Later, as he lay in his bed, the night filled with the sound of crows, hundreds of them, moving out of the trees around his father’s farm, to wherever they spent the spring months. Just as he was about to fall into sleep, he was jerked back into consciousness. The crows had left, and the house was still. He listened for the sound that had awoken him, then realized that the disturbance had come from within.
W
hen Daly left the police station at lunchtime, he found two men loitering by his car. Irwin was leaning against his driver’s-side door chatting to a man in a dark suit as if they were old friends. Their relaxed demeanor put Daly off his guard. He walked straight up to them.
“You want to jump in and go for a ride?” he suggested.
“No,” said Irwin, regarding him with a sardonic smile. “We just want to get inside your head and fix the loose screw in there.”
Daly surveyed the two of them, trying his best to look unimpressed. Irwin with his long, relaxed face and slick grin, and the other man, fair-haired, all business, his face lean and expressionless. Daly recognized him as the man with the razor-blade smile who had orchestrated the search at Devine’s cottage.
He held out his hand to Daly, leaning forward grimly, automatically.
“Inspector Daly. Inspector Fealty, Special Branch.”
Fealty was a different animal altogether from Irwin. He looked like a man who spent time making sure not a hair on his head was out of place. His blue eyes burned into Daly’s.
“What can you tell us about Dermot Jordan?” he asked.
“Nothing,” replied Daly. “Until you tell me why you want to know.”
“Just interested in his movements,” replied Fealty casually. “We’ve placed him on our list of suspects. I would suggest you do as well.”
“Thanks for the tip. Anything else?”
“Just wanted to help, that’s all.” Fealty paused and examined Daly’s face. “After all, you’ve no suspects, no witnesses, no motives, and Devine’s been dead for a fortnight. You’re hardly a credit to the police force.”
Irwin flashed him a look of disgust. “I hear you’re doing a number with Tessa Jordan.”
Daly didn’t answer. Fealty watched him closely. His lips looked too fastidious to join in Irwin’s line of questioning.
“What were you doing at Tessa Jordan’s last night?” asked Irwin.
Daly faltered. Nothing in his life was private anymore.
“For how long has following me been a priority for Special Branch?”
Irwin smirked. “It’s always a pleasure to watch a fellow officer enjoy his work.”
“Is that your brief? To distract me from my purpose and get me to shift my investigation away from Oliver Jordan’s murder?”
Fealty switched the line of questioning. “What was the rationale behind bringing Dermot Jordan along to Mitchell’s house?”
“He was on work experience from school. His mother wanted me to help him as a favor.” Daly’s face grew hot as he realized how lame his explanation sounded.
“We’re well aware of Tessa Jordan’s influence on you and this investigation,” said Irwin.
Fealty snapped in. “Here’s the situation, Daly. Dermot Jordan’s fingerprints were found on a postcard sent by David Hughes. We have his details on record. It appears he’s a very troubled boy. Quite the little fire starter, in fact. When he was thirteen, he set fire to a neighbor’s shed and then his car. The charges were dropped on condition he receive psychiatric counseling.”
The boy really was troubled, thought Daly.
“You don’t look surprised.”
“Of course I am.”
Daly felt the odds had been dramatically increased against him concluding the investigation successfully. They clearly had the advantage on him. He could see it in Irwin’s gloating smile.
“Looks like Tessa Jordan’s dropped you in a right little mess,” he said.
“The thing is, Daly,” said Fealty. “I wish the boy had stuck to lighting fires rather than getting mixed up with Hughes. This is a very dangerous game. And judging by the psychiatrist’s report on Dermot Jordan, he’s not good in a crisis.”
Fealty watched Daly’s reactions. He sighed. “Listen. We need to find Hughes as soon as possible. Otherwise, all hell is going to break loose. Is there anyone else you can think of who knows Hughes and might have an insight into where he might be hiding?”
“Yes,” replied Daly. “But unfortunately he’s dead.”
“Pity. Anyone we knew?”
“You should,” said Daly caustically. “Noel Bingham. He used to work for you.”
The lines around Fealty’s eyes tightened. His voice grew taut. “Of course.”
“Try to see it from Special Branch’s point of view,” interjected Irwin. “If everything Hughes knows gets into the wrong hands, we could have a stack of corpses on our turf.”
“Who, exactly, are we talking about?”
“Don’t play the naïve policeman with us, Daly. You ask too many questions.”
“Well, if it’s answers you want, you’ve come to the wrong place. Questions are what I specialize in.”
“Just get on with being a detective, and stop pretending to be Dermot Jordan’s social worker,” said Fealty. “You’re working for the police force, just the same as us. Don’t forget that.”
T
hey had trekked all morning without coming across a whitethorn tree or any other recognizable landmark. And then the sound of a car approaching made them look up suddenly. In all that time there had not been a human sound in the expanse of mountain bog land apart from their labored breathing.
David Hughes was the slower of the two, walking with head bowed and feet dragging as though he were pulling along the ropes and chains of an invisible harness.
At times his companion felt like they were two sleepwalkers drifting toward the edge of the world. At other times, that they were far out in the silence of a great sea. There had been a gentle wind, and the heather and bog cotton waved serenely under a low sky. However, there was nothing serene about the strip of bog they were searching for. The turmoil of the human world had seen to that.
Dermot gazed anxiously at the road cutting across the bog field. The car was still far off. It was the wind that made it sound close. He relaxed a little and watched the old man struggle to get his breath. The slowness of his progress had helped focus his mind, which had been ruthlessly driven by the desire for revenge. He had adjusted to the slow pulse of the old man’s thinking and was now content to walk side by side with him, matching his earth-heavy footsteps. Strangely, he found the emotions, which had cut so deeply for years, were growing less painful in his company.
“Let’s go back to the road and walk to the other side of the mountain,” suggested Hughes. “The tree might be there.”
“It’s a long hike,” said Dermot. “All the way up there and down again.”
“Well, it’s a long story.”
“Never mind that. You’ve got to tell me more about what happened that day. What other landmarks do you remember?”
“I remember following them for hours as they carried the body. Even back then, it was a grueling journey. They buried him under a thicket of whitethorn trees. It was early spring and the bare branches were brimming with white blossoms. Like stars against the blackness. That’s all I remember.”
A fissure in the bog opened before them, with a pool of black water far below. They tracked west, and the fissure grew into a wide trench filled with sphagnum moss and weeds. A soft drizzle fell on Dermot’s head and shoulders. He could hear water gurgling under the peat beds. He listened to the sound of countless droplets cascading down crevices that in his mind became deep trenches of darkness that threatened to open up before him. As they had opened up for the bodies of the disappeared, the murdered men and women whom the IRA had tried to wipe off the face of the earth.
“There’s only me left,” said Hughes. “The last time I counted there were six of us, but little by little, we’ve been falling away.”
Inwardly, Dermot groaned. The old man was unraveling quicker than he feared. Soon he would lose all sense of orientation. Dermot wished he could force the old man to remember, as one forces a hopeless piece of machinery to keep functioning.
Hughes turned in every direction, taking in the windswept arena.
“Maybe God doesn’t want us to find the tree,” he said. “That’s why he made this damned bog land so big.”
The sound of the approaching car caught their attention again. It had disappeared from view where the road knifed between two embankments of bog. Then it rose toward them on an open stretch, the wheels spitting gravel and clouds of dust.
The driver was going much too fast, thought Dermot. Perhaps the lonely mountain road and featureless horizon made him less conscious of his speed and the need for caution. Instinctively, he hid in a culvert by the road.
When the car drew level to where Hughes was standing it braked suddenly, as if the driver had recognized the old man.
Rolling down the window the driver leaned out and shouted: “Can I give you a lift?”
Dermot ran unnoticed along the culvert. Then, inching his way, he crept along the side of the car and crouched behind the driver’s window. He stopped just out of view of the wing mirror and waited. He was on tenterhooks.
“I’m only going as far as Cappagh,” shouted the driver.
The old man hurried as fast as he could toward the car, his wet trouser bottoms flapping. He bent at the passenger window and blinked, a look of confusion clouding his eyes.
“I’m only going to Cappagh,” said the driver again, a note of impatience creeping into his voice. “Sorry.”
“How far?”
“About three miles.”
“It’s OK. I’m not ready to go yet.”
Hughes’s fingers still gripped the edge of the opened window.
“It looks as if it’s going to rain soon,” said the driver. “You’ll get wet.”
Hughes hunched forward, pushing his face further into the car.
By now, Dermot was fairly sure the car was not part of a trap. Yet he was unable to relax, listening to the two men trade apology and politeness. He could see Hughes’s face, his features fumbling as he tried to grasp what the driver was saying.
“You’ll get wet with no shelter,” said the driver with concern raising his voice.
“I don’t mind the rain. As long as it doesn’t snow.”
Hughes paused again and stared at the driver. The lines of his face deepened as he sifted through memories.
“I remember one year the snow was so high it covered the hedges all over Tyrone.”
The driver began to feel awkward with the old man’s contorted face leaning into the car. However, curiosity kept him asking questions.
“What are you doing up here?”
“I guess you could say I’m in hiding.”
Dermot’s heart shriveled. His worst fear was that the old man would start divulging their secrets.
“In some kind of trouble?” asked the driver with a puzzled smile.
“You could say that. I had to leave my house in the middle of the night. Ever since I haven’t settled anywhere. But it’s been that way my whole life. Not just a few times. My whole life.”
“Everyone should be allowed to enjoy their old age in peace.”
“That’s what I thought.” Hughes sounded pleased to receive a measure of sympathy from the driver. “But they won’t leave me alone.” He cracked a smile. “Where did you say you were going?”
“Just up the road.”
“Cappagh, was it?”
“That’s right.”
“You know this bog well?”
“I pass here every day.”
“Nothing much to see is there?”
“Not when you know it like the back of your hand. I keep an eye out for strangers, though. We get a load of people up here trying to dump rubbish. That’s all they think this place is. A tip to discard what they would rather forget. I thought you were one of them.”
“No. I’m trying to find something I lost. I came here one day and found a whitethorn tree. I think it was a fairy tree. Its branches were all shrunken and pointed in the one direction. A dog came out of nowhere and tried to take a lump out of me. Christ. I had to thump it before it would leave me alone.”
“There’s a fairy thorn like that up at O’Neill’s bog. And that sounds like a dog he once had. If you went anywhere near his strip of turf you had to carry a hell of a stout stick with you.”
Hughes almost jumped into the passenger seat with delight. His reaction bewildered the driver.
“Can you tell me how to get there, to O’Neill’s bog?”
The driver supplied a few directions. Hughes thanked him, but he had already released the clutch and was moving off.
Dermot came up to Hughes, his face grave, after the car had disappeared out of sight.
“You shouldn’t have spoken to that driver. Now he’s suspicious.”
“Nonsense,” said Hughes dismissively. “I can still judge a trustworthy character. That’s always been my way. Anyway, I like talking to strangers. Especially when I’m worried about something. Remember, that’s how we met. That driver was a gentleman.”
The old man was angry, his face crammed with darkness.
“You know, I shot O’Neill’s dog that night, right between his eyes. I saw his bared teeth just in time. I always had the luck to see everything in time. No man or animal has ever caught me unawares.”
Hughes’s profile was like a blind slab of rock. He set off, following the directions to O’Neill’s bog.
The sun’s edge disappeared behind the clouds, and they came across a drift of flowering bog cotton, woolly blobs of new whiteness against the darkening peat. The old man moved in a purposeful mood while Dermot hung back a little, picking his way carefully over the shards of old turf that lay hidden in the grass. Every now and again they paused for breath. Then Hughes would look up and set off at such a fast zigzagging pace that Dermot suspected he was trying to get away, or at least discourage anyone from following him.
The bog on the north side of the mountain turned primeval. They could hear the roar of perpetual streams coursing through rocky gashes. After a further half hour of trekking, the old man came to a sudden halt and raised his arm to signal to Dermot.
“We’re almost there.” His breathing was hard.
They had found the stunted thicket of whitethorn, its twisted branches raising a wild bouquet of blossoms no one wished to accept. Farther along, in a bleak valley where little sunlight fell, they discovered the pit of dead bodies. It was as though even the mountain had turned its back on the horrors it contained. Dermot almost swooned at the stench of death and petrol fumes.