Haunted Ground Part 5

"I'm sure he intended them to end up in some museum, but in later years he lost interest in collecting."

"What could make him give it up--apart from already having one of everything?" Cormac asked. Osborne hesitated, and Nora watched him study Cormac for a moment, apparently deciding how to answer.

"He'd been away on an expedition, and my parents were on their way to meet him off the boat in Rosslare when their car went off the road. They were both killed. My grandfather hadn't much appet.i.te for anything after that."

4.

"It's got to stop, Lucy, before he gets hurt, or--G.o.d help us--before he does injury to someone else." Hugh Osborne's voice was agitated, and Cormac guessed that he was talking about Jeremy. He'd just come from taking another look at the priory plans in the library, and was returning to his room to collect the last of the gear for the morning's dig. He'd reached the landing when he heard voices coming from behind a half-open door at the top. He knew he ought not to be listening in on a private conversation, and yet he felt caught, not knowing whether to retreat or advance.

"I'm very grateful for your concern." It was Lucy's voice. "Heaven knows you've tried to be like a father. But most boys Jeremy's age go through a period of rebellion. Your worry is quite out of proportion."

"He came into the house last night so drunk he could barely stand. Please, Lucy, we have to do something."

"What can we do? He's not a child anymore. I've already spoken to him on this subject more than once." There was a pause.

"There are very good treatment programs--"

"I won't have him taken away and locked up. I couldn't bear that, Hugh, I truly couldn't." Their voices receded suddenly, as if they'd become aware of how loudly they'd been speaking.

Cormac began to climb the stairs once more. His eye caught a movement in a large mirror just beside the open door, and he could see Jeremy Osborne's dark features reflected in its surface. The boy was standing in a doorway opposite the mirror; he appeared to have been listening as well. His face was deathly pale, and Cormac could see dark circles almost like bruises under his eyes. When Jeremy saw that he'd been observed, he pulled the door shut.

G.o.d, the drink was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. What age could that boy have been when he found his father dead? He couldn't be more than seventeen or eighteen now, if that. Cormac remembered his own complex feelings when he was ten, and his almost complete inability to express them. He remembered his hurt and anger when his father had left them, the dreadful helplessness he felt when he looked at his mother's face.

He was sitting on the steps of his gran's house, listening to his mother and grandmother argue below in the kitchen. They didn't know he was there. He'd gone upstairs to get his hurling ball, and couldn't slip out without being seen, so he decided to wait and listen. He pulled out his pocketknife to see if he could pry up a corner of the leather on the ball to find out what was inside.

"And he told you all this in a letter?" He could hear the indignation in his grandmother's voice, her anger boiling over as she stirred the sugar into her tea with a force that threatened to shatter the cup. "Didn't even have the courage to tell you to your face. And what about Cormac? What about looking after his own son?"

"I've told you all I know, Mam," his mother said, sounding completely exhausted. "Must we go over it all again?"

"What business is it of his what they do off in Bolivia--"

"It's Chile, Mammy. People are disappearing."

"I don't care how much they need him in any G.o.dforsaken country on earth, he belongs here with his family. He'd no business getting mixed up in all that in the first place." They went on talking, but Cormac listened more to the sound of their voices than the actual words.

They'd received his father's letter a few days before, and he had watched first his mother's antic.i.p.ation, then her anguish, which she'd tried to keep hidden but couldn't. After about an hour, she'd asked him to sit with her on the sofa. It was very important work that his daddy was doing, she'd said; he was trying to help a lot of people who were in desperate trouble, and he had to stay for another while, he didn't know how long. Daddy had written that he loved them both, but it was far too dangerous for them to be with him, and that at least for now, he had to remain where he was needed. Cormac knew there was more she wasn't telling.

The women's voices floated up to him as he sat on the steps, and he began to realize that his father would never be coming home. He looked down at what had been a perfectly good hurling ball, now a loose flap of leather and a sphere of cork, pitted and gouged from all the places he'd stuck his penknife in it.

The memory unsettled him. He remembered how often as a boy he'd wished his father ill, but it was the kind of misfortune that a ten-year-old child could imagine: that he might trip and fall, or suffer some other small humiliation. He had never actually wished his father dead. But suppose he had? And suppose his father had then died? A suicide must be even worse, he thought, remembering the hours he'd spent trying to divine if there was something he might have said or done that could have driven his father away. No wonder Jeremy Osborne was a mess.

As Cormac slung his map book under his left arm and gripped the worn leather handles of his site bag, he knew that what he saw in Jeremy's face could have been reflected in his ten-year-old self a quarter-century ago. All the wishing in the world had not altered reality, and yet life had not ended. He had survived, and the wounds had eventually scarred over. If there were only some way he could communicate that hope to Jeremy Osborne. But he was here to dig. That was all.

5.

Nora was waiting for a call from the National Museum when Cormac left the house, so he had set off for the priory on his own. As he nosed the jeep down Bracklyn's shaded drive, he thought about how trees had come to be a sign of privilege in Ireland, their presence a.s.sociated with the walled estates of the English and Anglo-Irish aristocracy. In some cases, the big houses were long gone, and only the trees and walls remained as a legacy of the landlord cla.s.s. Outside the gates the woodland soon gave way to green pastures on either side. Almost at once, Cormac spied the gray stone ruins of ecclesiastical buildings off to his right, and he pulled onto the muddy gravel lane that led to the priory. Without all the equipment he had to transport, he might easily have walked the distance in ten minutes. The nearby fields had been fenced for cattle, and a large gate blocked the end of the lane. Osborne had arranged for an excavator to come this afternoon and clear away topsoil before they could begin on the test trenches. Slinging a camera over his shoulder and grabbing a notebook from his site kit, he climbed through the wire fence to have a look at the priory itself before making his walking survey and taking some pictures of the excavation site.

Osborne had said that Duchas maintained the priory, but from the state of the place, it appeared to be fairly low on the priority list. Someone had made a rather halfhearted attempt to arrange the fallen stones, and long gra.s.s grew up between them. The sweet scent of hay hung in the cool, damp morning breeze. Cormac shut his eyes and took a deep breath, letting his lungs fill with the fragrance. As much as he loved his work and enjoyed living in the city, he missed the sensory feast of the countryside. The ground was soaking from yesterday's heavy showers, but the wind was pushing the clouds steadily across the sky, occasionally letting the morning sun break through. As he entered the cloistered square, he disturbed a flock of hooded crows, which took off in a great noisy, wing-flapping crowd.

Pillared archways were all that remained of the covered walkways, built to protect the monks from the elements as they went from church to work to sleeping rooms. The knee-high remains of storerooms, kitchen, and monastic cells lined the cloister's outer rim. These stones, their worn surfaces incised with patterns, some carved into the shapes of dogs' heads, had been laid by some monastic mason 850 years ago. There was a beauty, a rightness of scale in these old buildings that stirred some aesthetic appreciation in him, and a sense of wonder about the lives of the men who had lived here. Cormac looked into each room as he pa.s.sed, imagining robed monks kneeling alongside the rude rush beds; working the surrounding fields; sharing a communal meal. At the base of one of the doorways, he knelt to take a closer look at a carving of a fernlike plant he could not name, perhaps six inches in height, its curling, pinnate leaves rendered in shallow relief.

He pa.s.sed through an archway, its wooden door long ago removed or consumed by fire, and stepped into the nave of a small church. Though it was roofless and full of morning light, he imagined the echoes of medieval prayers offered in the chilly hours before sunrise every day of the year, and conjured the damp, visible breath of the Augustinian brothers as they knelt together in candlelight on these stones. In the niche left by a fallen crossbeam, he glimpsed the small figure of a sile na gig, an ancient fertility symbol. This one was typical: a wild-eyed female figure with splayed legs, her hands grasping at the outsized genitalia beneath her grotesquely swollen belly. Why these figures were often found among church ruins was an anthropological conundrum, often taken as a sign that Ireland's pagan past had never really disappeared, only receded, and that Catholicism was only a modern facade on a much more primitive and atavistic religion. After snapping a photo, Cormac recorded the location of the figure in his notebook, and continued on his survey.

An opening at the far side of the chapel framed a small rectangle of green and a larger one of blue sky. Several lichen-covered gravestones tilted into the frame as well. Off in the far corner of the enclosure was a life-sized stone figure of Christ, streaked with rust and mottled with white lichen like the surrounding stones. Its feet were submerged to the ankles in gra.s.s dotted with tiny daisies. The left arm was missing entirely, and the right was broken in several places, leaving the iron rods that had once supported stone fingers curled into a rusty fist. Despite its ruined state, Cormac felt the vital energy in the figure's naked torso, the sidelong droop of its head, and found himself strangely moved.

He backtracked to the graveyard. In among the antique graves were fresh stones; their polished surfaces and sharply incised lettering stood out against the weathered slabs from the eighteenth century and before. No doubt Hugh Osborne's parents were buried here somewhere. Cormac crouched by one of the old stones and tried to read the inscription. Vegetation and damp had obscured most of the writing, but he could make out the name, Miles Gorman, and the dates, 1604 to 1660. He reached out to touch the ruffled, papery-dry edges of the yellow-green lichen that bloomed on the stone.

"If you're looking for the Osbornes, they're all under the floor inside." The gruff voice came from about three graves away. Cormac looked up, shading his eyes against the bright sunshine, and saw Brendan McGann silhouetted against the sky. He was in shirtsleeves, and carried a hay fork. Against the sunlight, Cormac couldn't tell if Brendan's eyes held mischief or malice. How long had he been there?

"Thought you'd packed off home," Brendan continued.

"I did. But I'm back here on a job. Hugh Osborne's asked me to--"

"That f.u.c.king squireen," Brendan said, his face darkening. "Never had any use for this land the past twenty years. Then he sends me a letter saying he would be 'obliged' if I would shift my cattle from the pasture beyond within two weeks' time."

"Surely you knew about his plans for the site," Cormac said. "He said your sister's been involved--"

"He ought to be leaving this place alone. You can see for yourself how peaceful it is. What we don't need is a lot of tourists coming around, gawping at us and clogging up the roads."

Cormac found it hard to believe that an increase in traffic was really foremost among Brendan McGann's concerns.

"Seems like this area could do with a bit of help--" he began, but Brendan cut him off again.

"We don't need any help," he said, looking at the ground, and the vehemence in his voice was suddenly alarming.

"The workshop seems to have a good bit of support," Cormac said, "I gather--"

"I don't give a f.u.c.k what you gather. If you were a wise man, you'd pack up right now and drive straight back to Dublin and let us settle things here on our own." His words weren't quite a threat, but the next thing to it.

"As soon as I'm finished here," Cormac said, hoping he sounded calmer than he actually felt. Did Osborne have any idea of the animosity borne him so close to home?

"No good will come of this," Brendan said, his muscles visibly tightening. "No good. You'll see." Then he turned and tramped stolidly away, leaving Cormac to wonder what kind of hornet's nest he had stumbled into here. There were Osborne's missing wife and child, perhaps the victims of foul play; young Jeremy Osborne's self-destructive bent; and now Brendan McGann's seething hatred of his neighbor. He thought back to the way Brendan had glared at Osborne out on the bog, and the look on Una's face as she defended Hugh against whispered accusations about his wife's disappearance. Maybe that was it--Brendan believed, or at least harbored a strong suspicion, that his sister was involved with Hugh Osborne. And maybe he wasn't the only one--hadn't Fintan said that he wished Una would wise up?

"h.e.l.lo? Cormac? Where are you?" It was Nora.

"Over here." He heard her footsteps approaching.

"Sorry that phone call took so long. I should have been here ages ago, I know." She came around the corner of the church, following the sound of his voice. "You'll be happy to know it paid off. Dawson's agreed to let us remove the piece of metal that showed up in the X rays. So that means I'll have to be back for the dental exam on Monday, but you have my full a.s.sistance until then." She paused, waiting for his response. "Well, isn't that good news? You do want to find out who she is, don't you?" He stood silent and frowning.

"h.e.l.lo? Cormac?" Nora said, waving a hand in front of his face. "You haven't heard a word I said."

"No, I have, I have. But I've just been carrying on a very odd conversation myself."

"With whom? There's n.o.body here."

"Brendan McGann. He's just gone." Cormac related the gist of his exchange with Brendan, and tried to describe what he'd seen in the man's eyes when they spoke of Osborne.

"So Brendan believes there's something between Hugh and his sister? What do you think?"

"I don't know. Hugh Osborne's a married man."

"Whose wife has disappeared," Nora said.

"This is none of our business anyway. Maybe we should give up speculating and try sticking to hard science while we're here."

They unloaded the surveying equipment from the jeep and, working from the maps Hugh Osborne had provided, began to measure the site and set up markers where the excavator should begin digging. The sound of car tires on gravel broke the silence, and soon Garrett Devaney approached them.

"How are you getting on?"

"Have you developed an interest in archaeology since we last met, Detective?" Cormac asked.

"Not exactly. I ran into Fintan McGann, and he told me what you were up to out here. I've been going through the old Osborne case file. And I thought with you working out here for a while, and staying up at the house, you might happen to pick up something useful."

"Do you really think anybody's going to talk to us? We're strangers here."

"You never know," Devaney said. "But what I had in mind was more just keeping your eyes and ears open, letting me know if you notice anything that seems out of the ordinary." He handed each of them a card. "The first number is the station in Loughrea, and the second is my home number; you can call at any time."

"And what should we consider out of the ordinary?" Nora asked.

"You'll know. Why? Was there something you'd like to tell me about?"

Cormac cut in. "No, Detective, I don't think so, just wondering what you consider strange. Perfectly innocent behavior might appear unusual if you don't know the background."

"Indeed. I'm not asking you to betray any confidences, only to keep your eyes and ears open. A woman and a child have gone missing. They may very well be dead, and not one suspect has ever been charged. At this point, I'm willing to follow any sort of lead."

When Devaney had returned to his car, Nora turned to Cormac. "You're very cautious."

"There's a simple explanation for everything we've seen. Lots of farmers get a bit narky about traffic on the roads where they drive cattle. And lots of young lads get maggoty drunk once or twice. Not exactly front-page news."

"You might feel different if it were someone you knew who was missing. Or dead."

6.

Just past midday, Una McGann was working at the loom when she heard a crash from the other side of the house. Brendan was off with Fintan tending the cattle; they weren't due back until teatime, and Aoife was upstairs taking a nap after a long morning of make-believe. She stopped her shuttle to listen, trying to pinpoint where the noise was coming from. Sliding off the long bench seat, she moved quietly to the front hall, and followed the sounds to the closed door of Brendan's room, directly behind the sitting room.

Una threw open the door to find a slightly dazed-looking hooded crow peering up at her from the middle of the floor, black wings shiny against the soft gray of its back.

"Well, Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph," she said, her surprise melting into relief that it wasn't a more dangerous intruder. "Just let me get the broom, you dirty b.u.g.g.e.r, and you'll be outside before you know it." She closed the door again, and retreated to the kitchen, where she fetched the broom, then opened the front door of the house. As she stepped into Brendan's room, she and the bird eyed one another, each expecting the other to make the first move. The bird turned slowly on its large claws, keeping its head c.o.c.ked and one shining black eye pointed in her direction.

"Out with you now," she said, making a sudden lunge with the broom. "Out that door you go, now."

But the bird opened its wings and tried to take off inside the small room, fluttering awkwardly over the bed and down behind it. Una gripped the bedpost and gave a mighty pull, then swept the astonished bird along the floor and straight out the bedroom door. Out in the hallway, it began once more to flap, but found the narrow walls too constricting, and skated on its claws toward the open front door, broom straw at its back. Outside, the bird remained grounded for only a brief instant before opening its dark wings and lifting up into the air and away.

Una's heart was pounding. She could not imagine how the b.l.o.o.d.y thing had gotten into the house. Brendan was usually so careful about stopping all the chimneys with netting. She returned to his room to put things right. The books on his table were all awry. She knew he wouldn't be at all pleased to know that she'd been in here messing about with his things, crow or no crow, so she tried to replace everything exactly as it had been. She straightened the coverlet on the narrow bed and was about to shove it back against the wall when she noticed a bit of paper sticking out from a hole in the plaster. There was a small hollowed-out place behind the head of the bed, with a folded sheet of paper hanging precariously from it. She smiled at the idea of Brendan keeping a secret place like a schoolboy, and was just pushing the paper back into place when she saw a bit of handwriting that spelled out her own name.

She hesitated, not wanting to intrude upon her brother's privacy, but feeling that she was ent.i.tled to read something that bore her name. Slowly she drew the paper from its crevice.

"eire--Ireland," the heading ran, "BIRTH CERTIFICATE issued in pursuance of Births and Deaths Registration Acts 1863 to 1972." Everything was written twice, in Irish and in English. "Ainm (ma tugadh)/Name (if any)," and in the s.p.a.ce below, "Aoife." Her own name was written in the s.p.a.ce labeled "Name and Surname and Maiden Surname of Mother." The s.p.a.ce under "Name and Surname and Dwelling Place of Father" was blank.

Her first reaction was to tear up this reminder of the day, five years ago, when her daughter was born, a day that should have been a joyous celebration but instead had been twisted into something shameful by the vaguely disapproving looks of the nurses at the hospital in Dublin. She had never told anyone who Aoife's father was, maintaining that it could have been any one of a half-dozen lads she'd known from university. Her aim had been to shock the prying busybodies, and judging from their looks she had succeeded, but it was an empty victory.

Why would Brendan have a copy of this certificate? And why should he keep it hidden? As she reached in to extract whatever else might be in the hiding place, she heard a small metallic clatter at her knee, and looked down to find a gold hair clasp. She turned it over to find two filigree elephants with their trunks entwined. Holding the clasp in her hand, feeling the weight of it, the roughness of the filigree against her fingers, Una remembered where she'd seen it before.

It was nearly three years ago now. She and Aoife had stopped in at Pilkington's to pick up a bottle of ammonia, which she used as a mordant for her dyes. She'd seen Mina Osborne standing at the counter holding her son, who was a bit younger than Aoife. The child wore a brand-new pair of red wellingtons. Mina Osborne had shifted the child from one hip to the other. The tired little boy had put a thumb in his mouth and reached up the other hand to twine his fingers in his mother's hair, and in this small gesture of self-comfort accidentally touched the clip that held her long black hair in place. The clasp had sprung open, frightening the child, who immediately began to wail, and as the mother comforted him, the hair clasp slid off and fell to the ground at Una's feet. Both women had stooped to pick it up, and Una noticed the intricate metalwork, and its distinctive design of two elephants. What a beautiful clasp, she had said, handing it back. Mina Osborne had looked at her so strangely that Una hoped it was not the sight of herself and Aoife that had caused the pain and sadness in those lovely dark eyes. Mina had taken the clasp with barely audible thanks and left the shop. It was the very afternoon she had disappeared.

Una looked down at the clasp in her hand. Two or three long black hairs were caught in its hinge. She reached back into Brendan's hiding place, this time pulling out a pile of carefully folded newspaper cuttings. "Wife, Son of Local Man Missing," said one. "Family Appeals for Aid in Tracing Mother and Child," read another. "Gardai Resume Bogland Search Today," and finally, "Gardai Baffled by Disappearance."

Why was Brendan h.o.a.rding all these things? What explanation could he possibly have? She hurriedly shoved all her discoveries back into the hole, not knowing or caring whether they were in exactly the same place. She nudged the bed back against the wall. Brendan had always been hot-headed; he'd go off by himself when he needed to think, walking the bog or the mountain, or sitting by the lake until he had worked things out or calmed down a bit. He often snapped at her and Fintan. But she'd always believed he was anything but a hard man inside. He could be very gentle with Aoife. She'd lived with her brother in this house for more than twenty years, but did she know him well? Willing her fears not to be true, Una set the pictures on the walls to rights and closed the door to Brendan's room once more. She decided to say nothing about the crow.

7.

Dunbeg reminded Cormac of his own home place in many ways: the humpback bridge, the small lace-curtained windows on the white, pink, and green pebble-dash houses that lined the only main street. The original Irish name for this place was dun beag, "small fort." It was possible that there had been no fort here for a thousand years, but the name lived on. A couple of sagging shop fronts stood abandoned, with weeds sprouting in their rain gutters, and a thin layer of soot seemed to cover everything. Even the lowering gray sky contributed to the town's pervading air of pessimism. There had obviously been a recent push to tidy up and present a good face, as evidenced by a couple of freshly painted pub fronts with hanging pots of flowers. But the roar of the Celtic Tiger had yet to be heard here, and Dunbeg was not near any of the main roads so frequented by cars full of tourists. Cormac guessed any holiday-makers here tended to be solitary anglers looking for a quiet spot to fish.

As he pulled to a stop at the curb, a muscular, short-haired terrier and a s.h.a.ggy black and white sheepdog ambled past, taking turns for a sniff and a piddle at each doorway, a couple of old comrades out on a spree. He climbed out of the jeep and ventured toward a nearby window that displayed a miscellany typical of a small-town hardware shop: a pitchfork and spade, wallpaper brushes and paint sc.r.a.pers, pots and pans, clocks, locks, trowels, dog leashes, flashlights, and fishing poles. A plainly painted antique sign above the window said, "J. Pilkington." As he drew nearer, a white placard propped in the window caught his eye; below the quatrefoil emblem of the Garda Siochana, the national police force, was a black-and-white image of a woman and child. The notice was dated almost a year ago. Cormac stooped to read the smaller type. "In the approach to the second anniversary of the disappearance of Mina and Christopher Osborne, the Gardai are renewing their appeal for information that would or might help in the ongoing investigation." The paragraphs that followed gave physical descriptions and details of what the two were last seen wearing. As he read, Cormac became aware of a pair of eyes looking intently at him from the other side of the gla.s.s. When he glanced up, the woman inside pretended to be dusting the shelves below the window.

He entered the shop, and as he went about picking up the things he'd need for the dig, had the distinct sensation that he was still being watched, though every time he raised his eyes, there was no one in sight. When he'd gathered all he needed, he proceeded to the counter.

"Can I help you find anything else, sir, or is that the lot?" piped a bright-eyed pixie of a woman. Hers was the face that had been staring at him through the front window. She was thin and dark, and wore a loud polka-dotted black smock. The woman's wispy haircut further emphasized her elfin character.

"I'll also need a roll of baling plastic and a half-dozen planks of wood, if you have them, about eight feet long."

"Ah, we do," the woman said. "I'll get the young lad to fetch them out for you." She stuck her head through the doorway to the back room, and communicated his order to a red-haired boy of about fourteen who was sweeping the floor inside.

"You must be the archaeologist fella who was here before," said the elf-woman, leaning forward on the till. Cormac smiled faintly.