The Book of Killowen

1

Regina Mullens, the National Museum’s textile consultant, was already waiting outside the hospital morgue when Nora, Cormac, and Niall arrived a few minutes before eight. “I drove down last night,” she said in response to Dawson’s surprise. “Stopped with a friend who lives near Birr. I wanted a crack at your bog man as soon as possible.”

“Sorry to drag you all the way out here,” Dawson said. “Not exactly museum conditions, I’m afraid, but we’re not able to transport him back to Dublin just yet.”

“Extenuating circumstances,” Cormac explained.

“Really?” Mullens was intrigued. “Do tell.”

Dawson frowned and turned away slightly, so Cormac said, “It turns out that our bog man was found at a crime scene.”

“You’re joking.” Cormac shook his head, and suddenly Regina Mullens’s eyes opened wider. “Not that car buried in the bog? I saw the news reports last night. That was somewhere round here, was it?”

Dawson seemed annoyed. “Sorry, Regina, that’s all we can say, except that we can’t transport our man here to the Barracks until the crime scene has been thoroughly investigated and cleared. You understand, I’d have to ask you to keep this all under wraps anyway, extenuating circumstances or no.”

“Naturally.” Mullens pulled a zipper across her lips. “I shall be as silent as the grave.”

Niall Dawson opened the door to the morgue’s refrigeration unit where Killowen Man and the satchel were being stored. “I wanted to show you this first—we found it yesterday.” He and Cormac transferred the board supporting the satchel to the exam table and lifted away its form-fitting cast. The wet leather glistened under the mortuary lights. Mullens began to remove some of the surrounding peat, revealing a messenger-style bag with a full front flap.

“A beautiful piece of work,” Mullens said. “Look at those double-bound seams. I’m not sure we’ll be able to date it from construction alone; leather fabrication methods haven’t changed all that much over the years. I might guess somewhere between seventh and tenth century, but don’t hold me to it. Where did you say this was found, in relation to the body?”

Dawson’s eyes narrowed. “Nice try. What else can you tell us?”

“Well, the material looks like vegetable-tanned cowhide. DNA is iffy with bog specimens, but you can usually get a read on the species from the hair follicles.” She peered at the leather surface with a magnifier. “In sheep and pigskin, the hairs are grouped in threes, but on cow and calf hide they’re more evenly spaced. The seams appear to be sinew, which is good; vegetable-based thread would have been more fragile. I hope you had a look inside.”

Dawson shook his head. “No joy. I suppose it was daft, even thinking about it. No one’s ever found a book in a bog. Let’s wrap it up, have a look at our bog man.”

All four of them gloved up this time and began uncovering the body, one portion at a time. Each time they removed Killowen Man from his wrapping, they were opening the door to mold spores and bacteria, the destructive elements he’d so far managed to avoid, protected in his anaerobic, antiseptic bed. Mullens’s eyes grew large as she glimpsed the knob of the humerus protruding from the peat beside bog man’s chin.

“Jesus,” she whispered when the full extent of the damage was revealed. “You didn’t tell me he’d been pulled apart.”

“Whoever buried the car must have accidentally discovered the body,” Nora said. She glanced at Niall Dawson, who warned her with a frown not to say more. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

Regina Mullens was watching both of them. “Now I’m dying of curiosity. But all right, I won’t ask any more questions. We’ll stick to his clothing. The good thing about wool is that it’s quite tough,” she said, “even after this long in a bog. From what I can see of the construction on this outer garment, it looks to be medieval, which could mean any time between the sixth and the sixteenth century.”

“Well, that helps narrow it down,” Cormac said.

“Dates might be difficult,” Mullens admitted. “It’s probably easier to figure out what social class he came from—there were all kinds of laws about who could wear what in ancient Ireland. Everything from permissible colors according to your status to the size of your brooch—it was all set down in the Senchus Mór.”

Nora shot him an inquisitive glance, and Cormac understood exactly what she was asking. “Ancient Brehon law books,” he murmured.

With Mullens supervising, they each worked on a small area, lifting the wet wool with long, flat probes, holding it away from the bog man’s flesh, spritzing frequently. Trying to undress someone who’d been in a bog for centuries was delicate work. The body and the clothes were all dyed a uniform shade of dark brown, looking as if they’d been soaking for hundreds of years in a vat of Guinness.

“Early medieval construction didn’t vary a lot. Looks like a rather plain overgarment,” Mullens said, almost like a pathologist scrutinizing a corpse. “From the amount of material here, I’d say it was an ankle-length woolen brat—a basic cloak, no embroidery or special trim. You didn’t happen to find a brooch of any kind?”

“Not so far,” Dawson said. “Although the body had been moved from its original location. We’ll know more after we’re finished at the site. If that bollocks Claffey took it—”

Nora said, “Niall, isn’t it possible that the people who killed him also pinched his brooch?”

Regina Mullens looked up. “What’s that?”

“Maybe you noticed these cuts through his cloak,” Nora said, gently lifting the fabric to show her. “They correspond with stab wounds to his stomach and back.”

“But this fella’s murder can’t be the reason you’ve got a crime scene. He’s been dead for centuries.” Regina Mullens was trying to work out the details of their intrigue. “All right, all right, no more in that vein.” She kept working, her nose only inches from the brown corpse. “So no brooch, at least for the moment. But I would expect to see a girdle or belt of some sort. Belting a cloak like this was fairly common—the draped material made handy pouches that medieval travelers used to carry things. Ah, here we are.”

Nora said, “We were wondering, given the bald patch and the stains on his hands, if perhaps he was a monk or a scribe.”

Mullens nodded and handed her the magnifying glass. “Well, you can take a look for yourself, but I’d say he came by that naked pate quite naturally. If you notice, the hairs on top of his head are very soft and fine, not like they’ve been shaved. Irish monks wore a distinctive tonsure.” She gestured, as if to pull a gloved thumb across her skull. “The whole front of the head shaved from ear to ear, with longer hair in back.”

Nora said, “You’d think he’d be wearing something under this wool.”

Mullens looked up. “Well, undergarments as we know them didn’t really exist until much later. But supposing he had gone into the bog fully dressed in the fashion for his time, he’d likely have been wearing a leine, a sort of linen shift, under his brat. But linen’s rather delicate. Doesn’t usually survive, even in a bog.” She paused, feeling through the wool. “There seems to be something underneath him here. I don’t suppose we could try turning him over?”

After about twenty minutes, they’d managed to flip the body, and Regina Mullens had peeled away enough of the woolen material to find what had been hiding inside Killowen Man’s cloak. “I’m dying to know what this is,” she said.

The object looked like some sort of diptych: two flat, rectangular pieces of wood, about the size and shape of a small paperback. Cormac could make out two holes drilled along one of the longer edges, looped through with a leather thong.

“Bloody hell, we were just talking about these last night,” Dawson said. He reached in very gingerly and lifted one of the pieces of saturated, bog-preserved wood. The thing opened quite easily on its leather hinge, revealing two reservoirs of darkened wax, scratched with words in an ancient script. “Looks like Latin,” he murmured. “And a few words in Greek. My God, there’s been nothing like this since Springmount.”

Nora moved in closer, crowding in with the rest of them. “What’s Springmount? Will someone please explain?”

Cormac spoke without turning his head from the object on the table, as if it might disappear if he looked away. “A set of seventh-century wax tablets discovered at Springmount Bog in Antrim in 1914.”

“And there was writing on those as well?” Nora asked.

“A couple of verses from the Vulgate text of Psalms.” Dawson shook himself, glancing between the body and the wooden object on the table. “I still don’t quite believe it. You realize we have not just a tablet—pretty miraculous in and of itself—but we may also have the person who wrote it.” Dawson’s voice trembled with excitement. “See how the passage fills the panel on the left side? And the right side is incomplete—”

“A work in progress?” Cormac wondered aloud.

Dawson rubbed his forehead, still not able to take it all in.

“What happens now?” Mullens asked.

“We carry on here with our cameras and spray bottles,” Niall Dawson said. “We take as many notes and pictures as possible, then pack everything back up in peat and keep working out at the site. And I suppose we’ll have to go and talk to Vincent Claffey.”

Cormac’s eyes were drawn to a pair of marble-shaped objects nestled in a fold of wool beside the body. “Did you see these, Niall?” He managed to tease one of them out of the crevice and handed it to Dawson.

“Hmm… they look like oak galls.”

“For making ink,” Nora murmured.

“That’s right,” Dawson replied. “How did you know that?”

Something wasn’t right. Nora looked as if someone had walked on her grave. Cormac moved closer. “What’s wrong, Nora?”

“I don’t know. Just a weird coincidence, I guess. Dr. Friel and I found a handful of those yesterday—forced down Benedict Kavanagh’s throat.”

2

Stella and Fergal Molloy were working on an incident wall in their tiny office at the back of the Birr police station. On the wall so far were Benedict Kavanagh’s photograph, a map of Ireland, and a fairly sparse time line marking the victim’s movements the last few days of his life. They had tracked down dates from credit card records in Kavanagh’s missing person file: he’d stopped for petrol at the Topaz on Donnybrook Road near the RTÉ studios, and then vanished.

“So the first question is: Would he come straight out to this place from Donnybrook, not even go home first? Maybe he finds out what the wife and her boy toy are up to and tracks her out here,” Molloy said.

“He seemed to have no problem with Graham Healy,” Stella said. “Knew all about the two of them, according to his wife. And Mairéad Broome wasn’t even here at the time—she and Healy claim they were in Mountrath.”

Molloy traced the distance from Killowen across the Slieve Bloom Mountains to Mountrath. “It’s only about forty kilometers. Do we believe them?”

“I’m not sure. If they’re lying about it, so is everyone else at Killowen.”

“Well, so maybe they are. Kavanagh could have been lurking about, spying on the wife. Suppose he confronted her and Healy, and there was an altercation. I think the motive was personal, not professional,” Molloy said. “Look at the way the body was left, with split tongue and those seeds or whatever they are in his mouth.”

“Dr. Gavin identified them, for what it’s worth—oak galls. Said she saw a whole load of them yesterday afternoon in Martin Gwynne’s studio. Any joy from Central Records?”

“Still waiting on most of my queries, but they were able to give me a rundown on Martin Gwynne.” He flipped open his notebook. “Studied medieval history at Cambridge, worked as a manuscript specialist for the British Library for fifteen years, until—get this—he was let go over a missing book. He claimed he was innocent; they declined to prosecute. It was never really resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. After that, he worked as a private assistant to his old tutor from Cambridge, the paleographer T. A. Priest, until Priest died, which was nineteen years ago. Gwynne and his wife arrived at Killowen not long after that.”

Stella took in this new information. “What about that academic conference where they met Kavanagh?”

“That group he mentioned, the Eriugena Society, is based in Toronto and meets every four years or so. They’re supposed to be sending me a copy of the program for that year.”

“Who or what is this Eriugena, anyway? Seems like I read that name in Kavanagh’s file.”

“Some medieval Irish philosopher,” Molloy said. “Used to be a picture of him on the old five-punt notes. That’s all I know.”

The phone on Stella’s desk gave three chirrups in rapid succession, and she reached for the receiver. “Cusack here.”

The voice was hesitant. “They said on the television this was the number to ring… about the man that went missing.” The caller sounded not well educated but respectable, and certainly not used to telephoning the police.

“Yes, this is the number. I’m Detective Cusack. We’re trying to find anyone who’d have information on Benedict Kavanagh.”

“Well, that’s not the name he used when he came here to me. But I recognized him straightaway from that photo they showed on the television. Always suspected he was up to no good, but murdered! I’ve no wish at all to be mixed up in things like that,” she said, though it was clear from her breathless tone that it was exactly what she wished.

“First things first,” Stella said. “Where are you ringing from?”

“The Groves B and B in Crinkill.”

“And your name?” There was a pause, as if the caller finally realized the situation she was in and might be entertaining second thoughts.

“I only kept his things because he left without paying, you see.” The woman spoke in a rush, worried how the situation might begin to reflect badly on her. “I don’t take money up front like most of them are doing now. Old-fashioned, I suppose, but he was the first whoever left without paying, and—”

Stella cut her off. “Are you saying that you kept Mr. Kavanagh’s things?” She said it for Molloy’s benefit and gestured for him to stand by with his notebook and Biro.

“It’s not much, only one bag, and a briefcase with some papers and a small little computer yoke. I thought I’d just tuck them away until he came looking for them, and get what was owed us before he’d get them back. No harm in that, is there? We’ve all got to make a living.”

“We’re going to pop round and collect Mr. Kavanagh’s belongings, Mrs.… what was the name? Right, Mrs. Dolan.” Molloy was ready with paper and pen, as Stella repeated the address. “The Groves, Roscrea Road, Crinkill. Thanks, yes, I’ve got it. Imelda Dolan. We’ll be out to you straightaway, Mrs. Dolan. If you would do us a favor, and not touch any of the items, just leave them exactly where they are. Thanks very much for ringing.”

They rolled up to the house twenty minutes later. It looked a lot like the place Stella had imagined while speaking with Imelda Dolan. Immaculate, with every shrub in the garden pruned into a perfect globe. Sharp edges on the flower beds, a completely weed-free lawn, and gravel so clean it appeared to have been run through a dishwasher. Three stars from Bord Fáilte, no doubt, but nary a whiff of warmth or personality. What was Benedict Kavanagh doing at a place like this? She’d had him pegged as a five-star man all the way.

Imelda Dolan answered the door with excuses at the ready, before they’d even crossed the threshold. “I’d never have kept his things, you see, only he’d gone off without paying his bill. Then I was out of the country, visiting my sister in Tasmania, so I mustn’t have heard the news about the poor man going missing. Bernard—that’s my husband—he said I shouldn’t get fussed about it, but it certainly puts the heart crossways in you, doesn’t it, hearing about someone you know being murdered?”

Stella showed her the photo of Kavanagh. “Is this the man who stayed here?”

“That’s him, and no mistake.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Oh, I’d know him anywhere. I knew there was something strange about him. A bit unnatural, he was, the way he’d probe at you with those eyes—”

“And did he say anything about the reason for his visit?”

“The first time, he was looking at some historic sites in the area.”

“Excuse me, ‘the first time’?”

“He’d stayed with us once before, oh, it must have been right around eighteen months ago. I can check our visitors’ book, if you like. But the second visit, not a word out of him. And I refuse to pry, not like some—”

“Can you tell us anything more about the day he arrived in April?”

“I remember, ’twas a Thursday night—the twenty-first of April it was—and he booked in through the weekend.”

“And when did you discover that he’d gone missing?”

“He was out a lot, not much in his room. But when Sunday came around, and he didn’t turn up for his breakfast, I went to the room and found his bags on the bed. All packed and ready to go, if you don’t mind. There was no sign of him, not that day, nor the following morning. I suppose it was a bit strange to leave the bags. But I suppose he didn’t intend to leave, did he, if he was murdered? Still, you can’t blame us for thinking he’d scarpered. Took his room key and all. Very annoying, that. Because it’s hard to get keys for the old locks anymore, you see. Bernard’s been after me to just replace the old doors, but I—”

Stella interrupted. “Excuse me, Mrs. Dolan, could we see Mr. Kavanagh’s belongings, please?”

Imelda Dolan kept talking as she led them through her sterile-looking house to a small room with a wall of built-in cupboards beside the back door. She spoke under her breath, almost like rubbing at a bruise, Stella thought. “Didn’t call himself Kavanagh when he was here. Scott, it was, Mr. John Scott. ’Twasn’t his real name at all—I should have known.” She pulled open one of the doors to reveal a small black leather overnight bag, a laptop, and a zippered briefcase. “I had to move his things, you see, to make way for the next guests.”

“And you didn’t happen to look inside the bags, or remove anything from them?”

“I resent the suggestion. I run an honest house here—”

“I wasn’t suggesting anything, Mrs. Dolan,” Stella said. “Only asking.” She grasped the handle of the overnight case.

Mrs. Dolan said, “Take it all away, right now, this minute. I want nothing more to do with any of it. Imagine if word were to get round about where the man was staying when he was murdered.” She crossed herself hastily.

Stella resisted the small urge to point out that any association with a gruesome murder might actually boost business. After a few more questions, including checking the register for the earlier visit, they took their leave, bringing the cases and laptop back to the station for further inspection.

“What are you hoping to find?” Molloy asked as they spread out Kavanagh’s belongings on the table in their small back room.

“Maybe some indication of what he was doing here,” Stella said, taking inventory of the usual items in the overnight case, all ordinary things a man would take with him on a trip out of town for a few days: clothing, toiletries, prescription bottles for various tablets—blood pressure, allergies, vitamins. “What do you make of these?” she asked, pointing out a small vial of blue tablets.

“Interesting,” Molloy said. “Especially if those tablets are what we think they are.”

“Oh, they’re the ‘little blue pills,’ all right.”

“So the question is, did he carry them on principle, or had he made plans?”

“Exactly.” In among the pill bottles, Stella noticed a small gold cross with a broken chain. She picked it up, squinting to see the letters engraved on the back: From Mum. Not a man’s jewelry, that much was certain. “All right, let’s have a look at the briefcase.”

Molloy placed the attaché case on the table and flipped it open, perusing the papers inside. “Looks like notes for a book or a paper about marginalia—”

“Why does that sound a bit unsavory?”

Molloy smiled. “It’s just the little notes that monks used to write at the edges of their manuscripts. Some wrote poems, or scribbled down random thoughts they had while copying.”

Stella was pleased to see that Molloy’s secondment to the Antiquities Task Force last year was paying off. But she was thinking about Benedict Kavanagh, not about monks. “So this trip may have had more to do with his work than with his wife?”

“Seems that way, so far at least. There’s nothing at all about her and quite a lot about old manuscripts. He seems to have made a translation of a poem in Irish. Here, read this.” He offered her a handwritten page, alive with scribbled notes and underlines.

“This Kavanagh’s handwriting?” she asked.

“Looks to be.”

Stella turned the page sideways, following several lines of text that seemed written with particular force:

After the poem came a cryptic code in Kavanagh’s hand: “i, ¹!!!!?”

“Any idea what this means—i-one?”

Molloy shrugged. “No, but the poem sounds like something a monk would have scribbled at the edge of his manuscript. We read a few of these, studying Old Irish at school.”

Stella remembered that Molloy had been educated at a gaelscoil, where everything was taught through Irish language—maths, physics, geography, the lot. And at that moment, the distance between the two of them seemed incrementally wider. They might as well have come up in different centuries, for all they had in common.

“What’s this?” Stella pointed to another notation, where Kavanagh had written “An Feadán Mór, 8k sw Birr, off N52.” She paused for a moment, thinking back to something Mairéad Broome had said in Dublin, about the breakthrough her husband had just made in his work. This is going to rattle some bones, he’d said. Two bodies in the boot of a car was a rattling of actual bones. There was something right under the surface here, she could feel it.

“Fergal, do you think Kavanagh could have been mixed up with treasure hunters?”

“Not out of the question, I suppose. They try to get all sorts of people in those smuggling rings—museum staffers, even coppers.” Molloy grinned. “They know we’re always skint.”

“But Kavanagh wasn’t. He’d plenty of money, according to the wife.”

“Ah, but some of them aren’t in it for the money,” Molloy said. “For them it’s all about getting your hands on something very old and rare. And book people are especially fanatical—or so I hear.”

Stella took a marker and started writing on the time line. “So, from the landlady we know Kavanagh arrived at the B and B in Crinkill on the evening of Thursday, April twenty-first, where he stayed for at least two nights, and went off between Saturday the twenty-third and the morning of Sunday April twenty-fourth and never returned.”

“Let’s put the wife’s time line up next to his,” Molloy said, grabbing a blue marker. “She and Graham Healy drive down to Cork for the exhibition installation on April fourteenth; they supposedly arrive at the friend’s house in Mountrath on April twenty-first and stay for a week, then head home to Dublin on the twenty-eighth. She waits around three days before reporting the husband missing on the first of May.”

Stella added a red line. “Work on the geothermal system at Killowen commences on April twentieth, and wraps up on the thirtieth. Niall Dawson is there for a couple of days around April twenty-second.” She paused, thinking of the way Kavanagh’s body had been left—tongue cleaved down the middle, gallnuts blocking his airway. There was a message in all that, but what was it? “What does a split tongue say to you, Fergal?”

“Signifies a liar, doesn’t it, someone who can’t tell the truth?”

“The serpent in the garden,” Stella murmured. “Let’s fire up that laptop.”

Molloy was keen on computers of all kinds and had no trouble navigating his way through the laptop to find out which files Kavanagh had accessed most recently.

“Seems like he’s downloaded quite a few images,” Molloy said, squinting at the monitor. He looked up at her. “Internet porn—what’ll you wager?”

“I’m not betting on anything. Let’s have a look.”

Molloy pushed a button, and dozens of files opened on the screen.

“Hah! Well, they’re skin pictures, right enough,” he said, “just not the sort of skin you’d expect.” Rather than rosy human flesh, the images were close-ups of parchment pages, Latin words inscribed in translucent brown ink. “Old manuscripts,” Molloy said. “Book of Kells old.”

“They were Kavanagh’s thing,” Stella said. “Isn’t that what everyone’s been telling us?”

“It’s the same poem as he’s translated.” Molloy was staring at the image on the screen. “Amazing.”

“What’s amazing?”

“Well, think of it: there used to be whole libraries full of books like this, copied out by hand. Jesus, all the time and effort those poor buggers the monks put into each one. We take it for granted now, don’t we—the printing press, the copy machine, the Internet. I mean, words lose their value, in a way, don’t they, when you’re drowning in them?”

“Never thought of it that way, but I suppose you’re right.”

She returned to the briefcase, finding numerous modern handwritten pages in the same distinctive rounded hand as the notes. They were beautiful to look at, although the words were mostly incomprehensible, the kind of scholarly language that made her eyes glaze over. She turned the page around to read tiny shorthand notes in the margin:

There was a gap below the last entry and then a hastily scribbled note:

Stella frowned. “I don’t know what any of this has got to do with Kavanagh’s wife being here at the artists’ retreat. But I don’t think we’re on the wrong track with her. I’m going out there to have another chat. In the meantime, Fergal, why don’t you get on the phone and see if you can do some checking into Graham Healy’s background.”

“Looking for…?”

“Any experience with heavy machinery. Somebody dug that hole in the bog.”

“Art school type,” Molloy scoffed. “Doubtful if he’s ever got his hands dirty.”

“You never know,” Stella said, remembering the construction materials piled in Mairéad Broome’s house. “Sometimes art can be more industrial than people imagine.” Stella looked back at Kavanagh’s notes. “While you’re at it, Fergal, why don’t you also put in a call to your pals on the Antiquities Task Force? And what about Interpol—they investigate art forgery and book theft, right? Give them the names of the players in our little drama, see if any of them have form in that area. You said Martin Gwynne was suspected of nicking something from the British Library. Let’s see if there’s anything else in his record.”

Molloy nodded. “They had us read a few case histories on the task force. Did you know the Brits once nailed this fella who’d stolen over a million pounds’ worth of old books? They called him ‘The Tome Raider.’ Good, isn’t it?”

“Very clever.” Stella was fond of books. She liked holding them, savoring their inky, wood-pulp smell. She especially loved wasting a whole weekend whenever she could manage it, holed up with a glass of wine and a juicy potboiler. But how could a book—any book—be worth killing for?

3

A lowering sky threatened to unleash a midmorning shower as Cormac and Niall Dawson set out for Vincent Claffey’s farm. The time had come to speak to Claffey about the recovery of the artifacts associated with Killowen Man. The law was fairly generous when it came to rewarding citizens for turning over any found objects. Still, trying to keep those citizens honest was a constant challenge when it came to priceless ancient treasures, especially considering the current state of the economy.

The shed door was open. A whirr of machinery caught Cormac’s ear as he stepped from the car. He glanced over at Niall, trudging toward the door wearing a grim expression, clearly not relishing the prospect of the conversation before them.

There would be no negotiation. Vincent Claffey lay on the conveyor belt of a contraption that filled almost half of the small shed. The machine was whirring and clanking, jerking the man’s body from side to side. Cormac took a step closer. Claffey was completely encased in cling film, and his eyes were open and glassy. His mouth gaped open, and several dark round objects protruded from it. Gallnuts. I know your secrets, Claffey had said last night at dinner. Someone had clearly taken his words to heart.

From slightly behind him, Dawson managed a strangled whisper. “He’s dead, is he?”

“I’m afraid so,” Cormac said. He located a red emergency switch, at last putting a stop to the machine and its futile whine. Claffey’s head sagged, and Cormac had to resist the urge to support it. They really ought not touch anything. He placed two fingers gingerly on the man’s temple. No pulse, and through the plastic, the skin felt cold. He must have been dead for some time.

Cormac found himself counting the hours since four A.M., until a voice inside his head said, Stop. He glanced up at Dawson, who was staring at the corpse, unable to move. “We should ring Detective Cusack,” Cormac said. “Will you check and see if Deirdre Claffey is around? We don’t want her wandering in here.”

“No, no, of course not.” Dawson began backing slowly away from the body.

Cormac had dealt with plenty of corpses in the course of his work, but there was something uniquely unsettling about this one. Now his training kicked in. Something in him turned on automatically in situations like this, reading a site for what it could tell. Vincent Claffey’s apparent penchant for clutter continued inside this shed. The only really remarkable item was the machine, fairly new and astonishingly clean, compared to everything else. What was Claffey doing here? A cardboard carton on the ground beside him was half filled with plastic tubes, with labels that read: “Tir na nOg—Authentic Irish Moor Peat, 500 ml.”

He looked at the gallnuts again. Nora had told them about the handful she and Dr. Friel had found in Kavanagh’s mouth. They were clearly some sort of message, but in a language as yet undecoded. It was as if someone knew that he and Niall would be coming to visit Vincent Claffey today, and his body had been left for them to find.

He thought of Niall Dawson’s old connection to Benedict Kavanagh and wondered about all the unknown threads that bound together the people he and Nora had met at Killowen. And how many more connections would Cusack begin to uncover, once she started to dig?

“The girl’s not here.” Dawson spoke from the shed door. “I’ve looked everywhere. No sign of the child either.”

4

Stella Cusack was on her way to Killowen on the N52 when her phone rang. It was Cormac Maguire. Her stomach sank as she received the news of Vincent Claffey’s murder. “There’s something else as well, Detective,” Maguire said. “We can’t find Deirdre Claffey or her baby.”

When she hung up, her first impulse was to ring Lia, just to hear the sound of her daughter’s voice. It was almost noon on Saturday. Where would Lia be now? She pictured her daughter with a small knot of friends, wandering aimlessly through piped-in music and shiny window displays at the Bridge Centre in Tullamore. When Lia answered, Stella could hear the echoing background noise and knew she’d guessed correctly.

“You don’t need to be checking up on me, Mam. Everything’s fine. Everything’s wonderful.”

Tears welled up as Stella rang off. Everything wasn’t wonderful. She couldn’t help thinking of Deirdre Claffey. If something had happened to that girl, or her child… Lia had no idea how fragile life was, how everything could be fine one minute and gone in the next second.

Still sitting in her car at the side of the road, she rang Molloy, then Dr. Friel, her third call to the state pathologist in as many days.

“It’s getting to be a regrettable habit for both of us, isn’t it, driving the N52?” Catherine Friel said. “I do hope this will be my last trip down that road.”

Arriving at the Claffey farm, Stella slipped immediately into crime scene mode, wading through the uncut grass that brushed against her legs. The shed she’d wanted to get inside for the past two days was wide open, and Maguire was standing to one side of the door with Niall Dawson.

Stella found Claffey’s body cocooned in cling film, his mouth open and stuffed with gallnuts, exactly like Benedict Kavanagh. A grubby plastic tub at one end of the machine held a glistening mass of wet black peat, the wonder substance Vincent Claffey was apparently packaging for sale. She should have known what he was up to in that protected bog. Pulling moor peat out of the ground, slapping on a label, and selling it for a hundred euros a liter—so obvious now. It was almost like free money. Claffey wouldn’t have been able to resist.

Stella returned to the door to speak to the two men. “Tell me what happened.”

Maguire began. “We found a few more artifacts from the bog site, so Niall and I came here to talk to Mr. Claffey about a possible reward. As the landowner, he’d be due some compensation. He was dead when we got here.”

“What exactly did you notice when you arrived?” she asked.

Again, it was Maguire who spoke. “We heard a sort of clanking noise from the shed—”

“That’s when we came in and found him,” Dawson managed to add. He still looked shell-shocked. “The machine was still going.”

“You haven’t touched anything?”

“No,” Maguire replied. “Well, apart from switching off the machine, seeing whether he was still alive.”

Dawson said, “I must have touched the door handle when I went to look for Deirdre.”

“I’ll need statements from both of you. Have either of you seen Deirdre Claffey in the past twenty-four hours?”

“She was at Killowen last night; she and the baby were with us for dinner,” Maguire said. “But her father came and collected her—”

“Dragged her off, you mean,” Dawson said. “It was a bit of a scene.”

“What time was that?” Stella asked. “And what happened, exactly? Tell me as much as you can remember.”

Maguire told her. “Must have been about half-seven, maybe closer to eight. Vincent Claffey called everyone at Killowen ‘fuckin’ hippies.’ Said he knew our secrets. He looked at every one of us, Niall, didn’t he? If I’d any secrets, I’d have the wind put up my back by that look, and no mistake.”

“What happened after they left?” Stella asked.

“Claire seemed to imply that it wasn’t the first time Claffey had come after Deirdre, that they had to figure out some way to get the girl away from her father,” Dawson said.

Maguire added, “Someone—Martin Gwynne, I think—mentioned having no evidence of abuse.”

“Nothing but the evidence of our own eyes,” Dawson murmured. “He was pretty rough on the girl. And he shoved Claire Finnerty at one point, as well.”

“But no one rang the police?”

Dawson shook his head. “Not as far as we know.”

“And no one said any more about the incident?”

Maguire glanced at Dawson. “We wouldn’t know. It was all guests out of the kitchen after that, so we didn’t hear any more discussion.”

Stella was processing all that she’d heard so far. Claffey could have been killed by someone wishing to protect his daughter, or someone with a secret so great he or she couldn’t afford to risk exposure. “Tell me who, exactly, was at the dinner table.”

“Claire Finnerty and the Gwynnes, Diarmuid—I’m sorry, I don’t know his second name,” Maguire said. “Shawn Kearney, the archaeologist, Anthony Beglan—”

“The French couple,” Dawson added. “Lucien and Sylvie.”

“My father and his minder, Dr. Gavin, and Niall and myself.”

No mention of Mairéad Broome or Graham Healy. Perhaps Vincent Claffey had seen something he wasn’t meant to see, perhaps someone, or even more than one person, coming back from the bog where they’d buried Kavanagh. Stella had to admit, she still liked the widow and her young man for Kavanagh’s murder, maybe this one as well. She walked closer to Vincent Claffey, his head dangling at an awkward angle. “Can you describe for me how you found the body?”

“The machine was going,” Maguire said. “Back and forth, like it was stuck, and he was on the conveyer belt, just like you see. I found the emergency switch and turned it off, then checked for a pulse, but it was no use, he was long gone. I sent Niall to look for Deirdre and phoned you as soon as he returned.”

She said, “If you would stick around until my partner gets here, he’ll take your statements. You can wait outside if you like.”

Alone inside the shed, Stella reached for her torch. The place was filthy, which made the one clear spot on the floor under the hayloft stairs particularly noticeable. The torch beam showed a rectangle on the floor, devoid of dirt or peat, with a footprint about the size of a small chest. At a crime scene, sometimes what was missing ended up being just as important as what remained.

Stella crouched and peered under the stairs, shining her tiny light all around the cramped space. In the farthest corner, tucked in under the steps, she could see the corner of a yellowed cutting from an old newspaper. She got down on her hands and knees and reached for the paper. The cutting was torn in half, but she could tell from what was left what it was about: a bombing in a small border town called Cregganroe. A car packed with Semtex had peeled shop fronts from buildings in the high street. The blast that had gone off without warning. She was familiar with the story.

On her very first day as a lowly bean garda, she had been assigned to evidence collection at the bombing scene. Nobody really covered those sorts of situations in training courses. And how could they? How on earth could anyone prepare trainee officers for the horrors they might encounter? After an hour searching the scene, relieved to find nothing, she’d been heading for the stairs when her gaze fell upon a small bright stone on the roof’s pebbled surface. Round and shiny, a shade larger than the others. And then she’d realized it wasn’t a stone at all but a lone detached eyeball, staring up at her.

The bomb makers had been found out and put away—too late, after their handiwork had killed seven people. During their trial, the bombers swore that a warning had been phoned in to Special Branch, in plenty of time to evacuate the area. They charged the authorities with letting the bomb go off—an act of calculated, cynical murder to harden the hearts of the people against the cause. The charge wasn’t all that uncommon in the bad old days of the Troubles. Stella knew which of the two scenarios she believed but had never admitted it aloud. Garda detectives weren’t supposed to have political views.

What was Vincent Claffey doing with this old newspaper cutting? She thought of the threats he’d uttered just last night. Perhaps Claffey was making someone at Killowen pay for what he knew, or thought he knew. She saw the faces of the people she’d interviewed yesterday, imagining each of them in this shed with Claffey. Who among them would have been physically capable of lifting the dead weight of a body onto the machine? Hatred was a powerful thing; it could give an attacker an almost inhuman physical power. Or perhaps the deed had been carried out by more than one person. She searched for signs of a struggle and found a small pool of blood near the outside wall. Perhaps Vincent Claffey never suspected that he was being attacked until it was too late. Blackmail, if that was Claffey’s game, was like playing with a serpent: in order to profit, you had to get close enough to risk a deadly bite.

5

Nora had just arrived back from the hospital and was standing in the kitchen at Killowen with Joseph and Eliana when Shawn Kearney came through the door. Her usually animated expression was gone. She pulled Nora aside and spoke under her breath.

“Vincent Claffey’s been found murdered,” she said.

“But that’s not possible. Niall and Cormac just went to see him.”

Shawn’s grim expression told her everything she needed to know.

“My God, they found him, didn’t they?”

“It seems so. And Deirdre and the baby are missing. A few of us are going to help with the search.”

“I’ll come, too,” Nora said.

The Claffey place was still being processed as a crime scene, so the search for Deirdre commenced from the nearest three-way crossroads. A group of uniformed Guards officers was milling about with volunteers, and Detective Molloy was handing out assignments to small groups. “Each team will have a detailed map of the area,” Molloy said. “We’ll be doing a grid search of the areas marked. The girl we’re looking for is Deirdre Claffey. She is sixteen years of age, approximately 1.65 meters tall. She has short brown hair and brown eyes. We’re working on the assumption that she has a child with her—her son, Cal, nine months. If they were on foot, it’s quite likely they haven’t traveled far. If you find Deirdre, try and persuade her to stay put; make it clear that we just need to talk to her. And ring that number on your flyer straightaway.”

Cormac and Niall Dawson arrived while Molloy was talking, and they joined Nora and Shawn to make a full search party. At last their turn came with the organizers. They were assigned a small area of meadow and woodland rising up from the edge of the bog just below Anthony Beglan’s farm. Nora studied the map as they began making their way to the assigned area. They had to circumvent a hedgerow of furze, a wall of thorns, obviously untrimmed for several years. Once they’d reached the area marked on their map, they walked along in close flanking formation, scanning the ground and the undergrowth for any sign of human activity. About a hundred yards up the hillside from the bog, they were nearing a small stone ruin.

“I didn’t imagine bringing you here under these circumstances,” Shawn Kearney said. “This is Killowen Chapel, the place we were talking about last night.”

They passed by a flat corbelled doorway, completely filled with rubble, and the stump of a round tower, sheared off about ten meters above the ground.

“The carving I mentioned is just inside,” Shawn Kearney said, leading them through a fine Romanesque arch on the far side.

“Here he is, the scribe of Killowen,” Kearney said. The carving beside the doorway showed a figure holding what appeared to be a stylus and a wax tablet. He wore a flowing cloak that pooled around his feet, and his head seemed to be naturally balding rather than tonsured in the Irish style. Nora felt the tug of intrigue.

“See the Greek letters on his tablet,” Cormac said, stepping closer. “Alpha and omega. That’s unusual. Most tenth-century inscriptions were in Latin. There’s a kind of monogram as well—interlacing letters, it looks like an I and an O, maybe an H. Hard to see. You were never at this place before, Niall?”

Dawson glanced away. “As I said, I was only here briefly. Had to get back to Dublin.”

“Listen, we can come back to that carving later,” Nora said. “Remember why we’re here.”

They spread out and began to search, poking through the tall grass that grew up through the floor of the chapel and all around the exterior. Nora spied the open door to the round tower and stepped inside. The tower had no roof, but a piece of blue tarp material was secured to the wall to make a kind of shelter inside. Somebody had been here, and fairly recently, too. Nora knelt and found a plastic carrier bag under one corner of the tarp. Inside the bag were a few items of clothing for a young child. If Deirdre were running away, why would she not go back to Killowen Farm, where she obviously felt safe? Or perhaps Deirdre and the baby weren’t running at all but had been taken away by force—an especially frightening possibility if Deirdre had seen the person who killed her father.

“It looks like they might have been here,” Nora said, rejoining the others. “I found a bag in the tower, with some baby clothes and some extra nappies.”

“Look at this.” Cormac pointed to several cigarette butts on the ground next to a crushed packet. “Silk Cut. That’s Anca’s brand, isn’t it, Shawn?”

Shawn Kearney turned to him. “How do you know that?”

“I’ll spare you the long story. We know she’s still here somewhere. The real question is, why are you all pretending otherwise?”

Shawn stared at the ground. “Anca’s been hiding out. I’m sure you’ve read stories in the papers about the Romanian gangs and what they do to young women, promising them good jobs here and then forcing them into prostitution. The people who brought Anca to Ireland were into all sorts of things—not just prostitution, but cigarette smuggling, identity theft. It’s a huge operation. Anca was so afraid of what would happen if they ever found out where she was, and she was our friend, so of course we hid her. You’d have done the same.”

Nora turned to Niall Dawson. His face betrayed a greater degree of concern than one might expect from someone who didn’t even remember the girl. A quick glance at Cormac told her that he’d seen it, too.

“Let’s leave everything here just as we found it,” Nora said. “I don’t think there’s any way around it, Shawn. You’ll have to tell the Guards what you know. They’ll protect Anca.”

“Can they protect her? You have no idea how much money is involved. That makes it impossible to trust anyone, even the police.”

“There’s also Deirdre and her child to think about,” Nora reminded her. “I’m afraid we have no choice, Shawn. We have to call this in.”

Shawn Kearney turned away with a frustrated sigh. “Do what you have to do.”

As they waited for Cusack and her team to arrive at the chapel, Niall Dawson was standing a few yards apart, speaking to Shawn Kearney. Cormac moved closer to Nora and lowered his voice. “I haven’t told Cusack about what I heard last night at Beglan’s place, about Anca. I don’t know why—”

“Because of Niall? He has been acting strangely, I’ll admit.”

“There’s something he’s not told us about that girl, Anca. You must have seen his reaction when you mentioned her at the dinner table, and just now. I didn’t have a chance to tell you before, but I saw him going back into his room after that episode with my father last night. It was close to four in the morning, Nora. I’m not sure what to do.”

“Can you talk to him?”

“There’s something else, too. When we found Vincent Claffey this morning, he had a handful of those gallnuts in his mouth.”

“You’re not serious.”

Cormac glanced over at Niall and Shawn Kearney, still deep in conversation. “I am. And I can’t help asking myself who could have known that detail about Kavanagh’s body, apart from the people with access to the excavation site.”

Nora considered what he was saying. “So, the Garda contingent and the coroner’s crew, Dr. Friel, the two of us—and Niall.”

“That’s it. You see, maybe Claffey’s murder was a warning to anyone else who might consider making threats. I want to get you and Eliana and my father away from here.”

“But surely we’re in no danger, Cormac. You and I know nothing.” She considered for a moment. “Well, next to nothing… very little, anyway.”

“Do you see what I mean? Every minute we stay, we learn more and more. We may be gaining knowledge completely by accident, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.”

“And what about our work here? All the things we’re finding out about our bog man, the satchel, and the wax tablet.”

“Yes, of course that’s all very important, but, Nora—”

She took his hand. “We’ll be fine, Cormac, really. Rest easy. Nothing will happen.”

6

Dr. Friel was just stitching up the Y incision on Vincent Claffey’s chest when Stella joined her in the mortuary.

“Another tongue cleaved down the middle, I’m afraid—postmortem again. And those were in his mouth.” Catherine Friel glanced down at the metal tray resting at her elbow, which held five dark brown objects that Stella now recognized as oak galls. “One fewer than Mr. Kavanagh had; I don’t know if that’s significant. Have you found out what they are?”

“Dr. Gavin said they’re gallnuts—they grow on oak trees, apparently. Still not clear what they mean. Any fix on the cause of death?”

“Blunt force trauma. He either fell or was on the receiving end of a pretty vicious blow to the back of the head. Fractured the occipital bone. He was at least incapacitated—most likely dead already—before he was wrapped in the cling film and placed on that conveyer belt.” Dr. Friel kept stitching. “It’s all in my report.”

“What about time of death?”

“From the core temperature and onset of rigor, I’d say he was killed in the wee hours, somewhere between one and five A.M.”

Stella’s phone rang as she stood at the table. It was Molloy.

“One of the search parties found a bag with some baby togs and a few nappies at a ruined chapel not far from Killowen. We haven’t found the girl yet, but here’s a new twist: she may be traveling with a Romanian national, Anca Popescu. This girl, Anca, was working at Killowen for the past nine months, but when you turned up asking questions about Kavanagh, Claire Finnerty and the others told everyone she’d left weeks ago.”

“How do you know she’s still around?”

“Maguire overheard her at Anthony Beglan’s place last night. And we found some recently smoked butts and an empty packet of her brand of cigarettes here at the chapel.”

Why had Cormac Maguire neglected to mention any details about the Romanian girl when they spoke this morning at the Claffey place? Too many people connected to this case were keeping secrets.

7

The baby’s anguished cry cut through the quiet forest. All other noise seemed muffled by the soft green moss at their feet. Deirdre stumbled, struggling to keep up with Anca, who was forging ahead through whipping branches of undergrowth. A thin branch brushed the child’s face, and he howled louder. Deirdre said, “He’s hungry, Anca. I’ve got to stop and feed him. He’ll only cry harder if I don’t.”

“All right,” Anca said, pulling up short. “But not too long. We have to keep moving.”

Deirdre settled into the mossy crook of a massive oak tree, hitched up her T-shirt, and put the baby to her breast. The split in her lip throbbed. “Where are we going, Anca? Why do we have to keep on? I’m so tired.”

“Because… because we have to, that’s all.” Anca looked desperate for a fag, but she’d run out back at the chapel.

“Can’t we just go back to Killowen? They’d feed us and look after us—”

“No, we can’t go back!” Anca’s voice was rising. “The police are everywhere.” She clasped her arms around her, as if they were crawling all over her.

“But we’ve no place to go.” Deirdre’s voice quavered.

“Be quiet! I don’t want to hear about it.” Anca covered her ears with both hands and continued pacing back and forth in front of the tree. “Don’t talk to me. You had to get away from your father, and I—” She dropped her hands and pulled the sleeves of her jumper over her balled fists. There was something strange going on, Deirdre thought. Something Anca wasn’t telling her.

She’d been fast asleep last night when Anca came into her room. Get up, she said, we have to go. Be quick about it and don’t make any noise. So Deirdre had gathered up some clothes and a few nappies in a couple of carrier bags, and they’d set out across the fields in darkness. It was no use asking what happened; the few times she’d tried, Anca had got very angry. Deirdre didn’t want to make trouble. Anca was the only friend she’d ever had, so she had kept quiet and followed along. But now she was beginning to feel frightened. She’d never seen Anca so upset. They’d gone as far as the chapel and waited there for first light. Deirdre looked at her friend now. The mascara had gone all splodgy around Anca’s eyes, and she looked like she’d kill for a cigarette. Cal seemed to catch their restlessness, pulling at Deirdre’s hair as he nursed. Why hadn’t she thought to bring him anything to eat? She reached for the handle of her carrier bags and realized that she’d only one. Where was the other? She had no nappies at all if she’d lost that other bag, and Cal would be needing a change very soon.

They’d have to turn around and go back to Killowen. Why didn’t Anca want to go there? Deirdre knew her father might get angry and drag her home again like he had last night, but Claire and Diarmuid did say she could come to them whenever she needed a place to stay. Her da wasn’t that bad, really. Mad as a snake, right enough, but he’d never hit her. Well, never before last night, anyway. And she had gone against him, after he warned her more than once about going to the farm. He said again last night that Claire and her crowd were not to be trusted, that he was just looking out for her, and maybe he was. Hard to tell sometimes who exactly he was looking out for. She looked over at her friend, stripping the bark off a thin branch. There was something wrong. Why wouldn’t Anca look at her?

“Did you see my da last night?” Deirdre asked. “Did you speak to him?” Anca just glared straight ahead and continued breaking bits of dry bark from the stick and pegging them at the ground. “Does he know where I am?”

Anca threw down her half-stripped branch. “Stop talking about him! Why do you care about him, anyway? Look at your face! He gave you that, didn’t he?”

“He never did it before.”

“So that makes it all right?” Anca made a face as if she’d swallowed something that was shredding her insides. She gripped her stomach as the words burst from her lips: “You don’t know what he was doing, how he was using you, and Cal.” She buried her head in her arms.

Deirdre felt cold all over. The baby stopped nursing and pulled away. She looked down at him and watched his mouth make a perfect O before his loud wail pierced her eardrums. She tried to soothe him, patting his back and murmuring little comforts. He always got an air bubble, that’s all it was. An air bubble. If she only walked him and rubbed his back, it would go away, stop bothering him. She climbed to her feet, trying to keep the child balanced on her hip.

They were deep in the oak wood now, the far side, no place she recognized. She had played in this wood as a little girl and had never been afraid, but now there seemed to be strange noises around them, shadows stealing up from all sides. What did Anca mean, that her father was using them?

All at once Deirdre found herself running through the woods, Cal bouncing heavily on her hip. She didn’t know which way to turn, so she just kept running. The baby had stopped crying, his arms tightening about her neck as she ran. She could hear someone behind her, crackling noises of branches breaking, feet pounding the earth, and heavy breathing, but she dared not stop or even look back.

8

Mairéad Broome answered the door to Stella this time. Her face looked pallid, as if all emotion had been wrung out of her over the past several days. Seeing who it was, she left the door open but turned and walked away. Stella stepped into the sitting room. The cottage was slowly taking on the look of a squat, with cups and plates, clothing strewn about, along with a few empty wine bottles. It was as if the two people living here had given up on appearances and surrendered to whatever was troubling them.

Mairéad Broome said nothing, sinking onto the sofa and pulling her loose jumper close about her. A cigarette burned in the ashtray beside her on the table, next to a nearly empty wineglass.

Graham Healy came in from the other room. “Why are you here, Detective? We’ve told you everything we know.”

“Forgive me, but that’s not quite true, is it now? It’s actually you I’ve come to see, Mr. Healy,” Stella said. “I had a question about your conversation with Vincent Claffey yesterday afternoon.”

The young man’s face betrayed his alarm, but Mairéad Broome’s voice broke in before he could answer. “Graham did have a brief conversation with Vincent Claffey after we arrived here. What about it?”

No immediate denial, then. Stella kept her focus on Healy, who was clearly unnerved. “You were seen passing Mr. Claffey a brown envelope. I have to ask you what was inside.”

Healy hesitated, thinking.

“Our witness said it was quite obviously a transaction. Mr. Claffey took a thick envelope from you, said he needed more time to think about what you were asking—I think those were the words he used—and then he rode off on his motorbike.” Cusack considered her bargaining position. She really had nothing beyond Dr. Gavin’s statement that would compel this suspect to say any more. Not yet, anyway. “So what were you asking of him? Shall I tell you what I think?”

Mairéad Broome leaned forward in her chair, her mouth set in a grim line. “You don’t have to say anything, Graham.”

“I’ve been imagining all the possibilities, why you’d be paying off Vincent Claffey. For instance, what he might have known about the two of you that would be worth a significant amount of cash.”

“I’ve told you, Detective, neither Graham nor I had anything to do with my husband’s death. I can’t help it if you don’t believe me, but that’s the truth.”

Healy’s eyes grew defiant. “If you need to know what was in the envelope, why don’t you ask Claffey?”

“I certainly would, except for one small detail—he’s dead.”

Mairéad Broome looked up. “What? How?”

“His body was discovered this morning. He was murdered.”

Graham Healy’s mouth dropped open, but no words came out.

Stella continued, “So I have to ask where each of you were between the hours of one and five o’clock this morning.”

“We were here.” Mairéad Broome’s voice was adamant. “We stayed in all night. And as far as the contents of that envelope are concerned, Graham was acting on my behalf, Detective. Vincent Claffey had done some work for me, and—”

“What sort of work?”

“Pardon me?”

Stella repeated: “I asked what sort of work he did for you.”

“Odds and ends, mostly, framing and stretching canvases, that sort of thing.”

Stella turned to Healy. “I thought those sorts of jobs were handled by your assistant.”

“They are, usually, but Graham’s got a lot on his plate at the moment, dealing with galleries and all the exhibition planning. Things have been busy lately, so we needed some help with… some of the more basic tasks. And Vincent Claffey always needed money.”

“So you’re quite certain it wasn’t blackmail? I understand that Claffey was here last night, making threats. He claimed to know the secrets of everyone here at Killowen. I presumed that might include yourselves.”

“If that’s true, we’ve heard nothing about it. I told you, we’ve been here at the cottage since we arrived.”

“I probably ought to inform you as well that Claffey’s daughter and grandson have gone missing. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that?”

“Deirdre and the baby are missing? Since when?”

Stella thought she detected a note of increased tension in Mairéad Broome’s voice. “All we know is that she was gone when her father’s body was discovered. We’re searching for her and the child now.”

“You have to find them, Detective! It’s bad enough that she should have that odious man for a father—”

“Mairéad.” Healy shot an imploring look.

“I can’t help it, Graham. He was. I’m not sorry he’s dead.”

Stella’s phone pipped. “Cusack here.”

Molloy sounded breathless. “We’ve got them, Stella. The two girls and the child. They’re all right. Uniform are bringing them in.”

Stella felt a surge of relief. “Where were they?”

“Just the other side of the oak wood at Killowen. Like you said, they hadn’t got very far. Had to keep stopping to feed the child, to keep him quiet.”

Stella turned around to find Mairéad Broome’s gaze fixed on her.

“Was that news about Deirdre? Is she all right?”

Stella decided to probe further. “She’s physically fine. But I am concerned. I mean, if the girl happened to witness what happened to her father, or if she were somehow involved—”

“Involved? For God’s sake, Detective, she’s a child.”

“Old enough to have a child of her own,” Stella said. Mairéad Broome turned away abruptly, as if she’d been slapped. There was some deep, unspoken link here, but what was it? Stella filed this information away, next to Deirdre Claffey’s reaction to news of Benedict Kavanagh’s death. “We discovered that Deirdre was traveling in the company of a Romanian girl, Anca Popescu. What do you know about her?”

“Not a lot. She’s been living here for the past year or so, working as Martin Gwynne’s apprentice. He’d know more about the girl, you can ask him.”

“I have a few more questions, about your husband’s visit to this area,” Stella said. “We’ve found the B and B where he was staying when he disappeared; some of his personal effects were still there. You’ve no idea what he was doing in this part of the country?”

“Not the foggiest.”

“Did he know that you were a regular visitor at Killowen?”

“I sincerely doubt it. He didn’t really pay me that much notice.”

“Doesn’t it seem odd that he’d come to this remote, rural area—to a place that you happened to frequent—and that his visit had nothing whatever to do with you?”

“Lots of things seem odd, Detective, when examined under a microscope. The only thing my husband was interested in was his research.”

“But he never happened to mention a connection to Killowen? What about Faddan More?”

“As I told you back in Dublin, he mentioned a breakthrough, but he offered no details. All I can think is that he was interested in medieval manuscripts, and this place was once a monastery…” Her voice trailed off, as if she’d just realized something significant, but the recovery was swift. “Then again, this whole bloody country is peppered with monastic ruins. I have no idea what brought my husband here. I wish I did.”

“All right, let me ask you this: in your husband’s belongings, we found a few interesting items. There was a gold cross with an inscription, From Mum. Not familiar to either of you?”

“No.”

“There were also some handwritten notes. In one of them your husband mentioned a person—at least I’m assuming it’s a person—with the initials IOH. Do those letters mean anything to you?”

Mairéad Broome gave a short, bitter laugh in reply. “Only the object of my husband’s affections, my nemesis—my only true rival.”

Not quite the answer she was expecting, Stella had to admit. “You’re saying that your husband and this IOH were involved?”

A tiny, cryptic smile played across Mairéad Broome’s features. “That’s a good word for it—involved. Most definitely.”

“In that case, I’ll need to speak to—”

Mairéad Broome cut her off. “That won’t be possible, I’m afraid, since he’s been dead for a thousand years. I am sorry, Detective, I’ve been toying with you. The initials belong to the ninth-century philosopher my husband studied. It was more than just study, if you want the truth. Benedict was completely besotted with the man—his intellectual hero, the great mind he tried to emulate. I know that level of devotion is hard to understand; in my experience, it seems to be a disease peculiar to academics.”

“So the manuscripts he consulted—”

“—were all to do with Eriugena, yes. He was obsessed.”

Stella paused for a moment. Eriugena. That name from Kavanagh’s papers again. Someone else had mentioned it as well—Martin Gwynne and the conference in Toronto. “How do you get Eriugena from the initials IOH?”

“That was evidently how the man signed his work. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know.”

Stella’s mind returned to the handwritten note mentioning IOH and his great unfinished work. “Do you think your husband’s remarks about turning the world of philosophy on its ear had something to do with this… Eriugena?” Stella nearly stumbled over the strange name.

“John Scottus Eriugena, John the Scot—call him what you like. Everything Benedict did had something to do with that bloody man. I’m sick to death of hearing his name.”

9

At a quarter past three in the afternoon, Cormac and Niall Dawson returned to the excavation site. With the discovery of the wax tablet in Killowen Man’s garments, it became vitally important to search for other any other associated artifacts.

Cormac stood at the edge of the cutaway with his clipboard and pencil, ready to climb down into the pit. Niall had been silent and withdrawn since they’d discovered Vincent Claffey’s body.

Cormac knew this moment was his best chance to excavate the past, as it were, to begin turning up whatever his friend was hiding. He took a deep breath.

“Niall, I’ve no wish to pry, but you’ve not been yourself these past few days. You flinch at the mention of this Romanian girl, Anca; you’re wandering about at all hours of the night. I saw you coming back to your room, Niall, it was nearly four in the morning. I haven’t said anything to Detective Cusack because I wanted to get your side of the story first.”

From the length of the pause before Dawson spoke, Cormac surmised that his friend was wrestling with a heavy conscience. “If I tell you what’s happening, can I count on your discretion?” Dawson asked.

“Of course.”

“My visit here in April was in connection with a treasure-hunting investigation for the Antiquities Task Force. No one at Killowen knew the real reason I was here. I received an anonymous tip about someone poking about, a ring of treasure hunters operating in this area. Sometimes it’s a group of amateurs with metal detectors, sometimes it’s professionals who’ve identified a particular artifact or group of artifacts from the records about a site. It happened that this group, according to the caller, was looking for an old manuscript. Then, only a day later, and apparently out of the blue, I got Shawn Kearney’s call about the stylus. That gave me an easy excuse to come down and have a look around.”

“Your tipster didn’t happen to say who it was, poking about?”

“No names were mentioned.”

“You’re saying a disembodied voice on the phone told you that someone was digging up this little corner of Tipperary searching for an ancient book?”

“Sounds completely daft, I know, but that’s about the size of it.”

“But surely the phone records—”

“The call came in on the museum’s main line, and you know yourself, our system is so antiquated there’s no way to tell where it was coming from. And I didn’t think to record anything.”

“What about Benedict Kavanagh? Did you know he was in the locality when you arrived?”

“I hadn’t a clue, but of course I can’t prove that. I’ve spent the last two days trying to work out whether he might have been involved with the treasure hunters. Kavanagh had a very particular field of study, you see, the Neoplatonist philosophers of the late ninth century, and one man in particular, John Scottus Eriugena. It did make sense that if Kavanagh was here, it had something to do with his work on Eriugena.”

Frankly, this wasn’t at all what Cormac had been expecting to hear. “So you think these treasure hunters have got something to do with his murder?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to work out. Without access to any of Kavanagh’s papers, I haven’t been able to crack what his connection might have been to Killowen. So I started reading up on his man, Eriugena. It’s a bit insane—we’re talking about someone who was born around 815 A.D., apparently educated in Ireland. He went to France to run the palace school for Charles the Bald, the Holy Roman Emperor, around 845. But the most interesting detail I found about Eriugena was his reputation as a Greek scholar.”

The import of what Dawson was saying took a moment to sink in. Cormac flashed back to the Greek words on the wax tablet, the figure in the chapel doorway holding a tablet with the letters alpha and omega. “You think there might be some sort of connection between this Eriugena and our bog man?”

“I don’t know. What I’m saying is that we need to find out more about him. It’s tempting to jump to conclusions, but we have to do our work and see where it leads.”

“I still don’t see what any of this has to do with Kavanagh being murdered.”

“Eriugena’s work was his singular obsession,” Dawson said. “Benedict Kavanagh would have paid any price to get his hands on information about the man, something no one else knew. Suppose the treasure hunters came across new evidence, something they realized Kavanagh would pay for, and something went awry in the transaction. Suppose he wouldn’t pay, or threatened to expose their operation. That’s sufficient motive for murder, don’t you think?”

“Wait a minute, how would they know to contact Kavanagh?”

“If you’re stealing ancient manuscripts, you’ve got to be something of an expert at what you’re doing. To know what they’re worth, who’d pay for them. Treasure hunters are not your garden variety thieves. They have to understand enough about the potential market to know which pieces will fetch a good price.”

“What sort of ‘new evidence’ about Eriugena were you imagining?”

“Well, look, we’ve already got a stylus, a wax tablet, a satchel, but what haven’t we found? Something you’d expect to find with all those other artifacts that we still haven’t got our hands on?” Dawson’s voice had taken on a kind of fevered urgency.

“Well, a manuscript.”

“Exactly! We’ve found the body of a murdered scribe, his wax tablet, and very likely his stylus and satchel, but there’s no sign of any book so far. Maybe his book survived, or was stolen for some reason.”

“You’re not making sense, Niall. Whoever killed Kavanagh wouldn’t have known there was an ancient body in the bog until he dug the cutout for the car. The satchel and tablet were found with the ancient body. The stylus was the only artifact that turned up here before we arrived. It’s just not tracking.”

“I know. I know it’s not making perfect sense, but I’m convinced that we’re on to something here. Can you not feel it?”

“Maybe. But you’re avoiding my real question. None of this explains where you were last night, Niall. Where were you until four in the morning? It’s something to do with that girl, isn’t it? With Anca.”

Niall Dawson’s face fell. His hands moved nervously. “I know it doesn’t look good, with what happened to Claffey. That’s the reason I haven’t said anything, to you or to Cusack.”

“It also doesn’t look good to be covering things up. Surely you see that.”

Dawson rubbed his forehead, frustrated. He began to pace. “All right. I went to try and find Anca. I just needed to talk to her. She wasn’t at Beglan’s place, so I went to Claffey’s.”

“Why did you need to speak to her? And why look for her there?”

“Just let me tell you what happened, all right? It’ll all become clear soon enough. When I got to Claffey’s place, he was already dead. I didn’t see anyone else. But here’s the thing, Cormac—he wasn’t up on that machine when I found him. He was on the floor, and there was blood.” Dawson pointed to the back of his neck. “It looked as if he’d fallen and hit his head on an old engine block up against the wall. I didn’t know what to do. I suppose I panicked. I just wanted to get the hell away from there as quick as I could. I headed straight back to my room at Killowen. Couldn’t close my eyes after that. I kept seeing his face, those eyes staring at me.”

“So there was no cling film, no gallnuts in his mouth?”

“No, no, none of that. He was definitely dead, though. If there had been any chance to save him, I would have rung for the ambulance straightaway. You do believe me, don’t you?”

“Why are you so jumpy when anybody mentions the girl?”

Dawson ran a hand through his hair, even more agitated now. “There are a few more bits I haven’t told you, unfortunately. About Anca. How she and I—”

“You had an affair with the girl?”

“No, no, not an affair. God, how I hate that word. It was just sex, and only the one time. I can’t even explain why it happened. I love Gráinne, Cormac. She’s the mother of my children. You know I’d never purposely do anything to hurt her. I’ve never been unfaithful, until that one fleeting moment of… I was at the chapel, and Anca was there, too, and we got talking. She seemed so… so alone, so fragile. I suppose it sounds stupid to say that I felt sorry for her. I can’t even tell you what happened. It was just this brief moment of delusion or connection or both, and then it was over and done with and forgotten.” Dawson ran both hands through his hair again. “Until the photographs started showing up in the post.”

Cormac’s thoughts raced back to Claffey’s threats at the supper table. I know your secrets, he’d said, the small, dark eyes drilling into every one of them. He winced. “Jesus, Niall, you were set up.”

“I know that now. The photos were taken from that tower at the chapel. I realized it as soon as I saw them. But don’t you understand, even if it was a setup, that doesn’t absolve me. And it didn’t mean that Vincent Claffey couldn’t ruin my marriage, destroy my family. I didn’t know what to do except pay him off. I couldn’t risk him saying anything to Gráinne. But I never killed him, Cormac. I wished him dead, so many times over, but I never… I swear to you on the lives of my children—I am not a killer.”

“But, Niall, if they’ve found the girl, Anca, all this is bound to come out. There’s no way to stop it.”

“Help me.” Dawson’s eyes pleaded. “I can’t think what to do. Everything’s falling asunder.”

Cormac took a moment, considering. He thought of Niall’s wife, Gráinne, his three lovely children, all the hours he and Niall had spent playing music together at sessions, all the meals and countless bottles of wine he’d shared in the Dawsons’ back garden, and the sight that always affected him, his friend’s arm slung around Gráinne or one of the children. Niall stared at the ground, his shoulders sagging.

“If Vincent Claffey was blackmailing you, how likely was it that he was holding things over other people as well?”

Dawson’s head lifted suddenly. “Yes, if we could just work out who did kill Claffey and Kavanagh, none of this ever need come out.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Cormac said. “But perhaps we can stop you being the focus of the investigation. Back up and tell me again about this tip you got about the treasure hunters.”

Dawson took a deep breath and pulled himself together. “The caller was a man. He seemed to know things.”

“What did he say, exactly?”

“That there was some illegal activity going on around Killowen that might bear looking into.”

“You’re sure the caller mentioned Killowen by name?”

“Yes. Made sure I knew it was Tipperary he was talking about and not some other Killowen.”

“And Shawn Kearney’s news about the stylus came the very next day—that didn’t strike you as odd?”

“Of course it did. But when I arrived, she seemed forthcoming about what they were finding. Her license was up to date, and she had her whole excavation very well documented.”

“And Shawn didn’t seem worried about security?”

“Apparently not. She never mentioned it to me.”

“I don’t like to cast aspersions, but how can you be so sure of Shawn Kearney’s honesty? There’s no way, for instance, she could be in league with the treasure hunters, perhaps accidentally left something out of her report?”

“She’d have had to enlist the cooperation of everyone at Killowen—they were all helping with the excavation. Everyone living there would be complicit in the lie.”

“And that’s not possible?”

“I honestly don’t know. A lot of our business depends upon trust. You know we can’t possibly keep an eye on all the sites that need monitoring, so we have to hope that national pride can overcome baser instincts.”

“If we could just figure out what Kavanagh was doing here,” Cormac said. “You know more about his work than I do, and you think he wouldn’t have come here except for some new discovery about this philosopher, Eriugena. He couldn’t have had any other motivation—his wife being here, for instance?”

“But that’s just it—she wasn’t here at that time. There were no visiting artists during the excavation and construction those last two weeks of April. They only let me stay because I convinced them that I was used to rough conditions.”

“What could have made Kavanagh drop everything and rush out here? And doesn’t it seem like there are only a few people in the world who would have understood the sort of information he’d be interested in? So the question is, who around here knows a thing or two about old manuscripts? What about Gwynne? Shawn mentioned him as the resident expert, but he’s only a calligrapher, isn’t he?”

“Try paleographer with a degree in medieval history from Cambridge.”

“I can’t believe you haven’t mentioned it before now. Why the hell is he working out here in the back of beyond and not at some great university?”

“He used to work at the British Library. I gather that he left under some sort of cloud, but I haven’t had time to find out what it was. I dread prying into people’s personal lives.”

“We might have to pry, if we’re to save you from becoming a suspect. You’ve got to come clean to Cusack, tell her that Claffey was blackmailing you, and why, that you and Kavanagh were friends at university. And you have to tell Gráinne what’s going on. You have to do it, Niall. Can you really justify keeping this from her when it’s bound to come out? That would be even more hurtful. She loves you. You have to trust her.”

Dawson swallowed hard. “It could all go pear shaped.”

“Tell her the truth. It won’t.”

Niall Dawson was still trying to convince himself. “Gráinne first, then Cusack.”

“You’re a decent man, Niall.”

“A decent man doesn’t end up making a fuckin’ bollocks of everything.” Dawson held his gaze for a few seconds, then climbed up out of the pit. He looked down at Cormac from the bank. “I can’t just ring her. I’ve got to go home. I don’t know when I’ll be back—it’ll depend on what happens.”

“Go, then. Don’t worry about me. I’ll carry on here, and I can walk back to the farm.”

Watching Niall Dawson’s disconsolate posture as he trudged across the overgrown bog, Cormac felt a twinge of guilt, having urged his friend to come clean. Some things between people were better not said.

10

The house was empty when Nora returned to Killowen. She headed to the kitchen to work on her report about Killowen Man, curling herself onto a short sofa with camera and laptop. Time to concentrate on work.

But all the events of the past few days had her head in a muddle, especially after seeing Cormac’s anxiety about staying here.

Nora had felt enormous relief when word came that Deirdre Claffey and her baby had been found. They all should have stood up to Vincent Claffey last night, kept him from taking his daughter away. He might still be alive if they had just found a way to resist. And what would become of Anca? She was probably not much older than Deirdre. Impossible to know how bad things had been for Anca at home, that she’d had to seek a better life here.

Nora shook herself, trying to clear these thoughts out of her head. There was nothing she could do to help right now. Better to stop worrying and just stick to her work. She pulled the memory card from her camera and slid it into her laptop to begin downloading the new pictures of Killowen Man, the ones they had taken this morning with the textile expert.

The first images were shots of the stab wounds in Killowen Man’s chest. She clicked through the pictures, pulling descriptive details: the visible pores in his brown skin, the size and placement of the wounds. From all these elements she could begin to weave at least a fragmented story for an unknown, fragmented murder victim. He did have a name, once.

Looking at close-ups of the gashes that had allowed a man’s lifeblood to escape, Nora suddenly felt the spark of vitality that had once been in the form before her. She felt the man’s pulse, his breath inside her, along with the fierce burst of mingled fear and joy that must have seized him at the very instant that he merged with the infinite. All at once, the letters on that stone carving on the chapel loomed forward in her consciousness. Alpha and omega. The beginning and the end. Nora found she couldn’t breathe. She reached forward and snapped the computer shut.

She pushed the laptop away from her, and as she did so, her elbow brushed against a tweed throw that someone had left tossed casually over the arm of the sofa. She looked down to see the corner of a Moleskine notebook peeping out from under the dark woolen fringe. Her curiosity aroused, Nora opened the cover to discover whose book this might be. It was a journal. The writing was small, compact, and in a female hand, it seemed—and in Spanish, which perhaps answered her question. Was this the sad story that Eliana had been reading on the evening they arrived? Nora tried to recall whether the book she’d seen in the girl’s room had a yellow cover like this. She scanned a few phrases at the top of the page: … y la forma en que me mira… A veces parece que diga el nombre de mi madre, pero quizás es sólo por accidente. Something about an accident? She could read the letters, but the words themselves formed a cipher, a code she could not crack.

She heard someone coming. She quickly closed the cover and slipped the journal back into its cushioned crevice.

It was Claire Finnerty.

“Wonderful news, that they found Deirdre and the baby,” Nora said.

“Yes, a great relief. We’re all very glad to know they’re safe.”

“And Anca as well,” Nora said.

Claire threw her a suspicious look. “Yes.”

“I don’t blame you for trying to keep her name out of the investigation, telling us that she’d left. Shawn gave us the whole story this afternoon.”

Claire Finnerty swung around to face Nora full on. “Did she, now?”

“We found Anca’s cigarettes during the search. Shawn had to tell us. She said you were trying to protect the girl. I think that’s commendable.”

Claire offered no response.

“It’s hard to know what to do, sometimes, to protect people.” Nora knew she was in danger of overstepping, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “Maybe last night wasn’t the first time you’d seen Deirdre’s father treat her that way. But I know what it’s like, not having any legal standing to intervene—”

“Please stop, just stop talking!” Claire Finnerty was grasping the edge of the sink. Her voice sounded strangled. After a long moment, she turned and fled the kitchen, leaving the water running over some salad greens.

Nora turned off the tap. She shouldn’t have pushed Claire so hard just to satisfy her own curiosity. And yet, recalling the shock and anger in the faces around the dinner table, she was sure that her memory wasn’t mistaken. It had been Claire Finnerty insisting that they find a way to get Deirdre Claffey away from her father. Someone had found a way, but perhaps it wasn’t what Claire had in mind.

Joseph and Eliana came ambling up to the kitchen through the courtyard garden. Both of them had witnessed the scene at dinner last night, but as far as Nora knew, they were still ignorant of Vincent Claffey’s death. Better if they were spared the details. The way Cormac’s father had clung to Eliana’s hand after Claffey’s outburst last night—you could read it as a protective gesture. Was that what was going on later on as well, when the girl was in his room? He didn’t want me to leave, she’d said. Was he afraid Vincent Claffey would come back to Killowen? Cormac had the same protective streak as his father, which could be maddening at times, but it was also oddly reassuring. And Cormac probably had no idea where he’d picked up that character trait.

“Time to wash up for supper,” Eliana was saying to Joseph, letting go of his arm. “Would you like to rest a minute here before we go upstairs?”

Nora saw Eliana check under the throw on the sofa and slip the yellow notebook out between the cushions and into her bag.

“I’ll take him to get washed up, Eliana, if you’d like a break before supper,” Nora said. She motioned Eliana a short distance away so that Joseph might not overhear their conversation.

“Did you have a good day?” Nora asked.

Eliana glanced at her briefly. “Yes, everything is fine today. We were studying these cards—what do you call them?”

“Flash cards.”

“Yes, the flash cards. He likes the pictures, but he gets eh… nervous?” She tried to find the proper way to express it.

“Flustered? Or perhaps you mean frustrated?”

“Yes, that’s it—frustrated. I try to tell him he will learn the words again. That it will take patience.”

“That’s true,” Nora said. She glanced over at Joseph, who seemed to be nodding off in his corner of the sofa. “I wanted to ask if there’s anything more that Cormac and I could be doing to help you.”

Eliana’s eyes flicked away nervously. “I hope I am doing the right things…”

“You’re doing great work, Eliana. He seems to enjoy the time spent with you.” Nora reached up to give the girl’s shoulder a squeeze. “I want to make sure you know that we’re here, both Cormac and myself, if you have questions about anything, or just want to talk.” Eliana nodded without looking up. “Now, a little time off.”

“I don’t need it.”

“I insist,” Nora said. “I can stay with Joseph, and you can do whatever you’d like to do.”

Eliana looked doubtful. “You’re certain?”

“Yes, go and enjoy yourself.”

Eliana rose slowly from her chair and headed for the stairs, not visibly cheered by the prospect of time to herself. This reluctance to leave Joseph was becoming a pattern. A worrisome pattern, if she were honest.

Nora turned back to find that Joseph had cracked one eye open. He’d been watching them the whole time, the sly old devil. “Narb a fisking torrit,” he said, drawing his hand over his face. “Her fox, it’s a looken peas. Peas.” He shook his head and with one hand seemed to bat the words away, a gesture that said he knew what was happening and was buggered if he could do anything about it. Here he was, back at the peas again. That was the way this thing seemed to work; he’d make steady forward progress and then would come a sort of verbal hiccup, and he’d drop back to where he’d been a week ago. Back with the vegetables.

“I think Eliana’s all right,” Nora said. “Probably just a bit homesick.”

He looked puzzled.

“Missing her family, you know.”

He looked at her with such a fixed stare that she wondered if he understood.

“Neary, shows a brick.” He put his palms together, then opened them like a book. Like an endless game of charades, Nora thought, and he can’t even tell us when we’ve guessed right. “A brick,” he said, and made the book gesture again.

“A book?” She exaggerated the O shape of her lips, trying to show him. “What is it about a book?”

“Hermakes a voil.” Here he scooped one hand, as if to say, Come here, and she moved closer. “No! A voil in it, a spog, a spogget.” Beads of sweat were beginning to form on his forehead, as if the effort of making oneself understood was hard physical work. She searched his face for hints, clues to the meanings he was going for, to no avail. He definitely had something to tell her, perhaps something important. That was the trouble—no way to know.

“Bollocks,” he muttered.

“Now that I understand,” Nora said. “And you’ll forgive me if I concur.”

11

Cormac looked up from his work in the cutaway. He was digging directly below the spot where they’d found the satchel, hoping there might be a few more clues buried in the peat. Killowen Man’s brooch was still unaccounted for, not to mention the contents of his satchel. The likeliest scenario was that both the books and the brooch were stolen by the assassins who had stuck their blades into Killowen Man’s belly.

It was nearly five; Niall had probably made it back to Dublin by now. Cormac tried mightily not to think about Gráinne Dawson’s reaction, not to feel in his own gut the punch his friend was about to deliver at home. He had never been married, so how could he possibly know what it was like? Surely a true marriage required a certain acceptance of all the shades of human complexity; to deny imperfection, or to allow a momentary weakness to undo years of connection seemed extraordinarily severe. And yet what would his reaction be if Nora came to him with a similar story to Niall’s, not a long-term affair but giving in to a brief flash of desire? He looked down at his feet, stuck into wellingtons that seemed to be melting into the wet peat, and realized that he was still standing on shifting ground. Was there nothing solid at the bottom of it all? After a full year together, he found himself still craving assurances that Nora, no matter how desperately he loved her, might never be able to provide.

He started packing up his tools. They hadn’t had any security out here since the crime scene detail left, and now he wondered if they should ask the Guards to post someone on site overnight. That’s when treasure hunters usually did their work, going over sites with their outlawed metal detectors.

Niall’s anonymous tipster had mentioned a manuscript. The real question was whether there was a manuscript, or whether the tipster only wanted to draw the National Museum’s attention to Killowen. The stylus was discovered a few days before Benedict Kavanagh went missing and just before Niall had received the tipster’s call. Considering Vincent Claffey’s obsession with rewards, could he have been the anonymous voice on the phone? Not likely that Shawn Kearney and the others at Killowen would have kept Claffey posted on their excavation, given the frosty relations between them. Then again, Claffey seemed to have no problem spying on people. He should have asked Niall a few more questions: what sort of accent the caller had, the exact language he had used.

As Cormac stood in the cutaway, he heard someone moving through the scrubby birch saplings at the bog’s edge. A strong, low voice carried over the heather: “How, hi, hi, how!” Anthony Beglan carried a thin hazel rod as he drove his cattle home from the pasture beside the bog. Cormac could see only the top half of Beglan’s body and the tip of the hazel. He had to struggle to make out the language—not English, that was certain, nor Irish. Straining to hear, he climbed up out of the cutaway, trying to follow without being detected, safely screened behind the saplings at the edge of the road.

Every language had its own music, Cormac thought, tuning his ears to the sound. If it wasn’t English or Irish, what were the possibilities, logically speaking? The sound was almost like Italian, or perhaps Beglan had begun to learn a few words of Romanian from the girl he’d been hiding in his house.

When they reached his farm, Beglan penned the cattle and slipped the leather strap from the basket over his head. Cormac followed at a distance. The rank smell he’d noticed the other night was stronger now and seemed to be coming from the shed across the haggard, a low building with a corrugated fiberglass roof.

Beglan crossed to an open lean-to against the shed, where he took an eel from his basket. Cormac looked away as Beglan held a nail to the creature’s head, and he flinched as the first hammer blow drove the nail through its skull. Cormac looked up to see the eel’s tail flex once and then lie still. Beglan took a knife and scored around the creature’s neck, then used pliers to peel back its skin. Finally he slit the belly and gutted it, paying close attention to the entrails and carefully separating out one small portion, which he slipped into a cup on the nearby bench. The eel went into a bucket at his feet.

As he watched Anthony go about his work, Cormac wondered about the conversation he’d overheard here the other night between Beglan and Anca. Shawn Kearney said the Killowen residents were trying to protect the Romanian girl. So why had she run away with Deirdre Claffey? Why not flee to Killowen? If Niall had been set up by Vincent Claffey, the girl must have had something to do with arranging the incriminating photos of her and Niall, either as coconspirator or unwilling pawn. Either made her a possible player in Claffey’s death.

Cormac had no more time for rumination. Anthony Beglan was such a practiced hand that the half dozen eels in his creel were skinned and gutted in the space of about twelve minutes. He rinsed off his hands under the tap in the shed, reached for the bucket of eels and the small container from the workbench, and set off down the lane toward Killowen.

Anthony never slowed or turned around. As Cormac struggled to keep up, it occurred to him that the old spelling for Beglan would have been Ó Beigléighinn—beag for small, and léighinn from the word léigh—to read or to study—scholarship, in other words. Put it all together and the name meant “descendant of the little scholar.” In all the conversations about Cill Eóghain, they’d gone back and forth about what sorts of scholarship might have been carried on at the monastery here more than a thousand years ago. Was it possible that Beglan’s family had some connection to this place from that time? Centuries had passed, to be sure, but it was true in Ireland—as it was true everywhere, in fact—that artifacts, roads, structures, and even people sometimes did not stir from where they’d remained for generations. There was clearly some powerful force that connected human beings to their ancestral places.

Cormac watched Anthony Beglan fifty yards ahead of him. Here was a man far removed from the bookish pursuits of his presumed forebears. How ironic it would be if this descendant of the little scholar could himself neither read nor write.

Arriving at Killowen, Beglan went first to the kitchen, where he dropped the bucket of eels, then crossed to the north wing of the house, where Martin Gwynne kept his studio. Still in Beglan’s left hand was the small cup from his workbench, with whatever he had taken from the eels’ insides. He stuck his head through the door and spoke to Martin Gwynne. Cormac could hear a few words of the conversation:

“…like you asked,” Beglan said.

“Very good, Anthony, I appreciate you going to the trouble,” Gwynne replied.

“Nuh-no trouble, really,” Beglan said. “All for a guh-good cause. I’ll get some more gallnuts as well.”

Beglan left by the outside door of the studio, and Cormac tried to get close enough to peer in through the window.

Martin Gwynne fished something out of Beglan’s cup, a small bluish organ, and held it steady over a glass jar. He lanced the thing with a sharp scalpel, releasing a bright yellow liquid into the jar. Gwynne carefully repeated the same procedure five more times. What could it be? Best to ask the anatomist—surely Nora would know.

12

Stella Cusack decided to begin by interviewing Deirdre Claffey. The girl was in one of the two tiny, airless rooms they had for talking to suspects and witnesses. The uniforms had taken the baby away for the moment. Deirdre had appeared exhausted when they brought her in. The circles under her eyes were dark as bruises, and she obviously hadn’t slept.

Getting information from people wasn’t as difficult as everyone imagined. Most of them wanted to speak. Deirdre’s head was on the table when Stella entered and took a seat across from her.

“Before we begin, do you need anything, Deirdre, cup of tea, a biscuit, maybe a sandwich?”

The girl didn’t raise her head but rocked it side to side. “Where’s Cal?” came a small voice from the tabletop.

“He’s being looked after by a very nice bean garda just outside. He’s fine. They’re giving him a bit of dinner while you and I have our little talk.”

“They won’t give him peas, will they? He doesn’t like peas.”

Stella checked her watch. Where was that bloody child advocate? It was getting late, and whoever Social Services had assigned to the case was taking her own sweet time in getting here. But those were the rules. She’d just have to wait.

Molloy stuck his head in. “She’s here, Stella, the advocate.”

Five minutes later, Stella sat across the table from Deirdre Claffey, now with the child advocate by her side. “I just need you to tell me what happened last night, Deirdre, in your own words. Take your time. We’re not in a rush.”

The girl’s hands were tucked underneath her. She stared at the table and mumbled her story, about going to Killowen yesterday evening, her father bringing her home, going straight to bed, and being awakened in the middle of the night by her friend Anca. They’d stayed in the chapel until first light and then moved on. Anca seemed anxious about getting away.

“You don’t know why Anca wanted to run away?”

“No. I asked if she’d seen my da, and she started shouting at me.”

“And what did she say?”

“That we couldn’t go back.”

“Why did you go along with Anca?”

“I was afraid. She said my da was using us, me and Cal—what was she talking about?”

“Do you know why you’re here, Deirdre?” Stella asked as gently as she could.

“Something’s happened to my da,” the girl whispered. “I know it, something bad. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Deirdre. I’m afraid he is.”

Deirdre put her head on the table and wept. Impossible to know if it was genuine sorrow or relief. The advocate tried to comfort the girl but was pushed away.

As she waited, Stella pulled a gallnut from her pocket, one of the pair Dr. Gavin had given her. When Deirdre looked up again, she set the gall on the table between them. “Do you know what that is, Deirdre?”

“Is it a seed?”

“Not exactly,” Stella said. “It’s a gallnut, from an oak tree. Some people call them serpent’s eggs.”

“I used to see them in the wood, where I played when I was little.”

Her wrist was exposed as she reached for the gall, and Stella winced at the sight of the fresh bruises—raw, distinct marks of an adult hand.

“Can you tell me how you got those bruises, Deirdre?”

The girl dropped the gallnut, and both hands went immediately back under the table. “Working the chipper,” she lied.

Stella tried again. “What about your lip—is that from the chipper as well?”

“Fuck you!”

Stella was unprepared for such vehemence. This girl’s father had been killed, possibly for abusing her, had quite likely made her pregnant, and here she was, still trying to defend him. The world really beggared belief.

Through the small window in the door, she saw Molloy out in the corridor. “Will you excuse me?” she said to the advocate. “I’ll be back.”

There was no sign of Molloy when she got outside. Stella took a deep breath and started to bang her head slowly against the wall. She felt a presence behind her and heard Molloy’s voice in her ear. “Hey, everything all right, Stella?”

She turned, surprised to see his look of concern. He leaned closer. “Anything I can do?” How had she never noticed his long lashes, those dark irises flecked with gold?

“Everything’s fine,” she said. “Just let me know when you’ve got Anca Popescu set up in the other interview room.”

“She’s there now,” Molloy said.

“What’s the word from Interpol? Anything?”

Molloy shrugged. “You know how things are on the Continent—they don’t work weekends. Did you want me to finish up with Deirdre?”

“No, let her stay put for a bit. I may want to talk to her again.”

Stella pushed through the door of the other small interview room. Anca Popescu sat at the table, smoking, hands toying nervously with a bit of cigarette wrapper. Stella noted some red marks on her wrist, the ankles twined together under the table. The girl’s eyes had the look of a cornered animal. Not the most trustworthy source of information, in Stella’s experience. Better to try to calm her first. Stella took a seat, moving deliberately. She had no file or notebook in front of her, no recording device. All conscious choices, to say this was just a conversation. She waited perhaps thirty seconds for Anca to glance up and offered a slight but reassuring smile.

“First of all, I want to make it clear that no one’s accused you of anything. We need to learn what happened last night. We’d really like to be able to help you, Anca, but you’ll have to give us a little information before we can do that. Do you understand?”

Anca didn’t respond, just pulled a fresh cigarette from the pack. She lit up with the old butt, then savagely stubbed it out. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“No, you don’t. But it may help you in the long run. If you cooperate with us now, we may be able to help if you’d like to stay in Ireland. You would like to stay?” No verbal response, but Stella could see the hunger in the girl’s eyes.

“Why don’t we start with last Wednesday, when you were still working at Killowen? We understand that your friends there were trying to protect you, to keep your name and picture out of the press.” Anca stared at the table, took a drag on her cigarette.

“I know you may be wondering what will happen to you, and to Deirdre. If you answer our questions, and we have no reason to hold you, you’ll be free to go.” Still no reaction. “If you’re concerned about the people who brought you to Ireland, we can offer accommodation at a safe house when we’re finished here. We’ll protect you. That’s one thing I can promise.”

Anca’s eyes flicked toward the door. It was the first time she’d lifted her gaze from the table, and Stella’s heart leapt just a little. She was in.

13

Claire Finnerty had left a cold supper for Cormac and her three other guests on Saturday evening. Everyone else seemed to have retreated into their private spaces. The atmosphere was quiet but slightly on edge, almost as though the house or the people in it were waiting for something. After dark, a couple of lights glowed from upstairs windows in the opposite wing.

As Cormac passed Dawson’s room, he saw that the door was open. Still not back from Dublin. Nora came up behind him. “Where’s Niall gone?”

Cormac tipped his head toward the door to their room. When they were safely inside, Cormac stretched out beside Nora on the bed. “Niall’s gone home to talk to Gráinne. It seems when he was here last April that he… well, he had a very brief thing with that Romanian girl, Anca.”

Nora sat up. “Niall Dawson? Jesus, Cormac, what on earth was he thinking?”

“Well, he wasn’t thinking, that’s the point. He said he felt sorry for her.”

“No wonder he was so anxious whenever her name came up.”

“From what he said, it also seems clear that he was set up. Vincent Claffey had photos. Niall paid him, but Claffey wanted more. Niall thinks Claffey might have coerced the girl.”

“That doesn’t excuse him, Cormac.”

“No, of course it doesn’t, but remember what Shawn told us about Anca running away from that Romanian gang? Claffey may have been threatening to reveal her whereabouts if she didn’t do exactly as he said.”

“You realize what this does—it makes Niall a prime suspect in Vincent Claffey’s murder.”

“He swore to me he’d nothing to do with it, but—”

“But what?”

“He did admit that he was there—at Claffey’s place—early this morning. Claffey was dead when he arrived. I have to believe him, Nora. Niall’s one of my oldest friends, and he’s going to tell Cusack everything as soon as he’s spoken to his wife.”

“And you have to believe that as well?”

“He’s not a liar—”

“Except about blackmail, apparently.”

“—and he’s certainly not a killer.”

“Well, if Niall didn’t murder Vincent Claffey, then it’s likely someone else around here did. And if we’re going to help Niall, we have to figure out why. You know, I keep thinking about those gallnuts in Kavanagh’s mouth—and Claffey’s as well. Martin Gwynne said they were used for making ink. If you look at the other items recovered so far, we’ve got a wax tablet, a stylus, a satchel. But there’s still something missing: a manuscript.”

Cormac was pleased that Nora had hit upon the same thing he and Niall had realized this afternoon. He wasn’t sure he should share what Niall had told him today, but his friend’s whole future was at stake. “Niall said he was here in April following up on a tip about a group of treasure hunters. The caller mentioned that they were after a manuscript. Something very old and very rare, like the books at Trinity.”

“With all the monasteries here, there must have been hundreds, even thousands, of books made in Ireland. What happened to them all?”

“Destroyed by the raiders who burned down monasteries, or some would have been hidden and never retrieved, and obviously a great number would have been carried to the Continent. There are still libraries in France and Switzerland full of ancient Irish books. But only a few manuscripts created in Ireland actually stayed here—I’d say less than a dozen.”

Nora didn’t say anything but reached for her laptop on the nightstand and opened the lid. “I was thinking about what Shawn Kearney was telling us about her research on the site here, and I came across something interesting online earlier. The local historical society just posted the full text of John O’Donovan’s Ordnance Survey Letters for this part of Tipperary. Look at this.”

When Cormac finished reading, Nora looked at him expectantly. “The keepers of this book shrine—they were called O’Beglan.”

“It’s funny, I was thinking about that name just this afternoon. It means ‘descendant of the little scholar.’” Cormac was remembering the dilapidated farm he’d visited earlier in the day. Were it and the place he and Nora sat at this moment part of the termon lands of Cill Eóghain, where the ancient monastery had once stood?

“And is a book shrine what I think it is, like those elaborate metal boxes they have in the National Museum? You said Niall was here checking out a tip about some treasure hunters and an old manuscript. Do you suppose Kavanagh could have been mixed up with them somehow?”

“From all I know of Kavanagh, he wouldn’t have been much interested in an elaborate shrine. He was far more likely to go for the book inside. But didn’t O’Donovan say in that passage that the manuscript was burned?”

“No, he says your man O’Beglan was said to have burned the manuscript, that the shrine was reported to have been sold and melted down. You’d think Niall would have known about all this. I’m going to see if there’s mention of this book shrine anywhere else.”

Nora’s attention was focused on her laptop again. Cormac’s head had begun to ache. He also wanted to check once more to see if Niall had returned from Dublin. “Listen,” he said to Nora, “I’m going below for a cup of tea. Do you want anything?”

“No, I’m all right.” She frowned at the laptop screen.

Cormac checked Niall’s room as he passed—still not back. It was getting late now; maybe he’d decided to stop at home for the night. And maybe that was a good sign. Cormac felt burdened by what he knew. He couldn’t abandon his friend now. Downstairs, the moon was shining through the window, so Cormac didn’t bother to turn on a light. He ran the tap for a few seconds, then filled the electric kettle. He looked out into the garden, imagining that it must resemble the kitchen garden that had helped to feed a monastery. He remembered the strange sight of Anthony Beglan cutting something from the entrails of those eels this afternoon. He’d have to ask Nora about it.

A harsh whisper came from the courtyard, and Cormac drew back into the shadows. He couldn’t make out who was speaking, but he saw two figures creep along the inner wall and leave by the gate outside Martin Gwynne’s studio.

Seized with an urge to know who could be skulking around Killowen at this hour, Cormac followed, keeping his distance. His brain registered the silhouettes ahead as male and female, but he could not distinguish their identities. He watched the two figures head for the storehouse, set into the side of a small hill, where the farm’s creamery and cheese-making operation was housed. Could it be the French couple, Lucien and Sylvie, or was someone else breaking into their domain? The pair ducked behind a white van, ghostly in the moonlight, parked directly in front of the door. KILLOWEN FARMHOUSE CHEESE was emblazoned on its side, and a pair of cartoonish bearded goat faces glowed eerily.

Cormac hesitated. He couldn’t follow any longer without being detected. Perhaps he ought just to wait.

Five minutes passed, then ten, as Cormac kept watch on the storehouse door. What the hell was he doing out here? Nora’s words reverberated through his head: If Niall didn’t murder Vincent Claffey, then it’s likely someone else around here did.

He checked his watch again. No sign of movement in the storehouse. He could be out here all night. Bugger that. And bugger the tea as well. It was time to turn in.

Checking Dawson’s room again on his way upstairs, he detected a flicker of movement inside. He pushed the door open wider. Niall was sitting on the bed, staring straight ahead.

“Everything all right?” Cormac asked.

“Gráinne threw me out. I’ve never seen her so angry.” He made eye contact. “Thanks for the advice.”

“Niall, I’m sorry.”

“You know, I don’t feel much like talking right now.” He reached out to push the door shut, and Cormac had to jump back to avoid being hit.

He’d made a total bollocks of everything. Nora was still staring at her computer screen when he opened the door to their room. She glanced up.

“Niall’s back from Dublin. Gráinne threw him out. I urged him to come clean, Nora, and now—”

“The two of them will have to figure out what to do, Cormac. We can’t help them.” She pointed to the floor beside her. “Come and sit.”

Her cool fingers gently massaged his temples, the tension melting away down his neck and shoulders, wherever her hands came in contact with his skin.

“Nora?”

“Hmm? You know, if you keep talking, you’ll never relax properly.”

“There’s something I meant to ask you. I followed Anthony Beglan home from the bog this afternoon and watched him clean and dress about a half dozen eels. He cut something from their entrails—I wasn’t close enough to see, but he brought whatever it was to Martin Gwynne.”

Nora kept working at the cords in his shoulders. “Go on.”

“They were small bluish sacs, about this size.” He made a shape with his fingers, held it up to show her. “After Anthony left, Martin cut open each one and drained off a bright yellow liquid into a jar.”

Nora stopped kneading. “Ah, yes, he told me about that. I wandered into his studio the day we arrived. We were talking about all the strange sources for pigments, and he said the monks used to make a yellow ink from the gallbladders of eels—”

A knock sounded at the door. And another, urgent.

Eliana was outside, in pajamas.

“He’s gone, your father. I don’t know where he is.”

Cormac froze. They’d never had a problem with him wandering off at home in Dublin, but each day out here seemed to hold a new and distressing surprise.

They headed downstairs, with Cormac and Eliana each taking a wing of the house and Nora checking outside in the car park. As Cormac ventured down the corridor of the south wing, he spied the door of the thermal suite ajar.

The old man was up to his chin in peaty water, eyes closed, clearly enjoying himself. “He’s here,” Cormac shouted. “Nora! I’ve got him.”

Eliana arrived at the door. “I’m sorry, I should have been watching.”

“No harm done, none at all,” Cormac insisted. “This isn’t your fault. It’s just that he’s very… independent.”

“Please don’t be angry with him. It’s my fault. Perhaps he doesn’t understand me, my English—”

“Your English is fine,” Cormac said. “Now, please don’t be upset. No one is in trouble.” When Nora arrived, he said to Eliana, “Maybe you and Nora would make us a cup of tea while I get him dressed again.”

Nora slid her arm around the girl’s shoulder. “Come on, Eliana, I think there’s a bit of porter cake left.”

When they’d gone, Cormac sat down on the bench beside the sunken tub and studied his father’s face: eyes closed, a film of perspiration on his forehead and upper lip. Suddenly the old man’s eyes opened, and he seemed overcome by a gust of feeling. Cormac sat helplessly, not certain what to do. He reached out and placed a hand on his father’s shoulder, the aging flesh soft as kidskin, loose against bone. To his surprise, the old man’s hand covered his. “You’re my sum,” Joseph said. “My sum.”

Cormac sank down on one knee beside his father, not wishing to withdraw his hand too soon. At last the old man sighed heavily. “I’m wet,” he said, as though noticing that fact for the very first time.

“Yes,” Cormac said, “that you are.” He reached over and pulled one handle to begin draining the tub, another to switch on the shower spray.

“Mmm,” Joseph said absently. He took Cormac’s hand once more and pressed the palm against his breastbone. “My sum.”