The Avalon Chanter (33 page)

Had Niamh stared intently at a man who should
not have been fighting, who should have stayed home—one who’d lost
his freedom? What would a ginger-haired leprechaun look like if
he’d spent umpteen years detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure, two
decades chewing over what-might-have-beens? Would that leprechaun
devolve into a troll?

Jean realized all three men were staring at
her, Darling nonplussed, Michael amused, Alasdair verging on
patient, but not quite there.

From inside came a gust of laughter. A gust
of wind from the opposite direction sent a cold, not at all
paranormal, chill down Jean’s back. “It’s not how he arrived here.
It’s when. He said he was on the ferry because he needed an
alibi.”

This time it was Alasdair who asked,
“Eh?”

“
Who has a whopping big motive to kill
Grinsell? Who did Grinsell track down, intimidate, and bring to
trial—after Maggie’s rubbish trial—and those were Parkinson’s exact
words. Who knew better than anyone that her trial was rubbish? The
third person who was there when Oliver Phillips was
killed.”

“
Donal McCarthy?” Alasdair’s eyebrows
were working overtime.

“
Who?” Michael asked.

“
Niamh’s father. Tara’s father. The man
who would have gotten away with murder, except for Grinsell.” Jean
rushed on—it made sense, it hung together—her words fell over each
other and a wave of heat rose up her body so swiftly that surely
steam wafted from her head. “Miranda said Donal McCarthy was sent
down for life. How long is ‘life’ here?”

“
Often no more than fifteen years, with
good conduct.” Alasdair backed off a step. “Jean, you’re making one
hell of a leap.”

Michael and Darling shared a wary glance.
“She’s doing this all the time,” Michael told him.

“
Is she now?” asked Darling.

“
Yes, it’s a leap.” Jean said. “It’s an
Olympic-quality broad jump. For one thing, how did Niamh recognize
Donal in his current condition? Heck, Maggie didn’t recognize him,
and she sure knew him better than Niamh ever did—she said earlier
she and her mother never heard from him.”

Alasdair was always willing to consider
what-ifs. “Niamh could have become curious about him the way Maggie
became curious about the child she gave up.”

“
Maybe she looked him up ages ago—he
told me he’d come to Farnaby to see Maggie again—he was honest
about that. He may not have covered her trial as a reporter, but he
had to have hung on every word—what if he came out here to see
Niamh, too? He might even have sprung himself on her. Ta-da, it’s
me, your long-lost daddy!”

“
If Donal’s the murderer, then looks to
be Niamh’s helping him out. Starting with giving him the
torch.”

“
If Parkinson, if Donal—whoever, if he
deliberately killed Grinsell with Maggie’s flashlight then left it
where it would be easily found . . .”

“
. . . he could have gone collecting
the wee pick during the night, planting it near the scene, trying
to put Maggie in the frame.” Alasdair’s eyes sparked, the mental
friction producing fire.

“
He intended to get revenge against
Grinsell and against her, too. Two birds with one stone.” Hadn’t
she thought of that already? Jean asked herself. Yes, except then
she’d been afraid Niamh was the culprit. No matter. “So is Niamh
with him now? Voluntarily or otherwise? What if Park—Donal realizes
his scheme to implicate Maggie has backfired? What
then?”

Darling whipped out his phone the way an
American cop would whip out his gun. “I’ll get onto Berwick, see if
McCarthy is still inside.”

“
Even if it’s not McCarthy,” Alasdair
told him, “even if Parkinson’s his own man, he needs apprehending
soon as may be. Sooner.”

“
I’ll get Miranda to check with
The Daily Dish
, see what his
background is there.” Jean pulled her bag around and groped for her
own phone. “We’ve got to warn Maggie, too.”

Michael took off toward the B&B, holding
the tray out in front of him. “I’m after telling Rebecca and Pen
what’s happening. If I can be helping after that . . .”

“
You can be helping, aye.” Alasdair’s
words fell like pellets of hail. “Sergeant, have Banks stopped in
Seahouses—the more the merrier when it’s coming to breaking alibis.
Then collect everyone who’s sober enough to not go falling over a
cliff. We’ll be after finding Niamh McCarthy if we’re turning over
every stone on the island. Let’s be hoping she’s still on
it.”

Chapter Thirty-one

Jean stood in the old book shop, the incident
room, now Alasdair’s command center. In the sickly light of the
fluorescent bulb, the place only looked more appealing this time
around because Grinsell wasn’t in it.

A little voice in her mind
counseled,
Don’t speak ill of the
dead
. Another voice advised,
Honesty is the best policy
. Rejecting both
voices, she leaned over several masculine shoulders, the better to
see the map of Farnaby Island spread out on the plastic
table.

The discussion sounded like a small symphony
with Alasdair as conductor. Crawford was the slow beat of a
percussion instrument. Darling was more of a flute, providing
bright notes both to Alasdair and to different voices on his phone.
James Fleming was a woodwind, his deep voice pointing out different
sites and options. Other islanders, musicians, and sundry made
helpful entrances and purposeful exits.

Nothing like a damsel in distress to clean
out the pub and set every sober man’s face in determined lines.
Nothing like a woman in jeopardy to make Pen rise from her fainting
couch—or so Michael had reported—and start preparing yet more tea
and baked goods, this time with Rebecca’s help. A search party ran
on its stomach.

Funny how in a crisis so many people
defaulted to more-or-less traditional gender roles. The men
protected, the women supplied . . . Well, more than one local woman
had turned up, prepared from head scarf to wellies to wade in with
the men.

All they needed was Hector and Michael piping
inspirational tunes, Hugh fiddling accompaniment. But Michael had
gone off with one set of searchers and Hector with another. Hugh,
after first volunteering to go as well, had gracefully agreed to
oversee an impromptu canteen in the pub.

The soundtrack consisted of voices,
footsteps, the revving of engines, the slow pulse of the wind and
the sea. And an electronic “Hail to the Chief,” which seemed
appropriate to Alasdair’s calm, cool, voice—oh! Jean realized her
own phone called for attention and dived for her bag, sitting on a
chair near the door to the back room. “Hey, Miranda. You got my
text after all. It was more of a short story, I’m afraid.”

“
But fascinating reading. I was pleased
to feel my phone giving a shudder, to tell the truth. It’s a
tourist agency dinner. Half the table’s asleep in the brandy
snifters, the other half is arguing over the pedicures of angels
dancing on heads of pins. I’m skiving off in the cloak room just
now—Duncan can go filling me in on what I’m missing, if
anything.”

“
No angels on pins here. It’s life and
death. I’m hoping Niamh’s not in danger.”

“
You’re also hoping she’s not gone over
to her father’s dark side, I expect.”

“
You think?” A
Star Wars
joke! Miranda was making progress. “The
latest is that Crawford heard back from his counterpart in
Seahouses. The
News of the North
reporter, Rosalie, met Donal at the pub. She’d never laid
eyes on him before then—certainly not on the ferry. She had no idea
Parkinson wasn’t his real name and does this mean she’s missed a
proper scoop here on Farnaby?”

“
Parkinson is Donal, then?”

“
Oh yeah, it’s the same guy. Darling’s
checked out his photo and everything. Good conduct got him out of
prison after fifteen years.”

“
My contact at the
Dish
was a bit hard to hear, with the techno
music in the background—no telling where he was having his Saturday
night—but I caught the sense of it. He hired Donal McCarthy on
three years since.”

“
He knew Donal’s real identity, then.”
The door in the back of the shop still stood partly open, like it
had been last night. Jean peered through the slit into the shadowed
room and its lopsided shelf loaded with moldering bits of dead
trees. Were the books worth rescuing?

“
Oh aye,” Miranda said. “He agreed to
keep it secret, though, let Donal work under a
nom de keyboard
, so long as he used his contacts
with the criminal element in reporting true crime
stories.”

“
Berwick told Darling that Parkinson
worked as a snout, a police informant, in prison. A stool-pigeon.
There’s your good conduct.” Jean laughed humorlessly. “He’s still a
musician, I guess. Still ‘singing.’ ”

A string quartet trilled behind Miranda’s
sultry voice, flowing and ebbing as the door of the cloak room
opened and shut. “How’s Maggie getting on?”

“
Alasdair phoned her, told her to lock
the doors, close the drapes, and keep Tara inside. She’s Donal’s
daughter too, if not the one he knew as a baby. Lance Eccleston . .
.” Did Miranda know who Lance was? It was a bit late to add a new
character to the narrative. Whatever, Jean plunged on, “And Lance
said he’d keep an eye on Gow House.”

“
That’s all to the good, but how’s
Maggie getting on?”

“
Darned if I know. When I asked
Alasdair how she sounded he goggled at me as though I’d said
something in Martian.”

Miranda laughed. “No, you’d said something in
Venusian. Female.”

A straightforward mobile ring tone made
Crawford step away from the map and set his phone to his ear. After
a moment’s conversation he said, “Thank you kindly. That’s right
helpful.” And, to Alasdair, “A chap on the south side of the
island’s found a rowboat abandoned on a bit of beach. It matches
the description of the one gone missing from the north side of
Lindisfarne.”

“
Where’s this again?” Alasdair
indicated the map.

Crawford bent over it and pointed. All the
heads leaned in for a better look.

Jean exhaled, so loudly Miranda asked, “Was
that by way of being a sigh of relief?”

“
Sort of. They’ve found a boat reported
stolen on Lindisfarne. That’s probably how Donal got back on the
island. It looks like he’s still here, and Niamh with him.” She
didn’t need to add all the appropriate caveats. Miranda’s
imagination might run to matter-of-fact rather than fantasy, but
she had enough of one to fill in the cautions for
herself.

Alasdair said, “Jean here spoke with McCarthy
at the ferry slip on the mainland and saw him going off toward a
car. Likely he was still in the area last evening, when the balloon
went up about the body in the chapel.”

And he saw his chance to
score points off Maggie
,
Jean added
silently.

Crawford’s face seemed less lively than the
one of the statue on Lindisfarne. “Did McCarthy know D.I. Grinsell
would be the responding officer?”

“
He worked the crime beat for
The Daily Dish
,” Jean said. “He had
names, ranks, and serial numbers of every cop in Northumberland. In
the UK, probably. I bet he has a contact in Berwick who told him
exactly who went where and when.”

Darling winced, no doubt wondering how many
walls back at headquarters had ears and making a mental note to
have a word with D.C.I. Webber sooner rather than later.

“
Thank you kindly,” Alasdair told Jean,
with a curt nod that she accepted at face value—high
praise.

He’d been doing quite a balancing act,
commanding troops who weren’t properly his. Weren’t Webber’s
original orders to liaise with Darling, work side-by-side? But
then, an intelligent youth like Darling had to be relieved to fall
into competent clutches.

“
There’s a perfect storm for you,” said
Miranda in her ear. “Donal had himself Grinsell and Maggie and a
juicy story, all at once.”

“
And his long-lost older daughter
working in Maggie’s home,” Jean replied. “I’ll bet he congratulated
himself up one side and down the other.”

“
The causeway was open last evening,”
Alasdair went on, “so McCarthy quick-smart drove across to
Lindisfarne. Or he might have already been there, meaning to spend
the night. No matter now. He helped himself to the boat and arrived
back on Farnaby in good time to get Maggie’s torch from Niamh. He
likely slept rough at Merlin’s Tower. Cruz is saying he saw a light
there just before midnight. Someone’s had a look at the
place?”

“
Aye,” James replied. “Went over it
with a fine-toothed comb, he did. No one’s there.”

“
Time to be having a look at the
outlying barns and byres, then.”

“
With no more than moonlight to be
seeing by . . .”

“
Well,” Alasdair said, “do the best you
can.”

It was cold out there. And while the light of
the full moon would be helpful, it also created very dense shadows.
A searcher could pass Donal and Niamh within a few feet and not see
them.

Jean thought of Niamh shivering with the
chill, with fear, with uncertainty. At least, she wanted to think
that’s what Niamh was doing, not that she sat there high-fiving
dear old dad for a scheme well carried out—if complicated by the
presence of a certain Scottish detective. “Although,” she mused
aloud, “if Donal and Niamh were collaborating, surely they’d be
long gone by now.”