The dark color and unfathomable depth of their water has conferred a sacred character upon some pools.
Benny Smollett felt the wind raise goose pimples on his exposed, pale flesh, and knew he’d better get into the water quick. He finished stripping off down to his swimming togs, folded his shell suit neatly and placed it beneath his towel, ready for when he emerged from the lake. The sun had already been up for more than an hour, but for some reason going for a swim in midsummer always made him colder than it did in chillier times of the year. The wife thought he was off his nut coming here at all, but the lake was handy to the house, and cost nothing. Sometimes in the depths of winter he used the pool in town, but he disliked the chlorine smell that seeped from his skin all day. No, the lake was far superior. It was clean, as well, with the bog all around acting as a natural filtration system.
Benny cast a glance skyward as he walked down the dock and dived into the water with a splash. He knew he was taking a chance, being out here on his own; the place was deserted, and if he took a cramp he would sink like a stone. But the solitariness of the place was one of its attractions. He knew people around the town thought him daft, but what did that matter? Out here he imagined himself as young and strong. In his own mind, he was fit, and getting fitter. He imagined that he could stave off decrepitude and even death itself.
He pulled the water back with strong strokes. He was almost used to the chilly temperature now. The lake wasn’t large, and he would swim once across and back. That was his daily routine. He plunged forward into the small waves, sliding into the easy rhythm of a crawl, conscious of his progress when he turned his head for air. He dared not miss a day, or his rhythm would get clogged up and it would take him days to find it again. He felt his muscles glide over his bones, felt the tendons tighten and loosen as they should, propelling him forward. He was a machine, kept in good repair by constant use, leaving the dock behind and seeing his goal, the opposite shore, nearly within reach. His legs felt strong and useful. He was glad he’d started doing his rounds on the bike in good weather. Driving the postal van everywhere was death on a man. He shuddered at the prospect and kept swimming, feeling the air flowing in and out of his lungs. He reached the far shore, felt the lake bottom with his fingertips on the forward stroke and turned, starting in on the backstroke for the trip back. High overhead a tall wading bird flew by, its long legs trailing awkwardly in its wake. He would have to start learning about all the birds he saw here. There were hundreds of them, nesting ducks and other waterfowl among the reeds near the shore, tall waders and small, wrenlike birds that he’d seen catching damselflies with one quick sideways twist. The streak of fine weather had been uncanny, and it lifted his spirits. He was blessed with work he enjoyed, fresh air and freedom. In the evenings, he had the refereeing at the local football pitch, and then home to bed by ten. He never touched a drop of liquor. All in all, a good life—not without its disappointments, but whose life had none of those?
When he reached the shallow water again, he headed toward the ramp that was built down in the lake for boats. The shoreline could be boggy in places, and difficult to get over without sinking into it, so the ramp was the best place to get in and out. He stood, dripping, exhilarated from the long swim, his brain firing on all cylinders. Great for clearing the head, it was. Losing his waterborne weightlessness, he trudged up the ramp, now knee-deep, until he stumbled over a submerged branch. Not a tree in sight, but he knew that these bog lakes often held huge trunks, whorls of roots that had been preserved below in peat. If he could manage it, he’d better move the thing so it wouldn’t trip him up again tomorrow.
He grasped the branch end with both hands and heaved upward. Once it was loose he could shift it out of the way. What he didn’t anticipate was that the branch would be easily six feet long, with smaller branches and leaves still attached. As he dislodged the thing from the lake bottom, it sent bits of dirt and peat flying, flecking his face and bare chest with slimy black mud. He reached into the water again, expecting to touch rough bark, but instead he felt something smooth and slippery bob to the surface. He moved to retrieve it. That was when he saw the marks where the branches had pressed into it, and knew that what floated in the water before him was pale flesh. A body.
Liam Ward turned away from the lakeshore feeling light-headed. He hadn’t been prepared for the sight of Rachel Briscoe’s body floating in the lake, her long hair a dark aureole spread out around her head. The unwelcome vision dredged up memories that he did not want to face again this morning. He was rescued from his thoughts by Catherine Friel’s arrival. Ward felt his heart tighten when she glanced over at him, and was suddenly conscious of the gold band he’d replaced on his left hand.
Twenty minutes later he was consulting with the crime-scene officers on their search of the area when Dr. Friel emerged from the white police tent and signaled for him to join her. As he entered the surreal diffuse light inside the tent, the sight of the girl’s waxen face and blue lips made his stomach lurch unsteadily once more, but he fought off the nausea and stood beside her.
“I’m afraid it’s all too familiar, Liam,” Dr. Friel said. “The garrote is a narrow leather cord with three knots tied in it. And her throat was cut—looks like left to right again, just like Ursula Downes. She also seems to have been hit on the back of the head, but I’ll know more about that after the postmortem. From the temperature and the condition of her skin, she’d probably been in the water about six to eight hours when she was found, which puts time of death maybe between one and three in the morning. No obvious signs of struggle or sexual assault. She does have some unusual scarring on her wrists.” She unzipped the body bag a few inches to gently lift one of Rachel Briscoe’s arms and show him. “They look like deliberate cuts. Completely scarred over, and at least several years old. If I had to venture a theory, I’d say probably self-inflicted.”
“You’re not saying this may have been a suicide?”
“Oh, no, I don’t think it’s possible that the fatal injuries were self-inflicted. Just that she may have had a history of self-injury. It’s not as uncommon as people might think. I don’t know if that detail might be relevant to your investigation, but I thought you should know.” She reached over and pressed his forearm. Her hand felt warm against his wrist, and surprisingly strong. “I am sorry, Liam. I know you were trying to find her.”
Ward nodded and looked out over the lake. The strong wind stirred up tiny wavelets that rippled its surface, driving a pair of mute swans on the far side of the water hard against the rushy lakeshore. How had this place come to be called Loughnabrone, and what other deeds were hidden beneath its waters? These three triple deaths—three lives sacrificed, and for what? Perhaps it was for something beyond rational understanding, something deeper than the motives he could grasp. He’d been fighting the notion. But with this third victim, perhaps he ought to admit there might be some dark connection to the past.
The pounding on the door downstairs gradually made its way into Nora’s consciousness. Cormac still slept soundly beside her. They’d been up half the night, over at the Scullys’ house, and had looked forward to a lie-in this morning. She climbed out of bed and went to the window, to find Liam Ward looking up at her, one hand shielding his eyes from the light. Behind him stood Detective Brennan. She hurried into her clothes and down the stairs.
“Dr. Gavin? Sorry to disturb you so early, but we need to have a word with you and Dr. Maguire.”
“About what?”
Ward pursed his lips and frowned. “I’m afraid there’s been another murder. Rachel Briscoe’s body was found this morning at Loughnabrone.”
Nora backed up into the entry, feeling jittery, as if she’d had too much coffee instead of too little sleep. Could something she had said or done in the last few days have placed the girl in even greater danger? “Another triple death,” she said. Ward’s face remained impassive. “It was, wasn’t it?”
“I’m afraid I can’t discuss the details—”
But what else would have driven them straight here, to check on their prime suspect in Ursula’s murder?
Cormac came downstairs, struggling into a shirt, with his hair still standing on end. Nora could see that he wasn’t quite awake, and she also saw each of the detectives noticing the reddish marks on his forehead.
Ward addressed Cormac: “I was just telling Dr. Gavin the reason that we’ve disturbed you so early this morning. A young woman named Rachel Briscoe has been found dead at Loughnabrone. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
A look of helpless disbelief crossed Cormac’s features. “Of course. Anything I can do to help.” He waved them into the sitting room.
Brennan took a seat on the sofa and brought out a small notebook and pen; Ward remained standing. He said, “I have to ask you both where you were last night between the hours of midnight and four o’clock.”
Cormac ran one hand through his uncombed hair and looked over at Nora. Her stomach leapt, knowing what he’d have to say, but Cormac didn’t seem tense at all. “After midnight, maybe about twenty past, Michael Scully rang. His daughter hadn’t come home all evening, and he was worried.”
“We went over to the house right away,” Nora said. “Michael was quite agitated, so I stayed with him while Cormac tried to find Brona.” Was it her imagination, she wondered, or did Ward’s reaction to this news seem a bit odd? She said, “I don’t know if you know the Scullys, Detective.”
Ward cut her off, saying in a low voice, “Yes, I know them. Michael Scully is my father-in-law.” Nora had a sudden vision of a slender form slipping silently beneath clear water, and grasped that Michael Scully’s elder daughter must have been Ward’s wife. He would know all about Brona’s silence. Her face burned and she felt ashamed for being so obtuse. Ward looked away for a moment, then calmly resumed his questioning of Cormac. “Where did you go looking for Brona?”
“I started behind the house, just cutting through the pastures. I’d seen her once before near a whitethorn tree at the top of the hill, so I thought I’d try there first. I didn’t go down to the lake.”
“Did you have a torch? Did you call out? What I mean to ask is whether anyone might have seen or heard you.”
“I don’t know. I did have a torch, and I did call for her, but I doubt whether anyone heard me.”
“How long did you carry on the search?”
“I suppose about an hour or so, maybe an hour and a quarter. I didn’t really pay attention to the time.”
“So from about one o’clock to approximately two-fifteen. And you eventually found her?”
“Yes. She was hiding in the top branches of the whitethorn tree I mentioned. It’s in the clearing on top of the hill behind Ursula’s house. I shone my light up into the tree, and she let go a branch that hit me square in the forehead. That’s how I got this.” He indicated the raised reddish bump near his hairline. Brennan noted all this in her book.
“Why would the girl attack you like that?” Ward asked.
“I don’t know. She seemed terribly frightened, as though someone had been after her and she thought it might have been me. I tried explaining that her father had sent me to look for her, that I couldn’t leave there without her. I just kept talking, and eventually she calmed down and came along with me. We got back to the house between two-thirty and three.”
“And then what happened?”
“After we’d got Michael and Brona settled, and all their doors and windows locked, we came home again and went to sleep. It had been a very long night. I think I fell asleep just after dawn, maybe around five.”
“Did you see anyone besides Brona Scully when you were searching?”
“No. I didn’t see anyone. Look, I didn’t have anything to do with any murder—last night or any other night.”
“Nevertheless,” Ward said, “I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to answer a few more questions down at the station.”
Cormac stood up, resignation visible in his face and posture. “I suppose the sooner I go in, the sooner you’ll be finished with me.”
“We would appreciate your cooperation.”
Despite the strong sunshine, the wind was brisk when they went outside. “Can I just get my jacket from the car?” Cormac asked, and Detective Ward gave a quick nod.
Cormac opened the jeep’s rear compartment to retrieve his anorak, and Brennan stepped up behind him.
“That yours?” she asked.
“Is what mine?” Cormac’s voice was muffled as he slid the anorak over his head.
“That,” Brennan said.
Cormac’s eyes went cold, and Nora and Ward stepped forward as Brennan pointed to a rucksack, nearly hidden by the site tools in the back of the jeep. A shiny pink fabric heart hung from its zipper.
Brennan’s eyebrows arched as she looked at Ward and lifted the rucksack out of the boot. She unzipped the main compartment and opened it. Inside the flap was an address label, filled in with Rachel Briscoe’s name and address.
“Wait a minute. I’ve never seen that rucksack before,” Cormac protested. “And I don’t know how it got there. I don’t believe this—”
Brennan opened the car door for him. “We can talk about all of this down at the station,” she said.
After the detectives had taken Cormac away, Nora stood in the kitchen and tried to think. There had to be some way through all this, but her head felt as though it was made of felt. Somebody was trying to make it look as though Cormac was mixed up in these murders. Someone must have been watching them last night; how else could anyone have known that Cormac was out searching for Brona at the time Rachel Briscoe was killed? Unless they’d been drawn out of the house on purpose. For a split second she wondered if someone had tried to set them up. But who—Michael and Brona Scully? She didn’t like to think it, but she and Cormac would have been at home all night if it hadn’t been for Michael’s urgent call. A wave of paranoia, and then a backwash of disbelief, rolled through her. No, not possible, not possible. Michael had been Gabriel McCrossan’s good friend. It had to be coincidence that Michael had phoned when he had.
She suddenly remembered what Cormac had said about finding Brona Scully—that it seemed the girl had attacked because she thought someone was after her. She had to talk to Brona, try to find out whether that had been the case, whether she knew anything—and whether she’d be willing to go to the police. But how would that help, having as their only material witness someone who could not speak?
Or maybe it would be best to go all the way back to the beginning—start with Danny Brazil, the first victim found with a knotted cord around his neck. Ward had refused to tell her how they’d found Rachel Briscoe, but Nora had a terrible, sinking feeling that there had been a triple-knotted cord around her neck as well.
This whole mess was beginning to resemble a tangled knot, with strands looped back and twisted around themselves. But getting frustrated wouldn’t help. Unraveling any knot needed a careful attack, following one filament at a time, working at it until it slid free; that was the way to undo this puzzle too. That was the way she could best help Cormac.
What could Ursula have found out or surmised about Danny Brazil’s death? Ursula had asked Quill if he thought three was an unlucky number. And the next morning she was dead. It was impossible to shake the impression that her murder had something to do with the Loughnabrone hoard. After all, Ursula had stolen one of Charlie Brazil’s drawings, one that seemed to document the existence of a priceless gold collar never registered in any museum. This was just the sort of discovery that would add fuel to all those myths about hidden treasure, gold buried underfoot. If Ursula had known of the collar’s existence, she might also have had some theories about who had killed Danny Brazil to get it. And maybe she was prepared to use that information—perhaps for blackmail, trying to squeeze money out of Danny’s killer. Or maybe it was even more complicated than that. Maybe, like Danny Brazil, the collar had never gone away. Maybe it was still here, still a motive for murder.
Nora crossed to Cormac’s desk and opened the book where Ursula had stashed the stolen drawing, turning on the table lamp to examine it more closely. The paper was black in places from mildew, but the draftsmanship was exquisite, incredibly clear and detailed. She reached for Cormac’s magnifying glass and sat down to get closer to the image. Maybe there was something she was missing, some double meaning hidden in it somewhere. The magnifier made the image bulge before her eyes, shading and hatch marks blurred into three-dimensional illusion. She traveled up and down the lines, looking for something, anything that might leap out.
She turned the paper over and saw a series of nine smaller circles inside the arc of a larger ring. The way they were drawn, she saw eyes peering out of the paper, a face that seemed somehow familiar, but not quite right. She turned the paper upside down, but that didn’t help. Did the numbers mean something—three and three and three?
Nora jumped as she heard a heavy fist beating on the cottage door. She closed the drawing into the book and slipped it under a pile of papers as quickly as she could. The pounding had stopped; with her heart still thudding in her chest, she moved to the door and peered out the diamond-shaped window.
No one was visible, but someone had left a small white envelope wedged into the window frame. The handwriting on it, plainly visible through the window, read “Nora Gavin.” Nora wondered why anyone would leave a note instead of talking to her. Could it be some communication from Brona Scully?
Remembering Cormac’s warning, she crossed quickly to the fireplace, grabbed the heaviest poker, and returned to the door. Still no sign of anyone outside. If only the window were a little larger, a little lower, so she could see if someone was there…. Sheunlocked the door as silently as she could, reached for the envelope, then closed and locked the door once more.
Safe inside, she turned her attention to the envelope. It was only lightly sealed, and Nora opened it carefully, conscious of the value it might have as evidence. Inside was a black leather cord with three figure-eight knots. Was it intended as a warning, or an accusation? She felt the thin roundness of the cord between her fingers, and knew with sudden clarity that the person who’d killed two people had just been outside the house.
She raised her head to peer through the window once again. Only then did she perceive the shadowy presence behind her and hear the soft whistle that split the air. Her head snapped forward, and the solid world beneath her dissolved, swallowed up in black and blinding pain.
“Look, I’ve told you already, I have no idea how that rucksack got into my jeep,” Cormac said. His eyes burned and his head ached from lack of sleep. Detective Brennan had been going at him for nearly an hour. He glanced up at Detective Ward, sitting silently by Brennan’s side, arms crossed over his chest.
“Why would I have opened the car if I’d known the girl’s rucksack was in there? It doesn’t make sense. We’re wasting time here, going around in circles.”
“So tell me something new,” Brennan said.
Cormac said, “All right. I think Ursula Downes was murdered over buried treasure.” Silence greeted his pronouncement; not a good sign.
“And why would you think that?” Brennan finally asked.
“I think she suspected—as a lot of people did—that not all the items in the Loughnabrone hoard had been turned over to the National Museum.” Cormac detected a subtle movement in the chair beside her, perhaps no more than a blink, but he knew that the idea had piqued Ward’s interest.
“Go on,” Ward said.
“But I think Ursula found some proof that there were items in the hoard never accounted for. I don’t know that much,” Cormac said, “but I’ll tell you what I do know.” And so he told them everything, about the drawing Ursula had apparently left in one of his books, about the similar one Nora had found in Charlie Brazil’s shed, about the letter Rachel Briscoe had left in Nora’s car, and his theory about her true identity. He carried on, despite the skeptical turn of their lips, the doubt in their eyes.
“You think Ursula Downes thought she’d found proof of a gold collar found at Loughnabrone?” Brennan asked.
“Yes. I don’t know who she thought was in possession of it. And I don’t know who she might have been working with—Charlie Brazil clearly has some connection, since he has a number of similar drawings. I think Ursula may have been carrying on an affair with Owen Cadogan. There’s nothing to say he was involved in the sale of illegal antiquities, but he’d have better connections in the right places than most of the men who work for him.”
Ward said, “Let me ask you, Dr. Maguire—if you believed these drawings to be so significant, why did you not bring them forward earlier?”
“It was a question of provenance,” Cormac said. “People would want to know where I’d got my hands on them. Plus, there was no way of knowing whether the collar really existed or whether someone just made it up. All the same, if it is real, then it would be incentive enough for murder.”
“How much incentive?” Brennan asked.
“You mean how much would something like that be worth?” Cormac shrugged. “Hard to say—whatever the market will bear. And when you’re talking about one-of-a-kind ancient gold objects on the black market, it’ll bear a lot.”
“So why should we believe your version of this story?” Brennan asked. “Why shouldn’t we just flip the whole thing back to front? You found proof of the collar, and Ursula tried to get a share of the selling price, so you killed her. And then killed Rachel Briscoe because she’d seen you that night at Ursula’s house.”
“Even assuming that were the case, why would I tell you about the collar? Why would I not just keep mum? Take me home right now, and I’ll show you the drawings if you don’t believe me.”
Ward and Brennan exchanged a glance; then they both stood up to leave the interview room.
“What’s happening?” Cormac asked. “Where are you going?”
“We’ll be back in a moment, Dr. Maguire,” Ward said. “I just want a quick word with Detective Brennan. Can we get you anything?”
“No, thanks.” When the detectives had left the room, he let his eyes wander around the stark space. If only he and Nora had been able to make more progress on the details surrounding Ursula’s death: her interest in Danny Brazil’s murder, the collar. He hoped Nora wasn’t up to anything rash, trying to get him out of this jam. They wouldn’t be able to hold him forever; they’d eventually have to either charge him or let him go. Surely she would see that. But somehow he didn’t feel overwhelming confidence on that point.
He might not even be here if someone hadn’t deliberately planted that rucksack in the back of the jeep; if he could only work out why…Perhaps so that he would have to be questioned again; but to what end? He couldn’t believe the police would actually charge him for Rachel Briscoe’s murder. It didn’t make sense, thinking that he’d killed the girl while out looking for Brona. So why lead them down the wrong track—unless it was just to get him away from the house?
And with a sudden, awful horror, he knew. Whoever had planted the rucksack wanted the drawings. He couldn’t believe he’d been so thick. He’d said it himself: Ursula’s drawing was the only evidence that any Loughnabrone collar existed—and to some warped mind, probably well worth killing for.
He leaped from his chair and started pounding on the door of the interview room. “Detective Ward! Somebody—open up!”
As they made their way to the galley kitchen across from their office, Brennan spoke first. “I can’t believe he wants us to swallow all that—a gold collar, for God’s sake.”
“Does sound a bit outlandish, all right, but you have to admit it’s not impossible. Look at that fella stumbled across those Bronze Age gold necklaces at the beach on his holidays up in Mayo.” She must remember it; the case had made national headlines.
Brennan gave a grudging nod, and Ward continued: “Dr. Gavin’s statement says she overheard Ursula Downes telling Charlie Brazil that she knew what he was hiding. What if he and the father still have a whole pile of stuff from the hoard? Ursula finds out, and they have to get rid of her.” As he spoke, a gauzy notion dragged across Ward’s consciousness. The way Ursula Downes and Rachel Briscoe had been killed—just like Danny Brazil, one of the brothers who’d found the Loughnabrone hoard in the first place. It was Maguire who’d known so much about triple death, but Charlie Brazil who’d been suspected of carrying out bloodletting rituals. “Even if he is blowing smoke, Maureen, it wouldn’t hurt to see these drawings he’s talking about. And we should probably pull Charlie Brazil and Owen Cadogan this morning, see if they can give us details about what they were up to last night. Maybe we’d better split up, when we’re done with Maguire. I’ll take Brazil; you take Cadogan.”
They both turned to the uniformed officer who’d just stuck his head in through the doorway; he appeared slightly winded from legging it up the stairs.
“Ah, Detective Ward, there you are. Thought you were in the interview room. I’ve got a phone call for you.”
“I am in the middle of an interview,” Ward said. “We’re just on a short break. Take a message, will you?”
“I would, but she says it’s urgent, sir, and she won’t speak to anyone but you.”
Ward crossed the hall to his office and picked up the phone.
“I’d like to speak to the officer in charge of the murder.” The woman’s voice was smooth and educated, with a recognizable Dublin 4 drawl, but tentative. Ward guessed that she didn’t often ring the police about murder—or anything else, for that matter.
“This is Detective Liam Ward. I’m heading up the murder inquiries.”
“Inquiries?” Shock registered in the silence on the other end of the line. With one hand, Ward signaled to Maureen to pick up her extension. “Does that mean there’s more than one? I only heard about one on the television.”
“As of this morning there’s been a second murder. Are you calling with information?”
The woman’s tone was matter-of-fact. “I’m ringing to tell you that Desmond Quill’s alibi for Thursday evening is a lie.” Ward pictured her slender and fair, with expensive rings on her manicured fingers, but he could not see her face.
“And how do you happen to know this?”
“Because that Thursday chess game was something he and Laurence Fitzhugh cooked up years ago, the two of them, as a convenient cover for when they wanted to misbehave. Every week they work out who wins and who loses—plot every move, in fact, so that they can back each other up if that should be required. The game actually does take place, you see—not on a chessboard, but in their heads. I don’t know where Desmond Quill was that night. But I do know he wasn’t with Laurence Fitzhugh, because I was—as I have been every Thursday night for the past six and a half years.”
Ward wanted to believe the cool, anonymous voice. It could be a vital lead, but his inner skeptic made him pull back. “We appreciate your coming forward, but of course we’ll need to verify—”
She cut him off. “I haven’t come forward. I won’t give a formal statement, and I’ll certainly never testify in court. I have far too much to lose. I’m sure you understand, Detective Ward. And you needn’t bother tracing this call; I’m ringing from a telephone box. I just had a notion that you ought to know the truth.”
She rang off abruptly, leaving a loud, flat buzzing in his right ear. He looked up at Maureen, who was setting her receiver in its cradle. She made a face. “Worthless. Could be anyone, a crank, someone trying to take the pressure off Maguire.”
“But it is something new. We can ask the Bureau to follow up with Fitzhugh. Maguire can wait another few minutes downstairs; let’s head over to Coughlan’s, will we, and see if anyone can tell us exactly where Desmond Quill was at the time Rachel Briscoe was murdered.”
Coughlan’s Hotel was a small but very formal inn—directly across the square from the Garda station, but not the sort of place that would be happy to welcome police officers on duty, even if they were neighbors. Ward showed his identification at the front desk, careful to keep his voice low as he asked to speak to the manager on duty. A neat, middle-aged man in an expensive suit came out of a side office almost before the receptionist had set down the phone. He introduced himself as Noel Lavin, the general manager, and ushered them discreetly into his office. “Now, then, if you could tell me what the problem is, exactly…? And if there’s any way my staff can assist you, they certainly will.”
“We’re inquiring after one of your guests, Mr. Desmond Quill. We’d like to speak to the staff members who may have had some dealings with him.”
Lavin seemed to waver for a moment between his civic and moral duty to assist the Guards and his professional duty to maintain a screen of privacy and discretion for his paying guests. He smiled insincerely. “Is Mr. Quill in some sort of trouble? I assure you he’s done nothing here—”
“We’re just making some routine inquiries,” Ward said. “Which members of your staff would have had the most to do with him during his stay here?”
“The restaurant and bar staff, certainly. He took quite a few meals in his room, obviously. We were all shocked to hear about the murder. A dreadful thing, just dreadful and terribly, terribly sad.”
Ward proposed that Lavin should fetch the people they needed to see, and Lavin liked the idea. “Much more discreet that way, yes. Saves you from chasing all over the hotel…” Ward finished the thought in his own mind:…and letting the guests see you question the staff.
From the barman, Ward learned that Quill had gotten desperately drunk on Friday, the first day he was there, and that it had taken the barman and the night manager and two others to get him into his bed. The following day, Saturday, he’d spent more quietly. He’d stirred out for lunch in the hotel restaurant, but otherwise stayed in his room, ordering in drink—plenty of it.
The night manager backed up the barman’s story, saying Quill had spent most of the time in his room, drowning his sorrows. “At least I assume that’s what he was doing, from the amount of whiskey he ordered up. I check all the rooms before I turn in, and you could hear him in there, drunk as a lord and snoring his head off. You’d feel sorry for him, the poor sod.”
“What about the cleaners?” Ward asked Lavin. “I’m particularly interested in talking to the person who cleaned the room today.”
“You’ll be wanting Cara Daly, then. Only works at weekends, but she should still be here. I’ll see if I can find her for you.”
While he was gone, Ward sat and pondered the anonymous phone call. What did the woman on the other end of the phone have to lose if she came forward? It might have been just an elaborate decoy maneuver, an attempt to deflect attention from Maguire—and if that was the case, he was wasting time here. He was on the brink of packing it in when the door opened and Lavin returned with a slight, frightened-looking young woman with a puffy face and circles dark as bruises under her eyes. As she sat down in the leather armchair beside him, she crossed her thin legs and twisted them together, as if half afraid they would start moving of their own volition. Ward felt a twinge of guilt, knowing he didn’t have time to find out her story. Lavin, clearly nervous about leaving the girl in Ward’s care, started straightening the items on his desk and wouldn’t leave the room until Ward asked him to. What was he afraid the girl might say?
“I asked to speak to you, Cara, because according to Mr. Lavin, you cleaned Room Thirty-eight yesterday and this morning—the room where a guest named Desmond Quill is staying. Is that right?”
“I always clean Number Thirty-eight. It’s on my list. I meant to tell him, Mr. Lavin, about the room right away, but I forgot.”
“Tell him what, Cara?”
“There’s nobody in it today. Mr. Quill’s stuff is gone, all his clothes and shaving things.”
Ward felt a prick of apprehension, but he needed to know more, much more.
“Was Mr. Quill in the room when you were cleaning yesterday?”
“No, he was out.” The girl’s muscles went rigid and her hands clenched into fists. Her anxiety was contagious; Ward felt a tightening at the base of his throat.
“When you were cleaning the room, Cara, did you notice anything unusual, anything out of the ordinary?”
Her eyes flicked toward him suspiciously, and she licked her lips. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“You’re not in trouble. Just tell me what was unusual about Mr. Quill’s room.”
“I shouldn’t have touched anything. They could fire me for that.”
“No one is going to fire you, Cara. What did you see in Number Thirty-eight?”
“Didn’t see. Heard. I was tidying up the bedside table, and there was a tape recorder on it. I was just curious. I wanted to hear what kind of music he liked, the man in that room. He was nice; he left me a whole tenner the day before.”
“And what kind of music was it?”
“It wasn’t music at all.” She hesitated again, her hands and fingers twisting into elaborate knots in her lap. “It was just a whole lot of noise. Sounded like me dad, snoring.” Ward had been prepared for almost any answer but that. Snoring? Suddenly he heard the voice of the night manager, sitting in the same chair only a few minutes earlier: You could hear him in there, drunk as a lord and snoring his head off.
A few minutes later, Lavin was letting him into Number 38, which as Cara Daly had reported, had been completely vacated. “I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding,” Lavin said, unable to imagine his venerable establishment tarnished by scandal. “He left a credit card number with us. I’m sure he’s going to come by the desk later to settle things up.”
Ward stood at the door and let his eyes sweep up and down the hallway, noting the glowing red EXIT sign at one end. He turned back to the hotel manager. “Supposing someone wanted to leave the hotel without going by the reception desk, without being seen. Is that the only other way out?”
“Well, yes,” Lavin said. “Although the door at ground level does lock so no one can get in from the street.”
“May I have a look?”
Lavin led the way to the fire exit at the end of the hall, and down the concrete stairwell that must have been added to the old hotel in the past few years. He pushed open the door at ground level, showing how the exit led into a narrow alleyway. There were no windows above, which meant there would be no one to witness comings and goings.
Ward crouched on his heels to examine the door more closely, and found that someone had taped the latch open. Desmond Quill could have come and gone at will without anyone seeing him.
Nora gradually regained her senses in darkness. Her eyes slid open, but there was nothing but impenetrable blackness before her; solid black, a total absence of light. The ringing in her ears and the throbbing pain radiating from the base of her skull told her she was still alive. Why? Was the killer just toying with her, saving her for later?
That grim prospect was enough to get her moving, despite the stiffness from lying in one position too long. It had been a couple of hours, anyway, judging by the way she felt. Propping herself up on one arm, she reached the other in front of her, feeling for surfaces, edges, shapes of recognizable objects. Her fingers closed around a long, round broom handle, a mop and bucket, two walls within reach. A closet, then. She was still in the cottage, in the broom closet under the stairs. She felt washed in relief, and drank in the mingled scents of cleaning liquid, dust, and lemon oil. She had been spared for some reason. That showed the killer wasn’t panicking, but proceeding according to plan. But what was that plan? Maybe it hadn’t been necessary to kill her, just to get her out of the way for a while.
But she had to get out of here. Climbing to her feet, she felt the door’s beaded lath; no handle on the inside. It wasn’t completely dark now; she could see a thin thread of light around the door. She tried to remember what the latch was like. A simple bar, if she recalled correctly. Depending on how the door frame was constructed, she might be able to lift it from inside, if she could find something to use as a tool. Even if he was here waiting for her when she escaped from the closet armed only with a mop, it was still better than just sitting there waiting for him to return.
Something thin, and strong enough to lift a latch. She set to work, down on her knees, methodically running her fingers over every object, leaving everything where it was, in case she needed it later. A strong wire might work, if only such a thing could be found. On the floor she found a box of rags; nothing in the bottom of the box. After a few minutes, she had examined and rejected every item. There must be something, something she hadn’t found, or something she could take apart to find the sort of flat tool she needed—
A noise came from the other side of the wall, and Nora froze in panic. She felt her skin flush with adrenaline, preparing for a fight. Maybe she should let him think she was still out—no, better to be ready as soon as anyone opened the door…. The scrabbling noises from outside continued, until she finally realized that it was just a pair of birds who’d built a nest under the eaves, arriving home and fluttering against the outside wall.
She relaxed a little, and her hand slid down the wall behind her, touching something she hadn’t felt before—a slight raised edge, a cold surface. She knelt and followed the edge, and prised up the flat piece of sheet metal from against the wall with her fingernails. Too big, probably, but worth a try. She’d have to be careful of the sharp edges. She felt around for a couple of rags and used them to lift the metal sheet. It seemed to be about eighteen inches long and eight inches wide; it might slip through the crack between the door and the jamb. She turned around in the cramped space and felt for the tiny crack, trying to remember how high off the ground the latch was, and hoping against hope that Gabriel and Evelyn had hired a carpenter who didn’t see any absolute need for square corners.
The thin sheet slid about a half-inch into the crack. She shoved it in another quarter inch, until she heard the distinctive sound of metal touching metal. Trying to keep a grip on her two makeshift handles, she wrestled the wobbling sheet downward, trying to find the bottom of the latch so that she could slip the metal under it and lift the bar. Her head still pounded dully, and beads of sweat were forming on her forehead and down the middle of her back. Let it work, she prayed fervently to whatever deity might be listening. All at once the metal sheet slid forward, and her shoulder bumped against the door. Now just to jimmy the sheet upward, and—
Nothing. The door didn’t budge, though the latch had lifted; she’d distinctly heard it click. Maybe something was blocking the door. She threw her shoulder against the stout wood and heaved with all her strength, but it wouldn’t move. She lifted the sheet metal higher—maybe the bar hadn’t quite cleared the latch. She joggled the flimsy metal up and down a few times, still pressing on the door, and all at once it burst open and sent her flying out onto the flag floor, sheet metal warbling and vibrating as it skidded across the stone.
After the deafening crash reverberated several times, the house was quiet. Nora lay still and listened, but heard nothing. Raising her head to look around, she saw that the house had been ransacked. The sitting area was in shambles, cushions tossed around, lamps broken, all of Cormac’s wine bottles and Evelyn’s beautiful crockery smashed. The floor was knee-deep in books that had been pulled from the shelves, as if someone had been searching the place in a frenzy.
Still jangling with fear, she went into the front hall to get the mobile from her jacket and tried ringing 999 with shaking fingers. The emergency operator’s voice kept cutting out, only half audible over the poor radio signal, and Nora knew her own voice was just as unintelligible. She hung up and tried again with no better luck; after the third failure she jammed the phone into her jeans pocket in frustration.
How had the attacker managed to get into the house? Both doors had been locked; she’d checked just after Cormac went off with the detectives. If someone could gain access to the house so easily, there was no protection in staying here. She could drive into town for the police. But what would she say? She hadn’t even seen the person who attacked her. She did have a nasty lump on her head, but even so, they might even think she was making it up, trying to draw suspicion away from Cormac. Think, Nora. Just clear your head and try to think, she told herself. There’s got to be something here, some clue to hold on to.
She checked the floor of the entryway. There was no sign of the envelope with her name; the attacker must have taken it. But the message it had contained was a triple-knotted cord. Was there something symbolic about those three knots, something she was missing? She remembered what Cormac had told Ward about a triple sacrifice making an offering more powerful. Danny Brazil had suffered a triple death. So had Ursula, and maybe Rachel, too. She put one hand to her own throat, and thought how simple it would have been for the assailant to slip the slender cord around her neck when she was unconscious, to cut her with the blade. For some reason she’d been spared. Maybe her death would have made one too many, disrupted the mysterious power of three. No, it was absurd even to think that way.
She looked into the sitting room, and amid all the jumble she saw the book into which she’d tucked the drawing of the collar. The book lay sprawled open, its pages torn and crumpled. She stumbled through the debris and riffled through the pages; nothing inside. Whoever attacked her had been after the drawing—had probably watched her hide it. She might just as well have opened the door and let him in.
But the killer had shown his hand by going after the drawing. It was the one thing that definitely linked Danny Brazil’s death with Ursula Downes. Rachel Briscoe might just have become an unfortunate liability, if she’d seen someone at Ursula’s house the night of the murder—or perhaps there was some other reason she’d been singled out. Loughnabrone…It suddenly struck Nora that last night the lake’s poetic name had become literally true. She didn’t even have to close her eyes to imagine Rachel Briscoe’s pale form pitching forward in the moonlight, helpless and alone as her blood mingled with the water. What desperate need had required so terrible a sacrifice? She felt a clench of regret and felt hot tears come to her eyes, reliving those fleeting moments in the car the other day, remembering the defensive pitch of Rachel’s dark eyebrows, her self-protective posture, and most of all the naked confusion and anger in the girl’s face. She should have made an effort, done something more. What good did it do now, wiping away useless tears when they were too late? Stop it, stop it, said the voice in her head. Stop beating yourself up and think about the drawing.
It had come from Charlie Brazil’s shed. He must have known that Ursula had taken it. Nora thought of Charlie’s hands around her ankle, his own triple-knotted necklace, how terrified she had felt when he mentioned Ursula’s interest in the significance of the three knots.
If Charlie was involved, it was possible that he wasn’t acting alone. What if dealing in stolen antiquities had been a family endeavor, the thing that had gotten Danny Brazil killed? It could be that Charlie was acting on his father’s behalf. Ursula might have found out what they were up to, and threatened to expose them.
Owen Cadogan wasn’t completely off the hook either. She’d spent some time thinking about him after they’d gotten home last night. Those things he’d dumped in the canal may have been evidence of his connection with Ursula, or Rachel Briscoe, or both of them. It looked as if he enjoyed tying people up. Maybe things got out of hand, and the whole staged ritual was just a cover-up for an accidental killing. But it was possible that Cadogan was involved in smuggling artifacts as well. His relationship with Ursula could somehow have been connected.
All these elaborate conspiracies were just possibilities—and pure conjecture, really. She knew from bitter experience that what the Guards would need was concrete proof.
Nora suddenly remembered that she and Cormac had been planning to talk to Brona Scully, to find out whether someone had frightened her last night. If Cormac was right about somebody being after Brona, maybe she could identify the person. Charlie Brazil she’d know, certainly; but she might not know Owen Cadogan, except by sight. Nora remembered the picture of Cadogan she’d seen last night in Michael Scully’s file on Loughnabrone. She dived into the jumble of books and papers on the floor, found the file, and flipped quickly past the raft of yellowed newspaper cuttings.
She came to a stack of black-and-white news photos. Most of them featured only the Brazils, with Danny in front holding up a corroded metal blade. One of the pictures was the same shot she’d seen in Cadogan’s office, of Dominic and Danny Brazil accompanied by a third man. This picture had not been cropped, and the lower part of the third man’s face was visible. There was something vaguely familiar about him, she thought—perhaps the posture, the body language; she couldn’t pinpoint it exactly. Was it just that she’d seen him in the other photograph?
Then her eyes fell on the perfectly knotted tie and the unusual pin. The image was minuscule but unmistakable, a testimony to pleasing and deceptively simple Iron Age design: a triskelion.
All this time, they had been so focused on the objects in the hoard that they hadn’t paid enough attention to the people involved. She looked more closely at the hands in the photograph, remembering the elegant fingers arranging coins on a table into triangles and rows of three. The missing link between Ursula Downes and Danny Brazil had been staring her in the face since the day she’d arrived, but now she knew his name: Desmond Quill.
Teresa Brazil set her small brown suitcase by the kitchen door. She had packed the case only twice in her life before, once the day before she was to be married, and once—
It was all right to think about it now. The past had been blocked off, dammed up; but the sight of that triple-knotted cord on the policeman’s desk a few days ago had started a slow drip that had grown into a steady flow, and finally into a deluge that she was powerless to stop. The long-dry lakebed of her soul was flooded with images, words, feelings, and sensations long denied. Staying here would be fatal; it would mean drowning in memory.
She had awakened this morning dreaming once more of hard yellow earth, sunlight, and dust, the reverse of this place with its soaking ground and dark drains slowly bleeding life away. Here, lives were confined by narrow roads, closed in by hedges and ditches and ivy-choked oak trees, hemmed in by a place that was perpetually dark, secret, and damp. She would leave this dying bog in midsummer, and arrive at midwinter in a place where the seasons stood on their heads. People said even the water spiraling down the drain went contrariwise. Nothing would ever be the same, and that somehow felt right and necessary.
She had let the sheep out, and sent Charlie to gather them up. She needed to make sure he’d not come back to the house for at least a few hours. She didn’t bother to look into the sitting room. It was where Dominic always was, these days, tied to his oxygen tank and his television. She could hear the noise of the television—bright, false laughter.
The hackney driver would be here any minute, and there was one more thing she must do before she left. She dug through the pile of discarded clothes at the bottom of her wardrobe until she found the square tin box, rusted shut and covered in dust from many years of neglect. She prised off the lid and stood holding the tin in her hands; she stared at its contents, feeling herself at once rooted to the earth and hurtling backward into the past.
Dominic Brazil had not been her own choice. He’d been twenty years older than she was, for a start, with roughly handsome dark features and a manner that was by turns brutal and taciturn. She had been only twenty-five years old, but her own family would keep her at home no longer; they’d made that clear. Dominic was dead keen on having her, her father had said. And she hadn’t had the will, nor the resources, to oppose any of them. It was only years later that she grasped what had really happened; that she had in effect been sold, in a ritual that shared more with animal husbandry than with true marriage. She had crossed this threshold an ignorant girl, led here from her father’s household like a prize heifer. She still felt shame, remembering the way old Mrs. Brazil had turned her around, poked and prodded, practically checked the teeth in her mouth. She had been judged too weak, too thin, too contrary to be of any use.
At first she’d wanted to prove them wrong, to show what she could do, until she realized that it would do no good. Nothing she did would ever be good enough. She was the outsider, resented all the more because she was necessary. The Brazils were a dark family. The darkness didn’t just reside in their coal black hair and sloe eyes, but seemed to emanate from their very souls, from the secretive habits and closed doors, the walls constantly built up between them. Danny had some of that darkness as well, but he was a bit different from the rest. He was the only real ally she’d ever had.
At first what passed between them had been very innocent. About eighteen months after she’d come here, she began finding small gifts in the henhouse when she went out to collect eggs—shiny stones, snail shells, and cocoons—compact treasures that fit in the palm of her hand. She started keeping them in a small box hidden at the bottom of the wardrobe. She knew who’d left them, but nothing was ever spoken or even acknowledged between them. No communication at all but these small, secret offerings and their silent acceptance. On the surface, everything carried on as it had before, but she could feel the current quickening below, threatening to pull her under.
The day that everything changed, she found a strangely formed lump of beeswax in one of the usual hiding spots. She held it to the light, admiring the pale, translucent form—like a tiny cathedral, she had thought; like a photograph seen in a book, something delicate and fine. Suddenly her husband’s dark form had filled the doorway, and she had instinctively folded the wax into her palm. Dominic had asked her something about the eggs, which she’d answered without even hearing the question. When he left, she opened her hand and saw the imprint of her palm and fingers in the ruined, misshapen wax, and knew at that moment that some part of her soul had suddenly been transformed. She could not go back, only forward. Why that single, accidental act of destruction had set off everything that followed, she would probably never fully understand, but she had held the wax tightly in her palm until she reached the apiary.
Danny was sitting on the cot against the wall when she arrived, hands clasped around his drawn-up knees, staring off into the distance. She distinctly remembered simply standing before him, uncurling her fist to show the melted lump of wax. And somehow she had known that he already understood everything she had come to say, and that there was no need to speak. When he finally pulled her down on the cot beside him, the sensation was not one of submission or capitulation, but of long-awaited freedom.
She and Danny had planned to meet early on that Midsummer’s morning. She walked the two miles to the crossroads at dawn. He would come from the apiary; they would meet at the cross and thumb a lift from a lorry driver heading toward Shannon. From Shannon they would make their way somehow to Australia. A dense fog had spread low over the bog that morning, and a frisson of anticipation had bubbled through her, dissipating all fear and fatigue. When the sun broke across the horizon, she sat on her suitcase under the shelter of an overgrown hedge, listening to a lark’s celebratory chorus. She remembered how the minutes had slid by, but it was difficult to recall exactly when her hopeful anticipation had begun slipping toward disappointment, then apprehension, and finally bitter despair.
She had never seen any tickets. He’d said they ought to wait until they arrived at Shannon. At six o’clock, nearly two hours after the appointed time, she concealed her small suitcase in the hedgerow and began walking home, feeling with every step a heavy inward strike, burying disgrace and humiliation far down in the depths of her soul, never to be acknowledged, ever again.
She had arrived home just in time to put the kettle on. After starting the rashers and sausages for Dominic’s breakfast, she had begun preparing his lunch for the day. He would have to be up in a few minutes for the eight o’clock shift on the bog. The cuckoo clock in the kitchen sang its mechanical song at seven. Everything was as it had been yesterday, and as it would be again tomorrow. There had never been anything else; it had only been temporary madness, an illusion.
And she had remained steadfast in her denial. When the monthly blood stopped and she began to feel the quickening flutters in her abdomen, she had simply accepted the child, never once looking at him in search of some feature that would tell her which of the two brothers was his father. Never once, that is, until Charlie had brought home news of a blackened corpse with a triple-knotted cord about its throat. It had felt like a car crash, that moment, filled with sounds of tearing metal and shattering glass. It felt as if a yawning void had opened in the ground beneath her feet, and everything that existed these last twenty-five years had slipped away, suddenly devoid of meaning.
She carried the tin box outside into the haggard behind the house, where she had made a pile of straw. She lit a match and touched it to the golden stalks, watching the fire falter at first and then take hold. One by one, she dropped the treasures from the tin into the fire, watching as it consumed each one with bright, chemical confidence. When the last object was gone, she turned away from the fire.
As she opened the kitchen door, the hackney driver was just pulling into the yard. She waved to signal that she was ready, and went into the house for the last time. One by one, she unscrewed the valves on the three oxygen tanks that stood in the corner of the kitchen. Then she crossed to the cooker. She had already extinguished the pilots; now she turned the gas on at each of the four hobs, and in the oven as well. Teresa let her gaze sweep the room one final time before she grasped the handle of her brown suitcase and stepped outside, closing the kitchen door carefully behind her.
It was strange how calm she felt, riding in the back seat of the cab—how well she could envision the journey ahead, if not its destination. When it was finally time, she would make her way down the long corridor that led to the departure gate. A few hours from now she would emerge naked and new on the other side of the world. She had tried to keep from feeling each minute seeping into the next, bleeding away, until there was nothing left. But now she felt as if her veins had run dry. She was a husk, light and free. If by chance she should cut herself, nothing would flow from the wound but a meager trickle of dry yellow dust.
Nora tucked the photograph of the Brazils and Desmond Quill into her jacket pocket, and set out to find Brona Scully. If Quill had been out here at Illaunafulla last night, and she could get Brona to identify him from the photo, it would be something to take to the police. It still wouldn’t be absolute proof that he was involved in the murders, but it would be one step closer.
Michael Scully seemed surprised to see her when he answered the door. His hair and clothes were rumpled as though he’d just awakened from a nap.
“I’m very sorry to disturb you, Michael, but I need to speak to Brona.”
Scully let her in and called for Brona from the foot of the stairs, but received no response. “I don’t think she’s here at the minute,” he said. “She must have gone out while I was resting.”
Nora saw last night’s dreadful worry creep back into Michael Scully’s face. He might not know about Rachel Briscoe’s murder, and there was no point in making him worry needlessly. “I’ll go and have a look at the place where Cormac found her. But if she does happen to come home in the meantime, would you give me a ring?” She fished a card out of her pocket and scribbled her mobile number on it. “Just ring me on that number.” Scully nodded gravely.
All these paths, Nora thought as she picked her way up the small boreen at the back of the Scully property; all these trails twisting around and leading nowhere. The grass was deep, and there were blind corners everywhere.
If Quill had been part of the Loughnabrone excavation team all those years ago, he could have been involved in Danny Brazil’s murder. And maybe Ursula had found out about his connection, and had been using that knowledge as leverage to get something she wanted—the gold collar? The drawing was documentary evidence that it existed. If it had already been sold, maybe it was a share of the money Ursula had been after.
Nora’s head still ached, and her joints were stiff from the time she’d spent in the broom closet. If she couldn’t find Brona, or if the girl couldn’t identify Quill, then she could try to track his movements last night—find out if he’d left the hotel, who might have seen him in the town. It was impossible to know whom to trust, but she couldn’t stop now. The facts were starting to fall together, piecemeal though they might be, and it would all come out eventually. She had to believe that.
She quickened her pace, scanning the hedges at the pasture’s edge for Brona Scully’s dark head. It was probably crazy to think she could find the girl, but Cormac had done it last night. She climbed through a hole in the hedge and emerged amid a crowd of cattle, heads down at their grazing. A young bullock raised his head to inspect her, his innocent brown gaze raising a host of specters of fatted calves and sacrificial lambs. She had to find Brona, before it was too late.
No figure appeared near the fairy tree. Nora peered up into its swaddled branches, feeling once more the strange intensity in the hundreds of ragged and colorful supplications. She called out Brona’s name, not daring to speak above a whisper, as if the tree might catch and hold her plea in its gnarled limbs.
She crisscrossed the patchwork of fields a half-dozen times, poking at the base of any ditches where a hiding place might lie, skirting any low-lying spots. There was no sign of the girl anywhere. She suddenly realized that she was at a distinct disadvantage. Brona Scully knew this place, every hedge and bush and pile of stones; she could even be watching from some protected place. Nora turned, taking in the vista, the brown bog stretching into the distance, the lake below the hill. She hadn’t yet looked in Charlie Brazil’s apiary. The thought of running into Charlie again after their last meeting was not a prospect she relished, but she had to find Brona. She would advance on the place slowly, circling around it first, in case anyone was there. Brona might run if she was surprised, and Nora didn’t want to meet anyone else.
She traced the edge of the pasture above the apiary, sticking close to the framing hedge and crouching as low as she could. There was the beekeeping shed that she could use for cover. She circled cautiously around the outside of the whitethorn ring that surrounded the hives, and came up behind the abandoned house. No one seemed to be about, but the breeze carried a lazy, intermittent buzzing, depending on which way the wind shifted. Brona could be hiding; she’d have to check inside.
As she turned, she felt a strong hand clamped over her mouth and another person’s wiry strength against her own. Her captor pushed her back against the wall, and it was a moment before she realized that the wide, frightened eyes only inches from her own belonged to Brona Scully. With her free hand, the girl lifted a finger to her lips; then she pulled Nora down into the weeds.
The reason for her urgency became immediately apparent; the grass began to rustle no more than a few yards away and two figures came into view through the overgrown grass and clover. Nora recognized one of them as Dominic Brazil; the other was Desmond Quill. Brona Scully’s whole body tensed, and she pulled at Nora’s arm as if to beg her to come away. They might be able to get away without being seen, but it was risky. If they stayed put, Nora reasoned, she might be able to find out what was going on. She shook her head. Brona stopped pulling, but remained where she was.
Dominic Brazil was speaking. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to find. I told you a long time ago, there never was any gold. It was something Danny made up to try and get some extra money off you. If there was any gold, why would I have just carried on all these years?”
Desmond Quill followed about five paces behind Brazil, carrying a spade in his left hand, and keeping the right jammed in his coat pocket. “It took me a long time to figure that out. You know, I almost believed you, back when that story was new—about how there was no gold, how Danny had made off with both shares of the reward money. But you ought to know it won’t wash anymore. Give it up. And keep walking.” He prodded Brazil’s back with the spade handle, making him stumble. “I admit that I underestimated your fortitude—sticking to that story all these years, never wavering.”
Brazil marched stoically through the deep grass, but his pace was slowing. “I’ve got to rest for a minute,” he said. “It’s me breathin’. I can’t cover ground like I used to.”
“We’re nearly there,” Quill said. “Keep going.”
“Nearly where? What are you on about? If you know where the fuckin’ thing is, why didn’t you just take it? Why did you have to drag me here?”
“Because I’m a curious man, Mr. Brazil, and you’re the only person who can satisfy my curiosity—let’s put it that way.” Quill’s mouth turned upward into a grim smile; he drew his right hand from his pocket and looked down at the dagger it held. “I understand that you’re a bit worried about this. But consider my position. How was I to know you wouldn’t try the same thing with me as you did with Danny? You seem to be on a downward spiral, my friend. I might have been next.”
“You’re fuckin’ crazy.”
“Wouldn’t it have been simpler just to tell me you’d murdered your brother? Why the need for such elaborate dissembling? I’m disturbed at your total lack of trust in me. I suppose you thought I’d go to the authorities. But let me ask: In all these years, have I ever done so? Have I ever raised one single objection to your acts of thievery or fratricide? You could have eliminated your whole sorry family as far as I was concerned. Stop there.”
Dominic Brazil was wheezing now, and pale, but Quill seemed not to notice. They had passed the beekeeping shed and stood within the circle of the hives. Quill looked at the three hives that marked the top of the circle, then turned and faced the other two sets of three. He stuck the spade into the soil at the base of the ninth hive. “Here’s where we’re going to dig. Where you’re going to dig, to be more precise.” Brazil looked as if he wanted to cut and run, but didn’t dare. Instead he reached for the spade. Quill said, “Despite everything, I’m going to be reasonable. We’re both going to be reasonable men, aren’t we?” Brazil glumly set the spade at the spot Quill had pointed out. Placing one heavy foot on the spade’s neck, he dug in.
Quill stood close by and watched Dominic Brazil dig. “Clever, wasn’t he, your brother? Much cleverer than you. And always just that much ahead of you in everything, even though he was younger by—what, six years? At first I thought the reason you killed him was something to do with the farm. It must have been difficult, having to share with your brother—like you’d had to share everything with him your whole life. Nothing was your own. And even though you were the eldest, you were always the less favored son; everyone knew it, even you. Especially you. They didn’t even pretend. He got everything, eventually. Everything.”
Brazil’s face and shoulders twitched. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He kept digging, but each spadeful was smaller than the last.
“Faster,” said Quill. “And then I thought, no, of course you wouldn’t kill your own brother, not just for the sake of a miserable few acres in the middle of a bog. Besides, you told me you had it worked out, all that. He was going away to Australia, and you were buying him out with the reward money. He could have the money and you could have the farm. But why should you be satisfied with that arrangement when you could have everything?”
Dominic Brazil scratched at the earth, and his breathing was becoming more labored. “I didn’t need everything. The way we were working it, the place would be mine. I’d not have to worry about him coming back and taking anything away. He signed the papers. He was going away for good, he said. What need had I to kill him? He said he was never coming back.”
Nora’s thoughts were racing, zigzagging through what she’d just heard. They had conspired together, all those years ago, to keep something back from the Loughnabrone hoard. Quill must have made a deal with Dominic and Danny Brazil to sell whatever it was and split the proceeds. But if Dominic was telling the truth, and there was no gold left, what was Quill making him dig for? Nora heard the spade’s rhythmic scraping against the soil. She couldn’t see the ground for all the weeds, but she had a clear view of each man’s face; the sweat gleaming on Dominic Brazil’s forehead; Quill’s cool, detached expression as he watched the digging. She thought about creating a distraction, something that would draw Quill away, but she had no idea what he might do. Maybe it was better to keep still and wait until they left.
The two men stopped speaking, but she could hear the spade. It struck something that reverberated with a hollow, metallic sound. The next sound she heard was a struggle, a cry, the sound of flesh slapping against the wooden spade handle. The two men were rolling on the ground, and Dominic Brazil was holding the spade handle to Quill’s throat.
With a fierce shove, Quill threw Brazil off balance and scrambled to his feet, wielding the spade like a weapon. “I thought we were going to be reasonable about this,” he said. “There’s no reason for either of us to get hurt. We’re partners, after all.”
She could hear Brazil’s labored breathing, each exhalation coming in a slow wheeze.
“Dig with your hands,” Quill commanded, and Brazil complied, reaching down into the shallow trench and scooping out earth until he had freed the object that was buried there, a large round black-and-gold biscuit tin. “Open it,” Quill said.
Still kneeling, Brazil pressed the tin to his chest and prised off the lid. Bundles of old hundred-pound notes fell onto the ground, and Quill’s face went rigid when he saw what else was inside. “Give it to me,” he said. Brazil lifted out a cloth-wrapped bundle and handed it over to Quill, who dropped the spade, putting one foot on it before he began pulling at the corners of the cloth.
It was probably the color—a luminous, deep yellow-gold—that made the most immediate and indelible impression. It must have been easy to believe that the wearer of this object possessed some supernatural power, such was its exquisite and incorruptible beauty. The rich golden metal seemed to give off its own light.
Quill stood frozen, mute, and Nora began to believe that this was the very first time he’d laid eyes on the collar, after dreaming about its existence for twenty-five years. He had been waiting almost half a lifetime to gaze upon this object with his own eyes, and now he couldn’t tear them away.
“I have a confession to make,” Quill said, finally. “I’ve been toying with you. I know the real reason you killed your brother.” Brazil’s head came up, his haggard features displaying honest curiosity.
“As I said, at first I almost believed that Danny had gone away. There was no other explanation for the fact that the collar was gone. I’ve been watching you all these years, and I have excellent contacts; I would have known if either of you had tried to take it to someone else. But you never did.
“The idea only occurred to me after Danny turned up dead. He might have been planning to swindle both of us. It’s easily done: he moves the collar, plans to take it with him when he leaves the country. But if that had been your reason for killing him, you’d still have the collar and the money. So how did it happen that Danny is dead, but you don’t know where the collar is? There’s only one explanation: you killed him before you found out that he’d taken it and hidden it somewhere else. But, I asked myself, why would Dominic Brazil do something so extraordinarily stupid?
“And suddenly I grasped the whole picture. It was nothing whatever to do with the gold, the money, or the farm. The collar wasn’t all that Danny was taking with him, was it? If you let him get away, you were going to lose a treasure worth more than any gold. This was where you found them, wasn’t it?”
Dominic Brazil didn’t speak for a moment. “They were going to go away, the very next morning. I was just outside, under the window, and I heard them talking, and—” Brazil’s voice and face transformed as he relived those dreadful, decisive moments. “After she’d gone home, he was still lying there in his pelt, smoking a fag. He didn’t even hear me come in. I caught him by that stupid fuckin’ leather cord; all I had was my penknife, but I was going to cut his thieving throat. I got one good cut in, but he started fighting like the devil and knocked the knife away. That’s when he ran out onto the bog—it was all wild bog around here that time. I couldn’t find the knife, so I picked up a hurley and followed him. I caught up to him and hit him a clout, and down he went. I thought he was dead, so I dragged him to the bog hole. I was just looking for someplace to hide the body until I could come back. I saw his eyes open down there at the bottom of the hole. But I couldn’t stop; I just kept piling in everything I could find, down into that hole, until he was gone. He was just gone, and everything was peaceful and quiet.”
Dominic Brazil looked as if he hadn’t much more life in him. His complexion was ashy, and his face telegraphed pain with every shallow exhalation.
“You didn’t know he’d taken the collar?” Quill asked.
“Not until afterward—when I went to the spot where we’d hidden it. It was all Danny’s idea to keep the fucking thing. I never gave a curse about the gold. I knew it was bad luck having anything to do with it, with the likes of you. He could have taken every one of those bloody yokes we found, and good riddance, if he’d only let me have my Teresa, my own wife. When Danny was gone, I thought she’d belong to me. Fuckin’ daft, I was then. It took me another twenty-five years to suss it out, that she never belonged to anyone but herself.” He looked up at Quill, and Nora felt an icy finger down her backbone as she wondered why Dominic Brazil used the past tense in speaking about his wife.
Neither man moved or spoke for a long moment; then Quill broke the silence. “What about the whole ritual, then—the triple death?”
Dominic Brazil’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There was no triple anything.”
Quill shook his head in disbelief. “You’re telling me it was accidental? What about Ursula Downes and the other girl, Rachel Briscoe? Don’t tell me those deaths were mere accidents as well?”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re on about. I didn’t kill those girls—”
Dominic Brazil started to protest, but Quill twisted behind him, wrenched his forehead back with one hand and with the other drew the dagger sharply across his throat. A fountain of blood gushed forth. Nora felt Brona Scully go rigid with terror beside her, and quickly clamped a hand over the girl’s mouth to keep her from crying out. There had been no warning. A man was dead, and they hadn’t even had time to react.
Dominic Brazil’s suddenly lifeless body sagged sharply sideways, his mouth still open in protest. Quill leaned forward to close Brazil’s staring eyes and murmured, “No, you didn’t. You might as well have. They never would have died except for you.”
Nora watched in frozen horror as Quill felt for a pulse. Satisfied that there was none, he reached into his pocket for several lengths of knotted black cord and laid them beside the body, pressed Brazil’s right hand firmly around the dagger handle, and then let it fall. No doubt he had taken the same exquisite care in arranging the bodies of Ursula Downes and Rachel Briscoe. Nora pressed herself to the wall and felt the air closing in around her.
At last Desmond Quill moved away, stopping to cast one last glance back at his ghastly tableau, as if considering the effect the scene might have on the person who eventually discovered it. Nora felt Brona begin to tremble beside her. Quill was still lingering, considering his handiwork, when she felt her mobile phone begin to vibrate against her hip. She reached for it instinctively, but by then it was too late: the quick double ring had given her away.
Quill’s voice was chilling. “Come out where I can see you.”
If he came any closer, he might see them both. Nora climbed to her feet, pressing Brona Scully’s head to the ground and willing the girl not to move.
“Closer,” Quill said. She moved toward him, stepping to the side to draw his vision away from where Brona was hidden in the weeds beside the shed. The phone had stopped ringing by the time she stood face-to-face with Desmond Quill. He’d taken the dagger from Dominic Brazil’s hand, and he used it to direct her movements. “Give me that mobile.”
She tried to press the call button as she passed it to him, but he must have seen the slight movement; he deliberately switched the phone off before putting it in his pocket. Then he picked up one of the knotted leather thongs and marched her ahead of him to the lakeshore, where he hurled the mobile as far as he could out over the water. “Thousands of years from now, they’ll dig up that curious artifact and display it as a votive offering. So now you know the whole story, Dr. Gavin.”
Nora knew she had to keep him talking as long as she could. One way was to appeal to his vanity. “Not quite. I still don’t know how you knew where the collar was.”
“I have Ursula and young Charlie to thank for that. And you.” He reached into his coat and pulled out the drawing he’d taken from the cottage. “When the Brazils came to me with their proposition, I was naturally skeptical about the gold collar. But Danny Brazil was clever. He knew it probably wasn’t wise to go around showing off the real artifacts, so he made drawings of every object they’d found—even the ones they hadn’t shared with the museum. Quite an expert draftsman, wasn’t he?
“After Danny disappeared, Dominic tried to tell me that there had never been any gold collar, that it was just a ruse. But Danny had made this wonderful drawing, you see. I had a hard time believing he’d made the piece up. I used various methods of persuasion to get Dominic to tell me what really happened. I’d almost given up hope—almost. Isn’t it strange? This summer I was going to make one last stab at Dominic Brazil. That’s why I arranged to meet Ursula. She was a good cover, a plausible excuse to be here. And then Ursula’s crew very conveniently stumbled over Danny Brazil’s body. Wonderful timing.
“I have to say that one of the qualities I actually admired most about Ursula was her tenacity. Once she’d found Danny Brazil’s body, she just kept worrying those old rumors of illicit gold, hoping something would shake out. And eventually something did. She found several of Danny’s drawings here. Charlie had them tacked up on the wall in that shed. Didn’t even know what they were, poor sod—but Ursula did. She couldn’t wait to tell me about the collar drawing with a strange bunch of circles on the back. I was coming out to take a look at it. But Ursula was sloppy. She let your friend Maguire walk off with the drawing that night. I watched him take it, not knowing it was in the bloody book. I was there, outside the house, the whole time he was with Ursula.” His features took on a slightly sardonic sneer. “What did he tell you—that she attacked him and he fought her off? Not that it matters very much at this point, since you won’t be seeing him again, but that wasn’t exactly what it looked like to me.”
Nora said nothing. She knew he was just testing her, trying to see what would provoke a reaction.
“So what were all the circles on the back of the drawing?” she asked. She tried to keep Quill’s back to the shed, in case Brona might be able to make a move, but there was no sign of the girl. Maybe she was too frightened, or maybe she didn’t understand that she ought to run for help.
“It was a map of this very spot, the nine hives, although a person might not recognize it if he wasn’t a bit familiar with the area already.”
“Why did you take Cormac’s waterproofs?”
“Why not? He’d already done himself in by going over to Ursula’s that night. And they provided another handy diversion, a way to get the Guards sniffing around him and leaving me alone.”
“How did you get into the cottage? The doors and windows were all locked. I checked them myself.”
“Doors are only locked against people who don’t have keys. Ursula told me where the key was hidden, outside the back door. She’d been there dozens of times; she sometimes used it as a trysting place when the owners were away. Very careless of them, leaving the key there—and not like Mrs. McCrossan at all. Ah, no, Mrs. McCrossan likes to do the smart thing, the prudent thing.” His tone was contemptuous.
“How do you know Evelyn?” Nora asked.
Quill’s eyes flashed. “Just couldn’t stay out of it, could you? Couldn’t let things run their course. Everything would have been settled, Dominic Brazil would have taken the blame for the murders, your friend would eventually have been let off for lack of evidence, and everything would have gone back to the way it was before. One brother pays for the death of the other. Everything comes back into balance.”
“And what about Ursula and Rachel? How do you balance their deaths?”
“They were necessary sacrifices. I’m afraid you’re looking for saints, hearts of gold where there were none. Beneath her damaged exterior, Ursula Downes was nothing but a vicious, drunken slag. I was actually quite fond of her, but that is the truth. And did you even know Rachel Briscoe? She came into Ursula’s house that night with a knife drawn. I’m sure she would have slit Ursula’s throat in a heartbeat—if I hadn’t done it already. She saw me and tried to get away. It took me until last night to find her, the daft little bitch. I gave each of them something more: a triple death. A perfect death.”
Nora stood still, hoping for a chance to reach for the dagger, as he drew closer. Quill reached up and put his fingers around her throat. His face was only inches from hers, and she knew he could feel the pulse beneath her skin.
“I’ll be sorry about you, Dr. Gavin. I’ve actually enjoyed talking with you. And not everything I told you about Ursula was a lie.” Quill’s plummy voice resonated in his chest; she could feel its vibrations traveling through his flesh and bones into her own. His eyes regarded her without feeling.
If she could create a distraction, maybe Brona could escape. She reached up and felt Quill’s fingers around her throat. Her voice came in a hoarse whisper: “Don’t you want to know what gave you away?” She let her eyes slide down to the triskelion design on the pin that held his tie in place. “You were wearing that same tie pin in the newspaper pictures taken after the discovery of the Loughnabrone hoard. Is it real, or a replica? You must be very attached to it, to have worn the same piece for twenty-five years. That’s how Ursula knew you were involved, and that’s how I figured it out as well.”
Quill’s lips curved in a mirthless smile. “Aren’t you clever? Ursula thought she was clever, too, thought she’d outwitted me.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Do you know what her grand plan was? First of all, she assumed that I had murdered Danny Brazil. Her plan, if you could even call it that, was to use the paltry evidence she’d scraped together to blackmail me—as though fear of exposure would be enough to make me do whatever she wanted. All she wanted was enough money to buy a one-way ticket to someplace warm. She thought all this was about money.”
“So if it’s not about money, what is it about?”
“I doubt you would understand.”
“Let me try. If you’re going to kill me, you owe me some sort of explanation. I want to understand.”
He moved behind her, tipping her head back and looking down into her eyes. His upside-down face looked distorted and strange. “You know, somehow I believe you do. But how do you explain something that isn’t based in reason? Look out there—” He tipped her chin down again and gestured toward the lake and bog that stretched before them. “You might as well ask for reasons from the earth, the water, the wind.
“It grieves me when people talk about an artifact only in terms of its monetary worth. As if its significance can be quantified, reduced, vulgarized in that way. I used to work in museums, and now they depress me unutterably—the contents of votive hoards, fallen from powerful talismans to mere trinkets and curiosities, and all those throngs of bored schoolchildren and gaping tourists trooping past, sullying sacred objects with undeserving, jaded eyes.” He held up the collar with his free hand. “Can anyone be blamed for wanting to keep this from them? Apart from its exquisite form, an object like this is nothing less than a window through which we can gain access to a mind that grasped the most astonishing and sophisticated concepts. The person who created it worked in a miraculous material that never decays, never corrodes. He shaped it truly believing that his inspired creation would confer superhuman power on the person who wore it. Who are we to disparage his beliefs? We carry them within us still. What is Christianity but blood sacrifice masquerading as modern religion? We’ve lost our faith in the world around us, in our own deeper selves—in the sacred connection between blood and death, the places on earth that can lead us deeper within ourselves. The destruction of this bog is a case in point. I detest that superior attitude we hold today toward ancient people; it releases a kind of fury in me. You probably can’t understand that, can you?”
“To a point. But is any object—even something so exceptional and exquisite and powerful—really worth the lives of three people?”
“What a small circle you live in, Dr. Gavin; your tiny moral universe. It’s four people, in point of fact, or soon will be—you’ve forgotten yourself. And yes, something like this collar is worth four lives, four hundred lives, and many more. No matter what’s been done to thin the population, I think it’s impossible to deny that human beings still remain in constant, practically endless supply. You think me callous, unfeeling. That may be true, but I’m not unique. Governments and corporations routinely treat human beings like cattle—because the people allow themselves to be treated that way, to be led to the slaughter like dull-witted beasts. But I have the utmost reverence for the sacredness of human life and death. Those who’ve never shed blood with their own hands should never presume to judge me for what I’ve done. And you’d be surprised at the number of people who actually wish to die, though sometimes they don’t really know it. People like Ursula, who can hardly contain their curiosity about death, who enjoy pushing at the threshold, though they’re too frightened to make the final, fatal leap.”
He was moving closer, and Nora didn’t dare try to slip away. She tried in vain to see whether Brona Scully had made a break. There was no sign of the girl. Quill’s hand moved, and Nora felt the cold dagger blade flat against her cheek.
“Shall I tell you what surprised me most about killing someone?” Quill asked. “How the act itself has such breathtaking beauty. I didn’t expect to find the color of blood so astonishing—that glorious crimson. Have you ever been present at a death, Dr. Gavin? Even with those who aren’t the most—acquiescent—there is undeniable gratitude; you can see it in their eyes, just before the light passes. Do you know what this place, this patch of land is called?” His voice was low, almost hypnotic.
“Illaunafulla,” she said.
“Very good; someone’s been giving you lessons, haven’t they? You must also know what it means, then.”
“Island of Blood.”
“And how do you suppose it got that name? An island of blood in a lake of sorrows. We’ve given up thinking of the spilling of blood as a necessary part of existence. I can’t understand why. We go to such lengths to deny the intense joy to be found in death—the ultimate joy, really. And in your line of work, Dr. Gavin, I’m sure some part of you has felt it quite keenly, too. What’s the difference if you choose the time and manner for yourself, or someone else chooses for you? Death by sacrifice is a sacred privilege. Now kneel.”
Nora looked at the heavy dagger only inches from her face. She was not going to get down on her knees. She started to twist away, but the dagger handle made contact just below her left ear, and she went down on her side in the soft grass.
When she opened her eyes, her vision blurred, then came into focus. She was lying facedown in the grass, with her hands tied behind her. As he tested the knot that bound her hands, Quill whispered in her ear, “Haven’t you ever wanted something so much, Dr. Gavin, that you were willing to do anything to get it? I suspect there’s something you want above anything else in the world, right this minute. I’m so sorry I’m going to have to cut your opportunity short.”
As he dragged her upright, she saw the dagger in his right hand, a shiny blade with an ancient-looking handle. Her feet were free; maybe she could manage a well-placed kick. She lunged sideways, trying to catch him off balance, but he deflected the tackle and reached for something at the back of her neck. She realized what it was only as the ligature cut into her flesh and she felt three knots pressing into her skin. He pushed her ahead of him, onto the dock that led out into the lake.
Once they’d reached the end, he forced her to kneel and jerked the cord tighter, cutting off her air supply. She was starting to get light-headed. She thought of her parents, wondering how they would survive another murdered daughter, and she knew they would not. The ancients had it right; their gods were corrupt and demanding, childish and wrathful by turns. The idea of a benevolent deity was off the mark. She fought the darkness that welled up in her blood and tried again to wrestle free from Quill’s grip, but he was strong. She felt the cold blade against her throat.
At the same moment she heard a cry, like an animal’s throaty howl. Desmond Quill whirled around, pitching Nora forward and letting go of the ligature. She felt a rush of blood to her brain, and turned to see Brona Scully at the end of the dock, triumphantly holding the golden collar above her head.
Nora bent her knees and launched her feet at Quill’s ankles, aware of the dagger only inches above her head. He staggered sideways and fell to one knee, making a desperate swipe with the knife, but Nora kept her feet in motion, striking out at any part of him that moved. She heard Brona’s quick footfalls on the dock, and looked up to see her bring the heavy collar down on Quill’s head, stunning him.
Brona dropped the collar and went for the knife, but by that time he’d recovered. He lunged, pinned her to his chest with one hand, and with the other lifted the gleaming knife to her throat. Nora struggled to her feet, panting, with her hands still bound behind her. Quill’s clothing and hair were disheveled. Brona’s blow had opened a gash on his forehead, and blood was now trickling into his eyes. The golden collar lay on the rough wood planks between them.
“Right back where we started, Dr. Gavin,” Quill said. “What was the point of all that? It just means that another person has to die.”
Brona’s eyes were still defiant. She drilled Nora with her gaze, then let her eyes sweep down toward the collar, and Nora knew she had to do something.
All at once the sound of an enormous explosion split the air, and a huge ball of smoke and fire erupted from the other side of the hill. Nora had no time to wonder what was going on; realizing that this was her only chance, she tipped the collar with the toe of her shoe and, with one fluid kick, hurled it into the air. She saw the whole thing as if in slow motion: the collar gracefully turning end over end, flashing gold, and Quill’s eyes following it. He flung out his right hand, the one holding the dagger, but he couldn’t reach the collar; he lost his balance and toppled over the edge of the dock into the water below. There was a cry and a splash.
Nora’s eyes traveled back to Brona. She’d been cut. The girl looked down at the scarlet tide advancing down her chest; then her head dropped forward and she sank into a small heap on the weathered planks. Nora ran to Brona’s side, but her hands were still bound, and she watched helplessly as the stain grew larger. There was nothing she could do to stop the bleeding. She felt tearing pain in her chest as she lifted her head and shouted to anyone who might hear, “Help! Help! Please, someone, help us!”
She thought she was dreaming when she heard heavy footsteps pounding down the dock, and Charlie Brazil’s terrified face appeared beside her. “Have you got a knife?” she gasped. He just looked at her. “To cut me loose! We’ve got to stop the bleeding if we can.” Without a word, Charlie took a penknife from his pocket and sliced through the leather cords that bound her. Nora went to work, oblivious of the blood on her hands, keeping pressure on Brona’s wound while Charlie removed his shirt to use as a bandage. He looked dazed, slightly singed and sooty, and Nora remembered the explosion. A growing wail of sirens was audible in the distance.
“The house is gone,” Charlie said. “The house is gone and my father—” His gaze turned toward Dominic’s body in the apiary.
“I know,” said Nora. “I’m sorry; there was nothing I could do.”
When help arrived, Nora heard voices as if through a fog. It wasn’t until the Guards lifted her away from Brona’s side to let the ambulance attendants take over that she felt her knees falter, and noticed the sharp bite of the wind. “Can someone get a blanket over here?” the Garda beside her shouted.
As they draped the blanket around her, she saw Cormac moving toward her through the blue-and-yellow crowd, his face haggard and drawn. His mouth dropped open at the sight of all the blood on her. “Not mine,” she said. “It’s not my blood.” She looked down at her hands and fell against him, suddenly so tired she could barely stand. She felt his chest contract as he let out a long, ragged sigh of relief and pulled her close. “Ah, Cormac, I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“Shhh. Be still now. Be still.” They stood in the middle of the dock as the Guards and emergency medical personnel moved in a constant mill around them, hurrying with stretchers, blankets, and rescue equipment.
“Don’t let go of me,” she whispered. “Please don’t let go.”
A few minutes later, the ambulance men took Brona away on a stretcher, but her face was uncovered. Detective Ward, following, stopped to speak to them. “She’s lost quite a lot of blood, but she’s alive,” he said. “I believe you saved her life, Dr. Gavin.”
Nora wanted to tell him that wasn’t the way it had happened at all—that it was Brona who had done the saving, who had nearly made the ultimate sacrifice to save her. She would tell him later. Ward turned to leave, and Nora caught his sleeve. “Wait—what was that explosion? Does anyone know? Charlie said the house was gone.”
“It was the Brazils’ house. Looks like a gas explosion. I don’t know any more, Dr. Gavin.”
“And what happened to Quill? He admitted killing Ursula and Rachel, and I saw him murder Dominic Brazil with my own eyes.”
“Yes, we know all that, Dr. Gavin. We know.”
“Then what happened to him? We were struggling, and he fell into the water. He didn’t get away?”
Ward’s eyes narrowed. “You really don’t know?” She shook her head. He put one arm around her shoulder and led her to the end of the dock. A hard breeze blew over the lake, raising a shiver on the water. “This lakeshore is treacherous, like quicksand. Struggling only makes it worse.”
In the marshy area below their feet, all that remained visible of Desmond Quill’s body was a pale hand sticking up out of the water. Gripped tightly in his fist was the bright gold collar, cast once more into its role as a votive offering, a dreadful sacrifice to appease the capricious gods.