Erin Hart - The Book of Killowen

Molloy shook his head.

“Fine,” she said. “Let him go. Christ, this whole case has me round the bend.”

Stella could hear the clock ticking, could feel the hot breath of Serious Crimes on her neck. They were going to lose this case in the next day or two, she could feel it.

Cormac shook his head. “It’s no use, I don’t know what you’re saying.” He threw up his hands and turned away from his father, who sat on the bed, refusing to get up or dress himself. They’d let him sleep late after the excitement over the fire last night, and now he was adamant about not leaving his room.

“I sew the Free Stater. Tolder pleaseworum.” He kept repeating the same phrases, over and over again, about a Free Stater. There was a screw seriously loose today, and no mistake. “Will you just please put your clothes on?”

The old man shook his head. “No.”

“If you’re not going to get up, I’ll have to get someone to sit with you.”

“No—” He started to stand. “Does she havunn? The Free Stater?”

Cormac said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean.” He knelt down in front of his father once more. “What is it? What are you trying to say?” He searched his father’s eyes, looking for clues.

Joseph shook his head and spoke slowly, distinctly. “I sew the Free Stater. I sew.” He held his fingers up, pointing to his own eyes. “Bollocks. But she… she knows I sew it.”

“Who knows?” Cormac asked. “Who the hell are you talking about?”

“Her! The worum.” He let his head drop into his hands. “You can’t hear me.”

“I’m trying. I’ll keep trying, if you will.”

“I’m an awful bosom.”

Cormac struggled to keep a straight face. “Well, an awful something, and no mistake.”

Joseph reached out to touch Cormac’s face, letting his fingertips brush the eyebrow that had been singed in the fire last night, the edge of the bandage that covered a small burn on his forehead. “My poor lad,” the old man said. “My sum.”

He helped his father to stand and brought his clothes from the bedside chair. “Time to put these on and face the day. Eliana is downstairs waiting for you.” The mention of the girl’s name drew an unexpected response.

“Can’t look. Spuh-puh-puncture of pass. Pass. Peas. Ah, I’m a fool of bad words.”

Cormac tried to hear what his father was saying. “Has Eliana upset you in some way?”

“No, no. She’s a goose to me.”

What must it be like, every day facing a barrage of meaningless words that hemmed him in, imprisoned his thoughts? She’s a goose to me. What could that possibly mean?

The old man was finally dressed. Cormac led the way downstairs, already exhausted before the day had begun. He made tea and buttered some brown bread for their breakfast, though it was nearly two in the afternoon. A strange morning after a strange night.

But both he and Nora had work to do today; he was back on the bog, and Nora had said she’d lend a hand. Bringing the old man out here, even for a few days, had been a mistake. What if he never regained his faculty of speech? Once in a while, some word would come swimming to the surface, stay anchored to its meaning for a few hours, and then recede again. Most days the image he carried was of the two of them, himself and his father, in a coracle, paddling furiously in a vast sea of alphabet soup.

By half-two in the afternoon, Stella Cusack felt her energy flagging. Between Molloy’s late-night visit and the fire, she’d slept only about two hours, and a heavy fatigue was beginning to settle upon her. But there was no question of taking any rest, not now when the case was in disarray. They had no leads, no suspects in custody. The whole thing was a bloody shambles. She’d been staring at the whiteboard for twenty minutes with no flash of insight.

Molloy set a cup of steaming tea on the table beside her.

“Just got a call back on Claire Finnerty,” he said. “Remember, you asked me to look into her background, like I did with Lynch? I checked public records for the birth date listed on her driving license. There was a Claire Finnerty born at the Mater Hospital in Dublin on the fourth of January 1968. I was able to track down the parents, Roger and Sheila Finnerty of Beaumont Road, Dublin. Just got off the phone with them, and get this—their daughter was eight weeks premature; she only lived two days.”

Stella said, “So who’s your one at Killowen calling herself Claire Finnerty? Any chance we’ve got her prints on file?”

Molloy shook his head. “Never any reason to collect them.”

“Except now we know she isn’t who she pretends to be.”

“Want me to talk to her?”

“No, I’ll go. What else have you got?”

“The arson investigators found a few fragments of the papers burned at that bonfire site. Thought you’d like to see them.” He lined up on the tabletop about half a dozen clear polythene bags, each holding a bit of partially charred paper. “Not much left, but…”

Stella took the magnifying glass from Molloy and peered at each one in turn. “No, but look—does that seem like a date from a newspaper article?”

Molloy peered at it. “Yeah, Irish Times , looks like the eighteenth of August 1991. We can check that. What about this?” He held up one of the other fragments. “That colored pattern looks almost like a bit of a passport.”

Stella turned the clear packet over. The numbers 463 stood out clearly at one corner. “Let’s start there, get a list of Irish passport numbers ending in four, six, three. See if anything leaps out.”

Molloy’s phone began to buzz. Stella couldn’t hear what the caller was saying, but it seemed to be good news. He pressed the phone to his shoulder. “They’ve found the girls and the baby. Up in a forestry preserve above Mountshannon. The car got stuck, but they’re all right. The local sergeant already called social services for Deirdre Claffey and the child.”

“Good! This time we’re going to keep closer tabs on Anca Popescu. I don’t think Murray will get over the trauma.”

“Tied up by that slip of a girl? He shouldn’t get over it.”

“Fergal, why don’t you head over to Mountshannon and bring Anca back here? I’ll get to work on these.”

Stella locked up the evidence, then stashed her notebook where she’d scribbled the newspaper date in her bag. The local library ought to have newspapers from that era, on microfilm or online. She left the station by the front door, traveling out John’s Place to the oval, and then turned right at Wilmer Road, the N52. The Birr library was in a nineteenth-century chapel built by the Sisters of Mercy. Stella stepped into the nave of the old church, now the main reading room. In the center stood a display case, lit from above. She felt herself drawn to the large book inside. The sign said it was a facsimile of the MacRegol Gospels, supposed to have been made at Saint Brendan’s monastery, Birr. Stella knew the place, now just a small ruined churchyard around the corner from the Guards station in Church Lane. She read:

The MacRegol Gospel Book is a manuscript copy of the Four Gospels, written and illuminated by an abbot of Birr about 800 AD. It consists of 169 vellum folios (leaves) about 345 mm high and 270 mm wide. The script used is a formal one called insular majuscule or insular half-uncial and it somewhat resembles one of the hands of the Book of Kells. A translation or gloss in Old English cursive script was inserted between the lines about a thousand years ago. Eight pages are illuminated in the style of the eighth or ninth century AD with pigments including red lead, verdigris, and orpiment probably bound with the white of an egg. About 1681 John Rushworth presented it to the Bodleian Library, where it was known as the Rushworth Gospels and presumed to be of Anglo-Saxon origin. But Charles O’Conor STD of the O’Conor Don family demonstrated by internal evidence in 1814 that the manuscript must have originated in Ireland. He pointed to the colophon on the final page of the manuscript, which read: “Macregol dipinxit hoc evangelium. Quicumque legerit et intellegerit istam narrationem orat pro Macreguil scriptori.” (Macregol coloured this gospel. Whoever reads and understands its narrative, let him pray for Macregol the scribe.)