Erin Hart - Lake of Sorrows

“That was quite a find,” said Cadogan from behind her. “Colossal. Nothing like it before or since. There was even a rumor that they’d turned up some gold pieces as well, but that turned out to be a load of—nonsense.”

“Would these Brazils be any relation to Charlie?” Nora asked, accepting the mug of gray, watery-looking tea he proffered, and wishing she’d been prudent enough to refuse.

“His father and uncle,” Cadogan said, taking a seat behind the desk. “We’ve got Brazils galore here. A lot of the lads come from families who go back four or even five generations on the bog. All the turf used to be hand-cut, of course, but even when they brought the big machines in we’d have whole families footing the turf for the summer.”

“What happens to the peat you produce here?” Nora asked.

“Some of it goes to the briquette factory at Raheny, but most of what comes out of Loughnabrone is only suitable for use in the power plant.”

“That place with the two towers down the road?”

“Used to go there, until a few years ago. It’s closed down now. Obsolete. They’re going to demolish it in a few weeks’ time. No, all our production gets shipped up to the new station at Shannonbridge.” Cadogan looked at her as if he didn’t consider this a suitable topic of conversation for visitors, and abruptly changed the subject: “I was meaning to ask how you happened to be out in the storm. You weren’t traveling on foot, surely?”

“Oh, no,” Nora said, suddenly acutely aware that she wasn’t prepared to give an exact account of how she had happened to be out on the road. “I stopped the car and got out to watch a—I don’t even quite know what to call it, a small whirlwind. I’d never seen anything quite like it—”

Cadogan nodded, as if he understood. “The fairy wind.”

“Excuse me?” Nora thought she’d misheard.

“That small whirlwind you saw. The lads around here call it the fairy wind. They also say nothing good comes after—ah, it’s a load of auld rubbish, that kind of talk, but what can you do?”

“Well, in my case it was true. When I turned around, there was a huge dust cloud bearing down on me. I barely made it back to my car. Thank goodness Charlie Brazil came along when he did.”

Again Cadogan studied her with a skeptical eye, as if he didn’t quite believe the tale. Why did she keep feeling as though she was missing the joke here?

“If you’ll excuse me just a moment, I’ll get you fixed up here straightaway.” He reached for his mobile and dialed a number from memory, then turned away slightly, with a small smile and a glance back in Nora’s direction. He wanted to be rid of her, and soon. She was getting to be a nuisance.

“Ursula? It’s Owen. Dr. Gavin’s arrived in the office. Did you want to come round and fetch her—?” Cut off in midsentence, Cadogan listened for a moment, then colored and turned abruptly, as if the person on the other end of the connection had asked an embarrassing question. One hand flew up to the side of his face, an unconscious gesture of protection. “Look, I really can’t…Yes, she’s here with me now,” he said, glancing up. Nora went back to perusing the office walls again, and did her best to pretend she wasn’t listening. She stared at the newspaper cutting once more, at the nearly headless man in suit and wellingtons, noticing the interesting pin that anchored his tie—a sort of three-legged spiral. She’d arrived too early, and they didn’t know what to do with her. Well, if that was the case, she could find her own way to the site. It beat standing around here like an idiot while they argued. She tried to catch Cadogan’s eye. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” he said, “but if you—” Ursula evidently cut him off again. “All right then…Yes, right away.” Nora wondered idly whether it was a command or an acquiescence.

“That was Ursula Downes, the archaeologist heading up the bog road excavation on the site. She was first on the scene when the body was found.” Cadogan looked vaguely preoccupied, shuffling through some papers on his desk, perhaps only to avoid having to make eye contact. “Since you’re here, Ursula said she’d escort you out to the findspot, but she’s rather tied up at the moment—so she’s asked me to run you over there.” He tried to offer a smile, but could only manage a worried grimace.

“Do I really need an escort? I’m sure I could find my way there if you gave me directions—”

“The trouble is that we’re liable for your safety, and it’s really much better if either Ursula or I or someone from Bord na Mona is with you out on the bog. It can be a much more treacherous place than it may appear. If you’d like to bring your own car, I’m happy to lead you out to the site—that is, whenever you’re ready.”

Nora glanced down at the brown film of limescale floating atop her now-cold tea. “I’m ready now.”

As she followed Cadogan in her own car, watching him cut corners and shift gears a bit more forcefully than was warranted, Nora wondered what had passed between him and Ursula Downes. After speeding down the winding, tree-lined drive from the office, Cadogan turned onto the long, straight bog road. A set of narrow-gauge train tracks ran parallel to the road just below the ditch, and three rusting railcars sat idle upon them, with no engine in sight. Where the rails curved away from the road and out into the center of the bog, she could also see a jumble of extra track and several large bales of black plastic beside a high bank of turf someone had cut away by hand. A dirty wing chair faced the bank, as if someone had been sitting watching the cutter at work. It reminded her that in addition to its ancient use as a ritual depository, the bog had more recently taken on the role of communal rubbish heap. There was a pervasive air of abandonment here that surely didn’t sit well with someone like Owen Cadogan, who still saw himself as young and vigorous. There wasn’t much time to take in details; Cadogan’s gray Nissan fairly flew along ahead of her, and she struggled to keep up on the bumpy road.

As they came near the site, she could see figures working at cuttings along the drain faces. In the distance, a brilliant white marquee tent out on the bog billowed slightly in the wind, looking oddly medieval in this dark, barren place. That’s where the body was; it had to be. Cadogan finally braked abruptly when he came alongside a television news van and a couple of small rectangular trailers that seemed to have been dropped haphazardly by the side of the road. Between the sheds, a fair-haired woman was pacing and smoking a cigarette as she spoke on a mobile phone. She looked to be in her midthirties, and was dressed in standard work clothes for the bog: heavy-duty waterproof gear and industrial-strength rubber boots.

As they pulled onto the patch of gravel beside the first trailer, the woman closed her phone and approached Nora’s car. Ursula’s spiky fair hair and full lips were certainly arresting, but it was her large, luminous green eyes—set off by the delicate gold ring that pierced her left eyebrow—that added a not-so-subtle air of sensuality to her appearance. Whatever had passed between her and Owen Cadogan on the telephone had created a tension Nora could feel from several feet away, as Cadogan got out of his car and strode toward them, arms crossed over his chest in a posture that demanded acknowledgment. He opened his mouth to speak, but Ursula deliberately ignored him.

“You must be Dr. Gavin,” she said, and Nora was surprised to hear a voice that immediately betrayed working-class Dublin origins. “Ursula Downes. I’ve heard so much about you, I feel as if we’ve already met.” Heard so much from whom? Nora wanted to ask. As they shook hands, she felt the woman’s eyes sweep her up and down, and had the unmistakable impression that she was being judged. It wasn’t that Nora hadn’t experienced this sort of scrutiny before—she was a Yank, after all, and had grown accustomed to being inspected—but the sincerity in Ursula’s gaze had only to increase by the slightest margin before it crossed over into something much closer to condescension.