Himself(70)

When she woke again they put Francis into her arms. She took him unseeing, blinded by tears.

They told her she was lucky. That she had a friend. They told her to get out of the town and never come back. Last chance, they said.





Chapter 39


May 1976


The portents came just before dawn, starting with a steady trickle of soot falling down every chimney into every unlit hearth at Rathmore House.

This was not the only sign of the coming storm.

At first light the swallows began to dip lower and lower over the field beyond the house.

For the bees it was old news. They’d told each other about the storm days ago with a dance of their plush behinds. And of course the trees knew too, but they just plumbed their taproots deeper and held their own counsel.

By now even the dead are jittery. Most of them have taken refuge in the basement, with the exception of Father Jim, who is smoking a pipe in the roll-top bath on the third floor, and Johnnie, who is sitting cross-legged on top of the cistern watching him.

Of course Mahony knows none of this as he stands barefoot in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil. He’s given up trying to sleep. So too has Desmond Burke, who appears soundlessly in the doorway.

‘Mahony, there’s something you should know. Something I should have told you.’

Mahony glances up at him. ‘Jesus, Desmond, you look like shit.’

Desmond takes a notebook from his pocket and throws it onto the kitchen table.

‘Look at it, Mahony. That’s my writing.’

They sit together in the garden, on chairs wet with dew, with the forest silhouetted by the brightening sky. Mahony watches as Father Jim, searching his pocket for his pipe, wanders out onto the veranda; the priest nods in his direction and drifts up onto the roof of the henhouse. Johnnie follows him, in a hat, a waistcoat and a pair of sagging drawers, his arms outstretched to welcome the new day.

Mahony doesn’t need to look at Desmond to know that the man is crying.

‘It was late, Mahony, really late. I was up reading. I answered the door and it was him.’

‘Who?’

Desmond puts his head in his hands and cries hard.

Father Jim lights his pipe, a spectral flame flickers for a moment then goes out. Johnnie drops his underwear and hopscotches down the garden path, his bare arse winking in the early morning light. The priest averts his eyes.

Desmond wipes his face with his sleeve and sits up in his chair. ‘He wouldn’t come in, he stood outside in the dark, he sounded terrified. He said that Orla was dead.’

‘Who was it?’

Desmond looks at him. ‘Tom. From the forest.’

‘Tom? Tom killed her?’

‘No.’ Desmond pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. ‘She was already dead when he found her.’ He squints up at the sky. ‘He had you with him, up under his coat.’

‘Who killed her?’

Desmond shook his head. ‘He didn’t know.’

‘You asked him?’

‘He said he didn’t know, Mahony.’ Desmond frowns. ‘She was in a lot of trouble, with the town. All Tom wanted to do was get you out of here.’

‘And he came to you?’

‘He knew I had a car.’ Desmond glances at Mahony. ‘And he wanted to leave something with you. A note to tell you who you were and what had happened. I would write it in my best hand.’ Desmond pauses. ‘He would tell me how it would read.’

Johnnie lies down on the grass with his legs open and looks up at the sky. A bird flies low and he quickly puts his hat over his mickey.

Mahony takes the photograph out of his wallet and hands it to him.

Desmond takes it. ‘I took this, of you and her.’

‘So you did know her.’

‘She asked me to take it. When she heard I had a camera.’ He studies the picture. ‘Leaving it with you seemed like the right thing to do at the time.’

‘And now it doesn’t?’ Mahony watches Desmond’s face. ‘You didn’t think I’d come back, did you?’

Desmond gives him a broken smile. ‘I hoped you wouldn’t.’

Mahony shakes his head. ‘You took your f*cking time telling me all this.’

‘I was worried about how you’d take it.’

Mahony looks at Desmond. The man is lucky he still has a head on him. Desmond must know it; he’s shaking like a shitting dog.

Mahony thinks for a while. Something isn’t adding up. ‘How did Tom know he could trust you? How did he know that you would help him?’

Desmond shrugs. ‘I don’t—’

‘You already knew him, didn’t you?’

Desmond looks down at his shoes. ‘Not when I opened the door, not straight away.’

‘Who was it, standing at the door, Desmond?’

‘Orla’s father, Thomas Sweeney.’

They sit in silence, Desmond with his head in his hands, Mahony smoking a cigarette. A mist is rising off the fields now and the birds are staking their claim on the morning. Mahony listens to their song echo in the early empty landscape.

‘Who else knew that it was Thomas Sweeney living up there in the forest?’

‘No one.’

‘What about Jack Brophy? He must have known Tom’s real identity?’