His panic widened in concentric circles from the crashed jeep, spreading outward as he searched for a sign of the old man’s body, in the ditch, along the roadside, in the field, until he was scanning the near horizon in all directions.
W
hen his mobile rang, Daly was trying to find some peace and quiet by digging up the potato patch in his father’s front garden. His spade hauled up stones and the previous year’s rotten tubers. After stooping for an hour or so he straightened his back and thought of having a lie-down. Not for him, his father’s epic daylong efforts with a spade. He fumbled to find his phone. He checked the screen but it was smeared with clay.
“Hello.”
“You said you would help me,” said the voice. “Does the offer still stand?”
“I never go back on my word,” said Daly, recognizing Dermot’s voice.
“I can’t talk for long. My battery is going to run out. Do you have a pen and paper?”
Daly hurried back into the house. “I’m writing this down as we speak.”
“I crashed the jeep at Maghery corner. I can’t remember what happened but when I came to, David was gone. He must have wandered off.”
“What do you want me to do?” asked Daly, playing for time to think.
“Organize a search party or something. He can’t have got far. There’s a man called Grimes. He’s tried to kill us already. I had to rescue David from Sweeney’s house. Before it went up in flames.”
“Hold on a minute,” said Daly, trying to conceal the concern in his voice. “There’s a lot of things need sorting out. First, you might be injured from the crash. It’s my duty to bring you to hospital and inform your mother.”
“I have to find Grimes first.”
“This man sounds dangerous. You need help.”
“And where would that come from? Special Branch? The PSNI?”
“You can’t do this by yourself.”
“I’ve already found my father’s grave. Something you people have been trying to do for the last fifteen years. At least Grimes is aboveground. I have to hang up now. I want to save the battery.”
“Wait,” said Daly. “You haven’t given me a proper description of Grimes. I want to launch a manhunt for him. Plus it’s getting dark. Where will you sleep tonight?”
There was pause at the other end of the phone. Daly pressed on. “I’ll be at Maghery as soon as I can. Twenty minutes.”
“OK. Thanks.”
“You don’t need to thank me. I’m just doing my job. Anyway, you and I need to talk. I want to know if you’re hiding any other secrets from me.”
When Dermot climbed into Daly’s car there was a remote fugitive’s smile on his face. He turned to face the windscreen, revealing a jagged cut above his ear, fragments of glass and congealed blood matting his hair. The blood ran down the side of his ear and stained his T-shirt.
“That needs looking at,” said Daly. “And your mother’s going to ask questions when she sees that T-shirt in the laundry. But that’s the least of your worries right now.”
Dermot touched his wound gingerly. “You could call it Sweeney’s revenge.”
“Sweeney is dead.”
“I know. He was dead when we escaped the fire.”
Dermot looked away as shadows swung over the recesses of his face, his features too gaunt for an eighteen-year-old. Daly felt the acid rise in his stomach and wondered to himself if his passenger had brought more dangerous excitement than he could handle on his own on a Saturday evening.
“What the hell’s been going on? I never thought it possible that a schoolboy could cause so much aggravation. Special Branch is trying to finger you for Sweeney’s murder.”
“Is this an interrogation?”
Daly held his impatience. “I’m not trying to incriminate you. But it’s clear a lot has been going on that I know nothing about.”
A spasm contorted the boy’s face. “Why should I trust you?”
Daly glowered at him and sighed in exasperation. “Don’t you see? We’re both too deep in this to hold back any secrets. For Christ’s sake, I’m breaking the law right now to save your skin. That jeep is a stolen vehicle. Right now, I’m aiding your escape from the scene of an unreported accident. Not only that, but you’re also wanted in connection with arson and possible kidnap charges. I would think it’s clear I’m the only friend you have right now, apart from a seventy-six-year-old man with Alzheimer’s, and he’s just run off on you.”
Dermot shot him a look of sullen fright. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“No doubt. But I need you to answer my questions truthfully.”
“What do you want to know?”
“You could start by telling me what happened at Sweeney’s house.”
Dermot threw a cigarette lighter onto the dashboard. “I set it alight. There’s your evidence. Now arrest me.”
Daly shook his head in annoyance. Driving a suspected arsonist to a place of safety was hardly normal procedure for a police detective.
“Let me assure you that if this was a proper investigation you’d be in handcuffs right now and on your way to a prison cell,” he said.
A tight-lipped smile formed on Dermot’s lips. He lifted the lighter and put it back in his pocket.
“I risked my life going back in to rescue Hughes,” he told Daly. “We were at Sweeney’s house, digging for information. Sweeney said he would introduce us to someone who could help. Then this man called Grimes arrived. He spoke with an English accent, and he was angry. He accused Sweeney of not following his instructions. I knew he wasn’t to be trusted.”
“An English accent?” remarked Daly. “Then he definitely wasn’t to be trusted.”
Dermot paused, wondering if Daly was being prejudiced or ironic.
“I managed to escape but realized I had to save David. They were holding him captive. The only thing I’m good at is lighting fires. I needed a diversion and there was fuel in Sweeney’s garage. There was nothing else I could do. I’m not the SAS.”
“So you set the place alight and managed to get Hughes out?”
“Yes. When I went back in, the fire had taken hold. David was tied to a gas cylinder. Sweeney was sitting in a chair, shot in the forehead. Hughes told me that Grimes hadn’t wanted them to burn to death. He’d just wanted their guts blown sky high.”
Dermot paused. “Fortunately I got in with my act of arson before Grimes could blow the place up.”
“Why was Sweeney shot?”
“Grimes is trying to tie up all the loose ends from Dad’s murder. That’s why Hughes is still in danger.”
They drove on in silence for a while.
“Grimes is one of your guys, isn’t he?” said Dermot. “He’s working for Special Branch.”
“Let’s not try to jump to any conclusions just yet,” replied Daly.
“It’s the only explanation that fits.”
“Somehow I don’t buy it. Not yet, anyway. I need more proof that Special Branch is prepared to kill Hughes. Or wanted Sweeney dead.”
“Sounds like you don’t know Special Branch very well.”
“I can’t see Special Branch killing its own people.” Daly was resolute in rejecting the theory.
“The only person I know who has a motive for killing Sweeney is you, Dermot.” Daly looked at him.
The boy was silent.
“Here’s my theory for you,” continued Daly. “This Englishman called Grimes doesn’t exist. Just like the men who were supposed to have burnt your house down on Woodlawn Crescent don’t exist. Neither your nor Hughes’s lives were ever in danger. You set fire to Sweeney’s house to kill the two remaining people who had a hand in your father’s murder.”
“Exactly,” said Dermot. “That’s what they want you to think.”
“What proof could you give a court of law that you’re telling me the truth?”
“Hughes will back me up. That’s why we need to find him. Why else would I have contacted you?”
When they got back to the cottage, Daly asked Dermot for the cigarette lighter.
“I don’t want you losing vital evidence,” he joked, placing the lighter safely in his pocket. In truth, he was worried about what might happen if he fell asleep with Dermot as a houseguest. His father’s cottage was insured against fire, but not one started by a boy with a track record of arson. From the hallway, he phoned headquarters to organize a search for Hughes. A helicopter was mobilized to sweep the fields and roads around the scene of the accident while officers were dispatched to carry out house-to-house inquiries. The police officers would have their work cut out for them. The moon had yet to rise and the darkness was dense. Anxious to dispel his sense of hopelessness, he brought the boy into the living room and made coffee.
Over a turf fire, Dermot opened up about his feelings.
“All I ever wanted to know was where my father was buried,” he told Daly. “I didn’t care about his killers or what happened to them. As long as I never had to meet them. It was a case of out of sight, out of mind. Then I learned from Hughes that Sweeney was involved in Dad’s abduction. The great politician and peace broker. It sickened me to see he was still alive, feeding his rotten soul with the illusion he was a man of peace. I couldn’t forgive him. Now that I knew who he was and where he lived, I wanted to finish him off. It enraged me to think he had profited so much from the Troubles. He should have spent the last thirty years of his life hiding like a leper.”
The turf burned quickly, inflaming their eyes with its sweet smoke. Outside a branch cracked and an owl hooted in the darkness. Dermot crouched by the fire, wanting to give himself up entirely to the comfort of heat.
“But he’s dead now,” he continued. “I thank God it wasn’t me that did it. He wasn’t worth it. I would have slipped to his level, fallen into a hole with him, never to get out again.”
A lump of bog root burst into flames, sending out a shower of sparks. Daly’s head felt light and fuzzy. The blue smoke of the turf was redolent with so many memories.
“My mother was killed in SAS crossfire,” he said. “The day it happened I wanted to go and find her killers. I was fifteen.” He stopped suddenly, regretting the words he had let slip, as if he had betrayed a secret and now wanted to recover it. Dermot’s anger had ignited an adolescent rage within him.
He had let that anger go, as he had let everything else go. Never putting up a fight for anything. All he had wanted to do was look after himself, no one else. In the same way, he had let his wife go. Work had just been an excuse, a means of avoiding getting too close to anyone. He had walked alone all his life, like an escaped convict, shackled to his fear. Cramped up by the dread of losing another loved one.
The fire burned down to its embers. Daly went out for a fresh load of turf. The darkness was filled with the sound of the wind howling through trees. He felt the wild air of the lough blow through him. He was surrounded by memories, the wind puncturing holes in the darkness through which ghosts could stream.
“Tell me about David Hughes,” he asked on his return.
A grim expression appeared on Dermot’s face. “What is there you don’t already know? He’s a confused old man carrying a load of terrible memories. Like a boat that can’t find a safe harbor. He’s plagued by ghosts and visions from his past.”
“Some of his ghosts are substantial enough, whatever you might think. I ran into a few of them myself.”
Daly described his suspicions that Devine had dressed up as the ghosts that appeared around Hughes’s cottage.
“Why would he do a thing like that? That’s sick.”
“He wanted Hughes to talk about the past. A bit like what you were doing in the nursing home. Call it reminiscence therapy with a supernatural twist.”
“Why didn’t he just ask him straight-out?”
“And have Special Branch alerted? Devine knew that however Hughes might try to explain their secret meetings along the hedge, the whole thing would always sound unreal, ghostly, even to Hughes himself. Remember, Hughes had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He didn’t believe his own eyes, so how could he persuade anyone else?” Daly threw some more turf onto the fire. “Hughes had once been the spymaster, but now Devine was pulling the strings. This time it was the informer who was extracting the information from the spymaster.”
“Was there a pattern to his visits?” asked Dermot.
“What do you mean?”
“Did they occur at a particular time of the day or week?”
“I don’t think so. According to Hughes’s journal, the ghosts came anytime they pleased.”
“He told me he could always sense when they were due.”
Daly took out the journal and they examined the entries. There were no obvious clues of the ghostly visits following a timetable or plan. Dermot took the book and began leafing through the pages. He only paid attention to the dates and began writing them down.
“Have you a calendar?” he asked.
Daly retrieved one from the kitchen wall. He gave a low whistle of surprise as Dermot marked down the dates. They corresponded with the nights of the full moon. They sat quietly for a moment, taking in the pattern.
“The last full moon was February fourth,” said Daly.
His finger followed the days until he came to the start of March.
“We need to get going. There’s a full moon tonight. Hughes might be waiting for a rendezvous with his supernatural friends as we speak.”
The wind that blew from the lough was cold, the moonlit sky clear of clouds, the water gleaming silver in the distance. The cottage lay abandoned, and the fields empty of human life. Lurking in the corners of the field were the whitethorn trees, their blossoms pale in the moonlight.
As Daly and the boy skirted the hedgerows around Hughes’s cottage, he had the impression he was approaching the advance posts of a hidden enemy. He hoped to find the old man quickly so they could all return to his house, eat, sleep, and build up their strength before dawn. A new day would give him the chance to clear his head and put everything right. Perhaps he would take the cowardly approach and lay the entire case at Inspector Fealty’s feet. Absolve himself of any responsibility for what happened after Dermot and the old man had been found.
In the moonlight, he could see the figure of a man sitting on a stone. He had his chin propped on a stick and was gazing out at the lough. Daly called to him, but the person did not hear. He went up close and saw that it was Hughes. He looked up at Daly and shook his head.