“No, he didn’t say. But I’m sure it was something to do with the horses. It always is with Oliver. God, I hope he’s OK.”
Lyons came back into the lounge carrying a tray with a large teapot, three mugs, a jug of milk, a sugar bowl, and a plate of biscuits.
“Here, Laura, have a cup of tea. Have you eaten anything yet this morning?” Plunkett asked.
“No. No, I couldn’t eat a thing, but thanks for the tea, Inspector,” she said, managing a half-smile.
“It’s Maureen, call me Maureen, Mrs Weldon,” Lyons said.
As Laura Weldon poured out tea for the three of them, Finbarr Plunkett caught Lyons’ eye and indicated that they needed to go into the kitchen to talk.
“We just have a few things to arrange, Laura, we’ll be back in a minute,” Plunkett said, but Laura Weldon hardly noticed. She was in a little private world of her own, and on this particular day, it wasn’t a very nice place to be.
In the kitchen, out of earshot of Laura Weldon, Lyons was first to speak.
“Mary Costello is on her way out, sir. She’s in my car, so as not to alert anyone. She has the recorder with her. We’ve put out an alert on Weldon’s car. We got the details from the motor tax office. What else do you need?” Lyons said.
“I need you to get out to Clifden as soon as you can. Take my car, it’s quicker. It has a siren, but don’t use it unless you have to. I’ll use yours when Mary gets here. On the way out get Mulholland lined up to have a good look around the town discreetly. When you get there, co-ordinate it, and see if there’s any sign of life at the show grounds. Report back to me when you have things moving. Oh, and Maureen, if you know any good prayers, start saying them now!” he said.
* * *
Lyons decided that the quickest way to get to Clifden was to turn off at The Twelve Hotel, drive up past the Father Griffin Monument, out past Bearna Golf Club and pick up the N59 halfway between the city and Moycullen. The road was narrow and boggy, but the big Audi soaked it up, and she managed a good pace with no other traffic of any kind to get in the way. She did have to use the car’s siren in Moycullen where both sets of traffic lights always seemed to be set at red, but after she had cleared the village she gunned the car, and was soon hitting 130kph, though the speed limit was only 80.
“I could get used to this,” she said to herself, taking the time to explore some of the toys the luxury car provided. Before Oughterard she called Sergeant Séan Mulholland in Clifden on the Audi’s hands-free phone.
“Séan, it’s Maureen. Have you heard about Oliver Weldon?”
Although superior in rank to Mulholland, Lyons found it better to continue to call him by his first name, as she had done while they were both sergeants. Mulholland seemed to enjoy the lack of formality, and responded well to it.
“Yes, Maureen. It came in about twenty minutes ago, and before you ask, I have Jim Dolan and several uniformed men out scouring the town for any sighting of him or his car. He’s well known around here, so if he’s in the area, someone will have seen him,” the sergeant said.
“Great, Séan. I’ll be there in twenty minutes or so, then I want to go to the show ground. Can you get someone to meet me outside?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll get Peadar Tobin to wait outside for you, unless you want us to go in ahead of you?” Mulholland said.
Lyons remembered Tobin from the day Jennifer Gillespie went missing. He was a uniformed Garda in his mid-thirties, around six feet two inches tall, and well built. He was quite attractive too, in a rugged, country sort of way.
“Thanks, Séan, he’ll do nicely, but get him to wait outside for me. Talk later,” she said, finishing the call.
Once Lyons got through Oughterard, the scenery and the road quality changed dramatically. The weather had become overcast, suppressing the glorious blues of the distant Twelve Pins that the sunshine brings out, but the wildness of the terrain still stirred something in Maureen as she sped along towards Clifden.
“Here we bloody go again,” she said to herself, “I should move out here permanently I spend so much time on this road. I must get a better car though, this is fantastic,” she thought, patting the car’s dashboard affectionately. In what seemed like no time at all, she was barrelling down past the new holiday cottages at Clifden Glen on the outskirts of the town.
* * *
When Lyons pulled up outside the show ground in Clifden, Peadar Tobin was standing at the gate with his hands behind his back looking like a sentry on guard duty.
“Good morning, Inspector,” he said tipping the peak of his Garda cap, “nice car you’ve got there. Is it new?”
“Morning, Peadar. No, it’s Superintendent Plunkett’s. He lends it to me for long journeys so that I don’t get too tired,” Lyons said. The uniformed Garda didn’t quite know what to make of that, so he said nothing.
“Can we get inside here, Peadar?” Lyons said.
“Well, I don’t have a key, and it’s padlocked. But if you turn away for a minute or two, we may find that it’s actually been left open,” the young garda said.
“Jesus!” Lyons said, shaking her head, and looking down the street away from Tobin.
A moment later Tobin said, “Here we go,” pushing the gates open sufficiently to admit them both.
The show ground was completely deserted, with the Classic Car Show being over and nothing else planned for a week or two. They made their way quickly to the buildings, and while the door at the bottom of the stairs leading to the office was locked, there was no sign of anyone, or any evidence that there had been anyone there recently.
“Do you want me to open it?” Tobin said, “it’s no bother.”
“No, leave it for now, Peadar. There’s no sign that anyone has been here, and if they broke in, they’d hardly go to the trouble of locking it again anyway. Let’s have a look in the outbuildings,” Lyons said as they made their way in that direction. Tobin walked behind her, not through any sense of chivalry, but in that way, if someone sprang out to attack her, he wouldn’t have to turn around to go to her defence. Lyons recognised and appreciated his thoughtfulness.
The outbuildings were not secured – there was nothing in them worth stealing – but it would be an ideal place to hold someone secretly, so the pair were thorough in their search. They looked in all of the stables, in the tack room, now bare of any equipment, and the sluice room which had been cleaned down and now smelled of Jeyes Fluid, with a few small pools of the murky liquid still drying out on the concrete floor. The two officers then walked around the paddock, but found nothing other than a few discarded drinks cans and some empty potato crisp wrappers.
Just as they were leaving the show grounds, Lyons’ phone rang.
“Maureen, it’s Séan here. I’ve just had a call from Pascal Brosnan out in Roundstone. They’ve found Weldon’s Mercedes on the little road leading down to Gurteen. It’s parked in the entrance to a site, and the builder can’t get his JCB in, so he reported it,” Mulholland said.
Pascal Brosnan was the single Garda who ran the police station in Roundstone. Miraculously, the village had been spared the devastating cuts following the financial crisis in 2011 when hundreds of rural Garda stations had been closed in an effort to save money. Brosnan was a bachelor who lived in a modern bungalow not far from the Garda station, and he had proven to be most useful the previous year when a young visitor to the area had been kidnapped.
“OK. Thanks, Séan, I’m on my way,” Lyons said.
Lyons left Peadar Tobin to walk back to the station and set out along the old bog road towards Roundstone in Plunkett’s car. By this time, she knew the road well and was able to cover the distance to Gurteen in fifteen minutes. When she drove down the little lane that led to the caravan site and the beautiful white sandy horse-shoe shaped beach of Gurteen Bay, Pascal Brosnan was lounging against Weldon’s apparently abandoned car.
“Hi Pascal,” she said getting out of the Audi, “Is it locked?”
“Yes, Inspector,
and the engine is cold. Looks like it’s been here for a while,” Brosnan said.
“Have you had a look around? Any sign of the driver?”
“No, not yet. I was waiting for some backup,” the young Garda said.
“Right. Well I’m here now, so let’s see what we can find.”
Unlike Tobin had in Clifden, Brosnan went ahead of Lyons, and pushed open the flimsy makeshift wire gate that was guarding access to the site where yet another bungalow was being constructed. After a few minutes searching fruitlessly, Lyons decided on some more positive action.
“Pascal, can you get on to Séan and get him to send as many people as he can spare out to us as soon as possible. We’re going to have to comb out the whole area till we find Oliver Weldon, assuming he’s here somewhere. I’ll get onto Superintendent Plunkett and get him to mobilize a crew from Galway,” Lyons said.
She called Plunkett’s phone, but got no reply, so then she phoned the Weldon’s house and asked to speak to Mary Costello.
“Hi, Mary. Anything there?”
“No, Inspector. All quiet here. What about out where you are?” Costello said.
“Well, we’ve found Weldon’s car, but don’t say anything to Mrs Weldon just yet. Is the superintendent there?”
“No. He left in your car about half an hour ago. He has a lunch engagement with a visiting delegation of French police. It seems they are here to find out how we handle rural policing.”
“Shit. So, can you get onto Mill Street and get them to mobilize a team of five or six and get them out here pronto on my instruction. We’ll have to start a search for Oliver Weldon, if he hasn’t been spirited away somewhere else altogether,” Lyons said.
“Do you think he’s still alive, Inspector?” Costello said.
“I bloody hope so, Mary, I really do.”
Chapter Fourteen
By mid-afternoon a team of uniformed Gardaí were swarming all over Gurteen Bay. They looked at every bungalow, and searched the caravan site, looking in, and even under, each of the static mobile homes, in the toilet block and washrooms, and even in the vehicles used by the park’s owners, but there was no sign of Oliver Weldon anywhere.
At almost half past four an odd thing happened. A shiny black Ford Granada hearse came slowly down the track leading to Gurteen with a small group of elderly mourners walking sombrely behind it. The men were dressed in old, well-worn two-piece suits, and each of them had a cap perched on his head. The only two women in the cortege wore heavy tweed coats and had head scarves. Lyons saw the hearse approaching and called Pascal Brosnan aside.
“What’s this Pascal?” she said.
“That’s old Festus O’Rourke. He died in the nursing home at the weekend. His family are all buried here in the graveyard up on the hill that separates Gurteen from Dog’s Bay.”
“Well, ask the men to keep well out of their way, will you?”
“Sure. They won’t be long putting him in the ground anyway. They’ve already said Mass up at the church.”
The small, sad procession continued along past the car park at the beach, and stopped at the gates leading into the graveyard. The undertakers manoeuvred the pale oak coffin out of the back of the hearse, and led by the priest – dressed in black and white robes with a black biretta and a silk stole embroidered in gold and purple – the little group made their way awkwardly into the cemetery where a fresh grave had been dug out of the rocky ground. The grave was covered by a light wooden frame with an artificial grass mat over it, to conceal the black hole beneath. Two gravediggers appeared from nowhere, and as the undertakers put the coffin down, they threaded strong canvas straps through the handles in preparation for the burial. They then removed the wooden frame from over the grave and stopped in their tracks.
Staring up at them from six feet below the surface of the ground was none other than Oliver Weldon. He had silver duct tape across his mouth, and his hands and feet were bound tightly with more of the same. As soon as the daylight reached him, he stared blinking rapidly and moving his arms, wriggling about as much as the confined space would allow, and grunting, fearful that he might be taken for dead and be buried alive.
As soon as the shout went up, several uniformed Gardaí ran to the graveside expecting the worst. Lyons’ radio crackled into life with an excited voice shouting, “We’ve found him. He’s in the grave, but he’s alive!”
“Christ Almighty, what next!” Lyons said as she ran off towards the graveyard with Pascal Brosnan at her side.
* * *
It took the combined skills of the two gravediggers, two strong Gardaí and the priest to extricate Oliver Weldon from his tomb. After all, graves normally only experience one-way traffic, and the damned thing was almost six feet deep. Eventually Weldon was brought to the surface, feeling very weak and very cold. So much so that he couldn’t speak coherently, even after the tape around his mouth had been rather painfully removed. He was shaking uncontrollably. They sat him on the coping stone of another nearby grave, and one of the Gardaí gave him his jacket while another was despatched to the caravan site to procure a mug of warm sugary tea. Tea, it seems, in the west of Ireland can even bring people back from the grave!
Lyons called Mulholland and asked him to get an ambulance there as quickly as he could, explaining where and in what condition they had found Mr Weldon. Then she tried Superintendent Plunkett again, and this time got through.
“Jesus Christ, Maureen. What the hell is going on?” Plunkett said on hearing where and how his friend had been found.
“Look, sir, he’ll be OK. He’s had a truly horrific ordeal, and he’s cold, weak and very hungry, but he’s alive. The ambulance is on its way. I thought you might like to tell Mrs Weldon yourself, sir,” Lyons said.
“Yes, thanks Maureen, I’ll call her now. And when you’ve tidied up out there I want you to come back in and see me. I’ll wait in my office till you arrive, and besides, I need my car back,” Plunkett said.
“Yes, sir, of course, sir, and I’ll be needing mine back as well,” she said, not wanting to let him get the upper hand completely.
“What? Oh yes, of course. I had to put fuel in it you know, it was right out.”
“Excellent,” she thought to herself smiling, “and I won’t be putting any diesel in yours, mate!”
Lyons felt that there was little point in trying to turn the grave into a crime scene. There had been too many people hoofing around, and there was no material that could hold a decent fingerprint anywhere about, although she did bag up the duct tape just in case. She told the priest he could proceed with the burial. The small group that had come to see Festus O’Rourke to his final resting place all appeared to be totally numbed by the whole episode, but Lyons had no doubt that the story would be told, and probably enhanced, in the pubs in Roundstone that evening, and eventually make it into the local folklore.
Lyons imagined what they would say: “And when they went to put poor old Festy in the ground, wasn’t there some other fella already in there. And I wouldn’t mind, but wasn’t he only alive!”
“If this is going to be my last trip in Superintendent Plunkett’s car, I’m damn well going to enjoy it!” she said to herself as she approached Roundstone village. She flicked on the switch for the siren and went screaming through the village as fast as she dared, much to the amazement of the locals. And then on to Recess, and Maam Cross pushing the Audi all the way. In the late afternoon, the clouds had given way to bright sunshine, and the long shadows from the mountains along with the purple of the heather all over the boggy land made a genuinely beautiful panorama as she drove along. She made good time until she encountered the evening traffic on the Newcastle Road, and as if to signal the end of her adventure for the day, a heavy shower descended making the road slick and her humour grey like the clouds overhead.
Just as Lyons was pulling into the car park at Mill Street, her phone rang. It was Mick Hays.
“Hi, where are you?” he said full of cheer.
“Hi, Mick. I’m just getting back to the station. I have a meeting with the Super. Where are you?”
“I’m at home. Do you think you’ll be long?”
“No, I doubt it. Plunkett will be keen to get away, but I’ll have to keep him here for a few minutes till his car cools down,” Lyons said.
“What?”
“Never mind, I’ll tell you later.”
“Why don’t we meet in O’Conaire’s at, say, seven-thirty. You can tell me all about it then. Oh, and leave the cars, I need a drink,” Hays said.
“Great. See you there.”
Superintendent Finbarr Plunkett was restless when Lyons arrived into his office.
“Come in, Maureen, give me an update,” he said.
Lyons outlined the events of the day from the time she had left the Superintendent out at Bearna.
“Do you think he’ll be OK?” he asked when she had finished.
“Well, physically, he’ll be fine. He wasn’t hurt. But it may take him a bit longer to get over it mentally. That was quite an ordeal.”
“You’re telling me. What’s this all about, Maureen?” he said.
“I’m not sure yet, but we will get to the bottom of it, sir, don’t worry.”
“Do you think the two incidents are connected?” the Superintendent said.
“It’s too early to say, but it’s definitely a possibility. I’ll know more tomorrow when we have more information about the dead man, sir.”
“Is Mick back yet?”
“He’s just arrived home.”
“Good. Get him to go and see Oliver in the morning. I want Weldon to know that we’re taking this very seriously,” he said.
Lyons bristled with the imputation, but bit her tongue. Plunkett was in no mood to be challenged.
“May I have my car keys please, Inspector?” Plunkett said.
“Oh, yes, sorry, sir,” she said, handing them over somewhat reluctantly and collecting her own car key from his desk.
“By the way, sir, how did you get on with the French contingent?” Lyons said.
The Galway Homicides Box Set 2 Page 8
