Holding Read online

  Twenty-six years later, though, as she walked down the same avenue with her wicker basket, Evelyn Ross was not thinking about the past. Abigail’s ladies were coming for bridge after dinner and Evelyn was planning what supper she would wheel through on the trolley with the tea. She thought she might use the good china with the yellow roses. Was that a bit over the top? Would Abigail roll her eyes? Evelyn decided that she didn’t care. It was pretty, and anyway, what were they saving it for? What occasion at Ard Carraig would ever be special enough to truly warrant its use?

  Once inside the house, she hung her coat on the rack by the freezer, turned on the radio and started to get lunch ready. She glanced at the clock: 12.15. Florence would be home from school soon and she was always in a rush. The soup was steaming on the hob and the slices of soda bread were fanned out on a plate when she heard the familiar ting of the bicycle bell as Florence threw her bike against the wall outside the back door and rushed in with a blast of cold air.

  Of the three sisters, Florence was considered the prettiest. She kept her light brown hair shoulder length and swept to one side. Evelyn envied her ‘curves’, as the magazines called them, though Florence never dressed to make the most of them: the kilts and thick knits that made up most of her wardrobe always gave her the slight air of a head girl. She seemed more out of breath than usual. Evelyn sensed at once that she had news.

  ‘Great excitement!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well, I was just finishing geography when the Garda car went flying by.’

  Florence put her anorak on the back of a chair and sat down. She picked at a piece of the bread and paused for effect.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I thought nothing of it, but when I was leaving just now, I could see it parked up at the new development. I didn’t want to look too nosy so I didn’t cycle up, but then as I came through the village I saw a couple of the builders outside the shop, so I stopped and asked what was going on. You’ll never guess!’

  ‘You’re right, I won’t,’ Evelyn said as she took two soup bowls down from the dresser. They had played this game before.

  ‘Something was found when they were digging out the foundations, and they think it’s a body!’

  The soup bowls hit the floor with a crash, the pieces scattering into every corner of the room.

  3

  Duneen had somehow managed to slip through the World Wide Web. No 4G, no 3G, no signal. PJ stared at his useless mobile phone, unsure of what to do next. There was little doubt that the builders had uncovered a body, or at the very least, part of one. The long white bones that had first aroused suspicion had now been joined on the large pile of dark earth by what was clearly a human skull.

  He was very aware that the foreman and the other men standing around were staring at him expectantly. They stood perfectly still, each one wearing the regulation bright yellow jacket, white hard hats perched awkwardly on their heads. PJ might have been a visiting dignitary or the priest come to bless the works. He tried to ignore the trickle of sweat that was tracing its way along the side of his nose. This was clearly a time when he needed to exert authority, but in reality, all he wanted to do was contact a higher power. This would require detectives, coroners, those rolls of plastic Garda Síochána tape used for major incidents. He knew he had some of that, but God alone knew where. Vague memories of his training at Templemore were telling him that under no circumstances should you leave a crime scene unattended, but equally he knew that he would have been added to the pile of bones by the time a senior officer happened to be passing by. He looked away from the excavations back down towards the school and took out his notebook, playing for time and hoping desperately that he was giving the impression of a professional following protocol.

  No building site had ever been so silent. A wood pigeon was purring quietly in a nearby tree and in the distance a tractor engine was idling in a yard. A builder stifled a cough. Should he abandon the human remains to go and raise the alarm or should he stay at the scene and dispatch someone else to tell the outside world about the most exciting thing that had ever happened during his entire career? Suddenly certainty coursed through his veins. He snapped open the notebook and looked back at the foreman.

  ‘Have you any rope?’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘Right, I want you to rope off this section here, from around the bones to the other side of the foundations. Can you do that for me?’

  ‘No bother.’

  ‘Then I need you to ensure that absolutely nobody enters that area,’ he began to walk towards his car, ‘until I return with …’

  Shit! He had lost the word. What was it? Please, please, please, he begged his brain.

  ‘Forensics!’ he announced a little too loudly and with a wide smile that made sense to no one, only himself.

  The building that served as Duneen’s Garda barracks had started life as a retired teacher’s bungalow: a pebble-dashed box with a central porch and a large rectangular window to either side. The former living room, with its peach tiled fireplace and Artexed ceiling, now housed PJ’s office, while the rest of the rooms were his living quarters. Some of the more basic furniture had been provided; the rest was a combination of charity shop finds and a few pieces that his sisters hadn’t taken after their parents died. It was the sort of haphazard interior design that one might find in a run-down bed and breakfast or a retirement home. Not uncomfortable, as such, but nor was it a place to feel at home.

  PJ parked the car on the short drive that separated the house from the main road. At the back of the house was a long, thin garden that went down to the river, which meant that most winters there was flooding, though so far the water had never made it past the back door. Full of purpose, the sergeant manoeuvred his bulk with some speed around the car towards the small glass porch. The smell of pork chops filled the air.

  Mrs Meany was waiting in the hall, holding a tea towel. The old lady was PJ’s full-time housekeeper, though she lived alone in a cottage on the other side of the village. She had been the priest’s housekeeper for quite a few years, but when Miss Roberts had retired as the manager of the hotel in Ballytorne, she had asked Mrs Meany to come and look after her, as she had no one else, and as an incentive promised the woman her cottage when she died. The arrangement had suited Mrs Meany well. She liked the little cottage and the feeling that it was all hers. No one could take it away from her, and like an animal spraying its scent she had covered every available surface with much-dusted china figurines and small glass ornaments. Since the passing of Miss Roberts she had cooked and cleaned for various people around the village before starting work full time in the Garda barracks.

  ‘There you are, guard. I was beginning to think something had happened.’ She flapped the tea towel and turned towards the kitchen.

  ‘Well actually, Mrs Meany …’ He heard his own voice. He sounded angry. Why did he sound angry? ‘Something has happened.’

  The old lady turned, her expression suitably shocked and intrigued.

  Pleased by her reaction, PJ continued. ‘I’m after finding a body.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘A human body!’

  He had waited his whole life to utter those words, and it felt as good as he had always imagined.

  ‘God spare us!’ Mrs Meany gasped and raised both hands to her neck as if gathering close an imaginary cardigan. ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ve no time. I must let Cork know,’ he announced, and went into his office, leaving Mrs Meany doing a strange little dance of uncertainty outside the kitchen, like a figure on a weathervane unsure if it was rain or shine.

  When PJ hung up the phone, he felt strangely deflated. Help was on its way, which was what he wanted, what he needed, but once it arrived this would no longer be his case. He would just be another useless man standing around at the scene, a sort of crime butler servicing those who would find out the identity of the body and how it died. Were they ancient remains? Was it a crime? The suits from Cork
wouldn’t get to the village for at least another hour. Was there anything he could do? Maybe he could crack the case in the next sixty minutes. He smiled at his own foolishness.

  A knock at the door, and before he could speak, Mrs Meany opened it, carrying in a steaming plate of food. PJ pushed his chair back from the desk.

  ‘No time for lunch today, Mrs Meany.’

  ‘No lunch?’ Her voice suggested he had announced his plan to commit suicide that very afternoon. ‘You’ll have a bit before you go?’ she said, her head bowed like a dog that wants you to scratch its ears. She put the plate on the desk and pulled a knife and fork out of her apron pocket.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Meany, but I have to get back up to the building site. They’re sending down some uniformed lads to secure the scene.’

  Mrs Meany drew her imaginary cardigan close once more.

  ‘Burke’s farm? Is that where you found the body?’

  ‘It is.’ PJ was pulling his jacket back on.

  ‘What class of a body?’

  ‘Just bones – too early to tell.’

  The old lady steadied herself against the desk and gulped at the air like a goldfish with grey hair. Her voice came out as a whisper. ‘Jesus, Mary and … Could it be Tommy Burke?’

  The sergeant took a step back into the room.

  ‘The fellow who owned it? Sure he’s not dead.’

  ‘Isn’t he?’ Her eyes narrowed as if she was trying to send PJ a message telepathically.

  ‘He just ran off, didn’t he? After some girl trouble, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s what we all thought, but I’ve never heard of a single one in the village who ever heard from him or caught a glimpse of him, and that must be seventeen – no, more, because sure you’re here nearly fifteen, so it’s more like twenty years since he vanished. It would make an awful lot of sense if it turned out he’d been up on the farm the whole time.’ She pushed a strand of grey hair behind her ear and slowly rubbed the side of her face. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about. Cold and alone all these years and not a stone to mark him.’

  PJ was appalled to see that the old woman’s eyes had filled with tears.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Meany, now don’t upset yourself. We have no way of knowing yet who it is or how the bones came to be up there. Go and put the kettle on and I might have more news later.’ He put his hand on her shoulder and encouraged her towards the door.

  ‘Thank you, guard. I don’t know. The thought of it … him. I just don’t know.’ She closed the door behind her.

  Sergeant PJ Collins hardly dared to breathe. Not a suit in sight, no other uniforms had even arrived, and he had a lead. He saw himself standing, one foot on the pile of soil, indicating where the farmhouse used to be and getting the rest of the team ‘up to speed’.

  He picked up one of the pork chops and took a large bite.

  4

  A limp spring onion draped itself over the edge of the wicker basket that displayed the fresh produce in the O’Driscolls’ shop, café and post office. It shared the space with a shrivelled red pepper, while the basket above it held a few sweaty-looking bags of carrots. On the ground was a large sack of potatoes. Brown paper bags dangled from string to allow eager shoppers to make their own selection from the enticing display. The sales representative who explained the refurbishment had mentioned something about a ‘French market feel’ and tried to include some sort of oven-to-bake frozen baguettes. Mrs O’Driscoll had drawn the line at this suggestion. There was no call for French sticks in Duneen. They had a daily delivery of sliced loaves, and her daughter Mairead had a nice little sideline making her own soda bread, thank you very much.

  Nobody did what might be called their ‘main shop’ in O’Driscoll’s. It was where you popped in for a forgotten pint of milk or emergency toilet paper; the sort of shop where you could buy every ingredient for a full Irish breakfast but would be faced with slim pickings for any kind of dinner. They made their money by being open long hours so that when it was too late or early to be bothered driving the forty minutes into Ballytorne, the nearest market town, people would drop in happy to pay a little more for the convenience.

  Mrs O’Driscoll liked the mornings best. Counting out the change bags, putting the little board out in the street, bringing in the paper delivery. After that the day was punctuated by regular flurries of activity – people going to work, a light surge around lunchtime and of course when the kids were being picked up from school.

  This afternoon was no different, except today the small gathering of mothers seemed to be growing and in no rush to leave. By a quarter past four there must have been at least eight of them, plus their bored children being ignored as they tugged on their mothers’ sleeves and skirts. At the centre of the group was Susan Hickey, still wrapped in thick layers to protect herself from the impending winter. Her small round face with its mouth pursed like a balloon knot was red and shiny from a mixture of heat and excitement. Her nephew worked up on the development and had told his aunt everything. A big pile of bones – it could be a mass grave. The place was crawling with guards, some down from Cork. There were various noises indicating dismay and approval. One woman reached down and slid her hands over her son’s ears.

  Behind the counter Mrs O’Driscoll sat silently contemplating her equally silent cash register. She didn’t mind customers chatting, but most of these women hadn’t actually bought anything. There was poor Petra trying to sweep around them; of course she’d have no interest because the Burkes were long gone when she had arrived. A whispered piece of speculation reached her from the hastily assembled coven.

  ‘Do you think your man Tommy was some sort of serial killer?’

  This was met with the sound of a giant airbed being deflated. Mrs O’Driscoll could hold her tongue no longer.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake. If that boy was a killer, wouldn’t he have started with his own father?’

  All eyes turned to her. They wanted more and she found herself reluctantly opening her mouth and forming words.

  ‘Big Tom was the only one in that family with any badness in him. Young Tommy might have been a bit of a fool, but there is no way on earth he was Ireland’s answer to the Yorkshire Ripper.’

  The women herded themselves to the till to learn more. Susan Hickey did not appreciate her role of expert being usurped in this way.

  ‘Well,’ she said loudly, ‘whatever happens, the police will certainly want to track him down in England to ask him some questions.’

  Much nodding. Mrs O’Driscoll rolled her eyes. She knew it was Susan Hickey who had objected to their wine licence in the café.

  ‘England? Who told you that, Susan?’

  ‘Everyone knows that.’

  ‘I’ve heard it as a rumour, but as far as I know not a soul has actually heard from him since he left. He could be anywhere.’

  A small woman with hair that used to be blonde put her hand up as if she was at a committee meeting.

  ‘You don’t think … could he be one of the bodies up above?’

  The airbed deflated sharply. They liked where this story was going.

  A loud crash suddenly ripped through the shop, followed by the shrill wail of a child. The mothers looked around for their various charges.

  ‘Fintan, where are you?’ Great gasping sobs came as a reply. ‘Fintan! What have you been doing?’ As the boy’s mother came around a stack of shelves, the answer was clear. A tear-stained face stared up from the floor, surrounded by at least a dozen cans of creamed rice.

  ‘Oh Mrs O’Driscoll, I’m so sorry. Fintan, what do you say to Mrs O’Driscoll?’

  Apparently all Fintan had to say involved a long scream of dismay as his mother dragged him by the hand from the scene of the carnage. Mrs O’Driscoll waved away the various expressions of apology as she came from behind the counter and called for Petra to come and help her. Secretly she was quite pleased. There was no damage done and it had put an end to the pointless speculation of the mothers’ meeting.

&n
bsp; Once order had been restored and the shop was empty, she retook her post behind the till. Wiry but strong, she sat perched on a high stool, her back slightly hunched from her years at the cash register, her scrubbed face giving nothing away. This was not a woman to go to for a hug or a ‘there, there’ pat on the back, but still there was enough warmth in her eyes to let people know you could rely on her in a crisis. Just the right side of formidable, she gazed out at the world passing by with her own unwavering sense of what was fair and right. She helped those she felt were capable of at least trying to help themselves, but didn’t hesitate to judge people she considered to be the architects of their own downfall. Running a shop, post office and café showed her every shade of humanity.

  She saw a Garda car drive by. Its indicator flashed orange and it headed up the hill to the old Burke farmstead. She wondered what on earth had gone on up there. She felt a twinge in her stomach; an uneasiness about the secrets that might be unearthed to disturb this little village. Of course she was aware of the various dramas that had taken place over the years, but somehow they had occurred off stage. The scandals had been contained. What if these bones threatened to drag the whole community into the spotlight?

  She chewed at the side of her thumbnail and remembered Little Tommy Burke and his mother. She had only been a child herself but she’d loved to sit at the back of the shop, pretending to do her homework while in reality hanging on every word the grown-ups said. If the voices were whispers, even better.

  Nobody thought Mrs Burke would ever have a baby, but then after about ten years of marriage came the miraculous news that she was expecting. It wasn’t only her belly that grew; the whole woman blossomed. Over the counter or on the steps after mass, she wore a newly acquired beaming smile. She was literally bursting with joy. A few weeks before she was due to give birth, it was only Mr Burke who was seen around the town. His wife was resting. Headscarves muttered to one another, getting ready for bad news, but then came the joyful announcement that the baby had been born. A boy, Little Tommy, named after his father, who immediately became known as Big Tom.