pattering off the wheels, but Gabriel came struggling up the field toward him, still waving, with crows irritably flapping all around him. He was obviously shouting, too, although John couldn't hear him.
As Gabriel came puffing up to him in his raggedy old brown tweeds and gum boots, John switched off the tractor's engine and took off his ear protectors.
'What's wrong now, Gabe? Did you forget which end of the shovel you're supposed to be digging with?'
'There's bones, John!
John wiped the rain off his face with the back of his hand. 'Bones? Where? What kind of bones?'
'Under the floor, John!
John climbed down from the tractor and ankle-deep into the mud. Close up, Gabriel smelled strongly of stale beer, but John was quite aware that he drank while he worked, even though he went to considerable pains to conceal his cans of Murphy's under a heap of sacking at the back of the barn.
'We was digging the foundations close to the house when the boy says there's something in the ground here, and he digs away with his fingers and out comes this human skull with its eyes full of dirt. Then we were after digging some more and there was four more skulls and bones like you never seen the like of, leg bones and arm bones and finger bones and rib bones.'
John strode long-legged down toward the gate. He was tall and dark, with thick black hair and almost Spanish good looks. He had only been back in Ireland for just over a year, and he was still finding it difficult to cope with running a farm. One sunny May morning he had been about to close the door of his apartment on Jones Street in San Francisco when the telephone had rung, and it had been his mother, telling him that his father had suffered a massive stroke. And then, two days later, that his father was dead.
He hadn't intended to come back toIreland , let alone take over the farm. But his mother had simply assumed that he would, him being the eldest boy, and all his uncles and aunts and cousins had greeted him as if he were head of the Meagher family now. He had flown back toSan Francisco to sell his dot.com alternative medicine business and say good-bye to his friends, and here he was, walking through the gate of Meagher's Farm in a steady drizzle, with a beery-breathed Gabriel following close behind him.
'I'd say it was a mass murder,' Gabriel panted.
'Well, we'll see.'
The farmhouse was a wide green-painted building with a gray slate roof, with six or seven leafless elms standing at its southeastern side like an embarrassed crowd of naked bathers. A sharply sloping driveway led down to the road to Ballyhooly, to the north, and Cork City , eleven miles to the south. John crossed the muddy tarmac courtyard and went around to the north side of the house, where Gabriel and a boy called Finbar had already knocked down a rotten old feed store and were now excavating the foundations for a modernized boiler house.
They had cleared an area twelve feet by twenty. The earth was black and raw and had the sour, distinctive smell of peat. Finbar was standing on the far side of the excavation, mournfully holding a shovel. He was a thin, pasty-faced lad with a closely cropped head, protruding ears, and a soggy gray jumper.
On the ground in front of him, like a scene from Pol Pot's Cambodia, lay four human skulls. Nearer to the damp, cement-rendered wall of the farmhouse, there was a hole which was crowded with muddy human bones.
John hunkered down and stared at the skulls as if he were expecting them to explain themselves.
'God Almighty. These must have been here for a pretty long time. There isn't a scrap of flesh left on any of them.'
'An unmarked grave, I'd say,' put in Gabriel. 'A bunch of fellows who got on the wrong side of the IRA.'
'Scared the shite out of me,' said Finbar, wiping his nose on his sleeve. 'I was digging away and all of a sudden there was this skull grinning up at me like my old uncle Billy.'
John picked up a long iron spike and prodded among the bones. He saw a jawbone, and part of a rib cage, and another skull. That made at least five bodies. There was only one thing to do, and that was to call the Garda.
'You don't think your dad knew about this?' asked Gabriel, as John walked back to the house.
'What do you mean? Of course he didn't know.'
'Well, he was a great republican, your dad.'
John stopped and stared at him. 'What are you trying to say?'
'I'm not trying to say nothing, but if certain people wanted a place to hide certain remains that they didn't want nobody to find, your dad might have possibly obliged them, if you see what I mean.'
'Oh, come on, Gabriel. My dad wouldn't have allowed bodies to be buried on his property.'
'I wouldn't be too sure, John. There was certain stuff buried here once, under the cowshed, for a while.'
'You mean guns?'
'I'm just saying that it might be better for all concerned if we forgot what we found here. They're dead and buried already, these fellows, why disturb them? Your dad's dead and buried, too. You don't want people raking over his reputation now, do you?'
John said, 'Gabe, these are human beings, for Christ's sake. If we just cover them up, there are going to be five families who will never know where their sons or their husbands went. Can you imagine anything worse than that?'
'Well, I suppose you're right. But it still strikes me as stirring up trouble when there's no particular call to.'
