Erin Hart - The Book of Killowen

He nodded, and Stella continued. “Listen to me, was it the bonfire in the wood, or the fire up here, the one in the storehouse?”

The old man’s eyes darted unmistakably toward the storehouse. She had a witness. “You’re sure it’s the same man you saw? It was dark last night.”

He focused on her face with intense concentration and said slowly, “I—sawt—rum-rumaway.”

“All right. Thank you for telling me.”

As Stella straightened, she glanced up to find Graham Healy staring at them.

Tired as she was, Stella felt an extra adrenaline jolt as she entered the windowless interview room. Graham Healy sat at the table. She took a seat across from him. “Thank you for coming in, Mr. Healy. I just have a few more questions.” She consulted her notes, giving him a little extra time to stew before she began.

“We found evidence of a bonfire at Killowen last night, out in the wood.”

“That’s not against the law now, is it?”

“No, but destroying evidence in a murder investigation is. Burning down a building with people inside it is a crime.”

“I was asleep in my own bed when that fire started at the storehouse last night.”

“I have reason to believe otherwise. Let me ask, how far is it from the cottage where you stay to the storehouse? Only a couple of hundred yards, right? Easy enough to start the fire and then double back. You could make certain everyone saw you and Ms. Broome coming up the path when the alarm went up.”

“Why would I want to harm those people? I know nothing about them. We’d barely even met. I’d never seen them before dinner last night.”

Stella paused for a moment, then tried a different approach.

“All right, let’s go back to your relationship with Vincent Claffey.”

“There was no relationship.”

“But you did work together, isn’t that right? Preparing canvases, other sorts of… how did Ms. Broome put it? Oh, yes, ‘the more basic tasks.’ You’d have to instruct him, surely, explain just the way she wanted them, dimensions and so on, and arrange delivery if he worked on the canvases at his own place, all that sort of thing.”

Healy offered a grudging glance in her direction. “Yes.”

“So you did have an ongoing relationship with Mr. Claffey, if he took care of those sorts of tasks for you on a regular basis?”

“I suppose so.”

“What’s the going rate?”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a simple question. How much did you pay Mr. Claffey for framing and stretching canvases?”

Healy looked at her for a long moment. “It was a bit more than the going rate; Mairéad was always too generous, especially with Claffey.”

“How much more? And do you figure that sort of work on an hourly basis, or is it usually piecework?”

“Hourly.” Graham Healy’s voice was barely audible. “He was paid forty euros an hour.”

“So he must have put in a lot of time on those canvases. Because the witness statement we have says it was a pretty fat brown envelope you handed over to Vincent Claffey on the day you arrived at Killowen.”

“He preferred twenty-euro notes, didn’t like fifties. He’d particularly asked to be paid in twenties that time. You can check with Mairéad if you don’t believe me.”

“So where are the canvases?”

“Sorry?”

“Come on, Mr. Healy. If Vincent Claffey spent so much time making bloody canvases, where are they? Is there a special shed at Killowen where you keep a store of materials? We didn’t find any materials at Claffey’s farm, so I assumed he’d been working at Killowen. But there don’t seem to be any supplies there either.”

Healy sat stone-faced.

“I have a different theory, Mr. Healy. Would you like to hear it?”

“I don’t suppose I can stop you.”

“I think Vincent Claffey spied you with Benedict Kavanagh out at Killowen Bog. I think he didn’t make anything of it until Kavanagh’s body turned up. That was when Claffey saw his big chance to make a bit of money—for keeping his mouth shut.”

“No.”

“But maybe he threatened to tell anyway. Or maybe he wanted more money, and you couldn’t see paying again and again, for years. So you had to get rid of him. Or maybe it was an accident. You went to talk to him, things got ugly, you pushed him, and he hit his head. Nothing to be done about it, so you make his death look like Kavanagh’s to distract us.”

Stella continued, “You knew the bog was protected, that no one was going to be cutting there for a long time. You have experience driving an excavator. The one thing I can’t figure with that whole scenario is how you got Kavanagh out to Killowen. But I have to hand it to you, whatever way you did it, it worked. Maybe it was you who sent him an anonymous message about an old manuscript, something to do with his old friend, Eriugena, the philosopher fella. Some earth-shattering new discovery that would definitely rattle some bones.”

“I really have no idea what you’re talking about, Detective. I never should have come here. You’re dead wrong—about all of this.”

“Am I?”

“I told you, Mairéad and I were staying at a friend’s place in the Slieve Bloom Mountains when Benedict disappeared. We were nowhere near Killowen. If you don’t believe me, ask Claire, ask Diarmuid Lynch—they’ll tell you.”

“They’re also friends of Mairéad’s. Maybe they were glad to see her get shut of that bastard of a husband, almost as glad as you were.”

“You’ve got it all wrong. Mairéad would never harm anyone. She was only trying to help—” Healy stopped abruptly.

Stella knew she’d just witnessed a slip. “Who exactly was she trying to help?”

Healy had reached his limit. “I’m done talking. If you’ve nothing to keep me here, I’d like to go.”

It could have happened just as she described to Healy, but there wasn’t a shred of evidence that could prove anything, and Healy knew it. Molloy was lounging against the wall outside the interview room when she opened the door. Healy didn’t make eye contact with either of them as he left.

“I hate to say it, Stella, but we’re going to have to charge Dawson or spring him. All we’ve got are those gallnuts from his room, which anyone could have planted, and a witness statement from Anca Popescu, who’s conveniently scarpered.”

Anca’s statement was looking more and more like a fable, Stella thought. She remembered Dawson’s words: Anca might have done for Claffey herself, did you not think of that? The girl had claimed that Dawson pushed Claffey, that the victim had struck his head. Those details had been borne out in the postmortem. But it could have been Anca herself on the other side of that altercation, and Niall Dawson could be telling the truth. They still didn’t know who’d mutilated Claffey’s corpse and wrapped him in plastic.

“Have we gone over the clothes Dawson was wearing that night? He admitted finding a corpse, for God’s sake. I can’t believe there’s not even a single speck of blood on his shoes. We’ve no physical evidence that can place him there?”