He looked up over at Noonan and Mairead O’Reilly. She was explaining something to him. He followed her outstretched arm as she swept it in short arcs from the tomb site to the large pit. A good five hours before the light would fail. An hour to get the search team lined up and ready.
Noonan seemed to have guessed what he was about to ask.
“Well are we set to go over the place now?”
“If you please. How many staff can we expect?”
“Sixteen or seventeen. A few in from Castlebar.”
Noonan nodded. Minogue wondered if the chief inspector was holding back a smile. Minogue faced Carra Hill while Noonan radioed the squad car. They’d have to go to the farm again to phone in. Noonan pocketed the walkie- talkie.
Minogue pointed at the cliff edge on the map.
“We’ll start there,” he said to Noonan “Tommy and myself.”
Malone shrugged his leather jacket and zipped it higher.
“If ye’d split into teams,” Minogue added, “pairs say, one covering the other so there’s overlap and start in from the road. Mairead would be with me, please.”
“All right,” said Noonan “Mind yourselves. It’s dodgy enough by the edge.”
Noonan glanced at Malone’s mountaineering boots. The muck had already come up to his calves.
“Those alpine jobs will come in handy there.”
Malone looked down at his encrusted shoes.
“You’re only slagging ’cause you don’t have any,” he said.
“It’s bleeding slippery here, boss.”
Minogue looked over. Malone’s head appeared between tussocks of grass.
“Anything?”
“Nothing,” Malone replied. “And I’m not diving off the bloody cliff and poking around underwater.”
Minogue looked across at the ragged, distant line of Guards coming in from the Cahercarraig Road. Mairead O’Reilly was sitting in the squad car now. He felt he should say something to her. Thank her for coming out to help them sort out the paths and holes. He decided to see how the identification crew in from Castlebar was managing with lifting casts of the wheel ruts.
“Go over to the identification crowd there, Tommy See them right, will you.”
He picked his way back across the clumps of frockins and heather to the graveled area. There were three Garda cars there now beside the van from the Castlebar section. Noonan had made his way in from the line that was moving north toward the fenced-in excavation.
“Does she be needing to get back to school?” Minogue asked.
“Ah no,” said Noonan. “She knew it might be the whole afternoon. If Mairead can help, that’s what she wants to do. Bred into her, and all of them.”
Minogue smiled in at her. She let go her folder, rolled down the window.
“I hope we’ve not stolen the day on you now,” he said.
“Not a bit of it,” she replied. “I’m in a grand spot here, the bit of peace and quiet. It’s like old times, so it is.”
Minogue glanced down at the folder. The pictures were amateur looking. She lifted it.
“This?” she said. “It’s just something to be reading. Again.”
“It’s the digging your father did years ago…?”
“It is. It’s old now, of course, but sure it was never meant to be the final word. More folklore now, they say.”
Minogue tried to get a better look at the open pages.
“Here, by all means,” she said.
He took it through the open window. Noonan stepped to his side.
“There’s the man himself,” Noonan said. “God rest him. When would that be, Mairead?”
“Nineteen forty-eight.”
Minogue glanced over at her.
“After that terrible winter of ’47. A hundred years after the worst times of the Famine, he never stopped telling us. He’s standing where that court tomb is opened up now. Well I can’t say now that he knew then what he was standing on. He says he did.”
Minogue read down. It had been poorly typed, and the copy was patchy.
“Well he added in the bits of stories and reading he’d done there. The whole locality. The Carra Fields, all that. Those roads there he put down to try and map things out. Twelve feet down he had to go.”
“A court tomb now,” said Minogue. “They’re scarce enough, aren’t they?”
“You’re right,” she said. “It’d be the well-to-do, the chieftain, being put in there, you see. Interred.”
Minogue looked up from the page.
“Would there be any class of comforts sent along with him?” he asked “Like our friends beyond in Egypt?”
“The cruiskeen lawn,” said Noonan and grinned. “Poteen?”
“There would,” said Mairead O’Reilly. “But there was nothing found here at all. That tomb, now, it was all done by the museum people and the OPW. Two years they were at this part, as I recall.”
Minogue returned to the folder. He turned the pages slowly in reverse order. Mairead O’Reilly stepped out of the car and buttoned up the collar of her coat.
“That’s yours truly there,” she said. “In the middle. I was four years old.”
Minogue grinned back.
“Don’t be asking me if it was before or after the Carra Fields were inhabited.”
Noonan laughed.
“There’s the whole slew of us there,” she went on. “Mam, God rest her, Eileen, John. That’s Finbarr Uncle Ger with the eyes rolling back in his head…”
She tugged her scarf tight and watched the Guards searching the heather.
“Take that back to Dublin with you,” she murmured.
“Thank you. Are you sure?”
“Indeed and I am. I have other copies made. You can go home and spread the fame of the Carra Fields.”
He watched Malone get up from his hunkers
“That’s rain,” said Noonan. “By God, you could depend on it.”
Minogue noted the few flecks on the car roof. The casts should be up by now, for the love of God. He’d have to get in touch with Galway to see what they could get up for recovery of bits from the seabed where the car had landed. Frogmen working in close to rocks and cliffs, if the wind rose? He checked his watch. No wonder his feet were like lumps, his fingertips clumsy, they’d been here two and a half hours. He’d been up and down by the track five times, all the way to the cliff. His shoulder ached from the chafing of the video camera.
Malone’s whistle was piercing. All the search teams looked over too. Minogue waved them on.
“A bit of rain won’t harm us,” said Noonan.
“Let’s try the hospital again, see if the doctor’s showed up for the PM.”
Noonan chewed spearmint gum. The windows were fogged up. Mairead O’Reilly shifted in the seat next to Minogue. Malone unzipped the carry case for the cameras, looked inside, and zipped it up again.
“Ah, we’ll go on,” said Noonan. “I don’t know what’s — ”
The radio came alive. Minogue remembered the voice from the conversation earlier. He rubbed the glass and looked out at the puddle he had been using as his gauge for the rain. Steady drizzle, small drops. Two of the other Garda cars had their engines running now. The Guard at the Keogh farmhouse had just received the call back from the hospital. There was a pathologist, Kelly, up from Galway. When would there be an officer attending?
Malone shifted and looked back at Minogue. The inspector asked Noonan how long it would take to get back to the hospital. Under half an hour.
“Will you get word then, if you please?”
