In skin-tight jeans and knee-high black leather boots the woman strode towards her.
‘That dope behind the counter won’t take down what I’m saying. Will you tell her to write it down? I know once it’s written you have to investigate it.’
Pointing to the wooden bench inside the front door, Lottie indicated for the woman to sit. She nodded knowingly to Garda Gilly O’Donoghue, who must have drawn the short straw for reception duty.
‘What’s your name?’ Lottie sat beside the woman.
‘My name has got nothing to do with anything. I just want to report what I heard, but no one will listen to me!’
‘I’m happy to listen to what you have to tell me. But if you want me to take you seriously, I need to know your name and address.’ Lottie extracted a notebook and pen from her bag.
‘If I tell you that, you definitely won’t believe me.’ The woman folded her arms tightly around the child.
‘Try me.’
‘Right then. Let’s see how unprejudiced you are. My name is Bridie McWard, and I live on the traveller site.’
‘Okay, Bridie,’ Lottie said calmly. ‘What did you want to tell me?’
The young woman shifted uneasily on the hard seat, seemingly disconcerted that Lottie was prepared to listen.
‘Little Tommy is cutting a tooth, see, and wakes up every hour on the hour. And Monday night, he was really bad. The tooth is just out, but all weekend he was a little hoor. Sorry. Don’t suppose you’d know about a screaming baby?’
‘You’d be wrong there. Go on.’
‘Like I said, Monday night, he was a nightmare. I’d got up to him maybe three times, and that was when I heard it.’
‘Heard what?’
‘The screaming. Like I told that ditsy madam over there.’ She pointed at Garda O’Donoghue.
Lottie smiled to herself. Bridie was a mile out in her conclusion. Gilly O’Donoghue was one of the brighter young guards at the station.
‘Go on,’ she said.
Bridie glanced at her. ‘You know where the site is? The temporary accommodation. Temporary my arse. It’s been there this twenty-five years. I was born there, and Mammy lived in a caravan on the site all her life, before the wee houses were even built. Reared eight of us, she did, until she had to go into the nursing home. I’m the youngest. Now we have the house. Temporary? No way. Anyway, I live right next door to the graveyard.’
‘I know it,’ Lottie said. She frequented the cemetery to visit Adam’s grave, though not as often as she used to. She should go over soon and leave some red roses for Valentine’s Day. Adam would probably turn in his grave laughing at her. They’d never bothered with Valentine’s Day when he was alive.
Bridie continued talking. ‘There’s a high wall between the houses and the graveyard. And Monday night – well, it was really Tuesday morning – I heard screaming coming from beyond the wall. I thought the dead had risen up to haunt us. It was like a banshee. Mammy told me she heard it once, years ago. I grabbed Tommy out of his cot and turned to wake Paddy, my husband. Except Paddy wasn’t there. He does that sometimes. Goes visiting friends and forgets to come home. I know he would’ve told me I was a stupid woman and to go back to sleep, but how was I supposed to go back to sleep with Tommy awake and someone screaming in the graveyard? Scared shitless I was. Still am, to tell you the truth.’ She bit her lip and bowed her head, as if it was a crime to be afraid.
Lottie paused, pen mid-air; the only sound was little Tommy sucking hard on his thumb.
‘You heard a scream?’
‘You believe me, Guard, don’t you?’
‘I’m Detective Inspector Parker, and yes, Bridie, I do believe you heard something. But I don’t know what. Why didn’t you come in yesterday to report this?’
‘Had to go to the social, didn’t I? To sign on.’
‘Right. What time on Monday night did you hear this screaming?’
‘I just knew it. You don’t believe me.’ Bridie jumped up. ‘The minute I said where I lived and mentioned the social. You think I’m just one of them time-wasters. Well, Missus High-and-Mighty Detective, you can think what you like. I’m educated. I got my Leaving Cert and a job. Then I got married, had Tommy and gave up work. So I had to sign on.’
‘Sit down, Bridie.’ Lottie waited a beat as Bridie slumped back onto the bench. ‘You’re reaching that conclusion about me possibly because of the way you’ve been treated in the past. But I do believe you.’ She watched the young woman running fingers loaded with gold rings through her son’s hair, biting her lip. Deciding what to say next?
‘I couldn’t see anything,’ Bridie said eventually. ‘Our windows are right up next to the wall. But the screams, they weren’t that far away. Just over the other side somewhere. It was a woman. I’m sure of it. It’s usually so quiet at night. Unless there’s a row on the site, or ambulance sirens wailing into the hospital. But Monday night it was frosty and silent. Then I heard those screams. It was 3.15 on the clock. I remember seeing the red numbers when I got up with Tommy.’
‘How long did the screams last?’ Lottie had already decided that Bridie had heard teenagers acting the maggot, running through the graves for kicks and frightening the shite out of themselves in the process.
‘Not long. A short burst, followed by silence again.’
‘And it was definitely a woman?’
‘Yeah. Are you going to go out there and take a look?’
‘I’ll send someone to scout around. Don’t be worrying. It was probably just teenagers playing around.’
‘Don’t send just anyone. You go. I’d trust you to look properly. And I’ve heard kids there before. This was different. This was real terror.’
With a sigh, Lottie put her notebook into her bag. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Promise me. Then I’ll know.’
‘Know what?’
‘If you promise me you’ll look yourself, I’ll believe you.’ Bridie’s wide eyes were pleading.
‘Okay, okay. I’ll take a look myself. But it’s now Wednesday, so I can’t see what good it will do.’
‘I’ll feel better. And I’ll know Tommy is safe. Promise?’
‘I promise.’ Lottie thought of crossing her fingers to cover a lie, but didn’t. Bridie’s sincerity had resonated with her, and she wanted to do what the young woman asked.
‘There’s a funeral later this morning. You’d want to get in before that.’
‘I’ll go as soon as I can.’
‘Thank you, Missus Detective. The minute I laid eyes on you, I knew you were a lady.’
Bridie bundled up her son, and with a squeak of her leather boots, she was out the door and gone.
‘Now you’re a lady?’ Gilly laughed.
‘Could have fooled me,’ Lottie said.
Seven
Lottie told Boyd to park outside the cemetery wall, under the CCTV camera. It was trained on one spot, a warning to potential car burglars to move further down the road. The old iron gates through which you could drive were locked with a clumpy chain.
She walked through the side gate, Boyd trotting beside her. The cemetery was eerily quiet.
‘They believe in banshees, don’t they?’ Boyd said.
‘Who?’
‘The travellers. They believe in curses and fairies and all that shite.’
‘And you don’t?’ Lottie walked swiftly, glancing around for any sign of a screaming woman, almost two days after Bridie McWard had heard the sound. She briefly wondered if it had anything to do with the missing Elizabeth Byrne, but dismissed that notion as ridiculous.
Halfway down the slope, she stopped as a man wearing a yellow workman’s jacket stepped out from behind a tree.
‘Can I help you at all?’ He had a spade in one hand and shears in the other.
‘Jesus, you scared me half to death,’ Lottie said.
‘Sorry, missus. You look lost. Bernard Fahy is the name. Cemetery caretaker.’ He moved the shears under his armpit and thrust out a grubby hand. ‘Are you looking for any grave in particular?’
‘Detective Inspector Lottie Parker, and this is Detective Boyd.’