Death at Whitewater Church Page 16

  “Yes.”

  “When are you going to exhume the coffin?”

  “Tomorrow morning, as soon as it’s light, to try to attract as little attention as possible. We only got this latest information this evening.”

  “Right.”

  “Did Danny Devitt ever mention Stephen McFerry to you?” Molloy asked.

  I shook my head. “I was just thinking about that. No, he didn’t. But even if he did know him, why in God’s name would he steal his dead body?”

  “He was always a little peculiar,” Molloy said.

  “But it seems to be completely motiveless.”

  “Yes, it does,” Molloy conceded. “It’s a mess. But at least it’s not a murder investigation. That’s something to be grateful for.”

  “True. Unless …”

  “Don’t say it.” Molloy sighed. “Unless someone else’s body is in Stephen McFerry’s coffin.”

  “Exactly. And what if it’s …?”

  Molloy finished my question. “Conor Devitt. I know. Believe me, the thought had occurred. Let’s wait till the morning when we see what the exhumation throws up.”

  There was a brief silence as we both sat staring into the flames.

  “So, what did you want to talk to me about?” Molloy asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “I’m assuming you wanted to talk to me. I saw you outside the station.”

  I could feel my toes curl in embarrassment. Had he seen me scrunched down behind the steering wheel? His face showed nothing but concern, pure and simple.

  “I just wondered if there had been any developments,” I lied. “But you’ve filled me in.”

  “Are you sure that’s all it was?”

  I nodded, looked away. He didn’t push it.

  “Okay, it’s time I got going.”

  He lifted Guinness gently off his knee and stood up. As he pulled on his jacket, a voice in my head told me to suggest food, but the words never reached my mouth. I walked him to the door and stood there for a second with my hand on the doorknob. Procrastinating.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  I stared at the ground. “Look, I know you know some things about me now. Things I never told you. I expect that pathologist woman, Laura, has told you everything.”

  “She has told me very little, Ben. Only that she recognized you, and from where.”

  I looked up. Molloy’s expression was kind.

  “I did want to talk to you about it sometime, it wasn’t that I didn’t,” I said. “I haven’t talked to anyone about it. Not even Maeve. There are things I haven’t told anyone.”

  “I understand. Talk to me about it when you’re ready. There’s no rush. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “It’s just …”

  “Yes?”

  “My mother rang today. My father’s had an accident. Not a serious one, but she wants me to go down. I haven’t seen them in a while. Usually I see them once a year, a quick visit, so that I don’t give them time to talk about anything.”

  It came out all in a rush. My voice sounded as if it were coming from very far away.

  Molloy responded with one word. “Go.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes. These things get harder, Ben, the longer you leave them. You’d advise anyone else in exactly the same way. Go visit your parents.”

  “Maybe.”

  He looked into my eyes. “What are you afraid of?”

  “That I’ll remind them. That they’ll remind me.”

  “It doesn’t look like you need reminding. I’m sure they don’t either.”

  “That they blame me, then. If they did, they’d be right to. There are things I haven’t told even them.”

  I could feel a painful lump in my throat. Don’t cry, for God’s sake, I thought.

  Molloy touched me gently on the shoulder. I could smell faint traces of aftershave mixed with leather. The same aftershave as on New Year’s Eve.

  “They want to see you, Ben. Just go. As soon as you can.”

  I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

  “Do you want me to stay a bit longer?” Molloy asked.

  I shook my head. “No, I’m fine. Honestly. I have some packing to do, apparently.” I smiled weakly at him.

  He smiled back at me. “I’m glad.”

  I opened the door to let him out, realizing as I did so that I really didn’t want him to go.

  Oddly, I slept well. Early the following morning, I phoned Paul Doherty to tell him I wouldn’t be accompanying him on the survey at Whitewater, after all. He took it reasonably well. I guess the prospect of the crypt was less awful in the early morning with a solid number of hours of daylight ahead. He might even have some company not too far away, if the exhumation was still going on. Not that he would know that.

  I threw enough clothes for the weekend into an overnight bag and sent my mother a brief text to tell her I was coming and what time I’d be leaving home. I stood in my bedroom staring at the bag on the bed, wondering if it had been Molloy’s complete conviction that it was the right thing to do that had finally persuaded me to make the trip.

  It had been a relief to talk about it; it was so long since I had confided in anyone. And Molloy cared about me, I knew that. But I sensed there was something holding him back, something I knew nothing about. I wondered if it had to do with the pathologist, his old college mate. I hoped not. Whatever it was, today I was simply happy to have his friendship back.

  I thought about the rest of our previous night’s conversation as I drank a coffee at the sink. They would be exhuming Stephen McFerry’s coffin this morning. Maybe I should stay until the exhumation and then set off. I’d still have plenty of time to get to my parents by early afternoon.

  The seagulls were putting on an impressive display, diving and swooping over the mud flats as I drove up along the coast road. It was a beautiful crisp winter morning, with a bright blue sky. I drove past the entrance to the church, and as I approached the wall of the graveyard, I could see a small crowd of maybe five or six people gathered outside the gate, all huddled together in winter coats, like funeral-goers awaiting the arrival of the hearse. They were facing in towards the graveyard. So much for not attracting attention.

  There was white and red garda tape across the entrance, preventing public access to the graveyard. No wonder they hadn’t succeeded in keeping things quiet. Although I guessed it would be hard to keep something like the exhumation of a grave quiet in a place the size of Whitewater. I slowed down as I approached, looking over the gate towards the graveyard. The top of some kind of bright orange mechanical digger or crane loomed up.

  I pulled in, feeling as much of a rubbernecker as anyone else. The first person I recognized was Phyllis, highly visible as usual. I tapped her lightly on the shoulder, and she whirled around, hand on her chest.

  “Oh Jesus, it’s you, Ben. You gave me a fright.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s all this.” She pointed towards the graveyard. “It’s all a bit creepy, this, don’t you think?”

  “What’s happening?” I said, feigning ignorance. It didn’t work. She peered at me closely.

  “They’re digging up that poor McFerry kid’s coffin. Apparently, it was him that was buried in the crypt. Did you not hear?” she said.

  “No, I did,” I admitted. “How far on are they?”

  “I think they’re about to start now.”

  An effort had been made to cordon off the grave from public view, but the height of the graveyard meant it was possible to see a lot of what was going on. We watched as the digger slowly cleared the topsoil from the grave.

  Molloy and McFadden were standing close together dressed in white boiler suits. Phyllis gestured towards a hunched man on the other side of the grave also wearing a boiler suit, but a mask and gloves, too.

  “Poor Hal,” she said. “He’s terrified he did something wrong.” She lowered her voice. “Like bury the wrong man.�
� She turned to me. “You don’t think that’s where Conor Devitt is, do you?”

  “God knows. Who is that man beside him?” I asked.

  “That’s Pat McFerry, the young fella’s dad.”

  “God, this must be rough on him.”

  “Horrific. Imagine spending years visiting a grave and all the while your son is lying on the other side of the wood in a cold crypt.” She shuddered. “The other man is the Environmental Health Officer – standard requirement for an exhumation, I’m told.”

  We watched as the man who had been operating the digger climbed down and started to clear the remains of the soil with a shovel. He was joined by three other men. Using ropes, they slowly lifted a long black coffin from the grave. Soil fell from it as it rose, its sheen reflected brightly in the winter sunshine as if it had been freshly polished for the occasion. There was a general hush as it was lowered slowly to the ground.

  Molloy guided Hal towards the coffin. Hal knelt on the ground, Pat McFerry hovering beside him looking as if he, too, didn’t know quite where to put himself. Hal started fiddling with the clasp on the lid of the coffin; this seemed to go on for an age. It was as if the crowd around me were holding their collective breath. I certainly was. Finally, something clicked and Hal lifted the lid.

  Chapter 22

  THE NEWS FILTERED through to the crowd at the gate. The coffin was empty. There was a hum of disbelief. Phyllis and I looked at each other.

  “God,” she exhaled deeply. “An empty coffin. Buried for all these years. Imagine. How on earth could that have happened?”

  “I suppose we don’t know how long it’s been empty,” I said.

  “Poor man,” she said, looking at the hunched figure of Pat McFerry. “Hal will blame himself, I know he will.”

  “I’m sure Hal did nothing wrong. It probably happened long after he had done his job.”

  “He won’t see it like that,” Phyllis said, shaking her head.

  She rubbed her hands together against the cold. “Anyway, that’s over. Have you time for a cup of tea? The Oak should be open by now. I could do with something to warm me up before I go back to the shop.”

  I looked at my watch. “Sorry, Phyllis. There’s somewhere I have to be. I’ll talk to you after the weekend.”

  I turned the car around and drove back in the direction from which I had come. I was driving past the church when something struck me – something Phyllis had said. Paul’s jeep was parked at the entrance to the church. The gate was open so I squeezed through and made my way up, a considerably easier job than the last time, since the brambles had been cleared to allow the authorities through. It seemed that one advantage to having a body found on your property is that you get the gardai to tidy up your garden. I wondered if I should point this out to Kelly.

  Paul was examining the outside wall of the church with some kind of handheld electronic device.

  “Morning.”

  He looked up in surprise. “Thought you weren’t coming.”

  “I’m not really here. I just wanted to check something.”

  “Help yourself. Do you need me?”

  “You haven’t a copy of that map I gave you, by any chance?”

  “Yep.” He took it from his pocket and handed it to me. “I need it back though, it’s the only one I have.”

  “Sure. Five minutes is all I need.”

  I walked around to the front of the church and stood there for a second, trying to get my bearings. The graveyard was over to the east, I calculated, towards the sea. I opened up the map. The lane connecting the graveyard to the church referred to on the deeds was marked with an X–Y. I followed the angle from the gable end of the church and walked diagonally across to where I thought it should be. There was a line of ancient, overgrown yew trees in front of me that the Garda Technical Bureau gardeners obviously hadn’t got to. This must be what Phyllis had referred to as “the wood.” She said that Stephen McFerry’s father had been visiting an empty grave while all the time his son was in a cold crypt “on the other side of the wood.” It occurred to me for the first time that the guards should probably have requested a copy of this map, if they had known that it existed.

  I shielded my eyes with my hands as I fought my way in through the undergrowth. Eventually I emerged at a clearing and an old stone wall covered in moss. Facing me was an old-fashioned stile. It had been clumsily blocked up with wooden planks horizontally nailed together, green and slimy and ice cold to the touch. I felt movement beneath my hand; something was loose. Putting the map in my pocket, I pushed at the timber, harder this time and with both hands. The middle section shifted forward and fell away onto the ground on the far side. I ran my fingers along the edges of what remained. The fallen section had been sawn away and fitted back together. The passage had been used since it had been blocked up, although someone was trying to disguise the fact. Not used recently though, I thought; the cut was not fresh.

  I climbed through the gap and found myself on an overgrown pathway leading through more yew trees. I followed it for a short while until I heard voices, one of them Molloy’s. I had reached the graveyard. I turned back.

  I drove along the coast road towards Derry deep in thought, trying to disentangle the latest developments. I had a good four-hour journey ahead of me and I wanted to postpone thinking about where I was going and why for as long as possible. Four hours of thinking about my own situation and what was ahead of me and I knew I wouldn’t make it the whole way. I’d lose courage and turn back.

  So Stephen McFerry’s coffin was empty. Presumably Hal would be able to confirm that it hadn’t always been that way, that he had placed the body in the coffin in the first instance. So when had Stephen’s body been taken, I wondered. Molloy said the pathologist seemed to think it had been done soon enough after burial. Had it been removed from its coffin and carried along the path through the woods? But why? That was the mystery.

  I crossed the Foyle Bridge and joined the road for Dublin, driving for about an hour before stopping for petrol in Omagh. As I was heading into the station to pay, my mobile rang. I was surprised to see it was Molloy. Surprised and pleased.

  “Just checking up on you. You okay after last night?” he asked.

  I could feel a lump forming in my throat again. Jesus, what was wrong with me? That was twice in twenty-four hours and both provoked by Molloy. I swallowed hard.

  “Grand,” I said. “I’m driving south, as a matter of fact. I took your advice.”

  I could almost hear the smile in his voice. “Good.”

  “I’m still not entirely sure you’re right, but I’ll probably regret it if I don’t.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “I stopped up by Whitewater on the way through earlier and drove past the graveyard.”

  “Ah. I thought you might. So you heard then?”

  “I did. Empty coffin, eh?”

  Molloy made a small noise in the back of his throat but said nothing.

  My curiosity rose. “Tom?”

  There was something he wasn’t telling me.

  “Tom?” I said again. “It was empty, wasn’t it?”

  “Well …” I could sense him coming to a decision. “It was empty to the extent that there was no body in it. That is certainly true.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “What was in the coffin, for God’s sake?”

  “Clothes.”

  “Clothes?”

  “The clothes Stephen McFerry was wearing when he was buried, according to his unfortunate father who had the job of identifying them. Jeans, runners, a T-shirt, even a chain with a cross that he used to wear. The clothes are little more than a pile of rags now, of course, but they are still recognizable.”

  “So someone didn’t want the bones identified too easily.”

  “Looks like it.”

  I shuddered. I tried to push away the image that was forming in my mind. The image of Danny Devitt, the man I had had in my office only days before, undressing a dead boy. I
t just didn’t fit.

  “We’ll test the clothing for DNA, of course,” Molloy went on.

  I leaned against the car and cast my mind back to my conversation with Mary Devitt at her son’s graveside. I know that mothers are frequently delusional about their sons, but could she really have been so wrong about Danny? I was more and more convinced that I needed to finish my conversation with her.

  “Ben? You still there?” Molloy said.

  “Hmm?”

  The car behind me in the queue for the pumps was beeping loudly. I had phased out for a bit. I waved an apology and got back into the car to move it out of the way.

  “Sorry, Tom. I’m going to have to go.”

  “Okay. Good luck with everything.”

  “Thanks. Oh, by the way, there’s a pathway connecting the graveyard to the church that maybe you should have a look at. I’m not sure exactly what it means, but there’s something strange about it.”

  I heard the surprise in Molloy’s voice. “I didn’t know there was a connecting path. We’ve been tramping along the road between the two gates.”

  “It was on the deeds, but the stile has been blocked up. And reopened. I tried to put the wood back where I found it, but it may not be perfect.”

  “Okay, thanks, we’ll have a look.”

  “And, Tom, thanks for calling.”

  “Let me know how it goes.”

  As I queued at the cash register, I turned over in my mind everything Molloy had said. I knew what local opinion would be when it was revealed that Danny Devitt’s DNA had been on the blanket. It meant that Mary Devitt was going to have to cope with some fairly heavy innuendo. I decided to go and see her after the weekend.

  As the cashier was checking the reading on the pump for my petrol, I caught sight of a small stand of books on the counter, picked one up, and had a quick flick through it. It was a paperback, a history of Inishowen, one of those local publications you find all around the country, published with aid from the local County Council.

  “I’ll take one of these, too,” I said to the cashier. I threw the book onto the passenger seat and drove out of the garage.

  Chapter 23