The Lake (6 page)

‘You’ll have a pint, sir?’ he sighed.

‘Oh, well if you are offering, that would be most agreeable, thank you sir.’ Doctor’s eyes stayed shut, even as he spoke.

Frank gestured at Peggy and looked back at his new drinking companion. He noticed the man’s grimy fingernails. ‘So you were the village GP?’ he asked, his disbelief audible.

‘Not at all,’ Peggy almost laughed, earning herself a sudden glare from the dark-haired man. ‘Doctor is his name. Or at least, that’s what he is called. He’s certainly not a doctor. And,’ she looked at the man, who was swaying slightly where he stood between Coleman and Frank, ‘he should not be taking pints from visitors to the place. Unless he really is in a position to help the Sergeant. Are you, Doc? Have you something to add to the investigation? Can you assist Frank with his enquiries?’

Frank gazed at Peggy as she scolded the old man next to him. He liked that she was willing to jump to his assistance. Not that he needed her to. He could handle two old drunks by himself, no problem. But she was so … feisty. He liked that. And she’d called him Frank. He liked that too.

‘Now, young wan.’ Coleman evidently could see a threat to his evening of free drink, and he was unwilling to let it go easily. ‘Doctor is so named as he is the seventh son of a seventh son. A gifted individual. A special soul. The seventh son of a seventh son is exactly the person you want to help you in your investigation. In any investigation.’

‘Pah.’ Peggy wrenched the tap down; filling the man’s pint glass with none of the care Frank had seen her take with every other drink that evening. ‘Well, use your powers now, Doctor, and tell the Detective what you can. If that’s anything at all. Because this is the last pint he’ll be buying you in this establishment.’

Frank saw her glance at him quickly, her cheeks flushed. He acknowledged her intervention with a quick wink, which seemed to make her blush even more.

‘Doctor worked on the graveyard also, Detective Sergeant.’ Coleman rested an elbow on the counter and looked across his friend at Frank. ‘He drove the hearse back and forth to the new cemetery. Is that not the way it was, Doctor?’

‘It was, it was,’ the man replied. Frank noted his canny ability to reach for his pint, even with his eyes closed.

‘Each remains was afforded a new coffin, and that coffin was lifted into the hearse to be brought up the hill.’

Frank listened to Coleman talk, but he knew now that the body at the lake could not be from the old graveyard. It was in the wrong location, on the wrong side of the valley. And the sacking. Something about the sacking was bothering him, but he couldn’t think what. It was as if he recognized the material from somewhere, but his mind wouldn’t let him remember.

‘What’s the lake called?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’ Peggy seemed to work continuously behind the bar as she spoke. She reminded Frank of a dancer, graceful and assured, as she never ceased wiping surfaces, rinsing glasses and tidying them away.

‘Well, there’s no name given to it on the map. It just says Crumm Reservoir.’

‘Yeah,’ Peggy said. ‘That’s its official name, I think.’

‘There was no name given to it,’ Coleman growled. ‘Those Dublin boys thought they would graciously allow the local people to name it, but as you might imagine, no one that was left behind had much of a stomach for the job. So it was never officially named.’

‘The anglers call it Glanaphuca Lake,’ Peggy said. ‘That’s what you see on their posters and whatnot. But I think they just made that up. It sounds more inviting than Crumm Reservoir when they’re advertising their competitions, I suppose.’

‘Glanaphuca,’ Frank said.

‘I know,’ Peggy smiled. ‘Valley of the ghosts. Not the most beguiling name they could have come up with.’

But certainly appropriate in light of current events, Frank thought. ‘Is there any chance you might recall whether any person went missing in the locality over the years, Coleman?’ Frank leaned across Doctor, ignoring him. He was fairly sure that even if the man had any information, his current condition meant it would be unreliable, at best.

Coleman furrowed his brow and stared off over the bar. ‘No, no. Can you recall, Doctor?’ He turned to his friend briefly, and then proceeded to ignore him himself. ‘No, no. No missing persons that I recall. Do you mean in the last few years, sir?’

Frank paused. He had his own ideas about the vintage of the find, but until the pathologist saw it, he didn’t like to make assumptions. ‘Possibly. Possibly from before the flooding of the valley.’

Coleman rubbed his whiskers on his chin. ‘Well, a lot of people moved on. Moved out. It’s possible someone was thought to have left around that time, where in actual fact they were buried on the shoreline.’ He pushed another cigarette out of the box and put it unlit into his mouth. ‘So you suspect some treachery, Detective Sergeant?’

Frank leaned back on his stool. ‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘Until the Doctor … the State Pathologist … ’ he added quickly, ‘until Dr. McKenna sees the body, it will be impossible to say how she died.’

‘Ah.’ Coleman seemed to give up on waiting for someone to strike a match for him, and he picked up the matchbox himself and shook it. ‘So it is the body of a woman, sir?’

Frank drained his pint. ‘We can’t say for certain yet,’ he said quietly. He glanced around the room, but could see no sign of Peggy. It was time for him to leave. He didn’t think Coleman could enlighten him any further. Not at this stage in the evening. He’d wait to see what the pathologist had to say in the morning. If necessary, he could look at interviewing people after that. He stood down from his stool. He knew he was stalling to see Peggy again, to say thank you, or goodbye, or something. There was still no sign of her. He noticed a line of rusty metal objects nailed to a beam in the ceiling, just above where he had been sitting. They looked like tools. Farm tools and blades. Two large serving ladles hung further along.

‘Treasures from the lake.’

Frank started as Peggy suddenly appeared beside him, carrying a tray of glasses of various sizes, all with a white foamy residue inside. She set it down on the counter and looked up at the line of metal objects.

‘Every so often, something washes up on the shoreline. A kitchen utensil from one of the houses. Part of some farm machinery. There’s even part of a loom there.’ She pointed up at a flat metal bar, punctured at both ends with small holes. ‘The fishermen bring them in sometimes. We hang them there. Out of … ’ she pushed her hair back from her face, ‘out of respect, I suppose.’

Frank noticed she was blushing again, as she walked around the counter and began to rinse the glasses.

‘They’re like little reminders of what happened here.’ She stopped for a moment. ‘Like little whispers from the past. You never know what the lake is going to reveal.’

They stood looking at each other for a moment. Then suddenly, the door behind Peggy opened and Carla walked through from the house. Frank noticed her face was scrubbed clean and her hair was tied back from her face in a severe ponytail.

‘Detective. You’re still here.’ She took a beer bottle from the shelf and opened it in one fluid movement.

‘I’m just leaving, actually.’ Frank looked at Peggy. ‘Thank you for your hospitality. It’s likely I’ll be back in the morning with Garda O’Dowd. We might have a few questions for you. Or your brother, if he’s around.’

‘You’ll be lucky,’ Carla said from behind her sister, and she swigged from the neck of the bottle. Frank tried to ignore her.

‘Nothing serious. We’ll be asking the same questions of all the business people in the area. Nothing to worry about.’

‘Of course, Detective, of course. I’ll be here all day. Jerome should be in around lunchtime. We will be serving lunch. From noon. Just … just if it suited you, of course.’

Frank smiled at her. ‘Thank you, Peggy.’

Carla snorted into her bottle.

‘Ms. Casey,’ Frank said to her, and turned to leave. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said in the direction of the two men at the bar, and walked halfway across the room before stopping. He turned back around and addressed Coleman, who didn’t lift his head from his pint. ‘You’ll be around tomorrow, Coleman?’

‘I will,’ Coleman said into his glass. ‘Sure amn’t I always around?’

‘You might walk with me to the lake in the morning? You may perhaps be able to cast some light on the situation? Or at least give me your own take on the matter. You having all the local knowledge, and such.’

Coleman turned stiffly on his seat. ‘I will, of course, assist An Garda Síochána in whatever way the Detective feels I might be in a position to.’

Frank nodded. Something was still bugging him, and he couldn’t think what it was. And that was bothering him even more. Something someone had said earlier. He lifted his hand in recognition of Enda O’Shea who, seeing him leave, had raised his pint to him, and he walked past the yellowing photographs of grinning men holding dead fish, and out of The Angler’s Rest.

He was glad to get out into the cool night air. He needed to think. He sat in his car for a moment, looking up at the front of the pub, with its whitewashed walls and glass lanterns hanging either side of the wooden front door. He thought of the two women inside. Crumm was not the place for a woman like Peggy. She was so much more than Crumm. He could see what a great job she was doing with the family business, but even so, it must be a lonely existence for her. And she seemed to him like the kind of girl who was meant for bigger things. Better things. But then, who was he to say? Maybe running her family business was what Peggy wanted from life. He knew plenty of girls who had never left his own village in Galway. Maybe everything Peggy wanted was here in Crumm.

Frank turned the key in the ignition and put the Capri into reverse. His thoughts turned to the body at the lake. He’d go down there now. Check on Garda O’Dowd and the young O’Malley lad. Maybe he should have moved the body today, but something had told him to wait. There could be clues to the mystery in the mud on the shoreline, and he was loath to disturb it. Better to let the doctor examine the lot before removing her. The Doctor. Frank shook his head, thinking of the other dirty, unkempt man holding up the bar in Casey’s. There really is one in every village, he thought, as he drove off through the darkness in the direction of the lake.

‘Goodnight, lads. Goodnight.’ Peggy pushed the old door closed behind the last few customers to leave. There were always the same few left till the end, nursing the dregs of their pints, the same few who apparently would rather sit in an empty bar well past midnight than meet with whatever waited for them at home. Belligerent wives in some cases, Peggy knew. But in others, there was only the quiet of the four walls waiting, and for those, mostly older men, Peggy understood the dread her calling time brought on. Still, it had to be done. She could hear them standing, talking, outside the door as she heaved her shoulder against it, pushing a worn brass bolt across at the same time. She stood back and kicked at another bolt closer to the floor. Walking back through the bar, she collected the last few empty glasses and brought them to the counter. Maura could do them in the morning. She still had the whole kitchen to clean, and she was tired. She rattled a window lock, and took one last look around the place before flicking the light switch on the wall.

She hoped Carla had gone to bed. She didn’t know what to say to her. As it happened, it was Carla’s back she saw on entering the old kitchen, as she stood near the sink rubbing something with a tea towel. She seemed not to hear Peggy as she came in. Peggy looked round the room. All evidence of the stew and the accompanying mess had miraculously disappeared.

‘You cleaned up!’ She realized a second too late that her tone would not be well received.

‘It’s not like I’ve never cleaned this kitchen before,’ Carla spun around, jolted from her reverie, her eyes glaring. She might have noticed the exhaustion in her sister’s eyes, or been startled by the pallor of her usually ruddy cheeks, but Carla seemed to pause, before setting the plate she was drying down on the worktop with a sigh. ‘Want a mug of tea?’

Peggy sensed the olive branch being offered and she took it.

‘Yes. I would love a mug of tea.’ She pulled a heavy wooden chair from beneath the large kitchen table that dominated the room, and sat down. It was only when she took the weight off her feet that she realized how exhausted she was.

Carla busied herself at the range. ‘I was going to have a sandwich. I haven’t eaten all evening. Do you want one?’

Even if Peggy hadn’t been hungry, she wouldn’t have turned her sister down. Carla rarely went out of her way for anyone, least of all Peggy. And a sandwich meant her time and company, possibly even her conversation. ‘That would be great,’ she said and watched as her sister put ham and tomato on slices of white, buttered bread. Carla put the teapot and the food on the table and sat down opposite Peggy. They ate in silence for a moment, the ticking of the clock and the odd creaking from the old Aga the only other noises in the room.

‘So Jerome will be back in the morning?’ Carla said, at last.

‘Lunchtime,’ Peggy said, her mouth full.

‘Hmm.’ Carla was disapproving. ‘He shouldn’t leave you here on your own so much.’

‘You were here.’

‘Yeah, today. But how long is he gone?’

Peggy didn’t want to get into this. ‘Wednesday,’ she said, hoping the confession would get lost in her mug of tea.

‘Since Wednesday?’ Carla’s eyes were wide. Peggy noticed that the heavy eye- liner she was never seen without in public seemed to have been washed away.

Carla looked as if she wanted to say more, but had thought the better of it. She swallowed a mouthful of tea instead. ‘He shouldn’t leave you like that,’ she muttered.

Peggy waited, unsure what to say. She worried about Jerome too. She wanted to talk to someone about him. But Carla could be so critical. And she could do without her brother and sister spending the weekend at each other’s throats.

‘He can’t go on like this,’ Carla seemed to be talking to herself now. ‘I don’t care what he … ’ she stopped suddenly, and looked up at Peggy across the table.

‘He’s getting the television,’ Peggy blurted.

Carla looked unimpressed at this piece of information, but then she leaned back in her chair and sighed. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ Peggy was acutely aware that her enthusiasm was not shared by her sister, but there was little unusual in that. ‘I think it’ll help. You know, there are plenty in the village with no television themselves. They’ll all come in to watch the big things. It’ll pay for itself, I know it will.’

Carla stared over at her sister, scorn contorting her face. ‘What big things?’

‘You know,’ Peggy played with the handle of her mug. ‘When there’s a big news story. Like Dev’s funeral. They were all crowded into Bridie Hennessy’s for that. Or … or the big matches.’ She looked up at Carla, vindicated. ‘If we had a television this Sunday, we could show the All-Ireland. Can you imagine the crowd in for that?’ Peggy’s eyes glazed over as she pictured Casey’s crammed with punters in to see the match, some standing outside looking in the windows for lack of space. She’d have to hire one of the local lads to help her behind the bar; the place would be so busy. They could have sandwiches made; ready to sell at half-time, or perhaps after the match concluded. She pictured it all, and glowed with satisfaction as she sat in the quiet kitchen. Then she realized that Detective Sergeant Frank Ryan was in her daydream too, sitting at the bar, shouting at the imaginary television, cheering the Dubs on. She shook herself from her fantasy. What was she doing? Frank wouldn’t be there. Even if by some miracle Jerome did bring the television back with him tomorrow, Frank wouldn’t be here on Sunday. She glanced up at Carla, almost expecting her to have read her mind and be ready with another taunt, but Carla seemed to be lost in her own thoughts. Peggy summoned all the courage within, and attempted to transform it into words in her mouth. There was so much she wanted to talk to Carla about. What exactly was going on? Why was Tom Devereaux calling her on Friday night, drunk? Tom Devereaux, her boss? Tom Devereaux, a married man? She willed Carla to look up, to see the questions in her eyes so that she wouldn’t have to articulate them. But Carla’s gaze didn’t move from the mug in front of her.

‘So,’ Peggy said.

Carla looked at her hard. ‘So?’

Peggy opened her mouth but closed it again. ‘The body thing’s weird, isn’t it?’ she said, at last.

Carla looked back down at her mug, and Peggy exhaled heavily.

‘Yeah. I suppose it is.’ Carla picked at a piece of nail varnish that was flaking off her thumbnail. ‘I wonder who it is. Was.’

‘Could be an IRA thing,’ Peggy said. She was glad to have some neutral topic of conversation to discuss with her sister, even if it was a dead body. ‘Maybe it’s a Loyalist. Or a snitch. They’ve killed people like that before, and buried their bodies.’

‘Ah Peggy. Don’t be daft.’

Peggy shrugged her shoulders. It was well known that the hills around Ballyknock and Crumm had been notorious during the civil war, littered with safe- houses, and scenes of infamous skirmishes between the Staters and the Republicans.

‘Maybe it’s older?’ she said. ‘From the twenties?’

‘Huh.’ Carla stood suddenly, the scraping of her chair legs on the tiled floor shattering the calm of the room. ‘It’s probably just some fool that refused to move when they flooded the valley.’ She brought her plate over to the sink. ‘Some stubborn eejit that sat in her house as the water rose around her ankles until she had no choice but to go under with the rest of it.’ She stood at the door leading to the rest of the house and pulled her cardigan tightly around herself. ‘Or some idiot, like Coleman Quirke, who thought that a moonlit walk over the bridge after ten pints was a great idea.’

The gentle banter was evidently over. Peggy just sipped her tea and let her sister rant and bluster.

‘There’ll be no great story. It’ll be no one famous or important. And your Detective Sergeant will go back to Dublin, and you’ll never hear from him again, Peg. So don’t get your hopes up. Right?’

Peggy tried her utmost to keep all expression from her face. ‘Right,’ she said.

Carla paused a moment, and for a second, Peggy thought she was considering sitting down again. But then her sister yanked the door handle and turned on her heel. ‘Goodnight, so,’ she said as she disappeared into the house.

Peggy sat unmoving for a moment. She had read in one of her magazines that it was good practice to breathe slowly and count silently to ten when you wanted to stop yourself from screaming and punching someone. She almost had to marvel at how Carla could, without a word having been spoken on the matter, find the fontanel of her thoughts, and stamp up and down on it unabashedly.

Frank. Of course, she had thought him attractive. Any normal girl would. She was fairly convinced that Carla herself had had an appreciation of his presence in The Angler’s Rest that evening. But had she really thought more of it? Maybe Carla had been one step ahead of her subconscious. She seemed to have worked through their attraction, affair, and Peggy’s broken heart before Peggy herself had had the chance to mull over the possibility of it.

Well, maybe Carla was right. This was Crumm, after all. Not the type of place where handsome men from Dublin came to find love. It was Crumm, where nothing ever happened; a village forever anchored to a painful and brutal past, the truth of which seemed to cast a lake-shaped shadow on the people who lived there.

Peggy sat in the quiet kitchen and thought about Coleman. It was rare to get more than a few sentences out of him on any occasion, and she had never heard him tell the story of the evacuation before. She had, of course, been aware of the history of the place; how their pub had once stood more than half a mile from the river water that now lapped less than one hundred feet away. But that is what it had always been. History. Before her time. She had only been a baby when the valley was flooded, and she could remember it no other way. Her own family had not been adversely affected by the dam; indeed, the new lake had brought opportunity and business to her father. But although she had known that some of the older people living in Crumm had once lived in the valley the lake now filled, she had never really stopped to consider what it might have been like for them to pack up their belongings and walk away from their houses and farms, knowing they were soon to be destroyed.

The washed-outs, they had been dubbed: Coleman and his older brother, old Mrs. King, Mr. Murphy out the Ballyknock road; there were very few left, really. But then, who would want to live next to a lake, knowing that your home was at the bottom of it?

Peggy drained her tea. It was ironic, how so many had been forced from the place not a quarter century before, and yet she had somehow managed to get tethered here herself. And while some days Peggy loved being the proprietress of The Angler’s Rest, on others she worried that’s all she would ever be.

She thought about Hugo, and how apparently easily he had set down the reins of the place and walked away into a new life. There was no stopping her doing the same.

She thought about Frank. Sometimes it took an outsider to illuminate the familiar, to show it up for what it was. He reminded her of a boy she had studied with in catering college. They shared the same fair hair. There had been a time when she had entertained the idea of going away with him, to London maybe, or even America. They might have found their own place. Their own story. She hadn’t thought of that boy in months. He’d gone to Boston not long after her father had died, and she had moved back to Crumm to manage the bar. He had sent her a postcard from a very fancy looking establishment called Parker House, where he was working as an assistant manager in housekeeping. It had sounded very grand to her. It had sounded a long way from Crumm.

She stood and brought her empty plate and mug over to the sink. She could smell smoke wafting from her clothes and her hair as she moved. She needed a bath, but she was too tired. And the smoke never went away anyway. Her lasting memory of her father was his warm, comforting smell of beer, and tobacco, and turf fires. That smell never shifted. It became part of you. It had become part of him. And as long as she ran The Angler’s Rest in Crumm, Peggy knew that she would be no different.