The Book of Killowen (Nora Gavin #4) (9 page)

Stella knew she had him. Cutting turf in a protected bog could bring a stiff fine. “What are you doing with the peat, Mr. Claffey?”

“Sure, what would I be doing with it? Only gettin’ me bit of turf mold for sowing potatoes—”

In the course of her work, Stella had driven past the Claffey place on numerous occasions and had never once seen a green leaf of any vegetable growing amid the rubbish and rusted-out machinery that filled his haggard. Vincent Claffey wouldn’t know a potato plant if he tripped over it. So what was he really up to, going for his bit of turf mold with a digger?

Her phone vibrated once—the photo of Kavanagh. She held up the screen to show Claffey the image.

“Do you happen to know this man? Ever seen him around here?” The photo triggered a subtle change in Claffey’s demeanor. Stella could see his thoughts zigzagging like a hare. He’d been his old cute, cunning self up to that point, and it was definitely the photo of Kavanagh that tipped him over. She said, “We’ve just found that the car in the bog belongs to him. Benedict Kavanagh. Ring any bells?”

“Kavanagh? No . . . no, can’t say that it does.”

“So you’ve never seen him before?” She held up the phone again. “Take another look.”

Claffey glanced once more at the image, shifted his weight. “No.”

“You’re sure?”

Barely a thrust of the chin this time, and he’d managed to suppress the glint of panic in his eyes. “Look, are you finished with me? I’m dyin’ for a slash.”

He had been dancing a jig along the tape for the past few minutes. “Just one more thing,” Stella said. “If you suddenly remember seeing Mr. Kavanagh anywhere, I want you to ring me.” She handed him a card. “My mobile’s on there.”

He took the card and pretended to study it before slipping it into his pocket. “Can I go now? I’m about to burst me fuckin’ bladder.”

She waved him off, and he legged it over behind the chipper and ducked around back. Stella made a mental note to stay away from the cod and chips—and almost anything else on offer from that van. No matter how hungry she got, she’d wait until Molloy could bring them some grub from the nearest Supra station. The girl in the chipper folded and refolded her gray rag, no doubt wishing she were somewhere else. What must it be like, having a man like Vincent Claffey for a father?

After a moment, Claffey emerged from behind the chipper, zipping
his trousers as he returned to his position at the tape. Stella circled around until she stood beside the van, out of his line of vision. More than one way to skin a cat, as her mother used to say. She stepped up to the chipper window. “Hullo, Deirdre, isn’t it?”

“Yeh.”

Stella’s gaze lingered on Deirdre’s forearms, which sported a few yellow patches at the wrist, the telltale remains of bruises. Suddenly self-conscious, the girl pulled down the sleeves of her jumper and balled both hands into fists. No good even asking, Stella knew. She would have a ready story about knocking into something. Everybody knew about Claffey’s wife scarpering years ago, leaving the child behind. Everyone also knew how Vincent Claffey worked his daughter like a navvy, and even worse suspicions had cropped up when she’d fallen pregnant. But the way the system worked, you couldn’t bring a parent up on charges on the basis of whispers and nasty rumors. And to complicate matters, whenever the girl had been questioned, she defended the bugger.

“Your father says you’d been helping him out here on the bog.”

Deirdre frowned, unsure whether to believe her. “I only work in the chipper. That’s all.”

“But he told you what he’s doing here?”

“No, he didn’t. My da is into all sorts of stuff I know nothin’ about.”

Thus sparing you from prosecution
, Stella thought.
Very decent of him.
She’d have to try a different tack. Glancing over the tired-looking menu board with its hash of mismatched letters, the spattered fryer and the bags of crisps on their clipboard, the cans of Sprite and Diet Coke stacked up against the back wall, she was caught in the undertow of memory. “I worked in a chipper once—I was about your age.” All right, so she was fishing, trying to soften the girl up, but it was the truth. “Hated that fryer with a passion—it seemed like I could never get the stink off me—but at least the job got me out of the house at weekends. You do meet all sorts, working in a chipper.”

The girl almost smiled. “Yeh, most of them stocious.”

Also true, Stella thought. She felt the tug of memory, of the late-night conversations she’d carried on with maggoty young fellas at one o’clock in the morning after the pubs closed. “I used to like market days,” she said. “People always seemed in a cheery mood when they were making a few bob.” Fishing again, hoping the girl wouldn’t notice.

“Yeh—” Deirdre started to say, when the startled noise of an infant
came from somewhere near her feet. She stooped to pick up a baby from its carrier and rested him on her hip. She reached for a bottle of formula and slipped it into the baby’s mouth; he helped hold it in place. After his nap, the child appeared plump and rosy; he beamed at his mother. Deirdre’s eyes, too, lit at the sight of her child.

“I wonder, you wouldn’t remember if you ever saw this man anywhere around?”

She held up her phone with the photo of Benedict Kavanagh. Watching Deirdre Claffey’s eyes dart away, her expression flattening, Stella picked up another whiff of a scent.
Hold up
, said the voice in her head.
Don’t pounce. Just let her talk.

“Dunno,” Deirdre said. She fiddled with the front of the baby’s jumper, switched him to her opposite hip. “Like you said, you meet all sorts.”

But not many you remember so well, Stella thought. And surely not many who ended up dead at the bottom of a bog hole.

It was nearly eleven by the time Nora returned to her room at Killowen. The National Museum team had worked into the night, lights rigged up inside the tent, which glowed out in the darkness of the bog like a giant luminaria. After they’d recovered as much of Killowen Man as they could from the boot, the coroner’s team had come in and removed the second body. Both sets of remains were now headed to the morgue at the regional hospital, where they’d each undergo a preliminary postmortem in the morning. Nora had elected not to go along, partly because she wanted to give Cormac a chance to catch up with his old friend Niall Dawson and partly because she was desperate for a bath after the day’s grubby work.

They’d not taken much time to get Cormac’s father settled in before heading out to the bog, so it was only now that she began paying attention to the surroundings at Killowen. A small sign marked
COTTAGES
pointed down a path to the right as she pulled Cormac’s jeep into the car park alongside the main house.

“House” was probably a misnomer, because the place still resembled the barn or granary it had once been: although two stories, the broad-beamed structure seemed to hug the ground, with vine-covered limestone walls and a slate roof. The entry was a graceful glassed-in room built out from the arch of an old doorway. A few lights glowed in the upper windows now, and Nora realized that she hadn’t met any of the residents except for Claire Finnerty, who’d greeted them when they arrived. It turned out that Killowen was no ordinary bed-and-breakfast guesthouse but an artists’ retreat. She crunched across pea gravel in the car park, wondering if she’d have to disturb someone to gain entrance this late, but the front door was unlocked. They mustn’t be too concerned with security way out here—or maybe it was a philosophical statement about the nature of property. Either way it was curious; the crime rate in the countryside was usually higher than one might want to admit.

The kitchen at the back of the house was dark but for tiny spotlights above the sink and a set of French doors that looked out onto an herb garden. Mealtime had come and gone, and she was positively ravenous. She opened the refrigerator to find a glass-covered cheese plate front and center with a note taped conspicuously to the bell.
Niall, et al., Please help yourselves to anything you may like here. Fix yourselves an omelet if you like, or there’s salad on the shelf below. The cheese is our own, and there’s wine, bread, and butter on the table.
The note was signed
CF
.

Nora nibbled some bread and cheese, to take the edge off. She might have something more, perhaps a glass of wine, with Cormac and Niall when they returned.

Making her way silently up the stairs, she knocked softly at Eliana’s door.

“Eliana? Are you awake?”

After a few scuffling noises, the door opened.

“Just checking to make sure—” Nora stopped speaking when she saw the girl’s face, slightly blotchy, the eyes red rimmed as if she’d been crying. “Is everything all right, Eliana? Are you alone here?” Nora’s eyes instinctively checked over the girl’s shoulder. There was no one else in the room, only a book overturned on the writing desk, a small volume bound in yellow leather.

“Yes, I’m all right. It’s just . . . a sad story.” She smiled. “Everything was fine today. We had an excellent dinner.”

“And you think Joseph was comfortable about being here—away from home, I mean?”

“Yes. But he seemed rather tired after the meal and went to bed about half past eight,” Eliana said, her voice steadier now.

“That’s not unusual; he sleeps quite a lot these days. Well, I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Nora said. “I’ll let you get back to your story. See you in the morning.”

Inside her own room, Nora gathered up the items she’d need for a bath and left a note for Cormac:
Gone in search of promised thermal suite. Join me if you like.

She headed down the stairs and turned toward the old stable block adjacent to the granary that had been converted into a kind of spa. The sleeping rooms at Killowen were all en suite, but Claire Finnerty had urged them to take advantage of the new whirlpool and steam room.
Because they’d been expected down at the bog, they hadn’t taken the time upon their arrival to have a look.

As Nora turned down the corridor to the spa, an eerie noise came from the far end. It sounded almost like a moan. She stopped to listen. There it was again, a strange wavering contralto. Impossible to tell whether it was a human voice, or just the wind crossing a chimney pot, or a piece of furniture being dragged across a flag floor. Then it was gone.

She kept walking, looking at the frescoes on the walls: long watery ribbons of intertwined pigment, in subtle layered shades of blue green, echoing the variations in the limestone outer walls. The place was a retreat for artists, and someone had put in a lot of time, making Killowen itself into a work of art.

Everything was silent now. And no wonder: the walls upstairs and here in the stable block were at least three feet thick. She hadn’t heard anything through the rough-hewn doors upstairs as she passed—no conversation, not even snoring. Quiet as a cloister, this place. She finally came upon a door with a hanging wooden sign:
BATH SUITE
.

The sight that greeted her as she switched on the light was a spacious room painted a stormy-sea shade of green, the same as the hallway outside. The outside wall was set with frosted-glass windows at regular intervals, the inside wall devoted to four roomy shower stalls. Nora ranged around the room, exploring. She peered through a small window into the steam bath; behind a folding screen at the opposite end, she found a massage table and a large oval tub sunk into the floor, with steps spiraling down along the rim. Nearby shelves held stacks of folded towels, bath salts, and dried seaweed in large apothecary jars. Alongside the jars lay several long clear plastic tubes, cinched at each end with metal clasps. Nora picked one up. “Tir na nOg,” read the brand name in large letters on the label, “Authentic Irish Moor Peat.” She’d heard of spas where you could steep in a hot peat bath, or detoxify by smearing moor mud on various parts of your anatomy. The scientist in her naturally discounted most of the outrageous health claims, but peat did have some pretty remarkable chemical and biological qualities that weren’t completely understood. Maybe she ought to give it a go, although her main concern at this point was getting at the muck lodged under her nails.

She kicked off her shoes and felt a delicious warmth radiating from the stone floor. Turning on the taps, she began to fill the tub, thinking about what she’d seen so far of Killowen. Through the French doors in
the kitchen, she had spied a large empty room in the adjoining wing that looked almost like a yoga studio. She’d still not seen any of the residents besides Claire Finnerty, but they must have staff. It would take a lot of effort to keep this place running. Especially if most of the food came from the farm. Claire had explained that residents and guests took meals together in the main kitchen; the rotating cooking detail and menus for the week were sketched out on a chalkboard on the wall. Communal living did seem to have some advantages. Nora supposed her own current arrangement with Cormac and his father had similar perks and pitfalls. But the homemade bread and cheese she’d just consumed let her imagine an idyllic existence here: What could be better than following the creative impulse, living on the bounty of the earth just outside the door? Of course there must be downsides: lack of privacy, for a start, which she understood firsthand. And there were always undercurrents of tension wherever human beings tried to work in concert. No doubt the rifts would become apparent the longer she stayed. But at least for tonight, it seemed easy enough to admire the beautiful façade.