In This Bright Future: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  ‘Tomorrow? I don’t see how that’s possible.’

  Kelly was talking quickly, flying with it all.

  ‘It’s as she keeps saying, there’s no criminal case here. If we find him, the police will only send an observer. So it’s a question of getting the people from the university and people from the Inquiry in place, that’s all.’

  ‘The university?’

  ‘That’s it. A Professor Calder, forensic archaeologist… They have the know-how and the gear that’s needed, they’ve done these before for the Inquiry. It’s just an initial survey and there’s not much equipment involved she says – but she thinks she can get them out for tomorrow afternoon.’

  No criminal case here… That was hard to hear, and harder to accept.

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘I’ve told them nothing yet. No sense in spoiling a night’s sleep. But I will in the morning – if anyone went down there without telling her, she’d never forgive me. She’ll insist on going herself, I know that.’

  There was nothing more certain.

  Smith said, ‘Down there? Where is it? I’m guessing that between you you’ve found the place online.’

  ‘We have. Google Earth. We’ve zoomed right in to the spot. Strange, isn’t it?’

  ‘Strange doesn’t quite cover it for me. Where?’

  ‘County Monaghan.’

  South of the border, where, in the 1980s, fewer questions would have been asked about men digging holes out in the countryside – to be sure they were just after a rabbit or two. Before he left Kings Lake, Smith had done a little research; more than one body had been found in County Monaghan.

  Kelly said, ‘Will you be coming, if it’s on for tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. I’m not exactly flavour of the month with some of the women. The last thing you need is any aggravation at a time like this.’

  Kelly didn’t answer straight away. Smith looked at his travelling bag, which lay unzipped on the bed – the packing had taken him all of two minutes.

  ‘I think you should. Ma would like you to be there…’

  Smith waited because there was something else to come.

  ‘And so would I.’

  Chapter Twenty

  The name of the farm was Gleann Beag, and the road, such as it was by now, passed through the small cluster of low, stone buildings. A wiry, grizzled old man straightened up from whatever he was doing in the entrance to a barn and watched the two cars as they passed by, and then in the doorway to the farmhouse – nothing more than a tiny cottage – they could see a woman, his wife, also standing and watching, wiping her hands on an old-fashioned apron. They had been told by now, of course, and Smith guessed that Helen Reece had stopped here and spoken to them before going on up the hill that lay beyond Gleann Beag. The farmer had almost certainly spent his entire life here on the farm. Had he known? Under other circumstances, Smith would have questioned him and watched his eyes closely for the answer.

  Some answers he did have as a result of the drive down to here in the Volvo automatic that Diarmuid had borrowed for the day. Smith had asked no questions – he had simply said, ‘So, tell me about that papercut’ as they were leaving Belfast. There had been a short silence as if Kelly had been contemplating the pros and cons of keeping up a pretence, and then he explained.

  Martin McCain had received a phone call from Tommy Blake on the Saturday afternoon – couldn’t tell if he was drunk or excited or both, Martin had said. We’ve got a chance to nail that little English shit, Martin! He’s back in Belfast and asking questions, can you believe? Are you in?

  McCain hadn’t heard from Blake for ten years or more, and it was plain that Blake hadn’t heard that McCain was one of those who had already been questioned. Martin thought about telling him but did not do so. He asked about the plan, what Blake was intending, and was told that Stuart Reilly would be in The Star that evening, and that there would be quite a reception waiting for him. McCain had thought about Mairead and then Diarmuid, and then he couldn’t but think about Catriona Kelly and her lost brother. He declined the invitation, took the dogs for a long walk, and when he got back home, he called Diarmuid and told him. Warn him off, he had said, tell him to keep away.

  Kelly said to Smith as they left the city, ‘I knew that was pointless. It would just tell you that you were on the right track. You’d go anyway, if only to watch and see who turned up.’

  Smith wondered whether he ought to feel slightly offended that he was so easy to read by someone that he hardly knew – on the other hand, he was still alive, thanks to the young man’s perspicacity. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘I told Martin that I’d go as well, just hang around and see what was going to happen. I’d no intention of getting involved unless I had to – I was thinking I’d just nip in and have a word with you if it was going down as Blake said it would. But of course, I didn’t know the man. Then Martin said he’d come with me to point him out, which he did. He was thinking about Mairead now, and wishing he hadn’t told me but it was too late. We stood on that corner outside and Martin recognised a couple of people going in. He said to me, this is happening Diarmuid, go and get him out but then Tommy Blake was there in front of us with a couple of cronies. He saw Martin and thought he’d changed his mind and brought me along for the fun. He took out a knife and waved it about, laughing, showing us what he was going to do. And then we had a bit of an altercation.’

  ‘A bit of an altercation? By the time I got outside it looked as if an anti-personnel mine had gone off. How did you get that?’ nodding towards Kelly’s hand.

  ‘He was serious – quite a nasty piece of work. The knife was a couple of inches from here, ‘pointing to his midriff, ‘before I blocked it. I didn’t know he’d cut me until after. Martin took me to Mairead, and she took me to the A and E. Jesus, she was more terrifying than any Tommy Blake. You should have heard her going after Martin, too.’

  Smith closed his eyes momentarily; thirty years gone and still it will not end. If Diarmuid had been killed in the search for Brann O’Neill? Could he have lived with that? How would he ever have faced the boy’s mother?

  He said, ‘So, what’s the prognosis?’

  ‘I was lucky, so they say. No nerve or tendon damage. But I’ll never be able to play the guitar.’

  Smith had almost fallen for it.

  ‘And could you play before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Very good. Will you do two things for me?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘First, just imagine the bollocking that I should be giving you for putting yourself in that sort of danger. Second, thank Martin McCain for me when you see him. He won’t want my thanks but do it anyway.’

  ‘I can manage at least one of those.’

  Beyond the farm buildings, the road became a single, unsurfaced track as it climbed the hill. On either side was open rough pasture where cattle must sometimes be grazed, though none were visible this afternoon. Had there been rain, the cars might not have made it up but the track was dry and dusty. Smith glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw that Catriona was following them at a safe distance in the Astra, with Lia in the passenger seat. There had been some pointless discussion in the morning about whether they should come, whether they needed to see the place – pointless because it had never really been in question. In the end, Catriona had said, ‘I want to see where he’s been these thirty years, and that’s an end to it,’ which it was.

  When they reached the crest of the hill, they could see the other two vehicles parked a little way down on an area of hard-standing that must have once been the foundations of a long-gone building. Professor Calder stood talking to Helen Reece, and the two post-graduate students were already busy in the back of the university’s four by four. Smith drew up behind Reece’s Audi, leaving space for Cati to do the same behind the truck. Kelly went to open the door for his mother and a moment later the six of them were standing in silence, looking down into the
valley.

  There was a sunlit stream shining through the alder trees that bordered it, and on this side of the water was a strip of marshy ground, the flood-plain of the little river. There were clumps of dark green hard-rush and the entire lower meadow was covered in the white and lilac flowers of Lady’s smock. Smith heard something said quietly by the professor to Helen Reece – heard enough to know from his own experience that if a body had been buried in wet ground for thirty years, it would make a significant difference to what they might find here. As far as he could tell, the three members of the O’Neill family did not hear enough to understand.

  After half a minute or so of silence, Professor Calder turned to them and said, ‘If Brann is buried here, it would be a strange thing. This countryside plays an important part in the story of Hugh O’Neill in the sixteenth century. The Irish chieftains met here before and during the rebellion.’

  Smith looked at Cati and Lia, wondering if he had just witnessed a remarkable example of academic insensitivity, and then he saw that they were not offended – in fact, they were nodding in agreement. The professor was encouraged.

  ‘Does your own family run back to those times?’

  Cati said, ‘We think it does.’

  ‘Extraordinary, then. Some believe that O’Neill is the oldest traceable family name in Europe.’

  Lia said, ‘There’s no ‘believe’ about it. Our own father told us it was so.’

  The history lesson was over.

  Professor Calder said, ‘So what we will do next is this. Carla, Tim and I will head down towards the stream. It’s a precise GPS reading but obviously we don’t know exactly where the device was when it was taken – whoever made it might have been standing fifty metres from the spot. Let’s hope not. You will see us appearing to just be wandering about aimlessly but I assure you that won’t the case. Let’s say fifteen minutes, and then we’ll review.’ He was looking at Helen Reece then, and the woman nodded her agreement.

  There was no track down beyond where the vehicles were parked. They watched the professor and his students walk in a line over the grassland, all three sets of eyes already fixed downwards, their only equipment seeming to be a pair of clipboards. They made slow progress towards the bottom of the slope where the GPS reading seemed to have its origin.

  It was difficult to know how to pass such a quarter of an hour. For Helen Reece, the problem was soon solved. Her phone began to ring, she apologised and said that she ought to take this – and of course they understood – more than anyone else in the world, they understood. She went to her car, climbed in and began a conversation. Lia put an arm around her sister’s shoulders and made sure that she was alright, and Diarmuid continued to watch the search. Smith took the opportunity to walk to the other side of the hard-standing.

  Since they arrived, he had been aware of another set of tyre tracks that went off onto the grass beyond; none of the vehicles here today had made them but they were still fresh. They didn’t continue down the hill as the farmer’s own vehicle might have done. Someone had simply driven off the hard area for a few yards, someone unfamiliar with the place. The earth at the edge was soft and had taken a good impression. He could get a picture on his phone, see if he could match them up… But there would be no police investigation. If they found Brann here – and after the professor’s guarded comments, the ‘if’ was looking somewhat larger – the police would come and observe, make notes and then go back to their station and close a file. That was all. That was the deal to get closure but it annoyed him.

  He went back through his thoughts since last night, after Diarmuid had called him. Thirty years ago, there were hardly any satellites up there, let alone a GPS system that could be utilised by anyone with a smart-phone. Someone, then, had come back to this place to get that reading – someone, obviously, who had known precisely where the body lay. He wanted to know who that was. He wanted to know what time yesterday afternoon they had received the call – it would have been a call, surely, and not a visit – telling them to come here. And he wanted to know who had made the call. Lorcan Quinn himself? If not, how many others were in the chain? He wanted to know their names, all of them, and had to accept that he would not. And who, come to that, had let Tommy Blake know that he had a chance to finish the job he had started so long ago? Quinn again? One way or another, Smith could make it all lead back to him, given the time and the opportunity. But there had been a deal of sorts, and that was the only reason they were here on this sunny hillside at all.

  He walked back to the little group. Helen Reece was still in her car. Ten minutes had passed – Diarmuid looked round at Smith and raised his eyebrows. The archaeologists were close together for a moment, all looking at the same point on the ground and then they parted again.

  Cati said, ‘What exactly are they looking for? It’s just grass and flowers where they are.’

  Smith answered her – ‘From up here, yes it is. But they can tell a lot from subtle differences in the vegetation. If the ground was disturbed or dug over, they can tell that, even if it was many years ago. Especially if someone was buried there…’

  She nodded, interested, and he reminded himself again that she was tougher than she looked. Most women are, most of the time.

  He went on, ‘And they will be looking for slight changes in the level – just an inch or two lower maybe. Some sort of indentation.’

  Diarmuid came and stood by his mother, asking if she was alright, and then Lia said, ‘There’s a seat in the back of the car, that folding stool – I’ll fetch it for you.’

  No need, Cati said, but Lia was gone and Diarmuid put a hand under her arm. The three of them stood close together for a moment, and Cati looked from one to the other and smiled.

  She said, ‘Well, I never expected to get even this far. So thanks to the both of you.’

  Smith made the usual cautious remarks which she dismissed in her usual Irish way, and Kelly watched and listened and then he understood something for the first time. It made him smile to see it for himself, even though it was a very old thing – he smiled and joined in, and for a minute or two they talked fondly about Brann, about the uncle he had never known. Smith had not noticed how long it was taking Lia to fetch the seat until he heard the sound. The other two had their backs to her and were still talking but Smith only had to glance a little way to his right to see Lia look away from him, her hand leaving her pocket then and finally reaching into the raised boot to pick up the seat that seemed to have been so well hidden. She had done something almost extraordinary, and when she came back she flapped and flustered around her sister and refused to look him in the eye.

  Twenty minutes had passed. The three people searching the hillside had moved a little further around to the left – they were standing close together again but they had done that several times already. Helen Reece’s phone call had come to an end at last, and she walked back towards them, still apologetic; Smith wondered about her – how she got into all this. What qualifications did you need, and what previous experience? What would she put on her next CV, if there ever was one? How much longer would she go on looking for the disappeared?

  She said, ‘Well, time is getting on. Maybe-’

  Her phone was ringing again.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry…’ and then she looked at it and stopped apologising. Instead, she held it to her ear and began to listen. It was Smith who realised that she was connected to Professor Calder. When he turned to look down the hill, he could see the man with his phone, looking down at the ground in front of him, and about ten feet away the two students together, facing in the opposite direction but looking down at the same piece of ground.

  Helen Reece said into her phone, ‘Yes, we will. Thank you,’ and closed it. Smith saw her swallow and steady herself before she met their eyes, and when she did so, her own seemed larger and more full than they had before.

  Then she said gently, ‘They think they have found something.’

  Helen Reece said, ‘Yo
u can go down with them yourself, you know.’

  He didn’t answer straight away. Cati was walking with her stick, making her own way down the hill towards the waiting group of three, who seemed themselves to be a part of some strange ritual under the midsummer sun and the cobalt sky. On her left was Lia, watching her closely, and on her right was her son, his bandaged hand extended all the time, ready to catch her if she stumbled.

  ‘I will before we go. But I think this first moment belongs to them.’

  ‘He was a friend of yours? A close friend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And they tell me he had no involvement in it at all. That’s quite odd. There was almost always something, some reason.’

  Was she asking him, inviting him to tell her? He would not do so – it was too complicated, too personal and painful.

  He said, ‘Looking back, it’s difficult to see much reason in any of it. I have to ask – how did you get involved in this? You’re doing a remarkable thing, by the way, but why?’

  Like him, she was watching the slow progress of the O’Neill family towards one of their own as she spoke.

  ‘For a detective, that would not be too difficult a thing to find out.’

  He guessed then that if he found a list of victims, he would have the answer to his question.

  She said, ‘And while we’re on the subject, I have a couple of questions for you. You don’t have to answer them – I’m very used to not getting answers.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Am I right in thinking that we’re not here today by coincidence? That this young man,’ and he liked the way she said that about Brann, ‘has not just happened to turn up while his close friend was paying a visit?’

  ‘It might be an example of the unexpected synchronicity of events.’

  ‘OK. I’ll take that as a yes. And you are detective, aren’t you? I mean, I said that just now and you did not question it.’

  He had to smile a little then because he had underestimated her.