Lake of Sorrows

Charlie Brazil’s story about building the bonfire had checked out, but they had no indication of how long he’d stayed there. He’d also omitted one major detail; he had not been alone. Ward had conducted his own search of the scene, and had trod on something in the ashes. Beneath his foot was the bracelet he and Eithne had given Brona for her tenth birthday. It was made of several slender strands of gold metal, twisted into a kind of torc. As far as he knew, Brona always wore the thing, never took it off.

He had picked the bracelet up and slipped it into his pocket, guilt clawing at his conscience. He’d told himself he would not keep its existence hidden if it proved to be significant. But he had already tampered with possible evidence. He pulled the bracelet out of his pocket and stared at it for a few minutes, turning it in his fingers. Time to return it to Brona.

He thought of all the things, like this bracelet, that had something to do with the case but would never find their way into his report. There were too many connections, too many stories that the case did not require, though they were part and parcel of it. Things such as the box full of trophies in Ursula Downes’s flat, things she had evidently nicked from dozens of men. Each object was tagged and documented with a first name and a date, and sometimes there were as many as three or four dates within the space of a single week. What pathological need, what lack had Ursula Downes been trying to fill?

Rachel Briscoe had indeed been the daughter of Thomas Power, as Maguire had surmised. After her parents divorced, the girl had moved to England with her mother, and they’d taken the mother’s maiden name. All of this had been confirmed for them by Sarah Briscoe, who had arrived more than a week ago to claim her daughter’s body. She’d not been interested in what they’d found in Rachel’s flat in Dublin: notebooks filled with tiny, crabbed writing, meticulously documenting her surveillance of Ursula Downes in the weeks and months before the excavation.

They were almost impossible to read, the scribblings of an increasingly disordered mind, but the one thing Ward had taken away from it was that Rachel Briscoe was not a killer, despite what Desmond Quill had said—unless you counted suicide as self-murder. Because that had been the girl’s plan: to find Ursula Downes, to get close to her somehow, and finally to cut her own wrists before the woman who had poisoned her existence.

His own blood had gone cold as he read those words, perhaps written at the very moment the idea had taken shape in Rachel Briscoe’s mind. It had been a long and difficult night, but he had forced himself to continue reading, living through her writings the tormented existence of a young woman who truly wished to die, thinking of another suffering he had been unable to ease.

He looked down at Lugh, who was just finishing the last bit of gravy in his bowl, nudging it across the floor.

“Nice work, old son. Hunger is great sauce, isn’t it? I suppose you’ll be ready for your walk soon.” Lugh’s head lifted at the word “walk,” another of their evening rituals, so Ward fetched the lead and fastened it to the dog’s collar. Their customary path was out the road by the hurling pitch, to the crossroads, up the hill past the castle ruin, and back home again on the small road that ran along the Silver River. They both looked forward to it on an evening like this, when the long light stretched over the hills. But when Ward opened his front door, he found Catherine Friel standing on his doorstep.

“Hello, Liam,” she said, recovering quickly. “I hope you don’t mind my dropping in on you like this. Maureen Brennan told me where to find you.” She handed him an envelope. “I wanted to make sure you got my report as soon as possible, and—”

Lugh poked his nose out the door and nuzzled her free hand, looking for a scratch, and she stooped to stroke his soft ears and look down into his face. Ward had to admit he felt slightly unsettled. Why would Dr. Friel drive all the way out here just to deliver a report he’d have had in the morning anyway?

The dog moved in closer, appreciating the unexpected attention, and tried to lick their visitor, but she held him off. “He’s terribly affectionate. What’s his name?”

“Lugh.”

“Lovely name. God of light, victorious over darkness.” Her glance upward was quick, as if to gauge by Ward’s expression whether Lugh had managed to live up to his name. “My son has been lobbying hard for a dog for the past eighteen months. I’ve been telling him I don’t know. I’m away from home so much with this new job. But I suppose to him that’s as much an argument for having the dog as against it. I keep hoping he’ll give up and let it go, but he’s been very persistent.”

“What’s your son’s name?”

“Johnny—John, after his father. I keep forgetting that he wants to be called John nowadays.”

“What age is he?”