Erin Hart: The Book of Killowen

“Why won’t we find his killer?”

“Because the one thing I can tell you with fair certainty is that this man died at least five hundred years ago.”

Stella stared at the pliable flesh before her. “But that’s not possible. He’s so—” She struggled to find the right word. “I don’t know how to say it—so fresh . How can you tell he’s been here for that long?”

“There are several clues, but first off, the color of the skin says he’s been in the peat for a good long time. Based on my experience with bog remains, I’d guess at least a few hundred years. And the bones are almost completely decalcified. When a body’s been in peat for a long time, everything—even the bones—becomes soft as wet pasteboard. Very easy to pull apart in that state.” She pointed to the toe of a shoe sticking up from the peat. “And, unless I’m very much mistaken, his footwear doesn’t appear to be the latest style.” Dr. Friel reached into her pocket and handed over a business card. “So you see, it’s not me you need, it’s someone from the National Museum.”

Stella glanced at the card: Niall Dawson, Keeper of Conservation, National Museum of Ireland.

“Best to ring straightaway,” Dr. Friel said. “They won’t want to lose any time. You might want to pack some extra peat around the body until Dawson can get a recovery team here.”

Stella thought she’d misheard. “Sorry?”

“It helps to preserve the body.” Dr. Friel stooped to collect a large handful of sopping peat from the cutaway floor, applying it gently to the corpse’s right arm. “Like this. You’ll want to make sure he’s completely covered. Niall Dawson will thank you for taking the trouble, believe me.” She eyed her watch. “Sorry, I’ve got to dash. Urgent case up in Westmeath.”

“Wait a minute. If this man is five hundred years old, how in God’s name did he get into the boot of a car?”

“No idea,” Dr. Friel said. “Perhaps that’s worth investigating.”

Cormac Maguire stood at his bedroom window, looking down into his back garden. Not just his garden or his room anymore. Nora Gavin had shared his bed for the last twelve months. It seemed impossible that so much time had passed.

When they’d returned to Dublin last fall, he had urged her to request a sabbatical, to allow herself a period of recovery after everything that had come to pass on that barren headland in Donegal. The Trinity medical school had granted her request, so she had spent the past year here in his house, reading, walking, digging in the garden. It was a necessary period of decompression, a slow readjustment after being so long submerged in grief. As he had anticipated, the guilt that had anchored her for five years proved difficult to cast off. In the past couple of months, however, he thought the weight seemed to be lifting, little by little—that was all he could say.

Be with me, he’d said to her at Port na Rón. Summoning his own words, and her unspoken response, never failed to fill him with a potent longing. He wanted nothing more than to be with her. But her mere physical presence wasn’t what he meant when he’d said those words: Be with me. Some part of her was still holding back, unwilling to allow him entrée to the very deepest, most hidden recesses within herself. Perhaps it was only that she had never dared imagine her life beyond a certain point—the point where she managed to bring her sister’s killer to justice.

He’d had his own period of adjustment since moving his father here last summer. The old man had suffered no permanent paralysis or lateral weakness from the stroke he’d suffered a year ago. He could dress and feed himself without difficulty, and for that they had reason to be thankful. But the brainstorm had left a different sort of damage: severe aphasia that showed no signs of abating. It was clear from the old man’s demeanor that he could understand them. He could also speak quite fluently, but only in strings of gibberish, as if all the words stored in his brain had suddenly become untethered. He seemed to harbor suspicion that everyone around him was deliberately obstreperous, or perhaps even a bit thick. Attempts at conversation frustrated and exhausted him. He’d recently begun regular twice-weekly sessions with a speech therapist—Cormac had heard the poor young woman from the next room, cheerfully trying to pull his father through the prescribed exercises: she would list the days of the week, the months of the year, try to coax answers to simple yes-or-no questions: Does glass break? Can fish fly?

Cormac crossed to his suitcase, lying open on the bed, waiting to accept the last few items he would need on this pilgrimage. For some reason he had fixed upon that designation for the trip he and Nora and his father were about to make. What else would you call a visit to a holy site, for the purpose of collecting relics?

The call about the body had come about forty minutes ago. Niall Dawson from the National Museum had rung to ask whether he and Nora would be part of the recovery team for a set of human remains that had just turned up in a remote Tipperary bog, beside the ruins of a medieval monastery.

Nora had come into the room just as he set down the phone. “Who was that?”

“Niall Dawson. A body’s been found in Tipperary, and he wanted to know if we could help with the recovery.”

“What did you say?”

“That I’d have to talk to you and ring him back.”

“You’d normally jump at a job like this. Why are you hedging? Do you think I’m not able to judge for myself whether I’m ready or not?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s just that this bog is way off down in Tipp somewhere. Who’s going to look after my father?”

“We’ve got that young woman from the agency coming, haven’t we?”

The old man’s regular caregiver, Mrs. Hanafin, had just left for two weeks at her son’s holiday home on Mallorca. He’d already arranged for a substitute caregiver from a local agency. Nora continued: “I’m not saying we should leave him alone with a new minder, but surely the agency won’t mind if we take your father and this new caretaker along with us. It’s only going to be a day or two, and it might be a good thing for him, getting out of the city.”

She was standing in front of him, her face only a few inches from his own. Her voice softened. “What is it? There’s something else, isn’t there? Tell me.”

“Niall didn’t have many details on the body, just that it was old… and it turned up in the boot of a car buried in the bog.”

He watched her features cloud over as she took in this new information.

She touched his face. “Oh, Cormac, I do love you for wanting to spare me. But you can’t do it forever. You have to stop trying.”

And so after a few hasty phone calls, it had been arranged: they would take part in the recovery, and Joseph and his temporary caretaker would travel with them to Tipperary. Dawson had arranged a place for them to stay.

In some ways, this trip would be déjà vu all over again. He and Nora had first come together over the corpse of a red-haired stranger, a tragic story sealed for centuries in a bog. They had managed to set her story free, but what would they discover about the current specimen?

The bell sounded in the front hall. Cormac opened the door to a pretty dark-haired woman whom he guessed to be in her midtwenties. She was casually dressed; a small rolling bag stood beside her feet.

“Ah, good, you’re all set. Come in, come in. We’ve been expecting you,” he said, extending his hand. “Cormac Maguire.”

“Eliana,” she said. “Eliana Guzmán. I was looking for Joseph Maguire?”

“Yes, my father,” Cormac said. “I’m sorry to spring travel plans on you with such little notice. Did the agency explain? We only just got the call and have to get down the country as soon as possible. You’re all right about leaving as soon as we have the car packed?”