Lake of Sorrows

1

Ward drove out to Illaunafulla on Saturday morning in bad humor. Rachel Briscoe had not turned up at her lodgings in Offaly or in Dublin, so he’d arranged for a ground search of the area around Loughnabrone, starting in Ursula Downes’s back garden where the girl’s binoculars had been found. So far, however, the search arrangements had not been progressing satisfactorily. There was too little manpower available, and it was taking too much time to mobilize and organize the extra officers and volunteers. Nothing was going right. A contingent of men would have to be sent to Ferbane, where the Leinster Fleadh Cheoil was on this weekend. The once-a-year regional traditional music competition meant extra security would be needed, since the town would be overflowing with people in the pubs and on the streets, and unguarded handbags and musical instruments would be ripe for the picking. And to top everything off, after a near-record fortnight of fine weather, a slanting rain had begun to fall.

“They’re all assembled, Liam.” Maureen Brennan leaned in through the car window he’d cracked open. “Waiting for your instructions. I told them to wait in the shed, around the back, to keep out of the rain while they could.” Low, shifting gray clouds moved silently across the sky, making the space between heaven and earth seem even narrower than usual.

Someone had set up a table in the hayshed, a sheet of plywood over a couple of sawhorses, and Ward set to rolling out the maps while Maureen gathered the collected force around. Several held steaming cups of tea, and one or two stubbed out their cigarettes at the entrance as they turned to follow Ward under the curved sheet-metal roof. They gathered around the makeshift table, their lean faces reminding him of his own first years as a Guard. There were a few more women here than when he’d started out—a good thing.

He said, “Some of you may know that yesterday morning, just beyond the wall in the back garden here, we found a pair of binoculars belonging to Rachel Briscoe. She’s not been seen now for more than twenty-four hours, and her employer has officially reported her as missing. Rachel Briscoe is twenty-two years of age. She’s five feet, six inches tall, and has long dark brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a dark blue hooded anorak, jeans, and blue and gray trainers. Distinguishing marks may include some healed scars on the hands or wrists. Here’s the photograph from her company-issued identity card.” He passed a stack of computer-printed photos to Maureen to hand out to the search party.

Ward unrolled the Ordnance Survey map he’d brought along. The Grand Canal ran east-west along the top half of the paper; on the eastern edge of the map was the bridge at Carrigahaun. The map showed all the ancient monuments, ringforts and tower houses, monasteries and holy wells. He showed them where they were, the farmyard marked carefully on the map, and pointed out the bright yellow line he’d highlighted around the area they would search. He looked up at their concerned faces and saw that it didn’t matter that most of them didn’t know this girl. They’d search for her, seeing in her place their own sisters, their own daughters, and praying that she would be found, alive and well.

Once the searchers had set out, Ward stood in the shelter of the shed behind Ursula Downes’s house and watched the line of uniformed Guards in their yellow rain gear inch up the hill. The line moved slowly, foraging in the long grass, using sticks to poke into the hedgerows and undergrowth. It was going to be a very long day. The heavy clouds seemed only feet off the ground and the rain had started to come down harder—a desperate, soaking rain, just as they were beginning the search in earnest.

He remembered taking part in just such a search as a young Garda—a profession his educated family had disdained, a job for plodders and born civil servants. He’d been part of a line just like this one, stretched across a forested hillside in the Wicklow mountains, searching for a woman who’d been missing for six days. The sun had been shining that day, and he remembered the sound his fellow officers’ feet had made as they worked their way up the slope. And he remembered what they’d eventually found. He couldn’t remember what he’d noticed first; perhaps the peculiar odor of death, then the still, silent form, and the way the dappled light strayed across the woman’s mottled skin amid the verdant undergrowth. He hoped none of his officers would have a similar experience today.

2

Nora awakened on the sofa in the sitting room, and heard Cormac rustling around in the kitchen. Niall Dawson’s fax had come in shortly after their call to him the evening before, and they’d worked into the wee hours looking through the records of the Loughnabrone hoard. To see the whole list of items recovered was astonishing; the hoard was an unparalleled cache of Iron Age swords and daggers and spearpoints. All that beautiful ancient scrollwork still snaked across her drowsy consciousness. They’d have to bring Charlie Brazil’s drawings to the police, she knew, but it would be so much better if only they could bring some other useful information as well.

“It’s nearly eleven o’clock,” Cormac said from the kitchen. “Fancy a trip into town? We can have some lunch there.”

Forty minutes later they walked into the bar at Coughlan’s and took a table near the window. Desmond Quill sat only a few tables away, staring into his coffee, looking as if he’d spent the previous twenty-four hours gazing at the bottom of a whiskey glass. He probably had, Nora thought, considering the state she’d seen him in yesterday afternoon. Everything about him—the slumped posture, the deep lines in his face, the pain that flowed from his downcast eyes—whispered devastation and loss. The plate of food before him looked untouched. It was as if the other restaurant patrons knew what he’d been through and, fearing the contagion of death, were determined to keep a safe distance.

Cormac must have noticed her looks in Quill’s direction. “Do you know him, Nora?”

“Not really. I met him for the first time yesterday. Desmond Quill; he was Ursula’s—” She stopped, not knowing what to call him. Friend? Lover? Companion? None of those designations seemed adequate, given the visible depth of the man’s grief.

Cormac seemed to understand. “Poor fella.”

Nora felt tempted to tell Cormac more about her conversation with Quill the previous afternoon, but she held off, feeling that to do so might violate Quill’s confidence.

Their lunch had just arrived when Nora looked up to find Quill approaching the table.

“You asked if there was anything you could do,” he said to her, picking up where their conversation had left off the day before. “You said you would help me if you could.” He turned slightly to look at Cormac, his bluntly handsome features pulled downward in an expression of puzzlement. “You look familiar; I’m sorry if I don’t know you. Desmond Quill.”

“I don’t think we’ve met,” Cormac said, taking Quill’s hand. “Cormac Maguire. Nora told me you were Ursula’s friend. I’m very sorry for your trouble.”

Quill nodded once, accepting the condolence. If Cormac had been one of the men Ursula had mentioned by name, it didn’t seem to register. Quill put his hand on the back of the chair beside Nora. “May I?”

She gestured for him to sit, curious about what had brought him over to speak to them.

“I’ve just remembered something Ursula told me, about the place where she used to meet Owen Cadogan. I don’t know where it was—somewhere out on the bog; a rough sort of a shed filled with bags of peat moss and dry concrete. Could be any one of a dozen places, I suppose.”

“Have you told Detective Ward about it?”

“I left a message, but he’s out on a search, they tell me, looking for a young woman gone missing—one of the girls on Ursula’s crew. No one’s seen her since late Thursday evening. A couple of Guards came ’round and asked me about her this morning.” He raised hollow eyes to look at Nora. “It’s like a nightmare, all this. A nightmare. I don’t know anyone here. I don’t know this place. But I wondered if you knew anyone who might recognize the building from that description. I don’t know what else to do. I’m going mad sitting here, and if I could just find something, some little piece that would help the police find the person who killed her—” His right hand flew up to cover his eyes for a moment, and he stood to leave. “I’ll go now; I won’t stay and disrupt your meal. But if you know anyone who could help me, please…it’s all I’d ask of you.” His red-rimmed eyes held a desperate, silent plea. Without waiting for Nora’s answer, he turned and walked away.

She waited until Quill was out of the bar before speaking. “Ursula told him that Owen Cadogan had been harassing her since she broke off the relationship. I think he believes Cadogan killed Ursula, but he can’t prove anything. You know the area—do you have any idea about the place he was talking about?”

“There are dozens of Bord na Mona buildings at Loughnabrone. It could be any one of them. Nothing comes immediately to mind, but his description was pretty sketchy. What was he saying about the missing girl?”

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it. Did they ask about her when you were in for questioning?”

“They did, actually, but the name didn’t mean anything to me.”

“What name?” She knew before he said it.

“Rachel Briscoe.”

“I gave her a lift home the other night, Cormac, and she dropped something in the car. It turned out to be an overdue notice from the Pembroke Library in Ballsbridge—but it wasn’t addressed to Rachel Briscoe; it was sent to someone named Rachel Power.”

It was Cormac’s turn for astonishment. “Rachel Power? You’re absolutely sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I can show you the letter—it’s still in my car back at the house. I was going to give it back to Rachel yesterday morning, but I forgot all about it when I found Ursula. Why—does the name Rachel Power mean something to you?”

“It’s a long, complicated story,” Cormac said.

“Tell me.”

“I have to say first that I never really knew how much of the story was true and how much was exaggerated, or even outright fabricated. I don’t think anyone really knew but the people involved, and they weren’t talking. I had a colleague at the university years ago, Tom Power. An outstanding archaeologist, one of the best scholars I’ve ever known. But he suffered terribly from depression. Used to go into these downward spirals that lasted for weeks. He got involved with Ursula in one of his really down periods. That much I know is true, because he told me himself. A moment of weakness, he said. He felt rotten about deceiving his wife, and he wanted to break off with Ursula; he knew it had been a terrible mistake. But by that point he couldn’t figure out how to extricate himself. He tried several times, but she wouldn’t let him go—threatened to tell his wife.”

“What happened?”

“This is the part I only heard second- and third-hand. I don’t know how much is true.”

“Tell me anyway. It could be important.”

“Tom’s wife and daughter walked in on them one afternoon in his office. His daughter was only about ten or eleven at the time. And the way I heard it, the confrontation wasn’t exactly an accident; it may have been deliberately set up.”

“By whom?”

“By Ursula. It’s awful, I know. I just don’t know if that part is true; it was just what people said. But Tom’s wife left him; that was a fact. And the scandal didn’t end there. There were rumors that Ursula was trying to discredit Tom’s academic work, saying she’d actually done his research and most of the writing he’d had published for the previous several years. I can’t believe that part is true. Tom Power was, and is, a brilliant man; he had no need to hide behind a colleague’s work. But he was consumed with guilt about what he’d done to Sarah and he wouldn’t even defend himself. He had to leave his teaching position, and no other university would touch him. In the end he took a job cataloging a large private art collection somewhere in France, cut his ties to everyone he knew. I can’t imagine that he’s had an easy time of it the past ten years.”

“And Rachel is his daughter?”

“Tom’s daughter was named Rachel, and she’d be about the same age as the girl who disappeared,” Cormac said. “Briscoe was Sarah’s name before she married. There’s got to be some connection.”

Nora’s thoughts went back to the scene at the excavation, when the young man had borrowed Rachel’s binoculars. Rachel’s temper had flared, but it was Ursula’s seemingly benign gesture, handing the binoculars back, that had nearly put her over the edge. “Rachel might have had reason to despise Ursula, but to take a job out here just to get close to her? I can’t see someone her age concocting such an elaborate scheme just for revenge.”

“She may have seen Ursula as the person who destroyed her family. People have committed murder for much more trivial reasons. If no one has seen her since Ursula was killed—”

“But that doesn’t mean she did it. She could have just been a witness.” Either way, the Guards would be anxious to find Rachel and talk to her. Nora considered the way Ursula had been killed and tried to imagine Rachel Briscoe pulling tight the leather cord, drawing a knife. None of it seemed to connect with the defensive young woman who’d sat in the passenger seat of her car less than two days ago.

“We’re probably getting ahead of ourselves,” she said. “Maybe she just got fed up with the job and went home. We don’t even know that she is your friend’s daughter, not for certain. Maybe we should go back to the house and think this through at least once more before we call anyone.”

3

At half-past five, Maureen Brennan set a steaming mug of milky tea on Ward’s desk. The daylong search for Rachel Briscoe had turned up nothing, so they’d come back to the station to dry off and go over their notes, getting ready to brief the Bureau officers who would be coming in on Monday.

“Don’t worry, Liam. She’ll turn up. If she’s anywhere to be found, we’ll find her.”

He didn’t need reassurance on that score. They would find Rachel Briscoe eventually, he was sure of that; he just hoped it wouldn’t be too late. They had found no footprints, no traces of hair or blood, no debris that could tell them any more about the girl’s whereabouts. The only thing they had turned up was a small area of bent grass and leaves under one of the hedgerows, as if someone or something had been sleeping there recently; even the most experienced searchers couldn’t tell whether the marks had been left by an animal or a human. Ward sighed. “What’s the latest from Dublin—and how are we doing on Ursula Downes’s personal effects?”

“She didn’t keep much in her appointment diary, as you saw yourself, so it’s been difficult to find anyone who claims to know her well. But here’s what we’ve been able to get so far. She was born and raised on the north side of Dublin, an only child; her father left before she was born, and the mother either married or remarried—we’re not quite clear on which it was—when Ursula was ten. The father’s whereabouts are still unknown, but both the mother and stepfather are now dead. Ursula was single, lived alone in a flat in Rathmines. The Bureau say they’ll let us know what turns up there, but they said it might take a while; her place is an absolute tip.”

Ward felt annoyed. He knew it made sense to have the Bureau handle the search, but he couldn’t help wondering if they’d miss something, even one tiny thing, that might help color the case. He also knew the Bureau lads wouldn’t be in any particular hurry to get things done until Monday, when their own officers would be safely in charge of the investigation.

A sideways glance from Brennan told him that she understood and shared his irritation, but she went on: “Ursula Downes’s mobile had only a couple of numbers stored in it; her office in Dalkey, Desmond Quill’s mobile.”

“That’s strange, isn’t it—that she wouldn’t keep more friends’ numbers on her mobile?”

“Not if she didn’t have any friends. Some people don’t, you know. Or it could be that she was just too lazy to program them all in.” Ward thought of the empty directory on his own mobile.

Brennan continued: “Several neighbors interviewed in Dublin yesterday said she kept to herself and was often out late, all night. I also spoke to her boss at the archaeology firm. Ursula had a decent job there, but the boss didn’t seem completely satisfied with her performance. Nothing he was willing to spell out, but he hinted that she’d probably not have been going back to them after the excavation season this year. That seems to have been a pattern in her employment history. She worked at six different contract archaeology firms over the past ten years.”

Ward turned to his own notepad. “All right, what about the timeline? Several witnesses place Ursula Downes leaving the excavation site at half past five. She drove into the village to pick up some take-away and a few other items, including four bottles of wine, according to the shopgirl who came forward yesterday. From there it looks as if she went home and started in on the wine; two of the four bottles were empty, and according to the toxicology, her blood alcohol level at the time of her death was almost double the driving limit.”

Brennan said, “From her mobile, we know that she rang Desmond Quill on his mobile around eight, and they talked for about thirty minutes. He says they were making plans for the weekend, and that they agreed he would arrive on Friday morning.”

“What do we know about Desmond Quill?”

“Owns a shop off Grafton Street—antiques, very posh. Lives in Ballsbridge. He says he was in Dublin the night Ursula was killed, playing his regular Thursday chess game at home with Laurence Fitzhugh, a banker. Fitzhugh confirms the story, says they were together at Quill’s house until nearly half-two in the morning. If he’s telling the truth, that wouldn’t give Quill time to drive all the way out here and commit the murder—Loughnabrone is a good three hours from the south side of Dublin. Quill says he left the city at eight o’clock on Friday morning.”

“And what time did Ursula ring Quill on Thursday evening?”

“Ten past eight—and again at twelve fifty-five.”

“She rang him twice? If they’d made all the arrangements for the weekend in the first conversation, why would she ring him back?”

“Quill says Ursula told him that someone was bothering her. She could have been calling him for help. He says he didn’t receive the second call, that his phone was switched off. And it lasted less than a minute. Maybe she decided not to leave a message.”

“And what time does the phone say she rang Maguire?”

“Twenty past twelve. That matches his story.”

“So she rings up Maguire at twelve-twenty, and Quill again thirty minutes later? Say Maguire was threatening her. If she was truly frightened, why would she call Desmond Quill, who was seventy miles away in Dublin, instead of emergency services? This isn’t lining up quite right.” With the new wireless technology, they could find out from the phone company exactly where Quill had been when he’d received the second call. It probably wasn’t worth pursuing at this point, unless there was something funny about his alibi, and so far, at least, it seemed pretty solid. “What about calls to Ursula’s mobile?”

“The phone’s memory keeps a record of the last ten calls made and received. The last ten received were all from Owen Cadogan’s mobile. They were spaced only a few minutes apart, all on the night of the murder, between a quarter past ten and three o’clock that following morning. All very brief, as though she knew who it was and didn’t answer.”

That was an interesting detail, but there was no way of knowing whether Cadogan had just given up trying to reach Ursula, or stopped phoning because he knew she was already dead.

“Who else did she call?”

“The last ten calls she made included one to Niall Dawson—you remember, that fella we met out at the bog—he’s Keeper of Antiquities at the National Museum. There were four calls to Desmond Quill, the one to Maguire, and four other numbers I’m still checking out.”

“What did you find on the laptop?”

“Let me show you.” She switched on the computer, and Ward brought his chair around so that he could look over her shoulder. “From the browser history we can tell that someone—maybe it was Ursula, or maybe it was someone else—was online the night she was killed. Here’s a list of all the sites browsed that evening: the Irish Times archive, the Examiner archive, the Duchas Sites and Monuments record—”

“Can we tell what was she looking for at any of those sites?”

“All of them. Which one do you want?”

“I don’t know—one of the newspapers.”

Maureen scrolled down the screen to show him: Ursula Downes had dug up a series of brief news articles on the animal mutilations about which Charlie Brazil had been questioned. None mentioned the boy by name, but Ursula may have picked up enough local gossip to make the connection. That could have been what she was holding over Charlie Brazil—though as horrible as the crimes had been, why would anyone care about three slaughtered animals all these years later?

Ward looked up at Brennan. “What were the other sites you mentioned?”

“She went into several excavation databases, searching for information on the Loughnabrone hoard. But she was an archaeologist, so it’s possible that some of those searches might have been work-related. I’d have to spend a bit more time digging to tell exactly what she was looking for—if it was just general information about the hoard, or something more specific.”

Ward looked down the list that glowed on the flat screen. The Loughnabrone hoard was another connection to Charlie Brazil—perhaps not directly, but it had been Charlie’s father and uncle who had discovered the hoard. And Ursula’s crew had just uncovered the uncle’s body three days previously. Perhaps there was a pattern he wasn’t seeing in the way these facts aligned themselves, a combination that would open it up. “Right. Keep at those searches a bit longer, if you would, Maureen. They might turn up something useful.”

“I had another thought today while we were out in the fields. Both eyewitness statements we have on Ursula Downes and her confrontations with Owen Cadogan and Charlie Brazil came from Nora Gavin.”

“What are you saying? You think Dr. Gavin is making things up to draw our attention away from Maguire?”

“It’s possible, isn’t it?” Maureen looked down at her notes again.

“Definitely possible. But we also have Desmond Quill’s statement that Cadogan was harassing Ursula, and evidence that Cadogan placed repeated calls to her mobile. I don’t think Dr. Gavin is making up stories, but maybe she’s being somewhat selective in what she tells us. At this point maybe we should concentrate on Owen Cadogan and Charlie Brazil—and those flat denials that they ever had anything to do with Ursula Downes. Anything back from forensics on fingerprints or other evidence from the house?”

“Nothing yet—probably not until tomorrow at the earliest.”

“Well, if we don’t have physical evidence, we can start on witnesses. Were you able to find out where Cadogan’s secretary lives?”

Brennan lifted her notebook. “Right here.”

“Let’s talk to her, see what we can find out. We’ve also got the phone calls from his mobile to Ursula’s. We can use that to rattle his cage a bit.”

Ward stood up and stared at the crime-scene photos on the board while Brennan collected what she would need for an off-site interview. For him, this process of painstakingly working through all the evidence—even at such an early stage in the investigation—was a necessary winnowing, a process that helped to separate kernels of relevant fact from the surrounding chaff. He was glad his partner had no objection to the method, because he wasn’t sure he could work any other way. The station was even quieter than usual today; everyone had been sent home after the unsuccessful search for Rachel Briscoe. Maybe Brennan was right and the girl would turn up eventually, unharmed, wondering what all the fuss had been about. He hoped so. The trouble with this case was that nothing was shaking out. They were already buried in chaff, and it would only get worse the more they found out. All he could do was to keep shaking the frame.

4

“Sorry to be calling around so late,” Ward said, noting the surprise on Aileen Flood’s face at the sight of two detectives on her doorstep. “I’m sure you can appreciate how busy we’ve been.”

“Of course. Won’t you come in?” She led them into an immaculate sitting room, antimacassars set with grim purpose as though aligned and placed with a template. Everything was exactly as it should be—china lined up in the cabinet, dinner dishes all washed and put away, the faint whiff of lemon oil and disinfectant in the air. It was a space that seemed to Ward essentially and inordinately female, as though it had never been contaminated by a man’s presence. Everything reeked of cleanliness and decorum.

“You live here alone, Ms. Flood?”

“For the last couple of years, yes, since my sister married and moved to Banagher. Her husband runs a boat there.” Aileen Flood had a round, earnest face that flushed easily; her trim, tailored clothes spoke of rigid standards that must be maintained, whatever the cost.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” She looked at him expectantly, but he glanced at Maureen, with whom she’d hardly made eye contact.

“I don’t think we’ll trouble you that long. It’s late—”

“I’m dying for a cup of tea, actually, if you wouldn’t mind,” Maureen said, leveling her eyes at Aileen Flood and smiling with her lips only. She wasn’t fond of overly demure women. Didn’t trust them. And Ward knew that she didn’t want tea at all; she only wanted to get Aileen Flood out of the room so she could have a better look around.

When they were alone, Brennan sidled to the kitchen door and cracked it open to peer through. Ward heard the sound of a refrigerator opening and closing; then his partner shut the door and came back to sit beside him. She leaned over and said in a whisper: “Three pint bottles of Guinness in the fridge. Does Aileen strike you as a solitary pint drinker, by any chance?” Maureen’s nose for scandal was unrivaled in his experience, and she often picked up cues their male colleagues were just too thick to see.

When Aileen Flood reentered the sitting room a few minutes later carrying a tray, Brennan asked to use the toilet, knowing that Aileen would be too busy with the tea to bother worrying about her.

“I’m sorry,” Ward said, “we shouldn’t be putting you to so much trouble. We’re only here to ask a few questions as part of the inquiry into the death of Ursula Downes.” He saw Aileen’s tea-pouring hand begin to quake, despite her best efforts to keep it still. Her face looked pinched, and she flushed an unattractive blotchy scarlet. This physiological reaction wasn’t of much use to him; some people started to sweat the moment they saw a policeman, whether they were guilty of anything or not, and Ward suspected Aileen Flood might be one of them.

By the time the tea had been poured around, Brennan had returned from the toilet, and when Aileen Flood’s attention was turned elsewhere she took the opportunity to tell Ward with a subtle shake of the head what she’d found there: nothing.

“Thank you for the tea,” he said. “Now, we have a few questions to ask you about the night of the murder, the twentieth of June. Can you tell us where you were on that night, say from the end of your work day onward?”

“I left the office at five o’clock on Thursday, the usual time, then drove to the shop in Birr for a few things. My sister and her husband were coming over from Banagher for dinner that night. I stopped at the off-license to get some Guinness; that’s what Phil likes to drink. They arrived about seven; we ate our dinner and watched a bit of an old film on television, and they went home about half-ten. Phil does have to be up early in the mornings on the boat.”

She paused, her fingers twisting the fringe of a plump, perfect pillow that lay beside her on the chair, and suddenly her soft face looked as if it were about to crumple in on itself. “I know what Owen said when you came to him in the office, that he was on his own on Thursday night, but it isn’t true. He was here with me. He said he didn’t want to involve me in this mess, but I told him it’s no use; I’m already involved.”

“You’re telling us that you’ve been sleeping with your boss?” Maureen asked, her voice as flat as she could make it. “How long has that been going on?”

Tears streaked down Aileen Flood’s face as she answered. “Since last March. He had a bit too much to drink at a farewell party for one of the other regional managers. His wife never comes along to any official functions anymore, and he really was in no state to be driving himself, so I gave him a lift, and it just happened.”

Brennan said, “I suppose he comes here to see you, here to the house?”

“Yes, of course. He doesn’t generally stay over, but he did on Thursday—the night you’re talking about, the twentieth. He arrived after my sister left—about half-eleven it was—and left again about seven in the morning. He was with me all night, I’ll swear it. His marriage was a sham, and everyone knew it, including his wife, so it didn’t seem wrong. A person deserves a little happiness.” Ward couldn’t decide if she was speaking about Owen Cadogan or herself.

“So everything had been going fine since March. Your neighbors must have seen Cadogan’s car here a few times, then?” Brennan asked.

“I’m sure they must have.”

“Does he keep any of his things here—spare clothes, a razor, a toothbrush?”

“I said he doesn’t usually stay the night.” Ward thought he heard Aileen’s voice catch in her throat. He knew where Brennan was going, and knew it was his turn to take up the questioning.

“You must have been quite surprised when Ursula Downes came back to Loughnabrone this summer.”

Aileen Flood’s voice and expression hardened in a single heartbeat. “Why should that be of any concern to me?”

“Because you know what happened last summer, when all Ursula Downes had to do was crook her little finger…”

The fierce battle Aileen was waging with herself was visible on her face. “Owen was through with her. He’d no interest in Ursula; he said he hated her.”

“Hated her enough to kill her?”

“No, I didn’t mean that.” Aileen was evidently having trouble keeping a lid on her own pent-up emotions about Ursula Downes. Ward realized they’d never considered the possibility that the crime had been committed by another woman—or by two people working as a team.

“Did you help Owen murder Ursula?”

“No! I told you—”

“You both hated her, did you not?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I hated her too, and I’m not sorry she’s dead.” Ward had been around canals and locks enough to know how to stick in a wedge and keep the floodgate open once it was cracked. His job right now was to lever it further open, keep the flow going.

“We have it on good authority that Cadogan’s affair with Ursula Downes was not over.”

“Who told you that?”

“We have an eyewitness who saw them engaged in—what would you call it?—a rather intimate conversation.” Ward watched as this information did its corrosive work on Aileen Flood’s pride.

“She was a right scheming bitch, that Ursula—thought she could just come back and start ordering Owen about. She never cared about him. You should have seen her, coming into his office and asking had he worked up the courage to ask me for a ride, in that horrible, mocking tone. She laughed at him, then expected him to fall down on his two knees and adore her—”

Ward said as gently as he could, “But he did adore her, didn’t he? He was still obsessed with her. Couldn’t stop thinking about her. And there was nothing you could do.” He watched as Aileen Flood’s eyes filled with tears once more. “You’ve never actually slept with Owen Cadogan, have you, Aileen?”

Her voice came out in a choked whisper. “No.”

There it was, Ward thought, the strange and shameful truth—and it was not that Aileen Flood was carrying on with someone else’s husband, but that she was in love with a man who had so little regard for her.

“It hardly seems fair that if Owen Cadogan killed Ursula and only came to you afterward, you can still be charged as an accessory to murder, just as if you had helped him.”

Her eyes grew large. “It’s not true. You’re just saying that.”

“It is true, Aileen. But you didn’t stop to think about it, did you, when he came to you for help that night? You’ve gotten much better at lying since all this began, haven’t you? But one thing I can promise you is that Owen Cadogan has gotten much better than you. It’s become so easy for him that he does it all the time now. No bother on him at all. He lies to his wife, he lies to his friends. He lied to you about Ursula once, Aileen, when he said he was finished with her. Why wouldn’t he do it again?”

Brennan said, “Do you know what he did to her, Aileen? Shall I tell you—”

“No, please, please, I don’t want to know. And I’m telling you, whatever was done, Owen didn’t do it. He arrived at my house at a quarter past two and said he’d been at Ursula’s and that she was dead, someone had murdered her, and he needed my help. I couldn’t say no. He said she was dead when he arrived, and I believed him. I had to believe him, didn’t I?”

“Do you want to go and talk to Cadogan now?” Brennan asked, once they were in the car and headed back toward the station. “We might not have any reason to hold him, but we can let him know what we’ve got—his own admission that he was at Ursula’s house on the night of the murder. We can at least make him sweat. I’d like that.”

“Let’s go, then. You know where he lives?”

Brennan nodded. “It always amazes me,” she said, “how men can go on behaving like such absolute shite hawks, and women still manage to be astonished. Stupid cows.”

Aileen Flood’s performance seemed to have touched a nerve, but Ward wasn’t sure it would be entirely appropriate for him to go probing into his partner’s personal life. It wasn’t only women, he reflected, stealing a glance at Maureen’s strong profile beside him. All of us insist upon our illusions, upon substituting dreams and distorted memories for the real thing. He’d certainly done it himself, and did it still, as the beautiful, quiet girl he’d fallen in love with became brightly polished over time, and the real Eithne—the thin limbs, haggard face, and compulsive gestures—had almost faded away in the reflected light of the favored image. It seemed to him that delusion was the most natural of human states; it was honesty that was the aberration.

5

“We’re going in circles,” Nora said. She looked at all the papers she and Cormac had laid out on the table before them: Charlie Brazil’s two drawings, the book about Iron Age metalwork, the list of Loughnabrone artifacts from the National Museum. They’d spent the entire afternoon and evening going through all the facts, an exercise that had proved almost entirely fruitless. Cormac had tried placing a few phone calls to establish whether Rachel Briscoe was the daughter of his former colleague, but no one he’d spoken to so far had been able to make that connection.

“Maybe we should quit trying to work it out,” Nora said, “and just bring Ward all these scraps of things we’ve found. He’s got different pieces of the puzzle as well. Maybe some of this will make more sense to him than it does to us.” She began searching under the papers for the policeman’s card.

“Hang on one second,” Cormac said. “Before you call anyone, I was thinking that I may know the place Desmond Quill mentioned at lunch. There’s an abandoned shed on the road out to Loughnabrone, from the time when they used to manufacture concrete drainpipes out here. The place I’m thinking of hasn’t been used in years, but it would probably still be full of dry concrete. Might be worth a quick visit before dark, to see if anyone appears to have been using it.”

The midsummer twilight lasted for hours, but darkness was just beginning to settle in the east as they left the Crosses and turned out onto the main road to Birr.

“How do you happen to know about this place?” Nora asked.

“Well, I’m not absolutely sure it’s the place Quill was talking about. But I used to know this whole area pretty well. There’s no guarantee that the place I remember is still there, but abandoned places tend not to change too much.”

The shed was exactly where Cormac remembered it, down a lane in a thick tangle of brushy trees. “Let’s leave the car out of sight if we can,” Nora said. “If someone’s there, it would be better to approach on foot.”

Cormac steered the jeep behind a huge bale of black polythene on the overgrown verge, took a torch from his glove box, and handed Nora another from his site kit. The twilight was fading fast. They approached the shed, a single-story rusting metal structure with a few dusty windows about ten feet off the ground and a huge padlock on the door. Nora checked the lock, careful not to touch the metal for fear of marring any fingerprints that might remain. It didn’t look brand-new, but it probably hadn’t been there more than a couple of years at the most. “I’d love to look in the windows,” she said. “There’s nothing around we could climb on, is there?”

“I hear a car,” Cormac said, and they both scrambled for cover, just managing to duck around the corner of the shed before Owen Cadogan’s silver Nissan pulled up beside it. Cadogan popped open the boot of his car and jumped out, fishing in his trouser pocket for the key. He let himself into the shed. Nora made a move to look inside the open door, but Cormac held her back. They heard rustling inside, and small groans of exertion; soon Cadogan emerged again, carrying a bulky bundle wrapped in black plastic over one shoulder. He dumped it without ceremony into the open boot, then locked up the shed again and drove away. As soon as he was out of sight, Nora sprinted toward the jeep, and felt Cormac close behind her.

They kept their distance out on the main road, and followed Cadogan when he turned down a narrow byway that led to the canal. There was no sign of his car ahead of them on the one-lane road. The jeep’s headlights fell on a ruined cottage, its windows blocked with weathered boards, once someone’s home, now an outbuilding of some kind. Nettles and blackberry brambles, signs of neglect, grew thick along the verge. Not many people would pass this way anymore, especially since the canal was so little used. The lane began to narrow suddenly, and the overgrown hedges at the roadside slapped against the car. But movement in the branches ahead told them that Cadogan had passed this way only a short time earlier. Eventually, after about a quarter-mile of winding road, they came to an abrupt stop at the canal. The hedge outside Nora’s window was chopped and twisted, as if it had been trimmed recently with a large, dull blade, and the pulpy bone-white wood inside lay exposed. A gravel towpath stretched in both directions, with no sign of a car either way. There was no other road Cadogan could have turned onto, but there was a small humpback bridge about fifty yards to the left. He might have gone over it; there was no way to tell, and going over the bridge might give them away. Nora was about to give up hope when a pair of red taillights suddenly appeared off to their right.

“Stay here,” she said, opening her door and climbing out of the jeep. By the time she’d made it around to the driver’s side, Cormac was out of the car as well.

“Wherever you think you’re going, Nora, I’m going with you.”

“Just down the towpath to see what he’s doing there.”

He nodded and followed behind her, crouching close to the hedgerow for cover. The rutted path was little used and filled with potholes. Nora saw the swordlike leaves of yellow flag growing along the canal bank, heard the birch trees on the far side rustle in the night wind. Ahead, Cadogan’s car bumped slowly down the path, sometimes swerving to avoid the deepest holes. They might be able to get impressions of his tire tracks, Nora thought, if that became necessary. Suddenly the car ahead stopped, and she and Cormac stopped as well, crouching just beside a stand of tall reeds that grew at the water’s edge.

Cadogan had just climbed out of the Nissan when his mobile began to ring, and he answered with an exasperated sigh: “What now?” He listened for a moment, then said, “Hang on a minute, Aileen. They’ve got nothing. No, they don’t know anything; they’re just—”

Again he listened; then he took the phone away from his ear and kicked the car tire savagely. “Fuck!” He kicked a few more times, letting out a stream of curses with each blow, until his anger was spent; then he put the phone back to his ear. “Do you realize what you’ve done, you stupid—Ah, Aileen, don’t cry. Jesus…No, I’ll think of something. Listen, I’ve got to go now—right.” He pulled the phone abruptly from his ear, switched it off, and landed one last savage kick. Then Cadogan rounded the car’s boot and opened it with a key. He leaned into the dark space and pulled out his heavy bundle, which they could see clearly now was the precise shape and heft of a body. He lifted the bundle to his chest, cradling it in his arms, but it sagged and slid down to his knees; he struggled, trying to maintain his grasp. Nora felt Cormac’s grip on her shoulder tighten, and felt his breathing stop as the heavy bundle slipped into the water without a splash. Cadogan stood on the bank for a few seconds as it sank, until the only sound was the swishing sigh of the wind in the tall reeds. Then he turned on his heel, climbed into the car, and drove away, his tires spitting gravel in their wake.

As soon as he was out of sight, Nora went to the water’s edge, overgrown with grass and weeds that were bent and broken where Cadogan had dropped his bundle. Without hesitation, she jumped over the bank into the opaque green water, not even bothering to remove her shoes. Cormac was left to watch from the bank as she gulped a deep breath of air and dived beneath the surface.

She emerged a few feet away, gasping, her hair and face streaming with water and algae. “He’s got it weighted down—you’ll have to help me.” She tried lifting one end of the bundle by the ropes that tied it, but couldn’t manage to shift it. “It’s too deep,” she said. “I can’t get a foothold.” She was too far out from the bank, as well; there was no way he could reach her. “Hang on,” Cormac called. “I’ve got a rope in the car. Don’t let go.”

He scrambled up and ran headlong for the jeep. Nora tried to hold on to the heavy bundle, but she couldn’t help coughing and spluttering as it kept pulling her under. Cormac backed the jeep into position and rummaged through the supplies he kept in the back until he found a coil of rope. He tossed one end to Nora and quickly looped the other end to the car’s frame. “Tie this to it, and hang on to the rope if you can,” he shouted down at her. “Let me know when you’re ready. Make sure you have a good grip; try and walk up the wall if you can.”

She dived under again, tied the rope through the chain that circled Cadogan’s bundle, and came up spluttering. “Okay, ready. Go ahead.”

Cormac climbed into the driver’s seat and inched the jeep forward until the bundle came up over the canal bank, with Nora trailing behind it. When she was safely over the bank, she let go of the rope and fell upon the large bundle, tearing at one end of the black plastic. Her body was filled with pounding dread as she anticipated finding what Cadogan had secreted inside.

When the plastic finally broke open, what came spilling forth was not what she had expected, but a mass of loose brown peat. Nora pulled at the twisted chains and tore at the plastic until she’d completely opened the length of the bundle: peat, only peat. Dizzy with confusion and relief, she started digging through it with her hands, just to be sure, and felt something solid beneath the surface. She brushed away the covering peat and extracted a rolled-up sheepskin. Inside it she found a handful of silk scarves, a velvet hood, several feathers, and a bright pair of nickel-plated handcuffs. Nora sat back and stared at the strange array of items laid out before her.

“Well, thanks be to God,” Cormac said, coming around the side of the jeep. “I thought it was—”

“A body,” she said. “So did I.”

Cormac crouched down beside her and picked up one of the scarves, apparently just as mystified as she was. The scarf was still dry; the canal water hadn’t had time to soak through the peaty bundle. “I can’t see anything here that’s even remotely incriminating,” he said. “So why would Owen Cadogan go to such lengths to hide this stuff?”

Nora felt discouraged, exhausted in the wake of fear and exertion, and chilled by the wet clothing against her skin. The dusk had completely settled now, and she looked out over the black and blue landscape, imagining Garda officers out here with flashlights, sifting through wet peat and Cadogan’s harmless bondage gear. There was no point in calling Ward; they had nothing that would help him find Rachel Briscoe, or identify Ursula’s killer. She had been so sure that Cadogan was capable of murder. She’d seen it in his eyes when he had Ursula by the throat.

On the other hand, these things didn’t mean he was off the hook. They’d just have to find some better proof.

“Let’s go home,” she said. “I can’t see anything here to make it worth calling the police.”

6

Nora was in the bathroom at the Crosses, rubbing her damp hair with a towel, when she heard Cormac’s mobile ring. Who would be calling at this hour? It was after midnight. She could hear his voice from the sitting room say: “Michael, what’s the matter? Are you all right?”

Nora went downstairs to find Cormac putting his shoes on. “That was Michael Scully. He can’t find Brona. She hasn’t been home all evening, and he’s worried. I told him we’d come over.”

Scully answered the door looking haggard. His thin skin seemed to hang loose on him, and he moved even more slowly than he had on their previous visit. He led them into the kitchen, where he’d evidently been trying to fill a medication dispenser. The box containing all the tablets and capsules had overturned, leaving a colorful melange of pills on the tabletop.

Scully smoothed his disheveled hair back into place. “I heard on the radio this evening that one of the young women from the excavation has gone missing, and I—” His voice caught in his throat.

Cormac said, “I know, Michael, I know. We’ll find her for you. You mustn’t worry.” When he’d gotten Scully settled in a chair, he turned to Nora and spoke under his breath. “I don’t think we should leave him alone. Will you stay here while I see if I can find Brona? I think I know where to look.” At the door, he said, “Lock this after me. Don’t let anyone in. Promise me.” She nodded, and for the first time Cormac’s eyes betrayed his own worry.

Nora helped Michael Scully get all his medications back in the proper boxes. As she counted out the pain pills, he said, “Who knows where I shall be this time next year?”

Nora looked into his eyes and saw fear, not for himself, but for the daughter already so isolated from the world. “Who knows where any of us will be? We can’t know that. Don’t worry, Cormac will find her. He said he would.”

Scully smiled faintly and said, “I wish Gabriel could see the two of you. He often talked about how uncommonly well suited he thought you were.”

“I’m sure he does see us, somehow, aren’t you?”

“I’m not sure I believe in spirits, exactly, but I do believe that what happens in the world never really goes away. Everything that has been remains somehow, makes an impression. Some things make stronger impressions than others, but it all leaves something behind, some change, some ripple in time, don’t you think? It’s probably the best we can hope for.”

Nora changed the subject. “I was wondering if you have anything in your files about the Loughnabrone hoard—any newspaper cuttings or official reports.”

“I’ve quite a large file on it, yes.” He faltered trying to stand, and Nora took his elbow.

“Are you all right?”

“It doesn’t take long for the painkillers to take hold. I’ll be fine in a few minutes. Not a bother on me. But maybe you’d look up the file? It should be on the far left, second drawer from the top.”

Scully kept talking as she opened the drawer and began scanning the file headings. “My daughter has been helping me with this work since she was a child. She’s read nearly everything in those files. I’m not sure whether she’ll want to keep them…. I’ve often thought about this place, and everything that has passed here over the last nine thousand years, and how little we’d know if someone had not seen fit to set things down, incomplete and imperfect as those things certainly were.”

Nora looked at the files, all neatly arranged and labeled in the same precise hand. She couldn’t help marveling at the time and effort it must take to maintain all this, and at the astonishing capacity of the human memory, to be so steeped in all this that you carried it around inside you. What she beheld was nothing less than a life’s work, and it was a humbling sight. Eventually paper records like these would probably be replaced by digital databases, just as the monks’ written annals had replaced the twenty years’ learning that the Druids had to undertake in order to qualify as high priests and judges. Faced with the whole wall of heavy files, representing as it did every fragmentary repository of human knowledge, she couldn’t help wondering at how transitory it all was, in the long run, and how necessary to existence to engage in this kind of gathering and hoarding of knowledge. She wanted to tell Michael Scully that she understood his fear, his need to see it all carry on, even without him. Instead she said, “There’s no need to talk if you don’t feel like it. You should rest.”

“I’d like to talk, if you don’t mind. There’s something I need to ask you.”

Nora pulled the Loughnabrone file out of the drawer and set it on the table in front of the sofa and sat, so that she could give her full attention to Michael Scully and his request. What could he possibly need from her?

Scully leaned forward slightly as he spoke, his grip on the chair arms occasionally betraying either social discomfort or physical pain, or both. “I hope you can understand a father’s apprehension. Brona is all I’ve got now. My wife died shortly after she was born and my elder daughter, Eithne—” He couldn’t go on for a moment. “Eithne wasn’t well for a long time, and disturbances of the mind are the most difficult to comprehend or confront. She suffered terribly, and nothing we did could help her in the end. Eithne drowned herself when Brona was just a child. I’m sure Cormac told you that Brona hasn’t spoken since that time. What I wanted to ask you was this: I have one sister who lives down in Waterford, and I don’t want her to interfere with Brona’s future. Now, it’s not that my daughter isn’t well able to take care of herself. Even though she doesn’t speak, she’s not in the least simple. But my sister cannot understand that, and treats her as if she’s somehow impaired. I’ve made all the necessary provisions in my will for Brona to have this house, as well as all my other assets, but I need to make sure that she has at least a few allies, just in case there’s any dispute about the provisions of the will after I’m gone. Evelyn McCrossan already knows everything that I’m telling you, as does Brona herself, but I wanted to explain the situation to you and Cormac as well, since you’ll have the cottage. I don’t know that anything would be required of you, and since Brona is more than competent there would be no legal arrangement, but it’s a possibility that she would from time to time need some…assistance, perhaps, in communicating with my lawyers or some other authorities. I don’t know who else to ask, besides yourselves and Evelyn. I realize it’s a rather strange and heavy responsibility, since it’s an unknown quantity, and particularly since you won’t be here most of the time. But as time passes I feel a greater urgency—”

“Of course we’ll do whatever we can to help,” Nora said. “I know Cormac would be more than willing as well. I’ll tell him. He may have some questions for you. We both may, as we think about it more.”

“Of course. Of course. It may be that nothing is required. I hope that will be the case.” Michael Scully looked as if a heavy weight had been shifted from him; the deep crease in his forehead seemed to soften, either because the painkillers were kicking in or because he’d been able, finally, to unburden himself. “Thank you,” he said, closing his eyes and letting himself sink back into the chair’s upholstered softness. He looked very frail and ill, and Nora felt the urge to take his hand and offer some gesture of reassurance or comfort. But as she reached forward she realized that Michael Scully was fast asleep, and she withdrew her hand, not wishing to disturb his rest.

7

Rachel Briscoe was awakened by the beating wings of a large bird flying only a few feet over her head. She opened her eyes and for a moment felt as if the earth were falling away beneath her, but it was only the clouds moving across the deepening blue of the night sky. She had fought sleep so long, resisted closing her eyes, to keep away the terrible vision that kept rearing up in her head. And was this slumber from which she had just awakened a real sleep, or one of those mysterious absences, a blank, a hole in time? She had no idea how many minutes or hours had passed since she came to rest in this thicket, or even how she came to be here. She had seen policemen out searching for something, and had run as far as she could in the other direction.

She didn’t dare come in contact with anyone, not yet, in case they heard the change in her voice and saw it in her eyes, that she was a person capable of shedding blood, of taking a life.

In her fitful sleep she had dreamt of a giant insect, its flattened eyes only reflecting what they saw, its sharp mandibles working. The thing had reached out to her, and she had opened her mouth to speak or cry out, but what had emerged was not words nor any other sound, but a warm torrent of blood. The memory of the dream made her feel ill. She could taste the blood in her mouth. Or had it been a dream? The line between what was real and what was dreaming had grown increasingly blurred over the past two days, since she’d found herself beside Ursula’s body, her hands covered in gore.

She was in a hedgerow, thick grass beneath her back and arching brambles in haphazard latticework above her head. She was burrowed in like an animal, and yet she had no recollection of how she came to be here, just a hazy memory of panic, of searching the perimeter of the field—was it this same field?—for a way out. And of weariness, of being worn down by noise, like metal on metal, in her head. Clanking noises, one, two, three. Always three. How long had she been here? How many days? Time seemed elastic here, seemed to expand and contract at will. The long drains glowed silver in the moonlight against the black peat. Her mouth was dry, but she dared not venture from the shelter to drink. The water here wasn’t safe anyway. At times she had been certain that she was being followed. Several times she had doubled back, but found no one where she was sure someone had been. She had no idea how far she’d traveled, but the short nights were a hindrance; she couldn’t get very far before it was light again. She pressed her face into the wet grass and tasted the dew, feeling no hunger, just insatiable thirst.

The field was on a little rise, and from it she could see all the bog she’d have to cross to get to the canal. A person could walk to Dublin on the canal. She’d plucked the idea from nowhere, it seemed. It was something that held together, when everything else seemed to be breaking apart. The night noises of animals, the sounds that had been her only comfort for days, seemed suddenly sinister. She heard rustling in the grass only a few inches from her head, and turned to find a badger baring his teeth at her, his black eyes reflecting the crescent moon. She scrambled backward, her clothes and hair catching in the brambles, imagining the sharp razor teeth biting into her flesh. There was no refuge from the blood. It would follow her, find her, punish her. She could see the stonelike forms of sleeping cattle in the field, the few stars emerging into the darkening night sky. If she stayed in this place, vines and brambles would grow over her, tying her down to the earth overnight. She’d never escape. Images and sounds traveled through her consciousness, her father’s eyes, brimming with remorse. Too late. And the clanging, metal on metal, never silent, and the searing pain behind her eyes. She gathered her strength for putting one foot in front of the other, counting each step, louder and louder, the pressure building, the blinding pain, louder when she closed her eyes, even louder.

All at once before her was a pasture gate. Again she wondered how long she had been trapped here; and now the gate had appeared. As she stood still for a moment, she felt darkness gathering in her, pushing her forward. She felt its presence like the wind, knew that it was getting into her head, seeping in there. Soon there would be no daylight left at all, only darkness and noise. She climbed over the gate and began running toward the blank darkness that was Loughnabrone Bog.

She tried to stop thinking about the tattoo beating in her head, but it was always there, waking or sleeping, sometimes just a soft thrum, sometimes a deafening din. Always the same pattern. One, two, three. One, two, three. She felt as though her thoughts were in danger of being drummed right out of her head. The one imperative that remained was to get home, back to Dublin, whatever way she could. She dared not close her eyes at all anymore; she had to keep moving, keep hiding so they wouldn’t find her. She could walk back to Dublin if she had to; she could find a way. Keeping out of sight was the main thing.

Whenever she closed her eyes, it came back—the blood, the spattered walls. Even with her eyes open sometimes she could see it, and hear the noise in her head again. She had not wanted it to happen that way. But when she had opened her eyes and seen the horror there, she’d dropped the knife and run. She looked down at her wet hands, expecting them to be covered in blood once more. She felt as though the knowledge of death would seep out of her; she imagined blood oozing from her pores like sweat.

From her hiding place on top of the hill, she had seen the canal cutting through the bog, straight as a road, a line into the heart of Dublin. That would be her path, if she could only get there. A huge expanse of bog lay between her and the canal bank, and a shivering body of water. Loughnabrone, lake of sorrows. She would have to cross that way. Every time she closed her eyes she saw it: the blood, and then the looming mask, the insect face, its raspy breathing sending a panicky chill into her veins.

The drains were deep and blacker than night, and she half expected something to rise up out of them after her. A hare, frightened by her sudden movement, zigzagged out from under a clump of rushes and brushed so near her that she lost her balance and tumbled down into the inky, water-filled ditch. She went down hard on one knee; she could feel the joint pop as she landed, and a sharp pain shot through her thigh. She sucked in her breath and bit her lip to keep from crying out. She lay still for a few moments, immobilized by the tearing pain in her leg, then scrambled upward, trying to stay focused on climbing out of the murky water, on trying to outrun the cacophonous clanking noise that grew louder and more clamorous until all other sound was shut out: One, two, three. One, two, three…It grew to such a pitch that she barely felt the blow that fractured her skull.

8

Nora settled the woolen blanket over Michael Scully’s sleeping form in the chair beside her, then took up his file on the Loughnabrone hoard and rearranged herself on the sofa. She was contemplating what Scully had said about humankind’s incomplete and imperfect attempts to set down what they had seen and heard and learned—and how much more imperfect they must be if the times you tried to document had no written language. It must be nearly impossible not to misinterpret or exaggerate the significance of everything that had been passed down, since the fragments were so rare.

She found John O’Donovan’s letter to the Ordnance Survey office, with notes about the townland called Loughnabrone. The older residents he had interviewed described it as a very gentle place, by which they meant that it had more than its fair share of fairy rings and raths. The water from the holy well on the northeast side of the hill supposedly cured all ailments of the throat.

She dug a bit deeper into the file and came across a photograph of Owen Cadogan, taken when he was appointed manager at Loughnabrone. Nora remembered her first impression of the man: restless, dissatisfied, a little dangerous. Maybe that had been the initial attraction for Ursula Downes, but maybe it was the sort of attraction that didn’t last forever.

A rap sounded on the Scullys’ front door, and Nora went to answer it. Cormac had been gone about an hour and a quarter. Remembering his warning, she checked through the window and saw him leaning on the doorjamb. The person who’d knocked was evidently Brona Scully, who stood beside him. When the door was opened, the girl darted past Nora without a glance, went straight into the sitting room to her father, and shook him gently awake. Scully clasped his daughter tightly to his chest without a word.

Nora said quietly to Cormac, “Where did you find her?”

“I didn’t. She found me. I was looking up into that tree, thinking she might be hiding there, and she was. She pulled back one of the branches and let me have it.” He rubbed the raised lump on his forehead where the tree limb had evidently made contact. “She would have done more, but I started shouting about how her father had sent me looking for her, and she came along peacefully enough then.”

“Who did she think you were?”

“I don’t know. But I think someone must have frightened the life out of her before I got there. If she hadn’t known me, hadn’t known Michael had sent me to look for her, she would have fought like a demon.”

“I’ve been wondering if Brona might have seen you leave Ursula’s house. That tree has a direct view into the back garden there. I know she might not be able to tell us anything, but do you think it’s at least worth asking?”

Cormac looked into the sitting room, where Brona was helping Michael to his feet.

“It’s nearly three o’clock. Let’s let them be for tonight,” he said. “We can talk to Brona in the morning.”