Treacherous Strand Read online

  TREACHEROUS

  STRAND

  Also by Andrea Carter

  Death at Whitewater Church

  TREACHEROUS

  STRAND

  AN INISHOWEN MYSTERY

  ANDREA CARTER

  Copyright © 2016 by Andrea Carter

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Constable

  Published in the United States in 2019 by Oceanview Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-60809-304-5

  Oceanview Publishing • Sarasota, Florida

  www.oceanviewpub.com

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  For Geoffrey Victor William

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  PANIC IS A hangover cure. This I discovered one morning in September as I tore along the coast road from Glendara to Ballyliffin, managing to avoid about one in every three potholes. My old Mini was not happy – her springs conveyed their displeasure in no uncertain terms. The windscreen wipers screeched as they did battle with the heavy rain. The car was humid, the windows fogged up from the inside. The sky was an angry mix of yellow and charcoal and the sea was that particularly bleak shade of gunmetal gray it so often is on Donegal mornings. Visibility was lousy.

  I wiped the windscreen with a filthy pink rag I’d picked up God knows where, but it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. The splitting head I had woken up with two hours previously had been replaced by a pins-and-needles-type sensation that was traveling down my neck and into my shoulders. Peering over the steering wheel, I caught sight of the mannequin advertising the Famine Village just in time to slow down, take a sharp right and cross the narrow causeway, over the mudflats and on to the Isle of Doagh. This morning the shrieking gulls and little oystercatchers held no interest for me; the dread in the pit of my stomach was all-consuming. Guilt made me nauseous, a bit like a hangover but a lot less cosy. Panic and guilt – now there was a song I knew by heart. I felt like running around in a circle, waving my hands in the air and screaming at the top of my voice.

  Instead, I continued along the narrow road that snaked through the center of the island, scraggy hazel hedges blocking the view on either side. Unable to see fully around the next corner, I swerved suddenly to allow a tractor to pass by with a trailer full of cattle. Then I remembered. It was Wednesday – Mart Day in Glendara. The office would be like a zoo. But there was nothing I could do about that now; I had to find out what had happened.

  I emerged at a wide grassy clearing where the sea appeared again in front of me. The tide was out and the long beach was just about visible as a biscuit-colored stripe beneath water and sky – providing, that was, you could see past the three squad cars and I counted seven gardai blocking the view. Every guard in Inishowen must be here, I thought. Tucking the Mini in behind the last squad car where it wouldn’t be seen from the road, I tugged hard on the handbrake. The salty wind that lunged at me as I clambered out of the car made me pull at the collar of my coat and hunch with my arms crossed as I made my way towards the blue figures. At least the rain was easing off.

  A tall guard was bellowing into a mobile phone, trying his best to be heard over the wind: Sergeant Tom Molloy – a native of Cork, honest, principled, and utterly committed to a job he arrived at late, after an abandoned career in science. I’ve known Molloy for seven years, although sometimes it feels as if we’ve only just met. Which makes things difficult for me since I’ve been thinking a lot about him lately. What began as a working relationship became a friendship of sorts, but then nine months ago something changed between us, culminating in a moment when we had almost … Almost because Molloy had pulled back. He still hadn’t told me why. It was clear there was something holding him back, but we’d brushed aside what had happened and carried on as before. The problem was, I cared about him, more than I wanted to admit. And I knew he cared about me; he had shown it when I had needed him most.

  He caught sight of me out of the corner of his eye, finished his call, and came over.

  “Ben, what are you doing here?”

  My parents’ fondness for an obscure fifth-century Italian saint has landed me with the middle name Benedicta, which did not make my convent school days any easier. Ironically, it’s now the name I use – or a shortened version of it. And thankfully, despite his dislike of nicknames – which I suspect comes from the difficulties in trying to police an area where nicknames are rife – Molloy has managed to make an exception for mine.

  “Is it true you’ve found a body?” I tried to sound less breathless than I felt.

  Molloy raised one eyebrow. He has dark eyebrows, framing deep gray eyes. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Oh come on, Tom, it’s all over the town. Do you know who it is? Is it Marguerite – Marguerite Etienne?”

  He relented. “We think so. One of the Malin guards was able to identify her.”

  “Is he sure?”

  “Yes. Seems she wasn’t in the water that long. Did you know her?”

  “She was a client.” That was enough for now, I decided. “When was she found? Who found her?” My voice sounded shrill. I’d like to have blamed it on the wind, but it wouldn’t have been true.

  “Iggy McDaid. He’s over there talking to McFadden.” Molloy nodded in the direction of a man with a face the color of a ripe plum, talking to a young guard. “He was out checking lobster pots about seven o’clock this morning when he came across her washed up on the shore. All knotted up in the seaweed. Came close to standing on her, according to him. He was pretty upset.”

  I looked over at the two men. Uncharitably, it occurred to me that McDaid’s starring role in the whole drama was compensating quite a bit for the shock. He was leaning against one of the squad cars talking animatedly while McFadden took notes. Every so often he’d grab the notebook, take a look at it, point something out, and hand it back.

  I cleared my throat. “May I see her?”

  “Christ, Ben, why on earth would you want to?” Molloy said.

  “It’s just something I need to do.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t let you. The state pathologist is on his way up from Dublin. He should be here in about half an hour.”

  “Please, Tom. I just need to be sure it’s her.”

  Molloy paused for a second and made a quick decision. “Right. Okay. I suppose it couldn’t hurt to have a second ID. Come on.”

  He led the way through the rough marram grass, over the dunes and along the narrow pathway leading down to the beach; his long strides forcing me to trot after him, my high heels sinking into the wet sand.

  He spoke briefly to the young guard at the bottom of the path then continued over the stones, on to the beach and towards a cluster of craggy black rocks about twenty meters to the left. As we approached, a large white tent covering part of the rock came into view with another guard standing outside it. He was stamping his feet and clapping his hands together to warm them against the wind but stopped abruptly as soon as he saw the sergeant approaching.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Molloy asked me.

  I nodded.

  He walked over, lifted the flap of the tent, and went inside. I took a deep breath and followed him. A smell I didn’t recognize assaulted my nostrils. Salt mixed with something else I couldn’t identify. Something unpleasant. My stomach lurched. Next to the rock, looking at first glance like a pile of shiny red ribbons, was a stack of dulse seaweed.

  Molloy stayed back as I took a step forward, slowly. Tangled up in the midst of the seaweed, lying in a fetal position and cradled by the rock, was a woman’s body. From a meter away it looked as if she was naked, but as I approached her, I could see that she was wearing sheer, lacy underwear. Short dark hair was plastered against her forehead. I forced myself to look at her face.

  “Well?” Molloy was beside me. He touched my arm. “Are you okay?”

  I swallowed, then turned to look at him. “It’s her. It’s Marguerite.”

  “There wasn’t really any doubt. Did you notice this?” He squatted down beside the bod y.

  Clearly visible on the left upper thigh was a crude black mark like a tattoo. It consisted of two intersecting arcs, one end of each extending beyond the meeting point. From one angle, it looked like a fish. From another, a noose.

  Walking back across the beach with Molloy, I made a decision.

  “She came to see me yesterday,” I said.

  Molloy kept walking, but I knew he was listening.

  “Professionally, I mean. At the office.”

  He stopped and looked at me.

  “She wanted to make a will,” I said.

  “I see.”

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “Tying up her affairs. Suicide.”

  “Well, it is the most likely cause of death,” he said. “We found her clothes and shoes on Lagg, and her keys were in the pocket of her jacket. You know that stony section just before you turn the corner to come on to the main beach?”

  I nodded.

  “With the way the currents are, if she’d gone into the water over there, this is where she’d wash up. And very quickly.”

  Molloy was right. The Isle of Doagh is an island attached to the mainland by a narrow causeway. Directly across from it, on the other side of Trawbreaga Bay, is a long golden stretch of beach called Five Fingers Strand, so named because of the five pointed rocks sticking out of the water on its western side. The locals call it Lagg, after the townland. But the currents in Trawbreaga Bay are dangerous and unpredictable. Bréag in Irish means falsehood, lie: Trawbreaga or Trá Bréige is Treacherous Strand.

  I remembered walking on the beach at Lagg when I first came to Inishowen and seeing some teenaged boys playing with an old football. One of them kicked it out to sea and he stood watching it float away like a little boy until one of the others shouted that he knew where it would wash up. The Isle of Doagh, he said, it’ll be on the Isle. And off they sped in their souped-up car to drive the twenty-odd kilometers by road in search of their ball, circling the inlet. Whether they found it or not, I have no idea, but the memory – in light of what we were talking about now – made me feel ill again.

  “She can’t have committed suicide,” I insisted.

  “Why?”

  “Because she didn’t sign her will. I haven’t even drafted it. She had to come back in. Why would she have gone to the trouble of coming to see me, give me instructions for a will, and then kill herself before she signed it? That doesn’t make sense. If that’s what she was doing, tidying up her affairs.”

  “Maybe she didn’t realize she had to come back in. Thought it was all done and dusted.”

  Molloy lifted the cordon, and I walked through. The rain had started again. I shivered, whether because of the chilly wind or the memory of what I had just seen, I couldn’t be sure.

  “She knew,” I said, as we made our way back up towards the road.

  Molloy smiled at me for the first time since I’d arrived. A wry one. “Are you sure about that? You’re not the clearest sometimes, you solicitors.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Look, we won’t know anything until the pathologist gets here. We may not even know then. It’s not easy to tell with drowning.”

  “The pathologist. It’s not …?”

  Molloy shook his head. “No. It’s the Assistant State Pathologist this time, I think.”

  “Will you call me after?”

  “Look, Ben, I’ll try. But you know what it’s like.”

  Chapter 2

  THE OFFICE WAS the last place on earth I wanted to be. My feet felt as if they were encased in cement as I walked towards the town square from the County Council building where I parked the Mini.

  I looked at my watch; it was half past ten, which meant that the Oak was not yet open, which meant no decent coffee till eleven. So I walked on towards the office, past McLaughlin’s Bar with its clutch of all-day drinkers smoking in the doorway – the only pub in Glendara with a Fisherman’s licence allowing it to open at 7 a.m.; past Doherty’s Surveyors; McLaughlin & Son Auctioneers and Estate Agents; Doherty’s labyrinthine second-hand book shop and McLaughlin’s newsagents. Much of the town is owned by Dohertys and McLaughlins – not all the same people, however, and in most cases not even related, just people who share the same surnames. This is something a blow-in like me struggles to handle, but the locals seem unfazed by it, any confusion deftly avoided by a reliance on nicknames. Patrick McLaughlin the newsagent, despite standing as straight as a rod, is Pat the Stoop because of the way his grandfather used to walk, bent over an old ash stick. His son and two daughters are lumbered with Stoop too. While Phyllis Doherty, the bookseller, will always be Phyllis Kettle since her family had a stall in the square selling pots and pans two generations before.

  Dohertys and McLaughlins are people who belong in Inishowen, have always belonged. I do not belong here. Although I have lived here for seven years, I will always be an outsider. In many ways this peninsula has saved me, for my position as an accepted outsider has allowed me to keep my past to myself, to be only who I choose to be and not what my past has made me. But it’s never as simple as that, is it? For the one person you can never escape is yourself.

  Marguerite had been an outsider too: a French woman living in Inishowen. Stupidly, it occurred to me for the first time that maybe that was why she had chosen to come to see me. Kindred spirits or something.

  I pushed open the door of the cramped terraced house that serves as my office – O’Keeffe & Co. Solicitors – the most northerly solicitor’s practice in Ireland.

  Leah looked up expectantly as I walked into the reception area. Leah McKinley is the “& Co.” in O’Keeffe & Co. Solicitors. She is my sole employee, the one who manages to fulfil all roles from A-Z, and she’s not one to hold back with her opinions.

  “Jesus, you look like crap,” she commented.

  “Thanks.”

  “Well?”

  “Yeah. It’s her.”

  Leah’s face fell. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. That’s awful. Do they know what happened?”

  “Not yet. Pathologist is on his way, apparently.”

  “God, Ben.” She looked at me sympathetically with her chin resting on her hands.

  “I know. Suppose I’d better get some work done though. Nothing else I can do at the moment.”

  “Right.” She handed me a stack of files. “Your morning’s appointments. First one is due back in ten minutes. I sent them off for half an hour. Said you had to step out.”

  “Thanks, Leah.”

  I climbed the stairs to my office, dumped the files on my desk, sat down, and finally allowed my mind to replay the events of the day before.

  It had been District Court day in Glendara. Still called “law day” by some of the older townspeople, as if it is the one day when the town is forced to acknowledge the existence of a national government and an obligation to obey a wider set of rules than those made locally. But that’s probably just my city view of things.

  At half past five I had emerged from the old courthouse, eyes watering, and yawning like a horse. I was so tired my teeth hurt, and it was still only the beginning of the week – a hell of a long way to go to get to Friday. Things hadn’t been great lately, and so I’d been looking forward to having dinner with Maeve and her family that evening. I made a decision to drop my files into the office and then head home to a long bath and an even longer glass of wine.

  Nice plan. Although I could tell it wasn’t to be, when I caught Leah’s expression the moment I walked in the door.

  “Ben, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I know you’re probably wrecked, but there’s someone here to see you. She seems pretty anxious. She’s been here for two hours.” Leah cast her eyes in the direction of the waiting room. “I told her you wouldn’t be able to see her today, but she insisted on waiting.”

  I hoped the look of dismay on my face wasn’t too obvious when my eyes met those of the woman sitting stiffly in the waiting room. It took me a second to recognize her out of her usual context.

  “Marguerite.”

  She stood up expectantly. Marguerite was my yoga instructor. That sounds more glamorous than it was. She taught an evening class in the local hall – in an empty room with peeling walls and a draught.