by Erin Hart
They’d have to find out more about Danny Brazil’s part in discovering the Loughnabrone hoard. Everyone had heard the rumors that there had been more to the hoard, that the Brazils hadn’t turned everything over to the museum. Ward wondered whether Danny and his brother had shared everything equally. He had sensed some tension when Dominic Brazil spoke about the farm. It wouldn’t be the first time that property had caused bitterness between family members, the kind of bitterness that sometimes led to murder. If Dominic had paid the brother for his share of the farm, where had all that money gone when Danny Brazil went into the bog? But if money was the motive, why go to such trouble—why not just bash him over the head, dump the body, and be done with it? No, the method suggested there was more to the story than simple money-grubbing. There were all the signs of sacrifice, and something in that smelled to Ward of revenge, of humiliation.
Another possible—though much less likely—theory was that Danny Brazil was a fallen hero, a champion cut down in his prime. Dr. Gavin’s mention of damaged or deformed sacrificial victims had brought that into Ward’s head. He thought about how seriously some of them took the hurling around here. You’d have thought it was their lives on the line with the outcome of a match. And what was sport, underneath, but a kind of sanitized, ritualized violence? Danny Brazil’s injury had probably cost his teammates the championship, the coveted McCarthy Cup…. Ward had never been that much interested in sport himself, but he thought of the faces he’d occasionally seen as a child—red faces contorted with pain and anger as a match slipped away. What was sport but a thin veneer over the factional fighting it had replaced—ritualized violence, bloody entertainment?
Everywhere around them, in religion, in sport, in politics and entertainment, were daily reminders of how quickly one could go from being carried on the shoulders of a jubilant crowd—greeted with palm fronds, as it were—to being reviled, cast down, crucified and torn to pieces. The pattern was too recognizable not to be seen. Blood lust he understood—someone pushed too far over a tipping point. What he couldn’t fathom was the conspiracy that made it possible to carry out and cover up an atrocity. But history was full of figures able to disconnect, to carry out horrific acts and still pose as decent family men.
They’d have to get back to the Brazils, dig a little deeper. Ward had a sense that Teresa Brazil and her husband knew more than they’d told him, with the husband’s illness providing an excuse when he didn’t feel like talking. And tomorrow he and Maureen could also start on Danny Brazil’s old hurling teammates, to see if they could shed some light on the man. The farm, the family, the hurling, the workshop… where else could Danny Brazil have got in over his head? Some of the seemingly ritual murders carried out recently had turned out to be drug-related executions. But illegal drugs—at least on the scale that usually accompanied killings—had been practically unknown in this area twenty-six years ago.
There were plenty of leads to follow on this one—too many. And many layers had settled over this murder in the years since the deed had been done. Who knew what would come up when they started probing around under the surface? Ward closed his coin album, placed it carefully back in the desk drawer, and turned the key in the lock.
15
Owen Cadogan drove to the abandoned storage shed at the edge of the Loughnabrone works and parked his car among the trees. He wasn’t terribly worried about being seen. No one used the back road anymore since the pipe factory had closed down a few years ago. Thirty years earlier, when the bog was in full production, they’d built a factory adjacent to the workshop, to make cement drainpipes for siphoning the water off the peat. The factory had closed once all the drains were laid. Eventually it would all be gone, he thought, and himself with it.
He unlocked the storage shed with a key from the chain on which he kept his office and car keys. This was where he and Ursula had met last summer, hastily and on the sly. The taste of those illicit encounters lingered on the back of his tongue. She’d felt the same kind of excitement, he knew; now she claimed it was over, that she’d moved on, and didn’t need him or want him anymore. After he’d spent the whole bloody winter dreaming of her, anticipating the next time.
He’d even started fantasizing about leaving Pauline, only to find out that what they’d done had meant nothing to Ursula. He had seen it in her eyes when she’d arrived this summer. He’d been a temporary diversion to her, nothing more. Anger and jealousy welled up in his throat, choking him. Nothing was over until he said it was over. He’d make sure she understood that.
No one else had a key to this building. He surveyed the small, crowded room, trying to keep alive the memory of how he’d felt there, looking at Ursula’s glistening face, certain in the knowledge that he’d made her feel something. He’d enjoyed having her in this place, not at all like the comfortable marriage bed, but hard, rough, and dangerous. A person might get hurt here.
Moonlight filtered through the filthy glass of the window. He looked down and saw his own handprint on a bag of cement stacked in the corner of the shed, evidence of where, a few months earlier, he’d stood with his trousers around his ankles, gasping and straining against her. He’d never done with his wife the things he did with Ursula. The intensity of the release he felt with her actually frightened him, made him feel that he was somehow abnormal. But once tasted, it had spurred a hunger that nothing else would fill. And now she was demeaning him further by making him beg for it, by holding his need over him like a club.
He went over those first few moments again, as he had a thousand times before. He’d given Ursula a lift home after some official function over in Birr. The Carlton Arms Hotel. He remembered almost nothing about the journey now; it had been wiped out, obliterated by what had happened when they arrived at her place, what he’d come to think of as his final moments as an ordinary man. When he’d pulled the car up the drive of her rented house, she’d reached over without a word and unzipped his trousers. They’d both been half pissed, but not completely out of their heads, and he hadn’t said no. How different everything would be now if he had.
After that night, they’d met almost daily in this old supply shed. There had been a few other places as well: in the woods bordering the canal, and once—only once, and most spectacularly—right out in the middle of the bog, on the sweet, yielding surface of a fresh peat stockpile under a full moon. That time had been so intense he’d thought he was having a heart attack, or a stroke at the very least.
Trying to re-create the intensity of that night, he’d emptied a dozen or more bags of peat moss onto the floor. Over the peat he’d draped woolen blankets. He now gathered them up and took them to the door and shook each one vigorously, until no more dust emanated with each snap of the rough fabric. When he had arranged the blankets once more, he stepped back and surveyed the scene. It was like a nest, an animal’s lair. Perhaps that was why he’d never been able to recapture those few ecstatic moments out under the broad mantle of sky.
From behind a stack of cement bags, Cadogan coaxed a large metal toolbox. He flipped the latch to open the lid. No one had touched these things for a long time, the handcuffs, the velvet hood, the silk scarves. It was just games, he’d told himself, just elaborate playacting. Harmless, really. And it had all started innocently enough, when the necktie he’d taken off had become the rope in a playful tug-of-war. It was Ursula who’d suggested going further; he’d had to be talked into it. But the craving was within him now, had wormed its way into his mind like a sinister, corrupting force. He’d become an animal, a monster.
He took out the hood, felt the velvet fabric with his fingertips, and slipped it over his head, flushing with the memory of how Ursula had made use of it, teasing him to within an inch of his life. She might be finished with him, but he certainly wasn’t finished with her. He pulled the hood off and put it back in the toolbox, then went to the door and flicked the light switch. The shed was well illuminated in the daytime, but he had to make sure he would have light at night. He
counted the steps it took to get from the door to the makeshift bed. He threaded a strong cord through the leather cuffs. She wouldn’t be able to wriggle free and evade him so easily here. He could talk to her all he liked. And he’d be gentle at first. But he’d make sure she felt his anger. She’d told him many times that she deserved to be hurt, and in this he was now more than willing to oblige.
Above the blankets was a shelf unit, through which was slung an assortment of hemp ropes and chains they’d rigged up to use with the cuffs. All very effective for his purposes. There was no danger the shelf would come down; he’d anchored it to the concrete wall himself, with six-inch bolts. He pulled one of the silk scarves from the toolbox, sliding it through his hands, pulling it taut. At first this had all been just a fantasy, but as he’d imagined it more and more, it had taken on a life of its own, and become a reality—or at least a possibility, and then a plan. She wouldn’t suspect; it was nothing they hadn’t tried before. He felt a frisson of excitement, thinking about the look that would come into her eyes when she realized that things were not going to go as they always had before, with her in charge.
Cadogan wound up the silk scarf and stuffed it into his pocket. Everything was ready. He walked slowly to the door, carefully going over all the details in his mind, then turned off the lights and locked the door behind him. No one would get into this place—or out of it—in a hurry.
The thought had crossed his mind a few times that perhaps she’d found someone else. If that was the case, he ought to warn the poor sod, before it was too late. It was too late for him, he knew—too late to go back to his former innocence. But what was done was done, and he’d never been one to wallow in misfortune. When something was finished, he forgot about it. He would forget about Ursula, too, as soon as he’d finished with her.
16
The fire was not difficult to start, given the recent dry weather. Charlie Brazil watched the flames leap higher as they consumed his broken frames, the bits of scutch he’d been saving for this night. The bullock he’d tied to the tree nearby lowed softly, alarmed by the fire’s scent. Charlie leaned over to pick up a cup from the ground, and reached into his pocket for a penknife. He approached the frightened animal, moving slowly and speaking softly to allay its fears.
“You’re all right, now. It’ll all be over soon. Just keep still.” The nervous bullock stamped its feet and eyed Charlie suspiciously as he inched nearer. He made a small but deep incision above the animal’s left foreleg, and held the cup to the wound to collect the blood that flowed from it. When the cup was half-full, he pulled it away; the blood continued, coursing in a small stream down the bullock’s leg. Charlie set his cup on the ground and reached into his pocket for a folded paper packet. He opened it and took out a flattened tangle of spider silk, and pressed it firmly against the wound. The bullock’s dark brown eyes shone in the moonlight.
He returned to the fire, feeling its heat against his face and chest and thighs. He dipped his first three fingers into the blood and sprinkled the warm liquid into the fire, repeating the motion three times. The droplets sizzled as they came in contact with the flames. He murmured the old charm:
Three over me,
Three below me,
Three in the earth,
Three in the air,
Three in heaven,
Three in the great pouring sea.
Then he poured the remaining liquid into the blaze and heard it hiss and sputter. He sat, knees drawn up to his chest, imagining that he saw fires on other hilltops in the distance, waiting for the flames to die down. By what he did tonight, he was making sure that Ursula Downes could not harm him, or anyone else, ever again.
17
The thudding music from the next room was giving Rachel Briscoe another grinding headache. She checked the clock; not time yet. Better to wait until after twelve, when it was really and truly dark. She closed her eyes and lay still, trying to quiet the thoughts, the colors and shapes that moved in her head.
The beat of the music coaxed her memory back to the spring. She’d been lying in bed at university, her windows open for the first time in the year. She’d emerged from sleep in darkness, to a noise coming from outside and above her bedroom window, a deep guttural sound. An animal, she’d thought at first. Then the cries had started to come faster and faster. When she’d realized what they really were—human noises, not animal—she’d felt embarrassed, repelled, fascinated. It had lasted only a few seconds, then all was quiet. People said it was a beautiful thing—but how could it ever be beautiful, she wondered, all that thrashing and howling like beasts? Her stomach knotted, remembering the disgust she’d felt. It remained one of the profound mysteries, what made men and women want to do those things to one another. But the worst thing was pretending that it was driven by love.
At eight minutes past twelve, Rachel got to her feet and looked around the room, surveying all it contained: a bed, a chair, a desk; herself and her rucksack. Nothing to tell anyone anything about her—no books, no music, no pictures. Only a few articles of clothing, a small clock, and some toiletries, all of which fit into her rucksack. She had to leave this room each night prepared never to return. And yet, so far, she always had returned, unable to let this part of her life go as eventually she must.
As she pulled on her jacket, she felt the pendulous weight of the binoculars in one pocket, her torch in the other—her two touchstones in this whole strange affair. She felt safer with them bumping against her legs. She checked to make sure no one was in the hallway, then left her room, shutting the door behind her. She would have locked it, if only she’d had the key. She passed the sitting room, seeing that Trish and Sarah were completely absorbed in some insipid pop-music program. They didn’t give a toss what she did. It was the three lads who thought her strange, who couldn’t resist slagging her, and who were probably puzzled by her total lack of interest in them. They had no way of knowing that she was here for reasons completely different from their own.
She quietly lifted her waterproofs from the hook and left the house by the kitchen door, careful to lock up after herself. Once outside, she struck out along the narrow lane, staying close to the verge so that she could avoid the headlights of any oncoming car, but sure there would be none. This road was dead quiet at night. A short distance down the lane, she climbed up and over a large metal gate, sinking into the soft ground churned up by the cattle that congregated there each morning and evening. She followed the field’s bushy perimeter—a short, familiar walk over the hill, fifty yards this way, another thirty yards that way—until she came to the gap in the hedge. She ducked under, sure of her footing after treading the same path each night for the past couple of weeks.
Rachel began to feel the knot in her chest loosen as she approached her destination. She’d imagined it would be hard to live in secret. But she’d been shocked at how easy it was, how like second nature it had become for her to lie to people’s faces. Perhaps it was more difficult when you were spurred by baser motivations. She felt herself to be above all that; it was love that was driving her, after all. This nightly trek was her own act of devotion, her own private pilgrimage. She always made sure no one saw her go out. And she had always made it back to the house before morning. But the late nights were beginning to take their toll, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to maintain these sojourns forever. It had to come to an end, and soon. Perhaps tonight she’d have the courage to act. She tried to imagine what she would say, what Ursula would say, what they would both do, but she could not envision the scene. The future loomed empty ahead of her, beyond the point of confrontation, that precipice. She’d never pushed herself to a place like this before, and it was both frightening and exhilarating. She began to acknowledge that tiny flame inside her that relished the prospect that lay before her, the unknown, dangerous place she was about to tread.
Working with Ursula every day, watching her, studying her, was a chance she’d never even dared to imagine. She’d applied at the firm not
even hoping for a spot on this dig, at least not right away. But it had fallen into place: first one of the archaeologists had got appendicitis just before work was to begin, and then her own application had been top of the heap when the position was to be filled. She couldn’t have planned it better had she schemed and plotted for years. That had to mean something.
Rachel reached her place outside Ursula’s house. She was sweating; her armpits and the small of her back felt clammy under her dark anorak. Taking the binoculars from her pocket, she let herself imagine briefly what her mother would say if only she could see her now. Rachel saw her mother’s face, pale and luminous, beautiful as she herself had never been, never would be now. She cut off the thought, before any hint of disappointment was visible in her mother’s face, before those lovely lips could utter her name.
The spot she’d come to was directly above and behind Ursula’s house. She had a perfect view into the kitchen and the bedroom, the one where Ursula slept. The bathroom window was pressed glass, a translucent pattern through which Ursula’s toweled head was sometimes visible after her nightly bath. Rachel knelt on the bed of leaves she’d arranged to make the spot more comfortable. She had been lucky in the weather. This summer had been incredibly dry so far; she’d only been rained on once—a minor miracle. She lifted the binoculars and focused on the kitchen table. An open bottle of red wine was there, as usual. No glass, though; she must have it with her. Rachel swung the binoculars from window to window, looking for Ursula’s form or any sign of movement. She might be in the bath. But she usually brought the bottle if she was going to have a long soak. Rachel focused in on the bottle on the kitchen table. It was newly opened; probably Ursula had just gone into the bedroom and would return to the kitchen soon. She decided to settle in. She had waited so long for this opportunity, and everything was going so well, just as she had planned; what need was there to rush? She could certainly bide her time for another few minutes.
