Whispers in the Mist (26 page)

“Was there anyone else out here?” Danny said.

“Could have been, but he’d be long gone by now. It was utter chaos with those two brawling like a couple of eejits,” Alan said. “Gemma appeared out of nowhere, and she was on the verge of speaking, I swear it. Then something must have spooked her because she deflated. Now look at her. I haven’t been able to get a response out of her.”

Dermot tossed the branch aside. “What am I doing? I’ve got to get Gemma out of here.” He knelt next to his sister. With care, he eased his arms beneath her body and gathered her up. She was limp as a towel, her gaze wide and staring into nowhere. “We need a ride and somewhere to stay. Danny, your place?”

“We’ll get an ambulance out here—”

“No!” He lowered his voice. “No. That won’t help, believe me, I know. We need a quiet place away from here.”

“As I was saying previously,” Malcolm said, “I’ll take the ambulance, and I’ll take an officer so I can make my statement against Nathan.”

“And what about my statement against you?” Nathan said.

“I was defending myself, also as I said.”

“Not that, you shiny knob.” Nathan addressed Danny directly. “I’d like to press charges against Malcolm for murder.”

FORTY
-
FIVE

T
WO HOURS AFTER COMING
upon the chaotic scene in the forest, Danny arrived at the Garda station with O’Neil driving and Malcolm in the backseat. Danny had lent Dermot his car so that he could transport unresponsive Gemma away from the scene. “No more hospitals for her,” Dermot had said. “I’ll not have her trussed up like my auntie’s Christmas roast. I’ll see to her.”

By that time, O’Neil had arrived with a crew of guards. “We need to question you.”

“What bloody questions?” Dermot had shouted, his eyes rolling. “My sister is almost comatose once again.” He pointed at Malcolm and Nathan. “They’re to blame. Now get the hell out of my way.”

Dermot’s departure left Danny to hitch a ride back into Lisfenora with O’Neil. Danny kept his gaze glued on the drystone walls that disappeared ahead of the headlights, counting in his head while Malcolm droned on about
preposterous
and
troubled
Nathan Tate, whom he, Malcolm Lynch, had tried to befriend, and wasn’t that the way when it came to his generosity, his so-called mates taking advantage of his kind nature, libeling him, and who knew what else?

Danny reached number 1,753 as they pulled into the station’s parking lot just behind the Garda vehicle transporting Nathan.

O’Neil herded Malcolm ahead of him into an interview room, but not before Malcolm twisted back and whispered to Danny, “Hadn’t you better get back to the hospital?”

Danny went weightless with rage, imagining Malcolm using the same intimate tone to persuade Ellen into his bed. He inhaled the scent of burned coffee and dust from the heating vents—1,754, 1,755—and exhaled as O’Neil retreated with Malcolm. Danny would’ve liked to see Malcolm pinned down like a bug in a display, see him squirm, for anything. Clarkson was right to want Danny nowhere near the investigation.

Clarkson approached. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something good and correct about your presence at a scene you shouldn’t have been within a prick’s one-eyed view of.”

“Alan Bressard called me. And as any friend would, I went out to lend him a hand.”

“And you just happened to have Dermot McNamara with you?”

“Yes.” Clarkson didn’t need to know they’d been driving back from the morgue when Alan called.

“Right. And where’s the missing girl? I thought you were bringing her in.”

“Looks like it will be a while before she’s fit to communicate. She’s had some kind of relapse.”

Clarkson stood in the middle of the jumbled desks with hands on his hips. His eyebrows formed a consternated line. “And your good friend, Alan Bressard, who found her?”

“At the vet. His dog got caught in the middle of it.”

“Oh, for the love of—” He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. “Okay, let’s get on with what we have here, shall we, gents? I’ll be with Malcolm Lynch in room two. O’Neil will remain with Nathan Tate. Whatever else those two have to say, we know Tate whacked Lynch a good one.”

With that, he was gone, leaving Danny at loose ends while around him uniformed guards on the end of their shifts gathered their belongings and saluted him on their way to the pubs or their cozy homes. With a pang of guilt, Danny remembered the novel and lavender spray he’d promised himself he’d bring Ellen.

Had she sprayed her sheets for Malcolm?

He shook the unwelcome images away and launched himself toward interview room one. Inside the monitoring room, the barrel-chested officer from Ennis glanced up and away again. “Eh?”

“Ignore me. I’m just here to see what Nathan Tate has to say.”

Nathan was in the midst of explaining why he had followed Malcolm into the forestry lands. Under the fluorescent lights, his skin was the color of a fish belly and the bags under his eyes stood out like purple flotation devices. The cool-cat
artiste
of few words wasn’t in evidence at the moment.

“I already told you that I followed Malcolm because tonight was the night I meant to have it out with him. He killed my father.”

O’Neil remained silent while Nathan rubbed his side as if in pain. His voice, when he spoke again, was low, completely done in. “I meant to catch up with Malcolm outside the pub and invite him to have a chat with me in the plaza, there to tell him what I know.”

“Know or suspect?” O’Neil said.

“Either way, close enough for me.”

“Go on.”

“Malcolm had left the pub in a huff because Seamus spilled beer on him. It was earlier than usual for him and for once he wasn’t chatting his way out the door with one of the other crows. Seemed a good time for a word, so I followed him. Only, he didn’t go to his flat as usual. Off in his car.” He shrugged. “So I followed him some more.”

“You’ve lived here for some weeks now so what was the hurry?”

“No hurry. Just seemed a good time, like I said, because he was already out of sorts. I thought I might catch him off guard and get a chance to say my piece. It’s like pissing in the wind with that man most of the time.” He straightened up, twisting in his chair to stretch out his back. “In the forestry, he came after me with the branch first, not the other way around.”

“That’ll have to be your word against his. Right now I’m more interested in the story of your father’s death. Malcolm must have had something against your father.”

“No. That’s just it. He didn’t. My father fit a type, that’s all.” Nathan lapsed into silence, staring at his feet.

Danny itched with impotence and with the urge to call O’Neil out of the interview room and deposit himself with Nathan instead. Come on, O’Neil, do me well, Danny thought. Ask the right questions. Get Nathan talking again.

“And what type was that?” O’Neil said.

Pretty good, pretty good. Danny pulled up a chair and sat forward on his elbows. There had to be something here he could use against Malcolm.

Nathan disappeared out of camera range, reappearing with a glass of water. He gulped it down and set the empty glass on the ground beside his chair. “John McIlvoy’s type, of course.”

O’Neil’s tone sharpened. “John McIlvoy?”

“Ay, that’s the whole bloody point. My dad fit the approximate height and appearance of McIlvoy, well enough anyhow. I don’t know how they met, but I’m sure Malcolm had been keeping an eye out. My dad had the misfortune to catch his attention.”

“You’re accusing Malcolm Lynch of planting McIlvoy’s identification on your father after killing him. You’re saying that McIlvoy is actually alive.”

“Exactly,” Nathan said. “Except, McIlvoy could have been the one to kill him. Either way, those two were in it together. Malcolm, the seducer; McIlvoy, the throttler.”

Danny rocked back on the chair. What the hell? This case was more muddled than a herd of sheep in a garden maze. Quickly, he checked his email. And there, a message from the Firebird Designs email address awaited him.

At least you’re right about one thing: I am a man of many talents. —
The Talented Mr. McIlvoy

Cute. But at least Danny had received a reply. It was a start.

“Now I know why they killed my father,” Nathan was saying. “McIlvoy is still wanted for murder. So my poor father was misidentified and his body sent to the incinerator without a proper investigation. Just another waste of space living on the streets. What did he matter?”

“If it was murder,” O’Neil said, “there was an investigation.”

“Yes, murder, but if there was an investigation it didn’t last long. I was told no one came forward to claim the body.”

“You skipped an important bit,” O’Neil said. “How did you discover that Malcolm Lynch—or McIlvoy—allegedly killed your father?”

The words seeped out of Nathan, slow and steady. “My father used to visit me in my studio if his voices weren’t too bad. He was a paranoid schizophrenic, to put the label on it, but what was I going to do? He was my dad, so I listened to him as he ranted about the CIA, the IRA, Al Qaeda, even the Queen of England. One day, he talked about how he’d finally got an ‘in.’ He’d cracked the code of silence, so help him, with the help of a new friend.”

Nathan paused for a moment as if to replenish the verbal well. “His description of his friend sounded like another one of his delusions. A fella with no hair—at all—and a great big smile, but it was the only fact I had. When my dad first went missing I gave the guards hassle, trying to light a fire under their arses to find him. Weeks later the guards fetched me. A homeless man had died—neck broken—but his identification said John McIlvoy. They showed me photos, and I’m all but shouting from the rooftops, ‘No, you bloody eejits, that’s my father, Sean Tate.’”

Nathan sat back, breathing hard. So did Danny. With or without Malcolm, McIlvoy had left devastation in his wake. Many years ago with Gemma’s family and three months ago with Nathan’s. And in the present with his own, if Danny’s gut was correct on the matter. And now here they all were, the results of the devastation flung together with perfectly timed, one might even say sublime, chaos. Father Dooley would probably have something to say about this—fate or destiny or God’s will. Danny liked to think in terms of karmic retribution.

“I wanted to identify my dad,” Nathan continued, “but it was too late. He’d already been cremated. The guards didn’t pursue the case in what I would call an in-depth manner. So here I am, having to do the confronting myself.”

“But how did you connect your dad’s death to Malcolm Lynch?” O’Neil asked.

Good lad. Keep Nathan focused.

“They had the decency to give me his effects, including a necklace. A nice thing. It took me a while, but I found a jeweler in Limerick who recognized the designer. Guess who? John McIlvoy of Firebird Designs. Easy enough to find the website even though McIlvoy was supposed to be dead.”

Indeed. But then, anyone could keep a website up and running.

“The website lists Malcolm Lynch as an agent of sorts. So I came to Lisfenora to meet him and—what do you know?—he was the spitting image of my father’s description. That’s when I decided to move here for a while. I move around a lot anyhow, so it was no problem.”

“Have you met John McIlvoy?” O’Neil said. “We’d like to find him ourselves.”

“Wish I could say that I have. But I did talk to him. His accent was pure Dublin.”

“What did he say?”

“The website listed a phone number. Unfortunately, I went at it all wrong. Couldn’t keep my temper. I didn’t give him my particulars—I’m not that stupid—but I threatened him. A few days later the telephone number was out of order and not listed on the website anymore. That’s why I was so intent on getting Malcolm to talk. He was my only connection to the man.”

Danny had heard enough. He slipped out of the room and into the loo to slap cold water on his face. The story was so bizarre it had to be true. Or perhaps Danny wanted it to be true. Either way, he’d go with it. Coarse paper towels caught on his stubble, and he smiled at his sorry self in the mirror. Malcolm had some explaining to do. At minimum, regarding aiding and abetting the main suspect in Siobhan McNamara’s murder. And from there, Malcolm would lead Danny to McIlvoy.

Buoyed by the thought, Danny combed wet fingers through his hair and settled it off his forehead.

The door opened and Clarkson entered. Danny tried to ignore the sound of Clarkson’s piss hitting porcelain. “What’s Malcolm saying?”

“You need to stay out of it. Are we square?”

“As a bathroom tile.”

Back in the desk warren, Danny unclenched his hand from around a wadded paper towel. He tossed it onto O’Neil’s desk, and then thought better of that and reached for it over a mess of paperwork. He caught sight of a crime scene photo of Blackie’s Pasture with assorted houses and shops lining the far side. Danny squinted.

Jesus. How could he have forgotten? Danny grabbed up his jacket and jotted a quick note to O’Neil.