I RANG MOLLOY to tell him what had happened, afraid that if Stan didn’t want to report it then no one else would. I told him that Stan wasn’t admitting to his injuries having been caused by anything other than a fall, although that seemed unlikely.
“I’ll go and talk to him,” Molloy said. “Has he been taken to the hospital in Glendara?”
“I think so.”
“I’ll give you a call later on,” he said before he rang off.
I drove back to Malin taking the longer road along the coast for no reason other than that I wanted to think. Had the Greys scared off whoever had attacked Stan? Assuming he had been attacked, which seemed pretty certain. What would have happened if they hadn’t?
I stopped at the coast road and was waiting at the junction to turn right towards Malin when a large blue BMW passed by. I caught a glimpse of its blonde female driver and it gave me a shock. It was Laura Callan, the pathologist; I was sure of it. Why was she still in Donegal? The postmortem on Carole was long since completed. And what was she doing here, in this part of the peninsula, if she had been working and staying in Letterkenny? A thrum of unease started somewhere in my gut.
When I arrived back in Malin, I was happy to see Guinness waiting for me on the doorstep. I let him in, made a pot of strong coffee, and sat down to drink it while he curled up on my knee. I ran a few things by him, but he wasn’t particularly helpful. Then my phone rang. It was my mother calling to wish me a Happy New Year, in case I was busy later on. She and my father had returned from their trip the day before. After she had told me all about it, I asked if they had any plans for New Year’s Eve.
“A reunion dinner of the Iceland crew,” my mother said.
“Haven’t you seen enough of them?” I joked.
“Yes, but they’re such good fun. You could do with a bit of that yourself, you know. Faye wouldn’t want you to—”
I didn’t let her continue. “Yes, I know.”
Though I knew she was right, it seemed strange to hear her speak like that. It had taken ten years for either of my parents to smile properly after my sister’s death. I knew I should be grateful. My phone vibrated in my hand with a call waiting. Molloy. “I have to go, Mum. There’s someone else trying to call me.”
“Okay, Sarah – I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Happy New Year again.”
“You too, Mum.”
I pressed the end call button and took Molloy’s. For some reason, I stood up, Guinness leaping off my knee in disgust.
“I’m at the hospital. Stan’s unconscious.”
I sank back down into my chair again. “But he was okay earlier. Well, maybe not okay, but he could walk, he could talk.”
“Some head injuries are like that, take a while to take effect. He was conscious for about an hour at the hospital then slipped into some kind of coma. They have no idea how long it will last.”
“Did you get to speak to him?”
I heard the hospital PA system in the background. “Briefly. He admitted he’d been hit on the head, but couldn’t say by whom. Seems the Greys scared off whoever it was.”
“Did you get a chance to speak to them?”
Molloy sounded weary. “They said they were walking onto the beach when they heard a scuffle and someone running. Then they came upon Stan, who insisted he had fallen.”
“That’s what he said to me. Why would he lie? Initially, at any rate?”
“Looks as if he was afraid of something. Of someone.”
I shuddered. “Who would have wanted to hurt Stan?”
“I have no idea. Do you?” There was a sudden edge to his voice. “Since you’re the one people seem to be talking to.”
I ignored the edge and told Molloy about the noise in the Oak. Since Stan had mentioned it to everyone else he’d met, I told myself there wasn’t a confidentiality issue any longer.
Molloy inhaled. “Really? What kind of noise?”
“He said it sounded like people moving furniture. The thing is, he said he went down once to have a look and the noise stopped.”
The background sounds changed and I heard traffic. Molloy had taken the call outside.
“And you think maybe someone saw him? Or perhaps he caught a glimpse of something someone didn’t want him to see?”
“If he did, he didn’t tell me about it.”
Molloy sighed in frustration. I couldn’t blame him. “I don’t suppose you could have told me this before now?”
“I’m sorry. It was a few days before the fire. And I thought Stan would have mentioned it. There is one other thing …”
“Go on.”
“Róisín and Susanne came back to the pub the Saturday night of the fire. At least they were dropped outside it. The taxi driver who brought them back thought there might have been a lock-in.”
“How the hell do you find out these things?” Molloy said in exasperation.
I had the grace to look embarrassed, though Molloy couldn’t see it. I shrugged. “People tell me stuff. Maybe it’s because I’m a solicitor.”
“I wish they’d tell me stuff.”
I smiled. “Maybe it’s because you’re a guard that they don’t.”
I thought about this when I ended the call. Why didn’t people talk to Molloy? Was it just because he was a guard? There’s always been an instinctive Irish mistrust for authority, but I wondered if it was more than that. My phone buzzed in my hand with a text from Maeve.
I’m going to Tony’s later. Are you sure you and the sergeant don’t fancy strutting the red carpet? Coming out to the world.
I rang her back since she obviously hadn’t heard about the latest development. She was shocked and wondered aloud if Tony would go ahead with his drinks party.
“He’ll go one of two ways,” she said. “Cancel it out of respect for Carole and Stan, or go ahead with a vengeance because we all need a bit of cheering up. Are you still having dinner with your sergeant?”
“No. He’s had to cancel, with this attack on Stan.”
“Will you come, then? To Tony’s? If he goes ahead with it?”
“You’re on.”
“Great. I’ll ring him and check.”
She rang back in five minutes. “He’s going ahead. Bit later than planned. Nine o’clock at his place. He’s going to see Stan at the hospital first.”
Glendara Community Hospital was shrouded in icy fog, dark silhouetted figures putting me in mind of a scene from Jack the Ripper’s London. I parked in the car park and sat there for a while, listening to the sound of my own breathing and trying to work out why I’d come. Stan was unconscious so wouldn’t be able to speak to me, but I wanted to see him all the same; he’d looked so vulnerable when we’d found him on the beach. And if I was honest, I also hoped I might run into Tony.
I locked the car and the fog swallowed me immediately as I negotiated my way through the car park towards the hospital entrance. The glow from the lamps was pale and ineffective, diffused light no match for the dense fog, and a couple of times I collided with a parked car I hadn’t realized was there. The air was still, as if the figures I’d seen on the way in had been absorbed into the mist, the only movement my own. I felt like a ghost. A tall, hunched figure appeared on my right. My heartbeat sped up; my instinct was to run, dash for the door of the hospital, but I didn’t. I kept my steady pace until I heard a voice.
“Ben.”
I heaved an audible sigh of relief. It was Tony Craig.
“Are you okay?” he asked, concerned.
“I’m fine. It’s just a little eerie. I couldn’t see your face.”
“It’s freezing fog. The roads are going to be lethal tonight. I’m wondering if I should cancel my drinks.”
My eyes focused. “It’s up to you, but I’d be happy to come and raise a glass to a better year than this one.”
“Fair enough. I’m sure you won’t be the only one. I have to meet another of Susanne’s boyfriends, and I could do with a crowd around me when I do that.” He gave a weak smile.
“So Phyllis said.”
“Although she tells me this one’s got a bit of class, not one of her usual scruffs, as she put it.”
We walked together towards the hospital entrance. “Are you going to see Stan?” I asked, although I already knew he was.
He nodded. “I expect they’ll move him to Letterkenny, but it may not be safe to take him yet. I thought I’d just …” He trailed off, lost for words.
“I know what you mean. Although they may not let us in since we’re not family.”
We approached the desk behind a huge fake tree and spoke to the receptionist, who made a call upstairs.
“You can see him,” she said as she hung up the phone. “But only for a few minutes. He won’t respond but he may be able to hear you. He’s on the first floor in St. Martha’s Ward. The nurse up there will take you in to him.”
To reach Stan’s room, we passed through a small anteroom filled with medical equipment, where a nurse gave us plastic aprons and masks before showing us in and closing the door quietly behind us.
Stan looked pale but himself, his breathing barely audible over the beeping of the machines. He was hooked up to an oxygen mask and a drip but he seemed peaceful; the fear was gone. In fact, he looked more at ease than I had ever seen him. Stan MacLochlainn spent most of his life putting on a performance, I realized; the loud, acid-tongued drama queen was a caricature he had created for himself. I wondered if any of us knew the real Stan.
Tony approached the bed first, brow furrowed as if trying to work something out. He looked confused for a second, and then his eyes widened and he moved suddenly to the end of the bed. I took his place by Stan’s side; there was nowhere else to stand, the other side too full of equipment and wires.
I heard a sharp intake of breath and my heart jumped. I looked at Stan, thinking for a second that he was coming around, until I realized that the noise was coming from the end of the bed. Tony was gripping Stan’s chart, his face deathly pale.
“Tony?” I asked. “Are you all right?”
He dropped the chart on the floor with a loud clatter. “I have to go … I have to …” He turned and walked out the door, leaving it to slam shut behind him.
I made my way to the end of the bed, picked up the chart and scanned it quickly, before the nurse came in to ask about the noise. It was full of charts and figures, none of which meant anything to me. Then I glanced at the top, where Stan’s name and date of birth should be. The name on the chart was Stephen Stanley.