Erin Hart - The Book of Killowen

“But you should talk to Daddy. He’s not—”

“I’ll speak to him, Lia, don’t worry.”

“Right, see you, Mam.”

“I love you, Lia. I’ll ring you back just as soon as I can.”

Stella started her ignition and felt the tears begin to flow.

Forty minutes later, she bumped along the road that crossed the top of the mountain at Cappaghbaun and found an ambulance, a Mountain Rescue van, and several Guards vehicles all parked in the middle of the road.

“Stella!” A voice came from beside the ambulance as she stepped from the car. It was her superintendent, Eamonn Brown, looking smart in his expensive suit. Not a bad copper, but too ambitious, always looking for the next opportunity to impress those above him, which tended not to impress the people below him.

“Eamonn, why are you here?”

“One of my officers involved in a fatal accident? It’s my job to be here.”

And to see how your investigation is coming along , was the unspoken subtext.

“Where’s Molloy?” Stella asked.

“The ambulance lads are checking him over.”

“Have they recovered the girl’s body yet?”

“A bit dodgy, that.” He waved her to the edge of the road to look down. “The Mountain Rescue team is rigging up some lines to make sure no one else takes a tumble. Then they’ll send a couple of people down and bring the body up on a gondola. Dreadful business. Molloy said he phoned and told you what happened?”

“Yes, that the girl jumped from the moving car.”

“I gather she was one of your witnesses on the Killowen case?”

“Yes, although I was beginning to have serious doubts about her story.”

“You’re saying you’ve no leads at all?”

“No, we’ve got substantial evidence for book theft but still not much to go on for either of the murders, unfortunately. I was hoping this girl might finally come clean when we got her back to the station.”

“Well, this is pretty damned inconvenient, then, isn’t it?”

She got the message: Brown wanted this case cleared up, and fast, before Serious Crimes ran roughshod over all of them, himself included.

The paramedics were just coming up the hill, pulled up by their mates along a couple of nylon cords. Anca Popescu’s body was already zipped into a black body bag. A light rain had begun to fall while they were down the slope, and now the valley below was beginning to disappear in the mist.

“Can I just see her face?” Stella asked the nearest paramedic.

He turned to look at her. “It’s not pleasant.”

Stella unzipped the bag. Anca’s face bore cuts and contusions; her lip was split, and there was a dreadful gash at the temple, lots of blood. She looked so young, even more like a little girl now that her wary eyes were closed. Where were this child’s parents? Stella wondered. And who would have to go and tell her people that she was dead?

The sun was just coming up behind the brow of the hill as Joseph Maguire climbed the rise that led to Anthony Beglan’s farm. He felt a little short of breath and paused to rest for a moment against one of the crumbling gateposts along the hedge-lined lane. In his mind was a picture of the eels he’d have for lunch today. He could see their shiny, slippery skins, the intricate and beautiful architecture of their tails.

He closed his eyes and breathed, letting the scent of cattle and grass fill his head, bringing back the animal smells of childhood, the strange gaze of beasts standing out in the rain along the road he walked to school. Everything took such an effort now, and time itself felt slippery as an eel. He was young, and then he was old again, in the blink of an eye.

He pushed off from the gatepost and passed by a field where a dozen pairs of large brown eyes looked up to greet him, ears with yellow tags flapped and twitched as he kept walking. He looked down and saw the bulge of a belly, two stout legs beneath him. Whose were they? Not those of a boy. Hard to keep things straight when his brain was so uncooperative.

A house stood at the end of the road, old and weather-beaten, paint peeling from the window and door frames. No one home. He could see no sign of life, no sounds, but he walked toward it, waiting for something. Glinting shards of light came from the building beside him, and he turned to see the sun broken into hundreds of pieces, bright circles, blinding him as he looked through a missing wall. All a dream, it had to be.

He felt the sharp jolt of the blow before the pain registered. It seemed like he waited for eternity after that, with that hollow roar in his ears as his knees buckled under him and he pitched forward into darkness.

Joseph felt himself drifting, floating in space. When he tried to move, he could not. Pain in his head. Cracking his eyes open, he saw and then felt the band, something around his chest. His hands were behind him, shoulders pulled back, a shooting pain up the shoulder. Where was this place? Was someone here? His head still lolled forward on his chest, but he could see a table before him, cracked oilcloth, a basin of water—and a shape made of green rushes. He was alone.

He began to move, trying to break free, but he was fixed, immobile. He twisted from side to side, and at last the chair moved, but only to topple over. He landed on his right cheekbone with such force that the pain knocked the breath from him, and he experienced a sudden flashback—the cold floor, the musty smell, the shooting pains through his limbs. Another interrogation? They could beat him all they liked—he knew nothing. The whole right side of his face felt numb. He was ready to pass out when the door opened and a pair of muddy black shoes walked slowly toward him. From his awkward angle on the floor, he could not see the wearer. The silent figure stood and looked at him, as if deciding what to do. He’d let his jaw go slack, feigning unconsciousness, knowing instinctively that it was the wisest course. When the boots turned and proceeded out the door once more, he tried to open his eyes wider but felt himself slipping into an unconsciousness that this time was not feigned.

“Sorry about the hour,” Catherine Friel said. “I’ve got to be up in Cavan by noon. You must know I wouldn’t have dragged you out of bed for no reason.”

Stella was gazing at the mortal body of Anca Popescu, looking in her nakedness on the table here this morning even more like a waif than she had appeared yesterday evening. Again Stella’s throat constricted, thinking of how alone this girl was, in death as in life. “What is it? What have you found?”

“Since I wasn’t at the scene, I don’t know a lot about the circumstances surrounding this girl’s death, but I can tell you with a fair degree of certainty that it was no accident. At first I thought perhaps it was the position of the body after the fall, a function of livor mortis. Then I found this.” She lifted Anca’s arm away from her body and revealed a mark on the skin, a pattern of discoloration.

“What is it?” Stella asked. “What am I looking at?”

“Do you see the outline just here?” Catherine Friel’s gloved finger traced the air above the shape. She pointed to a jagged line on one side, a rounded curve on the other.

Stella’s brain began to distinguish the significance of the outlines before her, just as Dr. Friel’s voice sounded in her ear: “It’s a footprint, Stella. This girl didn’t jump to her death. She was pushed.”

Stella stared at the mark, remembering Molloy’s distraught voice on the phone.

“Are you all right?” Catherine Friel’s voice had become a low, echoing noise, like a sound traveling down a long tunnel. Time slowed, and all Stella could feel was the touch of his hands upon her skin, his eyes locked on to her own. It wasn’t real, any of it—it had only been a distraction, to keep her from seeing what he was. She had to force herself to focus.