“I’m not a baby, I’m a big boy,” he protested. “And these are my new friends.”
“No!” his mother wailed, and turned toward Ro and Hain. “Leave him be! You hear me?”
As Ro and Hain ran off into the fens, his mother shifted him in her arms and hurried awkwardly back to the house, crying all the way. Donovan couldn’t understand why she was so upset, but he promised to be a good boy and not go wandering near the fens. Later that night, when he got ready for bed, he hid the piece of metal with the snake’s head in the toe of his sock, and put it in the hidey-hole inside the windowsill where he and Doreen kept all their secret treasures.
Whenever he had the brooch in his pocket, Ro and Hain would appear at the edge of the fens and the three of them would play together, though afterwards Donovan often had a headache and blurry vision. He never told his Mum, but eventually she found out. She took the brooch and hid it somewhere deep in the fens, where he would never find it again.
If only that had ended it.
His sister’s hand on his arm startled Donovan back into awareness. Her tears were gone and in their place, she wore the hard, determined expression he’d seen so many times on Dermot’s face. “’Twas all such a very long time ago. Why can’t the PSNI just let this go?”
“A man was stabbed to death, Doreen. They can’t exactly forget that.”
“Well, I know Da didn’t do it,” she stubbornly insisted.
He wished he shared her conviction. But he knew in his heart that his father was a drunk and a liar.
“Unless you have proof of his innocence, good luck convincing the police.”
She glared at him again, then reached for the door handle. Her voice was haughty, “I’m going in and pray for divine guidance. You should think about doing the same.”
Her self-righteousness always made him snippy, and now was no exception. “I’ll leave the praying to you. It’s your specialty.”
“Godless heathen!” she spat at him. Then she flung open the car door and walked swiftly toward the church.
Still gripping the steering wheel, Donovan rested his head on his forearms, feeling heartsick. Closing his eyes, he waited for the despair to pass. He wasn’t sure precisely how long he sat there, but when he opened his eyes and looked up, rain sluiced down the windscreen of the Morris. A steady stream of drops pelted across the pale circle of lamplight.
Since his sister and his father seemed determined not to tell him the truth, perhaps he needed to go and find it himself. In the fens.
An hour later, he pulled into the muddy cottage yard. The PSNI had posted a sign and plastic tape on the front gate, but he’d ignored them and driven in anyway. Rummaging in the glove box, he located a small plastic torch and was relieved to find the batteries were still good. Getting out of the car, he turned his coat collar up against the persistent drizzle and with the light from the torch, picked his way across the yard.
In the rain and darkness, it took Donovan a few minutes to orient himself. He played the light over the four different excavations at the edge of the yard, but he wasn’t interested in the storage pits. He sought the place where votive offerings had been made. The place that had yielded the scabbard ornament. And triggered his vision of the Druid. He hadn’t purposely tried to use his gift since he was a small boy. Would he still be able to do it?
When he reached the path leading into the fens, Donovan noticed heavy footprints in the mud. Prints too large for a woman’s shoe, and they had to be recent because they weren’t washed away, though water stood in the indentations of the heels. Someone from PSNI must have been out here earlier today, most likely Inspector Lynch. He stepped carefully around the prints and followed the path in.
The scent of mud and wet foliage surrounded him, and he had to move slowly in the darkness. At last, he recognized the partially burned beech tree and knew he was getting close. The path forked and he could sense, rather than see, the direction where the body had been discovered. He followed the other branch, scouring his memory for the images from Sybil’s digital camera to guide him. The dense growth of overgrown bushes and vines served as a bit of a shield against the rain. Still, his footsteps lagged, anticipating what was to come. Dreading it, but needing it at the same time.
Branches and vines gave way, and he could see the telltale mounds of earth that marked the location of McRory and Sybil’s dig site. The torchlight glittered on the droplets of water hanging from the taut pieces of twine. Warily, he approached the edge of the hole. He shined the beam of the torch around and recognized the ancient pilings, blacker than the surrounding earth. Taking a deep breath to steel his resolve, Donovan stooped and placed the torch on the edge, then lowered himself into the trench.
Inside the two-meter deep hole, the air felt heavy, but not necessarily with rain. The darkness of the mud and wood seemed to absorb the feeble beam of torchlight. As Donovan reached for the nearest pier, a faint buzzing throbbed between his eyes.
It was working.
With grim determination, he laid his hand flat against the wet, crumbling timber and held his breath. Intense colors swirled around him, blacks, oranges, and reds. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut as the colors exploded.
Drawing in a ragged gasp, Donovan slowly opened his eyes. Around him, the darkened landscape flickered in an eerie ocher light. The stench of burning pitch seared into his lungs and made him cough. He raised his eyes to the source of the odor and the light, a smoky wooden torch held aloft by a large man dressed in a long robe. Red and yellow beads adorned his flowing dark hair and beard.
The tall man squinted in the flickering light. “Dony?”
“Hullo, Hain,” Donovan replied. He tried to sound casual, but that was difficult with the blood pounding so fiercely in his temples.
“By the gods!” the Druid swore. “Why are you wandering here between, my brother?”
“Between?” Donovan gazed around at the shadowy landscape. It was no longer raining and it wasn’t night. But it wasn’t exactly day either. Everything beyond Hain looked blurry, indistinct. “Is that where we are then?”
“As the holy night of Samhain approaches, the passage is easier,” Hain acknowledged. “For those of us with the gift.”
“Gift?” Donovan snorted. “Always been more like a curse to me. Remember when we were little? Ro used to say that at times he saw something shiny in the two of us, like we were streams of water with sunlight reflecting off us.”
An indulgent smile curled the big man’s lips. “I remember well.” He wedged the smoking torch into the fork of a tree trunk and grasped Donovan’s arm in friendly greeting. “But Ro was always the better fighter.”
Clasping the Druid’s arm in return, Donovan nodded in agreement. “The two of us together could never beat him.”
Hain’s smile of remembrance faded and his piercing blue eyes delved into Donovan. “That was far away in our lives, Dony. Why are you here now, seeking for me?”
Taking a deep breath, Donovan dropped his hand to his side. “A man was stabbed to death and buried in the fens. This was far away in my life too, but now he’s been found, and he’s connected to me and mine somehow. I need to know the truth about who killed him, and I hoped you could help me.”
The Druid’s shaggy head drooped and he rubbed both temples with his fingertips, as if he too suffered with the same intense pounding.
“I know the man you speak of,” Hain said at last. “But what truth I can tell may hurt you far more than help you, Dony. This man caused your mother great pain, but he gave her something that brought joy as well.”
“My mother?” Donovan asked.
He experienced a sudden terrible flash of the hand stabbing the knife into Malachy Flynn. Strong fingers curled around the wooden handle, but the wrist bones looked slender, almost delicate.
“Oh God, no!” He jerked his hands up to cover his face. The air jammed in his lungs.
Hain’s hand settled on his shoulder in a comforting gesture. “She tried to protect herself, but m
ostly she was desperate to protect your sister and you.” His soothing voice sounded far away, while his words painted dreadful pictures in front of Donovan’s eyes. “He was heavy, but she dragged him as far as she could into the fens. Before she buried him, she searched his clothes.” As if he were hovering over the scene, Donovan saw his mother drag the dead man by his legs. She fell once, twice, as she struggled down the path. He watched her go through Malachy Flynn’s pockets, toss away his wallet, pull a notebook and some papers from inside his jacket. Hain’s voice murmured on over the vision. “Some of the things she found upset her even more. When she covered him with earth, she went back to the cottage to hide what she found in the safe place.”
The hidey-hole.
Donovan saw his mother shove the things into Doreen’s plastic pencil box, the one with the little metal padlock hooked through its clasp. She locked it and put it inside the hidey-hole. Then she climbed down the stairs and mopped up the blood from the kitchen floor. When she finished, she took her broom outside and swept away the tracks where she’d pulled Malachy Flynn across the yard.
“The other men came just as she finished,” the Druid continued. “She heard the noisy chariot come through the gate and she ran. Two men yelled at her, but she kept running. They chased her. One had a stick that exploded and spit fire through the air. It hit her in the back, but she got up and ran on. Into the safety of the fens.”
Before Donovan’s horror-filled eyes, he saw his mother stagger as the bullet slammed between her shoulder blades. He felt the pain radiate through his own body and he struggled to draw in his breath as his knees buckled.
“Please . . . ” With beseeching eyes, he clawed at the side of Hain’s robe. “Did she make it between? To you?”
Hain nodded but his expression was sorrowful. “She told me . . . showed me everything. Just as you’ve seen. But her wound was mortal, Dony. I was a mere child, I couldn’t save her. I could only help her find peace.”
Donovan sat back on his heels as an enormous shudder wracked his body. A bone-numbing exhaustion washed over him, consumed him. His limbs felt leaden and he ached everywhere.
“As I feared,” Hain whispered hoarsely. “This truth has hurt you, my brother. I regret the telling.”
“No!” Donovan denied with the last of his waning strength. “I needed to know. It was important I know. Thank you for telling . . . showing. Thank you for whatever you did for her.”
Unable to keep himself upright any longer, he fell over onto the cold, leaf-strewn ground, senseless.
Cold raindrops splattering on his face roused Donovan back to consciousness. He couldn’t tell how long he’d lain there devoid of physical sensations, but now he shivered with the wet and cold. Impenetrable darkness surrounded him and his head throbbed with a dull ache.
Gradually, he realized he was lying on his back at the bottom of the trench, and he forced himself to roll over and crawl out. He found the plastic torch, and after shaking and turning the power off and on a few times, he coaxed a feeble light from it. Using a slender tree to haul himself upright, he staggered along the path with the help of the wavering, meager beam.
The light flickered off completely when he reached the edge of the fens. Shoving the torch into his pocket, Donovan lurched a dozen more meters before he fell to his knees. Somehow, he forced himself to crawl on all fours across the muddy yard. When he reached the Morris, he heaved himself into the driver’s seat and started the engine, turning the heater on full blast.
His vision too blurry to drive anyway, he sprawled across the seat and soaked up the warmth. Within a short time, his fingers and toes thawed and although his clothes were still damp, he’d stopped shivering. He turned off the engine and fell into an exhausted sleep.
The cold roused him again a few hours later. Gray dawn light filtered through the windscreen. The rain had stopped. He turned the engine back on and used the heater to warm up again. Dried mud caked his jeans, his jacket, and his hands while a lingering pain pulsed behind his eyes. His vision, however, had cleared. After about ten minutes, he felt warm enough to turn off the car and go into the cottage.
After stamping off as much excess dirt as possible, Donovan forced the door lock, went inside, and headed for the loo to wash his hands and face. The chilly tap water stimulated all his senses fully awake, and he groaned as he pulled out his shirttails to dry off. A hot shower wouldn’t happen a moment too soon and would undoubtedly feel like a half step from heaven.
Making his way through the semi-dark kitchen, he climbed the steep stairs into the loft. The single window was easy to find, since it was the only source of light in the empty room.
The plank of wood on the sill came up easily too, exposing the empty gap between the studs and wall. Donovan shoved his hand into the narrow space, his knuckles scraping. As he struggled to squeeze his wrist and forearm into the hole, his fingers encountered something smooth and hard. Awkwardly maneuvering his hand, he grasped an edge and pulled out the familiar black plastic rectangle of his sister’s pencil box.
But the rush of triumph froze in his veins when he saw the broken remains of the lock hanging from the clasp. Biting his lip, he raised the lid anyway, and saw just what he feared. Whether twenty-five years ago or yesterday, someone else had been there first.
The box was empty.
Chapter 9
DONOVAN ARRIVED LATE AT THE ATTORNEY’S OFFICE. When he got back to the apartment after his night in the fens, he’d stayed in the shower until the hot water ran out, trying not to think or feel. Still groggy and somewhat achy, he’d crawled into bed and been overcome by a dreamless sleep more like an unconscious stupor than rest. When he finally awoke several hours later, he had to throw on clothes and rush out with two pieces of dry toast and a bottle of water in his hand. However, the drive to Armagh City had provided him with too much time to think about what he’d seen and learned the night before.
The knowledge lay heavily on his mind as he entered the office of Jeremy Heaney, Esq. His sister Doreen, sitting in one of the chairs in front of the attorney’s desk, gave him a sour look of disapproval as he introduced himself and apologized for his tardiness. With shaggy brown hair and mild hazel eyes, Mr. Jeremy B. Heaney scarcely looked old enough to be out of law school, but seemed cordial. His late father, John A. Heaney, Esq. had successfully defended numerous IRA members, he assured Donovan. Then, while Donovan’s gut twisted with dismay and his sister stared resolutely at the wall, Heaney quickly recapped his and Doreen’s previous discussion and outlined what information he needed and possible options that existed for Dermot.
His vision from the fens played over and over in Donovan’s mind as the three of them left the attorney’s office and made the short drive to Holy Family. He and Doreen rode silently in the Morris while the attorney drove his own car, a black BMW.
Wearing pajamas and a robe, his father sat in the chair with the ever-present communication device on the tray table in front of him. Donovan tried to hang back but his father kept insistently calling, “Boh” so that he was obliged to stand next to his sister and look over Dermot’s shoulder.
Dermot looked more pale and fragile than he had in over a month, but his stubborn expression was the same as usual. His visage never changed while the lawyer spoke about attorney-client privilege and other formalities, until Heaney brought up the allegations that Dermot had served as a “mule” for the Provos. Then, his eyes flicked toward Donovan and Doreen and for a brief instant, concern flashed across them before he typed, “Did it. Not sorry.”
Doreen’s mouth flattened into a taut line as Heaney asked, “So you knew the deceased, Malachy Flynn?”
Dermot gave what passed for a nod and uttered some half-intelligible curse words. Doreen’s face grew more distressed and Donovan could feel the tension knotting tighter across his own neck and shoulders while Heaney continued, “But you didn’t kill him?”
“Nuh!” Dermot spat, his hand trembling so that he dropped the stylus of his commun
ication device.
With the truth nearly choking him, Donovan patted his father’s shoulder and whispered hoarsely, “’Tis all right, Da. We know you’re not a murderer.”
Donovan wasn’t sure who shot him a more surprised look, his sister or his father. Hand still unsteady, Dermot gripped the stylus and determinedly punched out, “Wanted 2.” Then, his eyes glittering with tears, “Should have.”
Doreen flung her hands over her face and sobbed.
She must know more than she had ever told. Donovan sucked in a noisy breath and held it while the images of his mother stabbing Malachy Flynn slashed across his mind.
Expression somber, Heaney cleared his throat. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Sullivan, Mr. O’Shea. Should the PSNI pursue this case, I’ll do everything in my power to see that your father serves no jail time.”
“Th—thank you,” Donovan managed to say, though his voice remained unsteady.
His sister pulled herself together, leaned over and kissed Dermot’s wrinkled cheek. “I’m sorry, but I need to go back to work.”
“I’ll be happy to drive you,” Heaney offered. He pressed a business card into her hand, then another into Donovan’s. “And don’t discuss the case with anyone unless you call me first.” He patted Dermot’s good arm. “Especially you, Mr. O’Shea. I’ll see that the staff here all know.”
When Donovan turned to follow Doreen and Heaney, his father grasped his coat sleeve. “B—boh?” Deep worry lines creased Dermot’s forehead as he struggled to say more, but failed.
“What is it, Da?”
The old man waited until they were alone before he slid open the shallow drawer under his tray table. He removed a plain white envelope and pressed it into Donovan’s hand. Then he picked up the stylus and typed, “4 Ur pretty Yank.”
Donovan turned the envelope over and saw the word “Reilly” scrawled in childishly uneven letters, the tail of the Y long and slanted. His father had gone to a lot of trouble to write out a note. What could be so important?
Stomach churning with possible answers, Donovan shoved the envelope into his pocket. “I’ll take it to her straight away.”
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