Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(77)

He’s kind of infectious, I can’t help but smile. ‘Yeah, well, it might come to that yet, Bill.’

He screws his face up. ‘And sure, what are you doing here then, loveen? ’Tis London that finished that girl off, nothing to do with Mulderrin.’

I trot out the party line. ‘Maybe, maybe not. Maybe she was in contact with someone and they can tell us something? Maybe she asked them not to say anything but now she’s dead, they might? I don’t know, Bill, clutching at straws is better than sitting around scratching our heads.’

He’s not convinced. ‘Something like that’d get out around Mulderrin, I don’t care how much someone said they’d keep it a secret. This isn’t London, Cat. You might be able to run across Piccadilly Circus, naked as the day you were born and no one’d pay a blind bit of notice, but round here, if your washing’s out too long, folk start to speculate. Secrets are just gossip you haven’t been drunk enough to spill yet, you know?’ I must look despairing because he suddenly changes his tune. ‘Ah sure, you never know, I suppose. What harm will it do talking to folk .?.?.’

I open the file, take out the list of names. ‘So given I don’t have a lot of time, who’s still knocking around? Who should I prioritise?’

Swords laughs. ‘You’ll have plenty of time, loveen. Half of them have gone to meet their maker, the Lord have mercy on them. Another good few emigrated. We’ve got Mulderrians in the US of A, a few Down Under. One in Papua New Guinea, of all places!’ He seems to find this riotously funny and for that same infectious reason, so do I. ‘Colette Durkin’s still around but, God love her, the lift wouldn’t be going to the top floor, if you know what I mean. A few fries short of a Happy Meal.’

I strike a line through ‘CD’. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

He tuts. ‘Ah sure, what’s wrong with anyone? Depression, I suppose. Anxiety – isn’t that what they call it nowadays?’

‘Lot of it about, Bill.’

‘Well, not near me, thank Christ. I finished me thirty years in 2012, got me pension, bought this car, and now I have a grand old time driving about the place, listening to the radio, having the craic with folk. And a few pints at the weekend o’ course.’

Sold. I wonder if he wants an apprentice.

‘Anyways,’ he goes on. ‘the only two you need bother your head talking to are Manda Moran and Hazel Joyce. Now the three of them were very cosy. Manda Moran’s still Manda Moran. Never did marry, God love her, but she has a B&B behind St Benedict’s. Does well, I think. A great girl, altogether. Hazel Joyce’s now Hazel O’Keefe, I think. She lives in the next village up.’

For no other reason, other than my kamikaze tendencies, I look down at the file and say, ‘Oh look, how funny, there’s a Kinsella! No relation of mine, ha ha.’

His face pinches. ‘Now why in God’s name would I have questioned Agnes Kinsella?’ He thinks for a minute. ‘Ah, I know, she’d relatives over from England. One of the kids was sorta pally with the Doyle one.’

‘The McBrides?’ I say, casually, just shooting the breeze.

‘If you say so, I forget their names. Ah now, Agnes Kinsella, she was a nice woman. Decent sort. She died, oh, it must be ten years ago now.’

Eleven years. I had my GCSE Double Science exam so I couldn’t go to her funeral and only Mum ended up going in the end. Dad had to work for ‘Uncle’ Frank at the last minute. Work that involved flying to Rotterdam and back in a day.

Mum seemed to placidly accept it. I raged for months.

‘Here we are,’ Swords says, nodding towards the road ahead. ‘Didn’t take long now, did it?’

We drive into Mulderrin up the Long Road, a narrow winding track flanked by tall blackthorn hedges and grey drystone walls. Red and gold balloons, starting to wither and deflate, are tied in clusters to the Ash trees that still border Duffy’s field.

‘Big wedding last weekend,’ explains Swords in a crabby tone. ‘Children starving in Syria and they spent €2,500 on flowers, can you believe that? Plain scandalous.’

As we get closer to the town, the sign comes into view – ‘MULDERRIN’ written in austere black lettering. I’d have sworn there was a ‘Welcome to .?.?.’ back in the day but that could be me over-sentimentalising. Embellishing the facts, the way memories often do. There’s an instruction to drive carefully that I don’t think was there before. And a twinning with a town in Brittany – some lucky local dignitary quaffing Chablis at the taxpayer’s expense, no doubt. The houses look newer and it feels like there’s twice as many. Huge great piles with twin garages and pillared porches, monuments to the time when the Celtic Tiger was still having its tummy tickled and ostentation was de rigeur.

The town square’s empty. Just a few stationary cars and a lone old man creeping along the footpath with a stoop and a tin of dog food. The Diner’s called something else – we pass it quickly and I don’t catch the name – and Mrs Riley’s is now a Londis.

There’s also a bookie’s, three pubs and a funeral parlour.

Somewhere to eat, somewhere to shop, somewhere to bet, drink and die.

A blueprint for a life simply lived.

My B&B’s about a kilometre outside the town. Swords insists on helping me with my tiny case and introducing me to the owner, a tall woman with a bad bleach-job that’s left her hair the colour of off-milk. Before he sets off, he gives me the lay of the land.