Bleed a River Deep (6 page)

The number of cars parked in the area had significantly increased. The scent of fir trees had been thickened with the smells of burning wood and cooking food. The atmosphere under the canopy was carnivalesque. A few kids who should have been in school were playing soccer in a clearing, using the nearest trees as goalposts. A young girl was picking flowers from the woodland floor, in spots where the sun had managed to pierce the canopy.

Rock music played from one of the camper vans and a number of its occupants were sitting in the sunlight outside the open back doors, rolling cigarettes or drinking from beer cans. I noticed a few of those rolling smokes hastily hide them when they saw me getting out of my car. A man who was playing with a mongrel looked up, peered at me for a second as if in recognition, then turned his back and continued to fight with the dog for possession of the stick it had clamped in its mouth. None of them, as far as I could see, was panning for gold.

I nodded over to them, then walked on down to the river, where the atmosphere was very different. I counted twenty-three straining rumps down by the water, each owner sifting through the grit they had gathered in the sieves and colanders they were using.

I recognized Patsy McCann, standing close to the far bank. The spell of dry weather had exposed part of this section of the riverbed, though a good night’s rain would soon change things. I was able to cross to him with some care and minimal soaking, stepping from stone to stone.

Patsy threw his sieve down in disgust on the near bank and flopped down beside it. Reclining on the grass, he shielded his eyes with his hand and looked up at me.

‘Any luck?’ I asked.

‘Bugger-all,’ he spat. ‘I’d be better off back pulling pints.’

‘Anyone found anything?’ I asked, a little surprised that McCann had given up his job to sift through river dirt.

‘Nobody, apart from yer man Coyle.’ He nodded upriver to where a stocky middle-aged man stood, trouser legs rolled up to his knees, pan in hand.

I noticed that a number of the other people spotted around the river were likewise watching him and, as he moved around, they followed him, at a distance, as if he possessed some unshared knowledge of the riverbed and its secrets. If he was aware of their gazes, he didn’t show it.

Suddenly, a child’s shout echoed along the river. A number of prospectors looked up quickly towards the source of the cry, their faces lit with expectation and envy in equal measure when they saw something glistening in his wet hands. Equally quickly they turned away, with palpable relief, when they realized that it was not gold he carried in his hands but a dead fish. He held its curled body on his upturned palms, as if in offering. Coyle alone went over to inspect it, like some tribal elder, prodding it with his finger then turning and wading upstream. One or two of the others, watching him, gathered their things and began to move too, until he turned and glared at them as if warning them to keep away.

‘That fish is probably the most valuable thing anyone’s found since we got here,’ McCann said, drawing my attention back to him. ‘I’ll give it another week, I think. Then I’m packing it in.’

Wishing him good fortune, I headed on to Orcas, and a meeting with seemingly the only man to really profit from Ireland’s gold rush.

Weston suggested we walk to the site where a group from the museum were lifting the bog body from the ground and transporting it to Dublin. He walked with his suit jacket slung over his arm, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. I faced twin reflections of myself in his sunglasses as we discussed the discovery of the body, which, to Weston’s mind, could only be good for business.

‘We’re perfectly happy to stall production for a few days, helping the museum services to process this discovery. Far from trampling on tradition, we’re helping to preserve it,’ he said in a manner that made me believe the spiel had been scripted.

I couldn’t help but suspect that Weston worked hard to get me to like him – though I didn’t flatter myself to believe it was particular to me. He seemed to need people’s approbation; or perhaps he was so used to being criticized that he was now automatically politic in his conversation, arguing his defence before an attack had even been made.

‘Of course,’ he added, ‘I might ask them to sell the body back to us; put it on display in the reception area.’

I looked at him and he laughed, though, with his sunglasses shielding his eyes, I couldn’t assess the sincerity of the emotion.

‘Maybe just a loan then, eh, Ben?’

We reached the site slightly out of breath. Linda Campbell was there, though no longer in charge. I noticed that her paper suit from the previous day had hidden a slight frame.

‘Back again, Inspector?’

‘Can’t keep away,’ I said. ‘Even if I wanted to.’

‘Ben Devlin!’ a voice boomed, and I turned to see a man my age and size struggle his way out of the pit. ‘Jesus Christ, Ben Devlin in the Guards!’

He stood before me. His face was jowly, his eyes narrowed by the pudginess of his cheeks. His hair was receding, though still naturally black. He held out his arms, as if to give me a hug, and I instinctively stepped back.

‘Jesus,’ he said, turning to Linda Campbell and lowering his arms. ‘Four years together at college and the blackguard pretends not to know me.’

And then it struck me. ‘Fearghal Bradley,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Good to see you.’

‘Benny,’ he said, smiling broadly, clasping me to him in a bear hug. I patted his upper arms lightly in return and extricated myself from his embrace.

‘Fearghal, what brings you to Donegal?’

‘Kate, of course.’

I smiled a little uncertainly and looked at Linda. ‘Kate?’

‘Kate Moss,’ he explained, laughing at his own joke. I vaguely remembered that a body found several years ago in a bog had been named Peat Moss by some wag in the press. It hadn’t taken a massive leap to christen this new find.

‘Except she’d need to lose a few pounds to look like the real thing,’ I added.

Fearghal guffawed loudly. ‘Ben Devlin,’ he repeated, as if for the benefit of those standing around, who looked as bemused as I felt.

‘Are you in the museum now?’ I asked.

‘Professor Bradley
is
the museum,’ Linda Campbell said.

‘Listen to her,’ Fearghal laughed. I wondered for a second if there was something going on between them.

‘So, what happens with her next?’ I asked, nodding towards ‘Kate’.

‘Full forensics, Benny,’ Fearghal said. ‘Same as you’d do yourself. We’ll find out when she lived, how she died, maybe even why she died. It’s the discovery of a lifetime.’

‘I see,’ I said.

‘Ben Devlin in the Guards!’ Fearghal repeated, as much, I suspected, for something to say. ‘Who’d have thought it?’

We struggled to make small-talk for a few moments, having not seen one another in over a decade. Finally we parted with the half-hearted promise to meet for a drink sometime. As we shook hands to part he said again, ‘You a Guard!’ Then he added darkly, ‘Did they know about your criminal record?’

Linda Campbell looked quizzically at me. I laughed as good-humouredly as I could manage.

After returning to his office, Weston and I discussed the arrangements for the following week. He ran through Hagan’s itinerary with me, and details of the security he would be bringing with him. I in turn outlined the arrangements Patterson and I had discussed. Satisfied with our plans, Weston thanked me for my work and walked me to the door.

‘I have to ask,’ he said, smiling. ‘What’s the criminal record your friend mentioned?’ Before I could even respond he continued, ‘I shouldn’t pry, but I’m guessing it’s nothing serious or he wouldn’t have brought it up.’

‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘When we were students we broke into the admin building of the university. It was a student prank thing.’

‘You’ve a bit of the Irish rebel in you, Ben,’ Weston said, slapping me lightly on the back and laughing as if we were old friends. I was reminded again of how I felt on the day he had given me a gold necklace for Debbie. ‘Keep me posted,’ he said, patting me on the upper back once more, then turned back into his office, allowing the door to swing quietly closed behind him.

Chapter Five

Wednesday, 4 October – Thursday, 5 October

On Wednesday I attended the funeral of Ruslan Almurzayev. Karol Walshyk had helped make the arrangements, finding the priest in Derry who said the Polish Mass in the cathedral and persuading him to lead the service.

The turn-out was tiny. Clearly most of the other immigrants were fearful of Immigration Control attending the event. Natalia Almurzayev stood flanked by two female companions. She wore a simple floral summer dress and a pair of plain shoes. Her face was bleary with tears throughout the service.

She stood alone by the graveside as her husband was laid to rest, and I wondered how this woman, alone in a foreign country, having lost her unborn child and her husband within the space of a few months, had the strength to even stand. I was certain that, as she had huddled in the back of a lorry making its way across Europe, she must have held her breath and dared to hope that the future could only bring good things.

Before leaving, I went over to see her to express my condolences in a language she did not understand. Still, she held my gaze with dignity, her jaw set. But behind her strength I could sense a fear of what was to come. She must have realized that the rent collector would be calling on Friday for money she did not have.

I leant close to her, kissed her lightly on a cheek still damp with tears. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll not let them hurt you. I promise.’ I handed her my card, on which was printed my mobile number. ‘Call me if you need anything,’ I said.

She looked me in the eye and smiled lightly, as though she understood the sentiment, even if the words meant little to her.

‘Anything,’ I repeated.

The rest of the day passed with meetings to discuss security arrangements for Hagan’s impending visit. Patterson had relieved me of all other duties to focus on the event; my preparations required a visit to Dublin on Thursday with Patterson, to meet with a number of other regional commanders. It was the first such meeting since Patterson had taken over as Superintendent and he took advantage of the opportunity to go for drinks with his new colleagues during the afternoon. For my part, I decided to visit an old friend.

*

The girl at the desk of the museum phoned through to Fearghal Bradley for me and as I waited for him to come up from ‘the bowels’, as his message relayed through her put it, I examined the nearest display cases.

One in particular stood out: a massive torc – a golden neckband – which had been discovered in Meath in the 1920s was the centrepiece of the biggest display, surrounded by smaller gold pieces discovered in the same dig. The information sheet beside the cabinet related details of the find and the fact that the jewellery had been fashioned from Irish gold during the Bronze Age, when mining had been a common feature of life in Ireland.

A few minutes later Fearghal appeared by my side. I was a little surprised to see him wearing a white medical coat.

‘Benny, boy, good to see you,’ he said, continuing his hail-fellow-well-met routine.

‘Fearghal,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘I was down for a conference; thought I’d drop in and see how Kate is doing.’

‘Great to see you,’ he said, pumping my hand in his but noticeably toning down his voice. ‘Come and see her.’

As I followed him to the door, I asked about his family. His parents had both been architects, and I remembered them as kind, good-living people. They were both well, he assured me, as was his younger brother, Leon, who had been friendly with my younger brother, Tom, when Fearghal and I had known each other. Leon had been a computing expert, then had thrown it up and had gone off to some commune, apparently. Tom, meanwhile, had become a mechanical engineer.

‘That’s how people change,’ Fearghal concluded as he led me down several flights of steps to a basement laboratory not unlike a surgical theatre.

Kate’s body lay curled on top of a stainless-steel table, her features much clearer now that all the dirt had been cleaned from her. Her hair was red, her teeth almost golden in colour.

‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’ Fearghal said.

‘Considering her age,’ I said.

‘Two and a half thousand years,’ he said. ‘Carbon dating will give us a more accurate date, but we suspect early Iron Age.’

‘Have you been able to verify cause of death?’ I asked.

He smiled. ‘Typical cop,’ he said. ‘The how’s not really important, Benny. It’s the why that’s interesting.’

‘Why then?’ I asked, and then, perhaps through pure contrariness, he answered the ‘how’ anyway.

‘She was strangled,’ he said. ‘Garrotted.’

‘Miss Campbell thought that,’ I nodded. ‘And why?’

‘We think she was a sacrifice. She was probably a criminal who was to be executed anyway so they offered her as a sacrifice instead.’

‘A sacrifice to whom?’

‘Probably Aine,’ he said. ‘Goddess of love and fertility.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Detective work, Benny,’ Bradley said. ‘And a lot of guessing.’

‘That’s mostly the same thing,’ I said.

‘There’s a whole load of things we’ve picked up on,’ he said. ‘Firstly, the fact that she was buried at all. Early Iron Age man cremated his dead. If they buried someone, it was probably as a gift to the bog or to the gods.’

‘Why do you think she was a gift to the gods then and not the bog?’

‘Two reasons,’ he said, clearly enjoying discussing his work. ‘Linda examined Kate’s stomach contents, her last meal. She ate, or was forced to eat, a gruel or soup of flowers: barley, linseed, knotgrass, gold-of-pleasure. The fact that she ate a mixture of flowers and cereals suggests either the harvest or the spring.’

‘Forced?’

He beamed broadly. ‘C’mere.’ He beckoned me over to a shelf where a tupperware container sat, half filled with a thick yellow substance. Bradley lifted a spoon from the desk, wiped it on the tail of his white coat and spooned out some of the yellow mix.