The Book of Killowen (Nora Gavin #4) (27 page)

On her very first day as a lowly
bean garda
, she had been assigned to evidence collection at the bombing scene. Nobody really covered those sorts of situations in training courses. And how could they? How on earth could anyone prepare trainee officers for the horrors they might encounter? After an hour searching the scene, relieved to find nothing, she’d been heading for the stairs when her gaze fell upon a small bright stone on the roof’s pebbled surface. Round and shiny, a shade larger than the others. And then she’d realized it wasn’t a stone at all but a lone detached eyeball, staring up at her.

The bomb makers had been found out and put away—too late, after their handiwork had killed seven people. During their trial, the bombers swore that a warning had been phoned in to Special Branch, in plenty of time to evacuate the area. They charged the authorities with letting the bomb go off—an act of calculated, cynical murder to harden the hearts of the people against the cause. The charge wasn’t all that uncommon in the bad old days of the Troubles. Stella knew which of the two scenarios she believed but had never admitted it aloud. Garda detectives weren’t supposed to have political views.

What was Vincent Claffey doing with this old newspaper cutting? She thought of the threats he’d uttered just last night. Perhaps Claffey was making someone at Killowen pay for what he knew, or thought he knew. She saw the faces of the people she’d interviewed yesterday, imagining each of them in this shed with Claffey. Who among them would have been physically capable of lifting the dead weight of a body onto the machine? Hatred was a powerful thing; it could give an attacker an almost inhuman physical power. Or perhaps the deed had been carried out by more than one person. She searched for signs of a struggle and found a small pool of blood near the outside wall. Perhaps Vincent Claffey never suspected that he was being attacked until it was too late. Blackmail, if that was Claffey’s game, was like playing with a serpent: in order to profit, you had to get close enough to risk a deadly bite.

Nora had just arrived back from the hospital and was standing in the kitchen at Killowen with Joseph and Eliana when Shawn Kearney came through the door. Her usually animated expression was gone. She pulled Nora aside and spoke under her breath.

“Vincent Claffey’s been found murdered,” she said.

“But that’s not possible. Niall and Cormac just went to see him.”

Shawn’s grim expression told her everything she needed to know.

“My God, they found him, didn’t they?”

“It seems so. And Deirdre and the baby are missing. A few of us are going to help with the search.”

“I’ll come, too,” Nora said.

The Claffey place was still being processed as a crime scene, so the search for Deirdre commenced from the nearest three-way crossroads. A group of uniformed Guards officers was milling about with volunteers, and Detective Molloy was handing out assignments to small groups. “Each team will have a detailed map of the area,” Molloy said. “We’ll be doing a grid search of the areas marked. The girl we’re looking for is Deirdre Claffey. She is sixteen years of age, approximately 1.65 meters tall. She has short brown hair and brown eyes. We’re working on the assumption that she has a child with her—her son, Cal, nine months. If they were on foot, it’s quite likely they haven’t traveled far. If you find Deirdre, try and persuade her to stay put; make it clear that we just need to talk to her. And ring that number on your flyer straightaway.”

Cormac and Niall Dawson arrived while Molloy was talking, and they joined Nora and Shawn to make a full search party. At last their turn came with the organizers. They were assigned a small area of meadow and woodland rising up from the edge of the bog just below Anthony Beglan’s farm. Nora studied the map as they began making their way to the assigned area. They had to circumvent a hedgerow of furze, a wall of thorns, obviously untrimmed for several years. Once they’d reached the area marked on their map, they walked along in close
flanking formation, scanning the ground and the undergrowth for any sign of human activity. About a hundred yards up the hillside from the bog, they were nearing a small stone ruin.

“I didn’t imagine bringing you here under these circumstances,” Shawn Kearney said. “This is Killowen Chapel, the place we were talking about last night.”

They passed by a flat corbelled doorway, completely filled with rubble, and the stump of a round tower, sheared off about ten meters above the ground.

“The carving I mentioned is just inside,” Shawn Kearney said, leading them through a fine Romanesque arch on the far side.

“Here he is, the scribe of Killowen,” Kearney said. The carving beside the doorway showed a figure holding what appeared to be a stylus and a wax tablet. He wore a flowing cloak that pooled around his feet, and his head seemed to be naturally balding rather than tonsured in the Irish style. Nora felt the tug of intrigue.

“See the Greek letters on his tablet,” Cormac said, stepping closer. “Alpha and omega. That’s unusual. Most tenth-century inscriptions were in Latin. There’s a kind of monogram as well—interlacing letters, it looks like an
I
and an
O
, maybe an
H
. Hard to see. You were never at this place before, Niall?”

Dawson glanced away. “As I said, I was only here briefly. Had to get back to Dublin.”

“Listen, we can come back to that carving later,” Nora said. “Remember why we’re here.”

They spread out and began to search, poking through the tall grass that grew up through the floor of the chapel and all around the exterior. Nora spied the open door to the round tower and stepped inside. The tower had no roof, but a piece of blue tarp material was secured to the wall to make a kind of shelter inside. Somebody had been here, and fairly recently, too. Nora knelt and found a plastic carrier bag under one corner of the tarp. Inside the bag were a few items of clothing for a young child. If Deirdre were running away, why would she not go back to Killowen Farm, where she obviously felt safe? Or perhaps Deirdre and the baby weren’t running at all but had been taken away by force—an especially frightening possibility if Deirdre had seen the person who killed her father.

“It looks like they might have been here,” Nora said, rejoining the
others. “I found a bag in the tower, with some baby clothes and some extra nappies.”

“Look at this.” Cormac pointed to several cigarette butts on the ground next to a crushed packet. “Silk Cut. That’s Anca’s brand, isn’t it, Shawn?”

Shawn Kearney turned to him. “How do you know that?”

“I’ll spare you the long story. We know she’s still here somewhere. The real question is, why are you all pretending otherwise?”

Shawn stared at the ground. “Anca’s been hiding out. I’m sure you’ve read stories in the papers about the Romanian gangs and what they do to young women, promising them good jobs here and then forcing them into prostitution. The people who brought Anca to Ireland were into all sorts of things—not just prostitution, but cigarette smuggling, identity theft. It’s a huge operation. Anca was so afraid of what would happen if they ever found out where she was, and she was our friend, so of course we hid her. You’d have done the same.”

Nora turned to Niall Dawson. His face betrayed a greater degree of concern than one might expect from someone who didn’t even remember the girl. A quick glance at Cormac told her that he’d seen it, too.

“Let’s leave everything here just as we found it,” Nora said. “I don’t think there’s any way around it, Shawn. You’ll have to tell the Guards what you know. They’ll protect Anca.”

“
Can
they protect her? You have no idea how much money is involved. That makes it impossible to trust anyone, even the police.”

“There’s also Deirdre and her child to think about,” Nora reminded her. “I’m afraid we have no choice, Shawn. We have to call this in.”

Shawn Kearney turned away with a frustrated sigh. “Do what you have to do.”

 . . .

As they waited for Cusack and her team to arrive at the chapel, Niall Dawson was standing a few yards apart, speaking to Shawn Kearney. Cormac moved closer to Nora and lowered his voice. “I haven’t told Cusack about what I heard last night at Beglan’s place, about Anca. I don’t know why—”

“Because of Niall? He has been acting strangely, I’ll admit.”

“There’s something he’s not told us about that girl, Anca. You must have seen his reaction when you mentioned her at the dinner table, and
just now. I didn’t have a chance to tell you before, but I saw him going back into his room after that episode with my father last night. It was close to four in the morning, Nora. I’m not sure what to do.”

“Can you talk to him?”

“There’s something else, too. When we found Vincent Claffey this morning, he had a handful of those gallnuts in his mouth.”

“You’re not serious.”

Cormac glanced over at Niall and Shawn Kearney, still deep in conversation. “I am. And I can’t help asking myself who could have known that detail about Kavanagh’s body, apart from the people with access to the excavation site.”

Nora considered what he was saying. “So, the Garda contingent and the coroner’s crew, Dr. Friel, the two of us—and Niall.”

“That’s it. You see, maybe Claffey’s murder was a warning to anyone else who might consider making threats. I want to get you and Eliana and my father away from here.”

“But surely we’re in no danger, Cormac. You and I know nothing.” She considered for a moment. “Well, next to nothing . . . very little, anyway.”

“Do you see what I mean? Every minute we stay, we learn more and more. We may be gaining knowledge completely by accident, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.”

“And what about our work here? All the things we’re finding out about our bog man, the satchel, and the wax tablet.”

“Yes, of course that’s all very important, but, Nora—”

She took his hand. “We’ll be fine, Cormac, really. Rest easy. Nothing will happen.”

Dr. Friel was just stitching up the Y incision on Vincent Claffey’s chest when Stella joined her in the mortuary.

“Another tongue cleaved down the middle, I’m afraid—postmortem again. And those were in his mouth.” Catherine Friel glanced down at the metal tray resting at her elbow, which held five dark brown objects that Stella now recognized as oak galls. “One fewer than Mr. Kavanagh had; I don’t know if that’s significant. Have you found out what they are?”

“Dr. Gavin said they’re gallnuts—they grow on oak trees, apparently. Still not clear what they mean. Any fix on the cause of death?”

“Blunt force trauma. He either fell or was on the receiving end of a pretty vicious blow to the back of the head. Fractured the occipital bone. He was at least incapacitated—most likely dead already—before he was wrapped in the cling film and placed on that conveyer belt.” Dr. Friel kept stitching. “It’s all in my report.”

“What about time of death?”

“From the core temperature and onset of rigor, I’d say he was killed in the wee hours, somewhere between one and five
A.M
.”

Stella’s phone rang as she stood at the table. It was Molloy.

“One of the search parties found a bag with some baby togs and a few nappies at a ruined chapel not far from Killowen. We haven’t found the girl yet, but here’s a new twist: she may be traveling with a Romanian national, Anca Popescu. This girl, Anca, was working at Killowen for the past nine months, but when you turned up asking questions about Kavanagh, Claire Finnerty and the others told everyone she’d left weeks ago.”

“How do you know she’s still around?”

“Maguire overheard her at Anthony Beglan’s place last night. And we found some recently smoked butts and an empty packet of her brand of cigarettes here at the chapel.”

Why had Cormac Maguire neglected to mention any details about the Romanian girl when they spoke this morning at the Claffey place? Too many people connected to this case were keeping secrets.

The baby’s anguished cry cut through the quiet forest. All other noise seemed muffled by the soft green moss at their feet. Deirdre stumbled, struggling to keep up with Anca, who was forging ahead through whipping branches of undergrowth. A thin branch brushed the child’s face, and he howled louder. Deirdre said, “He’s hungry, Anca. I’ve got to stop and feed him. He’ll only cry harder if I don’t.”

“All right,” Anca said, pulling up short. “But not too long. We have to keep moving.”

Deirdre settled into the mossy crook of a massive oak tree, hitched up her T-shirt, and put the baby to her breast. The split in her lip throbbed. “Where are we going, Anca? Why do we have to keep on? I’m so tired.”

“Because . . . because we have to, that’s all.” Anca looked desperate for a fag, but she’d run out back at the chapel.

“Can’t we just go back to Killowen? They’d feed us and look after us—”

“No, we can’t go back!” Anca’s voice was rising. “The police are everywhere.” She clasped her arms around her, as if they were crawling all over her.

“But we’ve no place to go.” Deirdre’s voice quavered.