The Book of Killowen (Nora Gavin #4) (23 page)

Just then the bell went, and she opened the door to find her partner laden with a file tucked under one arm and two carrier bags full of take-away containers. “Didn’t realize your flat was so near,” she said.

“All right, I confess, I was in the car when you rang. Going for curry on my own.”

She showed him to the kitchen and they began unloading the food. “And here’s me, thinking you’d have someplace to go on a Friday night, somewhere a bit more exciting than going over case notes.”

“And if I was looking forward to it?”

“Then you are officially a pathetic human being.” The spicy curry smelled wonderful. Stella licked a bit of sauce from her thumb and realized that she was ravenous.

Molloy pulled the last package from the bag. “And garlic naan, as requested.”

“Thanks, Fergal. You didn’t have to do this.”

He waved away her thanks. “Best option I had for the evening, by a long shot.”

She leveled him with a look. “You can leave off the slagging right now.”

His gaze was steady as her own. “I happen to be deadly serious.”

A small voice at the back of her head told Stella something had just happened, that she ought to be paying attention. But whatever it was, the moment was so small, and so subtle, that she couldn’t say what it was. She went to the fridge and brought out two bottles of ale.

Molloy sat down to his curry and began flipping through the pages of his notebook.

“Killowen, including the turbary rights to turf cutting in the adjacent bog, belonged to a Thomas Beglan, bachelor uncle of Anthony, until his death at age eighty in 1992. Thomas had no heirs but his nephew, so the whole parcel went to him. Anthony Beglan still owns the land, both his own family farm and Killowen.”

Stella’s interest piqued. But first things first. “Kavanagh’s wife and her assistant are top priority in this case. I found it curious that even though they’d stayed at the farm multiple times, everyone I spoke to this afternoon denied that Mairéad Broome and Graham Healy were at Killowen during the last two weeks of April. And no one seemed to know what Kavanagh might have been doing in the vicinity. But Dawson, the archaeologist from the National Museum, he was at Killowen for a couple of days in April, right around the time of Kavanagh’s disappearance. Odd that he never mentioned it.”

“Want me to check him out?”

“Not yet. Dr. Gavin was telling me about an interesting encounter she witnessed this afternoon: Graham Healy passing a fat brown envelope to Vincent Claffey in the car park at Killowen.”

“Did you get anything from Claffey?” Molloy asked.

“More from his daughter than the man himself, not surprisingly.
When I spoke to Deirdre Claffey, she didn’t admit knowing Kavanagh, but she seemed quite upset that he was dead. It’s going to be difficult getting anything more out of her—the father doesn’t want her talking to us. But we’ll have to find a way to get to her again. And it looks as if Claffey’s hiding something in his shed. He made a show of locking it up as I was leaving, almost like a deliberate two fingers to the world. I wish I knew what the hell he’s playing at.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Stella clicked through the list of interviews in her head. “I keep going back to that car buried in the bog. It’s partially drained, so the surface is pretty solid—you can’t just push the car in. Someone used a digger. And that’s the thing: you can’t just pick up and drive a JCB—it’s not that easy. Whoever buried that car must have had some experience with an excavator. But everyone at Killowen seems to have things they’re not telling us. I found out that the calligrapher and his wife, Martin and Tessa Gwynne, both knew Kavanagh, or were at least acquainted. Met at a conference in Toronto twenty years ago, some group called the Eriugena Society. Let’s see if we can find out more about that. And maybe you could also get some background on Claire Finnerty and Diarmuid Lynch. He gave me a story about being a farmhand in Spain—I don’t know, it sounded dodgy. Obviously, it would be great if we could take a closer look at everyone, but we’ve got to prioritize. Unless we can make progress—and soon—Special Crimes will pull this one from us.”

“Let’s make some progress, then,” Molloy said. “I’ve been through the missing person file on Kavanagh, and there are a couple of things that don’t add up.”

“Such as?”

“Well, if he was out here in April for more than just a day trip, where’s his luggage? Presumably he’d bring a toothbrush, a change of underpants. But there was no case in the boot of the car, right? So if he did have an overnight bag, where is it?”

“Come to think of it, there wasn’t any laptop in his Dublin office either. But no one ever came forward with those things when his disappearance was in the news. Speaking of, did you put out that photo to the television people?”

“Just like you asked.”

“So maybe we’ll get something. Good work so far, Fergal.” She
glanced at her watch and sprang to her feet. “God, will you look at the time? It’s nearly midnight.”

“We’re only getting started.”

“No, it’s time you were off home. I want your little gray cells firing on all cylinders in the morning.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He offered a small, crooked smile, and Stella felt once more that she’d just missed something. She pushed him toward the door. “I won’t be responsible for dark circles under your eyes. What would your mammy say?”

He stopped short and gave her a curious look. “It’s all right, Stella, I don’t live with my mammy anymore.”

Cormac stood at the kitchen window, gazing out at the herb garden in the moonlight. It was after three o’clock, and everyone else at Killowen seemed to be asleep. He’d come downstairs, unable to stop the thoughts circling in his head, mostly worries about Niall Dawson’s connection to a murder victim and his strange reaction to the mention of that Romanian girl.

And it wasn’t just thinking about Dawson that kept him from sleep. Every time he had closed his eyes tonight, he’d sunk immediately into shadowy dreams: standing at the edge of a bog, surrounded by faceless assassins and dagger blades glinting in the darkness. He’d jerked awake the last time with a strong taste of bitterness on his tongue and headed downstairs for a drink—something that might take away the lingering sharpness. He’d found a lone bottle of cider in the fridge and had gone outside into the courtyard to drink it, sitting in the shadows of the cloister-like walkway.

It would certainly have been his preference to let the police get on with their job and solve Benedict Kavanagh’s murder. He didn’t want to be mixed up in all this, now with Claffey threatening people, and worrying about whether Nora, or his father, or Eliana might be in danger. And yet there were bits of information to which he alone was privy that raised questions perhaps not best answered by the police. He’d have to find some opportunity to speak to Niall. Why was it so difficult to know what to do?

He finished the cider and set the bottle gently in the recycling bin in the kitchen corner. Climbing the stairs, he decided that perhaps he ought to poke his head in, make sure the old man was safe and comfortable.

Cormac paused as he grasped the handle on his father’s bedroom door, conscious of making noise in the still night. But the sturdy hinges seemed to be well oiled, and the heavy door opened silently. He let his eyes get used to the darkness, focusing on the old man flat on his back,
the barrel of his chest rising and falling steadily, one arm flung out to the side. A pile of extra bedclothes on a chair next to the bed shifted, apparently on its own, and Cormac stared, trying to make sense of it. Again, the pile moved, and he squinted into the darkness. Was he seeing things? At last his eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, and he could see a pale arm snaking out of the blankets, a small hand clasped in his father’s large one. The old man wasn’t alone.

Cormac crept into the darkened room and knelt by the chair. “Eliana,” he whispered, trying to rouse the girl without waking his father. “Eliana.”

She started, groggy with sleep. “What is it?”

Cormac said, “Listen to me, you shouldn’t be here. You ought to be in your own room.”

“He couldn’t sleep, so I came to sit with him,” Eliana explained. “No trouble, really—”

“But you can’t let him talk you into these things.”

By this time, the old man was awake. He sat up and reached for the girl’s hand again. “Have a projection!” the old man mumbled. His hair was a fright, standing on end all over his head. “He can projector. Projecture.” He tried to push Eliana back into her chair.

Nora’s groggy voice came from the doorway. “Cormac, do you need some help?”

“Eliana was sleeping here, in the chair.” Cormac could feel his blood pressure rising, not sure how to explain what he’d seen, what he feared. None of this was good. “My father won’t let her go back to her room.”

“Let me speak to him—you can see Eliana to her room.”

Cormac hesitated. “He’s my responsibility, Nora. I can’t let you—”

“Will you stop? Just go with Eliana. I’ll be fine here.”

Eliana pulled her blanket from the floor and led Cormac to her own room next door. She piled the fluffy duvet onto her bed and sat beside it.

Cormac pulled up a chair beside the bed. “First of all, I’m not angry with you. I want to make sure you understand that.” The girl nodded. “Can you tell me what happened tonight?”

Tears welled in Eliana’s eyes. “I try to make sure he is all right before I sleep,” she said. “And tonight, he didn’t want me to go, I don’t know why, so I brought this.” Her fingers played with the edge of the duvet. “I didn’t mind.”

How was he going to explain to her? “Now, listen, Eliana, I want you
to tell me, honestly. My father hasn’t said or done anything that’s made you feel . . . well, uncomfortable?”

“No, he’s very kind.” Then she pulled back, her eyes widening, suddenly aware of what Cormac was asking. “No, no, nothing has happened, I swear! I would never . . . please, you must believe me.”

“I do believe you, Eliana. Calm yourself.”

 . . .

Back in their own room, Cormac’s conversation with Nora turned on what had just transpired and how they ought to handle it. He said, “I don’t think we should send her back to Dublin.”

“No, I agree.”

“So if we can just stick things out here for the next day or two, that would be best.”

“Do you want to call the agency, request someone else?”

“No, let’s wait until we get home and take things from there. It’s not as if Eliana has done anything wrong—perhaps she’s not exercised the best judgment—it’s my father who’s been making unreasonable demands.”

Nora smoothed the worry lines from his forehead. “We’ll figure all this out. And remember that it’s only temporary. Mrs. Hanafin will be back in ten days.”

Ten days. And then everything would go back to normal—at least to the ordinary strangeness of their quotidian life.

A whisper came from the darkness. “I meant to ask, Cormac, what were you doing up in the middle of the night?”

“The usual. Couldn’t sleep,” he said. No need to mention his fears about Niall, the shadowy dreams. He pushed all that away. Let Stella Cusack worry about solving Kavanagh’s murder. Not his business, any of it.

Nora’s silence told him that she had slipped back into slumber. He lay still and concentrated on breathing until he heard the faint sound of a footfall out in the corridor. If his father was going to start wandering the halls at four o’clock in the morning . . . He threw off the duvet and went to the door, cracking it open. No sign of his father, or Eliana. The only movement was Niall Dawson’s door across the way, closing silently.