The Book of Killowen (Nora Gavin #4) (41 page)

Cormac tried to get his head around the shape, the book splayed open, the upper left corner folded over and the pages dog-eared, the center almost rotted away, a mass of letters floating free in wet peat, independent of their vellum matrix. “I think you’re right. It is a book, though it looks a bit more like—”

“Lasagna,” Nora said. “What the hell do we do now?”

“First, we get the camera.” As Dawson turned to dig into his bag, Cormac’s eyes began to pick out details: a yellow bar appeared, and then an almost circular letter
D
, with an S-curve clearly visible inside. “Look here, Niall, I think this is a capital, and a gold border.”

Nora leaned in to try to read the script as Niall peered through the camera lens, snapping away as quickly as he could. He said, “See that line of text, dead center? Can you read it? Looks to me like
‘in ualle lacrimarum.’
”

Cormac dredged up his decades-old knowledge of Latin. “Something about a vale of tears. Psalms, maybe?”

“There’s one way to find out,” Nora said, quickly typing the letters into her phone. “You’re right. Psalm 83, verse 7:
‘in ualle lacrimarum in loco quem posuit.’
‘In the vale of tears, in the place which he has set.’ So our bog man was walking here, maybe reading his book of Psalms, and he’s attacked by a couple of assailants, they throw his body into the bog, and then his book, and his satchel after him.”

“So maybe he was robbed,” Niall said. “Remember what the textile consultant told us, that he ought to have been wearing a brooch, and we didn’t find any. Maybe it was as simple as that.”

But the words on Killowen Man’s wax tablet weren’t verses from Psalms, Cormac thought. They were something about freedom of rational thought, and malice and evil. He had often experienced this same sensation out on excavations, a feeling of hurtling down a tunnel through time. Now he felt himself spat out, centuries ago, on this same squelching bog, where the ancient man in the hospital cooler had once walked and perhaps written his last thoughts, and where he’d been brutally murdered. Cormac suddenly understood in a flash how everything they’d found was connected, down through the centuries, all the way from the Dark Ages directly to Benedict Kavanagh. He heard voices from a distance, then felt his thoughts zooming back into the present.

Niall had his face pressed to the wet peat and was using a flat probe to try and get a look between some of the other pages. “I can see another illuminated border.”

“We’ll have to get it out of there as quickly as we can,” Cormac said. “I’ve got some plywood in the back of the jeep. Would that do as a stabilizer for now?”

Niall nodded. “It’ll have to do.”

On the way to the hospital, Cormac’s thoughts came back to the present as he glanced over at Nora in the passenger seat. She was nodding off. Dawson’s eyes, too, were closed in the backseat. Cormac felt tremendous relief, looking at the white gauze wrapped around Nora’s forearm, that neither of them had been badly injured last night. They were lucky that Diarmuid Lynch had heard them. Surely the police would track down the book thieves, and the case would be wrapped up shortly. Still, it was chilling to know that someone at Killowen had wanted them dead.

Stella was on her way to Killowen when her mobile began to buzz. “Cusack here.”

“She’s dead, Stella. Anca Popescu is dead.”

“Fergal, what are you talking about? What’s happened?”

“I met the uniforms at Cappaghbaun, the place above Mountshannon where the girls got stuck on the forestry road. Social Services had charge of Deirdre Claffey and the baby, and I was carrying Anca back to Birr, like you said . . . ” His voice broke. “You told me to keep close tabs on her this time, and I should have been watching—”

“Just tell me what happened, Fergal.”

“I brought her in the car with me. But I never locked the fuckin’ passenger door, Stella. I never thought—”

“What happened?”

“We were coming over the top of the mountain, and the next thing I know she’s got the door open and she’s trying to jump. I reached out for her, but I couldn’t hold on.”

Stella was imagining the scene as Molloy described it: a rough forestry road, fir trees, and a vicious drop. She felt a punch to the gut. Did the girl dread being sent back to Romania so much that she would risk losing her life rather than face that? “Are you with her now?”

“Yes. I had to climb down to her. I checked her pulse, but there’s nothing. She’s dead.” He sounded on the verge of tears.

Stella heard her own voice take on a steely edge. “Fergal, listen to me. Stay where you are and ring Emergency Services. Do it now.”

She heard a sharp exhalation. Finally he said, “Right. It’ll be all right. I’ll just tell them what happened.”

“Phone Emergency Services right now, Fergal. Don’t move her, don’t touch anything else. I’m on my way.”

Stella rang off, feeling numb. Anca Popescu was only nineteen, but she had probably experienced more horrors than any human being could be expected to endure. And all Stella could see now was that haunted
expression in the girl’s eyes, the nervous, darting hands, the way she’d sucked that smoke from her cigarette, as if it were pure oxygen. That, and how Anca had turned her gaze into a silent plea as Stella had left the safe house the other day, as if she had somehow known it would be their last meeting. Why the hell had she sent Molloy? She ought to have gone with him, or picked the girl up herself, and none of this would have happened. She sat in the car, hands on the wheel but going nowhere, not sure what to do next.

Her phone buzzed again.

“Mam, it’s Lia.”

Stella didn’t say anything, afraid that if she opened her mouth to speak, she would begin to sob.

“I’m sorry about hanging up on you yesterday,” Lia said, her voice sounding less like the stroppy seventeen-year-old she’d been lately and more like the child she used to be. “It was rude. I only wanted . . . it just makes me crazy when you and Daddy are so unhappy. I don’t mean to mess things up.”

Stella forced herself to speak. “Oh, Lia, you haven’t messed anything up. What happened between your father and me, it’s not your fault, sweetheart. It’s nothing to do with you. Are you all right, staying with Daddy for another little while? It’ll only be a day or two more, I promise. I’ll ring you.”

“But you should talk to Daddy. He’s not—”

“I’ll speak to him, Lia, don’t worry.”

“Right, see you, Mam.”

“I love you, Lia. I’ll ring you back just as soon as I can.”

Stella started her ignition and felt the tears begin to flow.

 . . .

Forty minutes later, she bumped along the road that crossed the top of the mountain at Cappaghbaun and found an ambulance, a Mountain Rescue van, and several Guards vehicles all parked in the middle of the road.

“Stella!” A voice came from beside the ambulance as she stepped from the car. It was her superintendent, Eamonn Brown, looking smart in his expensive suit. Not a bad copper, but too ambitious, always looking for the next opportunity to impress those above him, which tended not to impress the people below him.

“Eamonn, why are you here?”

“One of my officers involved in a fatal accident? It’s my job to be here.”

And to see how your investigation is coming along
, was the unspoken subtext.

“Where’s Molloy?” Stella asked.

“The ambulance lads are checking him over.”

“Have they recovered the girl’s body yet?”

“A bit dodgy, that.” He waved her to the edge of the road to look down. “The Mountain Rescue team is rigging up some lines to make sure no one else takes a tumble. Then they’ll send a couple of people down and bring the body up on a gondola. Dreadful business. Molloy said he phoned and told you what happened?”

“Yes, that the girl jumped from the moving car.”

“I gather she was one of your witnesses on the Killowen case?”

“Yes, although I was beginning to have serious doubts about her story.”

“You’re saying you’ve no leads at all?”

“No, we’ve got substantial evidence for book theft but still not much to go on for either of the murders, unfortunately. I was hoping this girl might finally come clean when we got her back to the station.”

“Well, this is pretty damned inconvenient, then, isn’t it?”

She got the message: Brown wanted this case cleared up, and fast, before Serious Crimes ran roughshod over all of them, himself included.

The paramedics were just coming up the hill, pulled up by their mates along a couple of nylon cords. Anca Popescu’s body was already zipped into a black body bag. A light rain had begun to fall while they were down the slope, and now the valley below was beginning to disappear in the mist.

“Can I just see her face?” Stella asked the nearest paramedic.

He turned to look at her. “It’s not pleasant.”

Stella unzipped the bag. Anca’s face bore cuts and contusions; her lip was split, and there was a dreadful gash at the temple, lots of blood. She looked so young, even more like a little girl now that her wary eyes were closed. Where were this child’s parents? Stella wondered. And who would have to go and tell her people that she was dead?

The sun was just coming up behind the brow of the hill as Joseph Maguire climbed the rise that led to Anthony Beglan’s farm. He felt a little short of breath and paused to rest for a moment against one of the crumbling gateposts along the hedge-lined lane. In his mind was a picture of the eels he’d have for lunch today. He could see their shiny, slippery skins, the intricate and beautiful architecture of their tails.

He closed his eyes and breathed, letting the scent of cattle and grass fill his head, bringing back the animal smells of childhood, the strange gaze of beasts standing out in the rain along the road he walked to school. Everything took such an effort now, and time itself felt slippery as an eel. He was young, and then he was old again, in the blink of an eye.

He pushed off from the gatepost and passed by a field where a dozen pairs of large brown eyes looked up to greet him, ears with yellow tags flapped and twitched as he kept walking. He looked down and saw the bulge of a belly, two stout legs beneath him. Whose were they? Not those of a boy. Hard to keep things straight when his brain was so uncooperative.

A house stood at the end of the road, old and weather-beaten, paint peeling from the window and door frames. No one home. He could see no sign of life, no sounds, but he walked toward it, waiting for something. Glinting shards of light came from the building beside him, and he turned to see the sun broken into hundreds of pieces, bright circles, blinding him as he looked through a missing wall. All a dream, it had to be.

He felt the sharp jolt of the blow before the pain registered. It seemed like he waited for eternity after that, with that hollow roar in his ears as his knees buckled under him and he pitched forward into darkness.

 . . .

Joseph felt himself drifting, floating in space. When he tried to move, he could not. Pain in his head. Cracking his eyes open, he saw and then felt the band, something around his chest. His hands were behind him, shoulders pulled back, a shooting pain up the shoulder. Where was this place? Was someone here? His head still lolled forward on his chest, but he could see a table before him, cracked oilcloth, a basin of water—and a shape made of green rushes. He was alone.

He began to move, trying to break free, but he was fixed, immobile. He twisted from side to side, and at last the chair moved, but only to topple over. He landed on his right cheekbone with such force that the pain knocked the breath from him, and he experienced a sudden flashback—the cold floor, the musty smell, the shooting pains through his limbs. Another interrogation? They could beat him all they liked—he knew nothing. The whole right side of his face felt numb. He was ready to pass out when the door opened and a pair of muddy black shoes walked slowly toward him. From his awkward angle on the floor, he could not see the wearer. The silent figure stood and looked at him, as if deciding what to do. He’d let his jaw go slack, feigning unconsciousness, knowing instinctively that it was the wisest course. When the boots turned and proceeded out the door once more, he tried to open his eyes wider but felt himself slipping into an unconsciousness that this time was not feigned.

“Sorry about the hour,” Catherine Friel said. “I’ve got to be up in Cavan by noon. You must know I wouldn’t have dragged you out of bed for no reason.”

Stella was gazing at the mortal body of Anca Popescu, looking in her nakedness on the table here this morning even more like a waif than she had appeared yesterday evening. Again Stella’s throat constricted, thinking of how alone this girl was, in death as in life. “What is it? What have you found?”

“Since I wasn’t at the scene, I don’t know a lot about the circumstances surrounding this girl’s death, but I can tell you with a fair degree of certainty that it was no accident. At first I thought perhaps it was the position of the body after the fall, a function of livor mortis. Then I found this.” She lifted Anca’s arm away from her body and revealed a mark on the skin, a pattern of discoloration.