As she spoke, Swan walked over to the bit that she had described as a ‘hut’. It was just a lean-to of corrugated iron and wood cladding resting against an end wall. The kind of thing you would build to shelter a few sheep or some fodder.
One end was open, and a filthy mattress lay inside, as repulsive as a carcass.
‘They used to stay here, the two of them, Joan said, when there was trouble at home. It was their place, so she must have made the grave too, don’t you think?’
Swan stooped and made blinkers with his hands, to see better into the dark. Beyond the head of the mattress was a wall made of short lengths of horizontal planks. He stood and cast his eye over the outside of the shelter. Sure enough, it was longer than the space he had just looked into. Ali waited for him at the other end.
The boards that clad the outside of that end were vertical, and two of them were now lying on a flattened area of nettles and grass, leaving a gap into the dark space.
‘They were loose,’ Ali was saying. ‘I just put a hand to them …’
Kneeling on the bruised ground, Swan twisted his shoulders and pushed his head through the gap. The air was colder inside, heavy with the smell of damp clay. The space was as small as a cupboard, no more than three feet deep and empty.
Light crept in over his shoulder and his eyes adjusted. He hadn’t noticed the slate propped against the cottage wall. It was an ordinary slate, might have been part of the cottage’s roof once, but the bottom of it was embedded in the earth. As he tipped his head, a little light struck it and he could see marks scratched into it – the spidery double outline of a cross, and beneath it a heart. The ground in front was slightly mounded.
He pulled back out of the small gap and started to wrench away the other planks. They came easily, the old wood crumbling under force.
‘And what exactly do you think is in here?’
‘I think it’s Joan’s baby – it must be,’ said Ali.
Swan thought they were more likely to find someone’s dog or kitten beneath the slate than a child.
He was so close to solving the mystery of one dead baby, but had somehow let himself get diverted into this other tale. The wise thing would be to leave this little slate as it was, get on with the matter at hand. Garda Fitzmaurice could come and check it out another day.
‘I’ll run back and get more help,’ said Ali.
‘Wait.’ A fuss was the last thing he wanted. He was only a couple of hours away from moving in on the Nolan girl.
A flat stone lay in the weeds beside him, the size of his palm. He picked it up and started to scratch experimentally at the earth in front of the little slate.
‘I can’t watch.’ Ali walked away.
Hopefully there would be nothing at all here, thought Swan, scraping methodically now. He was only an inch down when his makeshift spade encountered a small, pliable obstruction, a pale nub that had an odd pinkish tinge to it. He put aside the stone and took his penknife out of his coat pocket. By prodding about, he loosened the earth about this small protrusion and brushed it away in one movement. There, in the scooped-out hollow, a perfect little hand emerged.
Swan’s heart missed a beat. Each finger was less than an inch long. Tiny pricks of clay filled a row of four dimples on the back of the palm. Warm relief trickled through him as he made sense of it. He pushed the tip of the penknife against the flesh-toned – it was obvious now – plastic.
As he started to dig out the rest of the doll, he called out to Ali, ‘It’s only a doll.’
She came to kneel beside him as he uncovered the whole arm, and next to it a forehead started to emerge. Here and there the plastic was marked with bright-yellow streaks, some kind of ageing. Once the head was free, he prised the rest of it from the soil, shook it free of insects and dirt and handed it to her. The body felt heavier than it should, as if soil had gradually sifted inside during the time it lay in the ground. The doll had a flannel nappy still wrapped around its bottom, a filthy scrap.
Swan poked around below where the doll had lain, to check there was nothing else there. Behind him, Ali muttered something.
‘What’s that?’
‘Baby Joy,’ she repeated, ‘this is Baby Joy.’
‘Was it yours?’
‘No, but it was supposed to be.’ Ali brought the grubby body up to her chest, embraced it.
He should get her back to her family. The girl wasn’t right, it was plain.
‘I need to get on,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk you back to town, to where you’re staying.’
‘My aunt’s house is just near here.’
‘I’ll walk you to that, then.’
He was glad to get away from the desolate cottage. As they walked, he rubbed his hands together to get rid of the soil that stuck to them. His trousers were mucky too. He offered to take the doll – to get rid of it for her – but Ali wouldn’t give it up.
Halfway down the forestry track she stopped still. ‘Have you come here because of Joan?’
‘Joan? No.’
‘You have, haven’t you?’
‘I don’t know your Joan, Ali. I’m still after the mother of the Rosary Garden baby.’
‘So what are you doing here?’
Swan hooked his hand into the crook of Ali’s arm, forced her to carry on walking.
‘There’s someone here we need to talk to.’
‘Oh,’ said Ali, looking down at
