THE FOLLOWING MORNING was dark and cold, and the faces that greeted me as I walked from the car to the office were somber. It was as if a shiver had traveled down the town’s collective spine. It was obvious that people had derived no comfort from the news that the bones lying on the floor of the damp crypt beneath the disused church were not those of the person they thought.
Whoever it turned out to be, it was still someone with family and friends. More significantly for the people who knew Conor, he was still missing. In most societies there exists a very human need to bury the dead. The closure that Conor’s family had expected and needed hadn’t come. And there was still to be grief for some other family, as yet unknown. One answer had produced a thousand new questions.
I was standing at the reception desk going through the last of the morning’s mail when the sound of the front door opening, followed by a man’s heavy tread, made me look up. The narrow hallway was filled by a large male figure, his broad shoulders in silhouette against the dim light coming through the tiny window above the door.
As he came closer, I found myself looking into a pair of intense gray eyes set under thick eyebrows in a bearded face.
The man could have been thirty or fifty, or anywhere in between. His hair was long and unkempt, a mixture of black and gray. There was something wild about him that didn’t belong inside. He reminded me of a wounded animal. There was pain, suppressed anger maybe – a slight madness, even, about him. I was disturbed by the feeling that there was something familiar, too.
He spoke gruffly. “You the solicitor?”
There was a smell of stale alcohol on his breath. His eyes were slightly bloodshot.
“I am.”
A bearlike hand was offered, black hair visible on the wrist emerging from the sleeve of a heavy dark overcoat. I shook it – his skin was clammy and cold. The man attempted a smile of greeting, but it lacked any real warmth. And there were far too many other things going on in his face that contradicted the smile. I remembered then where I had seen him before. He was the man I had witnessed being ejected from the Oak the Sunday before.
“I’m Danny Devitt,” he said.
“Claire’s brother?”
He nodded. “Aye.”
Now I saw the resemblance to his brother. But the photograph of Conor Devitt in the newspaper had shown a handsome, open face. The man standing in front of me was another illustration of the arbitrary nature of genetics, for the same ingredients arranged slightly differently had produced a freakish opposite. I realized I was staring at him. I recovered quickly.
“Can I just say how sorry I am, Mr. Devitt? I know your family is going through a rough time at the moment—”
He interrupted me. “I want to talk to you.”
“Of course. Come on up.”
He followed me upstairs, bowing his head to get in the door of the office. He refused the chair I offered, which was becoming a regular occurrence. But unlike Kelly, he didn’t pace. He walked to the window and stood there, staring out onto the street, hands rammed into his pockets, as if he needed to be able to see outside to think. I half-expected him to twist the latch, open the window, and lean out to breathe. I stood behind him, unsure of what to do next. He was so broad he blocked whatever feeble winter light was coming in, making the room feel small and cavelike.
“How can I help you, Mr. Devitt?”
He replied, still with his back to me, “My mother said I should come and talk to you.”
“Okay.”
I waited, but he said nothing. Feeling a need to fill the silence, I spoke again. “I’ve never met your mother, but I know Claire. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for all of you.”
Still nothing.
I tried again. “Anything you say to me is completely confidential.”
He still didn’t respond, or move, so I decided to sit at my desk and let him take his time. After a few seconds he shook his head vigorously, like a dog after a swim, still with his back to me.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I thought … for all those years I thought it was me, that I had …” He stopped.
“You thought you had what, Mr. Devitt?”
“It was the cold, that’s why I …” He shook his head again. “And all the time, all the time …” His voice hardened. “You can’t trust people, ever.”
Suddenly he punched the wall to the right of the window. Hard. I flinched. It must have hurt; it’s an outside wall.
I stood up, my voice shaking a little. “I’m going to have to ask you to calm down, please, Mr. Devitt.”
I wondered if I should call Leah. B for bouncer – I thought that might be pushing it. As it turned out, I didn’t need to. Danny unclenched his fist and his shoulders slumped as he lifted his arm and wiped his sleeve across his face. After a few seconds, he cleared his throat and spoke again, calmly this time.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. Maybe you should tell me what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You don’t know what to do about what, Mr. Devitt?”
He turned to face me. His eyes were shining. “I need to know who it is. Can you find that out?”
“Who who is?”
He was silent, as if I should know what he meant.
“Are we talking about the body in the church?”
He nodded. “Can you find that out?” he said again, more urgently this time.
“Well, not really, Mr. Devitt. But I know the guards are working on it at the moment. I’m sure they’ll have an answer soon.”
His eyes welled.
“Why do you need to know?” I asked. “Do you know something about it?”
Without replying, he turned back towards the window. I stood up and approached him. With trepidation I touched him briefly on the arm.
“Mr. Devitt, what do you know?”
He spun violently around. I leaped back. Shockingly, there were great, glistening tears streaming down his face. He was crying like a child cries, letting the tears fall as if he were powerless to stop them. As if he expected a parent to be there to catch them. I flushed, staring at him, helpless and unsure what to do.
I know I should be better at this by now – after all, there’s a reason why solicitors keep tissues in their desks. But I am ashamed to say that I have never been great with people who cry. I freeze in the face of emotion. My old master used to say that even if the work is everyday drudgery to you, most people who come to see a solicitor come at an important or traumatic point in their lives. It isn’t everyday drudgery to them. He was right. But grief frightens me. The best I could come up with was to hand Danny the box of tissues I keep in the drawer of my desk.
He grabbed a handful and started clumsily to mop his face. He blew his nose loudly and, at last, he took the seat I had offered him, although I was concerned for its ability to take his weight.
“This was a mistake. I’m sorry.” His voice was hoarse.
“Don’t be sorry, for God’s sake. You’ve all been through a rough time.”
My words sounded limp, one of those useless platitudes that come from the right place but that sound so hollow by the time they leave your mouth.
I tried again. “Talk to me, if you need to. That’s what I’m here for. I meant it when I said that anything you say to me is completely confidential.”
“I’ll sort it out myself. I know what I have to do.”
He stood up and faced me with his shoulders back and legs apart, shoving the sodden tissues into the pocket of his coat.
“Do you think the sergeant would be there now? At the station?”
“Molloy? I expect so. Do you want me to ring and check? I can come down with you if you like.”
“No, thanks. I’ll go down myself after a while. There’s something I need to do first.”
“Are you sure I can’t do anything?”
“Aye, I am. Thanks for your help.” He shook my hand.
“Well, I haven’t really done anything.”
He set off back down the stairs. I heard the front door slam and he was gone.
I went over to the window to watch him leave. He walked across to an old black-and-white sheepdog tied to a street lamp on the other side of the road. The dog looked up adoringly at him as he untied the rope, and the two of them headed off towards the square. One thing was clear: he wasn’t going in the direction of the garda station.
What had he wanted to tell me? And why was he so concerned about the bones in the crypt? I spent the next ten minutes twisting a pen in my fingers and staring at the wall, trying to figure out what I should do. But there was nothing I could do – my hands were tied. I just hoped he would talk to Molloy …
I was in another world when the phone buzzed.
“Shouldn’t you be gone by now?” Leah asked.
“Huh?”
I looked at the clock. It was twenty past ten. Court started at half past. I sprang up from my seat.
“Oh, shit!”
“The files are down here. They’re all ready.”
I barreled across the square towards the courthouse, briefcase in hand, keeping a half-eye out for Danny Devitt. There was no sign of him. I was relieved to see the judge’s car drive past the courthouse and turn into the car park at the back as I was walking up the steps. It meant I had five minutes. I jumped when someone grabbed my elbow. I turned around to be greeted by a broad grin on a freckled face.
“Hey, Solicitor.”
The Oak’s barman, Eddie Kearney, took a deep drag on the cigarette between his fingers. “What’s going to happen this morning?” he asked in a bored tone.
“Not much probably, unless you want to plead guilty today to the possession charge.”
“Do I fuck? That weed wasn’t mine. I told you that.”
“Okay. It’ll go back to another date then, for the State to have the Certificate of Analysis in court.”
The Certificate of Analysis is an essential proof in a drugs case. The prosecution requires a certificate from the Medical Bureau to prove that the substance recovered is a proscribed drug. Without it, there is no case. The difficulty for the State is that the lab is now so overworked that it can take months to produce the Certificate, which inevitably delays the proceedings.
Eddie’s grin got broader. “Right, I can head off then, so. I have a shift at eleven.” He made to head back down the steps.
“Not so fast,” I called after him.
He stopped in his tracks and turned back to face me.
“What?”
“You’re on bail to appear today. You have to be in court or the judge will issue a warrant for your arrest.”
The grin disappeared to be replaced with a look of gloomy resignation, and its wearer shuffled reluctantly into the courthouse ahead of me.
I made my way up to the solicitors’ benches at the top of the courtroom. Molloy was sitting on the State side with a stack of files in front of him and a queue of guards and solicitors waiting to speak to him. Molloy prosecutes the criminal and road traffic cases for the State. I cursed inwardly. Stupidly, I had forgotten that he would be in court this morning. Not surprising, considering I had forgotten that I was supposed to be in court this morning myself. But it meant that Danny Devitt wouldn’t be able to get hold of him until court was over. Molloy glanced over at me as I took my seat. I smiled at him. He looked back coldly and returned to what he was doing. Not even a nod.
The court rose for lunch at one o’clock. I knew Molloy was always last to leave, so I feigned great interest in some road traffic charge sheets until I was sure everyone else had gone, leaving him with no choice but to walk out with me.
“You all right?” I asked.
He didn’t look at me. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You look tired.”
“Yes.” He opened the gate and let me through. I stood and waited for him as he closed it.
“I’m fine.”
“Okay, don’t bite my head off.”
His face softened a tad. “Sorry. Yes, I’m tired. We got a report of another break-in last night. I was out there till two a.m. Another couple of newlyweds home from their honeymoon to be greeted by an empty house.”
“Empty?”
“Yes, empty. The whole place cleared out. Everything taken. Wedding presents, all their new appliances, cooker, fridge, furniture, even light fittings. The thieves must have had a van.”
“Jesus, that’s a mean sort of a crime, isn’t it?”
“Third this month. Second one in three days, the last one was Saturday. They target rural, newly built houses, full of new stuff, no neighbors to disturb them. They wait till after the wedding, when they can be sure that the couples are away for two weeks and they can do the job at their leisure, completely undisturbed.”
“So now you have that to deal with on top of the body from the church?”
“Yes.”
We walked up the street towards the square. I buttoned my coat and wrapped my scarf tighter around my neck. The wind was like a knife accessing any bit of skin that was even slightly exposed.
“And the bones aren’t Conor Devitt’s, I hear?” I said.
“No.”
“Hard for the family.”
“Yes.”
“They were utterly convinced it was him. But there was no real reason to think it would be – they were told that.”
“Really?”
Molloy stopped walking for a second.
“Actually, there’s a coincidence,” he said. “The break-in on Saturday was at the house owned by Lisa and Alan Crane.”
“Conor Devitt’s ex, Lisa McCauley?”
“Yes. Her new husband is Alan Crane, a plumber from Buncrana.”
“I’ve seen him. God, she’s had a tough weekend.”
“Mmm.”
“So is there any progress on the identification?”
“None.”
“Pathologist still in Letterkenny?”
Molloy’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”
I looked down. “No reason. I just wondered. I presume she’s still working on the body and doing tests on the blanket, that kind of thing.”
There was silence for a minute. Neither of us moved. I bit my lip.
“It’s almost a quarter past one. Do you want to get a sandwich in the Oak?” I ventured.
“I haven’t time. I have some work I need to do before two.” He turned to go.
“Tom?” I said.
He turned back to face me. “Yes?”
“Is there something else bothering you? Have I done something to annoy you?”
“I don’t know. Have you?” he asked.
“It just seems as if—”
He interrupted me. “I wish you trusted me, Ben, that’s all. I thought you did.”
“I do trust you.”
I reached my hand out to touch his arm. He looked down at it. His eyes widened as if he was about to say something and then he changed his mind.
“I have to go,” he said.