Lake of Sorrows

Arriving at the hotel, he looked forward to seeing Catherine Friel’s face. His wife’s death had made him draw back into his tortoiseshell, closed off from the world of experience and risk. Catherine was pulling him out of that, ready to expose himself to hurt and danger. And it felt exhilarating, that primitive, mysterious chemical and biological phenomenon—an intense, unsettling feeling, rooted in the primeval senses of touch and smell. What was it that drew him to Eithne, to Catherine, to anyone?

As he walked across the gravel drive and glanced into the restaurant, lit only by candles and the setting sun, he imagined her sitting across from him at the table, glowing in the flickering candlelight, perceptive of his unspoken yearning and reflecting it back to him. How natural, then, that after they finished the meal and lingered deliberately over the last of the wine and coffee, they would climb the stairs together, she leading and he following, until they stood behind the closed door of her room…. The momentary dream was shattered as the flat-nosed grille of a gold Mercedes came to an abrupt stop only a few feet from his knees, and the driver let down the window to offer a few choice words of advice.

Ward didn’t raise his eyes to the sputtering driver, but tramped slowly toward the door with measured steps. When he got inside, he was surprised by a bar stripped down to stone walls and wooden floor, with modern leather furniture in the seductive colors of exotic spices. He caught sight of Catherine Friel’s silver hair; her back was to him, and as he approached, wondering whether he should touch her arm or call her name, she turned slightly and he saw that she was speaking on a mobile. He stopped his advance and stood a few yards away to afford her at least a small amount of privacy.

“I can’t stay on the phone now, John, I’ve got to go…. Yes, I’m having dinner with a colleague….No, no one you know, a detective. We’re going to talk over the case. He’s probably waiting for me now.” She turned to check the room and saw Ward. “There he is. I should be home tomorrow evening….Yes…. Good night now, love.”

As he heard the last phrase, Ward felt foolish for entertaining notions about Catherine Friel. Her interest was in the case, that was all. It had been so long since he’d even allowed himself to imagine such a closeness, and now he shut the notion down, psychologically boarded it up, so quickly that by the time they entered the dining room he’d nearly forgotten the vision he’d had of himself and Catherine Friel there in the candlelight, and in the darkness upstairs, just beyond the locked door.

13

“I suppose the police are always reluctant to declare any death a ritual killing,” Cormac said, digging into his second plate of pasta. “Given a choice, they’d probably prefer old-fashioned, understandable motives. And I’ll bet a good portion of ritual killings turn out to be ordinary garden-variety murders dressed up after the fact to try and put detectives off the scent.”

Nora chased the last couple of penne around her own nearly empty plate and took another sip of wine. “I wish there was more we could do to help. Think about it, Cormac—he was probably still alive when he went into the bog hole.”

“But what else can we tell Ward? We don’t know anything about the victim, the circumstances of the crime.”

“We don’t know anything about Danny Brazil, but we may know something about the circumstances.”

“What do you mean?”

“We know something about the other people found with the same kinds of injuries. It would just be interesting to compare Danny Brazil to other possible triple-death victims—to take a really close look and see what the similarities and differences are. I should ask Rachel Briscoe, the girl who found him, if she removed any wood from around the body. The crime-scene people may not have been looking for stakes or branches, but if he was staked down, that would fit with earlier finds.”

“How are we going to do all this research without the materials we’d need?”

She shot him a sheepish look. “All my research files are in the trunk of the car. I figured if you were getting some work done here, I might have a chance as well.”

Cormac leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together behind his head. “It’s likely that the police will come up with something sooner than we would. I mean, it is pretty coincidental that the victim turns out to be one of the two people who’d found a cache of treasure only a short time earlier. This story is probably all about money or love gone wrong, and we might just be chasing wild geese.”