Erin Hart - The Book of Killowen

She could see him feigning surprise. There was no real place to conduct interviews out here, so she’d have to steer him away from the other gawkers.

“What’s happening? What’s all this commotion about?” Claffey’s grating voice was even louder since he’d spied the archaeologists calling her back to the site.

“The team is just going about their work, Mr. Claffey, and had a question for me. No cause for concern. But I wonder if I could have a word?”

He eyed her suspiciously. “What about?”

They were finally far enough not to be overheard. Stella tried to fix Claffey with a steady gaze, but his shoulders twisted nervously.

“We checked the property records for this bog,” she said.

Claffey looked insulted. “Didn’t I tell you it’s mine? I can show you the papers.”

“That’s all in order. But Detective Molloy also happened to run a check on Special Areas of Conservation.”

Claffey looked sideways, caught. “Ah, well, now, there’s a slight difference of opinion on that,” he said. “That law is weak.”

Stella knew she had him. Cutting turf in a protected bog could bring a stiff fine. “What are you doing with the peat, Mr. Claffey?”

“Sure, what would I be doing with it? Only gettin’ me bit of turf mold for sowing potatoes—”

In the course of her work, Stella had driven past the Claffey place on numerous occasions and had never once seen a green leaf of any vegetable growing amid the rubbish and rusted-out machinery that filled his haggard. Vincent Claffey wouldn’t know a potato plant if he tripped over it. So what was he really up to, going for his bit of turf mold with a digger?

Her phone vibrated once—the photo of Kavanagh. She held up the screen to show Claffey the image.

“Do you happen to know this man? Ever seen him around here?” The photo triggered a subtle change in Claffey’s demeanor. Stella could see his thoughts zigzagging like a hare. He’d been his old cute, cunning self up to that point, and it was definitely the photo of Kavanagh that tipped him over. She said, “We’ve just found that the car in the bog belongs to him. Benedict Kavanagh. Ring any bells?”

“Kavanagh? No… no, can’t say that it does.”

“So you’ve never seen him before?” She held up the phone again. “Take another look.”

Claffey glanced once more at the image, shifted his weight. “No.”

“You’re sure?”

Barely a thrust of the chin this time, and he’d managed to suppress the glint of panic in his eyes. “Look, are you finished with me? I’m dyin’ for a slash.”

He had been dancing a jig along the tape for the past few minutes. “Just one more thing,” Stella said. “If you suddenly remember seeing Mr. Kavanagh anywhere, I want you to ring me.” She handed him a card. “My mobile’s on there.”

He took the card and pretended to study it before slipping it into his pocket. “Can I go now? I’m about to burst me fuckin’ bladder.”

She waved him off, and he legged it over behind the chipper and ducked around back. Stella made a mental note to stay away from the cod and chips—and almost anything else on offer from that van. No matter how hungry she got, she’d wait until Molloy could bring them some grub from the nearest Supra station. The girl in the chipper folded and refolded her gray rag, no doubt wishing she were somewhere else. What must it be like, having a man like Vincent Claffey for a father?

After a moment, Claffey emerged from behind the chipper, zipping his trousers as he returned to his position at the tape. Stella circled around until she stood beside the van, out of his line of vision. More than one way to skin a cat, as her mother used to say. She stepped up to the chipper window. “Hullo, Deirdre, isn’t it?”

“Yeh.”

Stella’s gaze lingered on Deirdre’s forearms, which sported a few yellow patches at the wrist, the telltale remains of bruises. Suddenly self-conscious, the girl pulled down the sleeves of her jumper and balled both hands into fists. No good even asking, Stella knew. She would have a ready story about knocking into something. Everybody knew about Claffey’s wife scarpering years ago, leaving the child behind. Everyone also knew how Vincent Claffey worked his daughter like a navvy, and even worse suspicions had cropped up when she’d fallen pregnant. But the way the system worked, you couldn’t bring a parent up on charges on the basis of whispers and nasty rumors. And to complicate matters, whenever the girl had been questioned, she defended the bugger.

“Your father says you’d been helping him out here on the bog.”

Deirdre frowned, unsure whether to believe her. “I only work in the chipper. That’s all.”

“But he told you what he’s doing here?”

“No, he didn’t. My da is into all sorts of stuff I know nothin’ about.”

Thus sparing you from prosecution , Stella thought. Very decent of him. She’d have to try a different tack. Glancing over the tired-looking menu board with its hash of mismatched letters, the spattered fryer and the bags of crisps on their clipboard, the cans of Sprite and Diet Coke stacked up against the back wall, she was caught in the undertow of memory. “I worked in a chipper once—I was about your age.” All right, so she was fishing, trying to soften the girl up, but it was the truth. “Hated that fryer with a passion—it seemed like I could never get the stink off me—but at least the job got me out of the house at weekends. You do meet all sorts, working in a chipper.”

The girl almost smiled. “Yeh, most of them stocious.”

Also true, Stella thought. She felt the tug of memory, of the late-night conversations she’d carried on with maggoty young fellas at one o’clock in the morning after the pubs closed. “I used to like market days,” she said. “People always seemed in a cheery mood when they were making a few bob.” Fishing again, hoping the girl wouldn’t notice.

“Yeh—” Deirdre started to say, when the startled noise of an infant came from somewhere near her feet. She stooped to pick up a baby from its carrier and rested him on her hip. She reached for a bottle of formula and slipped it into the baby’s mouth; he helped hold it in place. After his nap, the child appeared plump and rosy; he beamed at his mother. Deirdre’s eyes, too, lit at the sight of her child.

“I wonder, you wouldn’t remember if you ever saw this man anywhere around?”

She held up her phone with the photo of Benedict Kavanagh. Watching Deirdre Claffey’s eyes dart away, her expression flattening, Stella picked up another whiff of a scent. Hold up , said the voice in her head. Don’t pounce. Just let her talk.

“Dunno,” Deirdre said. She fiddled with the front of the baby’s jumper, switched him to her opposite hip. “Like you said, you meet all sorts.”

But not many you remember so well, Stella thought. And surely not many who ended up dead at the bottom of a bog hole.

It was nearly eleven by the time Nora returned to her room at Killowen. The National Museum team had worked into the night, lights rigged up inside the tent, which glowed out in the darkness of the bog like a giant luminaria. After they’d recovered as much of Killowen Man as they could from the boot, the coroner’s team had come in and removed the second body. Both sets of remains were now headed to the morgue at the regional hospital, where they’d each undergo a preliminary postmortem in the morning. Nora had elected not to go along, partly because she wanted to give Cormac a chance to catch up with his old friend Niall Dawson and partly because she was desperate for a bath after the day’s grubby work.

They’d not taken much time to get Cormac’s father settled in before heading out to the bog, so it was only now that she began paying attention to the surroundings at Killowen. A small sign marked COTTAGES pointed down a path to the right as she pulled Cormac’s jeep into the car park alongside the main house.