by Erin Hart
“You’re fuckin’ crazy.”
“Wouldn’t it have been simpler just to tell me you’d murdered your brother? Why the need for such elaborate dissembling? I’m disturbed at your total lack of trust in me. I suppose you thought I’d go to the authorities. But let me ask: In all these years, have I ever done so? Have I ever raised one single objection to your acts of thievery or fratricide? You could have eliminated your whole sorry family as far as I was concerned. Stop there.”
Dominic Brazil was wheezing now, and pale, but Quill seemed not to notice. They had passed the beekeeping shed and stood within the circle of the hives. Quill looked at the three hives that marked the top of the circle, then turned and faced the other two sets of three. He stuck the spade into the soil at the base of the ninth hive. “Here’s where we’re going to dig. Where you’re going to dig, to be more precise.” Brazil looked as if he wanted to cut and run, but didn’t dare. Instead he reached for the spade. Quill said, “Despite everything, I’m going to be reasonable. We’re both going to be reasonable men, aren’t we?” Brazil glumly set the spade at the spot Quill had pointed out. Placing one heavy foot on the spade’s neck, he dug in.
Quill stood close by and watched Dominic Brazil dig. “Clever, wasn’t he, your brother? Much cleverer than you. And always just that much ahead of you in everything, even though he was younger by—what, six years? At first I thought the reason you killed him was something to do with the farm. It must have been difficult, having to share with your brother—like you’d had to share everything with him your whole life. Nothing was your own. And even though you were the eldest, you were always the less favored son; everyone knew it, even you. Especially you. They didn’t even pretend. He got everything, eventually. Everything.”
Brazil’s face and shoulders twitched. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He kept digging, but each spadeful was smaller than the last.
“Faster,” said Quill. “And then I thought, no, of course you wouldn’t kill your own brother, not just for the sake of a miserable few acres in the middle of a bog. Besides, you told me you had it worked out, all that. He was going away to Australia, and you were buying him out with the reward money. He could have the money and you could have the farm. But why should you be satisfied with that arrangement when you could have everything?”
Dominic Brazil scratched at the earth, and his breathing was becoming more labored. “I didn’t need everything. The way we were working it, the place would be mine. I’d not have to worry about him coming back and taking anything away. He signed the papers. He was going away for good, he said. What need had I to kill him? He said he was never coming back.”
Nora’s thoughts were racing, zigzagging through what she’d just heard. They had conspired together, all those years ago, to keep something back from the Loughnabrone hoard. Quill must have made a deal with Dominic and Danny Brazil to sell whatever it was and split the proceeds. But if Dominic was telling the truth, and there was no gold left, what was Quill making him dig for? Nora heard the spade’s rhythmic scraping against the soil. She couldn’t see the ground for all the weeds, but she had a clear view of each man’s face; the sweat gleaming on Dominic Brazil’s forehead; Quill’s cool, detached expression as he watched the digging. She thought about creating a distraction, something that would draw Quill away, but she had no idea what he might do. Maybe it was better to keep still and wait until they left.
The two men stopped speaking, but she could hear the spade. It struck something that reverberated with a hollow, metallic sound. The next sound she heard was a struggle, a cry, the sound of flesh slapping against the wooden spade handle. The two men were rolling on the ground, and Dominic Brazil was holding the spade handle to Quill’s throat.
With a fierce shove, Quill threw Brazil off balance and scrambled to his feet, wielding the spade like a weapon. “I thought we were going to be reasonable about this,” he said. “There’s no reason for either of us to get hurt. We’re partners, after all.”
She could hear Brazil’s labored breathing, each exhalation coming in a slow wheeze.
“Dig with your hands,” Quill commanded, and Brazil complied, reaching down into the shallow trench and scooping out earth until he had freed the object that was buried there, a large round black-and-gold biscuit tin. “Open it,” Quill said.
Still kneeling, Brazil pressed the tin to his chest and prised off the lid. Bundles of old hundred-pound notes fell onto the ground, and Quill’s face went rigid when he saw what else was inside. “Give it to me,” he said. Brazil lifted out a cloth-wrapped bundle and handed it over to Quill, who dropped the spade, putting one foot on it before he began pulling at the corners of the cloth.
It was probably the color—a luminous, deep yellow-gold—that made the most immediate and indelible impression. It must have been easy to believe that the wearer of this object possessed some supernatural power, such was its exquisite and incorruptible beauty. The rich golden metal seemed to give off its own light.
Quill stood frozen, mute, and Nora began to believe that this was the very first time he’d laid eyes on the collar, after dreaming about its existence for twenty-five years. He had been waiting almost half a lifetime to gaze upon this object with his own eyes, and now he couldn’t tear them away.
“I have a confession to make,” Quill said, finally. “I’ve been toying with you. I know the real reason you killed your brother.” Brazil’s head came up, his haggard features displaying honest curiosity.
“As I said, at first I almost believed that Danny had gone away. There was no other explanation for the fact that the collar was gone. I’ve been watching you all these years, and I have excellent contacts; I would have known if either of you had tried to take it to someone else. But you never did.
“The idea only occurred to me after Danny turned up dead. He might have been planning to swindle both of us. It’s easily done: he moves the collar, plans to take it with him when he leaves the country. But if that had been your reason for killing him, you’d still have the collar and the money. So how did it happen that Danny is dead, but you don’t know where the collar is? There’s only one explanation: you killed him before you found out that he’d taken it and hidden it somewhere else. But, I asked myself, why would Dominic Brazil do something so extraordinarily stupid?
“And suddenly I grasped the whole picture. It was nothing whatever to do with the gold, the money, or the farm. The collar wasn’t all that Danny was taking with him, was it? If you let him get away, you were going to lose a treasure worth more than any gold. This was where you found them, wasn’t it?”
Dominic Brazil didn’t speak for a moment. “They were going to go away, the very next morning. I was just outside, under the window, and I heard them talking, and—” Brazil’s voice and face transformed as he relived those dreadful, decisive moments. “After she’d gone home, he was still lying there in his pelt, smoking a fag. He didn’t even hear me come in. I caught him by that stupid fuckin’ leather cord; all I had was my penknife, but I was going to cut his thieving throat. I got one good cut in, but he started fighting like the devil and knocked the knife away. That’s when he ran out onto the bog—it was all wild bog around here that time. I couldn’t find the knife, so I picked up a hurley and followed him. I caught up to him and hit him a clout, and down he went. I thought he was dead, so I dragged him to the bog hole. I was just looking for someplace to hide the body until I could come back. I saw his eyes open down there at the bottom of the hole. But I couldn’t stop; I just kept piling in everything I could find, down into that hole, until he was gone. He was just gone, and everything was peaceful and quiet.”
Dominic Brazil looked as if he hadn’t much more life in him. His complexion was ashy, and his face telegraphed pain with every shallow exhalation.
“You didn’t know he’d taken the collar?” Quill asked.
“Not until afterward—when I went to the spot where we’d hidden it. It was all Danny’s idea to keep the f
ucking thing. I never gave a curse about the gold. I knew it was bad luck having anything to do with it, with the likes of you. He could have taken every one of those bloody yokes we found, and good riddance, if he’d only let me have my Teresa, my own wife. When Danny was gone, I thought she’d belong to me. Fuckin’ daft, I was then. It took me another twenty-five years to suss it out, that she never belonged to anyone but herself.” He looked up at Quill, and Nora felt an icy finger down her backbone as she wondered why Dominic Brazil used the past tense in speaking about his wife.
Neither man moved or spoke for a long moment; then Quill broke the silence. “What about the whole ritual, then—the triple death?”
Dominic Brazil’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There was no triple anything.”
Quill shook his head in disbelief. “You’re telling me it was accidental? What about Ursula Downes and the other girl, Rachel Briscoe? Don’t tell me those deaths were mere accidents as well?”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re on about. I didn’t kill those girls—”
Dominic Brazil started to protest, but Quill twisted behind him, wrenched his forehead back with one hand and with the other drew the dagger sharply across his throat. A fountain of blood gushed forth. Nora felt Brona Scully go rigid with terror beside her, and quickly clamped a hand over the girl’s mouth to keep her from crying out. There had been no warning. A man was dead, and they hadn’t even had time to react.
Dominic Brazil’s suddenly lifeless body sagged sharply sideways, his mouth still open in protest. Quill leaned forward to close Brazil’s staring eyes and murmured, “No, you didn’t. You might as well have. They never would have died except for you.”
Nora watched in frozen horror as Quill felt for a pulse. Satisfied that there was none, he reached into his pocket for several lengths of knotted black cord and laid them beside the body, pressed Brazil’s right hand firmly around the dagger handle, and then let it fall. No doubt he had taken the same exquisite care in arranging the bodies of Ursula Downes and Rachel Briscoe. Nora pressed herself to the wall and felt the air closing in around her.
10
At last Desmond Quill moved away, stopping to cast one last glance back at his ghastly tableau, as if considering the effect the scene might have on the person who eventually discovered it. Nora felt Brona begin to tremble beside her. Quill was still lingering, considering his handiwork, when she felt her mobile phone begin to vibrate against her hip. She reached for it instinctively, but by then it was too late: the quick double ring had given her away.
Quill’s voice was chilling. “Come out where I can see you.”
If he came any closer, he might see them both. Nora climbed to her feet, pressing Brona Scully’s head to the ground and willing the girl not to move.
“Closer,” Quill said. She moved toward him, stepping to the side to draw his vision away from where Brona was hidden in the weeds beside the shed. The phone had stopped ringing by the time she stood face-to-face with Desmond Quill. He’d taken the dagger from Dominic Brazil’s hand, and he used it to direct her movements. “Give me that mobile.”
She tried to press the call button as she passed it to him, but he must have seen the slight movement; he deliberately switched the phone off before putting it in his pocket. Then he picked up one of the knotted leather thongs and marched her ahead of him to the lakeshore, where he hurled the mobile as far as he could out over the water. “Thousands of years from now, they’ll dig up that curious artifact and display it as a votive offering. So now you know the whole story, Dr. Gavin.”
Nora knew she had to keep him talking as long as she could. One way was to appeal to his vanity. “Not quite. I still don’t know how you knew where the collar was.”
“I have Ursula and young Charlie to thank for that. And you.” He reached into his coat and pulled out the drawing he’d taken from the cottage. “When the Brazils came to me with their proposition, I was naturally skeptical about the gold collar. But Danny Brazil was clever. He knew it probably wasn’t wise to go around showing off the real artifacts, so he made drawings of every object they’d found—even the ones they hadn’t shared with the museum. Quite an expert draftsman, wasn’t he?
“After Danny disappeared, Dominic tried to tell me that there had never been any gold collar, that it was just a ruse. But Danny had made this wonderful drawing, you see. I had a hard time believing he’d made the piece up. I used various methods of persuasion to get Dominic to tell me what really happened. I’d almost given up hope—almost. Isn’t it strange? This summer I was going to make one last stab at Dominic Brazil. That’s why I arranged to meet Ursula. She was a good cover, a plausible excuse to be here. And then Ursula’s crew very conveniently stumbled over Danny Brazil’s body. Wonderful timing.
“I have to say that one of the qualities I actually admired most about Ursula was her tenacity. Once she’d found Danny Brazil’s body, she just kept worrying those old rumors of illicit gold, hoping something would shake out. And eventually something did. She found several of Danny’s drawings here. Charlie had them tacked up on the wall in that shed. Didn’t even know what they were, poor sod—but Ursula did. She couldn’t wait to tell me about the collar drawing with a strange bunch of circles on the back. I was coming out to take a look at it. But Ursula was sloppy. She let your friend Maguire walk off with the drawing that night. I watched him take it, not knowing it was in the bloody book. I was there, outside the house, the whole time he was with Ursula.” His features took on a slightly sardonic sneer. “What did he tell you—that she attacked him and he fought her off? Not that it matters very much at this point, since you won’t be seeing him again, but that wasn’t exactly what it looked like to me.”
Nora said nothing. She knew he was just testing her, trying to see what would provoke a reaction.
“So what were all the circles on the back of the drawing?” she asked. She tried to keep Quill’s back to the shed, in case Brona might be able to make a move, but there was no sign of the girl. Maybe she was too frightened, or maybe she didn’t understand that she ought to run for help.
“It was a map of this very spot, the nine hives, although a person might not recognize it if he wasn’t a bit familiar with the area already.”
“Why did you take Cormac’s waterproofs?”
“Why not? He’d already done himself in by going over to Ursula’s that night. And they provided another handy diversion, a way to get the Guards sniffing around him and leaving me alone.”
“How did you get into the cottage? The doors and windows were all locked. I checked them myself.”
“Doors are only locked against people who don’t have keys. Ursula told me where the key was hidden, outside the back door. She’d been there dozens of times; she sometimes used it as a trysting place when the owners were away. Very careless of them, leaving the key there—and not like Mrs. McCrossan at all. Ah, no, Mrs. McCrossan likes to do the smart thing, the prudent thing.” His tone was contemptuous.
“How do you know Evelyn?” Nora asked.
Quill’s eyes flashed. “Just couldn’t stay out of it, could you? Couldn’t let things run their course. Everything would have been settled, Dominic Brazil would have taken the blame for the murders, your friend would eventually have been let off for lack of evidence, and everything would have gone back to the way it was before. One brother pays for the death of the other. Everything comes back into balance.”
“And what about Ursula and Rachel? How do you balance their deaths?”
“They were necessary sacrifices. I’m afraid you’re looking for saints, hearts of gold where there were none. Beneath her damaged exterior, Ursula Downes was nothing but a vicious, drunken slag. I was actually quite fond of her, but that is the truth. And did you even know Rachel Briscoe? She came into Ursula’s house that night with a knife drawn. I’m sure she would have slit Ursula’s throat in a heartbeat—if I hadn’t done it already. She saw me and tried to get away. It to
ok me until last night to find her, the daft little bitch. I gave each of them something more: a triple death. A perfect death.”
Nora stood still, hoping for a chance to reach for the dagger, as he drew closer. Quill reached up and put his fingers around her throat. His face was only inches from hers, and she knew he could feel the pulse beneath her skin.
“I’ll be sorry about you, Dr. Gavin. I’ve actually enjoyed talking with you. And not everything I told you about Ursula was a lie.” Quill’s plummy voice resonated in his chest; she could feel its vibrations traveling through his flesh and bones into her own. His eyes regarded her without feeling.
If she could create a distraction, maybe Brona could escape. She reached up and felt Quill’s fingers around her throat. Her voice came in a hoarse whisper: “Don’t you want to know what gave you away?” She let her eyes slide down to the triskelion design on the pin that held his tie in place. “You were wearing that same tie pin in the newspaper pictures taken after the discovery of the Loughnabrone hoard. Is it real, or a replica? You must be very attached to it, to have worn the same piece for twenty-five years. That’s how Ursula knew you were involved, and that’s how I figured it out as well.”
Quill’s lips curved in a mirthless smile. “Aren’t you clever? Ursula thought she was clever, too, thought she’d outwitted me.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Do you know what her grand plan was? First of all, she assumed that I had murdered Danny Brazil. Her plan, if you could even call it that, was to use the paltry evidence she’d scraped together to blackmail me—as though fear of exposure would be enough to make me do whatever she wanted. All she wanted was enough money to buy a one-way ticket to someplace warm. She thought all this was about money.”
