I OPENED THE door to clear the cloud of perfume lingering in the air. It was way too cold to open a window. There was something about Lisa Crane I couldn’t warm to. Something cloying, a bit like her scent. Strange, because when I had heard the story of her fiancé’s disappearance before their wedding, I had felt sorry for her. But she was hard to like. I wondered if that was intentional on her part. I’m a woman, and Lisa Crane was a man’s woman. Or at least she wanted to be.
There was a brittle quality to her that she covered with aggression. I thought about how thin the line is between love and hate, how quickly one can turn to the other when someone’s trust is betrayed. What was it that she wasn’t telling me, I wondered.
The morning passed in a series of appointments. At one o’clock, after a message from Liam, I thought I’d call Raymond Kelly to confirm his instructions about the sale and get Paul Doherty back up to Whitewater Church to finish the survey. I was halfway through dialing Kelly’s number when it occurred to me that I should talk to Molloy first to ensure that we had access. I dialed the garda station and got McFadden.
“Is the sergeant there, Andy?”
“No. Can I help you with something?”
“Maybe. I wanted to make sure your crime scene people are completely finished up at the church. We need access.”
“Aye, I think so. I believe they finished last week. Why do you need access?”
“Well, it looks as if the buyers are going ahead after all and we need to get the place surveyed again.”
He whistled. “Jesus. They’re brave wee souls. There’s no accounting for taste.”
“It is a beautiful setting,” I said.
“Well, you couldn’t pay me to live there.”
“I know what you mean. Anyway, you’re all finished with
it?”
“Just to make sure, I’ll give them a call up in Letterkenny and I’ll ring you back before two o’clock. That do you?”
“That’d be great, Andy. Thanks.” I hesitated. “Where’s Molloy, by the way?”
I could hear the mischief in his voice when he replied, “He’s gone off to have lunch with his lady friend.”
“She’s still here?” I could feel the pins and needles traveling slowly up my neck again.
“Aye, she stayed an extra day to do the postmortem on poor Danny yesterday afternoon. I think she’s heading back tonight.”
I hung up the phone and stared at the wall. I couldn’t figure out what was making me so bloody uncomfortable – the identity of this pathologist Laura Callan and her place in my past, or the fact that Molloy was spending so much time with her, and in such a fashion that McFadden was calling her his lady friend.
Whatever it was, I hated it. Every time her name was mentioned, I started to think about things I didn’t want to think about. I wished her gone – far away from here.
I couldn’t face a sandwich. So I stayed at my desk over lunch. Stewing.
Leah arrived back at a quarter to two as I was making myself a quick coffee. She shoved her bag under her desk, asking, “So, how did you get on with our Lisa?”
“Okay. I met her last night at the wake.”
She smiled.
I rested my mug on the counter. “You seem to have a view on her. Spit it out.”
She shook her head. “Ach, it’s nothing really.”
“Go on.”
“She’s just a bit possessive, always has been – every woman’s a threat, if you know what I mean.”
“You sound like you’re talking from experience.”
She looked embarrassed. “Maybe. Anyway, it looks as if she’s met her match. Her husband came in after her and waited for her down here the whole time she was in with you.”
“Alan?”
“Yes. Walked her out the door by the arm. Very proprietorial. Oh, and by the way, I ran into Mick Bourke in the town. He wants to know if he can see you tomorrow afternoon after the funeral.”
“That’s fine. Give him a call back and stick him in wherever there’s a window. Did he say what it’s about?”
“No, but he was a bit jittery. As if he didn’t want anyone to see him talking to me.”
Leah took a slip of paper out of her bag and picked up the phone to dial. She stopped halfway through and placed the phone to her chest.
“Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you.”
“Something else? You’ve had a busy time.”
“There’s been another break-in. Paul Doherty – his office.”
“Oh no! When?”
“Last night or this morning. Two computers and some engineering equipment were stolen – mobile phone, too, I think. The postman told me.”
“No cash or anything?”
“No. But Paul’s furious.”
“I bet. I hope he’s insured.”
I didn’t like the apprehensive feeling I had walking in the door of the garda station. I wasn’t used to it. This was my turf; I had walked through these doors hundreds of times. I resented the fact that I felt uncomfortable now and I resented the person who was making me feel that way.
Luckily, she wasn’t there. Molloy and McFadden were on their own, squabbling about something. The atmosphere was tense. I had to add to it, of course.
“How was your lunch?” I asked.
Molloy gave McFadden a glare. McFadden reddened and stared intently at the statement he was typing. Immediately, I felt guilty.
“Fine. How was yours?” Molloy replied, approaching the desk.
“I didn’t have any.”
The words hadn’t sounded sulky when I formulated them in my head, but when they came out of my mouth I realized I sounded like a five-year-old. Molloy gave no indication that he’d noticed.
“Andy tells me that your buyers are back and you want to have the church surveyed again.”
I nodded.
“That’s fine. All the evidence has been collected according to the Garda Technical Bureau. It’s a matter of carrying out the tests now, and that’s going to take some time.”
“No cause of death yet?”
“Still up in the air.”
The door opened behind me. It was Paul Doherty, stubbing out a cigarette. The burglary had obviously induced his emergency smoking again.
“I’m here to give you that statement,” he said.
“Andy, can you?” Molloy nodded at McFadden.
“Sorry to hear about the break-in, Paul,” I said.
“Thanks. Could have done without it, that’s for sure.”
I looked at Molloy. “Could I have a quick chat with you?” I asked.
“Fine.”
I followed him into the interview room. He shut the door behind us.
“Any idea yet why Danny Devitt’s DNA was on the blanket?”
He crossed his arms. “Well, we’ve searched his cottage and it appears both the blanket and pillow came from there. So it does look as though he was the one who wrapped the bones.”
“Right.” I took a few seconds to digest this. “So where did the bones come from? Do you still think they were moved into the crypt from somewhere else?”
“We’re not sure,” Molloy said slowly.
“What about the soil samples?”
“They match the soil in the old graveyard, which is no indicator of anything,” he said. “The traces were minimal and soil is pretty similar throughout this area.”
“What about the disturbed soil in the graveyard? Under the trees?”
Molloy raised his eyebrows.
“Andy told me. Could they have come from there? A shallow grave?”
Molloy didn’t reply. Was I imagining it, or was he avoiding my gaze?
“Could Danny have dug them up and moved them into the crypt?” I asked.
Molloy shook his head. “Unlikely. The bones were fairly fragile. It’s not as if they would have held together.”
“I don’t know if it’s relevant, but he had some knowledge of anatomy, I think. Animals, anyway. He was a bit of an unqualified vet.”
“So I believe. To be honest, even wrapping the bones in the blanket would have been difficult. The pathologist believes that was done relatively recently. Moving a skeleton and having the bones remain intact would have been virtually impossible.”
It was a macabre image: Danny Devitt in a darkened crypt beneath a deserted church, carefully wrapping a human skeleton in a blanket and placing a pillow beneath the skull. Maybe with his dog in tow. A picture of Fred running away with one of the bones in his mouth crept into my head. I chased it away.
“Why on earth would he do something like that?”
“God knows.”
“And why were the bones there in the first place?” I said again. “I just can’t imagine Danny Devitt killing someone.”
Molloy looked away. There was something he wasn’t telling me, I could sense it. But I knew better than to push him. Molloy was like a set of tangled Christmas tree lights. The harder you tried to find a way in, the more inaccessible he became. I tried a different approach.
“You know I told you that he was anxious to know if the bones had been identified?”
Molloy nodded.
“Something was confusing him. Something didn’t make sense to him. He said he wanted to talk to me about it and then he changed his mind. Then he wanted to talk to you, but he said there was something he needed to do first. I don’t know what that was.”
Molloy scratched his chin thoughtfully.
“Tom?”
Molloy looked up.
“Was there anything strange about his death?” I asked. “Are we sure it was an accident?”
Molloy was unfazed. “Impossible to tell. He crashed into a ditch. We can’t be a hundred percent sure, but there was no other car involved as far as we could see. There were no skid marks, other than his own.”
“His body was released very quickly.”
“Yes. The postmortem didn’t take long. Cause of death was very straightforward. Head injury caused by the impact of the crash.”
Molloy frowned. “Are you implying that something was missed?”
“No, of course not.”
“He died in hospital, remember?”
“I know, I know.”
He raised his eyebrows. “So?”
I sighed. “It’s just it’s a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think? The bones in the church turn out not to be Conor Devitt despite everybody’s expectations to the contrary, and within forty-eight hours his brother is dead, killed in a car accident.”
“Yes, I do. But I also think that we can’t rule out suicide as a possibility.”
I didn’t like to think about that.
“How about the blood alcohol tests?”
“There was no alcohol in his system when he died. He was sober when he crashed.”