Death at Whitewater Church Read online

  He turned towards us, red-faced. “Sorry, Eithne.”

  She nodded piously, conferring forgiveness.

  “I have them ready,” she said. She knelt down behind the counter and stood up with a small paper bag, which she handed to the man. He was on his way towards the door again when he stopped and turned.

  “Should I …?”

  “No, don’t worry. Claire said she’d settle up later on.”

  “Grand. I’ll see you later on up at the house.” And he left.

  “Sorry about that. Where were we?” Eithne asked, turning her attention back to me.

  “He looks familiar,” I said.

  “That’s Mick, my brother. The carpenter, Mick Bourke? Conor Devitt used to work for him.” Her eyelids fluttered shut in that irritating manner of hers. “He’s been very good to Mrs. Devitt through all this.”

  I was buffeted across the square and almost fell in the door of the office, colliding with the postman on his way out. He didn’t seem in the mood to chat, which wasn’t like him. I said as much to Leah. Her expression darkened.

  “It’s Danny Devitt. He died about an hour ago. In the hospital.”

  “Ah, no.” I sank onto one of the seats in the waiting room.

  Leah stood in the open doorway. “He hadn’t a hope, apparently. The postman just told me.”

  “Jesus. What a week that family is having.”

  “I know. Expecting one funeral and getting another.”

  Now I had no choice. I had to face him.

  “Did Danny Devitt come and see you yesterday?” I asked.

  “No,” Molloy said. “Why?”

  He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. I felt an unexpected surge of sympathy for him, which made me lose my train of thought for a second. Then I pulled myself together.

  “He wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “Oh?”

  “He came to see me at the office and said he was going to come and talk to you after. I thought you should know.”

  McFadden looked up from his computer.

  “Do you know what he wanted to talk to me about?” Molloy asked.

  “I don’t, I’m afraid. He was a bit cryptic.”

  “That was his style all right,” Molloy said heavily.

  McFadden cleared his throat. “Em, Sergeant?”

  Molloy turned. “What?”

  “She’s right. He did want to speak to you. He came down to the station last night after you went off duty.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  McFadden reddened. “I forgot. You were off duty and I was going to tell you this morning. Then with everything that happened … well, I meant to.”

  Molloy sighed. “Come in here for a minute, will you?” he said, picking up some papers and walking towards the interview room. I followed him. He shut the door behind us and put the papers on the desk.

  “Traces of Danny Devitt’s DNA were found on the blanket and the pillow from Whitewater Church,” he announced.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. We had his DNA from the samples we took on Friday. If Danny Devitt wasn’t dead, we’d have been taking him in for questioning this morning.”

  I struggled to absorb this new information.

  “I’m only telling you this because it appears you would have been representing him if he were still alive. It’s not common knowledge. I’m trusting your discretion.”

  I looked at the ground, trying to make up my mind.

  “Was there something else?” Molloy asked. “Ben?”

  I swallowed. “He asked me if I could find out the identity of the bones in the church.”

  “Really?” Molloy said slowly. “And what did you tell him?”

  “I said you were working on it.” I whistled. “God, Danny, what did you do?”

  “That’s exactly what I want to know,” Molloy replied. “And now we can’t ask him.”

  “He seemed so distressed.”

  “And he gave you no idea what was upsetting him?”

  “None really, other than what I’ve told you.”

  Molloy frowned. “What the hell was he doing up there?”

  “He really didn’t strike me as someone who’d kill someone,” I said, although even as I uttered the words, I pictured him punching the wall in my office.

  There was silence between us for a few seconds.

  “Still no identification?” I asked.

  “Not yet. We’re waiting for some DNA comparisons.”

  “Oh?”

  Molloy gave me a look. No more information for me.

  “Will there be a postmortem on Danny?”

  “Yes. The pathologist is going to stay and do it this afternoon.”

  “Busy lady.”

  Molloy crossed his arms and leaned against the door. His tone changed as he said, “So, did you enjoy the play last night?”

  “You saw me?” I stumbled.

  “Yes. I didn’t know you could run so fast.”

  I couldn’t look him in the eye. I said the first idiotic thing that came into my head. “I thought you might want some privacy.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “I don’t know. Maeve wondered if you might be on a date.”

  “Oh, did she now?” Molloy perched on the desk and studied my face.

  Why couldn’t I remember her name? Suddenly it became absolutely essential that I did. So I asked.

  “Dr. Callan. Laura,” he replied.

  Laura Callan. Of course. How could I have forgotten? Another example of the mental firewall I’d created.

  “You obviously know her?” I stuttered. “More than just professionally, I mean.”

  “I’ve known her for a long time. We were in college together. Before I joined the guards.”

  “Oh.” I stared down at my feet. I knew Molloy had come to the guards late. That he had studied science before switching lanes.

  “It wasn’t a date.”

  I looked up. His eyes were creased at the edges, his brow furrowed with concern. Suddenly, I understood that Molloy was never going to ask me the questions I dreaded. It wasn’t his way. He would wait until I was ready to tell him myself. If I ever was.

  “So will that answer Maeve’s questions, I wonder?” He smiled gently.

  Chapter 13

  LEAH RANG AS I was leaving the station.

  “Tony from the pub called in.”

  “Is he still there? I’m just walking up the hill.”

  “He didn’t want to wait. Said he needed to get back. He told me to tell you that Danny Devitt is being waked this evening in his mother’s house. He thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thanks, Leah. I’ll go tonight.”

  “Tony said the cortège should be back from the hospital about seven, if they release the body about half five, like they say they will.”

  I dialed Maeve’s mobile and left a message. She rang back in seconds, farmyard noises in the background.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Malin Head. Testing. What’s up?”

  “Have you heard about Danny Devitt?”

  “Just this minute. Dreadful news.”

  “I’m going to the wake this evening. You coming?”

  “Aye, I’ll have to. I probably won’t get to the funeral. I’ll drive if you like. Pick you up at the office about half seven?”

  The afternoon was quiet. I’ve noticed that fatal accidents do that. They subdue a town. It is as if people feel a sense of guilt for going about their normal business so they postpone things, at least for a day or two.

  Maeve was bang on time and we turned into the narrow lane leading to the Devitts’ farm about quarter to eight. After the afternoon storm the temperature had plummeted again. The night was pitch black, but despite the frost, there wasn’t a single star visible.

  “Where are we? I’m not familiar with this part of the world at all,” I said, rubbing condensation from the window of Maeve’s jeep.
We had taken a route I had never been on. Inishowen is a warren of back roads and shortcuts, and Maeve, being a vet, uses them all.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “I lost you at Malin.”

  “You’d recognize it in daylight.” She inclined her head towards the left. “Whitewater is over there. About half a mile as the crow flies, across the fields. The old pilot station is just down the hill.”

  “Oh right. I had no idea the shore was this close.”

  “On a clear day you could probably see the church from here.”

  I thought about that for a minute. “Was Conor Devitt still living at home when he disappeared, do you think?”

  “I’d say so. He would have moved into the new house he built in Glendara with Lisa after the wedding. She’d have wanted to live in the town.”

  “I can see now why the family thought the body in the church might be him. Claire said he used to go up there sometimes.”

  “Oh, aye, it would have been only across the fields for him.”

  “You’d think they would have looked there when they were searching for him, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m sure somebody did. But they probably only searched the grounds, not the crypt,” Maeve said. “Although to be honest, I don’t remember there being a large-scale search for him. It wasn’t as if he was a child.”

  We slowed down as the lane became gradually narrower and came to a stop at the back of a line of cars parked along the ditch.

  “We won’t get any further,” Maeve said, pulling in as tight as she could to the hedge. “We’ll have a bit of a walk. It’s another half-mile or so.”

  Maeve took a torch from the glove compartment and we set off up the muddy lane, joining at least a dozen other people heading in the same direction. Ice was forming on the potholes, crunchy now underfoot. A murmur of voices surrounded us. Although it was hard to see faces in the darkness, some silhouettes are difficult to mistake. Phyllis’ distinctive shape appeared just ahead, and as we got closer, I could hear Tony Craig’s deep tones.

  “Poor Danny,” Phyllis sighed, after we caught up and fell into step with them.

  She was carrying a large casserole dish and had a plastic bag with loaves of bread hooked around her fingers. Tony was carrying a cardboard box, which, if the noise emanating from it was anything to go by, was full of bottles.

  “Funny place to have an accident, wasn’t it?” he said. “I mean, it’s a good straight road, there coming into the town. And it’s not as if it was icy last night. That road was salted yesterday morning – I saw them doing it.”

  “He must have been going very fast,” Phyllis said.

  “Or he was drunk.” Maeve voiced what I assumed everyone was thinking.

  “Although, there was a terrible accident along there a few years ago during the summer. That exact same stretch. Do you remember? That young fella from Derry,” Phyllis said.

  “That was a while back,” Tony replied. “The roads are better now – I’d bet on it.”

  “No, it wasn’t that long ago,” Phyllis argued. “Six or seven years at the most. Hal did the burial. I remember because I was doing a bit of office work for him at the time. Poor Hal, can’t add to save his life, he needed help. That young fella’s father was from up here originally; his mother was dead, I think. So, they wanted him buried in the family plot. Now, what was his name … McFerry or something.”

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “He was blind drunk and driving like a boy racer,” Tony said. “Should have had more sense, he wasn’t a kid.”

  Maeve threw him a look. “Danny Devitt wasn’t a kid either.”

  “Now, we don’t know for sure that Danny was drunk,” Tony said.

  “Hmm,” Maeve said doubtfully.

  “Anyway, drunk or not, Danny Devitt had lots of good qualities,” Tony went on. “I was fond of him.”

  “He was certainly bloody good with animals,” Maeve conceded.

  “Liked ’em better than people, from what I knew of him,” Tony said.

  “Not always such a bad policy,” Phyllis added.

  “He had his own remedies, didn’t he, made from wild flowers and herbs and things? I heard him talking in the pub about it,” Tony said.

  Maeve nodded. “Some of the other vets didn’t like him interfering, but from what I saw, he had a fair idea of what he was doing. He made his own poultices. I saw him cure a really nasty abscess on a horse’s leg once, when no amount of antibiotics had any effect on it. I don’t know what was in his potion, and it stank to high heaven, but by Jesus it worked.”

  “What’ll happen to his dog?” I asked.

  Phyllis made a small sound in the back of her throat, like a whimper.

  “Oh, don’t worry, Phyllis. Fred will be okay,” Maeve said cheerfully. “I’d say Danny’s mother will take him. Here we are.”

  We arrived into a yard flooded with light and packed full of cars. The Devitts’ home was a small, uneven, whitewashed farmhouse with a porch. As we made our way inside, we passed through a group of men clustered around the outside step, smoking. One of them was Mick Bourke. He gave me a brief nod of recognition.

  The porch led into a narrow, low-ceilinged hallway that ran to the right of the stairs. It was hot and gloomily lit, and crowded. There were people standing the length of it, leaning against the wall, sipping cups of tea or drinks, talking to each other in hushed, respectful tones.

  A woman in an apron emerging from a door at the end of the hallway, carrying a tray of sandwiches, resulted in an impasse. While we huddled at the foot of the stairs to let her by, I heard someone quietly direct Maeve towards a doorway to the right.

  “I’m going to take this into the kitchen,” Tony whispered, nodding at the cardboard box he was carrying.

  Phyllis was behind him. “Me, too. We’ll catch up with you two in a minute, Ben.”

  There was a steady stream of traffic in and out of the room Maeve and I were shown into. A rarely used dining room that probably hadn’t changed in a couple of decades, it had the same low ceiling as the hall, with a dresser along one wall, full of elaborately patterned china. A large oval-shaped dining table dominated the space. The chairs, which were occupied mostly by women of a certain age, had been moved away and lined up against the wall as if in preparation for a dance. An old sideboard rested against the back wall. The mirror that hung above it had been covered with a black cloth, and the clock on the opposite wall was stopped. Despite the cold, one window was open.

  I forced myself to look at the table and its burden. An open coffin. Seated next to the coffin was a woman with white hair and a small, tired face. She gazed silently at the floor, something set and determined, almost stoic about her expression as if she was willing this all to be over. I followed her eyes to the floor. She was wearing moss-green shoes.

  Maeve approached the coffin first. I watched as she leaned forward and whispered a prayer, blessed herself and moved aside. Now it was my turn. My throat tightening, I gazed down at the face framed by the folds of white satin and remembered the man’s awful sadness at the office. How different he looked now, his complexion an unnatural shade of beige, his hair neatly combed, his beard trimmed. I suspected Hal had done a hell of a job to conceal his injuries. He was dressed in a navy suit, although even in death he didn’t look like a man who would have had much call for a suit. A set of rosary beads fell from his clasped fingers. I wondered if the religion had been thrust upon him, too.

  Conscious of being watched, I racked my brains to come up with some words of prayer, and failed. Silently, I moved away.

  Chapter 14

  WE PASSED PHYLLIS in the doorway on our way out.

  “Claire’s in the kitchen,” she said.

  I noticed some unusual paintings in the hall, abstract oils in vibrant colors with no frames. Incongruous against the beige, flowered wallpaper. I would have liked to have taken a better look but it seemed a bit crass to ask people to move so I could admire pictures
at a wake.

  The kitchen was large and bright with a high ceiling, modern cabinets, and shiny new appliances. Harsh fluorescent tubes made me blink after the yellow gloom that bathed the rest of the house. I thought I detected a faint smell of fresh paint. The room was a hive of industry: teapots being filled, surfaces being cleaned. Two women at the counter buttered bread for sandwiches and two at the sink washed up. By the wall on one of the lower cabinets, Tony had set up a bar. Maeve and I stood in the middle of the floor unsure of what to do next.

  “Should we offer to help, do you think?”

  “Looks like they’re pretty much sorted.”

  I lowered my tone to a whisper. “I presume that was Danny’s mother sitting by the coffin?”

  She nodded. “Mary Devitt.”

  I hadn’t spoken to Mrs. Devitt in the other room. I was relieved when I saw that she was surrounded by people as I moved away from the coffin, but knew I must at least speak to Claire before leaving. I scanned the room for her, but there was no sign. A door to the left looked as if it might lead into a back kitchen of some sort. Tony appeared at my shoulder, glass in hand, as if reading my mind.

  “Looking for Claire?” He gestured at the door I had been contemplating. “She’s in there talking to Eithne. You could rescue her.”

  I opened the door and peered into a small room containing a washing machine and freezer. Claire was standing with her back against the wall beside a tiered vegetable basket full of carrots and potatoes, eyes downcast and clutching a stringy-looking tissue in one hand. Eithne, dressed in a long brown skirt and lilac cardigan, was stroking her other hand while talking to her in a low urgent tone. At the sound of the door opening, Claire looked up, startled, and immediately pulled her hand back from Eithne’s grasp.

  “Ben,” she breathed.

  Eithne turned to face me, as if irritated at being interrupted. Claire walked past her and ushered me back into the kitchen. She looked flushed and untidy.

  “Have you had some tea? Or a drink?” Her voice was shrill.

  I shook my head. “I’m fine.”