THE BODY WAS SPRAWLED FACEDOWN on the grass floor of a roofless cottage open to the sky. The head was a tangle of gray hair and drying blood, and more gore was smeared on a nearby rock. The ruin where he lay was one of a row of stone hovels that stretched across the foot of the mountain. Wind howled through the chinks of broken walls; there was no other sound. Bending down, I felt his neck but found no pulse.
God help us, we’re rid of him at last.
I stood and scanned the slope, cupping my eyes against the morning sun. Close and far, the rubble of a hundred houses weighed upon a line that extended the length of Slievemore Mountain. Above the row of houses, the slope rose quickly to pale, rocky heights.
I turned toward the sea and saw no one on the hill below me, only a few sheep in the graveyard near the entrance to the Deserted Village. I was the first visitor of the day—except for him. I took a long look at him and then closed my eyes. Eventually, I opened them and then retched at the sight of the mangled head. A shiny object on the ground next to his chin caught the sun and startled me. I stared at it, hoping I was wrong. I picked it up, put it in my jacket pocket, and fumbled for my phone. There was no point in delaying further.
A woman’s voice answered, “Garda Station, Westport. Do you have an emergency?”
“Yes,” I answered. “I’m at the Deserted Village on Achill Island, and I’ve found a body. A man’s been killed. He’s lying on the ground in one of the ruins.”
“Mother of God. Hold on,” she said. “I’ll put you through to Achill Sound.”
It took a while to make the connection. I repeated my message. There was consternation in the voice that replied. I heard the squeaking of a chair and pictured a rural policeman pushing back sharply from his desk. A moment’s pause; then came a barrage of questions.
“Your name, please.”
“Nora Barnes.”
“B-a-r-n-e-s?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re not from here?”
“No, I’m American.”
“Are you staying on Achill?”
“Yes.” I gave him the location of our holiday cottage.
“You’re saying there’s a dead body at the Deserted Village. When did you find this body?” He sounded skeptical.
“Just now. A moment ago.”
“And where exactly are you?”
“I’m at one of the first houses up the hill from the entrance gate.” I thought I heard the scratching of a pen.
“One of the ruins. Are you sure, now, this man is dead?”
“I am. He isn’t breathing.”
“Right. You said he was ‘killed’ when you called the emergency operator. What made you say that? The poor man maybe had a heart attack, I’m thinking.”
“Sir, his head’s bashed in and there’s blood all over.”
“Jaysus,” said the officer. “You haven’t touched him or moved him, I hope?”
“Just to feel for a pulse. He doesn’t have one.”
“Well, you’re not to touch a thing from now on, you hear? I’ll call the detectives and be there myself very shortly. Wait for me, will you?”
“I will.”
“One more thing. Do you know who the dead man is, by any chance?”
Oh, yes. I knew who he was, all right. “His name is Bertram Barnes,” I said. “My uncle.” Uncle Bert, the bastard.
That’s what my mother called him. She rarely mentioned his name without the epithet. We kids liked the sound of it, so that’s what we called him too.
“Your uncle? Why didn’t you say?” I didn’t reply. He continued, hesitantly. “Well, could be you’re in shock. I . . . I’m sorry for your trouble. Just stay where you are. I’m on my way.”
Ten minutes later I saw a car, a white sedan with GARDA painted in blue across the hood. It slid to a stop in the dirt parking area for visitors. I was sitting outside the ruin that contained Bert’s body. I stood and waved to the officer as he hustled up the hill carrying a clipboard. While he climbed, I scrutinized the ground, looking for footprints. The grass, moist with morning dew, was thick and tightly rooted. I wondered if it would take a footprint. I couldn’t make out my own, never mind the killer’s. Maybe the officer would see something I couldn’t.
He was young, with soft features and a pink complexion. Pudgy rather than fat, he was clearly winded from the climb. He wore a light-blue shirt with black epaulettes and navy pants. The tightness of his uniform stiffened his movement as he knelt beside the body, studying the bloodied head and making notes. Then turning to me, he said he was Garda Matt Mullen of the Achill Sound station. The inspector, he said, was on his way from Westport to take charge of questioning me, since there was evidence of a violent crime. A technical team would be dispatched from Dublin to gather forensic evidence. His job was to secure the scene and to keep an eye on any witnesses or suspects until his colleagues arrived.
“Are you all right?” he asked solicitously. But I could read his mind: Which was I, a witness or a suspect? Whatever his doubts, the young garda was polite. “Would you like some water?” He extended a plastic bottle. “At the station, I could have offered you a cup of tea, at least.”
“No need,” I replied.
“There’s just the one of me, you see. I’m meant to have another guard with me, but she’s on maternity leave. I’m on my own.” He glanced at the sky. “At least the day is fine, so it won’t be too hard on you waiting outdoors. But the Crime Scene Technical Bureau will want a tent over the building for when it rains, so I’ve got work to do.” He motioned for me to sit on a pile of stone rubble close by, and he returned to where the body lay. While I watched, he wound yellow tape around the ruined house and its lifeless guest.
Waiting for the inspector, I ran over the events of the past few days. Our trip had started out full of promise. I was with my parents, my younger sister, Angie, and Toby, my husband. We had come to Ireland to honor Dad’s cousin Bridget. It was her Silver Jubilee, her twenty-fifth year of being a nun. Celebrations in Galway began with a Mass said by Bridget’s brother, a monsignor who had come over from the states. Two of Bridget’s ten siblings read from the Gospels and the Epistles, and a fellow nun gave tribute to Bridget’s worthy service of twenty-five years.
The party afterward felt like a silver wedding anniversary, and in a sense it was, except that the husband was missing (or in heaven if you believed in it). No anniversary party ever had livelier dancing, both before and after the meal. I was stunned to see a group of nuns stepping in unison to a country-and-western line dance. As for us, we danced passably and took hasty breaks for drinks. It was a wonderful evening of family fun; that is, until a set-to between my mother and Uncle Bert marred its end.
We tried to put that bitter scene behind us as we set off after the party for our holiday on Achill Island. Achill (it rhymes with “cackle”) is Ireland’s largest island. It lies off the northwest coast above Galway and is now connected to the mainland by a causeway. “Why don’t you go up to Achill afterward?” Bridget had written to me before the trip. “It’s still unspoiled. The Brits, you know, did their best to stamp out our culture. But the West was too poor and too far from England for them to bother much about, so it’s where the old ways are best preserved. And Achill is about as far west as an Irishman can get.”
Taking Bridget’s advice, we arranged a holiday on Achill, hoping to get a feel for the land our grandparents left. Bridget found two small cottages for us to rent, one for Mom, Dad, and Angie, and one next door for Toby and me. For months ahead, I daydreamed about the party in Galway and the ten days the family would have on Achill Island, soaking up the atmosphere of old Ireland.
It wasn’t until the Jubilee dinner that we learned Uncle Bert would be on Achill at the same time, in connection with one of his real estate projects. The cottage he was renting was in walking distance of our own. Had we known that earlier, we would have made other plans. It didn’t take a conspiracy theory to conclude that Cousin Bridget sent us to Achill knowing that Bert would be there and hoping there would be a reconciliation. Her intentions were the best, but you know what they say about the road to hell.
I looked toward the ruined hovel, where the guard was working around my uncle’s body. With the face hidden and the form inert, already somehow shrunken, the corpse didn’t much resemble the man I had known. That man held himself high with his chest puffed out. He strutted like a major general, issuing commands in a booming voice. Even at funerals, he would shatter the quiet of the room. He was larger than life. But no one is larger than death.
When we were young, Dad would put my brother, Eddie, to bed and Mom would settle me in. For Mom and me, it was a time for confidences. One night she talked about Uncle Bert. It was the first time I heard her use the word “bastard.”
“The bastard is as rich as Scrooge McDuck. And just as selfish.”
“Does he sit on piles of gold?” I asked, thinking of my comic books.
“He sits on piles of shit.”
That’s the first time I heard her use that word too. I must have shown little-girl shock, because I remember that she shot back: “Don’t look at me like that! The man’s a shit and he makes his money in shit.” I knew it was a bad thing to say, but I didn’t understand how anyone could make money that way.
As I got older, our talks got longer and went deeper. I came to understand what she meant. Uncle Bert made his money in real estate. He bought and managed slum housing in Boston. He kept hundreds of people in poverty, overcharging for rent, evicting some tenants who missed a payment, lending money to others in ways that indentured them, letting buildings run down until they were so derelict that even the poorest of the working poor wouldn’t live in them. They moved out, and drug dealers and squatters moved in. The decay spread, and soon a whole street looked ready for the bulldozer. But that’s not what Uncle Bert sent in. He sent builders. He sent renovation teams. He received accolades for “saving the neighborhood.” He reaped a fortune by gentrifying. Nobody gave a damn about the people displaced after years of exploitation, nobody but Mom.
I wondered what Dad thought about his brother’s business, but the topic didn’t come up, because Dad didn’t talk about Bert. It was as if he didn’t exist until, once or twice a year, he would stop by unannounced (or so I thought). I came to realize that Dad did know he was coming and quietly alerted Mom. She was always in the bedroom reading when he arrived, and she let somebody else answer the door. Bert and Dad would go off by themselves to Dad’s basement workshop or for a walk outdoors. A few hours later, Dad would reappear, and nothing would be said about Bert’s visit, but Mom would avoid Dad’s eyes.
Every year or so, there was a funeral or christening in the extended family. Bert would make his rounds of the room, clapping the men’s backs and kissing the ladies’ cheeks. When he got to Dad, the brothers would have a chat. It was the only time Bert used his “indoor voice” and I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Sometimes Mom would glance at them, looking sour. My brother called it her witch face.
We rarely saw the witch face. Ordinarily Mom looked more like Cinderella. She worked hard at home and at her job, and her labors kept her lean. Lipstick was the only cosmetic she wore, and her dark, wavy hair, styled by nothing but air-drying and a hairbrush, fell loosely below her shoulders. She wore the same boatneck tees and white jeans all year long. There wasn’t a day in her life when her clothes and jewelry together cost more than thirty dollars. But to me she looked beautiful, and when she laughed it made me happy.
If fury possessed her, it was always about Bert. It’s strange how, in a family, you fail to ask questions about the things that most disturb you. I sensed that Uncle Bert had done something worse in Mom’s eyes than make a dirty million, something more personal that hurt her, or us, directly. But I didn’t dare ask.
It came out after a Christmas dinner at Grammy’s, our annual attempt to be a united family. My new cousin, Emily, had been in the family three years, since her mother’s marriage to Bert. She was a year older than I was, and much prettier. I tried to be her friend, but she kept me at a distance by talking incessantly, so that there was no time for friendship. That year she talked on and on about her vacations to places like Bermuda, where her new family had a bungalow, and to Paris. Her descriptions left me envious. When we came home, I asked Mom why I couldn’t go to Paris and Bermuda like Emily. She said nothing, but her jaw set and it seemed to me she was tamping down a fire inside. I thought it was my fault; I was being jealous and greedy. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t really want to go to Paris.”
She took my hand and said, “Sweetheart, you deserve to go everywhere in the world. But our family is different from Emily’s.”
“You mean, they’re rich and we’re poor?” I asked. “Is it because Dad’s a postman?”
She dropped my hand and stepped back. “There’s nothing wrong with being a postman, Nora. Your father works hard and does an honest day’s work.” She paused but lost the battle against her anger. “That’s more than I can say for your uncle. It’s because of him that your father never went to college. Dad’s twice as smart as Bert.”
“Then why didn’t Dad go to college?”
“Granddad saved up for it, and Dad did too. He wanted to go to UMass, like his friends. So he worked two jobs, one after school and another on the weekends, but Bert pulled the rug out from under him. Bert’s the one that went to college. And he used Dad’s money to do it.”
I pictured Bert finding a stash of money under Dad’s bed and taking it for himself. That would be really sneaky. Just to make sure, I asked, “How did he do it?”
“He’s a con man, that’s how, and he’s always been one. He pulled the wool over the eyes of some naïve teacher—got her to convince Granddad he was a genius and they had to send him to a fine university. The teacher tutored him through his junior year and got him into Boston College. She helped him do his applications, including an essay about how he came from poverty: immigrant parents, his father just a garage mechanic, blah, blah, blah. It was a snow job.”
“But isn’t Dad older than Uncle Bert? Why didn’t Dad go first, and then Uncle Bert?”
“That’s what should have happened. Even though Dad was a year ahead of him in high school, Bert convinced Dad to turn over his own savings and go to work to help put Bert through college first. Bert claimed that with a degree from BC, he could earn enough money to pay for Dad to go to college, help Granddad buy the garage, and even pay off the mortgage on the family home. Well, Dad put off college and never got another chance to go, and Bert got his golden ticket to the high life. And guess what? He never did a damn thing for your father. If I use bad language about him, now you know why.”
I went to bed left with the knowledge that Dad had been cheated and our family had paid the price. That’s why Dad was a postman and I couldn’t go to Paris and why Uncle Bert was a bastard.
With that understanding, I made it my habit to avoid Uncle Bert. So I wasn’t pleased that Cousin Bridget seated our two families together at the Jubilee dinner. The place cards put Dad opposite Bert, Mom opposite Bert’s wife, Laura, and me opposite Cousin Emily, with lucky Toby and Angie paired at the end of the table. Years of practice keeping our distance at social events provided us with survival strategies. Dad and Bert exchanged a few words after the champagne toast and then spoke mainly to their respective spouses. Emily and I did some catching up. She asked me about my work; I asked about hers. I was an art history professor in Santa Rosa, California, and she worked for Uncle Bert, managing commercial real estate in Boston. I was married, she was single. After so many years apart, we found it difficult to connect. There was more silent eating than normal. I drank more wine than I generally do, and so did Mom and Dad. He called the waiter over to get extra bottles for our table. Bert was knocking back whiskeys like a native.
I was relieved when the after-dinner dancing started and an Irish cousin invited me to partner him in a reel. Toby and Angie joined in, and we were caught up in set dancing for close to an hour. Exhausted at the end of a long round, I headed back to our table to fetch my purse on the way to the restroom. I saw Uncle Bert and Aunt Laura from behind. He was leaning back in his chair. Mom was half-standing, with one hand planted on the table, her arm straight as a pillar, while her free hand jabbed toward Bert’s chest. Her tone was threatening. I halted, like a squirrel in the middle of the road, listening. I made out phrases: “you little bastard . . . stole from your own brother . . . not enough for you?”
Was she drunk? The thought unfroze me. I walked toward the table and tried to catch Mom’s eye. She had only Bert in the grip of her gaze. “Mom,” I said weakly.
“Go away,” she hissed without looking at me.
I backed off slowly. Aunt Laura turned toward me, looking lost. With a slight hand movement, she pled for me to stay. I stepped away out of Mom’s sight but stayed close enough to hear.
“And now you think you’re entitled to keep the beach house on top of it! Well, you’re not getting that house! It’s as much Jim’s as yours.”
“Gloria,” he barked, “you don’t know what you’re talking—”
Mom cut him off. “I know more than you think.” She glanced at Laura, as if uncertain whether to proceed in front of her, but she couldn’t hold back. “You may have the title to the house, but you got it by taking advantage of your father, same as always.”
“Grow up,” Bert said, at a volume fit for the stage. “I was the one who took care of him in his old age. He was sick and broke and he couldn’t pay his bills.”
“Lucky for you,” Mom replied. “Gave you the chance to lend him bits of money and watch him go under. When you had him by the nuts, you took the title to the house.”
Laura raised her well-manicured hand and said, “Gloria, dear, it’s not our business, is it? You and I should stay out of it.” She put on the sappy smile that had always repelled me.
Mom kept on. “For God’s sake, Laura. By rights, that house should get passed down to all of our children. As long as their grandmother’s still living in it, my family can visit there. But what happens when she’s gone? I’ve heard you’re redoing the kitchen, right under her nose. Couldn’t you wait until she’s dead?”
Bert darted his arm across the table and grasped Mom’s forearm. “You don’t talk to my wife that way!” he warned. He twisted Mom’s arm, and she gasped. “Get hold of yourself, Gloria,” he ordered. “I won’t stand for—”
That’s when Dad arrived, coming up behind Bert. He placed his palms on his younger brother’s shoulders and said, “Cut it out, now.” Bert immediately let go of Mom’s arm. For the first time, I realized that Dad was taller than Uncle Bert, and Bert was intimidated. Was it Dad’s strength, or was it Bert’s knowledge that Dad knew the truth about him?
Dad took Mom by the elbow, but she wasn’t finished. Leaning in even closer to Bert’s face, she said, “You’ve always been a scheming bastard. If you get that house, I hope you die in it. I hope the roof falls in on your swollen head.”
And now here was Uncle Bert, lying in a roofless ruin with his head bashed in. What would the inspector make of that? From my perch on the hillside of the Deserted Village, I could see cars approaching the crossroads. The sedan, it turned out, carried the detectives, and the van belonged to the medical examiner. When the vehicles reached the parking area, Garda Mullen stopped his work at the crime scene and skidded down the slope to meet them. By the time the detectives reached me, they had been fully briefed. Mullen returned to his work.
The taller of the two showed a wallet badge and introduced himself as Detective Inspector Kevin O’Donnell, then presented his colleague, Sergeant Pat Flynn. O’Donnell had cloudy gray eyes set in a skull too big for the rest of his body. He was slim to the point of bony. His collar seemed a size too large for his neck, perhaps to accommodate a bulging Adam’s apple, which bobbed as he talked. I guessed he was in his forties. Sergeant Flynn was younger, shorter, and broader.
Flynn began by asking, formally, for my mobile number, home address, the purpose of my visit to Ireland, my arrival date, and traveling companions. He already knew my relation to the deceased. Were there other next of kin? I told him about Bert’s wife and daughter and where they were staying on the island. Flynn recorded my answers in a pocket-sized notebook.
Then the inspector took over. “So your uncle was a real estate developer, from Boston?”
“Yes, that’s right. I think he was here on business.”
“We’re aware of that.” The inspector exchanged glances with his sergeant and switched gears. “How close were you to your uncle?”
“Not close. We didn’t see him very often.”
“Was that because you lived far apart?” Inspector O’Donnell asked.
“Fifty miles, maybe. Our families just led different lives.”
“Was there bad blood between you?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I responded. I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to, I added silently.
“And when did you last see your uncle, alive?”
“That was yesterday,” I recalled, “at our cousin Bridget’s Jubilee.” I described the circumstances.
“How did your uncle seem at the time? Nervous, fearful, worried about anything?”
“Not that I noticed.” We had hardly spoken at the Jubilee, and the argument at Bridget’s party didn’t say anything about his general state of mind. So I shrugged. O’Donnell let seconds go by, then turned his eyes to Sergeant Flynn.
“I’d like to go over your call to the emergency operator,” said Flynn, almost timidly. “What time do you think you found the body?”
“It was seven fifteen. I checked my watch.”
Flynn’s broad brow furrowed. “It was half seven when you phoned the emergency number. Why the delay?”
The question sideswiped me. “I don’t—I didn’t realize I waited that long.”
“There’s a phone record,” said the sergeant. “The call came in at seven thirty-two.”
“I guess I was so jarred that I stood there a while.”
“I see,” said the inspector. “When you rang emergency, you said that a man had been killed. You used that very word, ‘killed.’ You seemed sure of that.” He paused, waiting for an explanation.
I tried to regain my footing. “As I told Garda Mullen, I could see damage to the back of my uncle’s head. It was covered in blood. And there was blood on a rock lying on the ground.”
The inspector’s eyes narrowed. “So, you concluded that he’d been struck with a rock?”
“That was my first thought, yes.”
“Any other reason?”
“No, just that.”
Sergeant Flynn stepped toward me and asked the alibi question, “Can you tell me where you were last night and through this morning?”
“Yes. Last night we had supper in Keel—my husband, my parents, my sister, and I—and then we came back to our cottages. Toby and I are renting one next door to my parents and sister. We watched some television and went to bed.”
“What did you watch, then?” continued the sergeant.
“We watched the Gaelic channel.”
“You speak Irish, do you now?” asked Inspector O’Donnell. His thin lips pursed in disbelief.
“No, but there was a documentary on Irish music. It was the best thing on. It had subtitles in English.” A faint smile relaxed the inspector’s gaunt face.
“That sums up last night,” I said. “This morning I woke up early, had a cup of coffee, and came out here on my walk.”
“Did you pass anyone on the way?” asked O’Donnell.
“Not a soul. Just sheep.”
He glanced over at the ruin. “We won’t know how long the body was exposed until the State Pathologist gives us the time of death. Your uncle may have died last night or early this morning. Do you have any idea why he might have come out here at night?”
“No, not at night. But I suppose there’s nothing unusual about a visit here first thing in the morning. That was my intention, coming early to avoid the crowd. I was hoping to have the village to myself.”
The inspector acknowledged my reply with a nod. The Deserted Village is the best-known tourist attraction on the island. No one knows exactly when its ghostly homes were built, but they were abandoned in the 1840s when the Great Famine struck. It’s an eerie site.
“Very well,” O’Donnell said. “One final thing. Do you know of anyone who might have wished to harm your uncle?”
There it was, the question I had been dreading. It would come out soon enough, the fight he had with my mother and the things she had said to his face at the Jubilee. There had been witnesses—Bert’s wife, for one. Well, they could find that out from her, not me.
“Not really,” I said.
The inspector grunted and gazed toward the ruin, where Garda Mullen was securing the tent. “All right,” said O’Donnell. “You’re free to go for now. Remain at your cottage, though. I’d like you to write up a brief statement, just how you discovered the body and what you saw. We’ll come by to get the statement after we’ve spoken to next of kin.” He turned and strode back to the ruin. His partner gave me a solemn nod and hustled after his chief.
I unclenched my teeth. I hadn’t given anything away. But had they guessed I was holding something back? Only I could hear my heart thumping against my ribs, but had they noticed my shaking hands? I reached into the pocket of my jacket and nervously fingered the object I had found next to the body. Of course I knew what it was as soon as I picked it up—a silver button, from my mother’s sweater.