Wednesday 28th September – 5 p.m.
No one could relax until Sylvia brought Conor back to the hotel. Rav had bought a round of drinks in the bar, but he couldn’t face any food. Neither could anyone else.
Aoife had found a nook of sofas, away from the great stone fireplace but close enough to feel its warmth, and now they were all curling up as rain lashed against the window.
Shannon still looked shocked, but kept glancing at James with admiration. She was nursing a whiskey and her hands had stopped shaking now.
Alert as a cat, Nell leaped up when she heard a voice from the lobby. She claimed another couple of whiskeys at the bar and turned to hand them to Sylvia and Conor as they walked in.
‘You read my mind.’ Conor took the glass with a grim thanks, and knocked it back, asking the barman for another. He took it over to sit with the group, as Sylvia peeled off her waterproof. She shivered into the sofa, and sipped the drink.
‘How are your parents, Conor?’ Nell asked.
‘Not good.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t have any words for this kind of situation. We mostly sat in silence.’ He took another slug of his drink and stared out of the window.
‘What happened, Sylvia?’ Shannon asked. ‘When you went back with Maeve and Aoife?’
‘I’m not sure. I heard Maeve suggest to Aoife that she could go and see her grandparents over at the cottage. I just wanted to see Conor. I knew he’d be at the lighthouse, and when I found him there we had a heart-to-heart.’ She looked over at Conor, who was still gazing out of the window, but had his hand in hers.
‘Did we solve everything?’ Shannon asked. ‘Given that Finn said he was talking to Sean all the time? Is it the idea now that they weren’t talking? Was Sean lying?’
‘I think they were telling the truth, but it was pretty unconvincing,’ James said. ‘Finn could have been doing anything.’
‘Yes, but the timing doesn’t really work, does it?’ Shannon said.
But Nell nodded. ‘Yes, it does. You just have to rearrange how you think about what he was doing, and when he was doing it.’
Conor’s head jerked up.
‘What do you mean?’ Sylvia asked.
‘Well, how long did it take you to get to the convent and back?’ Nell asked.
Rav frowned. ‘About two hours each way.’
‘Exactly,’ Nell said. ‘So here’s what I think happened. On Friday morning, Sean argued with his parents while – forgive me, Conor, but I think you and Siobhan were meeting covertly to confirm your plans.’
‘We were.’ He sipped his drink.
Nell nodded. ‘Yet no one mentioned seeing Finn then. So where was he?’
Rav’s eyes widened. ‘Eavesdropping on Siobhan and Conor.’
‘Exactly,’ Nell said, glancing at Conor. He raised his eyebrows. ‘So that’s how he knew where they were meeting. But just as Siobhan was leaving, she overheard Sean rowing with his parents. And then she argued with Sean. He begged her to talk, and so she tells him where she’ll be later – right before she’s due to meet Conor. So that would be Finn’s last chance if he – I don’t know – wanted to convince Siobhan to stay? Expected her to want him over Conor?’
Aoife grimaced.
‘So, Sean meets Siobhan, they talk, he leaves. And then Finn turns up. Maybe he expected her to be there, if he did overhear her plans, or maybe he spotted her car. They must have argued, she might have walked off, trying to get away, he may have followed and things got out of hand. Or perhaps he attacked her in a jealous rage? And then Finn has to bury her.’ Nell tried to say it as delicately as possible. ‘But he also has to deal with her car, especially if it was visible from the road. So he probably went to move it.’
Rav nodded. ‘If he had overheard all of Conor and Siobhan’s conversation from that morning, he could have expected to see Aoife in the car, with Siobhan’s packed bags, but there’s a chance he didn’t, and it was a shock for him to find the baby in the car seat.’
‘Oh …’ Sylvia’s hand clamped over her mouth.
‘So now he has a few seconds to decide what to do.’
Aoife paled. ‘I suppose, under those circumstances, I was lucky to have been given away.’
Conor’s chest heaved with rapid breaths and Sylvia slipped an arm around him.
Nell frowned. ‘I’m guessing that, if Aoife was still in her car seat, Siobhan didn’t go for her walk. If Sean arrived promptly, they might have talked by their cars. When they parted in anger, she may have paced around the car park, or got back in the car. But then Finn arrived, and they argued.’
‘All Finn can have been thinking then was to hide what he’d done and get out of there,’ Rav said. ‘So he would have put Aoife in the car seat in the back of his car, and probably shoved the bags in the passenger seat to dump somewhere. But he needed to hide Siobhan.’
Nell nodded. ‘And I know that he put Siobhan in the boot of his car and then drove off. Whether he had a plan to take Aoife to the convent, or whether he chanced upon it, I couldn’t tell.’
‘How do you know that he put Siobhan in the boot?’ Sylvia asked.
‘Because she wasn’t found?’ James guessed.
‘She wouldn’t necessarily have been found. I know because he took what was in the boot and put it on the back seat of the car. And that gave him the idea of an alibi.’
‘Ah!’ Rav grinned. ‘Yes!’
‘He could easily have done that the day before, intending to ask Sean to check the specimens later. That would mean his car boot contained crates of the plants he’d found, and the homemade notebook. With the pipewort flower falling out of the notebook, its pollen would have attached to the lining of the boot – along with the pollen of the flowers Finn had foraged – ready to transfer onto Siobhan’s body just after the pressed flower itself would have been moved to the car’s back seat with the crates, then got caught in Aoife’s car seat.’
‘And that’s how those very specific grains of pollen – yet no others – became attached to Siobhan’s body,’ Rav said.
‘So Finn was just making stuff up when he was talking to Sean on the phone?’ Shannon asked.
‘Yes. He’d have had the plants to hand on the back seat. He could have easily described them to Sean while he drove, left Aoife at the convent and drove back.’
‘But then what?’ Shannon asked.
‘Then he got fish and chips for his family’s dinner,’ James said. ‘Just like any other Friday night.’
‘And, after that, he and Sean went to the pub, and the state Conor was in was a gift.’ Nell glanced at him, and he gave a regretful nod. ‘When Finn helped him home, it was probably then that he realised he could either let the blame for Siobhan disappearing sit with Brandon or, if people asked more questions, or if her body was found, he could make sure all evidence pointed to Conor.’
‘With the bracelet,’ Shannon clarified.
Conor nodded. ‘I knew I’d lost that as soon as I woke up the next morning. I never took it off. I was furious with myself for losing it.’
‘Once Finn knew everyone in the house was asleep, that’s when he drove his car back to the bog, with Siobhan in the boot, to bury her,’ Nell said.
‘That makes sense,’ James agreed. ‘So he’d have driven her car back then, parked it quietly on her drive, then walked back to get his own car and drive home.’
‘But that could be when Finn realised Siobhan had grabbed his bracelet,’ Nell added. ‘Perhaps they argued, or she defended herself during an attack. He may have seen and tried to prise it out of her fingers when he buried her. But it would have been dark. So he either couldn’t get it back, or perhaps he only realised later that night, when it was too late.’
‘So he took yours.’ Sylvia looked furious as she spoke to Conor. ‘And wore yours as his own so that if Siobhan was ever found, it would be you in the frame, not him.’
Aoife’s jaw clenched along with both of her fists. ‘I hate him.’
‘And he tried to do the same with the painting,’ Shannon said. ‘He stole the painting in the living room and used your bank card to pay for postage, to send it for sale at auction. For about twenty grand.’
‘But … why?’
‘If Finn needed money, my guess is that he would have researched that sale – maybe even set it up – in New York before he left. I think he used the opportunity of a family gathering for there to be some confusion around who had taken it. And who better to point the finger at than Conor, who Finn always seemed to want to punish.’
Conor’s head sagged and he looked utterly defeated.
‘It seems like he spent his life getting you into trouble,’ Sylvia said, squeezing his hand.
‘Was that … all because my mammie loved you and not him?’ Aoife’s face trembled.
Conor’s look at Aoife was full of pain. ‘Yes, partly. But there was more to it. Toxic jealousy, I guess.’ He glanced at Sylvia. ‘We’re spending more time talking about Finn than we are about Sean, and that’s not right. We should be remembering a good man, with the biggest heart of anyone I know. Who just wanted to bring us all together.’
James and Shannon slid away, returning with more whiskey and glasses.
Conor solemnly handed out drinks. ‘To my little brother, Sean,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘You were the best of us. The only one who knew that what really matters is how you look after the ones you love.’