The Lake

SHEENA LAMBERT

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

Killer Reads

An imprint of HarperColl‌insPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GH

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Copyright © Sheena Lambert 2015

Sheena Lambert asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Extract in Chapter 10 from ‘Stand By Your Man’ by Tammy Wynette

The author and publisher have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright holders for permission, and any omissions or errors in the form of credit given will be corrected in future editions

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Based on a design by Jem Butcher

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780008134747

Version 2015-03-04

For John, forever

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter ONE

Chapter TWO

Chapter THREE

Chapter FOUR

Chapter FIVE

Chapter SIX

Chapter SEVEN

Chapter EIGHT

Chapter NINE

Chapter TEN

Chapter ELEVEN

Chapter TWELVE

Chapter THIRTEEN

Chapter FOURTEEN

Chapter FIFTEEN

Chapter SIXTEEN

Chapter SEVENTEEN

Chapter EIGHTEEN

Chapter NINETEEN

Chapter TWENTY

Chapter TWENTY-ONE

Chapter TWENTY-TWO

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Sheena Lambert

About the Publisher

Epigraph

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

– W. B. Yeats

ONE

Friday, 26th September 1975

‘Frank. Phone call.’

Somewhere between asleep and awake, Frank heard the words barked from behind his bedroom door. It took a second or two before he could open his eyes. Sunlight streamed through the unlined curtains as if they were hardly there at all. The digital clock by the bed flashed 00:00. Frank groped for the wristwatch lying next to it and squinted at it instead. Twenty-five past nine. Who the hell could be calling him? He tried his best not to disturb Rose as he got up from the bed and went out into the hall.

The receiver was cold in his hand. ‘Hello?’

‘Frank? Is that you?’ The lilt in the voice did little to soften its booming depth.

Frank stood a little straighter. ‘Yes. Inspector Carter?’

‘Yes. Look Frank, I know you have the weekend off, but, well, something’s come up.’

Ah Jesus.

‘It’s a body. And Jason’s away. And Eddie … well, I’d just rather you went down there, Frank.’

He pressed his fingers into his eyes. ‘Down where, sir?’

‘Crumm. The local guard is on his own there. The doc will be down later today. Hopefully.’

‘Hopefully?’

‘Well, there’s been another incident in Cork. And this thing in Crumm; it looks like it might only be a bog body. He might have to prioritize Cork. He might not get to Crumm until the morning.’

‘Tomorrow morning?’

‘Yeah. You’d better pack for the weekend.’

Frank rubbed his castigated eyes again. Rose was going to kill him.

The phone was silent for a moment. ‘So when can you get here? I’ll have the file ready for you.’

‘Right. Okay.’ It was freezing in the hall, even though the weather had been warm for weeks. Frank wished he had put on a T-shirt. ‘I’ll be in by eleven.’

‘Okay. Thanks Frank.’

‘Sure, sir. No problem.’

Frank was so intent on shutting the door soundlessly that he forgot about the warped floorboard just inside the threshold. Rose’s eyes opened, although her head didn’t stir from the pillow.

‘What was that about?’

‘I thought you were asleep.’ Frank pulled down the covers and vaulted back into bed, shivering. ‘That bloody hall feels like ten below.’

‘The phone.’ Rose’s tone was barely tempered by the pillow half covering her mouth.

Frank turned his head to face her. ‘It was work.’ He waited a second. He knew he wouldn’t have to elaborate.

‘Ah Jesus, Frank.’ Rose suddenly seemed very awake; her head propped up on one elbow, her apparent disbelief glowering down on him and his pillow. ‘Tell me you’re not going in?’

‘Worse, I’m afraid.’ Frank was conscious that the disappointment of this conversation was going to be predominantly one-sided. He turned his head on the pillow and wondered briefly what that meant. Yellowed paint was peeling from a patch of ceiling above their heads. ‘I have to go to Crumm. Overnight.’ He looked at her again. ‘I should be back tomorrow.’

‘Should be?’ She spoke quickly, but then seemed to check herself. A moment passed before she sat up and swung her legs out of the bed. A stripe across the middle of her back was paler than the rest of her skin. Frank thought it strange that he had never noticed it before. She reached down to the end of the bed and lifted a black T-shirt from where it been discarded, not long after they had come in the previous night.

‘You know you promised.’ She pulled the T-shirt over her head. ‘This weekend. You promised that you would really look.’

She turned and glanced at him, briefly, over her shoulder, before standing up and pulling at her jeans that were lolling over a chair. Frank exhaled and rolled his eyes to the ceiling; throwing his arm up and over his head to touch the buttoned, velour headboard. This seemed to have the effect of speeding her up.

‘What can I do, Rose?’ He sat up in the bed. ‘It’s work. You know how it is. If I want to get on, I have to do these things.’

‘They own you.’

‘Yes, they do.’ Frank nodded manically. ‘For the moment, they do.’

Rose stopped dressing, and stood at the foot of the bed, staring at him. Frank stared back. She would own him too if she had her way. She pulled a band from the pocket of her jeans and twisted it into her hair. But then her face clouded with a sadness he couldn’t bear to see. He patted the bed beside him, and she sat.

‘Look,’ he lifted his hand to her neck. ‘I will get a place. Of my own. And you may paint it whatever colour you desire. And I will designate a drawer in my bedroom for your sole use. And we will have some privacy.’

She looked up from twisting a loosened blanket thread through her fingers. ‘And then what?’

Frank paused. Then he would almost be thirty, and then it would be ridiculous not to ask her to marry him, and then he would be tied down forever to a life and a person he wasn’t convinced he really loved. ‘And then we’ll see,’ he said.

TWO

Peggy stood still for a moment, eyes straight ahead, waiting for the dizziness to abate. Then, with the spent light bulb held, tentatively, in a vice-like grip between her teeth, she lowered her hands, slowly, onto the leather seat of the high stool, bending her knees as she went, mindful of the unevenness of the century old flagstone floor. Crouched in this position, like a sprinter waiting for a gunshot, she paused again, before dismounting. She waited until she was sure she was stable, and then lifted the stool and plonked it back down at the bar with a clatter.

‘You should have joined the circus when you had the chance,’ a voice from the front door said. Peggy turned and grinned at Maura with the bulb still tight between her teeth.

‘You shouldn’t be climbing barstools, or changing light bulbs, anyway. Where is that brother of yours when things of that nature need doing?’ Maura flicked her duster in the direction of the errant light fitting before closing the door, and taking her apparent displeasure out on the plaques and framed photos of men with fish that adorned the walls of the little porch; her disapproving head rocking all the while in perfect time with her behind.

Peggy flicked an ancient-looking switch on the wall next to her and the new bulb turned white, although it made no obvious contribution to the small square room that was already bright with midday sunlight. She didn’t need her brother around to change light bulbs. Or bring in the coal. Or change a keg. Or pull a pint. Or all the other things Maura thought she needed a man for. She cast her eyes around the room, before going behind the bar and stooping to lift Coke bottles from a crate on the floor. She regarded every bottle an amazing feat of engineering and design; positioning each one with reverence on the old wooden shelves. Some were more worn than others, their glass opaque and almost sandy to touch. The odd time you might come across a brand new one. A new little bottle on its first journey. Crumm today; who knew where next? Peggy would hold each new bottle and imagine its next trip to be to a Jurys Hotel, or maybe even the Shelbourne, in Dublin. Peggy liked stocking the mineral shelves. She liked the order to it, the neatness. Although she would never admit it to her siblings. They would laugh at her. Or worse.

‘So the village is full of talk of the find.’ Maura’s voice floated over the bar to where Peggy knelt on the cold floor by the Coke crate. She could tell from Maura’s breathlessness that she had started on the windows. ‘Do you hear me? Peg?’

‘I do.’ Peggy clinked two bottles in a sort of wordless signal.

‘Mrs. McGowan says that they’re sending someone up from Dublin.’

‘Yes?’

‘A detective, I suppose.’ Maura spoke with some reverence. ‘Sure they’d have to send someone.’

‘They would?’

‘Well they could hardly let young Michael deal with it by himself.’

Peggy shook her head at the shelf of bottles. Poor Garda O’Dowd. They’d never give him a chance. He had been a guard for four years now, and they still saw him in short pants. ‘I’m sure Garda O’Dowd would be well able to manage,’ she offered.

‘Huh.’ Maura looked over the bar; her grey, lacquered curls defying gravity as she did so. ‘He’s all right for directing traffic at a funeral, or ordering the stragglers out of this place,’ she said, flicking her duster at nothing in particular, ‘but a body?’ She leant on the bar with the self-assured enlightenment of any of the old men that might take her place in a couple of hours’ time. ‘I don’t think he’s cut out for that sort of thing.’

She took herself back to the windows and Peggy resumed emptying the crates and filling the shelves. She could see the wooden uprights beginning to rot where they met the floor close to her knees. The corner of one wobbled in her hand like a child’s tooth. She cast her eyes to the ceiling. The plaster had dried out well over the summer, but it was bound to start raining again soon. They should really get the roof tarred while they had the chance. A rare flush of irritation deepened the colour of her naturally rosy cheeks. That was something Jerome could have taken care of. If he were ever here. But no sooner had the thought barged into her head, than she showed it the way out. She would rather climb stools, and pay one of the local lads to tar the roof, than have Jerome here with her seven days a week.

The shrill ring of the phone interrupted her thoughts, and she stood to answer it, her knees aching as she lifted them one by one from the hard floor.

‘Hello?’ She tried to massage the life back into them with her free hand.

‘You all right? You sound like you’re in pain.’

‘I’m fine.’ Peggy flexed one leg, then the other in an effort to get the blood back to her feet. ‘I was kneeling on the floor.’

‘Saying your prayers again?’ Jerome’s voice was mocking. ‘I thought we talked about that.’

‘No, smart-arse, I was stacking shelves. You know … working. You might have come across the concept.’

‘Ah now, baby sister. Only kidding. And amn’t I working here too? I am this very moment on my way out to meet a fellah about the television.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes. And a friend of mine happens to know one of the guys this man works with, so we might get a good price on a colour one.’

‘Really?’ Peggy found she couldn’t contain her enthusiasm for this bit of information. She’d been arguing for the installation of a television in the bar for months, but she’d only hoped to get a black and white one, second-hand. This was news.

‘Really.’

‘Right, so.’ They were silent for a moment. ‘So why are you phoning?’

‘Just checking in.’

The phone went quiet again, but Peggy could hear Jerome’s thoughts working up to some sort of request. Her brother wouldn’t phone her for nothing.

‘Actually, I was wondering if maybe you’d manage okay there tonight? If I were back, say, lunchtime tomorrow? Would that be okay?’

Peggy didn’t really mind if Jerome was there to help her that evening. It was unlikely that they’d be busy enough to need a second behind the bar. And anyway, Carla would be back later, so she could help out. But Peggy wanted to make Jerome sweat. Just a little. She saw Maura glance over at her from her perch on one of the benches, her hands hidden under the skirt of a lampshade protruding from the wall. Peggy turned her back on her.

‘Peg?’

‘You know Friday nights can be busy, Jerome,’ she hissed down the phone. ‘Last Friday was busy enough. What if a group of fishermen comes in? Or I have to change a keg?’

‘Now, when have we last had a big group of anglers?’ he asked. ‘Sure the water’s too low; there are hardly any of them around. Wasn’t the competition cancelled? And won’t Carla be back? Couldn’t she help you?’

Peggy could feel Maura’s indignation burning into her back. She didn’t want to drag this out any longer than was necessary.

‘Go on. You’re a useless big brother.’

‘And you are a darling little sister. I’ll make it up to you.’

‘You will,’ Peggy said. ‘I might decide I fancy a night up in Dublin myself one of these weekends.’

Jerome was quiet for a second. ‘Sure thing,’ he said at last. ‘Look, I’d better go. I’m on a friend’s phone.’

‘Right so.’ Peggy didn’t ask any more. She didn’t want to know.

‘See you tomorrow, Peg.’

Peggy put the receiver down, keeping her back to Maura who had started polishing the tables.

‘Weren’t you going to mention the news?’ Maura asked Peggy, incredulous. ‘The body?’

Peggy laughed. ‘I never even thought of it,’ she said, surprised at herself. ‘Ah sure he’ll hear about it soon enough. He’ll be up in the morning.’

‘Huh.’ Maura scoured one of the little wooden tables, searching for a shine that had been long since lost. ‘You’d think they found bodies every day of the week around here.’

THREE

Almost three hours after leaving Dublin, Frank saw the first sign for Crumm. Not a signpost for the village, but a large, wooden, homemade-looking sign for ‘The Angler’s Rest, Crumm’. Frank pulled in just ahead of it. Resting his arm on the passenger seat, he looked over his shoulder, let a Morris Minor pass, and reversed back to take a better look. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble over the sign. ‘The Angler’s Rest, Crumm’ it said in stencilled black paint across the top. Beneath, the words ‘Casey’s Bar’ were scripted. A sprightly looking fish leapt up from the bottom left-hand corner, and the words ‘Food Served All Day’ were diagonally across the right. Frank knew nothing about angling. He had no idea what type of fish was pictured, but he knew he was hungry, and that the chances of two places serving food all day in Crumm were slim. The final pieces of information on the overcrowded sign were an arrow and the words ‘turn left after two miles’.

Frank indicated and pulled back out onto the road. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Ten to three. He should probably go straight to the station. Garda O’Dowd would be waiting for him. His stomach growled and he regretted not stopping along the way to eat something. With his arm resting on the open window, he concentrated on not missing the turn for Crumm. Although it was the last weekend in September, it might have been mid-August. The sun was lower in the sky, but felt just as strong. The breeze on his bare arm was warm, full of the smell of cut grass and hay. The air smelt different away from the sea. Heavier, sweeter. Frank filled his lungs with it. There were certainly worse places to be on a Friday afternoon, he thought, although the image of Rose thumping him with indignation at the sentiment immediately popped into his head.

He might easily have missed the small sign for the village, were it not for a second billboard beneath it reminding road users of the food served ‘All Day’ at The Angler’s Rest. Frank slowed to make the left turn, and was met by a flood of brown, as a herd of cattle made its way across the road in front of him. The animals spilled from a gate to his left, pushing against each other like drunken ladies in stilettos. They ignored Frank; although he noticed one or two of them skip away at the sight of a nervous-looking dog just ahead of his car. A scarecrow of a man followed the last animal out of the field, stick held aloft in one hand, the other pulling the gate closed behind him. He nodded in Frank’s direction. The cattle jostled their way along the road a little before turning right into another field. The farmer followed the last one in, and his dog paced the open gateway like a sentry, as Frank drove slowly past.

The main road from Dublin had been no racetrack, and the Crumm road was worse. Frank winced as his tyres bounced over craters and ruts. Wherever it was given the opportunity, grass did its utmost to reclaim the land stolen by the tarmac. After about a mile, the sound of high-pitched voices broke through the background noises of the countryside. Frank slowed again, and in a clearing to his right, a grey, single-storey building appeared; an alien structure in the blanket of green. Outside, small groups of uniformed teenagers congregated; bags at their feet, jumpers tied around their waists. More walked in pairs and threes through the gate towards the road, chattering, laughing. The sweet freedom of a sunny Friday afternoon in September. Many heads turned or looked up as Frank approached, watching him as he cruised past. One face caught his eye, a tall girl with bushy blonde hair. Her eyes met his, and he gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. Frank knew how it was. There probably weren’t many Ford Capris in Crumm, fewer being driven by a twenty-something-year-old bloke with no one in the passenger seat. He could almost hear the hush descend on the yard as he picked up speed and drove away. They’d probably assume he was an angler up from Dublin. Or maybe they had heard about the body and were expecting the Garda. Frank checked his rear-view mirror, but the road was empty. There were certainly worse places to be on a Friday.

Then he sat a little straighter in his seat. This was not some weekend break on the lake. Some poor git was dead, and whether or not the body was ancient, as they suspected, Frank needed to remember why he was there. The third sign for The Angler’s Rest was so enormous that he first glimpsed it almost half a mile before he arrived at it. He kept the engine idling at the fork in the road where the sign urged him to turn left down towards the lakeshore and the food, before pulling out and heading right towards the village of Crumm. He had better go straight to the station and put the poor guard out of his misery. The Angler’s Rest would have to wait.

FOUR

About the time that Detective Ryan was pulling into the Garda Station in Crumm, Peggy was leaning over the bar at The Angler’s Rest, flicking through a magazine; her head propped up on one hand; her long dark locks pooling on the counter over her shoulder. Her other hand, she alternately lifted to her mouth and swept with venom across the colourful pages of tall, thin, tanned girls in short dresses and bell bottoms. Peggy knew that her weekly magazine purchase was a form of subliminal self-torture, but she was afraid to lose her primary contact with the world outside of Crumm. So each Friday lunchtime, she made the pilgrimage to McGowan’s General Supplies. She was fairly sure that the magazines had been delivered on Thursdays for weeks now, but that Mrs. McGowan had neglected to inform her in order that she herself might keep up-to-date with the latest styles and make-up trends at Peggy’s expense.

Peggy snorted aloud at the sight of a model in a pair of denim dungarees and a cowboy hat. Maybe she should wear a cowboy hat behind the bar. That would give her customers a laugh. They would all think she was losing her mind, when in actuality she would be the only fashionable person in Crumm. She stood up straighter, challenging the model looking back at her. Well at least she herself had good hair. Although it would be better if it were blonde. But the Caseys were all dark. Two girls with hair like thoroughbreds traversed the next double-page spread, clad in turquoise jumpsuits. She swivelled to see her reflection in the mirror running along the back of the bar, bringing the flat of her hand against her face, and flicking back the front of her hair like the girls in the picture. But as soon as she glanced down again at the pages, her hair fell into its usual place. She needed layers. If she had layers, she would be able to flick it out properly. A round brush and a squirt of hairspray would do it. She held back the end of her hair to try and recreate the effect, but dropped it again in resignation. She’d die before asking Mrs. Byrne to cut layers into her hair. As if Mrs. Byrne would even know what that meant. And she shuddered at the idea of bringing the picture with her to the salon. They’d have a great laugh. That Peggy with her big ideas. Food in the bar. Layers in her hair. Whatever next?

Peggy sighed at her reflection; mottled and tarnished in the old mirror. Sure what was the point, anyway? She might have good hair, but her pale skin and rosy cheeks were nowhere to be found on the pages of her magazine. And she’d have to lose two stone to be anywhere near as skinny as those girls. Like Carla. Carla could wear miniskirts and little dresses. Carla had legs like stilts. But she doesn’t have my hair, Peggy thought meanly.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. A quarter past three. She would be here soon. Peggy looked back at her own reflection, processing her feelings. Right now, she was looking forward to her sister’s arrival. The week was quiet with only Jerome’s unpredictable appearances to bring life to the place. But she knew it wouldn’t last. It wouldn’t be long before she’d hear Carla’s little car pull up outside, and the neighbour’s dog would bark, and Carla would bark back at it. She’d come through and into the bar, stooping a little at the archway, and they’d smile at each other. And it would be all downhill from there. No matter how sincere Peggy’s sisterly love was for Carla, she knew that by Monday morning there would be no sound more pleasing to her than that of her sister’s car pulling away on its early return journey to Wexford.

But then, she also knew that her hard-wired sibling sensibilities would contrive to rebuild an eager anticipation of her sister’s return the following Friday. And then Carla would appear, and the cycle would repeat itself. Peggy had long thought that, were she and Carla mere school friends, they would have parted company years ago. They were simply incompatible. And yet, every week, she fooled herself into thinking that things might be different.

The silence of the bar was suddenly broken by the telephone’s ring. Just as she reached to answer it, Peggy heard a car on the gravel outside. She looked at the clock again. Carla was early.

‘Angler’s Rest? Hello?’

‘Peggy? Is that you? ’Tis Bernie here.’

‘Hello Mrs. O’Shea.’ Peggy instinctively pushed the phone closer to her ear. It was unlike Bernie O’Shea to pay for a phone call when she could send Enda over on foot with a message. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Yes, yes. I will be having Detective Ryan from Dublin staying with me tonight, and I wanted to check that you would be serving food this evening. I can of course prepare something for him here, but it would have to be cold. It’s bridge night at the Corcoran’s. And who knows what time he will come in from the lake, or whatever it is he will be doing.’ Bernie O’Shea’s game of bridge was clearly not going to be disrupted, even for a dead body. ‘Can I direct him to you? Will you look after him?’

‘Of course, Mrs. O’Shea.’ Peggy waved at Carla who had stalked into the room, and dropped her bag against the wall. Carla stuck her tongue out at the phone when she heard the name. Her low opinion of Mrs. O’Shea had been honed during the summer of 1970 when she and Enda O’Shea Junior were secretly courting. At least, until such time as Mrs. O’Shea had caught them fumbling in one of her guest bedrooms.

Peggy glared at her sister. ‘I’ll be sure to feed him, Mrs. O’Shea. Thank you for the referral.’

Carla snorted as she stooped to grab a Coke bottle from the shelf behind her.

Peggy replaced the receiver. ‘What?’ She looked at Carla. They were already on their slippery slope and she wasn’t in the bar thirty seconds.

‘Referral?’ Carla sniggered, and took a swig from the bottle.

‘What about it?’ Peggy lifted a clean glass from a shelf and placed it on the counter.

Carla ignored it. She walked around and sat on one of the high stools like a customer. ‘Who is she referring to anyway?’

‘A guard up from Dublin.’ Peggy picked up a cloth and started polishing pint glasses. ‘A body was found down by the lake last night.’

Carla’s eyes widened. ‘You’re jokin’!’

‘Yeah. Some anglers, pulling in their boat. Apparently they saw it buried at the shore.’

‘Jesus.’ Carla straightened her neck. ‘They saw an actual body?’

‘Well, no. I don’t know exactly. The waterline’s so far back; the lake’s lower than it’s ever been. I think they saw the outline. Of the body. It might have been a coffin.’ Peggy could sense the shock-factor of her news diminishing. ‘I’m not really sure.’

Carla’s shoulders slumped. ‘So it could have been there since the valley was flooded?’

‘Maybe. They don’t know.’

Carla swigged from the bottle. Peggy noticed her fingernails were painted a deep pink. What was a schoolteacher doing painting her nails midweek? It was a nice colour though.

‘Sure it’s probably just one of the graves they moved before the dam went up,’ Carla said. ‘Or rather, one of the graves they should have moved.’

‘But the graveyard was on the other side of the valley. Close to where the new one is.’

‘Hmm.’ Carla considered this. She drained her bottle and handed it to Peggy. ‘Sure we might hear more if your referral appears looking for his dinner.’

Exasperated. That’s a good word to describe how she makes me feel, thought Peggy, as she slid the Coke bottle into an empty crate on the floor next to her. Carla reached for Peggy’s magazine and sat looking at the pages, all the while pushing back her cuticles with a pink talon. Peggy tried to distract herself with thoughts about the Irish stew she had prepared that morning. She would need to get it back into the Aga by four. The phone on the wall rang again.

‘Angler’s Rest? Hello?’ If she had it in by four, it would ready for five. Half past at the latest. ‘Hello?’ she said again to the silence on the line.

‘Eh, hello. Would Miss Cas … eh Carla, be there please?’

Peggy turned to Carla who had lifted her gaze and was questioning her sister with her stare. She shrugged and pointed to the receiver in her hand. ‘Who should I say is calling?’ She waited. Carla was shaking her head violently. Peggy noticed the colour of her cheeks change. ‘Eh, no Tom,’ she said. ‘Carla hasn’t arrived yet, although I am expecting her. I will of course. She has your number?’ By now Carla was making angry hang up gestures at her. ‘I will of course. Thank you, Tom.’ She hung the handset back in its cradle.

‘Jesus, I thought you were going to ask after his family,’ Carla spat. ‘Couldn’t you just have said, “she’s not here”?’

Indignant. There’s another word for how she makes me feel, thought Peggy. ‘What’s your problem?’ she threw back at her. ‘Who is Tom anyway?’

Carla looked at her, and retreated. ‘No one,’ she said.

‘Tom.’ Peggy wasn’t in the humour to give her sister any easy ride. ‘Not Tom Devereux? Your school principal?’ Carla said nothing. ‘Maybe I should have asked after his family.’ Peggy couldn’t help feeling shocked, and Carla’s reddening cheeks were doing little to allay her suspicions. ‘He is married, isn’t he?’

Carla flicked a little too quickly through Peggy’s magazine. ‘And why are you assuming he wasn’t calling about work?’ She didn’t raise her eyes from the pages.

Peggy reached out and rubbed her thumb over one of Carla’s painted nails. ‘I assumed you would take the call if it was just about work,’ she said. Carla pulled her hand away. Peggy drew the cloth from her shoulder and resumed polishing the glasses.

‘I’m not judging,’ she said, after some moments of silence.

‘Good,’ Carla replied, hopping off the stool and picking up her bag from the floor. She stood for a second, fiddling with the strap. ‘Thank you.’ The words were barely audible. She made her way towards a door in the back of the bar, leading to the main house. ‘I’m going inside,’ she said.

‘I’ll need you later,’ Peggy said. ‘Jerome’s staying in Dublin tonight.’ She waited for a tirade of complaints and bitching about her and her brother’s inability to manage the family business. It didn’t come.

‘Okay,’ Carla said. ‘That’s another Casey on a shady road to iniquity.’ Peggy looked up from her work to see if Carla’s face betrayed her true meaning, but all she saw was her sister’s back as she disappeared into the house.

FIVE

From the moment Garda O’Dowd tucked his long limbs into Frank’s car, he seemed to forget all about the body at the lake, and focus only on the Capri’s interior; staring in unabashed awe at the dashboard; tracing his fingers along the radio casing, only lifting his gaze once or twice to give Frank directions as they drove from the station towards the lake. When the boreen they were on finally came to an abrupt dead end, Garda O’Dowd seemed to remember what he was supposed to be doing, and pointed out Frank’s side window.

‘There. You can pull in there.’

Frank drove slowly into a clearing, where grass was trying but largely failing in its effort to push through the sun-baked ground. With the engine off, they sat in eerie silence, staring out over the lake. They had stopped in what seemed to be a makeshift car park, where fishermen could conveniently leave their cars and trailers while they went off on the water. It was really just a small field, edged by tall evergreens to the back, and opening out to the lake at the front. Parked as they were, facing the lake, Frank could see how low the water level was. A person could easily walk twenty yards from the edge of the clearing before their feet would get wet, and it was apparent from the barrenness of the grey sand that those twenty yards were unaccustomed to being exposed to the air.

Frank got out of the car and walked to the edge of the grass where the clearing met the lakeshore proper. A small drop, less than a foot in places, showed where the lake’s water habitually lapped. Now, Frank could step down onto the silty soil, littered with small rocks and pebbles, and walk on the lakebed with ease.

Garda O’Dowd followed him. ‘It’s just over here.’ He pointed past Frank to his right. ‘A little way along. I left one of the O’Malley lads at the site.’ He glanced up at Frank with apparent unease. ‘I was reluctant to leave it unguarded. Not that I’d expect any interference. But you never know.’

Frank said nothing, but walked in the direction the younger guard had indicated. He looked around him as he went, taking in the lake, the shoreline, the somehow unnatural layout of it all. He felt the ground beneath his feet soften as they ventured further. Garda O’Dowd hurried ahead, his hand up, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun. Wetness oozed around Frank’s leather shoes as they got closer to the water’s edge. The shoreline jutted out a little just ahead of them, and the trunks of tall evergreens blocked the view somewhat; their long needles swinging and swishing high above. Frank began to feel the dampness in his feet, and was considering taking his shoes and socks off when he noticed a lad of no more than eighteen walking towards them. Garda O’Dowd spoke quietly to him, and the lad nodded his tight red curls in earnest, and pointed to a spot only yards from where they stood.

Garda O’Dowd turned to Frank. ‘It’s just here, Detective Sergeant.’

Unlike a sandy seaside beach, the silty ground between the water’s edge and the natural shoreline was grey and flat. The stones that littered the area closer to the shore were absent further out, and the area of ground Garda O’Dowd gestured towards seemed to Frank to be an unvarying expanse of plain, drying mud. But as they got closer, Frank could see that one part of the ground, a strip of about five feet by two, was a darker grey than the rest, and that the silt around this shape was uneven, sagging in places, and rounding at the edges.

Despite the heat, Frank shivered. He looked up at the two men, only to see them looking back at him expectantly. Frank acknowledged the young lad with a nod.

‘Sir,’ the lad said.

‘You haven’t disturbed it at all?’

‘No, sir.’ The lad looked from one officer to the other. They were still ten feet from the ominous shape on the ground, but all seemed to share an apparent 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, her hands thin and anxious, her smile bright as she saw Peggy come in from the bar to make her a cup of tea.

That had been the first day she had worked for her father in the bar, but not the last. Who would have thought, that of the four of them, it would be Peggy working here alone now most days? Not for the first time, she tried to imagine her father’s reaction to the situation. He would certainly have been surprised. He would have expected Peggy to be working in one of the hotels in Galway or Dublin by now, maybe even assistant manager of one of the smaller ones. That had been the plan. But then isn’t that the way with plans? They have a tendency not to pan out as expected. And he would have been disappointed in Jerome and Hugo, that was for sure. Especially Hugo. Peggy thought about her eldest brother, away in London, working at God only knows what. He had been expected to take over the family business, like a million eldest sons before him. Their father had expected it, their mother had expected it, the whole village had expected it. Peggy herself had taken it as a fact of life. When her father needed him to, Hugo would come back from London, or wherever he might have been, and pick up where Patrick Casey had left off. It was generally assumed that Mr. Casey had died of a broken heart. But Peggy was of the opinion that the shock of Hugo’s refusal to stay on in Crumm after their mother’s funeral did more damage to their father.

‘Another round? Miss? Are you with us?’

Before Peggy could react, a voice from behind her said, ‘three pints? I’ll drop them down,’ and Carla materialized out of nowhere. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ She took three pint glasses from the shelf and tilted one under the tap. ‘Are you asleep? It’s not Waterford crystal you know.’ She nodded at the tumbler Peggy was polishing with a cloth.

Peggy looked at the glass and put it down on the shelf. ‘Where did you come out of?’

‘I was just checking to see if you needed any help.’ Carla started on the third pint. ‘I can stay here for a while if you like. Do you want to get some dinner in the back?’

‘No. No thanks.’ Peggy stood up and flexed her shoulders. ‘I’m grand here.’ She walked out from behind the bar and went to collect empty plates from a table where three men were sitting.

One of them smiled up at her. ‘That was lovely now, thanks girl,’ he said, his ruddy cheeks and crackled nose telling of many seasons on the lake. ‘Did you make it yourself?’

‘I did.’ Peggy smiled back.

‘Beautiful, beautiful.’ One of the other two men at the table lifted his hand in thanks, his eyes never leaving the pint glass in front of him, his grey beard bouncing against his collar.

‘Could ye be tempted to a slice of homemade apple tart with cream?’ Peggy asked.

‘Oh Lord,’ the affable, red-faced man patted his ample stomach. ‘I’m sure we shouldn’t but if it’s as good as the stew, sure we’d better give it a go.’ He nodded at the other two who seemed happy to go along with whatever their companion decided.

Peggy smiled at him and took the plates behind the bar. ‘I’ll just be a sec’,’ she told Carla, and went in through the door to the kitchen.

Five minutes later, she walked back into the bar carrying three plates of warm apple tart; a little cloud of cream melting on each one. She sensed immediately that the bar was fuller, and noticed a new table of three men, younger than the usual fishermen, the three of them watching Carla as she placed their pints before them. She put the plates of apple tart down to appreciative grunts and gentle chants of ‘beautiful, beautiful,’ from the bearded man. Back behind the bar, when she looked up, there was a man sitting right at the end of the counter on a high stool.

‘Oh, sorry,’ she smiled. ‘I didn’t see you there. What can I get you?’

The man looked amused. ‘Have I stumbled onto some Amazonian public house?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Peggy looked directly at him.

He glanced over at Carla. ‘It’s not often you come across bars being run only by women,’ he said.

‘Who’s to say I haven’t got a big lump of a man out the back?’ Peggy cocked her head towards the back door.

The man laughed, but then seemed to collect himself. He sat up straighter on the stool. ‘I’m sure you have no need of one,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a pint, so.’

Peggy put a glass to the tap. He was a funny one. It wasn’t too often they got strangers on their own in Crumm. Even the anglers tended to come in little groups after a day on the lake. You might get the odd German passing through, but Peggy knew this fellah was no more German than she was herself. His accent was soft. A monied lilt. First generation Dublin, she guessed. Carla handed her some used glasses over the bar, winking at her. Peggy scowled back. She noticed the stranger stealing a glance at them both.

‘So,’ she said, topping up the pint, ‘are you here for the fishing?’

‘Not exactly.’ He put some coins down on the counter. He drew the pint over to him, and lifted it to his lips. ‘Sláinte,’ he said, and sucked back a third of it before it had a proper chance to settle.

Peggy could see tables that needed clearing, but she stayed where she was behind the counter, rinsing glasses that had already been rinsed.

‘So is this your place?’ he said at last.

‘It is,’ Peggy replied. ‘Well, mine and my siblings. It’s a family business.’

He nodded. Peggy watched him stroke the pint glass. She wondered if he might be one of the contractors in to help a local farmer make the last of the hay. His fingers were long and tanned. His fingernails were clean. She dragged his coins across the bar with the flat of her palm, catching his eye as she did so. Facing the till, she could see his reflection as he took another drink from his glass.

‘So if you’re not a fisher, and you’re not a farmer, what is it that you do?’ She spoke to his reflection as she slowly tidied the till drawer.

‘What makes you think I’m not a farmer?’ His mouth curled in a smile.

Peggy turned and leaned heavily against the drawer, closing it. She nodded at his glass. ‘They’re not the fingers of a manual labourer,’ she said.

Frank regarded his hand, turning it front to back.

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘So I’m too clean to be a farmer?’

She smiled despite herself. ‘Something like that,’ she said.

They were still looking at each other, when Carla came around the bar, dirty pint glasses dangling from each hand. She ignored Peggy and smiled openly at the man sitting at the bar as she left the glasses on the counter. He glanced from one sister to the other.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Hello.’ Carla smiled back. Peggy rolled her eyes and turned back to the till. Carla stuck her hand across the bar at him. ‘Carla Casey.’

‘Eh, Frank Ryan,’ he said. ‘Detective Sergeant Frank Ryan.’

Carla’s kohl-streaked eyes were suddenly wide and she slapped her hands down on the bar. ‘Oh, are you up from Dublin for the body?’ She seemed to have forgotten about Peggy, who was standing behind her, watching Frank in the mirror. ‘So tell us, is it just one of the ones from the old graveyard?’ She leant on the bar opposite Frank and rested her chin in her hand. ‘Or was it new? Do you know who it is?’

‘Eh, well, I’m not really at liberty to discuss it right now.’ Frank sat back a little on his stool. ‘The pathologist will be here tomorrow. He’ll have to examine the body.’

‘So there definitely is a body?’ Carla asked him. ‘It wasn’t just some old, empty box left there? You actually found a body?’

‘Eh, yes.’ Frank looked from Carla to Peggy’s reflection and back. ‘There was a body. There is a body. It does appear to be old though.’ He coughed. ‘As in, of course we can’t be sure until the pathologist examines it, but it would appear to be, eh, old.’

‘Oh.’ Carla straightened up again. ‘Ah well.’ She lifted a cloth from the sink and wrung it out. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s a pleasure to meet you, Detective Ryan. Peggy here will look after you. I’m sure you must be famished having travelled all the way from Dublin. Peggy,’ she stared, wide-eyed at her sister. ‘Detective Ryan needs a pint.’ She tipped her brow to the glass of dregs still gripped in Frank’s hand, and turned to wipe down the counter with the cloth.

Peggy drew a calming breath and looked at Frank. ‘So, Detective,’ she said.

‘Frank.’

‘Frank. Another pint, Frank?’

‘Well, actually, if you are serving food … ’ Frank glanced around at the empty plates Carla was now clearing from a table behind him.

‘Oh Lord, of course,’ Peggy clasped her hand to her mouth. ‘Mrs. O’Shea told me to expect you. That you would need feeding.’

‘I think she had a prior appointment for this evening.’

‘Bridge night,’ Peggy nodded. ‘Even a Detective Sergeant from Dublin doesn’t come before bridge night, I’m afraid.’

Frank smiled. ‘Well, her husband offered to make me a sandwich,’ he said. ‘I think that was all he was getting himself.’

‘Poor Enda,’ Peggy smiled at Frank. ‘Well we can certainly feed you, Frank. If you like stew?’

‘Stew would be lovely, thank you. And I will.’ He tilted the glass in his hand.

‘You will?’

‘Have another.’

Just at that moment, the main door opened, and Peggy looked up to see Garda O’Dowd entering the bar. Even after he removed his cap, he had to stoop so as not to hit his head on the lintel. He glanced around the place, nodding at familiar faces, before approaching the counter. Carla pushed past him, her arms laden with dirty plates and cutlery.

‘Carla. Peggy,’ he said, tipping his head at the two women behind the bar, fidgeting with the cap in his hands all the while. ‘Detective Sergeant,’ he said looking at Frank.

‘Michael.’

Peggy noticed the beads of sweat on Garda O’Dowd’s brow as she pulled Frank’s pint. She tried not to notice the smell of sweat that the young guard seemed to have brought in with him. The perils of a young man left in charge of his own laundry, she thought to herself. He stood there, looking from one sister to the other, nervously passing the cap back and forth through his fingers. He seemed to be waiting for Frank to say something. Peggy could sense her sister’s exasperation rising.

‘Big day at the office for you, Michael,’ Carla said. Michael blushed madly as he looked from her to Frank.

‘Indeed,’ he said.

‘Oh, they’ll be looking for you over in New York after this, I’d say,’ Carla stood with the plates still in her arms. ‘I’d say the FBI will be looking to poach you. Don’t ye think?’ She elbowed Peggy, who stayed silent.

Michael just flicked his eyes at her again, before addressing Frank. ‘Sir? Eh, maybe we could, eh, talk a moment?’ He gestured with his cap across to a quiet corner of the room where there was a small table with two stubby stools either side of it.

Frank looked over at it. ‘Of course.’ He lifted his pint and stood to go. Then he stopped and pushed his free hand deep into the pocket of his jeans.

‘No, no,’ Peggy said. ‘I’ll get you your meal first. We can sort it out after.’

Frank nodded at her.

‘Will you be eating, Garda O’Dowd?’ she looked at Michael.

He shook his head. ‘No, no, Peggy. Thank you.’

‘Right. Well, why don’t you gentlemen sit over there, and I’ll be right out with your meal, Frank.’

Peggy noticed Michael’s eyebrows arch at her familiarity. She smiled to herself. Let him think her forward. She left Carla in the bar and went to plate out some stew for Frank. She’d put it on one of her mother’s Aynsley dinner plates. They looked nicer than the everyday ones.

Peggy hummed to herself as she stirred the pot on the Aga, looking for some good-sized pieces of meat. It wasn’t often there were interesting strangers in The Angler’s Rest. And she couldn’t help feeling that this weekend was going to be a little more interesting than usual.

SEVEN

Despite the warmth of the day, autumn could not be denied. The evening light had all but faded by the time most of the fishermen had gone home, and the local regulars had taken up their usual places in Casey’s. The old sash windows were still open, and the cooler air mixed with the smell of smoke and kegs and the stew; a comforting smell of home for Peggy. They would normally have a fire lit at this time of year, she thought, looking at the blackened grate that hadn’t seen a spark for what must be four months now. It had been such a summer; they just hadn’t needed it. She might light one tomorrow night. It would be nice to have it lit.

‘You should have lit the fire.’ Carla’s teacher-like intonation assailed Peggy’s ears. Her sister stood behind her, sorting coins in the opened till drawer. ‘It gives the place a bit of life.’ She shivered. ‘And God knows it could do with a bit of life.’

Peggy heard it slam shut. She decided to ignore her sister.

‘Although,’ Carla elbowed her in the ribs, ‘yer man over there,’ she tipped her head towards Frank, who was sitting with an empty dessert plate before him, a newspaper in one hand, and a mug of coffee in the other, ‘he’s a bit of life. No?’ She elbowed Peggy again.

Before Peggy could retort, the door opened, and a diminutive elderly man walked into the bar.

‘Oh, Jaysus, well here’s the walking dead,’ Carla said under her breath, and went off around the bar to clear Frank’s table.

The man walked in slowly through the porch, his eyes only leaving the flagstone floor briefly to acknowledge two younger men seated with pints at a low table. He was dressed for colder weather, wearing an old tweed jacket over a wool shirt and threadbare jumper. His trousers were two sizes too big, gathered in at the waist by a length of rope. Strands of white hair poked out from under his plaid cap, which he removed and hung on a hook next to the fireplace.

‘Young wan,’ he nodded to Peggy as he approached the bar.

‘Coleman,’ she said. ‘It’s getting cooler at last out there now, I think.’

‘’Tis that, child. ’Tis that.’ Coleman sat up on a stool and crossed his arms. Peggy pulled him a pint, and he watched the contents of the glass settle. After a moment, she filled it and placed it on the bar in front of him. He sat up straighter, and rubbed the white stubble on his chin, regarding the pint as if it was something he had never seen in his life before. Then he lifted it and drank some back, stealing a glance to his right as he did, to where Frank was seated with his paper. Peggy watched his ritual. She noticed how his white hair curled like a baby’s around his ears. He could do with a visit to Mrs. Byrne’s himself, she thought. The idea made her smile. She knew it was more likely that he’d get his brother to cut any stray locks with a kitchen knife.

‘That’s a fine pint.’ He nodded at Peggy, wiping the froth from his whiskers. ‘A fine pint.’

‘Oh, only the best at Casey’s,’ Peggy sighed, lifting a bottle of fizzy orange from the shelf behind her. She opened it and poured it into a glass for herself, popping a plastic straw in from a box beside the till. She could drink it more discreetly from a straw. Carla was sitting with a few local lads, soaking up their unbridled admiration. So much for her helping out. Peggy noticed Coleman take another sideways glance at Frank who was standing up to leave. Frank removed his wallet from his back pocket and took out a note. She couldn’t help but notice the strawberry blond hairs on his chest just below his neck, where the top two buttons of his shirt were left open.

‘Thank you for that,’ he said to her, leaving the note down on the counter between them. ‘It was very nice.’

‘You’re very welcome.’ Peggy took the note and turned quickly to the till to hide her reddening cheeks. She glanced up into the mirror. Frank was standing awkwardly next to Coleman, the older man pointedly ignoring him as he gazed down into his pint.

‘Frank, have you met Coleman?’ Peggy said loudly into the till. She turned and handed Frank his change. ‘Coleman has lived in Crumm all his life. He knows more about the area than anyone. Coleman,’ Peggy said, ‘this is Detective Sergeant Frank … ’ she stopped.

‘Ryan,’ Frank finished.

‘Sorry,’ Peggy said. ‘Detective Sergeant Frank Ryan. He’s down from Dublin because of the body found at the lake. He’s been helping Garda O’Dowd with the … the situation.’

Peggy waited. Coleman just nodded slowly at his pint, not looking up at either of them.

‘Coleman,’ Frank said.

The older man just nodded again.

Peggy threw her eyes to heaven. ‘Maybe you might be able to help the guards with their enquiries, Coleman?’ She spoke slowly, as if Coleman might not understand. ‘You having all the local knowledge. About the valley and the lake.’

Still the older man said nothing.

‘He’s not from Dublin, Coleman,’ Peggy said under her breath. She silently implored Frank not to contradict her. ‘He’s just stationed there.’

‘Is that right?’ the older man said at last, from a mouth that was clearly short a few teeth. ‘And what part of the world do you hail from, Detective Sergeant?’

‘Galway, sir.’ Frank winked at Peggy, who was slowly wiping the already clean counter beside them. ‘I grew up in Galway. My parents are both from Connemara.’

‘I see.’ Coleman took a draught of his pint.

‘I’ve lived in Dublin for the past ten years though,’ Frank said, a note of defiance in his tone. ‘Longer.’

‘I suppose you have a ticket for the match Sunday, so,’ Coleman said.

Frank thought about the coveted All-Ireland football final ticket he had back in his room in Dublin, wedged in the frame of a picture of Saint Michael his mother had given him. He had a bad feeling that was as close to the Hogan Stand as the ticket was going to get.

‘I do’, he said.

Coleman drained his pint and left it down on the bar, just a fraction farther away from him than before. Without saying a word, Peggy took the glass away, and began to pull another for him.

‘Well,’ he said, rubbing his gnarled hands up and down his thighs as if he was trying to massage some life into his legs, ‘at least those bastards from Cork aren’t going to be there.’

Peggy snorted. ‘Oh, if there’s one thing we like less than people from Dublin around here, it’s people from Cork,’ she laughed, shaking her head at Frank.

Frank just smiled, and sat back up on the stool he had occupied earlier that evening. ‘So you know the area well,’ he said to Coleman. ‘Do you remember them moving the graves before the dam was built?’

Coleman looked up at Frank as if he might be mad. ‘Sure wasn’t it I myself who was doing the moving?’ he said, turning back to nod at the fresh pint that Peggy had placed in front of him. He shook his head. ‘It was a terrible job, so it was. Upset a lot of people, as you might understand.’ He spoke slowly, deliberately; each word pronounced as if it was not his first language he was using.

‘I’ll get that.’ Frank nodded at the glass of stout. ‘And I’ll have one myself.’ He handed Peggy back some of the coins.

The old man’s lips twitched and he bobbed his head in Frank’s direction. ‘A terrible job. But sure, that was what they made us do. They came down from Dublin one day. A group of them. Like Cromwell did before them. Oh, with their measuring instruments, and big cars, and cameras. They took one look at the place and decided the whole lot of it would be better off under water.’

Frank could sense Peggy’s embarrassment at the old man’s bitter appraisal of the engineers and civil servants who had probably only been doing their job. He guessed Coleman regarded Frank himself in much the same light.

‘1946 it was. Not long after the war.’ Coleman sat even straighter on his stool, squinting out before him into the past, remembering. For someone who would hardly speak five minutes before, it seemed that he had plenty to say after all. ‘But there were shortages of all sorts at that time. It took until 1952 before they finished it. 1948,’ he announced loudly, drawing out the words as though they should be set to music. Frank noticed a few of the locals in the bar look over briefly in their direction. ‘1948, 49. They bought up all the land, from Crumm and Ballyknock on the east of the valley to Slieve Mart on the west. And we all had to get out. That was it. We had the year to leave, that was all.’ He turned to Frank and looked him in the eye for the first time in the whole conversation. ‘And they did not pay what they should have for that land,’ he almost shouted, his eyes blaming Frank. ‘That they did not.’

He turned back to his pint and went quiet for a moment. Peggy served another customer at the bar, but Frank could feel her watching them all the while.

‘They paid us what they wanted to, and that was that,’ Coleman said. ‘And we took it, of course.’ His voice, quieter now, was tempered with resignation. ‘That dam was to be built whether we got a fair price for our land or not. The water would be the sheriff.’ His face creased with the memory.

Peggy laid a cardboard coaster on the counter in front of Frank, and set his pint down on it. ‘Coleman worked with the other men to move the graves to the new graveyard,’ she explained to Frank, looking hopefully at Coleman. ‘He might be able to show you where that was. Isn’t that right, Coleman?’

Coleman nodded. ‘It is,’ he said.

He leaned over to one side suddenly. Frank went to catch him, then realized that the man was just reaching into his trouser pocket. He took out a crushed packet of cigarettes and threw them onto the shiny, lacquered bar.

‘My land was to be flooded. I’d sold the few cattle I had. There was work to be had at the graveyard for a few of us, so that is what I spent the summer of 1950 doing. Moving bodies.’

He went quiet then. Frank sensed the gravity of what Coleman was describing to him. Even Peggy was silent, as she stood behind the bar opposite where they sat, her arms folded, her eyes fixed on the old man’s face.

‘That must have been a difficult job,’ Frank said.

‘Aye. ’Tis better to leave those who are dead in their resting place. No old bones want to be lifted.’ He took a cigarette from the box and tapped it on the counter. ‘And my own people were there, of course. ’Twas that way for all the men. And if your own people were to be disturbed, you were not to work that day. That was how it was settled.’

Frank shook his head. He couldn’t contemplate digging up the bones of the dead, and moving them to be buried somewhere else. It seemed wrong. But then, so did purposely flooding a whole village, and yet that was what had to be done. People wanted electricity, so people had to pay for it. One way or the other. His mind went back to the grave he had stood over earlier that afternoon.

‘But the cemetery wasn’t near this place? I believe it was across the valley?’

‘That’s right.’ Coleman leaned in over the counter as Peggy struck a match for him. ‘’Twas across under the shadow of Slieve Mart. Near the manor house. That was where we moved them from. The new cemetery isn’t far from the original site. Half a mile further up the hill, no more.’

Frank watched as the man pulled hard on his cigarette. It was clear that the body they had found was not from the old graveyard. He wasn’t really surprised. The shallow depth of the site, and the ominous sacking that the body seemed to be buried in had suggested that it was no consecrated grave. He wanted to ask Coleman outright if he had any idea who it might be, buried there on the shore, being watched over this very night by that young, eager, local lad. Surely if anyone had gone missing from the place in the past few decades, Coleman would know about it. But it was clear to Frank that Coleman didn’t trust him. The man’s memory of what officials from Dublin could do to a place like Crumm was obviously still fresh.

‘So it was a farm you had in the valley?’ he asked. ‘Was it cattle you said?’ He took a slow swig from his pint. He had better pace himself. He suspected that he was going to be in Casey’s a little later than he had intended.

Coleman looked as if he were deciding whether to answer Frank or not. After a moment, he spoke. ‘’Twas my father’s land. And his father’s before him. And then mine and Desmond’s. Ours alone. And we farmed it together.’

‘Desmond is Coleman’s brother,’ Peggy said quickly to Frank.

‘They came with the army. After everyone had left. In ’51 I think it was. They came with their explosives and they blew the lot up.’

Frank looked up from his pint. ‘They blew it up?’ he said. ‘Your house?’

‘Our home … place, the Kilty Bridge, the old mill. Some other buildings in the village. They blew them up. Thought it was a great sport. They clapped each other on the back and took photos for the paper.’ Coleman pursed his lips. ‘We watched from the bleachers. Those of us who were still around.’

‘Did many leave altogether?’ Peggy asked. Frank glanced at her but her eyes were fixed on the old man’s face.

Coleman looked up at her with a furrowed brow and flicked his cigarette into a big ceramic ashtray she had left down on the bar near to him. ‘Hardly a soul stayed,’ he said at last. ‘The land was gone. There was nothing to stay for.’ He fell silent for a moment, his eyes trained on the ashtray. ‘Most went up to Dublin. A few of the older ones moved in with family in Crumm. Tom Clancy,’ he looked up at Peggy who nodded. ‘Tom moved in with his daughter and her family in Ballyknock, Lord have mercy on him.’

A punter gestured to Peggy from across the room and she acknowledged him and reached for a bottle of stout.

‘Coleman worked as a postman in the village,’ she said to Frank as she flicked the cap off and tilted the bottle into a glass, ‘until he retired a few years back.’

More than a few, Frank thought to himself, trying to picture the old man cycling the roads with his bag of letters. But he couldn’t help but be struck by the man’s story. He had sensed it, down at the lake. Aside from the finding of the body, there was an eeriness about the place. Echoes of bitterness and loss were in the wind that blew up from the water. As he watched Peggy take the bottle and glass over to a man seated by a window, he tried to imagine Coleman and his brother, watching from a distance, as their home was legally blown up before them. Bachelor brothers, probably in their forties at the time, and all they owned in life taken from them without their consent. Too young to retire, too old to move up to Dublin and start anew. It couldn’t have been easy. Then he thought of something.

‘But I thought I saw the top of a building in the distance today? Out in the middle of the lake?’ he said.

‘You might well have, the water is so low.’ Coleman pushed another empty glass away from him across the bar. ‘Part of the mill remains. It didn’t all fall like they had wanted it to.’ He slapped his hand down on the counter and brandished his toothless grin at Frank. ‘Them army boys didn’t have it all their own way, Detective Sergeant.’

Peggy came back behind the bar, empty pint glasses in her arms. ‘Now, now, Coleman’, she said, glancing up at Frank, ‘there’s no need to frighten the customers. You need a drink, I see.’

She went to refill his glass, while the old man sat back into himself, growling something about not being made into a sheep farmer by any army hoor. Frank was thinking of how best to approach the subject of the body with him, when the phone rang loudly on the wall. Peggy turned to answer it, and Coleman eased himself off his high stool and shuffled off towards a door that led out the back to the toilet. Peggy turned in towards the wall and covered her ear with her hand.

‘Hello? Casey’s?’ The line crackled. She could tell someone was there, but the connection was so poor, she couldn’t make out what they were saying. ‘Hello?’ The static stopped, and her ear was assaulted by a man’s voice, booming through the receiver.

‘I know she’s there. Hello? Just let me speak to her. Please. I know she’s … ’ The last part of the man’s plea was drowned out by a particularly loud burst of static and Peggy put some distance between her ear and the handset. Something made her notice Carla, who was still sitting with her three admirers, but who was staring at Peggy with an accusing look on her face. Peggy tentatively brought the phone back to her ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Just let me talk to her. Please. Just for a minute.’

The man’s speech was slurred, as if he were crying, or drunk, or possibly both. But the line was clearer and Peggy recognized Tom Devereaux’s voice, pleading. She glanced back up at Carla, who was stalking across the room towards her, eyes burning. The handset was snatched from her hand and she was met with the back of Carla’s head. She hesitated for a moment, before moving away from her sister, and back behind the bar. Coleman had returned and was hoisting himself back up onto his stool.

‘You’re drunk.’ Carla spat the words into the receiver; her head bowed low, her back to the bar. Peggy hovered, moving glasses unnecessarily around on a shelf beneath the bar. She caught Frank’s eye, but his face was expressionless.

‘You’re full of shite, Tom.’ The tirade continued behind her. ‘Off home with you now. I’m sure she’ll have your dinner waiting.’

Peggy wasn’t shocked at her sister’s tone exactly, more at the fact that some other person could be on the receiving end of it. She’d assumed that Carla only spoke to her siblings like that. She almost pitied Tom Devereaux. He might be an adulterous ass, but she couldn’t wish Carla’s ire on anyone. She looked at Frank who seemed to be concentrating on looking disinterested. Coleman was busy muttering nothing good into his pint glass.

‘Don’t you dare Tom.’ Carla’s voice was getting louder. Peggy looked anxiously around the room, but no one seemed to be taking any heed of her.

‘It’s bad enough I’ll have to look at you on Monday morning. Go to bed. Sleep it off. With your wife.’

The handset was slammed up against the phone and Carla stood staring at it for a moment. Suddenly, she swung around and glared at Peggy, her eyes blazing.

‘What?’ she spat at her. ‘What are you looking at?’ Then she seemed to notice Frank watching her, and she turned and walked through the door leading to the house. Peggy watched her go. She considered following her for a second, but quickly decided against it. Turning back to the bar, she looked at Frank.

‘That’s Carla. She’s the quiet, reserved one.’

Frank smiled at her. ‘So how many of you are there?’

‘Four.’ Peggy lifted a mineral glass from the little draining board next to the sink under the bar and started to polish it dry. ‘Two brothers, Carla, and me.’ She smiled. ‘I’m the baby.’

‘I see.’ Frank twisted his pint glass on the bar. Peggy noticed his eyelashes. They were long and fair. Not blond, but fair. Funny, she thought. She’d never noticed any man’s eyelashes before.

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