ But Daly remained resistant. His heart did not move. He stared at his watch and counted the minutes as they ticked by.
He thought of drawing closer to Rebecca’s seat, perhaps a few pews behind. He hesitated and then thought better of it. She might be disturbed by the idea that he had followed her into church. He was about to leave when the click-clack of her heels echoing in the empty church made him freeze. Still hidden from view, he listened as she walked over to a side altar, and confidently inserted some coins into the candle box. He resisted the temptation to look around the stone pillar. After a while, she returned to her pew, the rhythm of her steps slowing a little, but sounding no less decisive, as though she was determined not to feel dejected. She began praying, her voice low and even, reciting a rosary of Hail Marys.
She broke into what sounded like a stifled cough, and then the tone of her voice changed. There was wildness in it, an intensity, as though she were having a whispered argument with someone. He thought he understood her emotional shift, the despair raging below the smooth surface. She stopped and, for the length of several heartbeats, the quietness in the church deepened. She seemed to have lost the ability to string another prayer together. He felt moved. Something in him wanted to throw himself upon her hungry silence and satisfy the maternal fear and guilt he detected there. He would have allowed her, in the wildness of her thwarted love for her son, to tear at his very bones, if it helped. But then another voice whispered back, startling Daly, in lower, slightly hoarse tones.
This time he did look round the pillar. An old traveller woman dressed in a shawl had knelt beside Rebecca, and the two of them were now engaged in a hushed conversation. Rebecca’s voice grew louder, shakier, and some of her words became distinct.
‘I don’t want to know my future; I just want to know where my son is.’
‘Different places… never the same twice.’ The old woman’s voice came to Daly in fragments. She was talking in riddles, trying to tell Rebecca something, but not daring to say it clearly.
‘I don’t understand why you need him.’ Rebecca’s whisper penetrated the silence of the church.
‘He has a special gift… no ordinary boy.’
What gift was she referring to? wondered Daly. Clairvoyance, second sight? What need would the travellers have for a ten-year-old boy? What did he have to give that was so precious they had to take him away from his parents?
‘Your husband has to tell you his part… the start of the story… A debt has never been settled.’
‘But Harry has left me,’ said Rebecca coldly. ‘Oh God, I can’t go through with this. You must let me see him.’
The old woman whispered something about a plan and the vital role that Jack would play in it. They were relying on her for the plan to run smoothly.
Daly ste
pped out from behind the pillar. Neither of them heard him, so engrossed were they in the conversation. The elderly woman had risen to her feet, and Rebecca was holding on to her arm with a pleading look on her face.
‘We’re trying to help you,’ said the old woman. ‘Please let go.’ She seemed intent on giving nothing else away. ‘You’ll get a phone call every second day.’ There was a finality about her voice. ‘Don’t try to follow me or you’ll risk your son’s life.’
Daly watched her hurry up the central aisle towards the doors. Immediately, he saw right through her. He heard it, the false note ringing in her voice. He would have to follow her and forget about Rebecca for the moment. He slipped out of his pew and pursued her through the church doors. Almost immediately, she sensed his presence and quickened her pace. All trace of frailty and age seemed to vanish from her figure, her steps becoming firm and quick.
When Daly emerged, there was no sign of the old woman. She seemed to have miraculously disappeared. Then he heard the crunch of gravel and the squeak of a gate as she marched into the graveyard. He shouted for her to stop and she looked back, throwing him a sharp, shrewd glance before breaking into a run, gathering up her long skirts to reveal a pair of muddy trainers.
A mourner who’d been kneeling at a grave stood up and tried to block her path, but she sidestepped him, knocking against his shoulder. A slight collision, but enough to knock off her shawl and wig to reveal a much younger woman, running hard now, weaving her way through the jumble of gravestones. Daly vaulted the low wall and tried to cut her off before she reached the road, but getting his own legs to match her pace and agility was becoming problematic for him.
A white van swung alongside the boundary wall, and speeded up beside the traveller woman. A beckoning arm reached out of the back of the vehicle and, with a sureness of feet that would have been breathtaking in a circus horse show, the woman leaped into the accelerating van. Within moments, a yawning gap opened up between Daly and the vehicle. Soon it was disappearing out of sight, leaving him a solitary figure standing in the middle of the road. He felt more bereft when he returned, out of breath, to the church and found that Rebecca was also leaving in a hurry. He glimpsed the whisk of her dark coat pulled after her as she slammed the car door shut. Oblivious to his panting presence, she drove off at speed.
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