WHEN FINALLY I turned to go into the bank, I heard a shout from across the street. Phyllis was waving at me from the doorway of her shop, dressed entirely in the precise shade of yellow a child would paint a summer sun, providing a stark and uplifting contrast to the hard grey of the afternoon.
I couldn’t hear what she was saying. She cupped her two hands over her mouth and shouted again, and this time I heard her. “Coffee?”
I nodded and pointed towards the bank, diving in as the security guard gave a loud martyred sigh.
Ten minutes later, I was perched on a stool in Phyllis’s shop, a steaming cup in my hands, a plate of homemade ginger biscuits on the counter between us. It wasn’t difficult to work out how the bookseller was the size she was. Food played a major part in any encounter with Phyllis and was regarded as essential fuel for a chat. And as she regularly pointed out, much pleasure had gone into the acquisition of her considerable bulk. Phyllis viewed her size like laughter lines on a face, the sign of a life well lived.
“So,” she said, biting into one of her own biscuits with relish, ignoring Fred’s imploring expression at her feet. I reserved my sympathy; he’d get one eventually, he always did. “Any news?”
I knew Phyllis well enough to know this wasn’t a general enquiry. Despite Molloy saying that all would be made public, I wasn’t sure how much he would want me to reveal at this stage, so I decided to keep it vague.
“I think the guards need to work out what happened to Carole on the night of the fire. I don’t suppose you were in the Oak that night?”
Phyllis shook her head. “I’m not keen on the place at weekends. Too many people.” She corrected herself. “Too many young people, out to get as paralytic as possible as fast as possible. Some of those kids would drink it out of an auld wet sock.”
I suppressed a smile, but I knew what she meant.
“I did take Fred out for his nighttime constitutional, though,” she added. “A quick stroll around the square then out as far as the Derry road. Plastic bag in tow in case you were wondering.”
“What time was that?” I asked.
“About half past twelve, midnight, that is. We came back about one-ish. Turfing-out time.”
“So the Oak was still open?”
She nodded. “Not serving, though, I don’t think. The lights were still on and people were leaving. I saw Carole’s brother and his girlfriend, that girl who used to work for Stan.”
“Róisín.”
“That’s right, Róisín McCann.” She swallowed the last of her biscuit and helped herself to another. “I know her mother. She was a right whizz with a computer, that wee girl. I don’t know why she went into hairdressing. Anyway, I saw the two of them getting into one of those minibuses that take people out after the pub. Eddie was still drinking a pint from a plastic glass. The bus was packed.” She shook her head. “Why you’d want to go out further, after a night in the pub, is beyond me.”
“You’re getting old, Phyllis,” I said with a smile.
“Probably. Although I’d have no problem having an extra drink by the fire at one o’clock in the morning, you know that. It’s the idea of heading up the road and then trying to get home again afterwards – that’s what I wouldn’t be keen on. I’m definitely too old for that.”
“Eddie’s family live in Culdaff, though,” I said. “If that’s where they were going. He could have got home easily enough afterwards.”
I remembered that George had said he was playing music in the Bunagee Bar in Culdaff that night. I wondered if they had gone to see him play.
“What about the girlfriend, though? The McCanns live the other direction entirely – they’re out towards Derry,” Phyllis said.
“Maybe she was staying with Eddie?”
“Not if Eddie’s mother had anything to do with it.” Phyllis smiled. “Not if they weren’t married.”
“Really?” I said, surprised that that was still an issue. Eddie must have been twenty-five at least. “Even if they slept in separate beds?”
Phyllis raised her eyebrows.
“Maybe they stayed with Emma? Carole and Eddie’s sister? She has a big house.”
“She’s worse. The women in that family are like something out of the fifties.”
I had a sudden flashback to Carole on the flight to Dublin with the rosary beads in her lap.
“What about Carole?” I asked. “Did you see her that night?”
Phyllis shook her head, dunking her biscuit in her mug. “I presume she was inside the pub clearing up.” She shuddered. “God, I wonder if she had any inkling that it would be her last time. Those poor wee boys. I can’t stop thinking about them.”
“I know.”
“Although if they get enough mothering elsewhere, they might be okay.”
I noticed that Phyllis used the same word that George had: “mothering.”
She shook her head. “I still think she must have known something. Something someone didn’t want her to know.”
“Like what?”
“I have absolutely no idea. I just can’t think of any other reason why someone would want to do away with her.”
Not for the first time, I wondered if Phyllis might have a point. If Carole needed more money than she could earn or borrow, was it possible she had been blackmailing someone to get it? As I drained the last of my coffee, I noticed the paper that Phyllis had left by the cash register. The headline screamed: Barmaid’s body found in the snow on Christmas morning. It didn’t look real somehow, more like a piece of horror fiction.
The following morning was bright and crisp, and I realized when I awoke that I badly needed some fresh air. The snow was gone and I hadn’t been out for a walk since that fateful hike on Christmas morning, so it was time to blow away the cobwebs. I might even go for a dip. I threw together a towel and swimming togs before making a quick coffee and standing at the kitchen sink to drink it.
There was a loud knock at the front door, which made me jump. I went to open it, mug in hand. Charlie, my neighbor from next door, stood on the step, his little corgi Ash, who Guinness loved to taunt, at his feet.
“I think you might have to move your wee car.” Charlie’s tone was light, but he wasn’t smiling.
“Why?” I was confused. I always parked my car directly in front of my house and was sure I had done so the night before.
He beckoned. “Come and have a look.”
With trepidation, I followed him out to the green. The sight that greeted me was bizarre. The Mini was parked in front of my house all right, but horizontally across the road, blocking it completely, as if someone had picked the car up and turned it ninety degrees. Two men in work gear stood glaring at it, their own vehicles backed up behind, engines running.
“They wanted to lift her, but I wouldn’t let them,” Charlie said.
I ran in and collected my keys. When I came out again, the men were back in their cars. They watched as I maneuvered the car laboriously into its usual position alongside the footpath – there’s no power steering on an old Mini. I climbed back out and waved an apology as the two cars sped off.
Charlie stood, hands in pockets, looking amused as I locked the car door. “How did you manage to leave it like that?”
Ash gazed up at me, his grey face and soft brown eyes echoing his master. I couldn’t produce an answer for either of them.
“Thanks for letting me know, Charlie.”
I returned to the house shaken, baffled and mortified at the same time. Had I forgotten to put the handbrake on? But then how had the car turned the way it had; how had it ended up in that strange position?
By the time I’d finished my coffee, I still needed to get out of the house but I’d changed my mind about the swim. Ten minutes later, I found myself driving through Glendara and towards the mountain road to Sliabh Sneacht.
I parked the car in the same spot Molloy and I had parked on Christmas morning, four days before. I had plenty of time; I wasn’t due to meet Leah until eleven, and it was only nine now, so I dragged on my coat and hat and climbed out of the car. Unlike Christmas Day, I wasn’t alone – a battered blue Fiat Punto was parked diagonally alongside, as if someone had dumped it. No Garda cars; they had obviously gathered all they needed in the past few days.
I walked along the track and began the trail, sorry not to have Fred with me this time. I wasn’t entirely sure why I was here. But whether it was underlying guilt at never warming to the woman, or finding her body on Christmas morning, I knew I wouldn’t be happy until I discovered what had really happened to Carole. I thought that if I returned to the place where she had been found, something might occur to me.
I’d gone only a few hundred yards when I spotted two figures walking towards me, making their way carefully across the heather – the owners of the Fiat Punto, I assumed. It was only when we were almost level that I recognized them as Susanne Craig and Róisín, Eddie Kearney’s girlfriend. I realized how alike they had looked from a distance, both petite, one with black hair, the other bleached blonde. They were engrossed in conversation, heads bowed as they watched their footing, and they didn’t notice me as they neared. They didn’t break from their chat at all and I suspect would have walked right past me without a greeting had I not forced the issue with quite a loud hello. When I spoke, they looked up, recognition showing on both faces.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” I said.
Róisín nodded, while Susanne looked around her as if noticing her surroundings for the first time.
“You’d never think something so awful could have happened in such a beautiful spot,” I added.
“One of the few unspoilt parts of Donegal,” Susanne said. “Bungalow fucking blight, most of the county.”
I met her gaze evenly. “There are still plenty of beautiful parts of Inishowen.”
She looked away as if she couldn’t be bothered having a discussion with someone who was so ill-informed, and I pictured her in my office railing at clients whose mortgages were financing the bungalow blight.
I dismissed the image and turned to Róisín. “How are Carole’s family doing?”
“They’re surviving,” she said quietly. “The wee boys don’t really know what’s going on, which is just as well. But they’ve released the body so at least we can have the wake.”
“Oh, that’s something, I suppose.”
She nodded. “Emma and Eddie are pleased. The wake will be tonight and tomorrow at Emma’s, and then the funeral is on Thursday.” She gave a timid smile. “No kissing under the tree this year.”
With a jolt, I remembered that Thursday was New Year’s Eve, the night when the people of Glendara poured out of the pubs at midnight to ring in the new year under the tree.
She sighed. “He blames himself. He thinks he shouldn’t have left Carole to lock up by herself, that we shouldn’t have gone out to Culdaff. But she insisted, wanted us to go and see George, said he’d be glad of the support. Practically shoved us out the door, didn’t she, Sue?”
Susanne nodded. She looked down, kicking at a clump of heather with her boot.
“Why do you think she did that?” I asked.
Róisín lowered her gaze. “I thought at the time she just wanted Eddie to have some fun while he was home, but I wonder now if she was waiting for someone. Although I haven’t said that to Eddie. It’ll only make him feel worse.”
“Who would she have been waiting for?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said sadly. “What I do know is that she kept looking at her watch. Eddie thinks she’s been afraid of something since we’ve been back, but he’s only being wise after the event; he doesn’t know. None of us do.”
“When are you due to go back to Australia?”
“Oh, she’s not going back,” Susanne interjected, the first time she’d spoken since her bungalow comment.
A look was exchanged between them; I wondered what it meant.
“Are you staying here, then?” I asked. “In Glendara?”
I wondered what Eddie would feel about Róisín not returning to Australia with him. He seemed pretty besotted. Although it occurred to me that he might decide to stay on too, to support his mother and remaining sister.
Róisín nodded. “I never really intended staying in Australia. I was only there on a working holiday. I’m back working for Stan again.”
“Maybe I’ll come in for a trim.” I smiled.
“Good idea,” she said, then looked self-conscious when I laughed.
As I left them to make their way back to their car, I wondered at their choosing a place for a walk where a murdered woman had been found so recently. But then at least there were two of them. I was walking here too, and I was alone. The notion made me glance anxiously over my shoulder.
I made my way over the heather, doing my best to retrace our steps from Christmas morning, wishing again that I had Fred with me. The wooden markers made it easy enough, and within half an hour I’d come to the spot where Fred had found Carole’s body. The little pile of stones was still there. It was eerie seeing it again, remembering the bright socks, trying to imagine what had happened to her. In my present state of mind, the red moss beneath my feet reminded me of pooling blood.
After a few minutes, I went on, following the route we had taken to the cottage and reaching the copse within a few minutes now that I knew where it was. I realized that it would have been perfectly possible for a man with strength to carry a body this distance, particularly someone as slight as Carole and particularly downhill.
My heart raced as I made my way through the trees; even the branches appeared threatening. It was hard not to imagine what it must have been like for Carole if she had been brought here against her will. I wondered if she had ever come here with Dominic, then remembered she had known him only in England. From what George had said, she had never even told anyone they were a couple. Appearances were important to Carole; I had witnessed her pass judgement on others more than once, sometimes unkindly. She wouldn’t have wanted to leave herself open to that same judgement. I wondered suddenly why she had told George.
The cottage was just as we had found it, its front door still ajar. But this time I went inside, making my way into the tiny hallway to the still-present odor of damp and old turf fire.
I went into each of the rooms in turn – bedroom, bathroom and kitchen – rooms I’d only been able to peer at through the windows on Christmas Day. Some of the furniture had been removed, for analysis I assumed, although from what Molloy had said, they had found nothing of note. Finally, I stood in the kitchen, with its peeling wallpaper, its scorched and bubbled floor, and wondered how three people had ever lived here. The washing line with its pegged boots had been removed, but the memory of Christmas morning returned with a vengeance and the ground seemed to sway beneath my feet, as if the entire house were tilted to one side. There was a malevolence here that made me shiver.
And something about the boots and socks that bothered me.
Something that didn’t fit. But it remained just out of reach.
It was time to leave.
Although it was morning, and too early in the day for the light to be failing, the bright winter sky had clouded over when I came outside, and once in the trees I lost my way quickly, veering off the path Molloy and I had followed. Uneasily I wondered if the malevolence I had felt at the cottage was connected with what had happened to Carole, or if it was something further back. What exactly had Dominic Stoop done to wind up in prison?
Fighting off sharp, burned-looking branches to find my way back onto a better path, I saw something glint on the ground a few yards in front of me and made my way towards it. Silver, I thought at first, but when I reached it, my breath caught. It was a belt, a woman’s brown Western-style belt with a decorative silver buckle. Could it be the belt with which Carole had been strangled? If so, why had the guards not found it? Or the killer taken it?
However it had ended up here, one thing was certain. I needed to take it with me. I searched in my pockets for a handkerchief, but the best I could come up with was a used tissue. I was sure Molloy would tell me off for that, but it was better than picking the belt up with my bare hands. I hoped. I crouched down and scooped it up, hands trembling a little, then, holding it straight out in front of me and trying to avoid any more contact than necessary, made my way back down the hill. Hoping not to meet anyone else; wondering how I would explain myself if I did.
I didn’t. I drove back into town with my precious cargo and headed straight for the Garda station. Molloy, alone when I walked in, took it from me in stunned silence when I told him where I had found it. He wasn’t thrilled about my tissue, but he used a clean cloth to place the belt carefully in a plastic evidence bag, then took a DNA sample from me. I knew it was needed so that my DNA could be eliminated in case any had transferred from the tissue to the belt, but he still explained it to me as if I were a child.
He leaned over me to take a swab from inside my cheek, his face so close to mine that I inhaled his scent. We’d had so little time alone together lately that I flushed. He looked into my eyes, and I made a joke to cover my embarrassment.
“This means my DNA will be on file, doesn’t it? I’d better not commit any more crimes so …”
He raised one eyebrow but didn’t respond. He placed the swab in a glass tube, sealed and marked it, and put the tube into another evidence bag. Then he shook his head in frustration.
“How the hell was this not found?”