The Sin Eater(89)

‘Will I ever convince you that ghosts exist?’

‘I don’t know. But,’ said Nell, smiling at him, ‘I’d like you to keep trying.’

‘Would you? So would I.’





Kilglenn, the present


And so, thought Benedict, finally and at last, I’m going to see the place where Declan and Colm grew up – where all those strange and tragic things happened.

Driving the small hire car towards Kilglenn, he thought this part of Ireland could not have changed very much since the last years of the nineteenth century. Here, surely, was the steep road that Fergal McMahon, together with Nicholas Sheehan and Fintan, must have taken to Kilderry Castle that night. He pulled into the side of the road for a moment and consulted the map. Yes, this was where the castle had stood; there was a tumble of ruins at the top of the small hill. Had the chess set somehow poisoned the fabric of the castle, so that over the years it had rotted from within? It was more likely that the various Earls of Kilderry had simply gambled and womanized and quarrelled their substance into nothing, until the castle had to be abandoned.

He had not been able to identify St Patrick’s Monastery on any map – or, at least, he had identified so many monasteries under St Patrick’s banner that it was impossible to know which would have been Fergal’s.

He had not expected Kilglenn to be large enough to warrant a road sign, but when he rounded a curve in the road, there it was. ‘KILGLENN, 10 KILOMETRES.’

I’m nearly there, thought Benedict, and with the thought he felt the familiar stirring within his mind.

Nearly home, Benedict . . .

Benedict said, ‘I thought you’d be here.’

Would I let you do this on your own . . . ?

Benedict gave a mental shrug and drove on. Kilglenn, when he reached it, had succumbed to a degree of modernization, although essentially it was still the small backwater which two hopeful Irish boys had left all those years ago – and which a red-haired Irish girl had schemed to escape from. But there was a small supermarket and a bookstore with DVDS and CDs, and people in the little main street had mobile phones and younger ones had iPods.

At the far end was a low-roofed building with the legend Reilly’s and a small board with the chalked information that bar food was available. Fintan, thought Benedict, slowing down. I’m glad the name’s still used. He remembered Eithne’s story which Michael had passed to him, and the reference to a son and daughter. He would like to think it was Fintan’s great-grandson – maybe more ‘greats’ – who ran this bar.

Beyond Reilly’s the buildings thinned out, and there was only the wild countryside and the rise of the land towards the Moher Cliffs. But as he went on again, he saw a winding little track leading off to his right and he pulled the car to the side of the road and got out. Most likely there was nothing to be seen at the end of the track.

And yet, and yet . . .

You know what’s there, Benedict, said Colm inside his mind. Of course you do.

‘Of course I do,’ whispered Benedict, and walked up the track, with the springy grass on each side, and the wind with its faint taste of the ocean all around him.

The shack. The small structure might have been any half-ruined shanty cottage, of course, but Benedict knew it was the place where Colm had lived; where he and Declan had talked and planned and dreamed. He had seen it through Colm’s eyes and he recognized it now.

He picked his way through the rubble. There was nothing left of Colm’s short time in this cottage; there were only broken-up stones, ravaged by wind and rain, and shreds of fabric that might have been rugs or curtains or clothes, or that might simply be the debris of picnickers.

But there are memories, Benedict . . . There are so many memories here . . .

Benedict sat on the edge of what must have been a hearthstone. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Finish the story for me.’

Ah, but have we seen the ending yet, Benedict . . . ?

For a moment something shivered on the far wall – the outline of a man wearing a long coat with the deep collar turned up. Benedict remained very still, and then the tumbledown room blurred, and he had the sensation that he was looking through a very small window, thick with the dust of decades . . . Beyond that window was a small room, lit by flickering candlelight . . .





London, 1890s


When Declan looked back over the last ten days he could not imagine how he had been able to do what he did. He certainly could not imagine how he had had the courage for any of it.

Finding Cerise’s body in the old sewer tunnel was still a confused series of images for him. He had been so sure he had saved Cerise – he could still see how she had scrambled out of Colm’s clutches, and made that painful, limping run to the tunnel mouth, and the man who stood there. But when he looked back, Cerise had been lying on the ground, her throat gashed almost to the bone, and Colm had been standing over her, the dripping knife in his hands, a look of such agony and bewilderment in his eyes that Declan had known Colm had not meant this. He had known it in his heart and his bones and his marrow. That had been when he had made the plan to get Colm away from London, no matter the cost.

He had confronted him that night in the Holly Lodge bedroom, to which they had returned because they had nowhere else to go.

‘Cerise won’t be missed for a while,’ he said to Colm. ‘There’s time for us to get away. There’s time for you to tell me the truth about all this.’