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‘What friend?’

He sighed tiredly. ‘The mysterious woman you said was in your car and then she wasn’t.’

‘It’s possible she was here. She told me she tried to warn him but said he wouldn’t listen.’

‘She whacked him over the head and doused him in toxic drain cleaner. He couldn’t listen after that, could he?’

‘No need to be so cynical.’ Lottie backed out of the cramped space. She’d had enough of Mooney’s conspiracy theories. Not that she didn’t partially agree with his reasoning, but she’d never admit it.

‘The woman acted suspiciously,’ she said when he joined her, ‘but she deserves the benefit of the doubt.’

‘Why run then?’

‘She was scared. She might have seen Mickey being killed.’

‘But why wait around for you to arrive? And if she wasn’t abducted, then she ran from your car. Guilty until proven innocent.’

She considered his words. ‘You’ve that the wrong way round.’

She knew he was aware of what he’d said. But she was thinking the same thing. Why did the woman leave the car? Had something or someone spooked her? Again.

Bryan couldn’t concentrate on his farm, his work, his sheep. Or even Grace. Ever since the visit of Imelda Conroy a few weeks ago, memories had been awakened. Memories he’d suppressed for most of his lifetime. They were invading every waking hour, and his sleeping time too, even though sleep had become rare.

Mary Elizabeth had been his first love. His only love until he’d found Grace. But now it felt like he was cheating on the woman he was due to marry. If he knew the truth about what had happened all those years ago, he might be able to moveforward with his life. Imelda Conroy had stirred a pot that perhaps had been best left alone. Best for everyone concerned.

He rounded the corner where the old homestead had stood decades earlier. It was now derelict. Moss-covered stones, the roof caved in. He usually avoided going anywhere near it, but today he walked around it.

Something seemed to have caught on a nail in an upright timber. The old door frame. He hadn’t counted the sheep that morning, he’d been so distracted. Could a ewe have wandered over here and got herself entangled? Unlikely. They tended to keep to the hilly inclines that bordered his land. Still, he had to take a look.

As he neared the ruins, old memories that had been buried for decades surfaced and threatened to choke him. Images of his brother. His dead mother, of whom he had little recollection. His young sister. And of course his bastard of a father. He blamed that man for all that had happened, but in more forgiving moments he knew his father had had it tough too. No excuse, though, for not rescuing him from Knockraw.

The cloth he’d seen from a distance was some sort of fleece all right, but it wasn’t a sheep that had got caught on the old stone ruin. Blue material. He tugged at it and it came away in his hand. It was stained with what looked like blood.

Holding the scrap of fleece, he entered the ruin and went from room to room. There was no one there.

In a corner he spied a plank of timber with a nail embedded in its crook. He lifted it up to inspect it. A trail of blood was smeared all the way down the side of it. It looked like it might have been one of the old rafters. But the stain wasn’t old, it was fresh. He let the plank fall to the ground, then turned and walked across the fields towards the farmhouse, moving quickly away from what had been his childhood home.

Something was going on. He had no idea what it might be. Only that it was dark and brutal.

And in his hand he still grasped the blue material saturated with blood.

37

At Galway Garda HQ, Lottie finished her statement, then sat back and looked at Mooney.

‘The woman could be Imelda Conroy. You have to find her,’ she said.

‘We are trying our best. We also need to find out what she was up to. She seems to have opened up this tin of slugs.’

‘Can of worms,’ Lottie corrected.

‘Whatever you want to call it, but in my opinion she let loose a trail of slimy slugs that has me going round in circles. I have two dead bodies, one I have yet to identify, a missing documentary-maker and a nameless escapee who may well be said documentary-maker. What else? Oh, right. No suspects.’

‘And a mysterious scalded or burned man from decades ago,’ she added.

‘That could be a figment of Bryan O’Shaughnessy’s imagination. Shit, I have a meeting with my superintendent in an hour.’

‘Rather you than me.’