Ireland.
When Roly comes back, we stand there letting the sun warm our faces for a few minutes, and then we drive down to the crossroads.
7
THURSDAY, MAY 26,
2016
I remember the long, whitewashed hotel from before. It’s close to the road, making its stand in the landscape. A few people are clustered around the door, and one of them, a big guy with a ponytail, calls out, “Detective Byrne!” Roly waves but ignores him and mutters, “Fuckin’ reporters.” The pub is exactly the same, warm and low-ceilinged, with lots of wood and stone and knickknacks on the walls.
The waitress takes our drink order and leaves us with menus. She’s young, too young to be the girl I remember. They’re playing a CD of traditional music, instrumental only, “Caledonia,” then “Skibbereen,” then “The Fields of Athenry.”
“I’m glad they haven’t changed it,” I say. “I read an article about how all these Irish pubs are getting turned into fancy wine bars and bistros.”
“Well, you know some of those old places could use a bit of updating,” Roly says. “Better décor and that.”
“I think they should keep them just the same. I love this kind of thing.” I breathe in the peaty, smoky air, the delicious must of old pubs.
“Ah sure, Americans like all that old Ireland shite. I have a theory about it. Do you want to hear it?”
“I have a feeling I’m going to whether I want to or not.”
“You want Ireland to stay the way it was so you can come over here and feel good that your piss-poor ancestors got out. You can indulge in a wee bit o’ nostalgia for the mother country and then go home to your high-quality Italian marble countertops.”
I burst out laughing. “You may have something there, Roly. But truthfully, I don’t really like Italian marble. When I redid my kitchen I used wood.”
“Ah, for your piss-poor ancestors, I bet.”
I order leek and potato soup with a piece of brown bread and a pint of Guinness. Roly orders a half pint of Heineken and a ham sandwich. There’s a nice wave of heat coming from the fireplace against the wall behind us. As I take my first sip of the Guinness, I sigh happily. “Why you drink that yellow crap when you have the best beer in the world, I’ll never know,” I tell him.
“Well, that’s why you Americans are all so overweight,” he says seriously. “Not you, like, but I hear it’s a public health epidemic over there. Myself, see, I like to watch the figure.” He pats his middle.
The soup is good, thick and a little sandy, with a strong taste of leeks and butter. I spread Kerrygold on my bread and dip the bread into the soup. Ahhh.
“All right,” I say, once we’ve both finished eating. I can feel the emotion that started welling up at the scene starting to build again. I can push it down by doing my job. “I’m okay. I really am. What can you tell me about the review of Erin’s case?”
“You know yourself, D’arcy, not a lot. The updates I’ve given you and your uncle over the years, I can go over those with you. As I said, I’ll bring you in tomorrow and they can ask you some questions about Erin, about her mind-set and that. But I’ve to take care.”
I wait a second, figuring out how to come at this. “Didn’t you tell us at one point that you did some interviews a few years ago, someone who thought he had seen Erin at the bus station?”
“Yeah, there was a fella who rang us after RTÉ ran a special about cold cases. He said he wasn’t sure, but he thought he remembered seeing someone who looked like Erin at Busáras on the eighteenth, the Saturday of that weekend after she went missing. He was taking the bus home to Galway for the weekend and he noticed her, thought she was nice-looking, etc. But he couldn’t be sure.”
“I imagine there have been reported sightings?”
“Sure, a good few over the years. They usually spike after RTÉ or one of the UK stations do something on outstanding missing persons cases. Nothing that’s amounted to anything, though.”
“Can you give me anything on Niall Deasey? He show up on your radar at all over the years?”
Roly sits back in his seat. I can see him thinking, sorting through what’s public information and what’s not. I’d do the same, but right now my job is to get him to tell me more than he wants to, and it makes me feel guilty all of a sudden, that I’m not on Roly’s side.
“Niall Deasey has kept his nose clean,” Roly says. “Now, that’s not to say I haven’t heard … rumors. My pals on the drugs squad mostly. But nothing that we could use. As you know, he moved to London in the late nineties. So he was out of the country when June Talbot went missing. His alibis checked out. He returned three years ago and he’s kept his head down.”
“Anyone else who wasn’t one of the original persons of interest?”
He thinks for a minute. “Few fellas with sex charges who lived on Gordon Street or nearby, a few tips called in. That’s all I can tell you.” Roly takes a long sip of his lager and pushes his chair back. “Nothing good.”
We’re finishing our food when the waitress looks up suddenly, caution on her face, and Roly and I follow her gaze.
One of the uniformed gardaí from the site is standing in the door, and she crosses the room and gestures for Roly to stand up. I can see the reporters behind her, trying to sniff out why she’s here.
“We tried to ring you on your mobile,” she says. “But you must have the ringer off.” Roly scrambles in his coat pocket as she looks at me and leans in to whisper something to him. She doesn’t keep her voice low enough. I hear her say, “They found something.”
My stomach tightens. This is it. I think of Uncle Danny first.
I have some news, Uncle Danny. I have something to tell you. Are you sitting down?
“Lads wanted you to know,” she says, just loud enough for me to hear. “They’ve got a human skull. And that’s not all. Whoever dug the grave and buried her threw his spade in after him.”
* * *
We spend a couple of hours back at the site. The skull and shovel—spade—are four feet under, not far from where they found the scarf. Roly goes up with the techs and I wait in the car. When he comes back he tells me they’re doing another large-scale search for Niamh Horrigan tomorrow. The family will be coming back from Galway. Everyone’s worried about coordination, jurisdiction. Roly, who they know is working the cold cases, is putting everyone on edge, now that they’ve found the remains.
“What do you want to do?” Roly asks me once we’re back in the car. “I can drop you at the hotel. I can take you home to Laura. She’d love to make you a cup of tea and some toast and put you right. Sure, I don’t like thinking of you in a hotel room.”
I watch the orange vests, still moving up in the hills.
I imagine the excavation site suddenly, a dark hole, up among the trees. I push it away but something else comes to me, unbidden—Erin’s face, alive, laughing, her blue eyes fixed on me, her brown curls falling across her face, running away from me on a beach. Sun on the water. The smell of suntan lotion and salt. Erin’s nose peeling from her sunburn. I push that away, too.