Himself(29)

On the way out of town Tadhg pulls the car up next to a roadside shrine.

It’s a peaceful spot, with a grand view of the bay and the forest just across the road. It appears to suit the Mother of God, a strapping six-foot statue with a healthy colour. Her magenta face beams above robes that fall in folds of lancing cerulean blue. A stone grotto has been built around her to protect her from the elements.

Tadhg gets out of the car and takes a wrapped platter from the boot. With effort he bends down and pushes the plate onto the shelf beneath the plastic flowers that bloom perennially and the pot plants that come and go.

‘I didn’t know the Holy Mother liked a sandwich,’ says Mahony.

Shauna smiles. ‘It’s for the fella who lives up in the forest.’

Then, on second thoughts, Tadhg goes back and throws down a couple of cigarettes.

‘Tadhg isn’t the only one at it.’ Shauna looks out of the window. ‘Daddy has me leaving all sorts there for him. Soap, pipe cleaners, you name it.’

Tadhg levers himself back into the driver’s seat and starts up. ‘Wha’? Who’s this?’

‘Tom Bogey,’ says Shauna.

Mrs Cauley turns her head and peers over the passenger seat. ‘He’s a wood-kerne, a hermit, a speechless bard.’

Tadhg gives her a funny look. ‘He’s unravelled in the head only.’

‘Apparently so,’ says Mrs Cauley coyly. ‘Only I’ve never had the pleasure and neither has anyone else. You see, Mahony, Tom sees no one and no one sees Tom.’

Mahony raises an eyebrow. ‘Is that the case? How do you know that he exists?’

‘Because Jack Brophy says he does. He’s in cahoots with him.’ Mrs Cauley widens her eyes. ‘They go out skinning badgers and roasting squirrels together.’

Tadhg wipes his face with his handkerchief and starts the motor. ‘That’s some class of an imagination you’ve got there, Mrs Cauley. Don’t listen to a word of it, Mahony. Jack looks out for the poor guy, that’s all.’

Mrs Cauley shrugs. ‘And would Jack know what Tom the bogeyman has squirrelled away in the forest? He may have more than a couple of pipe cleaners up there by now.’

Tadhg rolls his eyes. It’s evident that he holds no truck with their investigations ever since his refusal to be interviewed by Mrs Cauley, claiming to be neither a murderer nor a slanderer.

‘What’s Tom’s story, Tadhg?’ Mahony leans forward with his hand on the back of the driver’s seat.

Tadhg looks at Mahony in the rear-view mirror. ‘The guy served with Jack’s father in the war and was some class of hero. But he came out of it badly; what he’d seen shattered him. It ruined him for people, so he sought consolation in nature. That’s the only story I know and that’s from Jack himself.’

‘So he’s up there just roaming around? And Jack lets him?’

Mrs Cauley shoots Mahony a sly look. ‘Why not? When the notion of Tom Bogey keeps the bad boys and girls out of the forest and away from all the no good they could be getting up to in there. For there Tom would be, hiding and spying amongst the trees, and reporting straight back to Jack Brophy.’

Tadhg frowns. ‘Tom keeps himself to himself and the village lets him, and that’s all there is to it, Mahony.’

‘He’s been around for a while then, Tadhg?’

‘Been up there near thirty years.’

Shauna nods. ‘Longer maybe.’

And Tadhg turns up Elvis singing ‘In the Ghetto’ on the radio and, because no one can argue with that, the conversation is at an end.





Chapter 10


April 1976


Mrs Cauley looks at the map spread over her knees in disgust. ‘They saw us coming, the feckers.’

She’s had five sherries.

Shauna sets out the hot water, a fresh towel and the medicated soap.

‘I’ve plotted their evidence on this map here, Shauna, and it demonstrates that Orla Sweeney was in eight different places at the approximate time she disappeared. I know she slung it about a bit, but even so.’

Mrs Cauley pushes the map away. ‘She was seen leaving town walking in five different directions whilst simultaneously boarding the bus to Ennismore, with and without a suitcase, a vanity case, a baby and a pram. All on a day when there was no bus to Ennismore because Bridget Doosey was lancing a boil on the bus driver’s arse.’

Shauna tuts and folds up the map. She gathers the rest of the papers into a pile and dumps the lot on the footstool next to the bed.

Mrs Cauley shakes her head. ‘How can I apply ratiocination to this dissembling shower of bastards?’

‘Apply what?’

Mrs Cauley grits her remaining teeth. ‘Logical thought, the process of elimination. Even Marple would be at a loss in this town. Jesus, they couldn’t tell the thing straight if their lives hung on it.’

Shauna takes a clean nightdress from the press. ‘Don’t get yourself worked up now. What did Dr McNulty say to you about getting worked up?’

Mrs Cauley, grumbling, removes her wig. ‘How can I bring reason to bear when Mulderrig doesn’t conform to reason?’

Shauna shakes out the wig and smoothes it onto the stand. ‘Why don’t you take the statements from the most trustworthy witnesses and go from there?’