The Celtic Riddle (22 page)

"Absolutely," I replied. I took a photo of the dining room set the
seller had given me out of my bag and laid it out in front of him.
"See? Lovely, isn't it? I found a beautiful silver tea service, too."

"Great," he said, handing the photo back to me. We seemed to be
having trouble talking about anything other than police work, I
realized. We used to talk all the time. This was not so good.

"Well," he said. "Down to business. Let's go over that evening
again. Michael and Breeta left together?"

"Yes. She had to catch the last bus into Killarney. Michael was
going to walk her to the bus stop, then he'd promised her he'd go back
to Second Chance to get Vigs."

"The turtle," Rob said.

"Tortoise, actually, but yes."

"Method of transportation?"

"He was walking her to the bus, but he had his bicycle, so he would
have used that to get to the house. She would confirm this, I'm sure."

"She has, more or less. Sullen young woman, isn't she? Has she said
anything to you?"

"Not a word," I said. "Literally. She's not speaking to me."

"She's not saying much to anybody, I gather. Okay," he sighed. "The
last bus was at ten-thirty. Breeta was on it: the driver remembers her.
He thinks Michael was at the stop, which makes sense. He would have
waited with her until the bus came. Then he bicycles to Second Chance.
That would take at least twenty minutes. Brendan here," he said
gesturing to the officer at the desk next to him, who smiled,
"strapping young man that he is, did the route and timed it. Let's say
he got there about eleven. Now Conail was in and out of various pubs
all evening, although he has difficulty accounting for his time
beginning around ten or ten-thirty. He says he ran into Fionuala, and
they had another argument, a loud one, I gather. Several people say
they heard a man and a woman shouting at each other out in the street.
That may account for a few minutes, but that's all. What do you figure
Michael did?"

"I think he did what he said he would do. He went back to Second
Chance to get Vigs. He could let himself in at the back door. The staff
had keys to the staff entrance. It was late…"

"Not all that late, but the family, that is Sean, Eithne, and
Margaret claim to have gone to bed very early, and didn't hear a thing.
Deirdre has a room up in the attic, so she probably wouldn't have heard
anything. She claims she didn't. She does say, though, that she saw
Conail creeping around outside the house. She looked out the window,
apparently. It was raining a little, so it might have been difficult to
see in the dark, but she says she recognized his walk and his shape.
Conail is adamant that he went nowhere near the place."

"So Michael would have gone looking for Vigs. Deirdre had Vigs,
though. She gave him to me when she went to Dublin. That may mean
Michael didn't find Vigs, that he never made it into the house, or that
he did and took him outside. Did Deirdre say where she found Vigs?"

"In the house, she says."

"So Michael could have run into Conail before he got into the house.
And then what? Conail stabs him with a hypodermic?"

"Conail doesn't seem to have a drug problem, just an alcohol and
temper problem," Rob replied. "These Irish do seem to like their drink,
don't they? Almost a stereotype, some of them. But I don't know. Conail
insists he didn't see Michael that evening at all. Too busy yelling at
his wife to have seen Michael in the bar at the Inn, apparently. The
question is, even if he did, why kill him? Just because he'd had a very
bad day? It wasn't Michael's fault Conail's wife ditched him, although
I suppose she could have been flirting with him. She was flashing a
fair amount of leg around that evening, chest too, if I remember
correctly."

I smiled to myself. I'd thought he was so besotted with Maeve that
he hadn't noticed Fionuala, but apparently he had.

"And it wasn't Michael who flattened him out at Malachy and Kevin's
place: It was our very own Alex." He grinned. "Sure wish I'd been there
to see that. So what would he kill Michael for?"

"For a clue?" I said. "Michael had a clue in his hand, part of one
at least."

"We've looked into the clues, of course, talked to those lawyers,
McCafferty and McGlynn, one of them anyway. I can't seem to tell them
apart," he said, checking his notes. "McCafferty it was. He says they
had nothing to do with hiding the second set of clues and didn't know
who did. Nor did they know which line of the poem went in each of the
envelopes. I suppose we have to believe him, being a fellow member of
the justice system and all that." "Did you find out what clues everyone
had? That would be important, wouldn't it?"

"Of course I did," Rob said. "I'm a seasoned crime investigator,
remember? Conail and Fionuala got one about," he stopped and looked at
his file again, "a ray of the sun. Conail showed it to me, or rather he
threw it at me. Margaret claims to have destroyed hers, without looking
at it, so it could be anything; Eithne and Sean got the clue about the
stag of seven slaughters; Padraig Gilhooly got…"

"Salmon in a pool," I interjected. "Michael got the furious wave,
Alex, the sea-swell. The trouble is there are more clues than people,
or original envelopes if you will. The beauty of the plant might have
been Breeta's clue, the one stolen from the safe at Second Chance.
Michael must have found it-maybe he wrestled Conail for it. Michael was
awfully fond of Breeta, and he'd not want anyone else to get her clue."

"Wrestled Conail or somebody else," he replied. "Could be. Or maybe
he just found it in the house somewhere. A lot of speculation isn't
there? We'll keep seeing what we can get from Conail. Ban Garda Minogue
is interrogating him now." I noticed he always referred to her as
Minogue in my presence and never Maeve. "We haven't got enough evidence
to hold him for the murder-at this point it's her word against his-but
fortunately perhaps, he's given us another reason to keep him here.
Garda Murphy might not agree it's fortuitous, of course. His nose is
being looked at right now. Broken, most likely, and swelling up
something fierce. By the way," he said, "can you decipher this?" He
handed me a sheet of paper, one that I'd come to recognize, with Eamon
Byrne's initials and Second Chance at the top.

"Conail's clue?"

"Yup. He gave it to us. Said it was a worthless piece of junk.
Jennifer told me you'd all been able to decipher any that turned up,
ogham or something I think she said."

"It is. Alex is really the expert. He broke the code, so to speak. I
recognize some of the letters now, but I'd have to have my cheat sheet.
It's in a safety-deposit box at the Inn. Make me a copy, and I'll go
right back there, do it and call you back."

"Thanks," he smiled. "That will save us some time. I already have a
copy, so here it is. I'd like the rest of the clues, too, if you don't
mind, although I gather they don't say much. Don't say anything about
Deirdre's accusations, will you? We don't want to reveal our source to
the family, most especially to Conail himself. We've just told him that
an unspecified someone passing by saw him hanging around there. How's
Jennifer doing, by the way? She's all right, isn't she? I haven't seen
her much lately, but she seems happy."

The question I'd been dreading. I looked about me. There was one
garda, Rob's deskmate, working just a few feet away, two others well
within earshot. Somehow, I didn't think this was the time to tell him
his daughter thought she was in love with an Irish sailor twice her
age. "She's okay," I said. "But I think she misses you and your
fatherly guidance." There, that was a big hint. "You should try and
spend some time with her, just the two of you, so you can talk."

"Yes," he replied. "I should, and I will. I'm sure she's getting
plenty of guidance from you, though. Just like you're guiding me, right
now." He smiled. "Thanks for the advice."

I got up to leave. If he thought I was giving his daughter guidance,
he wasn't going to be too pleased with the result. "Since I'm
dispensing advice right now, I have some more for you. Get some sleep,"
I said as I headed out the door. I heard him chuckle, but didn't look
around.

Conail and Fionuala's clue, the ray of the sun, was Grianan Ailech
to Granard down the line of the noonday sun. No more helpful than any
of the rest. I wrote them all down on a piece of paper and dropped them
off at the garda station for Rob on the way to my next buying
expedition. I'd heard there was an auction at a town on the other side
of the Dingle Peninsula called Ballyferriter. I stopped off for a bite
of lunch at a little wine bar on the main street of town and found, to
my surprise, Jennifer and Gilhooly, Malachy and Kevin. I smiled at her
and the two brothers, and glared at Gilhooly.

"How'd you get all the way over here?" I asked them.

"Paddy borrowed a van," Jennifer said, gesturing toward the window.
A dilapidated van sat outside.

"We've found another clue," Jennifer said. "I made a copy of Uncle
Alex's ogham table and brought it along."

"It's a mystery," Malachy said. Jennifer handed me the paper.

"All seen and seeing ring of fire," I read. "Which line of the poem
did this one come from?"

"A flame of valor," Malachy replied. "And we've found another one,
the one that goes with he who clears the mountain paths. Kev here had
the idea that would refer to Mt. Brandon, named after St. Brandon, so
we hiked all the way up the path to a cairn, and found it there."

"That's great," I said.

"Not entirely," Malachy said. "Tere's a small problem with it, you
see. 'Twas hidden the same way as the others, and it has Byrne's
initials on it and everything."

"But?"

"But it's blank! Here, take a look."

I looked. The now familiar paper was there, but it was, as Malachy
said, quite blank.

"What does this mean?" Jennifer asked no one in particular. "The
paper doesn't look as if it's ever been wet, or anything. Like the ink
might have washed away."

"How should I know?" I replied. "Unless…" They all looked at me.

"There have been more of the second set of clues than the first. I
mean, we've found ogham clues for lines of the poem no one was given.
Presumably, we were supposed, with the clues we got, to figure out it
was from 'Song of Amairgen,' and go and find all the lines of the poem,
not just the ones we had." I stopped there, and they all waited. "So,"
I hesitated. "So I don't know."

"So, this means that when we get this far, there are no more clues,"
Jennifer said. "Isn't that what you're thinking?"

"I guess so. We're still missing some lines before this. We would
have to try and find them, to see if there are any ogham clues that go
with them, and maybe one or two lines after this one to see if they are
blank too. Then we'd know."

"The lines from this one, the one about the mountain paths," Malachy
said, looking at the copy of the poem Jennifer had brought with her,
"are slightly different in structure. Instead of I am something or
other, they start with he who: he who clears the mountain paths, he who
describes the passage of the moon and so on. So maybe we have come to
the end of the clues. Maybe we need to find the missing ones before
that. We're missing the one about the stag of seven battles and the ray
of the sun, aren't we?"

"Not anymore," I said. "We now have ray of the sun, which is," I
paused to hold up my notes.

"Grianan Ailech to Granard down the line of the noonday sun,"
Jennifer read aloud. "Where did you find this one?"

"The garda station," I replied. "It's a long story." I felt vaguely
guilty about handing over the clue I got from Rob. But I'd given him
all the ones we had so far, hadn't I?

"Did you get a chance to talk to Dad?" Jennifer asked. She looked a
little lonely in a way, I thought, and missing him. She was wondering
whether I'd told him about her and Paddy.

"Only briefly," I said. "There were a lot of people around." She
looked relieved. "Don't tell him I told you about Conail's clue," I
added.

"Maybe we could do a deal here," she said, a mischievous smile
slowly appearing on her face.

"And maybe we couldn't," I said, although I found myself beginning
to smile too. "Just don't tell him."

"What did she say?" Kevin asked.

"She said don't tell Rob she told us the clue," Malachy said
directly into Kevin's ear.

"Not that, the clue," Kevin shouted. "What was the clue?"

"Grianan Ailech to Granard down the line of the noonday sun,"
Malachy shouted back. A couple of other diners looked our way.

"I know Granard," Kevin said. "It's a town, County Longford, I
believe. I don't know about this ring of fire thing, but Granard's a
real place."

"This is the first real place name we've had," Paddy said. "Maybe
it's hidden in Granard. Maybe we should go there. I'll see if I can
keep the van for another day or two. We could leave tonight."

Jennifer doing an overnighter with this guy? I didn't think so.

"Hold on a sec," I said. "There are a lot of other clues we still
haven't found. Why don't we just concentrate on finding them all, and
then see what we've got."

Jennifer looked disappointed. "I guess you're right," she sighed.
"But I just want to get going and find this thing, whatever it is."

"That's a good point," I said. "Eamon Byrne said the clues were
about what it was, as well as where it was. Maybe the Granard clue is a
what, not a where. Without the what, even if we knew where, we wouldn't
know what to look for. I mean is it bigger than a bread-box? Animal,
vegetable, mineral?"

"I think it's gold," Malachy said. "The bogs. Eamon Byrne was in the
turf business, peat. They've found all sorts of treasures hidden in the
bogs, stashes of gold and everything. The Celts apparently hid stuff in
the bogs, or maybe they threw it in as an offering or something. Roman
coins, Viking treasures, gold tores. Those are the metal collars the
Celts wore around their necks," he said to Jennifer. "In battle that
was all they wore, that and their swords and shields. Starkers, they
were, when they were fighting. Must have been something to see." He
roared with laughter and slapped his knee. "Denny has some good stories
about those battles," he said. "We'll get him to tell them soon. That's
if you're up to helping him to a whiskey or three, Lara," he added.