CHRISTMAS EVE PASSED under the fog of the predicted hangover. The night before had finished up at about 2 a.m. with Liam behaving in his usual paternal fashion, organizing taxis for everyone. I was a little disappointed. Tempted as I was – due to sheer nosiness – to try to orchestrate some sort of an introduction to George, there just hadn’t been a proper opportunity or excuse. We went for food around ten, and by the time we returned to the pub, George had left, his place taken by a troupe of traditional musicians who kept the session going late into the night.
I spent much of the following afternoon curled up on the couch by the fire with Guinness, watching It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street back to back, thankful that I’d forced myself to take that trip into Derry on Tuesday. The only time I left the house was to drop presents out to Maeve for her boys. Her house was empty when I got there so I left them at the back door, texting her to tell her what I had done, happy to be relieved of any human interaction. Molloy was working so I didn’t see him either, but he promised to call over first thing so we could go to Phyllis’s together.
Christmas morning dawned beautiful and frosty and a good night’s sleep meant that I was ready to appreciate it. When I glanced out of my bedroom window, it still looked as though snow was a possibility, though it had been threatening so for a week now since the first fall. I was beginning to think the weather forecasters were crying wolf.
By eleven o’clock, Molloy and I had completed the track that began the walk to Sliabh Sneacht, and started on the route across the heather to the summit, following the red markers. The sky was white and it was bitterly cold even on the lower slopes, which were usually blustery and soft. Fred charged off while we took our time trying to avoid patches of bog, the white tip on his tail a beacon ahead as he stopped and started whenever a scent required further investigation. Every so often he would come flying back, careering around us like a puppy before permitting one or other of us to rub his ears and heading off again.
It had been a good morning so far. I’d woken to the church bells ringing for Christmas Day and Molloy had appeared at my house at nine in red jacket and scarf with the ingredients for a proper fry-up. He wasn’t on duty until six that evening, so the day stretched pleasurably ahead. I’d made coffee while he cooked, and when we’d finished eating, he surprised me with a present. An antique letter-opener in the shape of a silver dagger, inlaid with green stones, in a leather case. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected but it wasn’t that. But it was beautiful and quirky, I loved it and he seemed pleased. I presented him with a good bottle of whiskey. Not particularly imaginative or romantic, but he seemed to like it too.
As we walked higher up the scrubby hills, the wind became stronger and more biting and the ground rockier underfoot.
Our route was broken here and there by a large boulder or a patch of green moss where it was wet underfoot. My calves ached, my hands froze on the rare occasions I took them from the pockets of my coat, and my face was so cold I could barely speak, but I couldn’t remember a Christmas morning when I had felt so content.
Turning to gaze at the view and catch our breath, we saw the twin mounds of King and Queen Mintiagh overlooking the sea, Lagg and the Isle of Doagh to the right, Inch and Buncrana to the left, and the smaller hill, Sneacht Beg. Ahead was a route over scree and jagged rocks, bracken and scrubby grass.
“Dalradian quartzite,” Molloy said under his breath.
“Sorry?”
“The rock. It’s sandstone that has been changed to quartz by heat. It’s metamorphic rock.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised.
He grinned. “I took a geology course as part of my science degree. A very long time ago.”
Watching his long stride when we set off again, I realized, not for the first time, how little I actually knew about him. Molloy was from Cork, so I’d never met his family or friends. I knew him only in the bubble that was Inishowen. The truth was, I was in no rush for that to change. What he knew about me was limited to what I chose to tell him, too.
We rounded a hill and the summit was in sight, with patches of white: Sliabh Sneacht – Snow Mountain. We climbed the last section in silence while Fred careered ahead of us over the jagged rocks, touched the rocky cairn at the top at the same time and then, laughing, slowly circled the monument while we caught our breath. When we stopped, it was deathly silent, the air crisp and cold. Cairns of various shapes and sizes dotted here and there gave the place the look of a moon surface. I pulled out my phone to take some pictures.
Molloy stopped suddenly and I walked over to join him. He was looking down at a square hole filled with brackish water, a large stone flag partly covering it.
I stood beside him. “What’s that?”
“I think it must be Tobar na Súl,” he said. “The Well of the Eyes.”
I gazed down.
“It’s a holy well,” he said. “People with sight problems used to come here to drink the water or bathe their eyes. They believed it had healing properties.”
I knew that Sliabh Sneacht had traditionally been a place of pilgrimage in Inishowen, but I hadn’t heard of the well.
“The Well of Eyes,” I said. “Sounds like a horror film.”
Molloy remained gazing into the black water while I took some more pictures. As I moved away, I placed my foot directly into a freezing puddle. Fate punishing me for my mockery. Molloy laughed as I grimaced and extracted it with difficulty.
I shook off some of the mud. “The Well of Ice would be more like it.” I looked at my watch. “Shall we start to head down?”
“Sure.” Molloy seemed reluctant to leave.
I looked at him curiously. “What’s wrong?”
He took a deep breath, hands buried in the pockets of his jacket. “I spoke to Luke Kirby’s probation officer.”
I felt my stomach sink.
He looked up. “I wasn’t sure if today was the right day to mention it, but I knew you’d be wondering.”
He was right, I had been wondering, but with everything else, I’d put it to the back of my mind and been happy to leave it there.
“Well?” I asked.
“She knew he was back in Dublin for a few days – he had a meeting with her, as a matter of fact. But she’s pretty certain he’s gone back to the UK now. Her view is that he is genuinely rehabilitated, says he has expressed remorse for what happened.”
“Right.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I’m not.” I didn’t want to get into this now, but if I had to, I wasn’t going to pretend how I felt. “I don’t think Luke Kirby is capable of being rehabilitated. I’m sure he’s still sticking to his position that he killed Faye accidentally, that it was a case of rough sex gone wrong. He’ll never admit that it was intentional. He knows he got away with it.”
Molloy was silent for a few seconds before replying. “I understand why you feel that way, of course I do. But as far as the authorities are concerned, he’s served his time. Maybe it’s time to leave it alone and trust the probation officers to do their job.”
I bridled. “Like we did first time around? When he got off with manslaughter when he should have been convicted of murder?”
I knew I sounded like my parents. I’d never told Molloy that they blamed his ex for the fact that Kirby was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder, or that there were times when I blamed her myself. Under cross-examination, Laura Callan had admitted that she couldn’t be sure the sex hadn’t been consensual, that Faye hadn’t willingly taken cocaine with Luke Kirby that night. She couldn’t be sure that Faye hadn’t willingly engaged in “extreme risk-taking behavior.”
Molloy didn’t respond. What could he say? He looked at me, eyes full of compassion, and I knew that everything he was saying was true. I needed to let things go, for my parents’ sake as much as my own; that ship had sailed.
I shook my head, snapping out of it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you. I’d never have been able to handle his release if it hadn’t been for you. I just wish I hadn’t run into him last week. It’s brought it all back up again for me.”
Molloy nodded. “That was bad luck, but hopefully that’s all it was.”
He reached out for me and pulled me towards him, holding me close, his warmth calming me down. It was only when we drew apart that I realized I hadn’t seen Fred for a while or heard his excited bark as he discovered a new scent. I said as much to Molloy, who turned and whistled, but there was no response. I called and looked around. The view was clear. We should have been able to see him.
“He’s not here,” I said. “Maybe we should go back down a bit.”
We walked a few yards and scanned the view again, but there wasn’t a soul or a canine about.
“Let’s try going around to the left,” Molloy suggested. “He’s probably gone chasing after a rabbit or something.”
“I hope he hasn’t found any sheep.”
Molloy shook his head. “There aren’t any that I can see. And anyway, he used to be a farm dog, didn’t he?” He smiled. “He’ll probably just try and herd them.”
“I suppose.”
We made our way back down, taking a different path to the one we’d taken up. This route was rougher – I nearly landed on my backside a few times tripping over uneven rocks. It was wetter too, full of boggy patches with icy shards on the surface. Twice I heard a crunch before finding my foot fully immersed in a bog hole, freezing water seeping into my boots. Both boots were soaking wet now.
Suddenly our path was bisected by a narrow rough track running from right to left; we chose the left. But five minutes later there was still no sign of the dog and I was starting to feel worried and guilty. Molloy and I had been so distracted by our disagreement that we hadn’t noticed Fred’s absence. What was I going to say to Phyllis if we couldn’t find him?
“Where the hell is he?” I said as Molloy whistled for him again.
Then we heard a bark echoing over the hill. I heaved a sigh of relief and we followed the sound, skirting further to the left. I called out, and the bark came again.
“It’s coming from near that mound over there,” Molloy said, pointing towards a hidden dip.
Suddenly Fred came into view, sniffing at something at the base of a pile of rocks. A flock of crows flew up, unconcerned at the dog’s presence but clearly unhappy with ours. Fred looked up but stayed where he was, our appearance not enough to distract him from whatever it was he found so engrossing.
“What’s that pile of stones?” I asked. “There’s something on top of it. Something red – ”
Molloy cut across me, breaking into a run. “What the hell has he got?”
Fred looked up and trotted over to meet us, tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, breath coming in little puffs of white mist, startled when Molloy ran past him.
The first thing I saw was hair; dark blonde hair. Then legs, hands, and feet. Molloy reached the woman before I did, crouching down beside her. She was facedown, arms and legs at strange angles, dressed in jeans and a blue puffed jacket. The jacket had ridden up at the back and I caught a glimpse of a red and orange top. My eyes widened in horror – I knew that top. My gaze traveled down her legs. A few yards away
I’d thought I was mistaken; now I could see I was not. The woman was barefoot, the soles of her feet so white they were almost blue.
“Is she …” I began, although I knew the answer. If she’d been alive, she’d have been freezing. Her feet looked so painful.
Molloy nodded. “No pulse. She’s been dead awhile.”
Wet hair covered her face. Molloy gently pulled back a lock to reveal part of her forehead, one closed eye, skin mottled with dirt. I’d known it already, but now there was no doubt. It was Carole Harkin.
Molloy pointed to a mark on her neck, a groove more obvious toward the front. A ligature mark. “Looks as though she’s been strangled.”
“Jesus.”
He checked her pockets but they were empty, then stood up. “You need to leave.”
“What? Where do you expect me to go?”
He shook his head. “You can’t be here. We don’t know if whoever did this is still around.”
“Well if that’s the case, I’m damn sure I’m not going all the way back to the car on my own.”
Molloy fell silent; there was little he could say to that. He glanced around him.
“Look at the rocks.”
I saw now that the pile of rocks seemed to have been recently stacked. And with a clenching in my gut, I realized that the color I’d seen in the distance was a pair of red Christmas socks, secured in place by a rock.
“It looks like a flag,” I said quietly.
Molloy nodded. “Whoever did this wanted her to be found. Although if we hadn’t come up here this morning …”
“How long has she been here?”
He looked down. “I’m no expert, but I’d say not that long. The body is still intact, though the cold would have helped to preserve it, so it could be a few days. No predator activity. But we’ll need the pathologist to confirm all of that.”
I looked around. This was a desolate, wild place, a place for walkers, those who enjoyed the outdoors.
“How did she get here?” I asked. “There was no other car where we parked.”
“She didn’t have a car with her when she disappeared,” Molloy said. “George said she usually got a taxi in and out to work.”
“So someone brought her up here.” I shivered. I couldn’t take my eyes off her feet, had to resist all my instincts to put her socks back on.
“Look,” Molloy said, pointing. “There’s a bit of a trail.”
I followed his hand. There was indeed a faint trail leading back over the hill, the heather indented and matted by something other than the wind. It was possible that Carole could have come that way; Carole and whoever she had been with.
“Should we follow it?” I asked.
Fred gave a sudden excited bark as if he understood what I was saying. He’d been running around in circles, waiting to see what we would do next, well behaved until now, staying back when instructed to do so by Molloy.
“Let me call it in first,” Molloy replied. “We can’t leave her.”
“Of course.”
He took out his phone and walked away to make the call while I stood uncomfortably beside Carole’s body, rubbing Fred’s ears and chatting to him to dispel the eerie silence. I was relieved when he returned.
“Buncrana will be here in ten. McFadden in five. At least he’ll be parked in five. God knows how long it’ll take him to get up here.”
“McFadden’s on duty on Christmas Day too?”
Molloy gave me a wry look. “Only till twelve.”
I looked at my watch. Five to twelve. Lucky McFadden. “He’ll stay with the body while I follow that trail. Buncrana will secure the scene when they get here.” Molloy rooted in his pocket for his keys. “You can go back to Phyllis’s with Fred when McFadden gets here. Take my car; I can get back with McFadden whenever that is.”
I shook my head. “I’ll come with you.”
“Absolutely not,” Molloy said firmly. “We have no idea where that path leads, or to whom.”
“All the more reason to have a dog with you. With us,” I said as Fred gazed up at us with his soft eyes, looking the absolute antithesis of a guard dog.
McFadden reached us in half an hour, a superhuman effort made obvious by the red-faced heavy breathing he was doing when he arrived. His weight loss clearly hadn’t improved his fitness. Molloy ordered him to stay put until the Buncrana guards arrived, and he stood obediently beside the body, looking as if this was precisely how he would have chosen to spend his Christmas Day lunchtime.
I had another shot at persuading Molloy to let me go with him, but he insisted I stay with McFadden. I waited until he was out of sight before surreptitiously releasing Fred from his lead. He took off up the hill as I’d known he would.
“I’d better follow him,” I said to a startled McFadden as I set off at a run after the dog.
When I rounded the hill, I could see Molloy in the distance, his red jacket making him easy to spot. He was following the trail towards a small copse of trees. I made my way in his direction as quietly as I could, but a bark from Fred made him turn, and he waited for me. He wasn’t happy that I’d followed him, but he didn’t send me back.
We followed the trail into the copse, Fred leading the way. The trees were dark and coniferous, a damp and gloomy canopy with needles brushing our faces and roots like writhing snakes underfoot. Broken branches implied that someone had come through recently, though it seemed there must be a more established route.
After a few minutes, we came to a clearing. Molloy, ahead of me, stopped dead and Fred did the same. When I emerged to join them, they were standing in front of a tiny semi-derelict cottage with a blue door, or a door that had once been blue. Now it was faded, the color long since stripped of its vibrancy, any patches of paint that remained curled like dead winter leaves. It had a roof of corrugated iron and small, mean-looking windows. Walls that had once been whitewashed now had tea-colored lines running from the windowsills like old blood.
The blue door was ajar.