graveyard on the way. It’s still there. You can go check.’
‘That’s all well and good, but we’ve got a witness who says otherwise.’ Frank told him briefly about Mae Miller.
‘Oh,’ said Joe, confused. ‘Well, I’m sorry to have…it must have been another rose…maybe Martha…’ He turned away, then nodded back at them. ‘Thanks for hearing me out.’
Anna called into the lighthouse. Sam was finishing up, arranging a set of spanners into a tidy yellow toolbox. He wiped his hands on an oily cloth and smiled.
‘I have good news for you,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have to do much. There were a few kerosene leaks and I had to replace the buckets in the air pumps.’
Anna had been expecting bad news.
‘What I’m saying is, I couldn’t find anything to stop you lighting the light.’
She hugged him tight and patted his back. ‘Thank you so much, Sam.’
‘Oh, there’s one more thing,’ he said. ‘This!’ He pulled out a small pink and cream silk mantle.
‘Wow! Thank you again.’ She took it from him and held it in her palm. ‘It’s not what I expected at all. It’s so light. It looks like something my grandmother would crochet.’
‘Good things come in small parcels,’ said Sam, winking at her.
Joe closed the front door behind him and walked along the hallway, obsessing about Frank and Richie and Mae Miller. He felt like the guy in school who puts up his hand to answer every question, but always gives the wrong answer. He needed to go back to the start. As he walked, he realised he was slowing down. Then something made him stop – a strange and vague hope. He hovered at Shaun’s bedroom door. Part of him ached at what he was about to do, but the rest was on auto-pilot. He pulled the door open and walked down the stairs. He moved around the room, touching as little as he had to. Anything he did pick up, he imagined it glowing like Luminol as soon as Shaun walked back in. The bed was made and a movie magazine lay on top of it. The only poster on the wall was Scarface. There were no photos of models or actresses in the room – Shaun had taken them down when he started going out with Katie. Joe didn’t expect he’d ever put them back up. He stood by the open wardrobe, taking in the boxes stacked on the top shelf. They had small black and white prints of trainers on the front, but they were overflowing with photos, concert tickets and small plastic toys. Joe reached up and pulled out a Magic 8 Ball. He shook it. He didn’t hear the creak from upstairs.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ shouted Shaun from the doorway.
Joe turned around slowly. ‘Uh…’
Shaun ran down the stairs and grabbed the ball from his hand.
‘That’s mine.’
‘I was just…’
‘What?’ said Shaun. ‘Spying?’
‘No!’ said Joe. ‘No. I…’
‘You’re full of shit.’
‘Watch your language.’
Shaun snorted. ‘This is not about my language. This is about you invading my privacy. You wouldn’t search a lowlife crackhead’s house without a warrant…what were you looking for?’
‘I don’t know. Something that would help. I want to help. You want to know what happened to Katie, don’t you?’
‘Damn right I do,’ snapped Shaun. ‘But if the answer was in my bedroom, I think I might have found it by now. And what the hell was that about with Robert? Do you think we’re all stupid?
The chair was damp against Duke’s back. His lids were heavy and his head lolled backwards and forwards. Somewhere outside, he heard a cry from the trees. His eyes shot open. He gripped the arms of the chair and raised himself up slowly. He moved towards the back door and stepped into the garden. In the next field, he saw two backpackers, laughing, helping each other over a stile. There was a long trail of flattened, yellow grass behind them. Duke bristled. He walked around the front of the house and down the road to where it started. A small hand-painted sign showed a stickman walking. The arrow pointed towards the backpackers. He reached out and rocked the sign back and forth until it came free. He flung it into the undergrowth, turned around and strode back to the van. He sat inside and drove until he saw the sea.
With one hand on her coffee mug and the other holding a coaster carefully underneath, Nora Deegan burrowed into the vast armchair.
‘He knows his coffee. I’ll give him that,’ she said, bending to inhale the rich steam.
‘Joe?’
‘Yes. This is another Colombian blend. I could sit here smelling it all night.’
‘It was nice of him to bring it back for you,’ said Frank.
‘Yes. It’s a coffee thing, though. Coffee drinkers are the smokers of the beverage world.’
Frank chuckled.
‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘We’re becoming pariahs. “Oh my God, I’d be up all night if I drank as much coffee as you” or “Do you not worry about what it’s doing to your insides?” or “No, no. Decaf for me”. There are more chemicals in decaf—’
‘Some of us have no choice,’ said Frank, making a sad face.
‘I’m not talking about you, pet,’ she said. ‘I’m talking about people who haven’t a thing wrong with themselves cutting coffee out of their diet. Madness.’
‘What are you going to watch?’ he asked, nodding at the TV.
‘I’m watching,’ she said, putting on half glasses and raising a folded newspaper to her face, ‘
‘Grand. I’m heading down to Danaher’s to meet Richie, run over a few things in the case.’
‘You’ll be sick of the sight of each other by the end of all this,’ she said.
‘Hmm,’ said Frank.
Joe sat down at the kitchen table. His nerves were still jangled. What kind of father had he turned out to be? He remembered when he worked in Sex Crimes how Anna had arrived into the station one day with Shaun. Joe hadn’t seen her for five days. He had been asleep upstairs on a sofa in the lounge when the call came through from the desk. He was exhausted after his shift, but he was staying back to work on a case. On the floor beside him was a file, topped with a glossy colour photo of a four-year-old Hispanic boy in pale blue pyjamas covered in little red aeroplanes. He was laughing, his upper body tilted, his arms held out like he was gliding. Joe still remembered his name. Luis Vicario. He had been lured to a house by a young prostitute hired by the owner, a filthy overweight trucker who had just moved into the neighbourhood. He had told her Luis was his son and his wife never gave him access. The prostitute promised Luis a ride in a real aeroplane, led him into the house, then left. His tiny body was found three hours later. He was barely breathing. An ambulance rushed him to hospital where he was intubated, his wounds were treated as best they could, his arms were stuck with needles and he was hooked up to a life support machine. Joe visited his family every week for three months until their son lost his fight. The neighbour had fled. The prostitute saw the story on the news and came forward. She was waiting in an interview room for Joe. He got up and ran downstairs to Anna who, without a word, pushed six-year-old Shaun towards him and said, ‘This is your son, Shaun.’ Joe found it hard to look at him, but he bent down and hugged him, patting his back, all the time staring at Anna. She had tears in her eyes. After a minute, he stood up. Anna took Shaun’s hand and turned around. ‘Au revoir,’ she called to Joe as she left. He knew that didn’t just mean goodbye. It meant ‘until the next time we see each other’. But he’d rather have her mad at him than try to explain.
This year in Ireland had started out as the best he’d ever had with Shaun. He didn’t want anything to happen that would take that away. But the worst part about Shaun disturbing him earlier was the realisation that he
