about them. I’ve a right to be here, they seemed to say. Still, he’d noted the way fear had pinched her nose, giving lie to her bravado. Her bitten nails said something, too.
Slowly, he drove along the harbor, past the courthouse and jail. Moments later, he pulled up outside the Pot o’ Gold, the bed-and-breakfast run by Annie Ryan—when she wasn’t working at the tourist office. Once it had been a convent run by the Mercy Nuns and then, much later, an orphanage. By the time he was born, the place was long disused and abandoned, but that had never stopped his old man from threatening to pack him off there with just the clothes on his back.
All done up now with lace curtains and amber lights in the windows, but Niall could still recall the cold, hollow fear that had gripped him as he’d stared up at the blank windows. Watching for the boy-eating rats that he’d been told lived inside.
Slowly, it had dawned on him that his wailing and begging and tearful promises to behave himself had quite entertained the old man and that a sure way to prolong the ordeal was to let on that he was scared. He’d learned to hide his fear by pretending to himself that it wasn’t really him standing there. That it was all happening to someone else, and he was just a bystander.
A twitch of the curtains broke his reverie, and he got out of the car and walked up the pathway. Given the speed with which Annie Ryan answered his knock, she’d evidently been at the window. Her hand went to her throat, and her eyes registered his mud-splattered boots. A lamp behind her cast an amber glow.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Maguire?”
“I was looking for Elizabeth Jenkins. I have it right, do I? This is where she’s living?”
“It is,” Annie said. “For now at least. She’s visiting from England. The daughter of a friend of mine.”
Niall heard the sound of the television from inside the house. Behind Annie, he could see the polished wooden floors in the hallway and off to one side the floral chintz of a chair cover. He had never eaten a meal at the Pot o’ Gold, but Annie’s cooking was legendary and as he stood there, he caught a whiff of a roast or stew that made him suddenly ravenous and more than a little lonely. “Elizabeth was to meet me tonight at Cragg’s Head Leap,” he said.
Annie’s eyes narrowed.
“She’s a student in the photography class I teach at the college,” he explained.
“Ah.” Her expression cleared momentarily. “Well, that’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“We were going to take some pictures—” He stopped, unable to remember if he’d said that already. Uncomfortable suddenly, he turned to leave. “Anyway, I’ll not keep you. I thought I’d just drop by and see if you might know where she is.”
Annie cupped her chin in one hand and gave him a long look as though she had something to ask him but didn’t quite know how to put it.
“Do you do that often, then?” Her eyes didn’t leave his face. “Meet students after class?”
He felt an unaccustomed surge of anger. Her tone was polite, but the inference was unavoidable. He took a deep breath, shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket.
“No, I don’t, Mrs. Ryan. Hardly ever. Most students don’t show the promise and enthusiasm Elizabeth does. I don’t do it because it takes time out of my own schedule that I could use to do other things, but I try to encourage students when they obviously have the talent.”
“Elizabeth’s a very young and impressionable girl,” Annie said as though she was justifying her question. “It wouldn’t take much to turn her head.” Her face had colored slightly, though, and her glance shifted beyond his shoulder. “It’s awful foggy out, isn’t it? Could you have seen much?”
“Sure, it’s a bit patchy,” he said, wanting to end the conversation. “Drifts in and out, but it allows for some interesting effects. If you wouldn’t mind, I’ll give you my card. Perhaps you’d have Elizabeth ring me when she gets home.”
She took the card from him and dropped it into the pocket of her skirt. “Right then. If there’s nothing more you need then, Mr. Maguire, I’ve supper getting cold.”
He was already on the road back up to Sligo when he remembered something Sharon, his business partner, had said that morning about a meeting at the bank. For a moment he hesitated, then, with a sigh of resignation, he turned around and headed back for Cragg’s Head to make peace with Sharon. The conversation with Annie Ryan played on in his head as he drove. It had been no more hostile than other encounters he’d had since Moruadh’s death, but he was usually able to ignore them all. Tonight he couldn’t, and he wasn’t sure why.
THROUGH THE MISTED GLASS of the Gardai car, Kate could see a uniformed man slumped down in the driver’s seat, his head thrown back. Sound asleep from the look of it. It was the same car she’d seen half an hour earlier. Somehow she’d managed to drive in a circle. Maybe as a penalty for past transgressions she’d been sentenced to spend the rest of her life driving along the cliffs of western Ireland.
She rapped on the window.
The man stirred, opened his eyes and muttered something unintelligible. Then he fixed her with a bleary-eyed stare. Early twenties, she guessed, with a mop of dark hair and a ruddy complexion. His blue uniform shirt was open at the neck and pulled out of his trousers. She couldn’t make out the letters on the brass name badge.
“Hi.” She smiled and caught a strong whiff of alcohol. “I’m trying to get to Dooley’s Bar in Cragg’s Head and somehow—”
“Straight ahead,” he said. “Five minutes down the road.”
“I think that’s what I did, but—”
“It’s the only way,” he said. “Go in any other direction and you’ll fall into the water.”
“Okaay.” Kate slowly nodded. “Well, thanks.” As she started to leave, a thought struck her and she turned back. “Listen, one other thing. I may have seen something out on the cliffs.” She glanced at her watch. “About an hour ago, I guess. It could have been a fight…the fog made it kind of difficult to tell, but you might want to check it out.”
The man stared at her for a moment, then seemed suddenly aware of the state of his clothes. One hand moved to his midsection. His eyes became fractionally more alert.
“Right then,” he sat up. “I’ll see that it gets written up. Good evening now.”
Kate glanced over her shoulder as she walked back to her car. “Five minutes, you said?”
“That’s right,” the Garda said. “Five minutes at the most.”
CHAPTER TWO
HALF AN HOUR LATER, with apologies to Hugh Fitzpatrick for being late, Kate squeezed into one of the narrow wooden booths at the back of Dooley’s main lounge. “Obviously, I should have allowed more time for getting lost,” she said, peering at the reporter through a blue haze of cigarette smoke.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Fitzpatrick said with a grin. “Sure, it’s no crime to waste a little time now and then.” He glanced over at the bar where half a dozen men in cloth caps and heavy jackets sat nursing pints, then lifted his empty tankard in the direction of the bartender. “And this is as good a place as any to do it.”
Kate studied him for a moment. Mid-thirties. Hawkish nose, sallow complexion. His hair dark, lank and a shade too long. Old tweed jacket, jeans and a black turtleneck. Struggling-writer type, she’d dated a few of them. They were always bad news. Lost in the world that existed between their ears. She watched him light a new cigarette from the one he’d been smoking. Judging from the empty glasses on the table and the speed with which he’d consumed the last pint, she figured he’d had some firsthand experience wasting time in bars.
In the window behind him, she caught a glimpse of her own reflection and moved her chair