Erin Hart - The Book of Killowen

Molloy nodded. “They had us read a few case histories on the task force. Did you know the Brits once nailed this fella who’d stolen over a million pounds’ worth of old books? They called him ‘The Tome Raider.’ Good, isn’t it?”

“Very clever.” Stella was fond of books. She liked holding them, savoring their inky, wood-pulp smell. She especially loved wasting a whole weekend whenever she could manage it, holed up with a glass of wine and a juicy potboiler. But how could a book—any book—be worth killing for?

A lowering sky threatened to unleash a midmorning shower as Cormac and Niall Dawson set out for Vincent Claffey’s farm. The time had come to speak to Claffey about the recovery of the artifacts associated with Killowen Man. The law was fairly generous when it came to rewarding citizens for turning over any found objects. Still, trying to keep those citizens honest was a constant challenge when it came to priceless ancient treasures, especially considering the current state of the economy.

The shed door was open. A whirr of machinery caught Cormac’s ear as he stepped from the car. He glanced over at Niall, trudging toward the door wearing a grim expression, clearly not relishing the prospect of the conversation before them.

There would be no negotiation. Vincent Claffey lay on the conveyor belt of a contraption that filled almost half of the small shed. The machine was whirring and clanking, jerking the man’s body from side to side. Cormac took a step closer. Claffey was completely encased in cling film, and his eyes were open and glassy. His mouth gaped open, and several dark round objects protruded from it. Gallnuts. I know your secrets , Claffey had said last night at dinner. Someone had clearly taken his words to heart.

From slightly behind him, Dawson managed a strangled whisper. “He’s dead, is he?”

“I’m afraid so,” Cormac said. He located a red emergency switch, at last putting a stop to the machine and its futile whine. Claffey’s head sagged, and Cormac had to resist the urge to support it. They really ought not touch anything. He placed two fingers gingerly on the man’s temple. No pulse, and through the plastic, the skin felt cold. He must have been dead for some time.

Cormac found himself counting the hours since four A.M., until a voice inside his head said, Stop . He glanced up at Dawson, who was staring at the corpse, unable to move. “We should ring Detective Cusack,” Cormac said. “Will you check and see if Deirdre Claffey is around? We don’t want her wandering in here.”

“No, no, of course not.” Dawson began backing slowly away from the body.

Cormac had dealt with plenty of corpses in the course of his work, but there was something uniquely unsettling about this one. Now his training kicked in. Something in him turned on automatically in situations like this, reading a site for what it could tell. Vincent Claffey’s apparent penchant for clutter continued inside this shed. The only really remarkable item was the machine, fairly new and astonishingly clean, compared to everything else. What was Claffey doing here? A cardboard carton on the ground beside him was half filled with plastic tubes, with labels that read: “Tir na nOg—Authentic Irish Moor Peat, 500 ml.”

He looked at the gallnuts again. Nora had told them about the handful she and Dr. Friel had found in Kavanagh’s mouth. They were clearly some sort of message, but in a language as yet undecoded. It was as if someone knew that he and Niall would be coming to visit Vincent Claffey today, and his body had been left for them to find.

He thought of Niall Dawson’s old connection to Benedict Kavanagh and wondered about all the unknown threads that bound together the people he and Nora had met at Killowen. And how many more connections would Cusack begin to uncover, once she started to dig?

“The girl’s not here.” Dawson spoke from the shed door. “I’ve looked everywhere. No sign of the child either.”

Stella Cusack was on her way to Killowen on the N52 when her phone rang. It was Cormac Maguire. Her stomach sank as she received the news of Vincent Claffey’s murder. “There’s something else as well, Detective,” Maguire said. “We can’t find Deirdre Claffey or her baby.”

When she hung up, her first impulse was to ring Lia, just to hear the sound of her daughter’s voice. It was almost noon on Saturday. Where would Lia be now? She pictured her daughter with a small knot of friends, wandering aimlessly through piped-in music and shiny window displays at the Bridge Centre in Tullamore. When Lia answered, Stella could hear the echoing background noise and knew she’d guessed correctly.

“You don’t need to be checking up on me, Mam. Everything’s fine. Everything’s wonderful .”

Tears welled up as Stella rang off. Everything wasn’t wonderful. She couldn’t help thinking of Deirdre Claffey. If something had happened to that girl, or her child… Lia had no idea how fragile life was, how everything could be fine one minute and gone in the next second.

Still sitting in her car at the side of the road, she rang Molloy, then Dr. Friel, her third call to the state pathologist in as many days.

“It’s getting to be a regrettable habit for both of us, isn’t it, driving the N52?” Catherine Friel said. “I do hope this will be my last trip down that road.”

Arriving at the Claffey farm, Stella slipped immediately into crime scene mode, wading through the uncut grass that brushed against her legs. The shed she’d wanted to get inside for the past two days was wide open, and Maguire was standing to one side of the door with Niall Dawson.

Stella found Claffey’s body cocooned in cling film, his mouth open and stuffed with gallnuts, exactly like Benedict Kavanagh. A grubby plastic tub at one end of the machine held a glistening mass of wet black peat, the wonder substance Vincent Claffey was apparently packaging for sale. She should have known what he was up to in that protected bog. Pulling moor peat out of the ground, slapping on a label, and selling it for a hundred euros a liter—so obvious now. It was almost like free money. Claffey wouldn’t have been able to resist.

Stella returned to the door to speak to the two men. “Tell me what happened.”

Maguire began. “We found a few more artifacts from the bog site, so Niall and I came here to talk to Mr. Claffey about a possible reward. As the landowner, he’d be due some compensation. He was dead when we got here.”

“What exactly did you notice when you arrived?” she asked.

Again, it was Maguire who spoke. “We heard a sort of clanking noise from the shed—”

“That’s when we came in and found him,” Dawson managed to add. He still looked shell-shocked. “The machine was still going.”

“You haven’t touched anything?”

“No,” Maguire replied. “Well, apart from switching off the machine, seeing whether he was still alive.”

Dawson said, “I must have touched the door handle when I went to look for Deirdre.”

“I’ll need statements from both of you. Have either of you seen Deirdre Claffey in the past twenty-four hours?”

“She was at Killowen last night; she and the baby were with us for dinner,” Maguire said. “But her father came and collected her—”

“Dragged her off, you mean,” Dawson said. “It was a bit of a scene.”

“What time was that?” Stella asked. “And what happened, exactly? Tell me as much as you can remember.”

Maguire told her. “Must have been about half-seven, maybe closer to eight. Vincent Claffey called everyone at Killowen ‘fuckin’ hippies.’ Said he knew our secrets. He looked at every one of us, Niall, didn’t he? If I’d any secrets, I’d have the wind put up my back by that look, and no mistake.”