Lake of Sorrows

“Already in my diary,” Brennan said.

7

Charlie Brazil wasn’t hard to find. They entered the workshop’s open maw, where a man in a stained boilersuit was working on aligning the swamp treads on a huge tractor. They showed their IDs and asked for Brazil. “You’ll have to wear these,” the man said, tapping his own goggles, and ducking into the shop foreman’s office to pull down two pairs from the board inside. He handed them each a pair, then pointed with his thumb to the next repair bay, where a young man in safety glasses worked on a machine part with a grinder. Ward put his goggles on, noting the row of illustrated calendars at the back of the shop, featuring posing, pouting women whose breasts looked like they’d been inflated with a bicycle pump. The workshop seemed to be organized into different areas, according to type of repair and equipment needed. It was impossible not to be overwhelmed by the scale of the machines and the sharpness everywhere: dull blades being honed with grinders, shiny new blades waiting to be fitted on these huge tools for scraping the skin of the earth. He wondered if these men understood that every day they came to work they were destroying their own livelihood. Bogs were finite, not like his line of work, which relied upon wellsprings of anger and greed and stupidity that seemed to have no end.

As they approached, the fair young man at the grinder pressed metal to metal, and a rain of sparks fell near their feet.

“Charlie Brazil?” Ward shouted above the noise, holding up his ID. The young man nodded and turned off the grinder, and Ward noted the fingers black with grime. They had it from two sources that their victim had been interested in the lad. But what was his interest in her? “We were just having a chat with your boss, Mr. Brazil. He tells us you knew Ursula Downes.”

Brazil eyed them suspiciously through his safety goggles. “So did we all. She was here on the bog last year as well.” Ward stood facing the open door to the next repair bay and watched as the police presence seemed to reverberate around the building. He marveled at how such knowledge was passed, like a scent, a feeling in the air. Some of the workers strode by purposefully; a few stood and gawked from a distance like curious cattle. Every once in a while, a figure would drift by the open door, pretending to check the yard for the next job. It was clear they all knew why the police were there. When the third boilersuited figure came into view, Ward turned to Charlie Brazil and said, “Look, we can go somewhere else if you’d like.”

Charlie gave a kind of resigned grimace and shook his head. “I’m used to it.” Ward noted that Charlie was the only youngish man at the workshop; all the rest seemed to be middle-aged or older. He could imagine the slagging, the thinly veiled envy, the superiority of knowledge. Charlie Brazil had the same look Ward remembered from boys who had been picked on at school, for being too intelligent, too introverted, too quiet. They might as well have had signs hanging around their necks. He watched Charlie Brazil’s long fingers fiddle with the clamps that held the machine part. Did he know what Ursula Downes had called him behind his back?

“I didn’t know her all that well. They sent me over to put up some steps for her, just knock together a wooden staircase so they could get in and out of their supply shed—it was up fairly high off the ground. When she needed some drawing frames there the other day, she asked if I’d make them.”

“So you were often out at the excavation site.”

“Fairly often, yeah.”

“Did you look for opportunities to be out there, to help Ursula whenever you had the chance?”

“No. I only did what I was asked to do.”

“Was there any change in how you got on, between last summer and this one? Any difference in her that you noticed?”

“Not really. She liked to get people to do things for her. She was always asking me to help her out, and I did.”

“Why?”

Brazil didn’t answer immediately; he looked away and pulled at his lip. His voice dropped a notch or two in volume. “I suppose I felt sorry for her.”

“What?” Brennan’s voice was incredulous, and Ward flashed his eyes to tell her to tread lightly here.

“It seemed like she needed attention,” Brazil said. “I helped her when she asked me.”

“I see.” Brennan opened her mouth to ask another question, but this time Ward jumped in: “Did you ever see Ursula away from the job, Charlie?”

“No. Never.”

“Did you ever have a sexual relationship with Ursula Downes?” Ward asked.

“No!” The lad’s nostrils flared as he raised his head, and his chest heaved as if he couldn’t take in enough oxygen. “I never. I swear.”

Ward remembered the comment from one of the archaeologists. “What were you doing in the archaeologists’ shed a few days back?”

Charlie Brazil stared at them with a new wariness in his eyes. “I was looking at a map they’ve got in there, trying to see where the next cuttings were going in.”