Death at Whitewater Church Read online

  I looked for some reference to the removal of the bodies from the crypt, but found nothing. I rooted through the contracts, receipts for deposits, and copies of maps scattered throughout the deeds. Eventually, I came across a sheet of paper folded in four. It was a contract between the church trustees and an English company called Nec-Move, dated January 12, 1995, for the removal of the bodies from the crypt and their reburial in the graveyard. That confirmed it: there were no bodies left in the crypt, and hadn’t been since before the church was deconsecrated. Which made sense: they’d have had to allow continued public access, if there were.

  The deeds prior to the deconsecration were sparse. One by one I unfolded them and laid them out in front of me. The slightly mouldy smell that usually emanates from old paper wafted upwards. There was a Fee Farm Grant from 1890 granting the land to the Catholic Diocesan Trust for the purposes of the erection of a parish church “to serve the sea-faring communities of the townland of Whitewater” and a certified copy of a marriage settlement from 1785. It settled large tracts of land amounting to over a thousand acres from various parts of the peninsula, of which the church and graveyard made up a tiny part, on a certain Louisa May Alringham.

  I sat back on the couch and rubbed the nape of my neck. Guinness grabbed his opportunity and leaped up onto my lap. I stroked his fur distractedly as I thought how sad it was that Whitewater Church had served the community of Whitewater for over a century and then, suddenly, just ceased to be a church. I presumed dwindling attendances had meant that it was no longer considered necessary and had therefore simply been deconsecrated.

  It was a bleak place now, beautiful and desolate. The houses that were occupied were few and far between, a couple of distant farmhouses. A run-down cottage almost entirely smothered by ivy on the road accessing the church was the closest building. I assumed it was deserted. But at one time Whitewater must have been a vibrant area. Vibrant enough to require the building of a church to serve its community, and a school where Alison Kelly had met Conor as a child, another victim of the death of a community.

  Sighing, I bundled the deeds back together and retied the ribbon around them. I had discovered nothing whatsoever to shed any light on why someone would choose the crypt of Whitewater Church to leave a set of human bones wrapped in a blanket. I wondered if I should find someone who knew something of the history of the church, an old warden or caretaker perhaps.

  I shook myself. I was trying to find answers again. Answers to questions no one had actually asked me. This was none of my business. I put away the deeds, returned to the Sunday newspapers, and started to think about something to eat.

  Chapter 9

  PUNCTUALITY HAS NEVER been my strong suit, but I made it into the office by a quarter to nine the following morning. I badly needed to sort out the heating crisis – the office was like a fridge. I switched on the heater I’d dragged down the stairs the day before, managed to find an old blow-heater that I plugged in upstairs, and made a phone call to Glendara Fuels. Finally, still wearing my coat and scarf, I sat at my desk, turned on my computer, and tried to ignore the crackling noise and rather odd smell coming from the heater at my feet.

  I checked work e-mails first. There was nothing that couldn’t wait. Then I Googled the words Conor Devitt+missing person+Donegal and was rewarded with 10,400 results. I scrolled down. Most of them had absolutely nothing to do with what I was looking for, but one caught my eye. It was a website with a link to archive editions of the Derry Journal.

  I clicked on the link, and the front page of the Journal of July 6, 2007, opened up before me. It was dominated by a black-and-white photograph of a handsome, smiling man in a checked shirt, with long dark curly hair and bright eyes. He had the same nose and firm jaw as his sister. Unfortunately for Claire, they looked better on a male than a female. The piece underneath the photograph was short, a matter of a few lines, simply asking for any information regarding the whereabouts of the missing man. People were asked to contact Glendara garda station or the man’s family, and the relevant telephone numbers were supplied.

  I stared at the picture for a few minutes and did what I was sure Conor Devitt’s family had done countless times. I searched his face for some kind of clue. Some hint in those smiling eyes as to why a young man would leave behind all who loved him and simply disappear. But, of course, there was nothing. I knew all too well the capacity we have to conceal our true intentions.

  But then, maybe Conor’s family was right. Maybe he hadn’t left of his own volition. Maybe the worst had happened. Claire, for one, appeared to be utterly convinced that the bones found in the church were her brother’s. I looked at my watch and wondered if the DNA and dental-test results were in yet. Wondered if it was too early to ring Molloy. If he’d even tell me anything if I did.

  I heard the front door open and Leah’s voice call up the stairs. “Jesus, it’s freezing in here. What happened?”

  I headed downstairs to take the mail from her.

  “I forgot to order oil. Sorry. It’s done now though. It should be here later this morning. Many appointments today?”

  She checked the book. “Only two.” She grinned. “Since it’s quiet, you could always start preparing for the Law Society audit next week.”

  I groaned and headed back up the stairs. Before opening the mail, I dialed the garda station, reasoning that it would be common knowledge soon enough.

  “Yes?” Molloy sounded weary.

  “It’s Ben. I wondered if there was any news yet, on the DNA tests?”

  He sighed. “Not till this evening.”

  “Okay. Fair enough.”

  “And, Ben?”

  “Yes?”

  “We do have to tell the family first, you know.”

  I didn’t have the nerve to phone Molloy again, so when I arrived at the Oak for the Drama Club meeting that evening, I assumed I had no more information than anyone else there. Again I was the last one in. Tony was behind the bar and Phyllis, Hal, and Eithne were at the table by the fire. Tony poured me a Coke and then followed me back down to join the others.

  There was no mention of Claire. Phyllis and Hal were engrossed in discussing possible plays to put on this year. As usual, Tony pushed for a comedy.

  “Ach, the town could do with a laugh, so it could. There’s so much misery about at the moment,” he said.

  “We did a comedy last year, if you recall,” Hal retorted. “And it wasn’t exactly a roaring success.”

  “I don’t know.” Tony grinned. “It had its moments.”

  “If you mean when the backboard started to collapse in the middle of the first act, I’m not sure that’s the kind of laughs we should be looking for,” Phyllis responded, lips pursed in mock disapproval.

  The previous year’s play had been a catalogue of disasters from beginning to end. A mouse had run across the stage at one point, studiously ignored by the cast and noticed – we hope – only by a couple of kids sitting in the front row.

  “I think it’s about time we did one of the old Irish standards,” Hal said. “A Sean O’Casey perhaps – The Plough and the Stars or Juno and the Paycock.”

  “Ah, Jesus, not one of those bleak civil war plays,” Tony groaned. “That’s the last thing we need.”

  “If you want to do a classic play, what about an American one? A Tennessee Williams?” Phyllis suggested. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? I think I could do a damn fine Maggie the Cat. What do you think?”

  She tried her best to strike a screen siren pose, not made any easier by her sizeable figure, nor the fact that she was squashed behind a pub table. “Now who wants to play Brick?” she asked, a mischievous gleam in her eye.

  Hal and Tony shifted uncomfortably in their seats, until they saw Phyllis wink in my direction. Eithne seemed distracted. She touched her face nervously as she took her phone out of her bag, checked it, and put it back in again. After a few minutes she got up to go to the bathroom, taking her phone with her.

  “Is she all right?”
I asked Phyllis, when the two men had left for a minute, Tony to check on the bar and Hal to pay for some more drinks.

  Phyllis lowered her voice to a whisper. “She’s waiting to hear from Claire with the results of the DNA tests. Claire promised to phone her as soon as she knew.”

  “God, I’m surprised she’s here at all,” I said. “We could have put the meeting off again.”

  “Claire insisted that we go ahead with it. Carry on as normal, she said. So that’s what we’re trying to do.”

  “I thought it was a bit odd no one had mentioned it.”

  “We’re trying to keep Eithne’s spirits up. She’s very anxious about Claire … shhh!” Phyllis said suddenly as the door to the toilets opened and Eithne came back in. Phyllis gave her hand a squeeze as she sat down and Eithne smiled wanly at her.

  “Nothing yet,” she said, the first words she’d said since I came in.

  “They probably haven’t heard themselves. These things sometimes take longer than expected,” I offered.

  Eithne nodded and put her phone back in her bag. The two men returned from the bar with a tray of drinks and the conversation resumed.

  “I was thinking, what about a play about the Troubles?” Hal said, taking a gulp out of his pint of Guinness, leaving a line of white foam on his upper lip. “We’ve never done one before.”

  “Aye,” Tony said, raising his considerable eyebrows. “That’s not such a bad idea.”

  “I thought you wanted a comedy?” Phyllis rounded on him. “A play about the Troubles isn’t likely to be a barrel of laughs.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Tony replied. “There’s a fair bit of black humor in a lot of the writing that was done at that time.”

  “You don’t think it’s too soon?” Eithne asked. “People are still very sensitive, you know.”

  “I think we’ve put enough time behind us to do a play about the Troubles without upsetting people,” Hal said.

  “Maybe,” Phyllis said thoughtfully. “I could have a look and see what I can find in the shop, if you like. I have a good collection of old drama books and scripts in a box upstairs. They don’t really sell so I don’t display them, but there might be something in there. I know they’re mostly Irish playwrights. Maybe there’s one there with a bit of humor in it.”

  “Good on you,” Hal said. “You’ll find something – I have the utmost faith in you. Have we that sorted then? A play about the Troubles, if Phyllis can find one we all like?”

  Suddenly dance music sounded loudly from the seat beside Eithne. She jumped, knocked her glass over, and spilled her drink across the table. She didn’t even notice, so intent was she on scrabbling frantically in her bag. Her panic was infectious. Tony and Hal started messing about with bar mats, trying to mop up the spilled orange juice, and Phyllis grabbed at the glass rolling slowly towards the edge of the table.

  It felt like an age before Eithne found her phone lying on the seat, and it seemed impossible that it would not stop ringing before she answered it. But she got it. She managed a muted “Hello” as she moved away from the table and went outside. There was a short pause before Tony finished wiping up the sticky mess and strode over to the bar to get Eithne a replacement juice, muttering that it was at times like these a person needed a good stiff drink and that Pioneers had a lot to answer for, Eithne being a strict non-drinker of the Pioneering, Temperance-preaching type. In her own quiet way.

  She was probably gone for all of about three minutes, but it seemed like twenty. Eventually, the door opened and she came back into the pub. She looked shocked. She swayed a little and Hal darted over to help her back to the table. Phyllis put her hand gently on her arm.

  “It’s not him,” Eithne said.

  There was an exchange of glances, and then everyone spoke at once.

  “But that’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Are they okay?”

  Eithne didn’t respond; she just kept staring at the phone on her lap as if she couldn’t quite believe what it had just told her. In the end, Tony voiced what we had all been thinking.

  “So if it’s not Conor, then who is it?”

  “They don’t know.”

  There was silence for a few seconds.

  I broke it. “How are they? How’s Claire?”

  Eithne shook her head. “They were so sure it was him; they were ready for it. And now they don’t know what to think. In a way they should be glad, but if it isn’t him …”

  “… then who is it … and where is he?” Phyllis finished her question.

  “So what happens now?” Tony asked.

  Four heads turned towards me as if it were the kind of thing I should know. I didn’t.

  “I presume they will continue to work on identification. And keep looking for Conor Devitt, of course – if they can.”

  “That’s not going to be too easy after six and a half years,” Phyllis said. “God, and we were all so sure it was Conor.”

  “What’ll they do with the body,” Hal said, “if they can’t find out who it is?”

  “I suppose they’ll have to hold on to it until they do.”

  “Well, I hope that’s soon. Whoever it is, they deserve a decent burial.”

  Phyllis put her arm around Eithne. “Are you heading up there?” she asked.

  Eithne gave the big woman an unexpected glare. “Of course I am. Claire needs me.”

  Phyllis pulled back. “Okay, pet. Let us know if there is anything we can do.”

  Chapter 10

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING was dark and cold, and the faces that greeted me as I walked from the car to the office were somber. It was as if a shiver had traveled down the town’s collective spine. It was obvious that people had derived no comfort from the news that the bones lying on the floor of the damp crypt beneath the disused church were not those of the person they thought.

  Whoever it turned out to be, it was still someone with family and friends. More significantly for the people who knew Conor, he was still missing. In most societies there exists a very human need to bury the dead. The closure that Conor’s family had expected and needed hadn’t come. And there was still to be grief for some other family, as yet unknown. One answer had produced a thousand new questions.

  I was standing at the reception desk going through the last of the morning’s mail when the sound of the front door opening, followed by a man’s heavy tread, made me look up. The narrow hallway was filled by a large male figure, his broad shoulders in silhouette against the dim light coming through the tiny window above the door.

  As he came closer, I found myself looking into a pair of intense gray eyes set under thick eyebrows in a bearded face.

  The man could have been thirty or fifty, or anywhere in between. His hair was long and unkempt, a mixture of black and gray. There was something wild about him that didn’t belong inside. He reminded me of a wounded animal. There was pain, suppressed anger maybe – a slight madness, even, about him. I was disturbed by the feeling that there was something familiar, too.

  He spoke gruffly. “You the solicitor?”

  There was a smell of stale alcohol on his breath. His eyes were slightly bloodshot.

  “I am.”

  A bearlike hand was offered, black hair visible on the wrist emerging from the sleeve of a heavy dark overcoat. I shook it – his skin was clammy and cold. The man attempted a smile of greeting, but it lacked any real warmth. And there were far too many other things going on in his face that contradicted the smile. I remembered then where I had seen him before. He was the man I had witnessed being ejected from the Oak the Sunday before.

  “I’m Danny Devitt,” he said.

  “Claire’s brother?”

  He nodded. “Aye.”

  Now I saw the resemblance to his brother. But the photograph of Conor Devitt in the newspaper had shown a handsome, open face. The man standing in front of me was another illustration of the arbitrary nature of genetics, for the same ingredients arranged slightly di
fferently had produced a freakish opposite. I realized I was staring at him. I recovered quickly.

  “Can I just say how sorry I am, Mr. Devitt? I know your family is going through a rough time at the moment—”

  He interrupted me. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Of course. Come on up.”

  He followed me upstairs, bowing his head to get in the door of the office. He refused the chair I offered, which was becoming a regular occurrence. But unlike Kelly, he didn’t pace. He walked to the window and stood there, staring out onto the street, hands rammed into his pockets, as if he needed to be able to see outside to think. I half-expected him to twist the latch, open the window, and lean out to breathe. I stood behind him, unsure of what to do next. He was so broad he blocked whatever feeble winter light was coming in, making the room feel small and cavelike.

  “How can I help you, Mr. Devitt?”

  He replied, still with his back to me, “My mother said I should come and talk to you.”

  “Okay.”

  I waited, but he said nothing. Feeling a need to fill the silence, I spoke again. “I’ve never met your mother, but I know Claire. I can’t imagine how hard it must be for all of you.”

  Still nothing.

  I tried again. “Anything you say to me is completely confidential.”

  He still didn’t respond, or move, so I decided to sit at my desk and let him take his time. After a few seconds he shook his head vigorously, like a dog after a swim, still with his back to me.

  “I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I thought … for all those years I thought it was me, that I had …” He stopped.

  “You thought you had what, Mr. Devitt?”

  “It was the cold, that’s why I …” He shook his head again. “And all the time, all the time …” His voice hardened. “You can’t trust people, ever.”

  Suddenly he punched the wall to the right of the window. Hard. I flinched. It must have hurt; it’s an outside wall.