I ARRIVED EARLY at the office the next morning to find the estate agent Liam McLaughlin waiting for me on the doorstep. He looked surprisingly chipper.
“Morning,” I said, as I turned the key in the lock. “You’re about bright and early.”
“Good news will always get me up and about,” he said with a grin, as he stubbed his cigarette out on the wall and followed me inside.
I dumped my keys and bag on the counter. “Go on, tell me. I could do with hearing it. Not much good news about at the moment.”
He frowned. “Aye, you’re right.”
“So what is it? I’m listening.”
“You know that English couple?”
“You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”
“The English couple who were going to buy Whitewater Church,” he said impatiently.
“Oh, yes.”
“They’re back on board!”
“Back on board?” My brain was particularly sluggish this morning. Sleep had eluded me again the night before. “They want to buy the church again.”
“You’re kidding.” Not what I was expecting.
“Nope. It looks like they’ve managed to get over their squeamishness and they’re still interested. Same price, the works.”
I crossed my arms. “Wow. That’s great news. Kelly will be delighted.”
“Sure he will. I don’t know if they still want to live in it, but who cares? That won’t matter to Kelly. The important thing is that they want to buy it. I’ve just thought – I’ll have to get Paul Doherty up there again.”
“Yes, I don’t think he managed to get his survey finished the last time. He was sort of interrupted.”
“Maybe I’ll ask him not to be so thorough the next time,” Liam said wryly. “In case he turns up something else.”
I smiled. “I don’t think he’s going to be too thrilled to have to go back up there at all, to be honest.”
“Wouldn’t blame him. I’m not too keen on the place myself.” Liam turned to go.
“Do you want me to phone him?” I asked.
“That’d be great. Just wait till I call Kelly. I’ll give you a shout when I get him.”
Half an hour later, I was going through the mail at the desk when the front door opened again. The smell of perfume hit me long before I saw the source. It was Lisa Crane. I was surprised to see her. I didn’t think she had particularly warmed to me the night before. Ignoring Leah, she addressed herself directly to me. “Would you have a minute? I don’t have an appointment.”
Leah opened the diary, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
“Your first appointment isn’t till ten,” she informed me.
* * *
Lisa arranged herself carefully on the seat. She made me feel unpolished and scruffy despite my suit. She was wearing skyscraper heels, a cobalt-blue woolen dress with the top button opened to give a hint of tanned cleavage, and she carried a chic-looking green coat, which she laid across her knees. If I were asked to bet, I would have said that both the dress and coat were cashmere. She was heavily made up, as she had been last night. I wondered what her salary was at the bank. She would have been an expensive lady to dress.
“What can I do for you, Miss McCauley?” I asked.
“Crane,” she said.
“I’m sorry. Mrs. Crane.”
“It’s fine. I’ve never dealt with you before. We’ve always used Keavney’s,” she said, referring to the other solicitor’s firm in the town. “But Alan thought, after we met you last night … in the circumstances, since you weren’t around when he went missing, well, that maybe you might be the one to talk to.”
“I presume we’re talking about Conor?”
She nodded. “I know the Devitts use Keavney’s, too. And what with everything that’s happened, I wanted to be discreet. I have no wish to be insensitive.”
“What is it that you want?” I asked.
She appeared to choose her words carefully. “I want to know when he can be declared legally dead.”
I leaned back in my seat to gather my thoughts. “Okay,” I said, “under the law here, a missing person is presumed alive for seven years. After seven years he is presumed dead.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “So, we’re nearly there.”
“When did you last see him?”
“The fifteenth of June, seven years ago this summer. The day before our wedding.”
I took out an attendance sheet and wrote down the date.
“So, I can do it this summer? Have him declared dead?”
“In theory, yes. But it’s not quite as simple as that. I’ll have to look into it but I think it can be quite complicated, in fact. It involves an application to the High Court.”
She sat forward. “Yes?”
“Probably with an affidavit. And even though you were his fiancée, you may not be able to do it on your own. We may need a relative – a blood relative.” I paused. “So you may need to involve the Devitts, whether you want to or not.”
Her face fell.
“Is there any particular reason why you want to do it?”
She delivered her response like a well-rehearsed answer to a question in an oral exam. “Conor and I built a house. It’s in our joint names, and I need to have his name taken off it.”
“Very well.” I returned to the attendance sheet and started to take some notes. “How were you registered, can you remember? What type of joint ownership?”
“Joint tenants. I’m sure of it. We were asked what way we wanted it.”
I was surprised. It’s not a question clients can usually answer so easily. I said as much.
She shrugged. “I’m in charge of mortgages at the bank.”
“So, if Conor is declared presumed dead, you will inherit.”
A look of displeasure crossed her face. “That’s not why I want it done.”
I put down my pen. “I’m sorry. Why is it you want it done, then?”
Her face hardened. It made her look older. “I want him out of my life. It’s been over for a long time, and I don’t want to have to think about him anymore. I want to stop getting letters from the bank addressed to Conor Devitt and Lisa McCauley, letters from the Revenue Commissioners about property tax, letters about God knows what.” Her accent seemed to get stronger as her voice grew louder. “I’m blue in the face asking them to change it, but they haven’t a notion of doing it while they can’t be sure if he’s dead or alive. I can’t live in limbo any longer. This whole thing’s been going on for long enough.”
“I understand,” I said.
“I want it over and done with. He’s gone and that should be it.”
“Especially now that you’re married to someone else.”
“Alan’s got nothing to do with it. I was full sure I was going to do something about it when I came home from the holiday, but then when that body was found and everyone seemed to think it might be him, I thought maybe it would be over and done with that way. And what with the break-in and all, I didn’t feel like doing anything about it, anyway. But then when it wasn’t him …”
I interrupted her. “Did you think it might be?”
“I didn’t know,” she said firmly.
“So, you’re not hopeful of him being found alive, then?”
A look of fury flashed across her face. It was the same look I had seen the night before.
“Hopeful? You are joking, aren’t you? If that man is alive, he’s downright humiliated me. Have you any idea of what it’s like to be stood up on your wedding day? To have relatives over from America and England and God knows where, spending everything you have on your dream wedding only for the groom not to bother turning up?”
“No, I don’t,” I said quietly.
“Well, then.” She sat back in her seat.
“Have you talked to his family about what you’re intending doing? Claire, or his mother?”
She shook her head.
“They might have some feelings about it, you know. They’ve just lost Danny.”
“I know that.”
“Well, as I said, you may need them for the application. But even if you don’t, I still think you should discuss it with them.”
Lisa sighed.
“You never know,” I said gently, “they may be in agreement with you. I understand they’re convinced something must have happened to him. They don’t believe that he left of his own accord.”
“They wouldn’t believe he put a foot wrong, so they wouldn’t,” she muttered. “Claire thought the sun shone out of his arse. Did anything he told her to do. And his mother was the same.”
“What do you think happened?”
She sighed again. “To be truthful, I don’t know. Things weren’t right for a while, I know that much.”
“Between the two of you?”
She shot me a warning look. “It’s not something I want said, mind.”
“Of course. Anything you say to me is confidential.”
She hesitated. “He was behaving a wee bit off. I don’t know what was going on, but he’d disappear for hours on end, turning his phone off so I couldn’t get him.”
“What do you think it was?”
She looked at me. “You’re thinking he was cheating on me?”
“No, I …”
“Well, maybe you’re right. I’ve no proof, but maybe you’re right. Conor Devitt was the kind of man women like, if you know what I mean?”
I knew exactly what she meant.
“Even my mother liked him,” she said. “My grandmother used to flirt with him and she’s eighty-two.” She smiled for the first time since she’d come in. “That should have been a warning sign. My grandmother’s a right old battleaxe. She didn’t even mind that he didn’t go to Mass.”
It was my turn to smile.
Her expression became sad. “We were together for a long time, you know? He was the first serious boyfriend I had. A few years older than me, good job, great football player. Sure, I was mad about him. But I never really trusted him. Strange, that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. He was too good to be true. Handsome and sensible. You don’t get that combination in one fella. Especially not in his twenties. There had to be something wrong.”
“How long were you with him?” I tried to calculate in my head.
“Nine years,” she said. “All the years when I should have been having a family.” Her eyes welled. She shook the tears away impatiently.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She looked down at her hands. A large solitaire diamond, a wedding ring, nails bitten to the quick. “I don’t know why I waited so long. I think in my heart I knew he didn’t want to get married. But I never thought he’d do that to me, just not turn up. That was cruel.”
I was beginning to feel sympathy for her when her voice hardened again, as if she regretted her show of emotion.
“The dress, the flowers, the hotel, the band, the photographer.” She counted them all off on her fingers. “The best of everything we had. I wouldn’t have any crap. A video man down from Derry. Doves, for Christ’s sake.”
I tried not to smile.
“All paid for. And the morning of my wedding I’m being driven round and round the town like a tool for a full hour.” Her eyes watered again. “He broke my heart. At first I was worried, then when he didn’t appear in the days after that …”
“Then?” I prompted.
She clammed up. “Nothing.”
“Are you saying you don’t think he is dead?”
“Like I said, I don’t know,” she answered sullenly.
“If you have any reason to believe he’s still alive, Mrs. Crane, you’ll have to tell me. It may cause a difficulty in obtaining a declaration of presumed death,” I warned her. “Everything will have to go into the affidavit.”
“I don’t. I don’t know what happened to him and that’s the truth,” she said firmly. Her expression didn’t change as she leaned forward, fixed me with a resolute gaze, and said, “So, are you going to help me get rid of the bastard or not?”