by Erin Hart
“Here it is,” Cormac said. “A shield boss, part of the Loughnabrone hoard.” Nora looked over his shoulder and saw a photograph that matched the drawing exactly. She thought of all the other drawings, probably at least ten or twelve of them, that Charlie Brazil had in his tin box.
“I have an idea,” she said. She ran to get her mobile, and scrolled through the memory until she found Niall Dawson’s home number. She heard his familiar voice over the background noise of children chasing one another, breathless with laughter. She could imagine them in the back garden of the Dawsons’ house in Sandymount, getting ready to take the food off the barbeque, and the sound of normal life suddenly made her feel like weeping.
“Niall, it’s Nora Gavin. I know it’s the weekend, and I’m calling to ask a favor. I’m wondering if there’s any way I can get a complete list of all the items found in the Loughnabrone hoard.” She waited for a moment, while the children’s voices carried on in the background. “I wouldn’t ask, Niall, except that I think it could be vitally important.”
“No, I’m happy to oblige, Nora. It’s just that I’m a little astonished, because you’re the second person in two days to ask for an itemized inventory of the Loughnabrone objects. I faxed the same list off to Ursula Downes yesterday evening.”
Book Four
DEVOTE TO DEATH
…in such cases they devote to death a human being and plunge a dagger into him in the region of the diaphragm, and when the stricken victim has fallen they read the future from the manner of his fall and from the twitching of his limbs as well as from the gushing of his blood…
—the Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus, writing about the Druids in the first century B.C.
1
Ward drove out to Illaunafulla on Saturday morning in bad humor. Rachel Briscoe had not turned up at her lodgings in Offaly or in Dublin, so he’d arranged for a ground search of the area around Loughnabrone, starting in Ursula Downes’s back garden where the girl’s binoculars had been found. So far, however, the search arrangements had not been progressing satisfactorily. There was too little manpower available, and it was taking too much time to mobilize and organize the extra officers and volunteers. Nothing was going right. A contingent of men would have to be sent to Ferbane, where the Leinster Fleadh Cheoil was on this weekend. The once-a-year regional traditional music competition meant extra security would be needed, since the town would be overflowing with people in the pubs and on the streets, and unguarded handbags and musical instruments would be ripe for the picking. And to top everything off, after a near-record fortnight of fine weather, a slanting rain had begun to fall.
“They’re all assembled, Liam.” Maureen Brennan leaned in through the car window he’d cracked open. “Waiting for your instructions. I told them to wait in the shed, around the back, to keep out of the rain while they could.” Low, shifting gray clouds moved silently across the sky, making the space between heaven and earth seem even narrower than usual.
Someone had set up a table in the hayshed, a sheet of plywood over a couple of sawhorses, and Ward set to rolling out the maps while Maureen gathered the collected force around. Several held steaming cups of tea, and one or two stubbed out their cigarettes at the entrance as they turned to follow Ward under the curved sheet-metal roof. They gathered around the makeshift table, their lean faces reminding him of his own first years as a Guard. There were a few more women here than when he’d started out—a good thing.
He said, “Some of you may know that yesterday morning, just beyond the wall in the back garden here, we found a pair of binoculars belonging to Rachel Briscoe. She’s not been seen now for more than twenty-four hours, and her employer has officially reported her as missing. Rachel Briscoe is twenty-two years of age. She’s five feet, six inches tall, and has long dark brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a dark blue hooded anorak, jeans, and blue and gray trainers. Distinguishing marks may include some healed scars on the hands or wrists. Here’s the photograph from her company-issued identity card.” He passed a stack of computer-printed photos to Maureen to hand out to the search party.
Ward unrolled the Ordnance Survey map he’d brought along. The Grand Canal ran east-west along the top half of the paper; on the eastern edge of the map was the bridge at Carrigahaun. The map showed all the ancient monuments, ringforts and tower houses, monasteries and holy wells. He showed them where they were, the farmyard marked carefully on the map, and pointed out the bright yellow line he’d highlighted around the area they would search. He looked up at their concerned faces and saw that it didn’t matter that most of them didn’t know this girl. They’d search for her, seeing in her place their own sisters, their own daughters, and praying that she would be found, alive and well.
Once the searchers had set out, Ward stood in the shelter of the shed behind Ursula Downes’s house and watched the line of uniformed Guards in their yellow rain gear inch up the hill. The line moved slowly, foraging in the long grass, using sticks to poke into the hedgerows and undergrowth. It was going to be a very long day. The heavy clouds seemed only feet off the ground and the rain had started to come down harder—a desperate, soaking rain, just as they were beginning the search in earnest.
He remembered taking part in just such a search as a young Garda—a profession his educated family had disdained, a job for plodders and born civil servants. He’d been part of a line just like this one, stretched across a forested hillside in the Wicklow mountains, searching for a woman who’d been missing for six days. The sun had been shining that day, and he remembered the sound his fellow officers’ feet had made as they worked their way up the slope. And he remembered what they’d eventually found. He couldn’t remember what he’d noticed first; perhaps the peculiar odor of death, then the still, silent form, and the way the dappled light strayed across the woman’s mottled skin amid the verdant undergrowth. He hoped none of his officers would have a similar experience today.
2
Nora awakened on the sofa in the sitting room, and heard Cormac rustling around in the kitchen. Niall Dawson’s fax had come in shortly after their call to him the evening before, and they’d worked into the wee hours looking through the records of the Loughnabrone hoard. To see the whole list of items recovered was astonishing; the hoard was an unparalleled cache of Iron Age swords and daggers and spearpoints. All that beautiful ancient scrollwork still snaked across her drowsy consciousness. They’d have to bring Charlie Brazil’s drawings to the police, she knew, but it would be so much better if only they could bring some other useful information as well.
“It’s nearly eleven o’clock,” Cormac said from the kitchen. “Fancy a trip into town? We can have some lunch there.”
Forty minutes later they walked into the bar at Coughlan’s and took a table near the window. Desmond Quill sat only a few tables away, staring into his coffee, looking as if he’d spent the previous twenty-four hours gazing at the bottom of a whiskey glass. He probably had, Nora thought, considering the state she’d seen him in yesterday afternoon. Everything about him—the slumped posture, the deep lines in his face, the pain that flowed from his downcast eyes—whispered devastation and loss. The plate of food before him looked untouched. It was as if the other restaurant patrons knew what he’d been through and, fearing the contagion of death, were determined to keep a safe distance.
Cormac must have noticed her looks in Quill’s direction. “Do you know him, Nora?”
“Not really. I met him for the first time yesterday. Desmond Quill; he was Ursula’s—” She stopped, not knowing what to call him. Friend? Lover? Companion? None of those designations seemed adequate, given the visible depth of the man’s grief.
Cormac seemed to understand. “Poor fella.”
Nora felt tempted to tell Cormac more about her conversation with Quill the previous afternoon, but she held off, feeling that to do so might violate Quill’s confidence.
Their lunch had just arrived when Nora looked up to find Quill approac
hing the table.
“You asked if there was anything you could do,” he said to her, picking up where their conversation had left off the day before. “You said you would help me if you could.” He turned slightly to look at Cormac, his bluntly handsome features pulled downward in an expression of puzzlement. “You look familiar; I’m sorry if I don’t know you. Desmond Quill.”
“I don’t think we’ve met,” Cormac said, taking Quill’s hand. “Cormac Maguire. Nora told me you were Ursula’s friend. I’m very sorry for your trouble.”
Quill nodded once, accepting the condolence. If Cormac had been one of the men Ursula had mentioned by name, it didn’t seem to register. Quill put his hand on the back of the chair beside Nora. “May I?”
She gestured for him to sit, curious about what had brought him over to speak to them.
“I’ve just remembered something Ursula told me, about the place where she used to meet Owen Cadogan. I don’t know where it was—somewhere out on the bog; a rough sort of a shed filled with bags of peat moss and dry concrete. Could be any one of a dozen places, I suppose.”
“Have you told Detective Ward about it?”
“I left a message, but he’s out on a search, they tell me, looking for a young woman gone missing—one of the girls on Ursula’s crew. No one’s seen her since late Thursday evening. A couple of Guards came ’round and asked me about her this morning.” He raised hollow eyes to look at Nora. “It’s like a nightmare, all this. A nightmare. I don’t know anyone here. I don’t know this place. But I wondered if you knew anyone who might recognize the building from that description. I don’t know what else to do. I’m going mad sitting here, and if I could just find something, some little piece that would help the police find the person who killed her—” His right hand flew up to cover his eyes for a moment, and he stood to leave. “I’ll go now; I won’t stay and disrupt your meal. But if you know anyone who could help me, please…it’s all I’d ask of you.” His red-rimmed eyes held a desperate, silent plea. Without waiting for Nora’s answer, he turned and walked away.
She waited until Quill was out of the bar before speaking. “Ursula told him that Owen Cadogan had been harassing her since she broke off the relationship. I think he believes Cadogan killed Ursula, but he can’t prove anything. You know the area—do you have any idea about the place he was talking about?”
“There are dozens of Bord na Mona buildings at Loughnabrone. It could be any one of them. Nothing comes immediately to mind, but his description was pretty sketchy. What was he saying about the missing girl?”
“That’s the first I’ve heard of it. Did they ask about her when you were in for questioning?”
“They did, actually, but the name didn’t mean anything to me.”
“What name?” She knew before he said it.
“Rachel Briscoe.”
“I gave her a lift home the other night, Cormac, and she dropped something in the car. It turned out to be an overdue notice from the Pembroke Library in Ballsbridge—but it wasn’t addressed to Rachel Briscoe; it was sent to someone named Rachel Power.”
It was Cormac’s turn for astonishment. “Rachel Power? You’re absolutely sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I can show you the letter—it’s still in my car back at the house. I was going to give it back to Rachel yesterday morning, but I forgot all about it when I found Ursula. Why—does the name Rachel Power mean something to you?”
“It’s a long, complicated story,” Cormac said.
“Tell me.”
“I have to say first that I never really knew how much of the story was true and how much was exaggerated, or even outright fabricated. I don’t think anyone really knew but the people involved, and they weren’t talking. I had a colleague at the university years ago, Tom Power. An outstanding archaeologist, one of the best scholars I’ve ever known. But he suffered terribly from depression. Used to go into these downward spirals that lasted for weeks. He got involved with Ursula in one of his really down periods. That much I know is true, because he told me himself. A moment of weakness, he said. He felt rotten about deceiving his wife, and he wanted to break off with Ursula; he knew it had been a terrible mistake. But by that point he couldn’t figure out how to extricate himself. He tried several times, but she wouldn’t let him go—threatened to tell his wife.”
“What happened?”
“This is the part I only heard second- and third-hand. I don’t know how much is true.”
“Tell me anyway. It could be important.”
“Tom’s wife and daughter walked in on them one afternoon in his office. His daughter was only about ten or eleven at the time. And the way I heard it, the confrontation wasn’t exactly an accident; it may have been deliberately set up.”
“By whom?”
“By Ursula. It’s awful, I know. I just don’t know if that part is true; it was just what people said. But Tom’s wife left him; that was a fact. And the scandal didn’t end there. There were rumors that Ursula was trying to discredit Tom’s academic work, saying she’d actually done his research and most of the writing he’d had published for the previous several years. I can’t believe that part is true. Tom Power was, and is, a brilliant man; he had no need to hide behind a colleague’s work. But he was consumed with guilt about what he’d done to Sarah and he wouldn’t even defend himself. He had to leave his teaching position, and no other university would touch him. In the end he took a job cataloging a large private art collection somewhere in France, cut his ties to everyone he knew. I can’t imagine that he’s had an easy time of it the past ten years.”
“And Rachel is his daughter?”
“Tom’s daughter was named Rachel, and she’d be about the same age as the girl who disappeared,” Cormac said. “Briscoe was Sarah’s name before she married. There’s got to be some connection.”
Nora’s thoughts went back to the scene at the excavation, when the young man had borrowed Rachel’s binoculars. Rachel’s temper had flared, but it was Ursula’s seemingly benign gesture, handing the binoculars back, that had nearly put her over the edge. “Rachel might have had reason to despise Ursula, but to take a job out here just to get close to her? I can’t see someone her age concocting such an elaborate scheme just for revenge.”
“She may have seen Ursula as the person who destroyed her family. People have committed murder for much more trivial reasons. If no one has seen her since Ursula was killed—”
“But that doesn’t mean she did it. She could have just been a witness.” Either way, the Guards would be anxious to find Rachel and talk to her. Nora considered the way Ursula had been killed and tried to imagine Rachel Briscoe pulling tight the leather cord, drawing a knife. None of it seemed to connect with the defensive young woman who’d sat in the passenger seat of her car less than two days ago.
“We’re probably getting ahead of ourselves,” she said. “Maybe she just got fed up with the job and went home. We don’t even know that she is your friend’s daughter, not for certain. Maybe we should go back to the house and think this through at least once more before we call anyone.”
3
At half-past five, Maureen Brennan set a steaming mug of milky tea on Ward’s desk. The daylong search for Rachel Briscoe had turned up nothing, so they’d come back to the station to dry off and go over their notes, getting ready to brief the Bureau officers who would be coming in on Monday.
“Don’t worry, Liam. She’ll turn up. If she’s anywhere to be found, we’ll find her.”
He didn’t need reassurance on that score. They would find Rachel Briscoe eventually, he was sure of that; he just hoped it wouldn’t be too late. They had found no footprints, no traces of hair or blood, no debris that could tell them any more about the girl’s whereabouts. The only thing they had turned up was a small area of bent grass and leaves under one of the hedgerows, as if someone or something had been sleeping there recently; even the most experienced searchers couldn’t tell whether the marks had been left by
an animal or a human. Ward sighed. “What’s the latest from Dublin—and how are we doing on Ursula Downes’s personal effects?”
“She didn’t keep much in her appointment diary, as you saw yourself, so it’s been difficult to find anyone who claims to know her well. But here’s what we’ve been able to get so far. She was born and raised on the north side of Dublin, an only child; her father left before she was born, and the mother either married or remarried—we’re not quite clear on which it was—when Ursula was ten. The father’s whereabouts are still unknown, but both the mother and stepfather are now dead. Ursula was single, lived alone in a flat in Rathmines. The Bureau say they’ll let us know what turns up there, but they said it might take a while; her place is an absolute tip.”
Ward felt annoyed. He knew it made sense to have the Bureau handle the search, but he couldn’t help wondering if they’d miss something, even one tiny thing, that might help color the case. He also knew the Bureau lads wouldn’t be in any particular hurry to get things done until Monday, when their own officers would be safely in charge of the investigation.
A sideways glance from Brennan told him that she understood and shared his irritation, but she went on: “Ursula Downes’s mobile had only a couple of numbers stored in it; her office in Dalkey, Desmond Quill’s mobile.”
