Before Swan could fully absorb what he was looking at, Considine leapt out of the passenger seat, the two Guards from Kinmore following her. Ali shouted something as they approached, pointing into the hole in the ground. The two men with the long poles froze where they were. The woman got to her feet and stepped behind the men.
The smell was awful, thick in his nose and throat, intimate and revolting. By the time he reached the group he could feel it soak his clothes and skin. One of the Gardaí stepped away to retch, affording Swan a view of the dark pit that all attention was centred on. Two feet below the opening he could see the stewing surface of some vast reservoir of faeces. The men had been stirring this with their poles, trying to fish something from it, and in the ordure was a form more solid than the rest. At first glance he took it to be a cat or dog that had somehow fallen in, a suggestion of matted fur or hair.
He lifted his eyes. Considine had her arms around Ali, was trying to inspect her head injury even while she spoke to calm the shivering girl. The younger man was wearing a blue boiler suit. His red hair and arms were streaked with slurry as if he had been half-dipped into the tank.
‘What’s in there?’ Swan asked him.
‘She’s says – she says it’s Davy,’ he replied, gesturing at Ali, but never taking his eyes from the hatch.
‘It can’t be Davy,’ the older woman said.
‘Well, it’s someone,’ said one of the Guards and the older man turned away at his words, trailing the hooked pole after him, heading off into the darkness, his shoulders heaving.
They eventually persuaded the family to go into the house, even the older man, Joe Devane, who they found shaking in a corner of the barn, still gripping his smeared pole.
Fitzmaurice put a call in for an ambulance and the fire brigade. He asked Swan if it was worth getting the Garda divers too.
‘Let’s see what the fire boys can do first.’
It took two hours to get him out – two hours of argument and speculation, of ropes and pulleys and improvised scaffold. The young fireman who volunteered to go down neck-deep and attach a line to the body deserved a medal. At last they managed to haul it out by a rope looped under its armpits, and it hung for a while under the scaffold in the lights, slowly rotating as the muck dripped from it, sliding off in gobbets. Swan checked again that the curtains were closed in the farmhouse.
Four men lowered the corpse onto the ground next to the opening.
‘That’s Davy Brennan all right,’ said Fitzmaurice.
‘Should we hose him down, clean him up a bit, for the family, like?’ asked one of the firemen.
‘No. We need him as he is,’ said Swan. ‘The Guards will take care of it from here.’
Two paramedics leaned against their ambulance, waiting. The yard and driveway were jammed with an assortment of vehicles now, a static pile-up.
‘Don’t touch the drain cover,’ he said to one of the firemen who had bent to grasp it. ‘Leave everything now, and thanks for your help, lads.’
The body was photographed before being lifted into the ambulance. Swan watched it move away, lights blazing, then he turned and entered the farmhouse. Considine was waiting for him.
‘I have them in separate rooms, now. The Guards are ready to take initial statements. No one saw him go in, apparently. Ali was the last to see him alive, they were drinking together in the next house along. Davy Brennan’s own house.’
‘It would be her. Christ. Did he give her the crack on the head?’
‘She says she fell running away from him; says he told her he killed Peggy Nolan’s baby in the Ranelagh house.’
‘Do you believe her?’
Considine screwed her mouth up. ‘Well, it fits with what the Nolan girl said. He was the last person to have the baby, as far as we know. ‘
‘Where is she now?’
She nodded her head towards a closed door.
In the old-fashioned living room beyond, they found Ali Hogan sitting on a sofa while Dr Nolan stood over her, bandaging her head. Swan had the odd sensation that he was watching a play with a very small cast, the same faces appearing again and again.
‘They called me,’ Nolan said immediately, defensively. ‘That looks very neat now,’ said Considine, and opened the door to the hall to hurry him out.
Dr Nolan quickly tucked the end of the bandage in, picked up his bag and left.
The girl was horribly pale, and her eyes were blurred-looking, pupils wide and black. She still wore her dark funeral garb, even more stained than it had been when he saw her last, spatters of blood and muck now added to the smears of grass.
‘We need to go through everything with you, Ali.’
‘Where will you take me?’
‘We can do it here if you like,’ said Considine.
Ali shook her head, clamped her jaw.
They decided to take her to the hotel, to leave the rest of the family to Fitzmaurice and his recruits for this evening. The body of Davy Brennan was on the road to Limerick, to a morgue and a post-mortem exam. Swan had ordered another for the body of Joan Dempsey – that would involve disinterring her from her new grave.
Swan guided Ali out of the room while Considine collected some clothes for her. Hanging
