Haunted Ground Part 18

"Sketches," he said.

Nora knelt beside him, and they each took a handful of curled and water-stained sheets to sort through. She could make out the recognizable shapes of animal skulls and bones, done in thick lead pencil, but the lines were wildly expressive, as though the artist had tried to memorize the contours of each object, and had put pencil to paper with closed eyes. There were dozens of sketches, compulsive repet.i.tions of the same objects. Nora picked up and studied one of many distorted outlines of the crow's wing. "Who could have done these?"

"Just what I was--wait a minute, look." Cormac shone his torch slowly up the wall. Nora added her light as well, and each of them turned slowly in place, until their torch beams revealed that most of the wall s.p.a.ce had been covered with huge abstract images of bones and eyeless skulls, on a background of twisted organic shapes--jagged lines, curving contours, and spirals of dark purple and dusky blue, interlaced with wide, wriggling swaths of metallic gold. Seeping moisture had caused some of the paint to come away in places, and from its thickness, they could see that the walls had been obsessively layered with paint over time. At the foot of the stairs lay a jumbled pile of empty cans, rags, and petrified brushes. A few spray cans and tins of paint, obviously used, stood on one of the crates nearby. Of all the things they had imagined when the door remained locked, the tower house as some kind of makes.h.i.+ft studio was not even among the considerations. And yet here it was before them.

"G.o.d, Cormac, this is so weird. But it's kind of wonderful as well." Nora began perusing the volumes that lay by the makes.h.i.+ft sleeping area. "Bird books, lots of art history," she reported, then pushed the stout wooden door shut. The back of it had been painted in the same fas.h.i.+on as the walls, but in the midst of the paint was a large color plate of an icon depicting a Black Madonna and Child.

"Cormac, have a look at this." There was no answer but a startled cry and a flapping, scuffling noise, and Nora swung her torch around just in time to perceive that she was under attack. She threw both arms up to protect her head, and felt a sharp scrabbling and a gust of wing beats against her face and hands as she flailed the torch in an effort to shake free. Cormac grabbed hold of her sweater and pulled her to the ground.

"Keep down!" he whispered fiercely as the random flapping continued above their heads.

"What the h.e.l.l is that?"

"Just a bird. I'm afraid I dropped my torch. Which way is the door?"

"Behind me here," Nora said. They scrambled out into the fresh air and light, and sat for a moment with their backs pressed against the tower's sloping base, gasping for air.

"I should have warned you," Cormac said. "This place seems to be a sort of rookery, I suppose you'd call it. There's a whole flock of crows nesting in the top of the tower and the trees above."

Nora rubbed her pecked fingers, then reached up and felt the scratch on her forehead. "Here, let me see that," Cormac said. He knelt beside her and tipped her head back to examine the wound. "It's not too deep. You'll mend." He sat back on his heels and crossed his arms. "Well--we've seen inside, and we don't know anything more than we did before. But I'm willing to call Devaney if you think we ought to."

"Let's think about this for a minute. Somebody uses this place to make pictures. That may be a bit strange--I'd even go so far as to say creepy--but it's not illegal. And if it is Hugh--"

"But he already has a sort of workshop in the house," Cormac pointed out. "So why would he come all the way out here? And in the middle of the night? It doesn't make sense."

"Well, who else could it be? He put the padlock on and presumably has the key--although I suppose it's easy enough to pick that sort of a lock."

"Dead easy. What about Jeremy?"

"I don't know," Nora said. "Could be anyone who knows about the tower."

"So have we any reason to phone Devaney?"

The Madonna and Child image flashed through Nora's consciousness. She hadn't really had a chance to examine it closely. Apart from some overpainting, there was something else strange and disturbing about the picture, but what was it? With effort, she might be able to conjure up the image that had only imprinted itself briefly on her brain in all the pandemonium. She closed her eyes and willed herself to remember. If she wasn't mistaken, the eyes of both mother and child had been cut out rather crudely with a knife.

"You know," she said, "I think we might."

On the phone, the young Garda sergeant had reminded Devaney of himself nearly twenty years ago, and he could hear the distinctive cry of a newborn in the background as they spoke. They settled on meeting in a pub on the outskirts of Ballinasloe. Donal Barry had been the man a.s.signed to Bracklyn House during the original search for Osborne's wife and child more than two years ago. Devaney knew he was grasping at straws here, but he'd begun to feel as if he was getting somewhere. Sooner or later, something would tip. That's the way it was with cases like this. Keep sc.r.a.ping away, like a file on metal, and eventually someone's story would weaken and give way. The hard part was sussing out where the vulnerable spot might lie.

Devaney got a pint and stood at the far end of the bar. Soon a strapping young man of about twenty-five came in. He was over six feet tall, clean-shaven, with fairish curly hair and a rugby guard's muscular build; he wore jeans and a heavy plain blue pullover.

"Devaney?" the young man said.

"Mr. Barry." Devaney held out a hand. "Thanks for coming. What'll you have?"

"Same as yourself."

Devaney lifted his near-empty pint and held up two fingers to the barman. "You were posted at the Osborne house during the various searches and the original interviews," he said. "And I wanted to get your impression of the situation there."

"I thought the case had gone up to the task force in Dublin."

Devaney frowned. "It has. But my superintendent evidently doesn't see how this one sticks out."

"Don't tell me--Brian Boylan?" Barry's tone was one of disgust. "What a f.u.c.kin' toe-rag."

Devaney found himself warming to the young man. "I can't say I disagree. Now, I don't quite know how to put this: Was there any angle that ought to have been pursued and wasn't?"

"I knew from the start the whole kidnap scenario was a f.u.c.kin' waste of time," Barry replied. "I mean, the boys generally know when there's something up, don't they?" He meant the Provos, the Provisional IRA, and he was right. They were sometimes the first to volunteer any information they had on criminal cases--provided they weren't involved. A bit of community-mindedness went a long way in the propaganda war. "There was nothing on the telegraph about this one. Boylan wasted a whole lot of precious time on it, though."

Devaney was impressed both by the young man's powers of observation and his common sense. Apparently Barry hadn't actually partic.i.p.ated in any of the interviews, which was a great pity; Devaney was sure the lad would have gotten more out of the witnesses than his superiors apparently had.

"What did you see or hear that didn't get into the official reports?"

"The trouble with this case was always the lack of a really good motive," Barry said. "The most obvious suspect, the husband, has a motive all right--the insurance money--but then why bother with the whole disappearing act? It would make more sense if the wife's body was found right away. I was never sold on the husband."

"There's a neighbor who might have a motive as well. Brendan McGann. Thinks...o...b..rne was messing about with his sister."

"Ah, those rumors have been flying for years. I know Brendan--mad as a snake, but canny. I'm not saying he couldn't have done it, of course. He's got a wicked temper. But Brendan's more likely to goad people into killing each other than topping anybody himself. I never knew why they didn't spend more time on that cousin."

Devaney's ears p.r.i.c.ked. "The boy?"

"Well, he was another right head case. But no, I meant the mother," Barry said. "Something quare about that one. A bit too--precious, if you know what I mean. I can't think why they didn't shake that tree a little harder."

"Tell me more about her."

Barry thought a moment. "After a day or two sitting in that chair in the front hall, I got to be invisible. Part of the furniture, you might say. She'd make tea and sandwiches for the detectives when they were doing interviews, bring up these trays loaded with food, and straight into the library with them, as though"--he hesitated slightly--"well, almost as though she were part of the investigation herself. I don't know, I'm not puttin' it very well, but it was like she got some sort of thrill out of being there, so close to it all, and having to mind Osborne while he was in such a state."

"Did you get the impression there was anything between herself and Osborne?" Devaney asked.

"I can't say for certain. Nothing obvious. I do remember one day she thought they were being too hard on him, asking too many questions. Well, she reared up. Fairly chased 'em out of the place."

"And she never made you tea and sandwiches?" Devaney inquired with a sideways glance.

"She did, of course. But I had mine below in the kitchen, not above with the great men. I'll tell you what else bothered me: she was the one who kept pus.h.i.+ng the notion that the wife had just scarpered. I mean, there were things missing, clothing and so forth, a couple of suitcases, right? But anyone in the house would have had access to those things, and could have nicked 'em before we even searched the place. Had three f.u.c.kin' days to do it."

Devaney felt foolish; he had never stopped to consider that fact. Put it together with the scarf Mrs. Hernan found under Jeremy's bed-- "Listen, I have to be heading off," Barry said, draining the last of his pint. "Sorry. I promised the wife I wouldn't be late. New baby."

"You've been a great help. Let me know if you think of anything else." Devaney watched Barry's broad shoulders push through the door as though it were made of cardboard, and imagined him stooped over, changing the nappy on a tiny infant. There was a father who hadn't missed the delivery of his child, Devaney thought. He took another drink from his pint. Barry had helped uncover another side of Lucy Osborne, one he had never fully considered before. He'd been concentrating all this time on one motive, money, and never settled long enough on one of the other overwhelming human motivations--jealousy. He remembered Lucy's vague disapproval, even disparagement of Mina Osborne as she stood before him, arranging those flowers. If she did have her eye on Osborne, was that enough to make her get rid of his wife? She's there for years with her son, getting used to the idea that this little arrangement could go on forever, and what does...o...b..rne do? He goes off on a summer course and brings home a pregnant wife. Must have been a shock, to say the least. Lucy and Jeremy get shunted aside, while he starts a new family. But what could have triggered a murderous impulse? In Devaney's experience jealousy usually had a trigger point, sometimes brought on by drink, or seeing the person with someone else. Devaney cast his mind back again to the flowers, and focused on Lucy Osborne's finger wrapped in a bandage. Was it just coincidence that she'd slipped and injured herself at the very moment he'd happened to mention her son?

The pub door opened, and who should appear again but Donal Barry. "There's one more thing I forgot to mention," he said, coming up beside Devaney and leaning forward on the bar. "Probably nothing, but you never know. There was one day when I was in the kitchen, one of the very first days after the disappearance. Lucy Osborne sets a plate of biscuits in front of me, right, and all of a sudden the stone drops right out of her ring. Huge f.u.c.kin' diamond. And along with it comes a little shower of dried clay. I think nothin' of it, and she brushes it away, sayin' something about how she'll have to give up digging in the garden."

"What's so strange about that?"

"My mam's a great gardener. Colossal. Never gets the clay out from under her nails. Now, hanging about that place, I saw Lucy Osborne working in the garden plenty of times. And she always wore gloves. Always. That woman wouldn't get her hands dirty for nothin'."

After Barry left, Devaney checked his watch--ten minutes past five. He'd have to head off if he was going to make it to Dunbeg before Pilkington's shut for the evening. In asking around, he'd found Dolly Pilkington had a small fiddle that might work for Roisin, and he had promised to come by the shop this evening to have a look at it.

Mullins had dutifully phoned this morning with the information he'd been checking. The scene-of-crime unit had found no complete fingerprints on the vehicles at Bracklyn, and nothing was missing from either car. This was going to be one of those cases where they'd never be able to prove who the perpetrator was--but they had to look as though they were making an effort. Mullins also reported that Hugh Osborne had indeed been on the seven o'clock British Airways flight from London on Sunday morning, just as he said. Fine. There was no reason for him to interfere with his own project. Maguire had a point: if whoever it was wanted to stop the priory development, why not actually put a spanner into the works at the site itself? Besides, there was fury in the way the damage had been done, Devaney thought. This wasn't just some calculated, bog-protest publicity stunt, it was personal. So why target a couple of strangers? Could they just have been in the wrong place--too near the real target? What was it Osborne had said, that his car might have been damaged as well if he'd been at home?

And then there was Dr. Gavin's mysterious dead crow. He didn't want to disbelieve the woman, but he'd checked all around the house and found nothing to support her story. He agreed with her a.s.sessment of Jeremy Osborne: the boy's destructive tendencies seemed more inward-than outward-directed. But his mother was terrified that he'd actually done the damage; you could see it in the way she looked at him. What did that say about how they were getting on? The word overprotective wasn't strong enough for Lucy Osborne.

And then there was Brendan McGann, with straw in his clothes, broken Guinness bottles on the footpath, and a story about coming straight home to bed after the pub. Devaney made a mental note to have a word with Dermot Lynch tomorrow at the session, to ask if there was anything unusual about Brendan's behavior Sat.u.r.day night.

Devaney pulled up in front of Pilkington's just as Dolly was locking up the old-fas.h.i.+oned double doors. She opened them again to greet him. "How are ye, Detective? I was just thinking you weren't going to make it."

"Sorry, Dolly--busy day."

"I heard about the goings-on at the big house yesterday." She clucked and shook her head. "Shockin'--I'd be terrified, livin' in a huge wreck of a place like that. Have you any idea at all who did it?"

"We're pursuing a few lines of inquiry," Devaney said. It was what he always said, even when they had caught the doer of the deed red-handed. Besides, if he told Dolly Pilkington anything, he could be sure the whole town would have some version of it in a matter of minutes. Oliver Pilkington's head appeared from around the corner of the back room, as he looked to see the person his mother was addressing. He squeezed past them and busied himself sweeping out the shop, sticking close enough to hear what they were saying.

"Ah, sure, we'll never get so much as a midge's dinner out of you, will we, Detective?" She opened the small fiddle case on the counter. "Well, here it is. Poor Oliver hasn't a note in his head--sure, you may just as well try teachin' music to a lump of stone. Try it out there, if you like." Devaney picked up the diminutive fiddle and put it to his shoulder, leaning his head over the body, the better to hear its voice as he pulled bow across string.

"Got a good tone." He plucked the strings, and held the instrument up to the light, to check the varnish and the straightness of the neck and sound post. "Could I have Roisin try it as well, to see if it suits her?"

"Surely. Keep it as long as you like, Detective."

Devaney set the fiddle back in its case and began to examine the hairs on the bow. "You've lived in Dunbeg a long time, Dolly."

"Born and reared."

"I imagine you hear both sides of every quarrel. Like it or not."

"Ah, there's some of that, you know. The secret of staying in business is listening to what people say and keeping it to yourself." She nodded wisely.

"So you might have heard a theory or two about what happened at Bracklyn House last night."

Dolly Pilkington's face lit up, and he knew she was about to ignore her own sage advice. "You won't have to look very far to find the culprit."

"Is that so?"

"Maybe only as far as across the road, they say."

"I understand Brendan McGann's dead against the development at the priory. Can't be easy when his sister is keeping company with your man."

"Keeping company, indeed," Dolly snorted. She glanced at Oliver and leaned forward. "There are some saying he's going to sue."

Devaney must have looked blank.

"For maintenance," she said, and raised her eyebrows. "For the child."

"His sister's child?"

Devaney heard a sn.i.g.g.e.r and saw Oliver Pilkington's gingery head lift slightly. "Sure, everybody knows Aoife McGann is Hugh Osborne's b.a.s.t.a.r.d," the boy said, and almost before the words were out of his mouth, Dolly had whirled and delivered a resounding slap to the back of her son's head. Oliver dropped his broom and made a dive away from his mother to avoid another clout, then stood a short distance away, rubbing his head and scowling.

"Go away out of that, you dirty boy," she said, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with indignation. "I won't have that kind of talk in here." It was plain that Oliver had heard this very phrase on his mother's lips, and was shocked to be dealt with so severely when he simply repeated it. Devaney was sorry to make the boy suffer for his benefit.

"It's a few years ago, now, but you know how people go on," Dolly Pilkington said. She offered a sniff of disapproval. Devaney's mind began turning over this new information. Of course he'd heard the current whispers around the town about Hugh Osborne and Una McGann, but he couldn't believe he hadn't heard the whole story. Even the children of Dunbeg took it as fact. Perhaps his own children. He thought of Brendan's bowed head and clasped hands as he sat in the church pew, of the crude letters carved inside the confession box. If Una McGann had had a child by Hugh Osborne, that might put Mina's disappearance in a whole different light.

When they returned from their expedition to the tower, Cormac found a note slipped under his door. He read it in a glance, and hurried down the hall to Nora's room.

"Message from Ned Raftery," Cormac said when she'd answered his knock. She was daubing at the scratch on her forehead with antiseptic. "Just says to ring him back; he may have found something on our red-haired girl."

"I might have had something for you earlier," Raftery said when Cormac had him on the phone, "but I had to ask someone to read through some of the boxes of old papers I have here. I don't know if I mentioned that I'd done a history of the Clanricardes some years back. I got to thinking, and wanted to check through some of the material. I knew that Ulick, the marquess of Clanricarde--he was the son of Richard de Burgo, who built Portumna Castle--wrote a memoir that was published a hundred years after his death. He lived from 1604 to 1657, so that puts him in roughly the same time frame as your red-haired girl, if she was indeed married in 1652."

Cormac covered the mouthpiece and called out to Nora, "Come quickly, I think you'll want to hear this." She came and stood beside him, and Cormac tried to hold the phone so that she could hear as well.

"There was nothing in Ulick's own memoir or letters," Raftery said, "but what I found was a letter Clanricarde received from one of his neighbors, a Charles Symner, in the spring of 1654. Symner mentions attending the execution of a young woman named Annie McCann, convicted of killing her newborn child. The date on the letter is May twenty-third. It's not much, but Symner makes particular mention of the young woman's wild red hair."

21.

When Devaney returned home with the fiddle, he found his daughter Orla reigning over the kitchen, wearing a baker's ap.r.o.n that nearly wrapped twice around her slender waist. She'd been on a French cookery kick for the last fortnight, ever since she got home from a school trip to Normandy, and the family were all beginning to put on weight from the cream sauces, herself excepted. Now she was trying to show Roisin how to make a rose from a tomato, which his younger daughter undertook with the same earnest concentration that she brought to every task. The aroma of onions and seared meat reminded Devaney that he'd forgotten to eat lunch.

"BeG.o.d, Orla, that food smells mighty." He lifted the lid off a saucepan and breathed in the fragrant steam. "What is it?"

"Get out of that, Daddy, you're not supposed to take the cover off while it's cooking." She sounded a bit like her mother. "It's Supremes de Volaille Veronique avec Riz a l'Indienne," she continued, with a perfect French accent, apparently antic.i.p.ating his grimace at such a reply, because she quickly translated: "Chicken and grapes in cream sauce, with curried rice."

"With the hunger that's on me now, I'd eat the Lamb of G.o.d. Mammy home yet?"

"She's on her way."

"Orla, this is impossible," Roisin said. Devaney felt her frustration, and appreciated the way her face brightened when she saw the fiddle case under his arm.

"Daddy, you remembered. I knew you would." She quickly abandoned her bruised-looking tomato and began circling around him, hungry for a look at the new instrument. He set down the fiddle and noted the parcel beside it on the table, bearing a large number of foreign-looking stamps.

"That came for you in the post today, Daddy," Roisin said. "Where's it from?"

"From India," he said.

"What is it?"

"Just my work, Roisin." Satisfied with that answer, his daughter s.h.i.+fted her attention to the new fiddle, and he watched with pleasure as she traced her finger around its curved sides, and tried out the instrument as he had done.

When Nuala arrived home, Orla's feast was ready. The girls had laid the table; now they lit candles and poured wine, and they all actually sat down and had a meal together--like a real family, Devaney thought--for the first time in months. Even Padraig tore himself away from his PlayStation battles long enough to sit and wolf down some food and trade a few good-natured barbs with his sisters. The phone rang at one point, and Devaney half rose to answer it, but Nuala threw him a look that said, Let it ring, just this once? And so he had. Probably for one of the children anyway.

He caught Nuala looking at him curiously several times. Why was he pus.h.i.+ng himself so hard, when it seemed so simple, so easy to be here? The feeling, like the wine, seemed to warm him like a candle flame from the inside. It lasted all through the supper, through the fiddle lesson he gave Roisin, watching her fingers take their positions for a new tune. It hadn't worn off by the time he and Nuala went to bed, and as he watched her undress, he imagined stopping his wife's fingers as she reached for the zipper on the back of her skirt and undoing it himself. But even in his imagination, he was clumsy, hesitant, unsure of how she would react. Sitting on the edge of the bed removing his shoes, he watched as she slipped from the skirt and hung it in the closet. As she lifted the silky blouse above her head, he imagined reaching out and pulling her toward him, until he could drink in her subtle fragrance, feel the warmth of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and belly against his face, the ever wondrous softness of her pale skin. There was nothing to stop him from doing so, nothing but the deadening force of habit and his own fear. As Nuala climbed into the bed beside him, pulled the duvet over her shoulder and plumped the pillow, the same way she did every night, the distance between them had never felt so great. He reached up to switch off the light.

When he did pull her against him during the night, he was amazed how easily it all happened. Why had he hesitated so long? For the first time there was no terrible urgency in their lovemaking. In its place, Devaney was aware of a new kindness in the way they touched each other; he felt they were once more moving in tandem as he heard Nuala's voice whispering urgently in his ear. At the sound, he awoke abruptly from his dream to find her breathing softly beside him. Devaney had been here a thousand times before, suspended on the point of indecision, and wondered what would happen if he were to touch his wife the way he had in the dream. Disconcerted by the thought, he quietly slid out of bed and went downstairs. It was just after one o'clock, and the house was completely silent.

When he switched on the light, the package from Mrs. Gonsalves awaited him on the kitchen table. It was done up in striped brown paper, with clear Sellotape, his name and address in a curious, old-fas.h.i.+oned hand. He hesitated for a moment, then got scissors from the drawer and sliced open the end of the bundle. As he did, a pile of tissue-thin gold-and-green-edged air mail envelopes slid out onto the tabletop. There must have been almost a hundred letters in all. It would be best to read them in order, starting with the oldest first, and so he dug every one out of the package and began organizing them by the dates on the postmarks.

He had not learned much about Mina Osborne from the case file. Despite the photos, the physical description, the witness statements that described the kind of person she was, he did not have a complete sense of her. It was typical of witnesses in a disappearance like this to offer vague descriptions that didn't even begin to capture the complicated character of a human being. Even her husband's attempts to draw a detailed portrait seemed to come up short. The fuller picture of Mina Osborne did not start to emerge until he opened her first letter home. "Dearest Mama," it began. He thought of the mother's voice echoing on the telephone line, and could almost imagine the sound of Mina's voice from the way she wrote. "Give Pa an extra kiss tonight. Maybe someday you may tell him it's from me." That was the only reference she made to being cut off by the father. She promised to write often, and from the looks of the stacks of letters on his table, she had kept that promise. He carefully reinserted the letter in its dated envelope and moved on.