38

NEXT DAY WE drive to Ballykilleen.

“Aren’t we going to my house, Grace?” says Sylvie as we turn down into the village.

“Not this morning, sweetheart. We’re going to talk to the gardai. We’ll ask them about the house, about Flag Cottage.”

“Are you going to find my family? Are you going to?”

She’s leaning forward toward me, pushing against her seat belt. Her face is full of light.

“We’ll try to, sweetheart. We’ll ask them. But I don’t know what will happen.”

Her expression clouds over. “But what if they can’t find them? What if they can’t find my family?”

“Let’s wait and see what they say. Policemen often know things . . .”

The garda station is just down the hill from Joe Moloney’s, past a trailer park that’s all shut up for the winter and a lonely little cemetery where the flowers heaped on the graves are covered with netting to stop them from blowing away. We park, go in. There’s a foyer with chairs and a desk with a sliding window, and through the window an office, where a man in uniform is talking on the phone.

Adam rings the bell. The man looks up. He’s forty-something, tall and thin, with a long, narrow nose and a thatch of graying hair. In profile he has the look of a melancholy bird. He nods at us and finishes his conversation. He unfolds himself from his chair and comes to the window and pushes up the glass, studying us with interest.

“We’re sorry to bother you,” says Adam.

“That’s what I’m here for, to be bothered,” says the man. He’s leaning on his elbows, so his face is level with ours.

“There was something we wanted to ask you,” says Adam.

“Ask away,” says the man.

“It’s about a house in Coldharbour that’s coming up for sale.”

The man nods.

It’s my turn to take over. We’ve decided on our story, but it makes me so uneasy, lying, pretending we’re a couple. And I’m very aware of Sylvie hearing everything we say.

“Somebody told us—the woman at Barry’s . . .”

My voice seems to come from somewhere else.

“Erin, you mean?” He pushes one hand through his mop of thick pale hair.

I nod. “She hinted that there was a story about it, that something bad had happened there. The thing is, I’m quite superstitious, and I don’t want to live in a house where anything really bad happened.” I attempt a shy, apologetic smile, yet I know I’m no good at subterfuge.

But he seems to take me at my word.

“That’s perfectly understandable. Myself, I don’t believe in all that. I don’t think things that happen can leave any trace behind. But of course if you do, then it’s going to worry you, isn’t it?”

I nod gratefully.

“I’ll see what I can tell you,” he says. “You know the address of the house?”

“It’s off the road north out of Coldharbour. It’s called Flag Cottage,” I say.

To my surprise, the man nods slightly. “I wondered if you’d say that. You’d better come through.”

He lifts up a section of the desk. “I’m Detective Sergeant Brian Ennis. You can call me Brian,” he says.

We tell him our names. He smiles at Sylvie.

“Could Sylvie stay out here with her books, where we can see her?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says.

I have a comic and felt-tips in my handbag. Sylvie sits on one of the chairs in the foyer. I find her a picture to color in.

She reaches up and whispers in my ear. “Ask him about my family, Grace.”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

She presses up against me, and I feel the fizz of her heart.

“Promise you won’t forget. Promise.”

She’s radiant with hope, and I’m so frightened for her.

Brian ushers Adam and me into his office, pulls out chairs.

I glance around the room. There’s a photo of two girls on his desk: they’re in their teens, in vest tops bright as fruit gums, and the older girl has exactly Brian’s smile—self-mocking, a little laconic. Through the window there’s a car park, with a line of dustbins and a palm with jagged leaves that clash together in the wind. You can hear their rattling through the glass.

Brian sits.

“So. Flag Cottage,” he says.

“We heard that something happened there,” says Adam.

“Something happened, too right,” says Brian. He leans toward us, his elbows on his knees. “It was seven years ago now,” he says. There’s a solemn, portentous tone to his voice as he starts to tell his story. “Their names were Alice and Jessica Murphy. They vanished without a trace, just simply disappeared. It happened on a Tuesday. They must have left Flag Cottage about half past six in the evening. Erin at Barry’s in Coldharbour saw Alice driving down the street with Jessica beside her.”

“How old was she—the little girl?” I ask him.

“Jessica Mary was nine years old,” he tells me. His face darkens. “Just the same age as my Amy was then.” He gestures toward the photograph. “Anyway, no one reported them missing till the Wednesday afternoon.”

He pauses to let us digest this.

I look around to check on Sylvie. She’s sitting quietly, drawing, a slice of sun from the window falling across her. The bright light seems to take all her color away.

“But somebody must have realized, surely,” I say.

“Nobody knew,” he tells us. “Alice’s husband was off on the road. He’s a computer salesman. I got the call at three. It was one of Alice’s friends. They’d been due to meet for lunch at Foley’s—that’s the seafood bar in Coldharbour. When Alice didn’t turn up, the friend went round to the house. She got no answer. So she called us.”

He has a mug of coffee on the desk in front of him. He stirs it with a Biro, staring into the mug.

“Sometimes you get a case,” he says, “and it’s like there’s just no way through. No body, no evidence. What can you do?” He gives his head a little shake. “It wasn’t for want of trying, believe me. We had the big guys down from Dublin, picking over everything. But there simply wasn’t anything to go on.”

“But what about Alice’s car?” says Adam. “Didn’t they ever find it? Wouldn’t there be some clue in that?”

“The car was found burnt out, a few miles south of Coldharbour,” says Brian. “So any forensic evidence was destroyed.”

“Maybe somebody killed them,” I say, “and then set fire to the car. So there wouldn’t be any evidence left.”

He shrugs. “Or maybe Alice set fire to it—before she did whatever she did. Or it could have been kids just playing about. Say they found the car abandoned there and torched it for a laugh. Kids from the Hazeldene Estate in Barrowmore, most likely,” he says. “There’s a load of budding arsonists up there.”

“You said . . . before Alice did whatever she did,” says Adam.

Brian nods. “Alice Murphy wasn’t a happy woman,” he says. “She’d had a lot of treatment for depression. In fact, she’d been an inpatient up at St. Matthew’s in Barrowmore—that’s the psychiatric clinic.”

“Suicide, then?” says Adam.

“That was one of the theories,” says Brian.

“But you never found them?” I say.

“We looked. But you know how it is round here. There’s so much empty country—places where a body might lie hidden for years.” He gives a small, defeated sigh. “Well, as I say, we don’t know, but that was always the theory I favored. That Alice took her own life, and took the little one with her.”

I glance around at Sylvie, feel crazily afraid for her, as though she might be snatched away. Everything suddenly feels unsafe.

“You think that Alice killed Jessica?” Instinctively I lower my voice.

“Could be,” says Brian. “Could be she took her off up the mountain and gave her some ground-up pills to drink in a bottle of Pepsi. There have been cases like that.”

I think about this, how it would be to kill your child—her pulse slowing, her eyes glazing over because of what you’d done. My mind shies from the horror of it.

My thought must show in my face.

“I’m sorry, Grace,” says Brian. “I didn’t mean to upset you. To be honest, we all found it hard. We had a psychiatrist in to help us. He said—what happens in these cases—the mother gets too identified with the child, she sees the child as part of her, so if she tries to kill herself, she will also kill the child. It’s still sick, if you ask me. Beyond forgiveness, really.”

For a moment nobody speaks. I listen to the quiet of the office. The wind in the palm outside the window has a cold, harsh sound. I feel slightly nauseous.

“And the other theory?” says Adam.

Brian shrugs. “Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as that. Perhaps she just walked off into the sunset. There could have been a lover that we didn’t know about. People do sometimes just walk out of their lives. Some of us favored that notion. But I couldn’t see it myself, and Alice did have depression, and it maybe wasn’t the happiest marriage in the world. So I’m sticking with my first theory . . . Well, I hope I’ve answered your question.”

“Yes. Thank you so much.” I pick up my bag. “We’re very grateful,” I say.

Brian gives me his card. “If there’s any other way that I can be of help, just ring.” He has a slight knowing smile. “I’m sorry if I’ve put you off Flag Cottage.”

“It’s as well to know,” I say vaguely.

He goes to open the lift-up flap in the desk. His eyes are on our faces. He gives us a sudden penetrating look.

“And maybe sometime you’ll come and tell me what this is really about . . .”

We go back into the foyer. Sylvie jumps up and tugs at my sleeve.

“Did you find them?” she says. “Did you find my family?”

There are feverish pink patches in her face.

I glance back at Brian, wondering what he will make of this. But he’s gone into his office. I collect the comic and felt-tips.

“We’ll get in the car, and I’ll tell you about it,” I say.

In the car she doesn’t immediately fasten her belt. She leans forward over our seats. There’s a blue bruised smudge on her lip, where she’s been sucking an inky finger. Her warm breath brushes my face.

“Did you find my family, Grace?”

I glance at Adam. I don’t know if I should leave this to him, whether he’d handle it better, but he nods slightly.

“I’m not sure, sweetheart,” I tell her. “We asked about the house—about Flag Cottage.”

“Yes. Where my family lived,” she says.

“He told us something happened. To the people who lived there.”

“Yes, Grace.”

She’s watching me intently. Her eyes are fixed on mine.

“Can you tell me what happened?” I ask.

“A bad thing happened,” she says.

I feel a thrill of fear. Then I remember what I said to Brian: I don’t want to live in a house where anything really bad happened. Maybe she’s just repeating that. I feel again how elusive she is, how she seems to slip through your hands.

“The man we talked to—Brian, the policeman,” Adam says to her. “He told us about the people who lived in that house. He said the people disappeared. He said they may have died . . .”

Sylvie nods slightly. “Yes, Adam. People died.” Her face is quiet and composed.

“Can you tell us about them, the people who died?” I ask her. My voice is thick in my throat. I feel uneasy speaking like this to a child, talking about death like this. I still feel the shock of what Brian said.

“Who were they, sweetheart?” I say.

Her eyes are on mine. She’s rather cool and remote.

“I died, Grace. I died in the water,” she says. Her voice so calm and matter-of-fact. I feel the lurch of my heart.

“Can you tell us what happened?” I ask her.

But it’s hard to speak, my breath has been snatched away.

“The water was red,” she tells me. “I saw the bubbles go up from my mouth.”

She fastens her seat belt. She turns away from us, looking out the window. She has her closed face.

“Can you tell us more about it?” Adam’s voice is urgent, eager. I can hear his rapid breathing.

“I told you, Adam,” she says.

“Can you remember anything else?” he asks her.

But she can’t, or doesn’t want to. I know that she’s withdrawing from us, she won’t say anything more.

I realize I am shivering. There’s gooseflesh all along my arms.

I glance at Adam. His eyes are wide and amazed.

He drives us back by a different route that to start with follows the coast. It’s a narrow, twisting road, the bright sea to one side of us, to the other side fields of rocks and black cattle and reeds, and shallow blue pools full of waving grasses turned to gold by the sunlight. In the distance, the mountains have cloud shadows skimming across them. I watch the many colors of the mountains, always changing and shifting, gray, then tawny, then purplish blue like damsons. I feel fragile, insubstantial, as though the slightest breath could blow me away.

“I want my family, Grace,” says Sylvie suddenly, her voice very clear and definite. “I want my family back. I want them.”

“I know you do, sweetheart,” I say.

It hurts, as it always does.

The road turns inland. We come to a place where it forks, where you can turn left for Barrowmore or right to go south toward Coldharbour. There’s a big old oak that leans across the road, and a broken barbed-wire fence with gorse and bramble bushes behind it, and a few bent, battered conifers twisted away from the sea. Up here, they must take the full force of the wind.

“Grace.”

Sylvie’s voice is small and panicky.

I turn quickly, see her face. Her skin is white as wax.

“Stop the car,” I tell Adam. “Now.”

He hears the urgency in my voice, pulls rapidly off the road.

I jump out, open her door, pull her out. I hold back her hair as she vomits onto the side of the road.

“You poor old thing,” I say when it’s over.

I stroke her hair. She has a greenish pallor, and she’s trembling.

Adam brings me a box of tissues. I wipe Sylvie’s face and her hands. I feel guilty—that we wanted too much of her, asked too many questions.

“We’ll just stay here for a moment,” I tell her. “We’ll take some deep breaths. You’ll be better out of the car.”

The sun is fully out now, but there’s no warmth in the sunlight. Above us, gulls flap emptily through the blue wide air.

“No,” she says. “I want to get back in the car, Grace. I want to go back to St. Vincent’s.”

“You need some fresh air, sweetheart. That’ll help you feel better.”

A bird calls with a sound like a pot being scraped, and the leaves of the bramble bushes sigh and whisper together. There’s a coconut smell from the flowering gorse.

“No,” she says.

She clambers back into her seat, sits there, waiting, expectant.

“I really think we should wait for a moment,” I tell her. “I’m worried you might be sick again.”

“I want to go, Grace.”

She’s implacable. Her mouth is set and tight.

I know there’s no point in insisting.

“Well, all right. But you must promise you’ll keep looking out of the window. That helps you not to feel sick.”

“Yes,” she says.

She folds her hands precisely in her lap. She turns to look through the window, rather pointedly, like I told her to. We drive away from the fork in the road, through the yellow glare of the flowering gorse.

“Is she often carsick?” says Adam softly to me.

“No, not carsick. But if she’s been crying a lot, she can sometimes make herself sick.” I remember the evening with Matt; it seems an age away.

“So it could be because she’s upset? Something could be troubling her?”

“Yes.”

I think, It was our fault, we pushed her too hard. But I don’t say anything.

We drive down the hill into Coldharbour. The tension has left her face now. She’s pale, almost translucent, but she doesn’t have that panicked look. Her fingers are carefully folded together, as though she’s frightened of breaking something, as though there’s some precious, delicate thing she’s holding in her hands.