“Do you miss it, where you grew up?” I asked him. He rubbed my hand with his thumb. “Dublin must be really different.”
“Yeah, I miss it a lot,” he said. “But I don’t think I ever really thought I could stay there. When I think about going home for Christmas, the craic, my mam’s brown bread and roast and potatoes and going out in the morning to help my da with the sheep, watching telly with my sisters. I don’t know. I guess it’s family, though it’s the place, too. There’s this little hill just out the back of the farm and I used to go out there to think when I was a kid. Whenever I’m home, I always go out there to watch the sunset. That’s what I miss. Ah, I’m sad, amn’t I? Do you feel like that about your place?”
“Yeah, well, the beach mostly. I grew up looking out at the harbor. The sunsets. The smell of it. The sound of the seagulls. Boats always moving on the water.”
In the distance, a gull called, and we both laughed.
“You sure you don’t want to devote your life to studying seagulls in Irish literature? There’s a lot of textual evidence.”
“So much better than chickens,” I said.
After a minute of silence, I asked him, “Did Erin ever tell you her mother was Irish?”
“Yeah, I think maybe she mentioned it.”
“Did she ever tell you she was looking for her?”
“I don’t think so. Is that why she came over here?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I don’t really know why she came over here.”
We were at the flat. We stopped and he looked down at me, then glanced away. His eyes were liquid light on the dark street.
“Thanks for walking me home.”
“Well, I should let you get inside,” he said. “And I have a lot of studying to do tomorrow. You know, chickens.”
“I’ll see you?” I said, laughing.
“Yeah. Stop by and have lunch. Or stop by and don’t have lunch. Our food’s not very good.”
“Okay. I will. Thanks, Conor.”
“No worries.” He hesitated again. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he didn’t. He just turned, stopped, turned again, and then he was off walking down the street, his shoulders hunched down in his leather jacket, and I was left standing there, listening to the gulls calling over the canal and out toward Sandymount and the sea.
19
SUNDAY, MAY 29,
2016
Whatever they found down in Wicklow has everyone excited. The news announcer doesn’t know what it is, but that doesn’t stop her from speculating. They’ve got shots of a cordoned-off area next to a narrow road, gardaí walking back and forth. I realize that Griz must have been standing not far from the spot when I called her.
They have a “former law enforcement professional” with an English accent piling on the speculation. He straightens his tie and looks sympathetically into the camera. “In these kinds of cases, you would be looking for clothing, perhaps a piece of physical evidence. It is entirely possible that they have found a piece of clothing with enough blood on it to indicate that Miss Horrigan has indeed met a violent end. It is also possible that they have located a piece of evidence that may lead them to Miss Horrigan’s abductor.”
The newscaster asks him why it would be kept confidential. “Well, if it is indeed a piece of evidence that could lead gardaí to the perpetrator, then they would want to keep that to themselves. It might be something that only the person who took Niamh would know about. It might be a way to test a confession. Or they may not want the person in question to know that they are on his trail.” The newscaster and the expert have an awkward little moment of silence where they both realize that their coverage means that the person in question definitely knows the police have found something.
Then the newscaster hands it over to a reporter in Wicklow, saying, “Aiofe Callahan, tell us about some new information we’re just getting about the location of this search.”
“Yes, Allison. The Gardaí hope that this development will help lead them to Niamh, who has now been missing for a week,” says the young reporter in a concerned voice. She’s standing close to the Wicklow Way trail marker. “We can report at this hour that the location where the item was found is very near to Drumkee and the former grave of Kevin Whelan, the Belfast teenager whose grave was identified by members of the Provisional IRA as part of the Good Friday peace agreement. As you know, Allison, Kevin was eighteen years old when he disappeared from his home in Armagh in 1981. There had been rumors in his community that he was an informant and his family assumed he’d been murdered. After the Good Friday Agreement, an IRA splinter group revealed the location of his grave, in a patch of boggy hillside in Drumkee, close to where Erin and now Niamh Horrigan were last seen. His remains were recovered and now the Gardaí wonder if there is any connection between Niamh’s disappearance and the dark history of this place.”
I scramble for my laptop and search for “Kevin Whelan” and “Drumkee.” There are quite a few stories, mostly archived reports from the late ’90s. As part of the Good Friday Agreement, which mostly brought the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland to an end, paramilitary groups on both sides of the conflict had to agree to put their arms beyond use. While some arms were buried in concrete or destroyed, others were illegally buried in secret locations, Wikipedia tells me, in case the violence started up again. The stories refer to anonymous sources that say it’s widely believed that arms were brought over the border and buried in multiple locations in the Republic. The stories don’t say it directly, but the implication seems to be that there are some arms caches in the Wicklow Mountains, in Drumkee, among other locations.
I call home to talk to Lilly but she doesn’t answer her cell phone, and when I call the landline Brian tells me that she’s gone out to Montauk for the day with her friend Cory’s family. “She doing okay?” I ask him.
“Yeah, she’s doing great. How are things there?”
I go to the window and look out at the street. It’s quiet, late on Sunday. I remember this about Ireland, how quiet Sundays can be in public spaces. I wonder suddenly what Conor Kearney is doing right now. “They’re no closer to finding Erin, and Roly has me completely sidelined,” I say. “I mean, I know he has to, but I’m just sitting in this hotel room. They found something today, something belonging to the girl who’s missing. Niamh. I could help them but I have no idea what it is and they won’t even tell me anything.” I’m unloading my frustration on him and I feel bad about it. “I’m sorry, Brian.”
“No, it sounds awful.”
“How’s Danny?”
“Okay. You know. Lilly went over and took him some brownies she made last night. He’s just … waiting. The bar’s been busy, so that’s good.”
“And … everything else is okay?”
I don’t want to have to say it and blessedly he picks up on my meaning. “Yeah, yeah. Nothing strange. I’ve been setting the alarm. Don’t worry, Mags. There’s nothing to worry about.”
I feel relief stream down toward my legs. “Okay. I’m going to go out and find some dinner.” I tell him to give Lilly a big hug and to tell her to call me when she can.