The Lake (10 page)

‘Crumm is a very small place,’ she said slowly, ‘in every sense. Small place. Small people. And Jerome, well Jerome is a very big personality.’

Frank seemed to consider this.

‘It’s difficult being different,’ he said, after a moment, ‘in any walk of life. People like people who fit in. Who conform. But things are changing’, he went on, ‘and it’s easier in Dublin. People are more accepting in Dublin. In cities generally, I think.’

Even in the heat of the sun, Peggy could feel her cheeks burning from the inside out.

‘Maybe he is happier in Dublin,’ he said, ‘but you need him here, of course.’

‘I don’t need him,’ Peggy snapped. She immediately felt sorry and turned to see if she had offended Frank. But his eyes were as soft as ever when they met hers. She swallowed back her ire. ‘Sorry.’ She smiled at him. ‘I studied hotel management. After I left school.’

Frank looked surprised. Interested.

‘My plan was to go abroad. For a few years, anyway. Work in one of the big hotels in London, maybe. Or America. For the experience. I thought I might come back after a few years and get a job in Dublin myself. In the Westbury, maybe.’ She suddenly felt a bit ridiculous. ‘Or, you know.’

‘So why are you here?’

The question could have been an innocuous one, but Peggy suspected that Frank was not enquiring about the practicalities of taking over a family business on the death of a father. Why was she still managing The Angler’s Rest? Why was she still living in Crumm? Why had she settled? The silence of the lake filled the space all around them.

‘It’s just one of those things,’ she said. ‘When Daddy died, the bar was closed for three days. We waked him in the house, and buried him up in Ballyknock. And then, the next day, we were all there together, and someone opened up, and that was it.’ She flicked at a fingernail with her thumb. ‘I suppose I’d assumed Hugo would stay. Well, everyone had. But the next day, he went back to London, and Carla went back down to Wexford. And, well, that was it. Myself and Jerome stayed.’

‘When was that?’ Frank asked quietly.

‘Two years ago now,’ Peggy laughed when she heard herself utter the words.

Frank sat up. ‘And you never thought of selling?’

Peggy shook her head, ‘It’s our home,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Our parents are dead. What would happen to us all if we had no home to keep us together?’

For a second, Peggy thought Frank might actually answer her question. He had been so insightful up until then, she actually hoped he would. But Frank just looked from Peggy out over the lake, and said nothing. And the reality of her admission became a real living thing. Out there now. Spoken. The truth. Peggy would never sell The Angler’s Rest, and her brothers and her sister would never stay. Peggy suddenly felt like someone had slapped her cheek. She clasped her knees tighter to herself. And they sat there, side by side, looking out over the lake, watching the little boat and its two crewmen row off into the distance.

Frank looked at his watch. He should be up at the station by now. Garda O’Dowd was expecting him. And he needed to phone Dublin. His superior officer would be finishing up at six. But it was very peaceful at the lake, talking to Peggy. She was easy to talk to. She impressed him so much: her sense of family, of responsibility. Her sense of duty. And she was undeniably capable. The Angler’s Rest was no hole in the wall. She’d obviously used her training to make it the successful business it seemed to be. But then, she was clearly very attached to the place. Very settled in Crumm. She had no apparent yearning to leave. It surprised him a little, but he could see that now.

He could also see thick, dark hair, and soft, pale skin. He knew he had asked her to walk out with him under false pretences. He didn’t really think that she could help him with his investigations. He also knew that whatever he was doing, Rose wouldn’t like it.

But he was doing it anyway.

He stood up and stretched his arms above his head, looking down on Peggy from above. ‘Will we keep walking?’ he asked.

They were getting close to the place where the body had been found. Frank could see the old manor house across the lake as the sunlight danced on the windowpanes.

‘So Coleman used to be a postman you said?’

Peggy laughed. ‘Yeah. It’s hard to believe it now. I remember him cycling around on his bike with a big basket up front. That must have been after the dam was built, as he said last night. I didn’t know that part of the story.’ She looked out over the water. ‘You know, it never occurred to me that he might have lost his farm to the lake. I just always assumed he was a sarky old postman who hated children. And dogs.’ Some memory made her giggle.

‘And he was never married?’ Frank said.

‘Well now.’ Peggy crossed her arms. ‘That’s an interesting one. I remember my mother telling me once that Coleman had had a girlfriend. Years ago. When he was much younger. Himself and the brother had been considered quite the catch, can you believe that?’ She laughed and touched Frank’s arm absent-mindedly, as if she was gossiping with a friend. Frank didn’t flinch, and Peggy didn’t seem to notice. ‘Apparently, he had been doing a line with a local girl, when she met some English tourist and went off to London with him.’ Peggy bit her lip. ‘And that was that. Himself and the brother have lived together as bachelors as long as I’ve known them.’ She looked up at Frank. ‘Sad, really.’

Frank thought about this. ‘When do you think that was?’ he asked. ‘When did the lady leave with the Englishman?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Years ago,’ Peggy said. ‘I’m not sure when exactly.’ She looked worried for a moment. ‘You could ask Coleman,’ she said. ‘But maybe don’t say I told you. I don’t want him to think … you know.’

Frank nodded. He needed to check it out. However, if the body travelling up to Dublin at that moment was dated to the Fifties, as Dr. McKenna supposed, it was unlikely to be Coleman’s lost love. He would have been at least forty years old back then. Frank couldn’t see him wooing a twenty-year-old woman. Then again . . he’d have to find her name and check it out. He looked at his watch again. He really needed to get back to the station.

Then he realized where they were and he stopped walking. ‘That’s the place. Had you seen it?’ He pointed to the spot where the body was found, a little farther on. The ground had clearly been disturbed, although someone had made some effort to refill the depression.

‘Oh.’

Frank saw a sadness fall over Peggy’s features. He watched as she went over to the spot and stood over it like someone might stand over an open grave. He stood next to her and they fell silent for a long moment. With no voices filling the air, he could clearly hear the magpies above their heads, croaking at each other in the swishing trees.

‘Poor girl,’ Peggy said after a while. ‘I hope they find out who she was. What happened to her.’ She looked up quickly. ‘You,’ she smiled. ‘I hope you find out.’

Frank nodded, staring into the sand as if some clue might suddenly materialize there. His hand closed around the tissue in his pocket.

‘Actually, we did find one clue on the body,’ he said. He removed his hand and opened the tissue in front of Peggy. She looked at the metal rectangles glinting in the sunlight.

‘What are they?’ she asked.

‘Dog tags.’ Frank lifted them by the top loop and dangled them in front of her. ‘Army identification tags.’

‘Of course.’ Peggy nodded. ‘I’ve never seen them up close.’ She put her hand out. ‘Can I touch them?’

Frank laid them down on her palm. He noticed the small welts under each of her fingers.

‘Wow,’ Peggy lifted one of the tags as though it might break. ‘So, was she in the army?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Maybe it was an IRA thing after all?’

Frank almost laughed but swallowed it in time. ‘No. We don’t believe them to belong to the victim. And I’d be fairly sure that they’re not Irish. Look here.’ He pointed to the letters embossed on the metal.

Peggy peered at them. ‘Maxwell John R,’ she read. ‘So who was Maxwell John R?’

Frank took the tags from her fingers. He wrapped them in the tissue and put them back deep in his pocket. ‘We’re looking into that,’ he said. ‘I gather the name means nothing to you?’

She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone in the army actually. Ever.’

She seemed almost shocked at the idea. She might be someone who could very capably run a bar, but Frank could see at that moment how innocent of the world Peggy Casey really was.

He tipped his head towards the shore. ‘We’d better be getting back. I need to get up to the station.’

‘Of course.’ Peggy turned to go immediately. They walked towards the small grassy field where Frank had parked his car not much more than twenty-four hours previously. Back before he had ever set foot in The Angler’s Rest. Back before he had ever heard of Peggy Casey and her siblings. It struck him as strange how he felt he knew them now. Knew Peggy at any rate.

‘So,’ he said as he jumped up from the stony lakebed onto the grassy shore. ‘Is Peggy short for Margaret?’

Peggy gave a little laugh. ‘No, actually,’ she said, ‘my mother just always said she liked the name. I never really asked her what made her choose it.’

Frank could hear traces of regret in her voice.

‘But Peggy Lee was big in the early Fifties,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’m a bit of a Peggy Lee fan. I like to think I’m named after her.’

Frank laughed aloud, but stopped when he saw Peggy’s offended expression. ‘It’s a lovely name,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m not laughing at the name. It’s just, my mother. She named me after Frank Sinatra. She told me she had to lie and tell the priest I was named for Saint Francis of Assisi or he wouldn’t have baptized me.’

Peggy kept her face trained on the ground as she walked, but Frank could see she was smiling.

‘“Nice Work If You Can Get It”,’ she said, and began to sing, quietly, her voice was creamy and rich.

‘Are all the Caseys singers, so?’ The question twinkled in his eyes.

‘Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee. That was the only song they ever recorded together,’ Peggy explained.

He could see she was blushing. ‘Well, if you ever need work, you’d be well able for the stage,’ he said. He meant it. An image of Peggy standing behind a microphone in a curvaceous, sparkly dress popped into his head. He coughed. He was glad to see the white walls of The Angler’s Rest up ahead of them.

‘I’ll head on up to the station,’ he said as they reached his car.

‘Of course.’

‘Well, Peggy. Thanks again for your help.’

‘I’m not sure that I was any help,’ she said, stooping to deadhead some petunias growing in an old iron pan under the windowsill.

‘Oh you were, you were.’ He opened the door, and noticed Peggy observing it, but she said nothing.

‘So, thanks again,’ he said.

‘You’ll be back up to Dublin tonight?’

He thought she sounded a little breathless. ‘Probably. Well, it depends on what information I can get from America today. On the tags, you know?’

She nodded.

‘Anyway. I’m not sure yet.’ He put a foot into the car. ‘I’d better get down to Garda O’Dowd now, anyhow. Bye Peggy.’ And he sat into the car and turned the key in the ignition.

‘Bye, Detective.’ He thought he heard her say, and he pulled out a little faster than he really needed to, and off up the road to the village.

There was the odd time, the very odd time, when Peggy wished someone from the Irish Tourist Board would happen in on The Angler’s Rest in Crumm. When things were good, she knew that Casey’s Bar wouldn’t look out of place on the pages of any brochure advertising Ireland to American travellers. Were that to happen, it was certain that some of those travellers would find their way to this idyll of an Irish bar, travellers who might otherwise bypass a place like Crumm and spend their dollars in Cashel or Killarney instead.

Tonight was one of those times. As she lifted empty glasses from tables around the room, Peggy could feel a buzz in the atmosphere. It weaved its way through the hum of conversations; a hum punctuated by the odd booming laugh; laughter that would get louder and chatter that would get more animated as the night was oiled by stout and whiskey and bottles of beer. They had finished serving food now, and the last of the empty plates had been cleared to the kitchen. Life and heat danced from the turf fire in the grate, adding to the glow on Peggy’s face. Two of the Delaneys had brought a fiddle and a tin whistle in with them, and leather boots tapped subconsciously all around Casey’s Bar. Even the smoke rising from fingertips and moving lips seemed to twist and twirl in time with the reel.

Peggy glanced up at the bar where Jerome was busy measuring whiskey into four small glasses lined up in a row. She watched him fill a ceramic jug with water. He looked up at her, and gestured to four men sitting at a low table, their stools turned to face the musicians in the corner of the room, their hands slapping their knees, their feet bouncing off the flagstone floor. Peggy left the empty pint glasses down on the counter. She set the whiskey and water on a tray, and brought it over to the men.

‘Ah, would ya look at this,’ one of them said. ‘What more could a man want after a long day on the lake, but a fine malt served by a beautiful girl.’

As soon as Peggy had left down the tray, the man reached up and pulled her onto his lap, jiggling and dancing her in time to the music. Peggy jerked away from him and stood, pulling at the hem of her skirt.

‘Now now, lads,’ she said, the smile on her lips never dimming. ‘Only food and drinks on offer here at Casey’s. Back up to Dublin with ye should ye be looking for anything else.’

She shot a warning glare to the man with the roving hands. As she turned away from the table, she caught Fergal Maher staring at her, his face serious, his fist clenched on the table. She winked at him. Fergal was a good guy. A good friend since their school days. But being the proprietress of a public house came with its own perils and Peggy was well able to handle a few spirited fishermen.

She crossed the room to the fire and gave it a stoke with the poker. She knew she was waiting. Hoping. Twenty times that evening she had jumped when the door had opened, only to reveal someone who wasn’t Detective Sergeant Frank Ryan. For the past ten minutes it had remained stubbornly shut. He was still in Crumm. Enda O’Shea had informed her of that before he had taken his pint and sat next to the Delaneys in the corner where he might not be conspicuous in his solitude. The detective would be staying another night in O’Shea’s, and would most likely be returning to Dublin tomorrow.

Peggy reached back and tightened the clip in her hair. She felt for her mother’s pearl pendant. It was still there, resting against her skin. She didn’t usually wear it in the bar: too much of a risk of it falling off, or getting caught in a keg. The clasp was old. Peggy glanced into the copper pot that hung over the mantelpiece, but it offered little by way of reflection. She must get Maura to have a go at it with the Brasso on Monday. She bent down and threw a sod of turf on the fire. Bits of dry straw caked into the peat glowed and fizzled. He was sure to come in this evening. He’d hardly have to work all night. The sound of the front door opening made her start, but it was just Coleman and Doctor, and her heart sank a little. She returned behind the bar as the two men trudged along their well-beaten path towards her. They hoisted themselves up onto the high stools, seemingly ignoring each other as they settled themselves. Coleman threw a battered-looking box of cigarettes on to the counter in front of Peggy.

‘Ye’ll have to buy yer own drink tonight, gentlemen,’ she said with a raised eyebrow.

Coleman scowled at her as he shook a box of matches, which was left on the bar. He turned a little in his seat in order to look at the fiddle player in the corner. Peggy could hear him growling something under his breath. Doctor seemed oblivious to them both. He sat nodding at the musicians as though he was the king on a throne, and they the court entertainment.

‘Are we to die of the thirst?’ Coleman looked up at Peggy from under wire-brush eyebrows.

She swallowed a retort, and went to pull two pints. Jerome nodded a silent greeting at Coleman and went to open the till.

‘No sign of your sergeant this evening?’ he said over his shoulder.

‘What?’ Peggy flipped the tap back with more force than she intended. ‘Sure why would he be in here? I’m sure he has better things to be doing with his time than hanging around in bars.’ She directed the last part of her tirade at Coleman.

His concern seemed to be focused on the pints she was pulling. ‘Go easy on them, child,’ he said. ‘No pint of stout was ever improved with haste.’

‘More haste, less taste,’ Jerome said into her ear. She swatted him away.

‘Feck off, the lot of you,’ she said. ‘It would be more in your line to get that thing working, darling brother, and stop annoying me.’ She nodded over at the television that hadn’t made it out of its cardboard box and was still sitting quietly on the table in the corner.

‘Haven’t I been trying?’ Jerome poured himself a glass of water from the tap, and stood back, surveying the situation. ‘I’ve the brackets and shelf ready. I just need a bit of assistance getting the lot up onto the wall. Hugo can help me tomorrow.’

‘Hugo?’ Peggy took the coins Coleman had left on the bar and turned to the till. ‘What do you mean, Hugo?’

‘Oh, he phoned. While you were out swanning around with your detective. He’ll be home tomorrow for a few days.’

‘He will?’

‘Yeah.’ At that moment, two girls, a little younger than Peggy, approached the bar, and Jerome turned his attention to them. Peggy watched the blonde one follow every movement Jerome made with her blue eyes, and she watched how he didn’t seem to notice.

He finished serving them and turned back to Peggy. ‘He rang to say he was coming on Monday, but when he heard about the body, and what Carla’s been up to, and your detective … ’

Peggy glared at him.

‘He said he’d get the first flight tomorrow.’ Jerome drank back the rest of the water in his glass. ‘I told him we were fine, but he didn’t listen.’

Peggy opened herself a bottle of Coke. ‘How is it he can just hop on a flight like that? At short notice? He did that before, remember?’ She poured the Coke into a glass. ‘When Daniel Hogan’s mother died, he got a last-minute flight, and was back for the funeral.’

Jerome shrugged. It struck Peggy that he didn’t really seem to care either way. Hugo had never been very open about his job in London. He had transferred over there from a job in the civil service in Dublin, but he’d never really told her what it was that he did exactly.

Anyway, she wasn’t sure what he thought he was doing, coming back here. Not that he wasn’t welcome home anytime. Peggy was usually delighted at the prospect of the four of them being under the same roof. But if he thought she needed him to talk to the Garda for her, or to cope with Carla? Huh. She was well able to handle the lot of them. Hugo had better not start acting like her father, and making her look like a child in front of Frank.

If they ever saw Frank again.

She looked up at the door for the hundredth time that evening just as it opened, but it was only Bernie O’Shea. In for her weekly glass of Dubonnet and gin. Peggy glanced over at Enda O’Shea, smiling and tapping his feet to the music beside him. That smile won’t be long on your mug, she thought to herself as she saw Bernie enter and scan the room. Sure enough, no sooner had Enda O’Shea spotted his wife, than he sat upright and wiped the trace of foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. He stood to let her sit, and waved over at Peggy, who took down a stemmed glass and reached for the brown liqueur bottle.

‘If Hugo’s here, ye could do the flat roof above,’ she said to Jerome who was rinsing glasses at the sink.

‘We could,’ he said. But she knew they wouldn’t.

‘Another, so?’ She looked at Coleman’s empty glass. The first usually took him less than two minutes to drain. His pace slowed a little after that. She was halfway through the pull when the foamy liquid spluttered and gasped and the flow stopped.

‘I’ll get that,’ Jerome said and before she had a chance to object, he was gone through the back door out to change the keg.

‘Sorry, Coleman,’ Peggy said. ‘Won’t be a minute. Will you last?’

‘I’m not drinking the first pint out of a new keg.’ He took a cigarette out of the box in front of him, a look of disgust on his face. ‘Pour me a bottle there, young wan. You can give some other fool the first pint.’

Peggy didn’t even bother arguing, and she reached for a bottle of stout and opened it. She watched Coleman light his cigarette as she tilted the beer into the glass. It was hard not to feel for him. He was still a codger. A borderline alcoholic whose drinking habits were a steady contribution to The Angler’s Rest cash flow. But Peggy knew she felt differently about him today. She couldn’t help it. She had never thought of him as someone to be pitied, but knowing now, as she did, about his life before the dam had been built, well. It coloured her view of him, of that there was no doubt. He’d obviously had a tough life. She saw now how he might have grown into the bitter, grumbling old man that he was. Something her mother used to say popped into her head. ‘He too was someone’s blue-eyed baby boy.’ She’d said it anytime a beggar had called to the pub, looking for something. And as with many other things, she had been right. Coleman Quirke hadn’t been born a crotchety old man. Life had made him that way. The lake had made him that way.

‘So were you any help to the Garda, Coleman,’ she asked, ‘down at the lake? Did Fra … did the Detective ask your opinion on it all?’

Coleman sat back on his stool and exhaled two sickly lungs of smoke over the counter towards Peggy. ‘The Detective seems to be managing just fine,’ he said. ‘He needs no counsel from me.’

‘I’m thinking it’s Cairbre O’Rourke’s child.’ Doctor turned towards them, setting the dregs of his pint down on the counter. ‘’Twas long said he’d put her in the ground somewhere. Little rip that she was.’

He pushed the empty glass closer to Peggy. She ignored it.

‘She gave her mother a terrible time of it,’ he went on. ‘My money’d be on it being the O’Rourke child.’

‘Ara blather.’ Coleman didn’t look up from his glass. ‘Isn’t that girleen up in Dublin this past thirty years? At Saint Joseph’s. She must be forty years of age by now. Still causing trouble from what I hear.’ He half turned to his friend. ‘She’s no more in the ground than you are yourself.’

Doctor pouted a little. Peggy knew he was after another pint, but she wouldn’t pour one until he had left the price of it on the counter first. The back door swung open and Jerome strode in.

‘Try that now, Peg,’ he said.

Peggy pulled the tap, and after a moment the stout began to flow. She filled a glass and was about to tip the contents into the sink, when she realized that Doctor was eyeing it longingly through slitty eyes. She thought again of her mother.

‘Do you want to try this, Doc? See if the keg is good?’ She put the pint glass down on a beer mat in front of him. Without a word of thanks he lifted it to his lips and drank half of it back.

‘Possibly not the best pint I’ve had in this establishment,’ he said, his eyes shut tightly again. Peggy was about to tell him where he could go to find a better one, when Fergal Maher materialized before her.

‘Peggy.’ He smiled at her. ‘Two pints, please. And a Smithwick’s shandy.’

‘Taking it easy tonight, Fergal?’ Jerome said as he rinsed his hands behind the bar.

‘Up to Dublin in the morning,’ Fergal said, nodding. ‘I’ve a cousin, plays for the Kerry minor team.’ He looked over to where he’d left his two brothers sitting. ‘I’m driving the lads up, early doors. Don’t want to have a head on me.’

She noticed his cheeks burn a deep red.

‘Ah, Kerry’ll run away with it,’ Jerome said, leaning on the bar. Peggy was about to laugh out loud at her brother’s sudden interest in the Gaelic football, but she decided the better of it.

‘What do you make of the body down at the lake?’ Jerome went on. ‘Mad stuff, isn’t it? And they think it’s a young girl now?’

‘Jaysus.’ Fergal seemed shocked at this news. He handed some coins to Peggy. ‘But it must be there years, no? If it was under the water. It must be all rotted by now? Jaysus.’ He shook his head. ‘Will they ever find out who it is?’

Jerome shrugged. Fergal took a draft of the shandy.

‘They did find some, clues.’ Peggy looked from Fergal to her brother. She hesitated, not wanting to say more than she should. But then, if Frank had told her, it could hardly be a secret. ‘They found dog tags on her,’ she said, hoping she sounded as if she knew what she was talking about. ‘On the body. They have a name on them and everything. She was wearing them on a chain. Apparently.’

The two men were wide-eyed at this piece of news.

‘No way!’

‘Are you serious?’

‘No way.’ Jerome dismissed Peggy’s revelation with the shake of his head.

‘I saw them.’ Peggy glared at her brother. ‘Frank showed them to me.’

Jerome looked at Fergal. ‘Frank’s the detective on the case. Peggy’s new friend.’

Peggy slapped his arm. ‘Shut up, Jerome. Anyway,’ she finished pulling the two pints for Fergal and placed them in front of him on the counter. ‘I did see them. And they did have a name on them. So they’ll be able to trace whoever owned them. And hopefully, find out who she was.’