‘Shit.’ It was suddenly silent. The superintendent’s whine had come to an end and he was looking at PJ expectantly. Had he asked a question? It was like being back at school, caught out by the teacher. There was nowhere to hide. PJ swallowed and tried a tentative ‘Sorry?’
‘Who? Which resident?’
‘Who what now? I’m sorry, I just …’ His voice trailed away.
The detective superintendent picked a phantom piece of tobacco from the tip of his tongue and lowered his eyebrows until he was almost squinting.
‘Sergeant Collins, I had hoped to use you in this investigation. I had hoped your local knowledge would be an asset to myself and the rest of the team, but if you’re not interested …’ He raised his hands in a gesture that suggested he was taking no responsibility for what would happen next. PJ looked at him and decided that not speaking was probably his best course of action.
‘Who was the last person to see the farmer lad?’
‘Tommy Burke? People say he went to London.’
The superintendent closed his eyes and lowered his head. A beat and then he looked up again with a sigh.
‘I’m aware of that, Sergeant. Who saw him go? Who has been in touch?’
PJ’s face lit up. He knew this one.
‘As far as I know, nobody has heard from him since he left, but I don’t know why people think that’s where he is. I’ll ask around the village … unless … Is that all right? I don’t want to go against proper procedure.’
A weak smile from the detective.
‘No. That would be helpful.’
‘Should I talk to the women at the same time, or is that your job?’
‘Women?’ His head cocked to one side.
PJ groaned silently. He hadn’t told him. Well, it wasn’t his fault. This slimy fuck wouldn’t shut up, but of course now it was himself who looked like a bungling incompetent.
‘The story was that Tommy left because of a messy love life. I’ve never really got to the bottom of it, but I believe he was stringing a couple of girls along and it all came to a head with a fight in the village.’
‘Names?’
‘Well, I know one of the Ross girls was involved, but I’m not sure who the other one was. Would you like me to find out?’
A long, narrow cloud of cigarette smoke was followed by a quiet ‘Yes. Yes, that would be good.’ His voice was a patronising blend of bored, sad and resigned. PJ had an almighty urge to punch him hard in the face.
The rustle of paper in the wind made both men look behind them. A guard was coming towards them across the site, struggling with a large map. He weaved through the excavations like a small dinghy in rough seas having trouble with its sails. The map reared up and slapped him in the face and he nearly fell.
Christ. What a fucking clown, thought PJ.
‘Jesus. Here comes another fucking clown,’ said the detective. PJ could feel himself blushing.
A few spots of rain began to drum against their coats and the dark sky promised more. Detective Dunne shooed the approaching guard back.
‘Head for the Portakabin,’ he shouted into the wind, and pulling his collar up he moved off back towards the small makeshift site office. PJ hesitated for a moment then followed a few feet after him.
They stood around the brown Formica-topped table and stared down at the old map folded out before them. Strange names of townlands were written to the north and east of the area that was now the building site. The old house was marked just back from the road, and behind that a series of outbuildings and what would have been a large garden or paddock. The detective stared out of the window and then back to the table several times before speaking.
‘So the body was found about here,’ he said, pointing just to the east of the row of farm buildings that must have formed the farmyard at the rear of the house. He looked at PJ and opened his mouth to speak. The sergeant braced himself.
‘How many acres?’
A wave of relief. He sort of knew this.
‘Well, I’m not sure how big the farm was, but all that’s left now is about six acres. The Flynn brothers bought it a few years ago to build a big scheme of houses, but then sure the arse fell out of everything.’
As he spoke, he had an idea, a brilliant idea. If the Flynn brothers had bought the land, they must know where Tommy Burke was. He blurted out, ‘Oh, do you think …’ but before he could finish, the detective had turned to the other guard.
‘One of these Flynns must know the whereabouts of the Burke fella if they bought a house off him. Track them down.’
PJ wasn’t sure what he wanted to do exactly, but it was violent.
‘One of them is just there, detective.’ The guard was pointing through the grime-smeared window at a large silver car parked by a couple of builders’ vans just beyond a pile of gravel. Both PJ and the detective peered out and saw a bald middle-aged man sitting in the driver’s seat talking on his phone.
‘Well get him in here,’ the detective barked, making it very clear that he considered himself to be the captain of a ship of fools.
With the other guard gone, PJ felt this was his chance to redeem himself. Surely he had some local insight to offer, some line of enquiry to suggest. He searched his brain, but to no avail. The two men stood silently side by side, the sound of the rain on the thin roof filling the silence. A heavy winter fly made its way slowly across a 2013 Bank of Ireland calendar hanging by the door.
The Flynn brothers, Martin and John, had taken over their father’s small building company in the mid-nineties and quickly transformed it into the magnificent company Flynn’s Future Homes, which, on the advice of a brand management company from London, had been shortened to Flynn’s Futures. The idea was to use the millions they were making during the boom to diversify the company. Martin and John had lots of other ideas, but sadly so too did the economy. The great crash happened and now all the Flynns owned were their homes and cars, and they were lucky to have them. The offices and permanent employees were all gone and people wouldn’t even talk to them after mass, they owed that much to so many. This modest development in Duneen was supposed to be the beginning of their comeback, and now this. A dead body. Martin was not a very religious man, but as he sat in the car talking to his brother John about whether or not the insurance would cover them, he decided that if there was a God, he was an awful bollocks.
‘His name is Connolly. I think it’s Fergus Connolly. He’s based up in Dublin. He approached us. Said it was land that belonged to a relative.’ Martin sat on the orange plastic chair opposite the detective and answered the questions as best he could. All he could think of was the amount of money they had paid at the time, when it seemed the golden goose would never stop laying. Suddenly he had a question of his own.
‘Tell me this. If your man Connolly knew there was a body buried here, would I have a claim against him?’ He could almost feel the wallet in his jacket pocket getting heavier.
Detective Dunne shut his notebook and gave him a smile, more out of pity than anything else.
‘I really wouldn’t know. Best speak to a solicitor about that. Thank you for your help.’ He stood up, signalling that this interview had been terminated. As Martin got up to leave, he remembered that he had an even more pressing question.
‘When do you think we’ll get back to work on the site?’
The smile of pity again.
‘I really wouldn’t know. We’ll be in touch.’ The detective opened the small door and ushered Martin down the steps into the rain.
The policemen watched him scurry back to his car.
‘Right. Let’s find this Connolly. In my experience most bad things in this world happen because of sex or money, and we just found a whole lot of money.’ Linus Dunne buttoned his coat and headed out towards his car.
PJ rolled his eyes. Had he really just said that out loud? He’d bet good money he was a graduate that had been fast tracked through the ranks. PJ stood in the door of the Portakabin watching him
picking his way across the mud towards his car like a dressage pony. Yes, he really was a complete and utter prick.
7
Duneen slept. A ragbag of smoky clouds drifted across the half-moon sitting low in the sky. A fox trotted daintily down the main street, enjoying his freedom to strut in the open rather than cower in the clump of rhododendrons at the back of the priest’s house. The street lights bled the shadow of his tail along the pavement behind him like a dark cloak. Almost as if he were keeping someone waiting, he quickened his pace as he got to the alley beside O’Driscoll’s. The anticipation of browsing the bins without interruption gave his paws a slight bounce as he disappeared from view.
The fox was not the only resident awake. In four houses, four women found that sleep was eluding them.
Mrs Meany tossed and turned. Normally if she couldn’t sleep she prayed a few rounds of the rosary, but tonight she couldn’t even keep her mind on that. She kept losing count of the beads and the Hail Marys until it felt disrespectful. If she couldn’t sleep, she reasoned, she might as well read her book, but the words refused to fall into place and become sentences that told a story. She shut the book and rubbed her hand across its shiny cover, tracing out the large embossed gold lettering. She felt so tired, why wouldn’t her mind yield to sleep? Of course she had continued to think about the body they had uncovered up at Burke’s, but it was more than that. It was an uneasiness, a nervousness that tugged at the pit of her stomach. The past was opening up like a great dark bottomless pit, and she felt herself falling. Squeezing her eyes shut, she let out an audible whimper and pushed her book to one side, letting it hit the floor with a muffled thump.
Susan Hickey knew exactly why she couldn’t sleep. Excitement. She had stayed up far too late getting everything ready. On the third Friday of every month she had a little coffee morning to raise money for the hospice in Ballytorne. Normally she made around fifty euros and she got a little thank you in the announcements at mass. Of course that wasn’t why she did it, but it was a nice gesture. She enjoyed doing something to help others less fortunate, but at the same time it was amazing how quickly the third Friday came around every month. Tomorrow morning, however, couldn’t come fast enough.
She smiled to herself as she added another stack of paper napkins to the already precarious tower on the sideboard. The timing couldn’t be better. Guards swarming all over the village and an actual body unearthed in Duneen. True, she had been disappointed when she found out that it wasn’t a mass grave, but in a way this was almost better. A single mystery. People would be coming from all over the parish. How lucky for her that her coffee morning was happening before that Sunday’s mass so this would be everybody’s first opportunity to discuss every little detail. She wasn’t a gambling woman, but having talked it over with, well, everyone she had met in the last forty-eight hours, she was fairly certain the bones were the last remains of Little Tommy Burke.
She skipped up the stairs to bed. Whoever those bones belonged to, they hadn’t buried themselves! She felt breathless as she pulled her duvet up and turned out the light. She hoped she had enough cups.
Like the Lady of Shalott, Evelyn lay on her back, her arms crossed over her chest and her hair fanned out on the pillow. Her breathing was deep and regular and yet her eyes remained wide open, staring into the gloom that engulfed her. She wondered if this was the start of her dark, lonely journey into madness. The last two days had been hell. She had lost count of the number of times she had had to run upstairs or rush into the downstairs toilet to have a quick cry. She hadn’t dared step foot in the village, because she knew exactly what it would be like. All beady eyes and whispers, and just when you thought that was bad enough, some interfering bitch rubbing your arm and asking pointedly, ‘And how are you?’ Evelyn’s flesh shuddered under the covers at the thought of it.
She knew Abigail was watching her carefully, but she honestly thought Florence hadn’t noticed a thing. Evelyn suspected that she had spent so much time with children that she had begun to view the world as they did. She was the centre of her own universe and if it wasn’t affecting her directly then it was as if it wasn’t really happening. She sat at the table cheerfully recounting the comings and goings of the Garda cars up the hill past the school oblivious to what part her own sister might have played in the mystery. Mind you, why would anyone suspect that things that had happened – or more importantly hadn’t happened – all those years ago would still have such a vice-like grip on her heart? At least when her parents had died, or when Tommy had left, she knew why she was crying. Back then the sleepless nights had felt real, felt natural, but what was this? How could her heart and mind make sense of these feelings when she couldn’t name them? Was it sadness, regret, love? No, she decided, the most overwhelming emotion was fury. She wanted to slap the face that looked back at her from the mirror. This stupid woman who had allowed her whole life to slip by in a dull blur.
She put a hand up to her face to wipe away the tears that had begun to roll down the sides of her face into the pillow. The young girl with all that passion, where was she now? Wild, that was the word; Evelyn Ross had been wild. She had stood with her feet wide apart on Main Street and howled. She could remember the first punch, and the mad rush of adrenalin as people tried to drag them apart. Why had she banished that version of herself so completely; why had she replaced her with this prig? This woman who worried about cleaning tile grout and putting borage flowers in her salads? And for who? Not even a man – just her sisters, who neither cared nor noticed! What a fool! What a stupid, stupid woman she was.
She turned on the light and closed her eyes for a second to avoid the sudden glare. When she opened them again, she scanned the room as if searching for something, anything, that she could do to change her life. She couldn’t go back, but she could start again. Vogue! Her ridiculous shrine to the clothes she would never own and the places she would never go. She almost jumped out of bed and started heaving bundles of the old magazines over to the door, where she stacked them in haphazard piles. When they had all been moved, she looked with satisfaction at the pale square on the carpet where they had been, making a mental note to give the room a good hoover. In the morning she would continue the Vogues on their journey. She would bring them to the back of the long shed and have a bonfire.
She closed her eyes and imagined the heat on her face and the flames dancing like flags in the wind. Something to look forward to at last.
Sleep had found Brid Riordan but now she had escaped its hold and was wide awake. She blamed the screw tops. It was so easy when you finished a bottle around ten to think to yourself that just one more glass was a good idea, then suddenly it was one o’clock in the morning and you were stumbling around the kitchen half-cut trying to get things ready for the next day. It was sort of funny, but also a bit mortifying, that time Carmel came home from school after finding a bottle of washing-up liquid in her lunch box. Brid had made a bit more of an effort after that. Well, after that and the time she got breathalysed taking the kids to school. Thank God she’d gotten away with a fine. Anthony had looked at her as if she’d tried to kill the kids, but she knew she’d been perfectly fine to drive. Failing one of those tests was very different from being drunk. Everyone knew that.
She had woken up face down on the kitchen counter at 3 a.m., and now, two hours later, she was still sat there half listening to the radio. She knew she should head upstairs. She’d feel awful in the morning, but she couldn’t bear the disapproving sigh as Anthony rolled over when she got into bed. That was part of the problem. He went up so early and she had no one to talk to, so of course she had a few glasses of wine. She was bored! The kids were holed up with their computers all the time. Anthony wouldn’t let her get another dog after she’d run over Trixie, even though the whole family knew it hadn’t been her fault. Yes, she was bored.
The days weren’t so bad. There were things to do. A bit of housework, a trip into the village or over to Ballytorne for provisions, dinner
to make, but once Anthony, Carmel and Cathal had wolfed down their food, she was left alone with nothing to do and no distractions. She used to be a big reader when she’d been young, but somehow she had got out of the habit. As a girl she had welcomed the refuge novels had offered. In their pages she had imagined so many futures for herself, but time had run out for those fantasies. She was living her future. No book now seemed able to hold her, though she still bought the odd one and left them around the house just in case the mood would suddenly take hold of her. In reality they were just more things to dust.
Tommy Burke. She had needed a drink that lunchtime. Why had no one told her? She was sure Anthony must have heard but supposed he hadn’t wanted to upset her; or maybe he simply didn’t want to talk to her. He rarely did these days. The shock of it. She had been changing a bulb in the lamp in the hall. She’d asked Anthony to do it, but you might as well be talking to the wall. Through the frosted glass of the front door she saw the outline of Pat the postman. Carmel and Cathal used to get a real kick out of that. Their letters were delivered by a real-life Postman Pat. The excitement when they had a day off school so they’d be at home when he called! She’d opened the door to get the few bills or circulars she knew he’d have for her, but mostly just to see another face, hear another voice. They exchanged the usual observations about the weather, deciding it was mild for nearly December, certainly compared to last week, but then as Pat turned to leave he said, ‘Fierce business up at the building site.’
Of course she couldn’t have known what had happened; she just assumed one of the lads on the site had been injured or even killed.
‘What’s that, Pat?’ Such a simple question. She leaned forward to get the news and he told her about the bones, and then he said his name. She hadn’t heard that name spoken out loud for so many years, and here was a voice telling her that Tommy Burke was dead and buried in his own farmyard.
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