The Book of Killowen (Nora Gavin #4) (8 page)

“I think we found him,” Cormac said.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a second body in the boot. Clearly not as old as the—”

Cusack held up one hand. “Wait. Back up just a minute.
Another
body?”

“Looks like he’s been pushed into the back of the boot.”

Cusack paused for a moment, trying to get her mind around this new information. Her joyriding theory had suddenly vanished, replaced by something much darker. All the tumblers that had begun lining up in her brain would have to be recalibrated.

“We’ve stopped the recovery work, obviously,” Cormac said. “At least for the moment. But we can offer our assistance if you need it—”

Without a word, Cusack began marching over the bog once more. Cormac had to jog along beside her to keep up.

“Did I hear you say the owner of the car was Benedict Kavanagh?”

Cusack gave a sideways glance. “Why? Do you know him?”

“Not personally, but I remember thinking when he went missing that someone must have done him in.”

Cusack pulled up short. “Why would you think that?”

“You never watched his television program?”

She kept walking. “No.”

Fair enough, Cormac thought. Spending a Friday evening watching tweedy intellectuals lock horns in epistemological debate was not everyone’s idea of a good time.

“It was a chat show, but not like the usual—philosophy was Kavanagh’s
hobbyhorse. He’d spend the first twenty minutes teasing out his guests’ ideas, grilling them about their latest book or whatever. You could feel him digging the ground out from under their feet. Then in the last few minutes, he’d prove his guests not just sadly mistaken but wrong on every possible level. He was brilliant. But I couldn’t help feeling there was something a little sadistic underneath it all. I’m amazed that anyone ever agreed to be on the program. I mean, surely they knew what was in store for them. Or they imagined themselves somehow able to fend him off, unlike the last poor sod.”

“So you think he may have been murdered by a disgruntled guest?”

“Well, perhaps not—that would be too bizarre. But I’ll admit it was my first thought when I heard the name.”

Stella Cusack wished that her instinct about this case had been wrong. But there was no mistaking the age of the second body; she stared at the three buttons on the tweed jacket, the gold signet ring a few inches from them. There was no mistaking the initials on the ring either: BKA. She spoke to Molloy. “Give Dr. Friel a quick ring, Fergal. We’ll need her back as soon as she can manage. The crime scene detail as well. And ring up central records in Harcourt Street, tell them we need everything they’ve got on this man.” She reached for her notebook and ripped out the page on which she’d written the name of the car’s owner. “Missing person case.”

She turned back to the archaeologists, who were standing above her at the edge of the cutaway. “I understood there was some urgency in getting your bog man out of here.”

Niall Dawson rubbed his chin. “There is. I was just going to say, we’ve got to extricate him sooner or later. So I was thinking, it’s probably better for all concerned if we just press on.”

Stella knew that the decision—and the consequences, should something go wrong—would be on her.

Dawson looked at her hopefully. “Dr. Gavin has been an official consultant to the state pathologist on bog remains, and Dr. Maguire has extensive crime scene experience, documenting mass grave sites in Bosnia. They’re both well up on the protocol for clandestine burials.”

Stella knew she had to make a decision. “All right, carry on, then. But I want all your photos and drawings. And I want scene-of-crime to go through everything you’re planning to take away.”

“Done,” Dawson said. “And we can see about keeping our bog man on ice at the local mortuary until you’re ready to release him.”

As she stepped around the edge of the tarp again, Stella found herself scanning the faces in the small crowd that still lined the perimeter of the site, thankful that at least she’d not chased them off. They were bound to guess that something was up when the state pathologist
made a return appearance. The new body changed everything. Vincent Claffey claimed to own this parcel of bogland, but what exactly was he up to here? He’d hired Kevin Donegan to cut a drain, but there were no milling machines or baggers lined up to turn this bog into garden-grade peat moss or extruded turf. Whatever he was doing, it had to require planning permission, so had he filed the necessary paperwork, or was he trying to get away with something?

Would Claffey be giving out like this if he’d known about the car and the two bodies—if he’d actually put them there, for instance? Feigning ignorance could just be a way of pointing suspicion away from himself. Stella was familiar with Claffey’s form; he’d never been what you might call a hardened criminal, just a small-time schemer who always walked a fine line when it came to the law. Probably due up in court next month for not paying his television license. Claffey and his moneymaking schemes were the stuff of local legend. There was the time he tried offering stump removal with an ancient Massey Ferguson tractor. He ended up rupturing a gas line, barely escaping with his life. The tractor had been blown to smithereens. Or that December night a few years back when the Christmas turkeys he was rearing in a heated shed had all escaped and perished out in the frosty fields. It wasn’t just where did he get such hare-brained notions, but where on earth did he get the money? Somehow there was never a shortage for the next big project. Burying a car in the bog was exactly the sort of thing Vincent Claffey might do, but was it in him to cross over the line into something like murder? Still, it was possible to underestimate the man.

Then again, it might also be significant who was
not
standing around at the perimeter of the crime scene. This bog bordered on three farms: Claffey’s place, Anthony Beglan’s property, and Killowen, and yet neither Anthony nor Claire Finnerty had even ventured over to see what was going on. Might be wise to leg it over there soon.

Stella’s phone began to vibrate, then she heard that wretched Lady Gaga song her daughter Liadán had programmed in as her personal ringtone. Bloody teenagers. She fumbled for the phone, trying to shut off the embarrassing noise as quickly as possible.

As usual, Lia didn’t bother with a greeting. “I’m going to stay at Da’s tonight. He said we could get an early start on the weekend, if it’s all right with you. And before you ask, I’ve collected the mail, folded all the laundry, and finished the washing up.”

Jesus, Stella thought, did she really sound like that to Lia? Had the past twelve months of single motherhood turned her into a total nag and a killjoy?

“So, is it?” Lia prompted.

“Is it what?”

“Is it all right with you if I head over to Daddy’s tonight instead of waiting until tomorrow?” Lia spoke each word distinctly, as if her mother was suddenly deaf as well as clueless. Stella heard the note of exasperation and could imagine the eye rolling going on at the other end of the phone. She considered the alternatives. Lia would be seventeen next Tuesday week. She had begun to spend every other weekend with her father these past few months, though they hadn’t worked out any sort of formal arrangement. In fact, Barry hadn’t pressed for specific visitation—probably just as glad not to have his daughter around, especially as he was busy bedding women closer to his daughter’s age than his own. The very thought made Stella ill. But as it turned out, Barry had very little to say about his part in their daughter’s custody; Lia had latched on to the idea of weekends at her father’s place when she learned that she could get away with murder. He let her eat what she liked, never made a fuss about her staying up all hours. She understood that if she said yes, she was being overly permissive; if she said no, she was being too hard. Those were the choices; there was no middle ground.

She had dragged out the decision as long as possible. “Well, since you’ve got everything in hand, I suppose it’s all right. But you’ll be back by five on Sunday, as usual?” Stella heard the subtle note of pleading in her voice and hated it, hated herself for allowing it to creep in. She had no doubt that Lia heard it, too.

“Yes. See you Sunday. Thanks, Mam.”

A loud click told her Lia was already gone.

Stella snapped her phone shut. It wasn’t as if she’d be home all weekend anyway, not with another dead man in the boot of that bloody car.

Fergal Molloy approached. “I got on to the revenue crowd about the property records. This bog is split into three turbary allotments, one for each of the adjoining properties, as you might expect. One belongs to Anthony Beglan, one is part of the Killowen parcel, and the other is attached to Vincent Claffey’s land.”

“So Claffey is the legal owner, as he says?”

“Looks like it. But here’s the thing he didn’t mention. This bog was
designated as Special Area of Conservation two years ago. Claffey and his neighbors are getting compensation for not cutting here—a thousand euros per annum, each. I suppose Claffey wanted to be having his cake and atin’ it, too, probably counted on nobody checking.” Molloy jerked his head in the direction of the car. “Is it really him in the boot, Benedict Kavanagh?”

“We’ll find out soon. What news from Dublin?”

“Harcourt Street are sending the file over. Looks like Kavanagh went missing four months ago. He taped his television program on a Thursday afternoon, as usual—that was April twenty-first. But he wasn’t officially reported missing until the first of May.”

“Who made the report?”

“His wife, Mairéad Broome. She’s a painter—pretty famous in her own right, evidently.”

Stella felt a pinprick of irritation and told herself Molloy didn’t realize he was being patronizing. It was just what people said.

“What about a photograph?”

“They’re sending pictures to both our mobiles. Should have them here in a tick.” Molloy looked sideways at her. “You ever watch his program? Kavanagh’s, I mean.”

Why was everyone asking that? “I suppose you did.”

“Once in a while. Bit out of my depth, really. But it was amazing what he got away with. I think half the people who watched didn’t give a fiddler’s fart about philosophy; they just liked seeing your man have a go. Fuckin’ deadly with words, he was.”

These minor details were revealing a side of Molloy that Stella had never glimpsed before. All she knew was that he’d been born and reared in this part of the country, and had been seconded to the Antiquities Task Force before landing in Birr last year. What else did he do in his spare time? From the way he dressed, she’d already guessed he wasn’t in a darts league with the local Guards contingent. Molloy had been her partner for only a few months, and these things took time. But it had been brought home to her only too recently that you could work with, even live with, someone for years and never get a glimpse into his inner life.

“Any idea who tipped the media?”

Molloy shrugged. “Well, Claffey brought the chipper. Ask him.”

“Did you notice there’s no one here from Killowen?”

“You sure they’ve heard about all this?”

“Not much goes on here that Claire Finnerty hasn’t got a bead on.” Stella had investigated a suspicious fire at Killowen about three years ago. Hooligans, most likely, not enough evidence to pursue anything. But the investigation led to a few interesting chats with Claire Finnerty. There was something that nagged at her about the woman; she couldn’t say exactly what it was—a certain guardedness, perhaps, that helped kick her detective’s instincts into overdrive. “I’ll have a word with Claffey. Why don’t you have another little chat with the digger operator, see if he has any more to tell us.”

“You mean like why he was digging a drain in a protected bog, for instance?”

People who didn’t actually do police work might imagine that detectives were trained to deal only in facts, but the bottom line was that a large part of the work was sorting fact from fiction—also from hearsay, misremembered details, outright lies, ingrained biases, and personal opinion. There was no such thing as “the facts.” She tried to keep all that in mind as she rambled over to Vincent Claffey.

She could see him feigning surprise. There was no real place to conduct interviews out here, so she’d have to steer him away from the other gawkers.

“What’s happening? What’s all this commotion about?” Claffey’s grating voice was even louder since he’d spied the archaeologists calling her back to the site.

“The team is just going about their work, Mr. Claffey, and had a question for me. No cause for concern. But I wonder if I could have a word?”

He eyed her suspiciously. “What about?”

They were finally far enough not to be overheard. Stella tried to fix Claffey with a steady gaze, but his shoulders twisted nervously.

“We checked the property records for this bog,” she said.

Claffey looked insulted. “Didn’t I tell you it’s mine? I can show you the papers.”

“That’s all in order. But Detective Molloy also happened to run a check on Special Areas of Conservation.”

Claffey looked sideways, caught. “Ah, well, now, there’s a slight difference of opinion on that,” he said. “That law is weak.”