Disappeared (18 page)

He stood up shakily, and the boy rushed to steady him.

The stump of his leg flailed in the air, and he fell back heavily. Daly rushed to help the two of them. He was afraid that Mitchell would miss the seat completely and end up sprawled across the floor.

“Thank you.” Mitchell grimaced and held on tightly to Daly’s arm. Again, he felt the compact energy of the man transmitted through his fingers.

“I don’t want a bad fall in my condition. One silly mistake and I’ll end up drooling in a dark corner of some nursing home.”

“Surely not,” said Daly.

They helped heave Mitchell’s body into the chair. With a grunt, he readjusted himself as though his body needed reining in and subduing like a surge of uncontrollable emotion. He squeezed Daly’s arm.

“If Devine was murdered because he was an informer, you’ll have a job drawing up the list of the people he double-crossed.”

Daly looked into the retired detective’s eyes and saw a fresh pain take shape there, one unconnected to any limb or part of his body.

“Be careful,” warned Mitchell. “A person like Devine doesn’t go to his grave without dragging a few more along with him.” He sank back in his seat. “That’s all I can tell you. I’m tired now.” He looked at Dermot. “Your hunt in the shadows for the truth will never end.”

When they were outside, Dermot turned to look back at the windows of the farmhouse.

“They’re running scared.”

“Who?”

“Special Branch. The IRA. And the every second one of them that was an informer for the British.”

They drove past the black trees that fed on the icy stillness of the lake.

“Why are you helping us?” asked Dermot.

“I don’t know. Because it’s my job. Maybe we’ll never solve why your father was taken away. But it’s a mystery that I’ve stumbled upon, and I can’t stand mysteries.”

In the silence between himself and the boy, Daly felt an equal measure of hostility and ease, with the ease just about coming to the fore. He hoped that Dermot and his mother might realize that as a detective he was motivated by more than just maintaining the status quo and protecting the reputation of the police force. A raw desire for justice was beginning to shape his thinking.

They had not come away with any concrete leads, but at least the pattern was becoming clearer, he thought. Not complete. There were still many gaps, but at least he could guess why Oliver Jordan’s disappearance had haunted Devine.

They drove in silence. The trees thinned out and the shadows disappeared. They sped by muddy fields and untamed hedgerows. Mitchell had one thing in common with Devine, thought Daly. He, too, was trying to escape the past by going into the woods. But the creatures of the forest had their troubles as well. The past might be less relevant to their survival but they still had predators to worry about.

Daly switched on the radio and flicked through the stations until he found a Smiths song playing. He turned up the volume.

“I am the son and the heir of nothing in particular…”
sang Morrissey.

The guitars released a shuddering wave of adolescent angst that filled the car. Daly glanced at the boy, but his profile was still and composed.

The detective’s mind wandered along the tortuous paths of his own teenage years. A memory floated up from the aftermath of a late-night party—the sudden privacy of an empty sofa, a shared bottle of cheap cider, licorice sweets, and the long black hair of a girl he had never kissed. There had been something about how her hair lay curved upon her slender shoulders, her green eyes shining with a secretive, submerged light, and the lips of her mouth pursed in wanton silence. He had talked and talked. He remembered how her eyes swam up to meet his while her body remained detached and distant. He had waited but missed the opportunity to kiss her, reluctant to shrug away the solitary nonchalance of adolescence. It alarmed him to realize that all the women he had loved since were a composite image of this girl with the shining black hair.

“This is like a movie,” interrupted Dermot.

Rain was falling, pounding the tarmac, drenching the windscreen. Daly gulped like a drowning man coming up for air. The windscreen wipers thrashed back and forth at monsoon setting, but he had no recollection of switching them on.

“What’s that?”

“I mean, I’ve never seen anything like this happen, except in a film.”

His voice had changed. There was an edge of tension there, and something else, amazement. He was leaning forward and watching the left-wing mirror intently.

Daly glanced in his rearview mirror. Through the rain, he could see a car some way behind.

“That car’s been following us,” said Dermot.

Daly’s reaction was to say nothing, show nothing.

The rear window was obscured by a glistening screen of raindrops, making it difficult to determine the car’s registration. Daly’s foot found the accelerator, and the car rode forward with a deliberate burst of speed.

“What makes you think that?”

“Easy. It’s been behind us since we left Mitchell’s place.”

Daly switched off the radio and glanced doubtfully at the boy. He slowed and watched the car behind loom closer. A black BMW. Where had he seen one like it before? A lorry overtook them, thundering by in a wash of water. The car crept closer, but not near enough to show the number plate.

He turned left at the next junction and glanced repeatedly at the deserted road behind him. They drove under a row of trees, fat drops plopping onto the car roof. The BMW swung into view again, its bulk taking up most of the narrow road.

“What are they going to do?” asked Dermot.

They swung right at a crossroads, crossed a bridge. The BMW lagged behind and switched on its headlights as the rain fell heavier.

Daly wished he were on his own. Dermot was a civilian, and a schoolboy at that. It was wrong to involve him in a murder enquiry. When he glanced over at the boy, he saw that he was trying to scribble down a description of the vehicle.

“You’re enjoying this,” he remarked with surprise.

“Yes,” replied Dermot after a moment’s hesitation.

“Don’t you find it worrying?”

“I don’t know. I can’t say.”

“I’m turning back,” said Daly grimly, but when he looked in the mirror the car had gone. As if it had suddenly unfolded a pair of wings and flown away, bored with its prey.

“I’m taking you straight home, Dermot.”

“I don’t want to go back. Not yet.”

But Daly was adamant.

By the time they arrived at the farm, his suspicions were starting to ease. The boy must have been mistaken, he reassured himself.

“Who do you think was following us?” asked Dermot, determined not to give up.

“I don’t know. Maybe the car was lost and following us because they thought we knew the way.”

“They were going ’round in circles if they were relying on you.”

Daly grinned. Perhaps he was making some progress after all. Yesterday he thought he was going in reverse, knowing less all the time, rather than more.

There didn’t appear to be anyone at home when they pulled up at the rambling farmhouse. Dermot went to the caravan while Daly took a walk around the outhouses. He did not want to leave the boy on his own, though he was sure he was capable of looking after himself.

“Is anyone there?” he shouted. A goat with a bell looked up from a hedgerow and made a wild regurgitating noise. It twitched and rolled its eyeballs at Daly. He remembered a saying of his father’s: a horse only thinks once in its lifetime about killing a human, but a goat does so countless times.

He called out a few times and eventually got a lighthearted cry in response, and slow footsteps. Tessa Jordan appeared in Wellington boots and a floral skirt, a large bundle of stalks and dead flower heads tucked under her arm. Daly thought he detected a bashful glow in her cheeks when she recognized him. Perhaps it was the flush of physical exertion.

“I was clearing the vegetable garden.”

“Looks like hard work.”

“It is, just a touch.” She stood still. The sun came out and brightened the edges of her dark hair. “Yesterday I planted some cabbage seedlings but the goat came along and ate them. I had to beat it with a stick.”

“You look just at home.”

“Not really,” she said, smiling. “But I’m getting there.”

Not for the first time, it struck Daly that Tessa Jordan was an attractive woman. He noted the slender curves of her body as she leaned the bundle of cuttings against her hip, and the luster of her hair and skin in the wash of weak spring sunlight.

In spite of the sun, the air was cold with the sharp, empty feel of winter. When Daly looked at Tessa’s eyes, he saw a vague sense of loss take shape there. She suspected he had some news about her husband.

Despite himself, he felt a reflex of desire. Then he saw her wedding ring glinting in the sun and, rather selfishly, he felt depressed. How could he compete with the memory of a dead man?

“Don’t tell me about the investigation,” she urged him. “I don’t want to hear anything. Not yet.”

“What else shall I talk about?”

“Anything.”

Daly was at a loss for words in spite of the forcefulness of her entreaty. The investigation was starting to consume all his thoughts.

“Your goat is making a strange noise.”

“I’m listening.”

“To me or the goat?”

“To you. Tell me a story.”

But his mind was a blank. Her anxious, dark eyes peered up at him. He was struck by the expression of worried tenderness in her face, and made no resistance when she suddenly buried her face against his shirt. A list of endearments passed through his mind but his mouth opened and closed silently. He had always told himself it was impossible to love two women at the same time—too many contradictions to resolve in the heart. She pressed her head deeper against him, and he felt an unraveling inside, a sense of things flowering at the wrong time. He was a police officer and she was a widow, but the real interplay was between two lonely people. So much tension was mixed up with the pleasure of feeling her cheek brush against his chest.

She breathed in deeply, seeking out his scent, and looked up. “You look exhausted,” she said.

“I have to go,” he replied gently. “Dermot’s back at the caravan.”

“Stay a little longer. Tell me what Mitchell said.”

“Dermot was there too. Perhaps it’s better coming from him.”

He extricated himself, feeling a tingling of embarrassment in his cheeks, and made his way back to the car.

It was still light when he arrived home. The sun had bored through the blanket of grayness and was sprinkling the waters of the lough with a dappled light. He stretched his cramped limbs and took off with a spurt of energy across the patchwork of fields to the shoreline.

The breeze was soft, and he soon found a sheltered spot under an oak tree to rest. The evening felt like a comparative heaven to the purgatory of dark winter nights he had endured in the cottage. He watched the smoke start to rise from the chimneys on the western shore of the lough.

Even though the sun was setting, Daly sensed by a hundred little signals that light was beginning to win over darkness above and below. A sharp volley of swallows shot over a row of trees and swooped overhead, a traveling kink against the edge of winter. He reassured himself that he no longer lived at the brutal front edge of history, that he was beyond the reach of the bullets and bombs that had blighted the careers and lives of policemen like Mitchell. The evening air was thick with the promise of spring.

Soon the daffodils his father planted would be bursting out of the hedge banks. He would take pleasure in their appearance this year, a simple, enclosed contentment that had much to do with the sense of failure that had overshadowed his personal life for the past six months.

When he got back to the house, he found an envelope pinned to the door. Written inside was a series of places and times. It took him a moment to realize the list described every single journey he had made that day, with all the times indicated accurately.

He opened the door of the house and locked it behind him. He felt uneasy. He stood in the hallway and looked into the rooms, listening as if a burglary might be in progress. The distant sound of crows settling down to roost formed an unruly backdrop to the silence of the house. He went into the kitchen and stared at the sink, where a tap was slowly dripping. Instead of cooking something to eat, he took down a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a generous measure. He sipped it, facing the door in a strange state of expectancy.

If he had developed an instinct for the practicalities of survival, he did not show much evidence of it that evening. By the time the moon rose, he was already asleep in an armchair facing the back door, an empty bottle of whiskey cradled in his lap.

T
he clear skies overnight meant a sharp frost. Daly drove to work through an icy landscape as faultless in its construction as an underwater kingdom of coral. To his hungover brain, the merciless morning was crammed with burning crystal. He blinked in the jagged light, his eyes swimming with the strain of focus. He was late and the car steered with a mind of its own, skidding along the frozen lough-shore roads. He dipped in and out of the vehicle’s grinding bag of gears, cursing to himself as he fought for control.

By the time he reached Derrylee Police Station, it was after nine thirty a.m. He walked into the building, flashes of light firing behind his eyeballs. The desk sergeant eyed him with curiosity and handed him a report sheet.

There had been a hit-and-run in the early hours of the morning. When Daly saw the name, his cheeks puffed out in a smothered explosion of surprise.

“Inspector Irwin said he’d deal with that one,” the sergeant told him. “Apparently the victim was a drunk. A taxi driver saw him stumble onto the road trying to wave down traffic just before he was knocked down.”

“Only one kind of journey he’s going on now, and that’s the final one,” murmured Daly, casting his mind back to the last time he saw the victim.

“Any details of the vehicle?”

“None so far.”