Erin Hart - The Book of Killowen

The baby’s anguished cry cut through the quiet forest. All other noise seemed muffled by the soft green moss at their feet. Deirdre stumbled, struggling to keep up with Anca, who was forging ahead through whipping branches of undergrowth. A thin branch brushed the child’s face, and he howled louder. Deirdre said, “He’s hungry, Anca. I’ve got to stop and feed him. He’ll only cry harder if I don’t.”

“All right,” Anca said, pulling up short. “But not too long. We have to keep moving.”

Deirdre settled into the mossy crook of a massive oak tree, hitched up her T-shirt, and put the baby to her breast. The split in her lip throbbed. “Where are we going, Anca? Why do we have to keep on? I’m so tired.”

“Because… because we have to, that’s all.” Anca looked desperate for a fag, but she’d run out back at the chapel.

“Can’t we just go back to Killowen? They’d feed us and look after us—”

“No, we can’t go back!” Anca’s voice was rising. “The police are everywhere.” She clasped her arms around her, as if they were crawling all over her.

“But we’ve no place to go.” Deirdre’s voice quavered.

“Be quiet! I don’t want to hear about it.” Anca covered her ears with both hands and continued pacing back and forth in front of the tree. “Don’t talk to me. You had to get away from your father, and I—” She dropped her hands and pulled the sleeves of her jumper over her balled fists. There was something strange going on, Deirdre thought. Something Anca wasn’t telling her.

She’d been fast asleep last night when Anca came into her room. Get up , she said, we have to go. Be quick about it and don’t make any noise. So Deirdre had gathered up some clothes and a few nappies in a couple of carrier bags, and they’d set out across the fields in darkness. It was no use asking what happened; the few times she’d tried, Anca had got very angry. Deirdre didn’t want to make trouble. Anca was the only friend she’d ever had, so she had kept quiet and followed along. But now she was beginning to feel frightened. She’d never seen Anca so upset. They’d gone as far as the chapel and waited there for first light. Deirdre looked at her friend now. The mascara had gone all splodgy around Anca’s eyes, and she looked like she’d kill for a cigarette. Cal seemed to catch their restlessness, pulling at Deirdre’s hair as he nursed. Why hadn’t she thought to bring him anything to eat? She reached for the handle of her carrier bags and realized that she’d only one. Where was the other? She had no nappies at all if she’d lost that other bag, and Cal would be needing a change very soon.

They’d have to turn around and go back to Killowen. Why didn’t Anca want to go there? Deirdre knew her father might get angry and drag her home again like he had last night, but Claire and Diarmuid did say she could come to them whenever she needed a place to stay. Her da wasn’t that bad, really. Mad as a snake, right enough, but he’d never hit her. Well, never before last night, anyway. And she had gone against him, after he warned her more than once about going to the farm. He said again last night that Claire and her crowd were not to be trusted, that he was just looking out for her, and maybe he was. Hard to tell sometimes who exactly he was looking out for. She looked over at her friend, stripping the bark off a thin branch. There was something wrong. Why wouldn’t Anca look at her?

“Did you see my da last night?” Deirdre asked. “Did you speak to him?” Anca just glared straight ahead and continued breaking bits of dry bark from the stick and pegging them at the ground. “Does he know where I am?”

Anca threw down her half-stripped branch. “Stop talking about him! Why do you care about him, anyway? Look at your face! He gave you that, didn’t he?”

“He never did it before.”

“So that makes it all right?” Anca made a face as if she’d swallowed something that was shredding her insides. She gripped her stomach as the words burst from her lips: “You don’t know what he was doing, how he was using you, and Cal.” She buried her head in her arms.

Deirdre felt cold all over. The baby stopped nursing and pulled away. She looked down at him and watched his mouth make a perfect O before his loud wail pierced her eardrums. She tried to soothe him, patting his back and murmuring little comforts. He always got an air bubble, that’s all it was. An air bubble. If she only walked him and rubbed his back, it would go away, stop bothering him. She climbed to her feet, trying to keep the child balanced on her hip.

They were deep in the oak wood now, the far side, no place she recognized. She had played in this wood as a little girl and had never been afraid, but now there seemed to be strange noises around them, shadows stealing up from all sides. What did Anca mean, that her father was using them?

All at once Deirdre found herself running through the woods, Cal bouncing heavily on her hip. She didn’t know which way to turn, so she just kept running. The baby had stopped crying, his arms tightening about her neck as she ran. She could hear someone behind her, crackling noises of branches breaking, feet pounding the earth, and heavy breathing, but she dared not stop or even look back.

Mairéad Broome answered the door to Stella this time. Her face looked pallid, as if all emotion had been wrung out of her over the past several days. Seeing who it was, she left the door open but turned and walked away. Stella stepped into the sitting room. The cottage was slowly taking on the look of a squat, with cups and plates, clothing strewn about, along with a few empty wine bottles. It was as if the two people living here had given up on appearances and surrendered to whatever was troubling them.

Mairéad Broome said nothing, sinking onto the sofa and pulling her loose jumper close about her. A cigarette burned in the ashtray beside her on the table, next to a nearly empty wineglass.

Graham Healy came in from the other room. “Why are you here, Detective? We’ve told you everything we know.”

“Forgive me, but that’s not quite true, is it now? It’s actually you I’ve come to see, Mr. Healy,” Stella said. “I had a question about your conversation with Vincent Claffey yesterday afternoon.”

The young man’s face betrayed his alarm, but Mairéad Broome’s voice broke in before he could answer. “Graham did have a brief conversation with Vincent Claffey after we arrived here. What about it?”

No immediate denial, then. Stella kept her focus on Healy, who was clearly unnerved. “You were seen passing Mr. Claffey a brown envelope. I have to ask you what was inside.”

Healy hesitated, thinking.

“Our witness said it was quite obviously a transaction. Mr. Claffey took a thick envelope from you, said he needed more time to think about what you were asking—I think those were the words he used—and then he rode off on his motorbike.” Cusack considered her bargaining position. She really had nothing beyond Dr. Gavin’s statement that would compel this suspect to say any more. Not yet, anyway. “So what were you asking of him? Shall I tell you what I think?”

Mairéad Broome leaned forward in her chair, her mouth set in a grim line. “You don’t have to say anything, Graham.”

“I’ve been imagining all the possibilities, why you’d be paying off Vincent Claffey. For instance, what he might have known about the two of you that would be worth a significant amount of cash.”

“I’ve told you, Detective, neither Graham nor I had anything to do with my husband’s death. I can’t help it if you don’t believe me, but that’s the truth.”