Lake of Sorrows

“Hang on one second,” Cormac said. “Before you call anyone, I was thinking that I may know the place Desmond Quill mentioned at lunch. There’s an abandoned shed on the road out to Loughnabrone, from the time when they used to manufacture concrete drainpipes out here. The place I’m thinking of hasn’t been used in years, but it would probably still be full of dry concrete. Might be worth a quick visit before dark, to see if anyone appears to have been using it.”

The midsummer twilight lasted for hours, but darkness was just beginning to settle in the east as they left the Crosses and turned out onto the main road to Birr.

“How do you happen to know about this place?” Nora asked.

“Well, I’m not absolutely sure it’s the place Quill was talking about. But I used to know this whole area pretty well. There’s no guarantee that the place I remember is still there, but abandoned places tend not to change too much.”

The shed was exactly where Cormac remembered it, down a lane in a thick tangle of brushy trees. “Let’s leave the car out of sight if we can,” Nora said. “If someone’s there, it would be better to approach on foot.”

Cormac steered the jeep behind a huge bale of black polythene on the overgrown verge, took a torch from his glove box, and handed Nora another from his site kit. The twilight was fading fast. They approached the shed, a single-story rusting metal structure with a few dusty windows about ten feet off the ground and a huge padlock on the door. Nora checked the lock, careful not to touch the metal for fear of marring any fingerprints that might remain. It didn’t look brand-new, but it probably hadn’t been there more than a couple of years at the most. “I’d love to look in the windows,” she said. “There’s nothing around we could climb on, is there?”

“I hear a car,” Cormac said, and they both scrambled for cover, just managing to duck around the corner of the shed before Owen Cadogan’s silver Nissan pulled up beside it. Cadogan popped open the boot of his car and jumped out, fishing in his trouser pocket for the key. He let himself into the shed. Nora made a move to look inside the open door, but Cormac held her back. They heard rustling inside, and small groans of exertion; soon Cadogan emerged again, carrying a bulky bundle wrapped in black plastic over one shoulder. He dumped it without ceremony into the open boot, then locked up the shed again and drove away. As soon as he was out of sight, Nora sprinted toward the jeep, and felt Cormac close behind her.

They kept their distance out on the main road, and followed Cadogan when he turned down a narrow byway that led to the canal. There was no sign of his car ahead of them on the one-lane road. The jeep’s headlights fell on a ruined cottage, its windows blocked with weathered boards, once someone’s home, now an outbuilding of some kind. Nettles and blackberry brambles, signs of neglect, grew thick along the verge. Not many people would pass this way anymore, especially since the canal was so little used. The lane began to narrow suddenly, and the overgrown hedges at the roadside slapped against the car. But movement in the branches ahead told them that Cadogan had passed this way only a short time earlier. Eventually, after about a quarter-mile of winding road, they came to an abrupt stop at the canal. The hedge outside Nora’s window was chopped and twisted, as if it had been trimmed recently with a large, dull blade, and the pulpy bone-white wood inside lay exposed. A gravel towpath stretched in both directions, with no sign of a car either way. There was no other road Cadogan could have turned onto, but there was a small humpback bridge about fifty yards to the left. He might have gone over it; there was no way to tell, and going over the bridge might give them away. Nora was about to give up hope when a pair of red taillights suddenly appeared off to their right.

“Stay here,” she said, opening her door and climbing out of the jeep. By the time she’d made it around to the driver’s side, Cormac was out of the car as well.

“Wherever you think you’re going, Nora, I’m going with you.”

“Just down the towpath to see what he’s doing there.”

He nodded and followed behind her, crouching close to the hedgerow for cover. The rutted path was little used and filled with potholes. Nora saw the swordlike leaves of yellow flag growing along the canal bank, heard the birch trees on the far side rustle in the night wind. Ahead, Cadogan’s car bumped slowly down the path, sometimes swerving to avoid the deepest holes. They might be able to get impressions of his tire tracks, Nora thought, if that became necessary. Suddenly the car ahead stopped, and she and Cormac stopped as well, crouching just beside a stand of tall reeds that grew at the water’s edge.