Guy seemed to sense her reluctance to leave the car. ‘Come on. It’s all right.’
She followed, walking carefully on the cold ground, wishing she could grasp his arm. ‘What if no one’s there?’ The place had no phone, so they hadn’t been able to call ahead even if they’d wanted to.
‘Then we’ll ask around. Go to the local Gardai station, visit the pub.’
She imagined Guy’s cut-glass English vowels amid the turf smoke and suspicious gazes of a Donegal pub. ‘I think maybe we should leave.’
He looked at her in surprise. ‘It’s not like you to get spooked.’
‘No. I just—’ She was afraid, she wanted to say. She’d been afraid from the moment that pregnancy test had turned pink. Despite her best efforts, and wherever she turned now, she had something to lose. ‘Knock, then.’
The door was low and latched. Nobody seemed to have been there for decades. Paula fidgeted nervously from foot to foot, willing the silence to remain unbroken. One second. Two seconds. Three – footsteps, and the door creaked open. A stooped old woman stood before them, in a tweed skirt and heavy coat, a piece of twine wound round it to keep it shut. Her legs were bare and exposed, raw sores marking the shins, and she wore little ankle socks with hiking boots. She stared at them.
From inside, the squawk of chickens. Guy cleared his throat. ‘Good afternoon, madam. We’re from the police – we were looking for any family of Mary Conaghan, who we think lived here once?’
She stared. There were several distinct whiskers on her chin. Paula had the fearful impression of a goblin barring the way.
Guy tried again. ‘Do you know the family, madam?’
The woman looked at Paula and said, ‘An Sassenach é?’
Paula froze. ‘Er – Tá sé. Is mise Éireannach.’
‘An bhfuil Gaeilge agat?’
‘Cúpla focail.’
Guy was looking stunned.
‘She’s an Irish speaker,’ Paula explained. ‘There’s a few older folk about who are still more comfortable in it.’
‘You speak it?’ He was watching her with awe and surprise.
‘A bit. That’s what I told her. She’s surprised to see an Englishman here, I think.’
‘Sassenach,’ Guy repeated. ‘Is that derogatory?’
‘Um . . . depends on the context. I don’t remember that much, to be honest. But I was quite good at school.’ She groped for the word ‘police’. ‘Tá muid . . .’ she failed. ‘Mary. Mary Conaghan. An bhfuil sí anseo?’
Asking if Mary was there was the best she could do, though clearly Mary wasn’t. She was in Ballyterrin in her mansion built with other people’s money, unless they were very wrong about everything. But the woman understood. ‘Mary.’ The name was rusty in her old throat.
Paula nodded.
‘Tagaigi isteach.’ The goblin woman vanished into the gloom, and Paula nudged Guy.
‘She says go in.’
He peered into the interior. ‘It smells like animals.’
‘Yes, well, you wanted to come here. Go on.’
The house seemed entirely preserved from time. White-washed walls, a cracked wooden floor, and scant light from the high, dirty windows. The animal smell came from the chickens which roamed, clucking, and three large black Labs slumped around the open turf fire. Paula noticed a line of large muddy boots by the door – perhaps the woman lived with a son, who looked after her. It was hard to imagine her coping with a farm, she was so tiny and wizened.
She muttered something. ‘What did she say?’ There was only one wooden chair, so Guy stood, almost banging his head on the low ceiling.
‘Tea. She’s offering tea.’
‘Of course she is. Can I say no?’
‘Nope.’ Paula pasted on a smile. ‘She can almost certainly understand you, by the way. It’s not the Amazon. She’s just speaking Irish by preference. Go raibh mhaith agat,’ she pronounced, on receiving the tar-like tea in a chipped flowered cup. A packet of Kimberley biscuits added a surreal modern touch. Guy smiled uncertainly, but failed to hide his grimace on tasting the tea.
Paula was struggling to dredge up the distant memories of GCSE Irish, taught by Mr Ó Briain, a rabid Republican with gingery sideburns and a tendency to go off on rants about the Black and Tans. The tea had a distinct farmyard tang, but she drank it anyway, removing a dog hair surreptitiously from her mouth.
‘Is mise Paula,’ she said. Lesson one in first year, how to say your name. ‘Guy an t-ainm atá air.’ She pointed at Guy, hoping she’d got the right gender on the preposition. ‘Tá muid ag . . .’ Crap, what was the verb to ‘look for’? No. ‘Mary. Ba mhaith liom Mary.’ I want Mary. That should cover it.
‘Níl sí anseo.’
Well, yes, it was obvious she wasn’t there. She decided to ask the woman’s name. ‘Cad e an t-ainm atá ort?’
‘Eilish,’ said the woman reluctantly. She rocked in her rocking chair, smacking her lips at the tea. A chicken wandered over and settled at her feet, puffing its feathers. ‘Ba chairde mise agus Mary.’ She began to speak rapidly in Irish. ‘Bhí sí ina cónaí anseo. Ba chol ceathrair liom í a mháthair.’
Paula nodded, trying to keep up. ‘I think she’s saying she’s a cousin of Mary’s mother, and they were friends. This was where Mary grew up. Cá bhfuil a mháthair de Mary?’ Where’s Mary’s mother?
‘Marbh.’ Dead, as she’d suspected.
‘Tá athair?’
Eilish shook her head. ‘Níl aon athair aici.’ She had no father. ‘Bh sí ina cónái anseo, lena mháthair agus tá lena hathair mór.’
‘She lived with her mother and grandfather,’ Paula explained to Guy. ‘No dad. They must be dead now anyway. How old was Mary when she left, Eilish?’ She hoped the English would be understood as she gave up trying to knit together her meagre focal of Irish.
Eilish held up both hands, then one hand again. Fifteen.
Paula nodded; that fitted with what they knew. Mary had been sent away to live with her cousins as a teenager, then somehow ended up in Dublin. ‘An raibh sí anseo . . . um . . . recently?’
A strange watchful look crept over the face of the old woman. She shrugged her shoulders vaguely.
‘Eilish – an bhfuil photograph agat?’
Eilish got up, leaving the chair to swing back and forth on its own. Guy was looking blank. ‘I asked if she had a photo of Mary, just to make sure we’ve got the right one this time.’
‘Good idea. Should we follow her?’
But Eilish was back already, a faded album in her hands, falling apart at the seams. She plonked it on the table, making dust rise, and opened the dark green cover to the first page. Under the tacky plastic was one picture. It had been torn across the top, so the head of one of the figures was missing. Paula shivered. She turned the page, the plastic squeaking under her fingers. The head of the same person was cut off in every one, jagged and rough. A man.
‘Sin é?’
‘An t- athair mór.’ Mary’s grandfather, with his head torn off. Paula wanted to ask why, but the words failed her.
The first picture also showed a young girl of about fifteen, dressed in a seventies short skirt. She had bobbed hair and glasses, and stood stiffly with the man’s arm about her. The picture was old, but the likeness to present-day Magdalena was clear. She even wore the same type of glasses still. Mary Conaghan. Magdalena Croft. The same person and this proved it.
But Paula’s attention was caught by a third person in the picture – a younger girl, maybe twelve or thirteen. She was very pretty in a dark way, a wide white headband holding back her long black hair. She wore shorts and a pink shirt. Paula pointed to the girl. ‘Cad é sin?’
Eilish snapped the album shut, the severed edges of the pictures hidden.
‘Eilish?’ said Paula. ‘Pleas
e, who is that? We need to know. Please, Eilish. Cad é sin? Le do thoil.’
For a moment she thought the woman really wasn’t going to tell her. But she paused in the doorway of the room, album clasped to herself. ‘It’s Bridget,’ she said in her croaky voice.
‘Bridget?’ Paula looked at Guy. ‘Cad é Bridget?’ Who the hell was Bridget?
Eilish turned to go. ‘Deirfiúr léi. Deirfiúr le Mary.’
‘What?’ said Guy impatiently. ‘What does that mean?’
Deirfiúr, Deirfiúr. Paula knew this word. Think, Maguire. She tried to remember the Irish classroom, the teacher’s nasal voice.
‘Well?’
Paula watched the woman shuffle away. ‘Her sister. Bridget was Mary’s sister.’
‘A sister?’
Paula was on her feet, following Eilish down the dark corridor of the cottage. The woman stood in the doorway of a small, low-ceilinged room. ‘Eilish . . .’
The room was lit only by a small, high window, crossed with metal bars. The only furniture was two narrow twin beds, made up in plain sheets. The white-washed walls were hung with pictures, three on each. The glass of each picture had been smashed, a helix of fractures hiding the faces of the people in them, but it was clear to see they were of the same man and girls in the photo album. On the wall a huge cross looked down, Jesus’s face twisted in agony.
Paula found herself backing away, into the solid warmth of Guy, thank God. ‘I think we better go,’ he said.
Chapter Thirty-Three
‘I can’t believe it. In all our research, no one turned up the rather vital fact that Mary Conaghan had a sister?’ Guy was fuming.
‘I think she must have hidden it,’ said Paula. ‘I’m sure Avril would have spotted it if anything was on the records.’ They were back in the BMW, Guy driving. Night had closed in, that wall of darkness you get in the country. A freezing sea mist hung over the coast road, and Guy was driving very slowly, peering through the windscreen.
‘I’ve no bloody mobile reception. It’s like Deliverance out here. As soon as we get back let’s get a search on Bridget Conaghan. How old would she be now?’
‘In her late forties, I’d say. A few years younger than Mary.’
‘So there were two girls, stuck out here with the mother and grandfather.’
‘Yeah. Then the mother died.’ Paula lapsed into thought. Bridget had presumably been left behind when her sister was sent away. She’d have been twelve or thirteen at most. What had happened to her?
‘I wonder where she ended up,’ Guy said, with his trick of echoing her thoughts. It was disconcerting.
‘Me too. I— Christ, watch out!’
It was all happening. A face had appeared out of the gloom, and Guy was yanking the wheel to the left, cursing as the wheels spun and the car skidded off the wet road. Paula had a brief image of mangled features coming out of the fog – bulbous nose, tiny pinhole eyes – and then it vanished. The car ran up the bank and jerked over the turf siding. Paula was flung forward, bracing her hands on the dashboard. She hit her head awkwardly off the side of the car, then they came to rest.
‘Are you OK?’ Guy had his seat belt off in a flash. ‘Paula? You’ve gone white as a sheet. Are you hurt?’ He was feeling her forehead and throat. His hands were cold. His face was very close to hers.
Paula drew off all her breath in a shriek. ‘Christ! What was that? Did you see that face?’
‘No idea. Some local walking in the road, I suppose. Are you all right?’
Her hands had gone straight to her stomach. He’d seen. ‘Does something hurt?’
‘N-no.’ She was OK. She was fine. Her heart must be deafening the baby. ‘I’m just shaken up a bit. It’s OK.’ It was fine. Everything was fine.
‘OK.’ He turned his head. ‘We need to push the car out. Can you help, do you think?’
‘I don’t know. I’m – I feel weird.’
‘You’ve had a shock. We need to get some sugar into you, once we’re out of here. If you can turn the wheel and rev, I think I can push.’
Under other circumstances, Paula would have found it funny when Guy went up to the knees of his hand-made suit in the Irish bog. ‘Shit! I think I’ve lost my shoe.’ He was scrabbling around in the marshy undergrowth, trying to find his Italian loafer by the light of the car. But she could only sit frozen. It had been so close. So close. And part of her still thought – one bang could have been it. Erase, rewind, go back to September, as if she’d never come home at all.
‘Ready? Rev the engine, will you?’
She pressed the pedal, and with Guy pushing in his shirtsleeves, they got the car back on the road and limped the rest of the way to the hotel.
‘Right, the room’s ready.’
Paula looked up mutely. The hotel had an open fire and glowing Christmas lights, and she wanted nothing more than to crawl into a scalding bath and slough off that cottage, the clinging feel of the mist all over her. The sweet, smoky smell of burning turf filled her lungs. She’d always loved that smell – of long, compressed summers, and life left to bed down. Now it made her shudder.
‘The room? Singular?’
He looked awkward. ‘Yes. I don’t think they understood me on the phone, to be honest. But I’m not sure that tyre will last to get anywhere else. I can sleep on the floor, of course.’
‘OK.’ She couldn’t look at him. ‘I’m too tired to go anywhere else anyway.’
‘Fine. Now come and have some food. We need to get your blood sugar up.’
Guy was at the bar ordering them pie and chips, while Paula sat warming her hands at the fire. Had it really been some kind of monster she’d seen on the road, or did the fog distort things, play tricks on her? And what of Bridget, Mary’s unexpected sister? She thought of the man with his head torn off and shuddered again.
Guy was coming back and she smiled at him, grateful for his presence. He’d put a soft blue jumper over his mud-stained shirt, and there was a speck of dirt on his face. She wanted to rub it off, but as he put down the drinks – Guinness for him, a glass of something amber for her – she saw his wedding ring glint in the firelight. ‘What did you get me?’
‘Whiskey.’ He held it up to the light. ‘He looked at me funny when I asked for brandy. But drink it, you’ll feel better.’
She gazed at the small glass of liquid, glowing warm and golden. Imagined it trickling down her throat, into her body. She stood up. ‘Actually, I really hate whiskey. Sorry. Why don’t you drink it?’
‘Shall I get you something else?’
‘No, it’s OK, I’m just . . .’ She gestured to the Ladies and then bolted. It was a small room, and smelled of soap. She locked the door then fumbled down her jeans, where she’d felt the sudden wetness. She was braced and ready to see the blood, but there was nothing. Nothing. Everything was fine. Paula leaned forward onto her bare thighs, and began to cry, as noiselessly as she could.
Guy made a big fuss about trying to arrange pillows on the floor, until she stopped him, intensely weary. ‘Just lie on the bed, will you?’ She was already in it, pyjamas on and jumper over them – paranoid about any possible bump showing.
‘Are you sure?’ He’d stripped down to a T-shirt and boxers and she was doing her best not to look at his legs.
‘Yes. Come on, I’m so tired.’
‘OK. Tomorrow we’ll try to find the local Guard and see if we can turn up Mary’s cousins that she was sent to live with. Hopefully they’ll know where she went after the baby’s disappearance.’
‘Yeah.’
He switched off the light, and then she heard his padding footsteps, the creaking as he settled into the bed, as far from her as possible. They’d spent the night together before, of course, but she’d been so drunk and exhausted she barely remembered falling asleep. The memory made her
blush in the dark.
Guy cleared his throat. ‘You’re really OK? You’ll tell me if you have any whiplash, or delayed pain?’
‘Delayed pain? Is that even a thing?’
‘Of course. Sometimes after a shock, you can’t feel what’s been done to you until it’s much later.’
Paula thought about that for a moment. ‘I’m fine.’
‘OK. Sleep well.’
They lay for a moment, then she turned over awkwardly. ‘Sorry. I’m not used to this. I mean, I sleep alone usually.’
He spoke very quietly. ‘So do I, Paula. For a long time now.’
She opened her mouth to ask, but what was the point? It wasn’t her business if he was in the spare room or whatever was going on between him and his wife. She was still his wife. That was the point. And Paula was . . . nobody.
‘Why were you so convinced it was her?’ she asked, in the dark. ‘Magdalena Croft, I mean. Mary.’
He said nothing for a moment. ‘When Jamie died, my wife – Tess, I mean, she went to a psychic. Who said Jamie was at peace now, and happy. Charged her five hundred pounds.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s not that I – I think she got something from it, but these people, they find you when you’re at your worst. That’s what we do too, but we’re supposed to help. People like Croft just exploit you, and your pain.’
She could feel him lying awake beside her, so she pretended to be asleep for a long while until his breath came slow and regular, and then she sat up. He was sleeping with one arm thrown across his face. A gap in the curtains let in the security light from outside, lashed by wind. She got up to fix it, looking out for a moment at the stormy bay. Even behind glass she could hear the roar of the waves.
There in the car park, someone was watching. Could have been a punter from the pub. She couldn’t see clearly. Someone in black clothes, face white as bone in the mist. Paula stood for a moment, looking out, while he looked back at her, illuminated as she was against the light. Then she pulled the curtain tight and went to the bed. She curled herself against Guy, laying her back all along him, tangling her legs in his. He moved and took her in his arms, as if they’d done this every night for years. As if she were his wife, falling asleep beside him in the long dark. ‘Are you cold?’ he murmured, feeling the jumper under his hands.
The Dead Ground Page 26
