Haunted Ground ng-1 Read online

  At Ballinasloe he turned off the main road and headed south toward Portumna, the town at the head of Lough Derg. To the west, the ground sloped gradually upward to the feathery pine forests that covered the Slieve Aughty Mountains; to the east lay what remained of the ancient body of water that once covered the whole center of Ireland. Farther down the lakeshore were the holiday resort towns of Mountshannon and Scarriff, but in this remote corner of Galway, there was only farmland and mountain overlooking small, hidden lakes and treeless stretches of bog. As he approached the lakeshore, he began to see homemade signs posted along the road. At first he thought they were To Let notices or adverts of some kind, but as he drew near the first one he read, “No Bog Licence”; a bit farther on was one that said, “No Bog Evictions”; and finally:

  YEAR 1798 REBELLION

  YEAR 1999 TURF-CUTTING PROHIBITED

  YEAR 200? ? ? ?

  He wasn’t surprised to see such sentiments expressed along the roadside. There had long been controversy about Ireland’s use of peat, since it was an unrenewable resource. Irish bogs also provided a wildlife habitat unique in all of Europe, and there was increasing pressure from the EU to consider the environmental consequences of turf-cutting.

  Cormac arrived at the site at a quarter past two. The sun was still fairly high overhead, barely veiled by a few wispy clouds. Here and there the bog’s heathery surface was scarred with deep black gashes. There were no ditches here, no fencing, no visible evidence of property boundaries on this raised blanket of turf. And yet he’d wager each of the locals knew precisely where his own turf allotment ended and his neighbor’s began. A random scattering of spiky, pale green furze bushes, not yet covered in bright saffron blossoms, stood close to the road. Beyond them, a patch of bog cotton shivered in the breeze. And beyond that, about fifty yards away, Cormac could see a small group of people, including Nora Gavin and a uniformed Garda officer. He felt something like dread as he stepped into his waterproof trousers, then carefully removed his shoes and plunged each stocking foot into a sturdy wellington. He stood for a moment at the roadside, squinting as he surveyed the horizon for some fixed point, a church steeple or radio tower, anything that would help him map out exactly where the body had been discovered; nothing appeared. A short distance down the road, the door of an ancient-looking Toyota opened, and a squarish man in a brown leather jacket emerged. A slight protrusion of the man’s midsection suggested a fondness for porter, and the sunlight glinted off his silvery-white hair. He seemed to have been waiting. Cormac lifted his jacket and site kit out of the passenger seat and extended his hand as the man drew near.

  “Cormac Maguire. The National Museum asked me to oversee the excavation.”

  “Ah, the archaeologist,” said the man, taking the hand Cormac proffered and giving it a firm squeeze. Now that Cormac was closer, he could see the man’s fresh pink countenance belied his hoary head; he was probably no more than forty-five.

  “Detective Garrett Devaney,” the man said. “Dr. Gavin will be glad to see you. Said she had to wait for you to begin.” Devaney spoke out of the corner of his mouth, as if every word were an aside, and his pale blue eyes darted slantwise under their lids, giving him a perpetual look of wry amusement. Then the policeman tipped his head across the bog, and they turned to make their way to the gathering, treading carefully over the soggy ground, with Devaney leading the way and talking backward at Cormac. “You probably know most of it, local farmer cutting turf. According to him, nobody’s so much as opened a drain on that section for a hundred years or more. Malachy Drummond—you know Drummond, the pathologist?—apparently agreed. He was in and out of it in about ten minutes this morning.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, what’s a detective still doing here, all the way from…”

  “Loughrea.”

  “…from Loughrea, if this isn’t reckoned to be one of your unsolved murders?”

  “Ah well, we didn’t know that for certain, now did we? There was some notion it might be a woman gone missing from nearby. I’m just here to clear up any questions on that score. And I live just down the road.”

  “Is there much disturbance around the body?”

  “It’s fairly clean,” Devaney said. “Once he realized what he was onto, the lad with the spade set it down in a bit of a hurry.”

  Nora Gavin approached as they drew nearer the cutaway. She was taller than Cormac remembered, and dressed as he was, in jeans and wellingtons, but no waterproofs. Her large blue eyes, dark hair, and milk-white skin exemplified the paradoxical features so common in Ireland. Occasionally some word or inflection would hint at her Irish origins, but for the most part, Nora’s accent betrayed the years she’d spent in the broad middle of America. Her hair was different, perhaps shorter than the last time they’d met, and drew Cormac’s attention to the graceful line of her neck, something he’d not noticed before. In his recent fit of self-recrimination for the way he’d behaved toward Nora, Cormac had quite forgotten how thoroughly attractive she was, and felt vast relief that the excitement of the occasion seemed to have removed any awkwardness about their last encounter.

  “Cormac, it’s good to see you,” she said, reaching out to take his hand. “I’m realizing I must have driven the whole way like an absolute maniac, and I’m sorry to say I’ve been pestering these poor people with questions.”

  “I apologize for keeping you waiting,” Cormac said. “Good to see you as well.” He turned to Devaney. “The man who found the body—is he here?”

  “Brendan McGann,” Devaney said, indicating the stocky man of about thirty who stood a few feet from him, leaning on the handle of a two-grain fork. The shaggy curls that framed McGann’s face cast it into shadow. Apart from the reticent farmer, the mood of the group was expectant as Devaney introduced them. Declan Mullins, the young Garda officer, obviously fresh out of the academy at Templemore, had a slender neck and prominent ears, which lent him the air of an overgrown altar boy. The fair-haired woman in the denim jacket and Indian skirt, whom he guessed to be in her mid-twenties, was McGann’s sister, Una. Cormac was struck by her large dark eyes, and the way her broad mouth turned up slightly at the corners. But most unusual were her hands and fingernails, which were stained as though they’d been steeped in blackberry juice.

  “All right if I have a look?” Cormac asked Brendan McGann, who said nothing, but put his lips together and tipped his head to signal assent. Cormac climbed carefully into the hole with his site bag, feeling the soggy turf spring like rubber under his weight. The cutaway was a space seven or eight feet in length, but narrower than a man’s arm span—large enough for one person to work comfortably enough, but extremely close quarters for two. One wall rose higher than the other, and its surface, which graduated from sepia to coal-black, bore the oblique impressions of a foot slean. The floor was uneven, and Cormac turned his attention to the area of loose peat where Brendan McGann had apparently been stopped in his work. He knelt and used his bare hands to scrape away the damp peat that had been replaced over the body. It was too risky to use a trowel in a bog excavation: a sharp metal edge could too easily damage waterlogged objects. His breath came faster as he caught the first glimpse of finely preserved hair and skin, but he was unprepared for the wave of pity that struck him at the sight of an ear, as small and fragile as that of a child. He looked up to see Nora Gavin crouched at the very edge of the cutaway, captivated by the grisly image that had just emerged from the peat.

  “Are you ready?” Cormac asked. She nodded wordlessly, then climbed down into the cutaway beside him.

  “First we have to determine the way the body is situated before we begin the complete excavation,” Cormac said. “The head appears to be turned at roughly a forty-five-degree angle to the cutaway floor here, which means the body could be articulated in any number of different ways.” He was aware that this was probably Nora’s first experience of a bog body in situ, so after carefully covering the head once more with wet peat, Cormac pulled paper and pen
cil from his bag and hastily drew a sketch to show her what they were about to do.

  “So, here’s the head—right? The body could be fully extended or flexed, and it could also be angled downward, if it’s intact. We’ll mark out as much of a circle as we can, then dig small test pits, like this,” he said, making small circles on the diagram, “starting from the outside of the circle and moving inward. That way we can establish how large a block of peat will have to be removed. The pits should be about fifty centimeters apart, and twenty to thirty centimeters deep. We’ll have to dig with our bare hands; that way we can’t do any damage, and it’s important for sensing the texture of the surrounding material.” He unstrapped his wristwatch, glancing at it briefly before putting it into his pocket. “If only it weren’t so late in the day. We’ll have to work quickly.” He handed her his waterproof jacket. “You can kneel on this if you like. Any last thoughts before we get stuck in?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. Her eyes rested for an instant on his stubbly chin, and as she turned away, Cormac felt a faint flush of embarrassment; in the rush to get out here he hadn’t taken the time to shave. He lifted his sweater over his head and rolled up his sleeves. As he worked, plunging his bare arm into the dense, waterlogged peat, he considered that there was nothing in the world quite like the consistency of turf. If a bog wasn’t exactly liquid, it wasn’t quite solid either, but a curious mixture somewhere between the two. It was also extremely cold; with their sleeves and shirt fronts completely soaked through, both he and Nora had to stop every few minutes to warm their hands. After nearly twenty minutes thoroughly probing almost the entire arc of their circle, they had turned up nothing at all.

  “Is it just me,” she asked, leaning back and rubbing off the tiny flecks of wet peat that stuck to her arms, “or is something missing here—like any sign of a body?”

  “Let’s have another look at her,” Cormac said. With Nora watching over his shoulder, he removed a larger portion of the protective peat, to find the woman’s features obscured by her long red hair, which clung like seaweed on a victim of drowning. Bog tannins gave hair of every hue—even black hair—a reddish tinge, but it was still possible to tell the original color. Cormac carefully lifted the damp strands and laid them aside, then froze when he saw what lay beneath. The girl’s mouth was clamped tightly shut, her top teeth deeply embedded in the flesh of her lower lip. One eye stared wildly; the other was half closed. Her face seemed distorted with fear, a far cry from the images he’d seen of Iron Age bog men, whose unblemished bodies and tranquil expressions led to theories that they were either drugged, or willing victims of sacrifice. In its brief exposure to the air, the girl’s hair had already begun to dry, and a few strands began to play in the breeze that scooped down into the trench. Something about this tiny movement made it seem, for one surreal instant, that she was alive. Cormac felt Nora Gavin’s involuntary start beside him. “Shall I go on?” he asked. Nora’s head slowly turned until her eyes met his, and she nodded.

  Cormac continued scraping away the soft black turf with his fingers, until what he had half suspected was confirmed. The girl’s neck ended abruptly, he estimated, between the third and fourth vertebrae. He sat back on his heels.

  “My God,” Nora said. “She’s been decapitated.”

  The girl was young, perhaps no more than twenty, and, if you removed the ghastly expression, had probably been quite beautiful, with a gracefully arched brow, high cheekbones, and a delicate chin. Beside his knee, Cormac could make out a ragged fringe of rough fabric, like torn burlap. Who was this girl, that she had come to such a harsh and desolate end? When he rose slowly to his feet again, he found the McGanns and the young policeman gazing at her solemnly, as he and Nora had, in silence.

  The sound of voices came from the road. Detective Devaney was having words with a newcomer—a tall, fair-haired man dressed in jeans and heavy work boots. The man broke away from Devaney, and began to cross in long strides to the digging site. Devaney followed after, leaping sideways through the heather like a terrier. They could hear the policeman’s words: “…completely unrelated…Haven’t we promised to notify you if there’s any news at all?” The stranger ignored Devaney, and marched stone-faced through the scrub. When he reached the cutaway, the man was breathing heavily, though he still said nothing. His eyes met Cormac’s for an instant, but his gaze was distracted until it at last seized upon the terrible, upturned face of the red-haired girl. And at that moment, all purpose seemed to drain out of him. He fell to his knees and clapped a hand over his eyes, as if suddenly overcome by extreme exhaustion or relief. After a moment or two, Una McGann stepped to the stranger’s side and helped him to his feet.

  “Hugh,” she said, looking into his face intently, “you know it isn’t Mina.” He nodded mutely, then straightened and let her walk with him away from the trench. Devaney’s eyes had never left the stranger’s face. Now the policeman raised a hand to the back of his neck and sighed. Cormac caught another slight movement with the corner of his eye, and glanced up to see Brendan McGann twisting the two-grain fork in his hands, his eyes trained on his sister’s back.

  In the course of his work, Cormac had often felt like a detective, sorting through evidence and piecing together clues to unlock the secrets and the lives of those long dead. Here were two mysteries dropped in tandem right into his lap. What—if anything—had they to do with one another? He wished he could keep digging until he had discovered what word or thought or deed had brought the red-haired girl to this place. But archaeology was not that kind of science. Whatever small knowledge he could gain came in shards, in fragments, in frustrating, piecemeal fashion. Would they ever find out who she was, or why she died? He looked down into the dead girl’s once-beautiful face, and pledged that he would try.

  3

  Nora Gavin found it strange that no one had said a word when Una McGann and the stranger walked away from the site, but she had followed Cormac’s lead and fallen to work again. The initial shock of seeing the dead girl’s hair, so like Triona’s, had been unsettling enough. Nora knew she must not think about her sister, at least not while there was still work to be done. She forced herself to focus instead on Cormac’s instructions, and on what she must do once she got back to Dublin. She’d call and arrange for a technician to meet her at Collins Barracks tonight, so that this curious relic might be deposited in the refrigeration unit as soon as possible. Tomorrow she’d take the hair and tissue samples they needed for carbon dating and further chemical testing. She’d schedule a CT scan at one of the local hospitals immediately after the preliminary exam, if they could fit her in. Much of what they knew about bog specimens today was based on past blunders. The primary mistake had usually been in waiting too long before beginning examination and conservation, and the result was that the specimens had begun to decay. This girl might not be as important a find as the Meenybraddan woman back in 1978, but Nora wanted to make sure that they found out as much as they possibly could from her.

  The crowd at the cutaway had thinned considerably by the time they finished the excavation: the farmer, Brendan McGann, had cleared off shortly after his sister left the scene, and the young Garda officer had eventually drifted back to his station in Dunbeg. Only Detective Devaney remained, standing by with arms crossed, looking down at his feet and occasionally toeing the earth like a hopeful suitor. The block of peat that she and Cormac removed, though not large, was extremely heavy. Cormac had rigged a sort of makeshift stretcher but it took two of them to lift the thing and convey it across the bog to the road, where they set it gently in the trunk of her car; Devaney followed after. As she arranged the items in the trunk to keep the plastic-wrapped bundle from sliding in transit, Nora wondered why the policeman had bothered hanging around so long. There was something tentative in his manner, as if he felt he really ought to return to work but couldn’t let go of some idea that was rattling around in his brain. Maybe he was waiting until the three of them were alone to tell them what was
going on here. And if he didn’t bring it up, then she bloody well would.

  “I’ll stay on and clear up around the site,” Cormac said to her. “You’d better be heading back.”

  “So that’s it—you’re finished here?” Devaney asked.

  “Well, we’ve searched the immediate area pretty thoroughly,” Cormac said, wiping his hands. “We can’t just go tearing up turf at random. Things shift around in bogs, Detective. It’s almost like an underground lake. Even if the girl’s body had been nearby at one time, there’s no telling where it’s got to by now.”

  Devaney’s tone was studiously nonchalant. “I don’t suppose ground-probing radar would be any use?”