Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) (34 page)

‘Questionable Death? Coroner’s Office to Re-Open Investigation into the Death of Wealthy Businessman and Politician James Kirkpatrick III.’

‘Something about the whole situation seemed a bit funny from the start,’ says the Reverend Lucien Broughton, currently seeking to become member of Parliament in the district the deceased James Kirkpatrick had represented from April of 1962 until his untimely death in early March of this year. ‘It seems as if the public was never given an adequate explanation for his death, a man relatively young and in good health, tragic yes, but, accidental, well that remains to be seen,’ continued the Reverend Broughton. ‘He was a much loved public figure and I feel that the people of his district and this city deserve an honest answer to what actually happened.’

Questions about the death of James Kirkpatrick have been swirling since his death in a hunting accident; however his son, now Lord Kirkpatrick, assured the press and media that it was nothing more than an accident. Strange, perhaps, for a man whose skill with a gun was impressive but not entirely out of the range of possibility. Now, however, disturbing facts are coming to light that cast doubt on the story...’

Jamie, body cold and rigid, scanned the rest of the story and saw that it gave details of his father’s life, medical and psychological history, relationships and then went on to chronicle his own woes. He felt a cold trickle begin to build into a hard ball of ice in his stomach. There were things in this article, half-hints and insinuations, which alluded to particulars no one outside of himself and his father could possibly have known about. Unless someone had done a lot of homework, had set out to lay a trap, had rifled his papers, fine-tooth combed their business dealings for the last three decades and searched his home. Someone who had bided their time until it was beyond his powers of damage control.

“Dear Christ,” he breathed out, head reeling, pruning shears slipping to the ground and rolling away into the soil.

“That’s not all, you’d best look at page three,” Pamela said miserably.

He flipped the page over, wondering what grimy detail they hadn’t thoroughly exhumed and examined on page one. His question was answered in a black and white, 3X5 picture. Taken on the night of his father’s funeral it showed he and Pamela by the fire, at the precise moment he’d leaned against her in exhaustion and despair. The pose, however, indicated anything but despair.

‘Mistress of the Castle?’
read the caption. The accompanying article made no pretense at being respectable and proceeded in five paragraphs to dissect his love life, his marriage, Colleen’s defection to a nunnery and speculated with outright lewdness about the whys and wherefores of the girl who’d taken up residence in his home. Including a bit on what was snidely referred to as the ‘summer love nest in Scotland’.

Fury and fear jostled for primacy in his head. The words themselves were bad enough, censure, ruination, defamation... and the list went on of the damages the tone of the article could and, he admitted, would wreak. But there was something else, a feeling sliding blackly under the words themselves that told him much more than business dealings and standing in the community were at stake. A fool, he knew, should have seen some of this coming. You couldn’t take a young, beautiful girl under your roof and expect people not to speculate and outright accuse you of a wide variety of perversities. There had been bound to be whispers about his father’s death as well, gunshots to the head caused supposition and suspicion by their very nature.

But the pictures—who on earth had taken one of Pamela and himself that night? And the other one of his father gave him real cause for worry as it had been in his desk, a private moment of memory, a melancholy father caught on film by an equally melancholy son. Someone had been through his home, had spied on him with malevolent intent for some months now it would seem. The question that begged to be answered was who? He thought, with a chill, dropping sensation in his stomach, that he might know the why all too well.

“What do we do?” Pamela, still pale but less visibly shaken, was looking at him with questioning eyes.

He took a moment before answering, but when at last he spoke his voice was calm and firm, “We go back to Belfast, find out who’s behind this and then dig in for a long and ugly fight.”

It was, at least, a place to start.

Take a break Casey, there’s someone out back waitin’ to see ye.”

Casey, putting down a trayload of freshly cleaned glasses, nodded, paused behind the bar to get his cigarettes and with only a mild curiosity as to the identity of his guest headed out to the back of Declan O’Ryan’s pub.

The early evening light was bright in comparison to the dimly lit interior of the pub and he took a moment to adjust, sliding a cigarette out of the pack and lighting it by feel alone.

“Hello,” he heard a quiet voice say, a voice he’d spent all summer remembering and forgetting.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said gruffly, eyes adjusting and taking in the sight in front of him.

“Yes, it’s me,” Pamela said, voice in response to his own, less soft. “Pat told me I could find you here.”

“Come to say goodbye an’ fare thee well, have ye? Could have saved yerself the expense of bus money, the papers pretty much said it for ye.” He sat on an empty milk crate, eyeing her dispassionately through a haze of smoke.

“No,” she said warily, “I came to see you, I promised I would.”

“Aye well,” he took a long pull on his cigarette, the next words coming out in a slipstream of blue, “ye’ve kept yer promise, so ye can go back to the other side of the tracks with a clear conscience. Ye’ll have to excuse me I’ve inventory to do.” He stood grinding his cigarette out and disposing of the butt in a slimy looking bucket.

“Do you believe everything you read?” she asked as he turned his back to her and reached for the door handle.

He stopped, gripping the handle tightly wishing he could just open it and be done with her. Christ he needed this conversation like he needed a hole in the head. Another hole in the head he revised, as he turned to face her once more.

“Fools generally believe what they want to, whatever’s most handy to their own wants an’ needs,” he said coolly, “an’ I am no fool.”

“I never thought you were, though, I’m wondering,” her brows drew into two delicate lines, “if I’m going to have to amend that opinion.”

He stepped towards her, all the confusion of the last week coalescing itself into a tidy knot of anger. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“That if you allowed a bunch of half-baked suppositions and filthy innuendoes change your mind about me then perhaps you are a fool and not worth the fare it took to get me down here. What exactly did you learn from those stories that you didn’t already know?”

Throwing accusation into the fray didn’t help Casey’s anger. “Ye come here accusin’ me? Yer the talk of the town, you an’ yer gentleman friend on the hill. Ye told me ye came to this country because of childhood memories but ye came here for him, didn’t ye? He’s yer memories.”

She met his fury squarely, “Yes, I came here for him, because of him.”

“I knew it,” he said, shaking his head. “Well then I don’t see that there’s anymore to say.”

“No,” she said her voice suddenly sad, “perhaps there isn’t after all.”

“Well then,” he said awkwardly, “I’m busy as ye can see, I’d best get back in.”

“Yes, I’m busy myself,” she smiled, a bright, slivered fake smile, “I have to find a new place to live and I’ve only got started.”

He was at the entry, had the knob turned when she spoke her last words and he leaned his head against the door and closed his eyes.

“So that’s it, is it? Ye had yer summer with him, threw yerself at his head and got turned down stone cold. Am I gettin’ the picture clearly here?”

“Yes,” she said in a tight voice.

“An’ so now ye thought ye’d come an’ I’d welcome ye with open arms.” There was a resounding silence behind him. “Aye well isn’t that rich? Ye’d think I was no more than a dog on his doorstep for ye to kick or kiss dependin’ on yer whim,” he turned back to her, knowing his emotions were there for her to see plainly but not caring, “an’ ye know the saddest bit is that like that dog I’m happy to see ye, I’m grateful for whatever ye throw my way. I’m willin’ to take the scraps off someone else’s plate an’ make a meal of it.” He rubbed a hand over his face, bristles of his whiskers rasping against the palm. “This is what I’m reduced to an’ I can’t say I care much for the feel of it.”

“I came because of him, I’m still here because of you,” she said quietly, pale beneath the tan that dusted her skin gold in the fading light.

Casey let out a long and frustrated exhalation of breath, “Christ, girl what the hell do ye expect me to say to that?”

“I don’t expect you to say or do anything,” she responded, “only believe me when I say that I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you but I had to know where I stood with him.”

“Is that meant to comfort me?” he asked, sarcasm heaped neatly over each syllable.

“No.”

“Well I’ll give ye top marks for honesty,” he gave a low laugh, “but not for much else.”

“Fair enough.”

He shook his head, nonplussed by this girl. Her honesty took him off guard, left him open to all sorts of confusion and doubt. Just her presence here was enough to give him all the signs he needed, to tell him the truth that was written on this particular page of his life. Pinwheeling senses, jellied knees, cascades of stars, difficulty breathing and a complete and utter lack of logic presiding in his brain.

“I really must get back to work,” he said, the words difficult and forced, feeling hard and stripping to his throat.

She nodded, not turning away, not walking off into the evening air the way she was supposed to.

“Alright,” he said in defeat, “I’ve got to make a short trip this Saturday, it’s a trip I meant to make alone, but if ye’d like to come, I think I can manage the company.” It was he knew, a less than gracious offer, but the rest of his suffering senses had made him angry.

“That would be grand,” she said, tipping forward on her toes and kissing him on the corner of his mouth.

He watched her walk off, mindlessly mesmerized by her thoroughly female undulations. He’d an uneasy feeling that she hadn’t had the slightest doubt of the outcome of their meeting.

Connemara sat by the sea. An ancient, misted landscape, marked, pitted, scored and scarred, an old woman settling down hard on her bones.

Long ago, the Riordans had originated in Connemara and still to a certain extent claimed it as their ancestral home. It was a land suited to such men, wilder, less pastoral, harder and less forgiving than the rest of Ireland, a land that refused to be tamed or give much comfort to the inhabitants thereof. The first of the Riordans, it was said, emerged from the sea onto rock and swore he’d never put a foot in water again. Legend surely, repeated with a smile and a bit of drama, from one generation to the next, but oddly enough not a man of them had any fondness for the sea. Living on an island one learned to deal with it, to understand it well enough that it couldn’t take one’s life easily, to use it for practical reasons and harbor no romance whatsoever about it in one’s soul. It was neither friend nor foe merely a great implacable fact that must be regarded with respect and a certain amount of fear. The sea was like a woman, a tricky business, never quite understood but respected for its vagaries. Rock on the other hand, which was what the vast majority of Connemara consisted of, could be depended upon, would change only minimally through countless seasons of rain and sun, it was something a man could stake his life upon. And so the Riordans had, though perhaps they had loved the land too much. At first in a very literal sense, for they ploughed it, cultivated it, brought forth food and sustenance from a barren wasteland. Of late in an interpretation that was purely figurative. The land on both counts had betrayed them, taken their lives with as little emotion as the sea would have.

Casey’s pilgrimage here today was a personal one, an homage to ancestors and a long postponed apology to a father he’d never had a chance to say goodbye to. It was a trip he’d been avoiding since he’d come home, but had decided on this first Saturday in September that the time to face his ghosts was long overdue.

The day, somewhat like his mood, had been one of sporadic showers, heavy oppressive cloud and now on the brink of evening had sprung out in glorious sunshine, soft cross-hatched clouds in watery pinks, lavenders and melting yellows, painting the sky. Light, mellowed by the pull of night, danced tender-footed on leaves, was caught in the clasp of water and mating became strings of diamond. It was enchanting, if somewhat soggy.

“You might,” said an annoyed and exhausted voice behind him, “have told me we’d be jumping fences and pulling through haystacks all day, at least I could’ve dressed for it.”

“Now how was I to know ye’d turn up lookin’ like ice cream on Sunday,” Casey gave a mild look over his shoulder.

Of the verbal sort there was no reply, but a pebble, deliberately sharp, pinged off the back of his head seconds later.

“Ouch, what the hell was that for?”

“For inviting me,” she answered, looking a little less forlorn than she had a moment previous. She was, like the naiads, inappropriately clad and soaking wet.

“Where are we?” She halted beside him, shivering.

“Don’t exactly know,” he replied bemusedly, taking his coat off and settling it around her shoulders without even looking sideways.

“You don’t know?” her tone was incredulous. “You’ve made me march about in grass up to my backside all day, sit through a deluge of rain buried in suspicious smelling hay and you don’t know where we are?”

“I will when we get there,” he answered and set off once again after studying the rock formations in the distance.

“If you won’t tell me where, can’t you at least tell me why we’re going and what we’re going to do when we get there?” she asked, grumpily keeping pace with him.

“Who, why, when, where, what, yer full of questions aren’t ye? Have ye ever considered there aren’t answers for everything an’ that some things must be taken on faith?”

“Are you asking me to trust you?” She irritably brushed a piece of hay out of the neck of her dress.

“Have I given ye any reason not to?”

“Point taken.”

They walked on some further way as the sky abandoned its grasp on the day and a soft, subtle shading began to occur, casting shy phantoms before it.

Just when she thought she might have to throw herself into a hedgerow for a rest, Casey suggested that they stop while he regained his bearings.

“How can you get yourself righted if you’ve no idea where we are?”

“It’s a feelin’ I’m lookin’ for more than an actual landmark, though there ought to be a twisted oak an’ a stream...” he trailed off, peering distractedly through the gloom.

“We’ve been walking in great bloody circles all day and you’re looking for a tree with a hump in its back? Are all Irishmen mad or is it you in particular?”

“Me in particular most like, why do ye ask?”

“It’s only that we’ve passed a tree like that twice,” she said wearily, shucking off her shoes and standing first with one bare foot and then the other in the wet grass.

“We passed it twice an’ ye didn’t say anything?”

“I didn’t, if you’ll recall, have any idea what we were looking for.”

“Where was it?”

“Ten minutes back that way,” she gestured, a tired elliptical motion that indicated both sky and sea but not land.

“Where?” he asked more patiently.

She sighed and taking her shoes in one hand set forth across the field they stood in, towards the thickening skin of night to where clouds curdled in blackened piles over the sea.

“There,” she said as they crested the top of a hill. Below them lay a small valley, a precipitous gouge in the land, as though a giant with a sharp hand had scooped out a handful of earth and flung it away. In the last of the light, a tree could be seen at its lowest point, a narrow stream hissing past its roots. The tree was indeed hunchbacked, gnarled and knotted to such a degree that it seemed it had been lifted whole from Eden and transplanted here. Or Eden itself, an Eden of stars and Samarkand, of dark voices and wily serpents, of comforting apples. Of eastern fruit easily bruised, the apricots that last but a moment in a season.

“That’s the one,” Casey whispered and taking her hand firmly in his own, began the climb down into the valley. They picked their way through rock, slid with frightening velocity down a thirty-foot drift of loose shale, waded through a patch of bramble bushes and came out cursing on the brink of the stream.

“Where are we?”

“We’re on my great-granddaddy’s land,” Casey replied.

“How can you be certain?” she asked looking about as if she expected the ghosts of ten dead generations to come piping across the fields.

“The tree looks right, but I know one way to be sure.”

Up close, the tree was even more formidable. Leafless and stony, it seemed an iron fist of earth erupting from the ground, weathering eternity. Casey took his hand away and dropped to his knees at the tree’s roots and began to scrabble in the dirt.

“What is it, Casey?” she peered over his shoulder, unable to discern much of anything.

“It’s our rock,” he whispered and though he faced away, she could hear the tears that stood at the gateway of his words. She knelt down beside him and saw clearly what his hands, dripping with earth, had revealed. A long, thin wedge of slate, obsidian in the night, clear as a mirror under the moon, inscribed with the only tangible legacy Casey’s family had left behind.