A Carol for the Dead, page 30
‘Look, Matt, I have no reason to believe anything out of Keelan’s mouth, any more than you have. But, by his own admission, he told Traynor about the infant’s body in the morgue. And, as we know from Muriel Blunden, that made Traynor lose interest in digging up the field all of a sudden.’
‘So?’
‘I guess we’d also accept that Keelan phoned Traynor to try and sell him the artefact – and that’s when they arranged to meet at the morgue.’
‘Yeah? So?’
‘So Keelan was there to witness the last call Traynor received, the one made from a call-box in Slane – probably the one that lured him out to Monashee.’
‘It could have been one of O’Rourke’s buddies setting him up.’
‘Be that as it may, Keelan said Traynor seemed very pleased with whatever he’d been told. To me that sounds like a man who had just received a reply that was to his satisfaction.’
‘A reply to what?’
‘A demand. A demand he had made after confirming the existence of the deformed baby.’
‘But he made no calls in between.’
‘He didn’t have to. He could have just sent a text.’
Gallagher’s own phone rang before he could comment.
‘Yes? … What? … The minister, you mean?’ He gave me a glance that said, This is not good news, and went outside to continue his conversation.
I asked myself what had made me change my mind about Keelan being the killer. It was mostly instinct, but there were also pieces of contradictory evidence that Gallagher was choosing to overlook. For example, he himself had previously described the drawing of ‘Goldilocks’ as having been done by another hand – not Traynor’s; moreover, it was drawn as part of a circular object, and Traynor’s put-down of the bone carving implied that Goldilocks was quite a stunner by comparison with her ‘ugly sister’. And, since I would have bet that Traynor equated beauty with monetary value, I still believed Goldilocks to be a gold artefact.
Chapter Thirty
Fitzgibbon had obviously phoned the local Gardaí: a squad car drove up to the house and Keelan emerged from the living room, head bowed, handcuffed to the detective. When he realised I was there, he looked at me imploringly. ‘I may be a thief, Illaun, but I’m not a murderer. Please tell them I’m not a murderer.’
Fitzgibbon shoved him towards two uniformed Gardaí who were approaching the still-open door. Gallagher paced up and down outside, talking into his phone.
I was glad my mother hadn’t been around to witness all of this because she was … Damn! Richard and Greta’s flight had arrived at least two hours ago. They were all due at any moment.
The squad car drove off. I saw Keelan’s pale face in the back between Fitzgibbon and one of the uniformed Gardaí, his eyes staring straight ahead. He was frightened.
Gallagher came back into the hall – which, I noticed only now, was as cold as the outside. I was shivering and I started to close the door behind him, but he signalled that he was departing straight away.
‘… Right, keep me up to date.’ He put away his phone. ‘Derek Ward’s been badly injured.’
‘How?’
‘Someone threw a brick through his windscreen. Random delinquency, it seems. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘Where was that?’
‘Between Drogheda and Donore.’
‘And they’re sure he wasn’t the intended victim?’
Gallagher’s moustache twitched. ‘That’s what it looks like at this stage.’
‘I thought ministers had drivers.’
‘Sure. But all of us like to be on our own from time to time.’
‘It means you can’t question him. Odd, isn’t it?’
‘If he can talk at all, I’ll be asking questions. Meanwhile, I’ve got to make sure we get O’Rourke to court tomorrow morning with all the right paperwork done. It’s going to be a long night. Any news, I’ll let you know.’
‘Don’t be too tough on Keelan,’ I said, following Gallagher onto the doorstep. ‘I think he’s just … weak.’
I closed the door and went back towards the living room. Passing the picture Gallagher had banged his head against, I noticed it was slightly askew. A charcoal drawing of a rural churchyard blanketed in snow, it was dated 1896 and signed by Peter Hunt, the talented man I had come to accept as my great-grandfather.
The depiction of the church in the wintry landscape, isolated and alone on a hillside, the gravestones barely proud of the snowdrift, had made a strong impression on me when I was a child. But, as I adjusted the picture on the wall, I realised I hadn’t looked at it properly in years. As I did, the memory of my childhood response to it – one of those defining moments when an emotional reaction is fixed for all time – flooded back. It had given me mixed feelings: a comforting sense that the dead, whom at the time I imagined lying in a form of extended sleep in an underground cave, were even more snug beneath the blanket of snow – marred by anxiety that, when it melted, the water would rain down upon them. Now that childhood recollection morphed into a presentiment similar to the one I’d had on the beach at Bettystown: that these images – water, a church, the subterranean lair of the dead – were like Tarot cards promising insights into the future if they could only be properly interpreted.
I was startled by the phone ringing beside me.
‘Are you OK?’ said Finian.
‘I’m all right.’
‘Peggy rang me. What’s been going on?’
I gave him a brief account.
Finian made little or no comment about Keelan. He was more concerned about my well-being. ‘Do you want me to come to the house?’
‘No, the others will all be arriving –’ I saw lights outside. ‘They’re actually here, Finian. And, by the way, I’m not telling Richard about this or about what happened in the church, OK? Got to go.’
Greta climbed out of the front passenger seat, wearing a peach-coloured jogging suit and immaculate white sneakers. ‘Good to see you,’ she said, with a huge, perfect smile. Greta was also tall, golden-tressed and golden-limbed into the bargain.
‘Hi, sis,’ Richard called from inside the car, struggling with an unfamiliar seat-belt.
‘Eoin’s asleep,’ said Greta, opening one of the rear doors. ‘He’s propped up against his gran in there.’ I could see my mother in the back seat, gently stroking Eoin’s curly head.
Richard freed himself and came around the car to give me a squeeze before he leant in to gather up his son.
‘Let’s not wake him,’ I said. ‘Follow me – I’ll show you where he’s sleeping, and where you two are, as well.’
Richard slung Eoin over his shoulder and carried him inside. As we went along the hall, I could see how alike all three of us were – black curls, pale skin, inky eyebrows.
Within a few minutes Eoin had donned pyjamas, gone to the bathroom, downed half a tumbler of water and been tucked up in bed without apparently opening an eyelid. As we assembled in the living room, I wished I could have joined him in the Land of Nod. Recent events had left me feeling like a punch-bag.
But I had to make the effort. ‘Well, it’s great to see you all! Welcome to your first Christmas in Ireland as a family. Would anyone like a drink?’
Richard was standing with his back to the fireplace, flipping through a magazine he had found somewhere. He glanced across at Greta.
‘To be honest, Illaun, we’re really pooped,’ she said, making the decision for them both. ‘Could we leave the drinks until tomorrow night?’
‘Suits me fine. What about you, Mum?’
‘I’m tired too, Illaun. Talked out. You know your Aunt Betty.’
And I know you as well, Mum. Two of a kind.
‘She had me going through some old photographs with her. She wants to – what’s the word? – scan them and give family albums to all the nieces and nephews.’
‘For Christmas? It’s a bit late in the day, isn’t it?’ said Richard, still flicking pages.
‘No, not for Christmas. It will take time. She’s going to have to get your dad’s family to go through their collections as well.’
Richard stopped what he was doing and caught my eye. The mention of my father had distracted him.
‘How far back do the photos go?’ I asked, ignoring him.
‘Well, your great-grandmother and great-grandfather are there. They would have been married a few years when the photo was taken, sometime early in the century.’ Twentieth century, she meant. My mother had never quite adjusted to the intrusion of a new one into her life.
‘What were their names? Peter and Marie?’
‘No, no. Your great-grandfather’s name was Willie and your great-grandmother was Julia Russell.’
I was confused. ‘Then who was Peter Hunt? The man who played the violin – the one who drew the picture in the hall?’
My mother smiled wistfully. ‘Ah, that was your great-great-uncle. A wonderful man, by all accounts. It was sad, though: he died suddenly at the age of twenty-six.’
I was stunned. ‘Twenty-six? And what happened to his wife? His wife was Marie, Marie Maguire … from Celbridge … ?’
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about, dear.’ My mother was looking at me strangely. ‘Peter Hunt never married.’
‘Never married?’
‘No. I heard it said he had a sweetheart, but I never knew her name.’ She stood up and gave Richard a hug, then kissed Greta good night.
‘We’ll be on our way, too,’ said Greta, slinging her arm around Richard.
‘Uh, yeah,’ he said, putting down the magazine. He kissed me on the cheek as he passed. ‘We have to talk, you and I,’ he whispered.
‘Let’s do that. In the morning.’
When they had left, I sagged down into an armchair and sat gazing at nothing on the wall opposite. What was the point of wishing if wishes were never fulfilled?
There was a tap on the door. I stiffened, thinking Richard had changed his mind. Instead my mother put her head in. ‘You look as if you’ve been to hell and back. And I noticed that bruise on your head, too. What’s happened?’
I beckoned her in, and she perched on the edge of the armchair.
‘I hit my head against the edge of the car door,’ I said. ‘In the car park of the church. After the carol practice.’
‘You got the message from Gillian, then.’
‘Are you sure it was Gillian herself who rang?’
‘Well, she didn’t say her name; but she was quite curt, the way Gillian can be sometimes.’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘You haven’t answered my question, dear.’
She would have to be told about Keelan.
‘You could have been dead under this very roof,’ she said when I had finished.
‘I don’t think so, though I’ll admit I was scared at first. But now I’m just … disillusioned, I suppose.’
She stroked my hair as she had Eoin’s in the car earlier. ‘We’re flawed, Illaun. Weak and fickle and flawed. That’s why we need God. That’s why we have to call on Him sometimes. And it’s not when we build impressive monuments to Him or create elaborate rituals that He listens to us. He listens when we’re honest about our failings, when we admit we need help, when we acknowledge that we can’t do it all by ourselves.’
‘What about Dad? I don’t see how God has helped him in any way.’
‘God helps me, Illaun. That’s how it works. That’s how I’m able to cope.’
I had just turned off the light when my mobile rang. It was Gallagher.
‘Still processing this arrest,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, you’ll not be surprised to hear that Derek Ward may have been the intended victim of the brick thrown at his car.’
‘You’re right. I’m not surprised.’
‘He got a call from someone and took off – left his driver twiddling his thumbs. He was driving under a flyover near his home when someone dropped a brick from above. It slammed onto the bonnet, then came through the windscreen; it would have taken his head off, except the driver’s airbag inflated and took some of the impact. The car ran off the road onto the grass verge and stopped. He was lucky. Broken neck, bad bruising, but he’ll pull through.’
‘Who did the call come from?’
‘We won’t know until tomorrow.’
‘Are you going to talk to him?’
‘You bet. And, just in case you think this helps O’Rourke’s case – the attack took place at about three o’clock this afternoon, just about the time O’Rourke was absent from your little get-together.’
Christmas Eve
Chapter Thirty-One
10.24. There was no light coming past the edges of the curtains, which partly explained my late waking. I pulled them back and looked out on the garden; it was still in semi-darkness, as if the sun had failed to rise above the horizon. The grey, amorphous clouds shutting out the light were mottled with patches of pink and purple and ivory that ran into one another like watercolours on wet paper. It looked like a snowy sky, but the weather forecast I heard while dressing said no snow was expected, at least in the east of the country.
As I headed for the kitchen Boo emerged from the living room, his entire coat bristling as though he had been plugged into the mains. He looked at me with a mixture of terror and indignation in his huge eyes, then sat at the door to the utility room and mewed plaintively. He wanted out and was, unusually, using his voice. The reason for his tense fur came into view: Attila the Hun in blue dungarees – my three-and-a-half-year-old nephew. Eoin spotted his quarry and gave chase. Boo panicked and shot through my legs down the hall, skittering past the child and around the corner towards my mother’s part of the house, where he would find himself in a cul-de-sac and become even more desperate.
‘Whoa there,’ I said, and collected Eoin up in one arm as he pounded by, at the same time opening the utility-room door so that Boo could eventually escape into the garden.
‘Want cat,’ said Eoin, struggling to get down. I put both my arms around him and asked if he would not prefer some nice hot toast slathered with chocolate spread instead.
‘No – yes!’ he replied.
Richard, in a red-and-blue checked shirt and jeans, was in the kitchen putting some things on a tray for Greta. ‘Two treats she asked me for, on her first morning,’ he said. ‘A lie-in without You-know-who clambering all over her, and breakfast – to include porridge – in bed.’
Just like Goldilocks, I thought. ‘Lucky girl,’ I said. ‘We don’t like the look of what she’s getting, though, do we, Eoin? We’re here to get some chocolate spread and toast, aren’t we?’
‘Yeah! Choctoast!’
Richard swept up the tray and headed out of the kitchen. ‘Enjoy,’ he said.
Ten minutes later Eoin resembled a clown with a sad down-turned mouth made of chocolate. I dampened some kitchen towel and was wiping his face and hands when his father arrived back.
‘Off you go, Eoin. Granny wants to see you.’
Eoin galloped out the door, and Richard and I were left alone. The subject we had been able to avoid the night before was heading for us like an express train and we had nowhere left to run.
‘Like some coffee?’ I asked, trying to eke out another few seconds before impact.
‘No, thanks.’ He sat on a stool and sifted through the photographs I had left on the counter the night I had brought Finian home. ‘Where did these come from?’
I took a stool opposite him. ‘I took them at a place called Grange Abbey. There’s a Romanesque church there.’
He was looking closely at the figure carvings. ‘And these are over the doorway?’
‘Yes. Mostly imaginary men and beasts, as you can see.’
‘That’s mostly not what I see.’ He had picked up the magnifying glass. ‘Not on the two innermost arches, anyway.’
‘What do you see? I’d be really interested to know.’
‘Hey, hold on there, sis. Methinks thou art evading the subject.’
Addressing each other in mock Shakespeare was a habit going back to our childhood, and something that our father didn’t approve of in theory but secretly enjoyed hearing us do.
Perhaps humour could derail the locomotive. I puffed out my chest and ratcheted up the decibels. ‘What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me? What wheels? racks? fires? What flayings?’
Richard placed both hands on his chest and emoted, ‘Make that thy question, and go rot!’
We laughed. We were quoting random lines from The Winter’s Tale. At least they were from the same play, not something about which we were always particular.
‘But seriously, Illaun – about Paddy coming home for Christmas … I had a chat with Mum first thing this morning.’ Richard called our father ‘Paddy’, something I had never been able to do. Had he outmanoeuvred me by getting Mum on side first? ‘And I really don’t think she’s up to having him here tomorrow.’
What was this?
‘I asked her if it was because you were opposed to it, but she said that had nothing to do with it. She said she’d love to have him with us, but wants to give her undivided attention to Eoin, as it’s his first Christmas here. And you know how she loves to spoil him.’
I could have hugged my mother at that moment. But not in front of Richard, of course.
‘Never go against a little boy’s granny,’ I said.
‘She was also concerned about you; she said you’ve had a heavy week of it and could do with a rest.’
‘It’s true. But I’d still like to go and visit Dad at some stage tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, I guess we all would. Maybe we should work out a roster, so we’re not all crowding in on him at the same time.’
‘Good idea. That’d be much more enjoyable for him.’ I was lying, of course. My father no longer had any capacity for enjoyment. But Richard didn’t need to hear me saying that. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘what were you saying about the carvings?’
Richard picked up the print he had been examining and tapped it with a ballpoint he had unclipped from his breast pocket. ‘Because of my work with premmies, I’ve seen most of these creatures at one time or another – in reality. The inner arches of this doorway are a showcase for a whole range of congenital syndromes.’
