Erin Hart - Haunted Ground

“Hugh,” she said, looking into his face intently, “you know it isn’t Mina.” He nodded mutely, then straightened and let her walk with him away from the trench. Devaney’s eyes had never left the stranger’s face. Now the policeman raised a hand to the back of his neck and sighed. Cormac caught another slight movement with the corner of his eye, and glanced up to see Brendan McGann twisting the two-grain fork in his hands, his eyes trained on his sister’s back.

In the course of his work, Cormac had often felt like a detective, sorting through evidence and piecing together clues to unlock the secrets and the lives of those long dead. Here were two mysteries dropped in tandem right into his lap. What—if anything—had they to do with one another? He wished he could keep digging until he had discovered what word or thought or deed had brought the red-haired girl to this place. But archaeology was not that kind of science. Whatever small knowledge he could gain came in shards, in fragments, in frustrating, piecemeal fashion. Would they ever find out who she was, or why she died? He looked down into the dead girl’s once-beautiful face, and pledged that he would try.

Nora Gavin found it strange that no one had said a word when Una McGann and the stranger walked away from the site, but she had followed Cormac’s lead and fallen to work again. The initial shock of seeing the dead girl’s hair, so like Triona’s, had been unsettling enough. Nora knew she must not think about her sister, at least not while there was still work to be done. She forced herself to focus instead on Cormac’s instructions, and on what she must do once she got back to Dublin. She’d call and arrange for a technician to meet her at Collins Barracks tonight, so that this curious relic might be deposited in the refrigeration unit as soon as possible. Tomorrow she’d take the hair and tissue samples they needed for carbon dating and further chemical testing. She’d schedule a CT scan at one of the local hospitals immediately after the preliminary exam, if they could fit her in. Much of what they knew about bog specimens today was based on past blunders. The primary mistake had usually been in waiting too long before beginning examination and conservation, and the result was that the specimens had begun to decay. This girl might not be as important a find as the Meenybraddan woman back in 1978, but Nora wanted to make sure that they found out as much as they possibly could from her.

The crowd at the cutaway had thinned considerably by the time they finished the excavation: the farmer, Brendan McGann, had cleared off shortly after his sister left the scene, and the young Garda officer had eventually drifted back to his station in Dunbeg. Only Detective Devaney remained, standing by with arms crossed, looking down at his feet and occasionally toeing the earth like a hopeful suitor. The block of peat that she and Cormac removed, though not large, was extremely heavy. Cormac had rigged a sort of makeshift stretcher but it took two of them to lift the thing and convey it across the bog to the road, where they set it gently in the trunk of her car; Devaney followed after. As she arranged the items in the trunk to keep the plastic-wrapped bundle from sliding in transit, Nora wondered why the policeman had bothered hanging around so long. There was something tentative in his manner, as if he felt he really ought to return to work but couldn’t let go of some idea that was rattling around in his brain. Maybe he was waiting until the three of them were alone to tell them what was going on here. And if he didn’t bring it up, then she bloody well would.

“I’ll stay on and clear up around the site,” Cormac said to her. “You’d better be heading back.”

“So that’s it—you’re finished here?” Devaney asked.

“Well, we’ve searched the immediate area pretty thoroughly,” Cormac said, wiping his hands. “We can’t just go tearing up turf at random. Things shift around in bogs, Detective. It’s almost like an underground lake. Even if the girl’s body had been nearby at one time, there’s no telling where it’s got to by now.”

Devaney’s tone was studiously nonchalant. “I don’t suppose ground-probing radar would be any use?”

“No use at all on a bog,” Cormac said. “All the organic material is waterlogged. Doesn’t matter what it is—turf, tree stump, body—it all reads exactly the same. That’s what makes a bog the ideal place to hide a corpse. But I’m sure you know that, Detective.” Devaney frowned and rubbed his chin.

Did Cormac know something that she didn’t? “Would you mind filling us in?” she asked the policeman. “Who was that guy? And who’s Mina? It seems like I’m the only one here who doesn’t have the full story.”

Devaney considered them both for a moment before speaking. “His name is Osborne. Local gentry, I suppose you’d call him—lives at the big house on the lake beyond. His wife disappeared just over two years ago. Maybe he thought we’d found her.” Nora felt as though she’d been punched.

“The whole area was searched at the time of the disappearance—civil defense, underwater units, the lot—and none of the search teams came up with anything. Last year all the bog holes in East Galway got another going-over. We’ve put out numerous appeals, and there’s been a generous reward all along, but nobody’s come forward. Nobody knows a thing. It’s as if the ground just opened and swallowed her up.”

“Don’t you have any suspects?”

“We’ve no proof a crime was even committed,” Devaney said, the dismay audible in his voice.

“What about that guy, Osborne?”

“He was interviewed several times. No solid alibi for the time of the disappearance, but nobody could manage to find any material evidence that would crack his story. And without a body… Now the higher-ups want to lump his case in with a whole string of women gone missing over the last five years—in spite of the fact that it doesn’t fit.”

“Why not?” Cormac asked.

“Well, for one thing, none of the others involved a child. Osborne’s young son is missing as well.”

“Could Mina have had some reason to leave, Detective?” Nora heard herself asking. “People sometimes disappear on purpose.”

“If you’re running away, usually someone’s got a clue. Nobody’s seen Mina Osborne. And I mean no one. Not her family, not her closest friends. And we couldn’t find a reason that she might have left. According to all the world, the Osbornes had the perfect marriage. No one says a word to the contrary.”

“How do people know what really goes on?” Nora murmured. That’s what people had said about Peter and Triona as well, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. She felt queasy. First the red hair and now this; the coincidences were beginning to unnerve her.

“So what do you think happened to them, Detective?” Cormac asked.

“At this point I don’t think anything at all.”

“It seems to me if you’re hanging around asking questions about ground-probing radar, you might have some theories,” Cormac said.

“Oh, I have a few. But the trouble with theories is they don’t prove a fucking thing”—he cast an apologetic look at Nora—“if you’ll pardon the expression. And evidence-wise, everything has come up blank.” He paused. “But I know two things: As far as we know, Mina Osborne hasn’t made contact with anyone since her disappearance. And her husband’s been pushing to get turf-cutting in the area banned altogether. I have to ask myself why.”

“The man was devastated,” Cormac said. “We all saw him.”

“So we did” came Devaney’s terse reply.

Nora felt her throat constrict as she tried to understand what the policeman was saying: that Osborne’s show of grief could have been exactly that—a show. Her face felt frozen; she hoped it could mask her feelings. She felt a hand on her elbow.