Lottie’s hand came away covered with clay. Looking into the caretaker’s yellow-hued face, she noticed that the whites of his eyes were similarly coloured. ‘Have there been any disturbances round here lately?’
‘Disturbances? Oh, now I get it. That nosy biddy from the traveller site was on to you, whingeing about banshees screaming in the night.’ His laugh was loud and shrill, startling the birds in the bare tree above his head. They fluttered their wings and flew up as one giant black cloud into the cool blue sky. ‘Bridie’s as mad as old Queenie, her mother. And she’s a McWard too. Into all that old witch shite. Know what I mean?’
‘Did you investigate Bridie’s claims about the screams?’ Lottie rubbed her hands together so that she wouldn’t get frostbite standing in the freezing air.
‘If I was to look into everything reported by that lot living over there, I wouldn’t get a single grave dug and you’d have unburied corpses in coffins lined up along with the rubbish at the main gate.’
‘You’re telling me you didn’t investigate it?’
‘Dead right I didn’t. Isn’t that what I just said?’
Lottie shook her head, trying to decipher his cryptic conversation.
‘In the last few days, what have you been up to?’ she asked.
‘Dug a grave on Monday for old Mrs Green from the town centre. Ninety-one she was. The family were waiting for a grandson to come home from Australia. She’ll be buried today, beside her late husband.’ He pointed down the hill to a mound of clay. ‘It’s been quiet, to tell you the truth. But this time of year, with the freezing cold weather, you can be sure there’ll be a few more kicking the bucket before the week is out.’
‘You didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary at all? No cider parties? Teenagers running wild through the graves?’
‘In this weather? No, that carry-on is reserved for the summer. Those youngsters are at home drinking their parents’ gin during the winter. Playing computer games or watching Netflix. Too cold for their young skin.’
As he tugged the shears out from under his arm and back into his hand, Lottie studied Fahy’s stubbled face. Pockmarked from teenage acne, she surmised, wisps of hair snaking out around his ears from underneath a black knitted hat. His eyes were inscrutable. She couldn’t read what was written in them, and she wondered if she really wanted to.
‘We’ll have a quick look around if you don’t mind,’ she said.
‘Off you go.’ He headed up the way they’d come.
At the bottom of the incline, Boyd said, ‘I don’t like the look of him.’
Lottie shrugged and glanced over at the houses in the traveller site behind the high wall. Smoke swirled up, then, as if held by an unseen force of frozen air, petered out in straight lines and back down to earth.
There was no way Bridie McWard could have seen anything over the wall in daylight, never mind in the dead of night. As she scanned the headstones in the chilly haze, she glimpsed Adam’s granite resting place, on the high ground to her left.
‘Isn’t Adam buried up there?’
She jumped. ‘Jesus, Boyd. For a minute I forgot you were here.’
‘Didn’t mean to scare you. But it’s kind of creepy in this weather.’
‘Creepy at the best of times.’
She turned left along the wall, and came to a stop beside the freshly turned clay that Fahy had pointed out. The open grave was covered with slats of timber.
‘Mrs Green’s new abode, I presume,’ she said.
‘Dermot Green.’ Boyd read the inscription. ‘Died September 2001. Aged eighty years. Yes, I’d say this is where she’ll be going. To rest beside her late husband.’
‘You’ll make a good detective someday,’ Lottie said with a laugh.
Boyd laughed too. The sound appeared to echo back at them, and she shivered.
Memories of the day Adam had been buried flooded her mind. His body lying in a wooden box with a gold-plated cross on top, interred forever in sacred ground. Dismissing the images, she looked at the area around the Greens’ burial plot. The grass outside the kerbstones was flattened, presumably by Fahy and his workmen as they dug the grave. Lottie made her way slowly along the path, stopping at a grave three up from the Greens’.
‘Boyd, look at this.’ She knelt down. ‘Is that blood?’
Boyd leaned over and they stared at the bead of brownish red staining the white pebbles adorning the burial plot.
‘Looks like it.’ He took a plastic evidence bag from his jacket pocket. ‘I’ll get it tested.’
‘Do that.’
Standing up, she glanced all around. Some of the grass here was flattened too. It could be from the frost, or people visiting buried loved ones, or even the caretaker, she supposed. Or was it something else entirely? And why was there that stain that looked like blood within screaming distance of the traveller site?
She began to think that maybe Bridie McWard hadn’t heard a banshee after all. It seemed more likely that someone had indeed screamed while running through the graveyard early on Tuesday morning.
Turning back to Boyd, she said, ‘You done yet?’
‘I am.’
‘I don’t like the feeling I’m getting. Let’s have another chat with Mr Friendly.’
* * *
The caretaker’s office was just inside the main gate. The windows were criss-crossed with iron cladding and the roof was shaped like one you’d find on an old country church.
‘This used to be living quarters at one time,’ Bernard Fahy said.
He’d divested himself of his workman’s jacket and was shuffling around the small office. He wore a thin jumper under a pair of dungarees at least two sizes too big for him. His hair had probably once been blonde but had turned yellow. From cigarette smoke, Lottie suspected.
‘Does anyone live here now?’ She stared at the bare concrete floor, then the cracked walls.
‘Not a sinner, except for the poor souls buried six feet beneath us.’
‘Really?’
‘Not literally.’ He laughed, the same harsh sound that had earlier scared the birds.
Lottie felt her skin crawl. She looked up at the tall, thin man. It was hard to tell his age, because his skin was so weather-beaten.
‘I’ve been caretaker here for the last fifteen years, and I could tell you a thing or two about what goes on around here. You wouldn’t believe it.’
‘I think I would,’ Lottie said. She wasn’t here for reminiscences. She wanted answers. ‘If someone wanted to gain entry to the graveyard at night, is it easy?’
‘The main gate is locked, unless a hearse is arriving, but the side gate is left open day and night. And anyone can hop over the wall if they’ve a mind to. There’s a lot of illegal dumping. I work for the council and they won’t listen to me about it. Did you see the mound of black bags out there? Don’t suppose you can do anything?’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry.’ Opening her bag, she took out Elizabeth Byrne’s photograph. ‘Have you ever seen this young woman?’
Fahy picked up the photo and ran a dirty fingernail down Elizabeth’s face. ‘Pretty girl. What did she do?’
‘She didn’t do anything.’ Lottie pulled the photograph from him and wiped it clear of smudges. ‘We’re trying to locate her.’
‘You won’t find her here, unless she’s dead and buried,’ he sniggered.
‘Have you seen her?’
‘You keep asking the same questions. Must be hard, training to be a guard. No, I never saw that girl before.’ He picked up his jacket. ‘And if you don’t mind, I’ve Mrs Green’s funeral arriving in a few minutes.’
‘If you hear anything else from Bridie, or anyone else, please let me know.’ Lottie handed him one of her cards.
‘I will. If truth be told, she did rattle me a little with her scary stories. I was beginning to believe them myself.’ He looked up at the diamond-shaped windows, lost in thought, before adding, ‘You sure you don’t want to look into that illegal dumping for me?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘If I catch who’s doing it, they will be dead and buried,’ Fahy said.
Lottie pushed Boyd out the door in front of her and strode to the gate.
‘He gives me the creeps,’ Boyd said.
Lottie said, ‘Dead and buried. I hope not.’
Eight