LITMIR.BIZ

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reluctance to encroach any further.

      ‘’Twas two fishermen found it, Detective Sergeant. ‘Garda O’Dowd took a small notebook from his trouser pocket and flipped over a few pages before settling on one filled with scribbled notes. ‘Late last evening. A John Forkin and a Thomas O’Reilly. They’re not locals, but they say that they would return should we need to speak with them again.’

      Frank looked up at the young guard.

      ‘I did interview them, of course,’ he continued, glancing quickly at the young red-headed boy who was still standing close by. ‘Last night, here, at the scene. One of them, eh,’ he consulted his notes, ‘Thomas O’Reilly. He went on up to the Hanleys’ up the way.’ He gestured with his notebook up along the road they had just driven down. ‘And I was summoned. And I came down here.’ He wiped the back of his hand across his brow. ‘To the scene of the crime, as it were.’

      Frank looked down at the shape under the sand. ‘Well, we don’t know if it is a crime yet, of course,’ he said. He knew he was teasing, but it was difficult not to. The young officer invited ridicule with his baby face and his nervous manner.

      ‘Of course, sir. Of course.’ Garda O’Dowd flushed red. ‘Some of the locals suggested that it might be an old grave. From before the dam.’

      ‘This whole valley was flooded,’ the boy spoke suddenly, his eyes wide, his arms outstretched across the lake. ‘There was a whole village here once, sir, before they built the dam. The whole thing was drown’ded. Out there.’ He pointed out to the middle of the lake.

      Frank followed his gaze. He could just make out some sort of stone, or rock, protruding from the still water.

      ‘The water’s so low now you can see the tops of them buildin’s, sir. Although most were blasted down, they say. But some were left.’

      ‘Yes, thank you, Cormac,’ Garda O’Dowd glared at the boy. He took a handkerchief from his other trouser pocket and mopped the perspiration from his brow again. He turned back to Frank. ‘It is possible of course, sir,’ he said. ‘The main graveyard over at the old manor estate was moved at the time, plot by plot, to a site higher up Slieve Mart. But that’s over the other side of the village.’ He tipped his head back towards the spot Cormac had been pointing to. ‘So it couldn’t be one of those. Coleman thinks it must be from another time altogether.’

      ‘Coleman?’ Frank started to step tentatively towards the shape in the ground.

      ‘He’d be the eldest around here,’ Cormac saw fit to interject again before being hushed by another glare from Garda O’Dowd.

      ‘He’s lived here all his life,’ Garda O’Dowd said to Frank. ‘Since before the flooding even. He’d be, oh, certainly in his seventies.’ He raised his eyebrows at Cormac who nodded in agreement.

      ‘The local sage,’ Frank said to himself. He stood as close to the shape as he could, and crouched down until his face was only a couple of feet from whatever it was that was buried there. The sand was smooth, except for the end closest to the shore, where it appeared disturbed, and Frank could see some type of cloth sticking out of the silt.

      ‘Ah, that is where I investigated last evening, sir,’ Garda O’Dowd said from his standing point five feet off. ‘The shape of the mound was, of course, suggestive of a grave, or, eh, a body,’ he coughed. ‘But I felt the need to be sure, sir, before I alerted the Superintendent. I didn’t want to be causing a commotion for a, eh, false alarm, sir.’

      Frank didn’t answer. He leaned in as close to the exposed material as he could without falling onto the sand himself. It was coarse, like flax or some other type of sacking. It was certainly somewhat degraded. Definitely not new. He reached down and lifted the raw edge a little. Without turning, he could sense the trepidation of his two companions.

      ‘It’s just beneath the sacking, sir.’ Garda O’Dowd swallowed loudly. ‘You can, I think, see some, eh, remains.’

      Sure enough, Frank could make out what seemed to him to be matted, black hair. Human hair. He dropped the cloth and stood up straight, wiping his hand roughly on his jeans.

      A moment of silence passed between them. Cormac O’Malley blessed himself quickly three times, the reality of what he had been guarding only apparently dawning on him at that second.

      Frank collected himself. ‘You were right to call it in, Garda O’Dowd,’ he said at last.

      The younger man flushed, nodding in vindication. Frank stared down at the pitiful strip of mounded sand. What poor unfortunate had ended up here? He was fairly sure it was an old grave, but not old enough, he guessed, that it predated a coffin burial. Whoever it was, they had been buried in a sack, and that was no fitting end for any of God’s creatures. He ran his hand through his hair, damp from the heat of the afternoon.

      ‘You’ll stay here a while longer, Cormac?’ He looked at the boy, who nodded, clearly delighted to be considered worthy of assisting a Detective Sergeant all the way from Dublin.

      ‘Sir,’ was all he said.

      Frank looked at Garda O’Dowd. ‘We’ll go up to the station, Michael,’ he said. ‘I’ll need to call the pathologist, and update him on the situation. And you, Michael,’ he lowered his gaze back to where the tiniest glimpse of black hair was visible in the ground, ‘you might go and bring the priest.’

       SIX

      The bar was a little busier than usual that evening. Although the local angling club’s competition had been cancelled due to the low water level in the lake, some of the more committed fishermen had decided to make the journey anyway. Since five o’clock, Peggy had already fed two groups of three, when another two strangers walked in through the door of the pub in sleeveless poacher jackets and bucket hats. They sat up at the bar, and one of them ordered two pints of Guinness. Peggy half filled two glasses and left them to settle.

      ‘Would ye like to see the menu?’ she asked.

      ‘Ara, no thanks love.’ The older of the two looked at his companion. ‘I’ll have to make tracks after this one. I told herself I’d be back for the dinner.’

      Peggy nodded, and finished pulling the two pints. She thought of how busy the weekend could have been. Sometimes a hundred people attended the last competition of the season. They wouldn’t all have eaten in the pub, of course, but it could have been a really lucrative weekend, nonetheless. Even in the days before they had started serving food, the Casey teenagers would have been expected to hang around on competition weekends in case they were needed in the bar.

      She put the two pints in front of the men and took the money handed to her. It would have been around this time of year when she had first been asked to help out herself. A rite of passage in their household, she still remembered the day clearly. She had been sitting outside under the big tree, reading Little Women, when her father’s bald head had appeared at the door of the pub. He had asked her to collect the empty glasses that had been abandoned on the wooden bench outside. After leaving them on the bar, she had stayed, listening to the fishermen talk as they stood drinking pints, hiding behind them so her father wouldn’t see her.

      But after a while, she had realized that her father was too busy with customers to notice her at all, and she had started to clear empties from tables inside the pub too. She’d watched Carla, probably only fifteen at the time, flirting with strange men from Dublin as she wiped spills and stacked used pint glasses in the crook of her arm. Carla had been tall even back then. She could easily have passed for seventeen, or even eighteen. Hugo and Jerome had been behind the bar with her father. Peggy closed her eyes for a moment, trying to see her mother in the picture. She turned back to the two anglers who were ogling their untouched pints. She handed the older one his change. Where had her mother been that day? And then she remembered, and she could see her sitting in the back kitchen next to the Aga, her face pale with pain,

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