In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4)

by Cindy Brandner

  She was very damp and somewhat piqued and flushed by the time she reached their appointed meeting spot. The woods had originally been the parkland of an earl’s estate. Both earl and estate had long faded into the annals of time, but a few things remained that gave echoes into the present day of what the site had once been. Such as the garden bench, well mossed, that William Bright sat upon, looking about as if he expected evil gnomes to come to life and attack him at any second. A country boy he clearly was not.

  Pamela had not thought to see this man ever again in her life. She had not particularly wanted to either. He was the most feared man in the hardline Loyalist world, and that was saying something in a world where blood and hatred were a given. In some ways he was a walking cliché. Short, barrel-chested, covered in tattoos and looking every inch the hard man that would kill you without giving it a second’s pause.

  “Mr. Bright,” she said and sat down beside him on the bench.

  “Mrs. Riordan,” he replied, with the slight mockery in tone that she remembered from her only previous encounter with the man. “By the by, I want to start off by sayin’ I’m sorry about yer husband.”

  “Thank you.” She knew she sounded stiff, but she could not discuss her missing husband with this man. “All right, what is it that you want?” she asked.

  “I do like a woman who knows how to get straight to brass tacks, an’ none of yer small talk to it.”

  “Why me?” she said, striving for a cool tone, despite a dry throat and a tongue that felt as thick as a wool sock.

  “Because I know ye’re friends with dat journalist, da Catolick one that’s got the death wish.”

  He meant Muck, she knew, there were only so many journalists that fit the ‘death wish’ descriptor. As a teenager, Muck had been a member of the Official IRA, drawn to them because of their socialist-republican politics. He had been interned as a result in 1971 and spent a year in the Kesh in the Official IRA compound.

  Muck occasionally wrote under an assumed name. Sometimes he disguised the names of the people about whom he wrote, giving them nicknames, but describing them in such vivid detail that they were entirely recognizable within the narrow tribal world of Belfast. It was a safe bet that he didn’t have any Loyalist fans, which begged the question of why this man wanted to use Muck’s particular talents.

  “I have a story to tell ye. Let me just tell it through so I don’t miss any of the details an’ then ye can ask me any question ye like. Will that suit ye?”

  “Yes,” she said, intrigued despite herself. It had to be something very serious for him to have taken the risk of meeting with her.

  “First, I believe ye took death scene photos not so long ago of a young girl, fifteen years old, light brown hair?”

  “I did,” she said, unsurprised by his knowledge. This wasn’t a country for secrets, at least not in some respects.

  “Ye’ve been on the Mullabrack Road, so ye’ll remember what a lonely, isolated stretch it is?”

  “Yes,” she said, remembering too clearly the morning she had been on that particular bit of roadway. She had been waiting for a car to come and pick her up to take her to meet with the man beside her now. She well remembered the isolation of it.

  “Well, imagine that same road at midnight, an’ imagine ye’re a fifteen year old girl wanderin’ along it, maybe a touch worse for the drink. Imagine that ye’ve just had a bit of a disagreement with a friend an’ ye’re goin’ to go tell yer married lover that ye’re pregnant with his child.”

  “Pregnant?” she asked, thinking of the forlorn little corpse in her bower of bluebells.

  “Aye, pregnant,” he said heavily.

  “What was she doing out on that road in the middle of the night?”

  “Meetin’ her man, apparently he wanted to be circumspect about their relationship.”

  She raised an eyebrow and he laughed a short barking sound that resembled a hostile seal.

  “Aye, too little, too late.”

  He took a breath and then coughed, a long wracking sound that was disturbing. It sounded as though the fabric of the man’s lungs was rending in two. It took a few minutes, and he had to get up and hit his chest several times, before he could get his air back. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and muffled his face in it for a moment. She sat waiting, wondering if he was ill. He took the handkerchief away from his face, and in the second before he hastily stuffed it in his pocket she saw a bright scarlet stain in its snowy folds.

  He sat down again and resumed telling his tale, as if he hadn’t just coughed up blood. He was plain in the telling, but she could see it clear, the young girl, frightened by the news she had to impart, standing on that dark lonely road in the middle of the night, easy prey for anyone who might happen along. She must have been terrified. Pamela tried to push the delicate face out of her mind—the delicate face with the soft line of childhood still there in the chin and the round of the cheek.

  “So this man does pick her up, though he claims he’s not the one with whom she was havin’ relations. An’ he drives her back toward Portadown. He stops to run an errand he says an’ while he’s out of the car—for two minutes—she shoots herself in the head.”

  “And so they think she committed suicide?”

  “Aye, well they would, despite a whole lot of evidence to the contrary.”

  “Why is that?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? An’ this is where it gets interestin’. It was one of their own in that car. The man that picked her up was an off-duty RUC officer.”

  The need for secrecy suddenly became clear. She felt ice-water gather in a pool in her stomach. The man was mad if he thought Muck could break this story, even with credible witnesses to back him up, of whom she suspected there would be none.

  “And he’s saying she grabbed his gun, and killed herself for no apparent reason?”

  “Aye, that’s about the size of it,” he agreed. “Though she’s left-handed an’ apparently shot herself in the right side of the head, at a bugger of an angle.”

  “Oh, that poor girl,” Pamela said. “Is it possible he’s telling the truth and he wasn’t the man she was having an affair with?”

  “No, it’s not possible. He did know her, mind ye there’s little to prove it other than her wee girlfriend sayin’ it were him Janie were havin’ relations with. She says Janie was pregnant, an’ that the baby belonged to the policeman. I think she asked him to meet up with her, so she could tell him she was expectin’. He’s got a wife an’ a family already, he’s panickin’, she maybe threatens to tell his wife an’ in his panic, he kills her. Dumps her body in a ditch an’ away he goes, thinkin’ he’s scot-free.”

  “How do you know she died in the car?” Pamela asked. “We found her in a farmer’s field, after all.”

  “That’s not where she died though, right?”

  “No, she had been placed there.” She recalled the strong sense she’d had that the girl had been put there by someone who loved her.

  “Her girlfriend said she’d gone to meet this man that night, an’ she told Jane’s family. Jane’s daddy went there straight off, found the man cleanin’ his car. He said he could still smell the blood in it. The man called the police, said Barry—that’d be Jane’s daddy—were harrassin’ him. They carted Barry away, an’ stuck him in a cell until he cooled off. So they bring in their colleague for questionin’ an’ he admits the girl was in his car, but that she killed herself. An’ that’s that apparently, case closed. The evidence is bein’ made to fit the events, essentially.”

  “Why aren’t you dealing with this inside the Loyalist community?” she asked, though she feared she knew the answer.

  “It can’t go that way, Loyalists are loyal to the RUC. Nobody is goin’ to talk, an’ if they did their life would be bound to get difficult real quick-like. Their neighbors would turn against them an’ the police would harass the ever-livin’ bejesus out of them.”

  “Whereas they would just put o
ut a hit on us pesky Catholics,” she said drily.

  “Yer journalist friend has more death threats against him than raindrops fallin’ from the sky on any given Belfast day. Do ye really think it will give him pause? As to yerself, there’s no reason why yer name has to be connected with any of it. I came to you because I know the journo is a friend of yers. An’ because frankly, I need to keep this outside my own community.”

  “Why are you talking at all then?” she asked.

  “Because there’s a wee girl that’s been killed an’ her mammy an’ daddy need answers. They’ve stained her memory by sayin’ it’s a suicide, when it’s not. The police don’t like me anyway, I’ve little to worry about.” He rubbed a hand over his bald head, and gave her a questioning look.

  She sighed. “I’ll take it to Muck, and I’ll let you know what he says. I’ll send word back to you through Father Jim. I’m assuming,” she said somewhat tartly, “the communication line runs both ways.”

  He smiled. “I believe it does.”

  She gathered up her purse and stood, but William Bright had one last thing to say.

  “I hear ye’re keepin’ interestin’ company these days.” He wasn’t looking at her as he said it, but rather gazing out over the broken walls, the sun gleaming on his bald pate like a ring of fire turning him into a wide boy version of Lucifer.

  “Do you?”

  “Aye, I do. Some say ye’re Noah Murray’s woman now.”

  “People can say as they like,” she retorted sharply, “it doesn’t make it so.”

  “I told ye once lass, that ye were right to be afraid of me, an’ I will also tell ye this for free—I haven’t been afraid of any man in my life but two—my father an’ that bastard Murray, an’ if he’s got ye in his grip, he isn’t likely to let ye go.”

  “I’m not here to talk about Mr. Murray,” she said.

  William Bright shrugged and turned back to look at the flowers. “Fair enough. Just remember my words.”

  Pamela made a stop before heading home. She needed time to clear her head and sort her emotions before she could deal with the children and set about all the homely tasks of the evening. She had long been familiar with this old estate, and there was a spot that was particularly dear to her.

  Casey, knowing her as he did, knowing how she loved history-haunted places, had brought her here more than once, to this estate, abandoned so long ago that it wasn’t even on the map anymore and very few people knew of its existence. It was part of why she loved it here, because usually she could ramble without interference, and feel like she was caught in another time altogether. They had come with Conor now and again too, to traipse through the old gardens, and sit by the pond, where crumbling statues glimpsed their ghostly reflections. It was to the pond that she now headed.

  There still remained parts of the ancient house, lines of stone beneath the velvet of grass and lichen, partial walls rearing up out of nowhere, statues that lay over abandoned, long buried in a shroud of vines and bramble. A chimney still stood, stones the size of a trunk partially mortared together and sporting reams of plant life. It was an incredibly romantic spot as well as a sad one. There had been rumors of late that the National Trust might be eyeing the property. She didn’t see how strewn rocks and broken statues would be worthy of that august institution though.

  The earth was mucky near the pond, but the water reflected the sun, edging the pale gold in pewter, taking the orb of light in and rinsing it soft so that it became something else—the moon of a drowned land. She walked near the edge of the water, listening to the soft quork of the frogs and the household chatter of the ducks, all of which had scuttled to one corner of the pond upon her arrival.

  The last time she had been here she had been pregnant with Isabelle and Conor had been just a tot. The acknowledgement of how much time had passed since that day gave her a hollow sensation. She always knew the date, and measured it from the day Casey had disappeared.

  She took a few deep breaths, not really taking in the scenery in front of her, realizing suddenly that she was angry. While she had been upset by William Bright’s story, able to understand the poor girl’s plight, and horrified that her short life had ended in such a terrible fashion, her primary emotion right now was anger. For the truth was, his final words to her had upset her more than she cared to admit. There had been a time when Casey’s presence and love had kept her as safe as a woman might expect to be in such a hard land. It was clear that was no longer true, for now she was a woman alone with two small and very vulnerable children, which in turn made her that much more vulnerable as well. She had put herself under the protection of Noah Murray and she had taken the steps that led people to believe he was now a man in her life, if not indeed the man. Gossip was as rife in a small Irish village, after all, as it was anywhere else.

  Part of her anger was directed toward Casey himself, she knew. Because he had not come home and had disappeared leaving her with what might become a lifetime of unanswered questions.

  She closed her eyes against the peaceful scene in front of her, wishing that she could bring that peace inside herself, could feel a bit of it, even if only for a few minutes of respite. And yet, would she? After all, to feel peace would seem like a betrayal of Casey. It was moot anyway, as she knew she wasn’t capable of any sort of tranquility right now, as much as she might long for it.

  If she didn’t open her eyes, maybe she could transport herself back to the last time they had been here together and could find one of those rifts that she imagined existed on this old estate. They had been sitting by the big boulder down near the pond’s north end, Casey wet and laughing from playing in the reeds with Conor, her keeping a tight eye on their son as he mucked about in the mud, rocks clutched happily in his hands, and more disreputable objects shoved in his pockets. Conor was one of nature’s natural magpies, and had been since he was old enough to grasp things between thumb and finger.

  The day was a beautiful one, the light that pale, soft green that spoke of all things new and growing, things beginning, both root and soil moving, opening up, burgeoning with life—rather like her own self, six months pregnant and feeling like a waddling duck.

  The rosebuds were just opening, giving a filmy glimpse of the wash of pearl pink that would cascade down the broken walls and through the wild hedges in another week. Finbar was picking his way through what she feared was a patch of stick burrs. Half of her mind was rebuilding the estate, planting it with Elizabethan herbs and Irish wild flowers, and peopling it with the lords and ladies of that time, while the other half wondered what to make for dinner, watched her son, and tried to remember how long since the baby had last moved. Such were the vagaries of a pregnant woman’s mind. She was lying on a patch of dry grass, her head in her husband’s lap, one hand held lightly over the contents of her belly.

  “Do you think he was part of the Flight of the Earls?” she asked, for her husband was well versed in all his Irish history, not just the parts rife with rebels. He would know the history of the man who had once lived and ruled here.

  “No, he wasn’t. He’d led an attack on an English fort near Dublin, set fire to the colony an’ was considered a traitor for his deeds. He got what traitors got from the British—no mercy an’ the headsman’s axe. They put his head on a pike as a warnin’ to any other rebel Irish who might get ideas. But ye know, we Irish, a head on a pike just encourages us. My da used to refer to them as the ‘Twilight Lords’, bein’ that it was the twilight of the Celtic world.”

  “It’s a twilight place—an edge place, so it’s fit that a twilight lord should have lived here.” She reached up and brushed a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. “Maybe if we came here at twilight we’d slip back in time and the house would be whole again, and the lords not yet fled the country.”

  “Aye,” Casey said encouraging her flight of fancy. “An’ would ye like that, to be there in the Celtic twilight, before the English razed what was left of us to the ground?”

&
nbsp; “I would, though maybe not forever. I’m rather fond of hot baths and kitchen appliances, after all. Likely I would have been the scullery maid anyway.”

  “You?” Casey said softly. “No, I think not, Jewel. Ye were born to be a lady, there’s no mistakin’ such a thing. Ye’re my lady, after all. Which makes me what—the highwayman or the boot black boy?”

  “Outlaw suits you best—stirring up rebellion around the countryside.”

  “After havin’ made off with the earl’s daughter.”

  “And knocking her up, not once but several times, bad man.”

  She could conjure it up in her mind’s eye: the house, the grounds, the clothes, the music drifting out on the wind, played by an old blind harper. The twilight lord, the last of the great Celtic chieftain-warriors, knowing his world was dissolving around him as certainly as time had crumbled the walls of his house. The English had put paid to what was left of the Celtic world, thinking them barbaric and savage, belonging to a world of myth and legend and not having a place in the modern universe.

  “What happened to his wife?”

  “She died givin’ birth not long after he was executed. Their children were orphaned and turned out of the house. Heaven only knows what happened to them.”

  She shivered a little, despite the warmth of the day. Had she been a woman of that time, she knew it was highly likely, with the number of pregnancies she’d had, that she might not be alive at this time in her life. Conor’s birth had been straightforward, but she remembered the fear that had accompanied it all the same.

  “Ye’re driftin’ off to dark thoughts,” Casey said, “I can tell because ye’ve a wee crease above yer nose. Ye always get that when ye’re troublin’ over somethin’.”