Himself(30)

Mrs Cauley snorts.

Shauna takes a soft brush from the drawer to brush out Mrs Cauley’s few bits of hair round the back of her head. ‘There are still people you haven’t interviewed, Mahony said.’

Mrs Cauley nods. ‘Jimmy Nylon, for one; he was seen walking with Orla up towards the forest on the day she disappeared. There were three separate sightings of that.’

Shauna looks at her. ‘Jimmy Nylon, really?’

‘Oh, I know, Shauna. He’s a malignant little fecker but I doubt he’s capable of murder.’

‘Not unless Orla was a pint.’

Shauna unbuttons Mrs Cauley’s dress and lifts it over the old woman’s head.

‘Then there’s Tadhg.’ Mrs Cauley narrows her eyes. ‘Mary Moran described him as a handy young fella with a fiery temperament. What’s more, Orla had arranged to see him later that day.’

‘Well, I don’t think Tadhg is Mahony’s daddy, or the murderer. You know he can’t keep a thing to himself before he’s off blathering it around town.’ Shauna drops a flannel into the basin. ‘Do you know he told Annie Farelly that you pretend to be asleep whenever she visits?’

‘Did he now?’ Mrs Cauley grins.

Shauna lifts Mrs Cauley’s arm and begins to soap her armpit. ‘Do you really think something bad happened to Orla?’

Mrs Cauley nods. ‘I’d bet money on it. I told you what was in that note. She was a little troublemaker, so they finished her off.’

‘It’s awful. In a place like this?’ Shauna rinses out the facecloth and gives Mrs Cauley a quick wipe down. ‘Poor Orla, and poor Mahony, with him being an orphan and all that.’

‘Don’t you worry about Mahony. He’s just the fella to apply a good swift kick right up this town’s arse. You just watch him – he’ll be taking a run up to it.’

Shauna drops the flannel in the bowl and reaches for a towel. ‘I’d say it would be more of a swagger with Mahony.’

Mrs Cauley smiles grimly. ‘Either way, that lad won’t stop until he gets the truth.’





Chapter 11


April 1976


‘Now that’s just bloody horrible,’ says Bridget Doosey.

On the back doorstep is the corpse of a recently deceased ginger cat with its head wedged in a wicker basket.

Bridget kicks open the lid of the basket and bends down to study the cat. ‘Merle did right to call me.’

Its tongue hangs out of its mouth, swollen and black.

‘Cream scones: poisoned. Something industrial.’ Bridget takes a card from the basket and holds it up between her rubber-gloved fingers. ‘And they weren’t meant for this poor little bastard.’

Mahony’s name is typed on it.

‘I’d watch your back from now on, lad. It looks like your mother’s fan club has reassembled.’

Mahony notices the cat, now dead, prancing in the flowerbed, snapping at a fly.

‘Any ideas who?’

‘Take your pick, Mahony. Your mammy wasn’t a crowd-pleaser and now here you are poking your coulter where it’s not wanted.’

‘Even so.’

‘You were dreaming of a different kind of welcome.’

‘They seemed friendly enough.’

‘Did they? Well, now you have the measure of them.’ She looks at him closely. ‘It could get rough. This town’s as twisted as tits on a bull.’

Mahony frowns. ‘Are you saying I should stop asking questions?’

‘I’m saying that you might not like the answers.’

The cat stretches, shakes its dim tail through a series of exclamations and walks through the wall.





Chapter 12


April 1976


Mulderrig is asleep under the awning of the night sky. Above her, stars can be seen, now and again, through the inked smudges of ragged clouds.

By day Mulderrig appears respectable, a solid fat-ankled mammy dressed in patchworked fields. But at night, when Mulderrig lies down under the moon, she’s gypsied to the nines, beringed and braceleted with fairy forts. And the moon looks down at her and smiles, tracing the dark waves of her forest and lighting the curved spine of her river all the way down to the bay.

Tonight Mulderrig is silent but for a moth beating against the window of a filthy cottage with a dolmen view. Where Bridget Doosey snores under a catskin quilt, busy spring hoeing and planting kittens in her garden. They wrinkle their little noses and mew as she sprinkles them with golden rainwater. She rubs her hands; soon she’ll have tortoiseshell cabbages and tabby kale.

Mulderrig is silent but for the scuttle of rats in the basement of Kerrigan’s Bar. In his bedroom above, Tadhg wallows heavyweight under a blanket of crisp packets on white pillows of stout foam. He’s dreaming of screaming eels. He catches one with a fresh perm. She bites him, hard.

Mulderrig is silent but for the chime of a time-haunted clock in the fortified bungalow where Annie Farelly sleeps the fitful sleep of an old-lady-killer. She dreams only of dentures; they’re coming for her. Snapping.

Mulderrig is silent but for the soft song of shale and the lulled ocean, heard in the bay-view bedroom where bachelorised Jack Brophy lies snug in housekeepered pyjamas. But does he dream? His slippers will tell you that when Jack lies down he enjoys the deep slumber of the upright. He only moves once, to turn the alarm clock off, at daybreak, just before it rings.