‘I don’t like seeing Caroline being taken advantage of,’ I said.
‘She’s a big girl, Ben. She doesn’t need you to look out for her.’
‘It’s not the way I remember her. Caroline wouldn’t take shit from anyone.’
‘People are different with their partners. Maybe this is her way of grieving. Maybe it’s easier on her not to fight. However she handles her husband, you need to respect it.’
She stood up, then added darkly, ‘And try to keep your feelings for her under control.’
I made it to the hospital before 10 a.m., driving through a rainstorm so heavy that, even on full speed, my windscreen wipers proved ineffective. The remains of Peter Williams were to be released sometime later that day, to be driven to Caroline’s parents’ home, from where he would be waked. I had promised Caroline that I would see her at the hospital.
She and Simon were sitting in the cafe on the second floor when I arrived. Peter’s remains would be delayed for another hour, they’d been told, with the result that they were forced to remain in the hospital together in what seemed an uneasy truce.
I bought a cup of tea and sat with them. Despite having been in Caroline’s company on and off since Saturday, I had not had a chance to speak to her at any real length. Our conversations, prior to Peter’s body being washed up on the beach, had revolved around the efforts being made to find him. We had not spoken about Caroline’s life since leaving Lifford, as if to engage in such a reflective topic would force her to consider also the more recent events and whether the two might be connected. However, with the discovery of his body, I was aware that in addition to the physical post-mortem being conducted, Caroline would be conducting her own private self-examination, fired no doubt by her ex-husband’s accusation the day before that she was, in some way, responsible for her son’s death.
‘Have you been given any word yet?’ I asked when I sat down.
‘Nothing,’ Caroline said. ‘But thanks for coming.’
I waved away the comment. ‘How have you been since?’
She glanced sideways at Simon before answering, ‘Fine.’
‘You’ve asked for blood tests,’ Simon said, his tone heavy with accusation.
‘That’s right. I’ve asked for toxicology tests,’ I said. ‘I want to check whether Peter had taken or been given something in the time prior to his disappearance.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s standard practice, Simon.’
‘Don’t Simon me,’ he snapped. ‘You didn’t ask our permission.’
‘He asked me,’ Caroline said, though that was untrue. I had simply assumed that they would be agreeable to such a test being conducted. Besides, there was no legal requirement for me to ask their permission.
‘That’s right,’ I said, smiling lightly to show Caroline I appreciated her support.
‘There’s no need,’ Simon Williams continued. ‘He was allowed to go off the rails. She couldn’t keep a handle on him, didn’t discipline him.’
‘I’m familiar with your views on discipline, Mr Williams,’ I said.
‘What’s that meant to mean?’ he demanded, leaning forward in his seat, the table edge digging into his gut.
‘Stop it,’ Caroline snapped. ‘Both of you. Stop it.’
Simon Williams glared at me and jerked his thumb in Caroline’s direction. ‘Ask her what he was doing out camping in the month of February.’
Caroline looked at me, seeming to struggle with how best to answer his accusation and clearly questioning herself why she had allowed her son to spend his last night on earth in a tent at the latter stages of winter.
‘Look, I understand how you feel,’ I said, ‘but blaming someone won’t help Peter.’
‘You couldn’t understand how
I
feel,’ Simon Williams snapped. ‘He was my son. And he needed his father.’
‘His father didn’t want him,’ Caroline retorted, and I saw for the first time since her arrival a flash of the Caroline Williams I knew.
‘Watch your m—’ Simon Williams began, emphasizing his point with a single podgy finger, but he got no further for I gripped his wrist in my hand and slammed it against the tabletop.
‘Mind how you speak to her,’ I warned.
‘For God’s sake,’ Caroline snapped again. ‘Stop it, both of you,’ she added, pleadingly, before getting up and rushing from the table.
I followed and caught up with her in the corridor.
‘I’m sorry he spoke to you in that way,’ I said, my hand on her arm.
‘I’m not fucking helpless, Ben,’ she said. ‘I don’t need you to stand up for me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought—’
‘Stop saying sorry. And stop treating me like an invalid,’ she said, her voice rising to the point where it cracked a little on the final word.
I took my hand from her arm and stood foolishly, as she rushed down the corridor and through the double doors at the far end.
I called in to Letterkenny station, to meet Harry Patterson and update him on the state of the Kielty investigation, though my focus had shifted slightly with the discovery of Peter Williams’s body. Indeed, that was the first thing about which we spoke.
‘Bad news about Williams’s wee boy.’
‘It was fairly horrific,’ I said, shuddering involuntarily at the memory of Peter’s damaged face.
‘A fucking waste,’ Patterson said. ‘He was always a bit . . .’ He struggled to find the right word. ‘Sensitive,’ he concluded.
‘He had an abusive, neglectful father,’ I said levelly.
‘We all have our sob stories,’ Patterson said, belching lightly into his fist. ‘Doesn’t mean we all take a one-way flight off a clifftop, does it?’
‘It’s been assumed that he fell.’
Patterson sniffed dismissively.
My feelings must have been evident in my expression for Patterson, his mug paused inches from his mouth, looked at me with bewilderment.
‘I’ve asked for toxicology reports to be done with the postmortem,’ I said.
He put down the mug on his desk. ‘Why?’
‘A fifteen-year-old falling off a cliff seems a little out of the ordinary. He’d been camping with friends. Maybe someone slipped him something.’
Patterson guffawed. ‘Depends what you mean by slipped him something.’
‘He was Caroline’s son, Harry. Jesus, have a heart.’
‘It’s a waste of time and money, Devlin,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘What’s it going to achieve? So what if you find he took something, or someone slipped him something? What do you do then? He went off a fucking cliff. No one pushed him – he fell himself.’
‘I’d like to do something; for Caroline’s sake.’
‘Did you talk to her? Did they have a row? Was it something she said?’
‘I’m not sure facetiousness is appropriate, Harry,’ I said, standing up to leave.
‘Try finding out why the fuck she let a fifteen-year-old go camping on the beach at the start of February,’ he suggested, glancing up at me, then turning his attention to the sheets of paper he had started shuffling on his desk. ‘Now what’s the story with the actual murder you’re meant to be investigating.’
‘Not much to report. He was stabbed in the chest and set alight. Forensics found traces of drugs in the barn, but little more than that. There does seem to be some confusion from witness accounts. The neighbour saw a blue car parked outside the house at ten. The milkman saw a white Transit van with Southern plates there at two in the morning. The pathologist can’t state time of death with any certainty, but it doesn’t really matter. Kielty’s phone wasn’t answered after 10.15 on the evening of his death. I suspect he died around that time.’
‘Why did they hang around until two in the morning then?’
‘Maybe they didn’t. Maybe it was a different person – a buyer maybe?’
‘Or maybe they killed him, headed off for a van and came back to lift his stash. There were only traces of drugs found in his barn. If he was selling, where’s his supplies?’
‘Robbery gone bad?’
Patterson shrugged. ‘Maybe. He got what was coming to him, anyway. People choose to live that lifestyle, they take the risks.’
‘He didn’t deserve to die, Harry,’ I said. ‘No one does.’
‘Spare me the bleeding heart liberal, Devlin. The man was a scumbag.’
‘He may well have been, Harry, but his daughter will grow up without her father. Someone needs to answer for that.’
‘She’ll be better off without him,’ Harry muttered. ‘Besides, it was probably one of his own who did it, anyway. What about this connection with Lorcan Hutton? Any sign of him yet?’
‘None so far,’ I admitted. ‘I think that Rising thing the other night might have driven him underground.’
‘Which reminds me,’ Patterson added, flicking through the various sheets of paper on his desk before selecting one and handing it to me. ‘The local radio station want to run an interview with one of the local community associations who’ve thrown their support behind The Rising and a member of An Garda, about the drugs problem in Lifford.’
‘There is no drugs problem in Lifford,’ I said.
‘That’s what I like to hear. I knew you were just the man for the job,’ Patterson said, smiling disingenuously. ‘I’ve also told Rory Nicell that you’d be calling. He’s one of the Drugs Unit for the region. He’ll fill you in before the interview; might be able to pull you out with Kielty too. His details are on the back of that sheet, along with the stuff about the interview.’
‘Who’s the other speaker?’ I asked, scanning the sheet which gave details only of time and location: the local radio station at 1 p.m. the following afternoon.
‘How the hell should I know?’ he said. ‘Tell Williams I passed on my condolences,’ he concluded, already turning from me as he gestured towards his door with the pen in his hand.
I called Rory Nicell on the number Patterson had given me, though it cut straight to an answering machine. I left a brief message, explaining who I was and that Patterson had passed on the details, finishing by asking Nicell to call me when he got a chance.
My parents agreed to watch our two children that evening so that Debbie and I could attend Peter Williams’s wake. The rain continued for the duration of our journey down, falling in fine needles that careened off the roadway at angles. Debbie was uncharacteristically quiet, looking out the side window as we drove.
‘What’s up, Debs?’ I asked, patting her lightly on the knee.
She took my hand in hers, though did not, at first, look over at me. ‘I’m just thinking about Penny and this disco tomorrow. She’s so excited about it.’
‘I still think she’s too young,’ I ventured, half joking.
‘She’s grown up on us without our noticing,’ Debbie replied, looking across the car at me.
‘She’s still a child,’ I said. ‘She’s not looking to get married.’
‘This is the start of it. She wants to go because there’s some boy in her class she really likes.’
The comment affected me in ways I could not express.
‘So you said. Who is he?’ I asked, swallowing hard against the words.
‘Some new boy. She’s got a real crush on him.’
‘We’ll soon stop that,’ I said. Half joking again.
‘It’s cute,’ Debbie said, smiling. ‘Her first crush. At least she can tell me about things like that. I’d hate for her to feel she couldn’t tell us, wouldn’t you?’
‘Mmm,’ I agreed, though part of me could do without knowing that my daughter had a crush on someone. And the other part of me thanked God, as I approached Peter Williams’s wake, that I still had a daughter who was alive and well enough to have a crush at all.
A group of people were gathered outside the wake house by the time we arrived, just ahead of the hearse carrying Peter’s remains. I stood to one side as the coffin was lifted from the back of the hearse and a group of men gathered, a little embarrassed, to share the weight of Peter Williams, as they attempted to manoeuvre the coffin in through the narrow front door of Caroline’s parents’ home. The undertakers shuffled beside them, umbrellas held aloft, though they did little to shield the coffin from the rain, which rattled on its lid. I was surprised at the size of the coffin. I had, I suppose, been expecting something smaller – it being some years since I’d known Peter Williams.
We gathered in the hallway for a few moments while the family said prayers upstairs around the coffin. When the rosary was finished, Caroline’s parents brought the priest downstairs again. He was now sitting on one of the hard wooden seats brought in from the kitchen, a cup of tea and a sandwich balancing on his knee. Caroline’s father, John, nodded to us and gestured that we could go upstairs.
The stairway was narrow, and we had to stop and stand against the wall as those mourners coming down from the wake room squeezed past us. At the top of the stairs, a middle-aged man I did not recognize, in white shirt and black trousers, nodded to us solemnly and pointed with an open hand towards the room where the coffin had been placed.
The bedroom was tiny, even with most of the furniture removed. Peter’s coffin rested on a stand against the wall behind the door. The lid had been left on the coffin, for Peter’s body was marked beyond the capability of even the most seasoned undertaker. A batch of Mass cards rested on the lid, to which pile Debbie added the one we had brought. At the head of the coffin, her hand placed lightly on the brass crucifix at its centre, Caroline Williams sat, flanked by two women who introduced themselves as her cousins. Caroline smiled sadly when she saw Debbie, then her face creased in tears. Debbie rushed to her and they hugged. To my left sat four upright wooden chairs of the style I had seen downstairs. Simon Williams sat alone on the furthermost chair, his back straight, his clasped hands in his lap. I approached him and extended my hand.