“Inspector Daly,” he announced, “once again we are victims of circumstance. It’s rarely a good morning when our paths cross.”
The driver was the solicitor Malachy O’Hare, a big shot in the local legal field.
“What are you doing here?” asked Daly.
“Curiosity. I wanted to see where Joseph had holed himself up.” The solicitor’s voice, musical and rich, was more accustomed these days to buying rounds of drinks than saving the hides of criminals. He also appeared to be out of touch with police procedure.
“This is a crime scene, Mr. O’Hare.” Daly pointed to the yellow tape. “That’s as far as you can go.”
“One of your officers called me this morning. Joseph was an ex-employee, a legal clerk who worked forty years for the firm.” O’Hare’s eyes were playful and engaging. “We suspect he may have had some belongings of ours.” His tone was light but insistent.
“Well, that’s exactly the kind of information I’m interested in,” said Daly with a sudden professional smile. “What kind of belongings?”
“Oh, just a few folders belonging to some old cases. Nothing legally active, but we have the confidentiality of our clients to worry about.”
“Follow me,” said Daly. “While we’re walking you can tell me what you remember about Mr. Devine.”
“What can I say apart from the fact that he was a good legal clerk? He never revealed much about his private life.”
“But you believe he removed some important files.”
O’Hare wiped his expensive-looking shoes on the threadbare doormat before entering the cottage. “Let’s say some concerns had been raised.”
Even in the gloom of the cottage, Daly could see a distracted look cloud the solicitor’s eyes. He waited patiently, hoping the rhythm of their exchange would reveal why the solicitor had taken the unusual step of rushing to a crime scene.
O’Hare frowned and surveyed the collection of duck decoys. He raised an eyebrow at them as though they were a jury hovering on a verdict.
“It’s extraordinary what a colleague can conceal over the years. I never knew he had an interest in ducks. Perhaps he did have an obsessive streak. It’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, but I always thought he was a dull, venal man.”
“We’re not here to judge his personality,” replied Daly.
O’Hare glanced up at the detective, scanning his face, looking for what might be hidden between his words.
“Devine was employed as a paralegal almost as long as I’ve been a solicitor,” he continued, with the unhurried meticulousness of a prosecutor laying out the case against the accused. “And believe me, he was a dull man. Those decoys haven’t budged a muscle since we came in, but there was more life in any one of them than in that man, God rest his soul. I’d have rather shaved my head than get caught in a conversation with him. He was like a true bogeyman about the office. But then a tedious nature is probably a strength in the legal profession. No one with an aversion to boredom ever survived working in law.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted him killed? A disgruntled client, perhaps.”
“Our firm is almost exclusively concerned with the ordinary affairs of humanity: contracts, conveyance, leaving a will…. I can’t see a client getting sufficiently enraged to kill Joseph. Though there was an occasion when he served a writ at a funeral. The coffin containing the man’s father was being lowered when Joseph handed him the papers. I don’t think he was aware of the emotional ramifications. But that was a long time ago, back in the ’70s. Apart from that, I can’t think of any reason that would drive someone to kill him.”
O’Hare gave in to his curiosity and lifted one of the decoys.
“We should get an expert in to value these,” he said, but he was no longer looking at the ducks. Instead, his eyes roved hungrily around the room.
“Perhaps I should send a man ’round for a few hours to go through Joseph’s belongings. Some of these decoys are antiques and collector’s items. His estate needs drawn up. You can lock our man in; even search him when he comes out. Just an hour or two is all he’ll need to document anything of value.”
“And have him rummage through possible evidence? You should know better than to suggest that.”
“Yes, yes, of course, you’re right.”
O’Hare glanced again at Daly and took measure of the solid air of suspicion that was forming between them. He tried to change tack.
“Have you formally identified the body as Joseph’s?” He leaned toward Daly, groping for a more cordial footing to their conversation.
“If not, then you’re trespassing in the home of a missing man, and we have two crimes to solve instead of one. You think it was impossible that he was killed in such a way?”
“It does strike me as strange.”
“What I find strange is that when a police officer calls you this morning you drop everything and hightail it out here. That’s strange. Devine was a minor staff member who left your office a good while ago.”
“Oh dear,” sighed O’Hare. “Everything about this setup—the surroundings, the decrepit state of the place—strikes me as highly unusual. I can’t imagine why he came here in the first place.”
“Anyone who moves to a place like this is trying to escape something. Traffic jams, the rat race, boredom, the past,” suggested Daly. “It wasn’t just for the long rainy afternoons and the occasional sunset.”
O’Hare’s face turned grave. “I fear we are in for a few unpleasant surprises. You must tell me if any sensitive documents turn up. This could be very bad for the firm’s reputation.” A crude grimace distorted his mouth, and he whispered, almost to himself, “the past is an overflowing shit-pot of trouble and Devine has stirred it all up with a big stick.”
“This man’s murder is the only unpleasant surprise I care about. We’ll be working hard to catch his killers. If anything comes up, we’ll let you know.”
O’Hare took a final anxious glance about the living room. Devine’s death had tightened a coil of fear around him. His nervousness reminded Daly that, as a solicitor working during the Troubles, O’Hare had probably carried a gun in self-defense. They were violent times, and solicitors were the least likely group of people to attract new friends.
“You don’t look well,” said Daly.
O’Hare kneaded his arm. “High blood pressure. The doctor says I should spend more time on the golf course. If it wasn’t for Devine ringing me on Thursday I’d be there now.”
“That would explain your anxiety,” said Daly. “What did he ring you for?”
“It was a strange conversation.” O’Hare’s face was pale and grim as he spoke. “He said he wanted to talk, but not on the phone. When I asked where, all he said was ‘You’ll see.’ He said he wanted some information about an old case. He also admitted to removing some important files. But he wouldn’t be drawn any further. I tried to chat to him about general things, the weather, his health, where he was living. He told me he had found a wonderful location on the lough. ‘A good place to die,’ were his words. I began to suspect his mind was losing its footing.”
Just then, a shout from Irwin drew their attention outside. Some of the officers had found the remains of a fire at the bottom of the garden. The solicitor followed Daly out.
Amid the fine gray ashes was a box of partially burnt papers. O’Hare recognized the box and began beaming like the sun. His self-confidence returned and he reached for the charred files with a sense of triumph.
“Hang on. Nothing can be removed from the fire,” warned Daly. “Not even by our officers. We have to follow our procedures.”
“Why?”
“There’s building waste among the ashes. We can’t rule out that it’s asbestos. The burnt fibers are harmful if released in the air. No one can touch the ashes until a team with protective gear arrives. And at this moment I have no idea how long that will take.”
“These files might be a ticking time bomb, who knows what confidential information they might contain,” said O’Hare, his voice rising.
“Lung cancer is a horrible disease. I’ve never seen anyone die of it myself, but I hear the sufferer finally drowns in a froth of blood and phlegm.”
O’Hare raised a voluminous handkerchief from his pocket and placed it over his mouth. For a moment, he and the detective stared at the ticking time bomb. A look of frustration burned within the solicitor’s eyes before his charming equilibrium restored itself.
“Very well, Inspector. Thank you for your assistance. I would like to be notified when the contents of the fire are examined. Those files are still the property of the firm.”
When O’Hare had left, Daly returned to the fire. The solicitor’s instinct for survival had proved a solid enough foundation on which to base a minor deception, he thought to himself as he sifted through the ashes and retrieved the file. One misled solicitor would hardly upset the scales of justice.
O
liver Jordan. The name still meant nothing to Celcius Daly, but it was the only one he could decipher as he scanned the scorched legal notes. It was written several times in a pedantic hand so minute as to be practically illegible, added almost as a footnote to what appeared to be police custody notes. It was the same name inscribed on one of the crosses in Hughes’s makeshift cemetery. The only other detail that jumped out at him was the date of the notes, taken between August and November 1989.
He decided the file would have to wait for a more detailed examination. It was early afternoon, and he was late for a meeting with a local politician. He placed the papers into an evidence bag along with Devine’s pager and tossed them onto his passenger seat. He told Irwin he was leaving and drove back to the station.
He had yet to drink his first coffee of the day, and he craved its cerebral buzz. Concerned that he might nod off to sleep, he rolled the window down a chink. The drip-drop of birdsong from the tree-lined shore threaded into the car. The forest was alive with the bubbling sounds of blackbirds and thrushes.
Daly was on his way to meet Owen Sweeney, a Republican politician. He had known Owen as a boy, given him lifts to school on the back of his bike while he did his morning paper round, in fact, but their paths had diverged many years ago. Sweeney had rung him in a fury over the helicopter search for David Hughes. The helicopter was equipped with a PA loud-hailer system. At one point, on Sunday afternoon, it had hovered over a crowd returning from a GAA match, requesting them to assist in the search for the missing man. A panic had ensued because the football fans thought a dangerous maniac was on the loose. Sweeney claimed the helicopter pilot had targeted the fans on purpose, to harass them on their way home.
The press will have a field day on this one, he had warned Daly. The detective imagined the headline:
ALZHEIMER’S PATIENT IN PAJAMAS AND SLIPPERS TERRORIZES GANG OF FOOTBALL FANS
. Daly loathed the melodrama and political blackmail that accompanied community liaison work in post-cease-fire Northern Ireland.
At a bridge, he passed a mud-spattered transit van, which appeared to have broken down. He slowed and observed the driver—a skinny, pasty-faced youth standing at the side of the vehicle with a mobile phone pressed to his ear.
The van had a flat tire, and even though he was in a hurry, Daly braked and pulled up with his warning lights flashing. He had a feeling that something else was wrong.
As soon as the youth saw Daly, he sprinted off, disappearing up a lane overgrown with brambles and bushes. The back door of the abandoned van lay open. Approaching it, Daly sniffed the heady, acrid bouquet of diesel. He peered inside at its illicit cargo: a double row of fuel containers, half covered in oily blankets. He had happened upon a botched fuel smuggling run.
Daly had been involved in a few deadly games of high-speed cat-and-mouse with such vehicles as they flashed down the M1 motorway and disappeared up country lanes. The drivers were always young men who ten years ago would have happily toiled on a tractor all day in a muddy field. Now they could earn thousands of pounds for the dash from the border to the ferries at Larne, or to loyalist paramilitary gangs in Belfast. Smuggling, as old as the border itself, was breaking a range of political boundaries. Agricultural diesel, originally from the Irish Republic, was smuggled across the border by former IRA men, treated in secret sheds, and then driven to loyalist heartlands in the city. For sworn enemies pounds had become more important than politics or the pope. There was no religion on a ten-pound note, after all.
But it wasn’t just illegal. It was highly dangerous. The back of a van was an unsafe place to store thousands of liters of combustible fuel. Daly felt the bonnet of the vehicle to see if it was still warm. The engine was cold. As a makeshift fuel tanker, the van was a ticking bomb.
His eyes caught the flash of the youth’s tracksuit, slowing down as he found cover amid the shrubbery. Afterward Daly realized this was the point when he should have let the youth escape and radio in for help. He had a van full of evidence, and an important meeting to get to. Instead, he took off in pursuit. Not out of fearlessness but because the person who was running away from him was still only a flash of tracksuit, a shadow flying away, a page torn from a book he had yet to read.
About a hundred yards up the lane the youth stopped, apparently convinced the middle-aged passerby would not give chase. When Daly saw him at the end of a tunnel of leaves, his face was as expressionless as a sheet of ice. The only thing that moved was the vapor of his breath trailing into the shadows. Then the boy darted off again, his gait quicker, more fluid, his body weaving around sprawling shrubs, jumping over crumbling walls, disappearing into whorls of leafy shadow. Daly lumbered behind, crashing through the outstretched branches.
The lane ran roughly parallel to the main road and a gleaming line of new bungalows. It burrowed through overarching thorn trees and alders, twisting by the oddly angled walls of dilapidated cottages and outhouses. Nobody knocked down buildings in this part of the country. They just built bigger ones, deposing the previous generation’s homes to overgrown lanes such as these. The Armagh countryside was becoming a maze of dark, forgotten little lanes, as dark and crooked as the past.