Irish Secrets (26 page)

"That makes this week kind of special, doesn't it? But I'm sorry, I'm working every day, so I'll have to wait until another time to go to Glasnevin with you. I
will
come back again, though, as soon as I can."

Margaret hugged her as she was leaving. "Don't worry about your mother, Kara. Although it would be wonderful to meet her, we're more than happy to have you as part of our family now."

Sitting by Patrick's side as he drove her into the city centre, she shook her head sadly. "Your parents are being very brave, aren't they? I'm sure they're devastated at not being able to meet with my mom."

"It would be a dream come true for Mam, and, of course, my dad never even saw his daughter. They're thrilled to have copies of all your photos of her, but please don't give up trying to persuade her, Kara." He smiled. "At least she gave you an Irish name, even though we usually spell it with a
c
, not a
k
. It means friend."

His words reminded her of Ryan explaining the meaning of
mo anam cara
, and she swallowed past the lump in her throat.

"I'll do my best to tell her about you all," she said when Patrick dropped her off at the bus stop on the Quays, his word for the road along the River Liffey. "I want her to meet you, and to realise how much she was loved by her mother."

"In the meantime, remember my parents will always welcome you. You are a very precious link to their daughter."

"Thanks, Patrick." She grinned. "Although I should call you Uncle Patrick, shouldn't I?"

He laughed. "Sue's kids call me Pat, so you can do the same. I hate being called Paddy, by the way."

"I'll remember that."

Ten minutes later, she was on the bus heading out of the city, and thinking back over everything she'd learnt about her family that afternoon. Not only about themselves but about their ancestors.
Her
ancestors, and her mother's too. Somehow she had to find a way of getting her mom to listen to her.

Her thoughts drifted to Ryan, and her anger dissolved. She'd missed him so much today. Missed him squeezing her hand, smiling when their eyes met, asking Margaret or Jon more about their ancestors, adding his own comments to their stories of the famine or some other aspect of Irish history.

As the bus reached the motorway across to the west of Ireland, she pulled her phone from her pocket. After a moment's hesitation, she hit the quick dial key for Ryan's number, and held her breath as she listened to the ringtone.

Calls are not currently being connected to this number,
said the automatic voice.

She frowned, tried the number again, but got the same message.

A weight dropped inside her. If he'd changed his phone, she had no way of contacting him again.

Chapter 25

On Monday morning, Ryan drove to Glasnevin Cemetery. He'd had a pint with a colleague the previous evening and, when Tony said he was having problems finding where some of his family lived in the 19th century, he offered to check the original burial records for their addresses. At the time, it seemed like an opportune way to divert his thoughts from the downward spiral his life had taken.

Now, as he pulled up in a parking space near John Kavanagh's pub outside the cemetery, it no longer seemed such a good idea. There were too many reminders of Kara here. Her smooth hand in his as they walked along the paths, her fascination with the graves of Ireland's national heroes, the light of interest in her eyes as he told her stories about them—

His thoughts came to an abrupt halt. Two weeks ago, her bewitching blue eyes had narrowed in shock, and then anger. Not that he could blame her. How many times since that nightmare Sunday had he cursed himself for not telling her the truth when they had lunch at Roundstone? He knew a raid on the cottage was imminent. He could have warned her but her accusation was right. He'd been too concerned she might let something slip to Liz, which meant he hadn't trusted her.

The irony, of course, was that Conor wasn't involved anyway, and that had led to his uncomfortable debriefing at BCI headquarters when he returned to Dublin. He'd spent the rest of the week at his desk, writing his report and catching up with other paperwork, but received no summons into his boss's office to discuss another assignment. No great surprise there, not after he'd screwed up the Clifden one so badly. Tom Wild had vanished, his car had been found abandoned at the Enfield service station on the M4 about forty kilometres from Dublin, and the Belfast police had nothing on Mick Leary. Even if his theories were right, nothing could be proved, which meant this was the second black mark against his name, after the McGuffin case last year. But if it meant he was going to be demoted to a tedious desk job for the foreseeable future, he might have to think about finding a different role, maybe as a private investigator.

Needing some time out, he applied for two weeks' leave. Once it was granted, his first instinct was to head back to Clifden, this time in his own car and not the mock taxi provided by the Bureau. Second thoughts told him it was too soon.

Instead, he spent the first week of his leave tackling some of the overdue jobs in his apartment, like giving the kitchen a fresh coat of paint and fitting a new shower. Anything to stop him from thinking about Kara, and the disastrous end of their relationship. Every time he was tempted to call her, he stopped short when the echo of contempt in her voice reverberated in his mind. Was he being over-cautious, or simply a coward in putting off contacting her?

Heaving a deep sigh, he got out of his car, walked along the path to the Visitor Centre, and settled in the research area, ready to study the large leather-bound tomes of burial records. Even when he'd been an undergraduate historian at Trinity College, he'd always preferred original documents to digitised records, despite the fact that the handwriting proved challenging at times. At least it helped to keep his mind off Kara and their visit here together.

After three hours, he'd found some of the names on the list Tony had given him, but his aching shoulders told him it was time for a break. The café on the ground floor of the museum was busy, and as he waited to pay for his pot of tea and chicken baguette, he glanced around.

With a jerk of surprise, he recognised the elderly couple sitting at one of the shiny white tables and, after picking up his tray, he headed across the café toward them. "Margaret! Jon! Grand to see you again."

They both looked at him, not completely blankly, but with uncertain expressions of
Don't we know you from somewhere?

He smiled as he put his tray on the table, and smoothed his hand across his cheek. "Aye, when we met, I had a beard, and I've had my hair cut since then, too. I'm Ryan. Ryan Brady." He used his undercover name so as not to confuse them even more. "I visited you with Kara a few weeks ago."

Their faces cleared, and Margaret smiled. "Ryan, of course! It's grand to see you again. You look so different without your beard."

"Sit y'self down, lad," Jon said. "What brings you to Glasnevin?"

"I've been doing some research for a friend."

"We've just taken some flowers to Jon's grandparents' grave," Margaret said. "We always visit this week because of a couple of anniversaries." She hesitated. "Kara came to see us yesterday, and she said you two had broken up."

He nodded as he poured tea into his cup. "That's true. It's difficult to explain everything, but it was my fault. Did she tell you what happened?"

"We didn't like to ask her."

"It's because I'm not what she thought I was." As Margaret and Jon both raised their eyebrows, he went on, "I'm a detective with
An Garda Síochána
. I was working undercover as a taxi driver in Clifden, until the case I was investigating blew up in my face, and she found out who I was."

"And she's upset because you didn't tell her the truth about yourself?" Jon asked.

"More than upset. She's angry, and accused me of not trusting her."

Jon nodded and leant forward. "Let me tell you something, Ryan. It's not the same situation, but it has a parallel, I think." He wrapped his hand around Margaret's and brought it up to his lips to kiss it lightly. "Fifty years ago, I was angry with Margaret. We didn't tell you the whole story when you visited us, but you may remember we didn't marry until over a year after we met again. The reason for that was my anger, when Margaret told me she'd given our daughter up for adoption."

Ryan glanced across at Margaret. "Didn't you explain what happened?"

She nodded, and Jon went on, "Yes, she told me everything, and I understood her reasons, or thought I did, but I couldn't get past the fact that she hadn't trusted me enough to tell me she was pregnant. I was hurt, and I'm guessing Kara is hurting in a similar way. Rationally, she may accept you couldn't tell her you were working undercover, but emotionally she probably feels let down, betrayed, maybe even inadequate, or wondering if she was somehow at fault. I experienced all those feelings and walked out of Margaret's life for several months."

Margaret smiled at her husband. "It was a difficult time for both of us, wasn't it?"

"Indeed it was."

Ryan tilted his head, frowning slightly. "And yet you're here together now, fifty years later, so how – I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry, but—"

"Don't apologise, Ryan. After all, I started to tell you our story, so it's only fair I should tell you how we resolved things. This is where it differs from you and Kara, because this happened in the mid-sixties." Jon smiled. "Unemployment was high, but I was lucky, as I had a good job at the bank. My friend Liam wasn't so lucky. He applied for a manager's job in Rathgar but didn't get it. Not only that, he was dismissed from the place where we both worked. Why? Because he was unmarried, but living with his girlfriend, and they had a six month old baby."

Ryan nodded. "I've heard similar stories from those days."

"The only reason I've told you about Liam is because that was when it hit me between the eyes. Margaret knew I would lose my job if it was discovered I had fathered a child outside of marriage, and so she went through all the agony of the Ballykane home and being forced to give up our daughter because of me. To protect me
.
That was an amazing thing for anyone to do, wasn't it? And, to cut a long story short, I found her again, and asked her to marry me."

"The legend of the red thread was certainly true in your case," Ryan said with a smile. He bit into his baguette, and chewed it thoughtfully. "But I'm not sure how I can untangle the thread between Kara and me."

"You'll find a way, son. It took me nearly a year, so don't lose hope. Not if you love her."

Different thoughts whizzed around Ryan's mind while he finished eating, and Jon went to the counter to order more tea for them all.

"Kara was so thrilled to meet you," he said to Margaret.

"And we're delighted she has found us. Yesterday she met our son and daughter, too. She's a charming young woman, and I already think of her as part of our family." Margaret shook her head slowly. "Our only disappointment is that her mother isn't interested in her Irish roots."

"So Kara's still not managed to tell her about what happened?"

"Her mother won't listen."

The idea that jumped into Ryan's mind was so bizarre he was tempted to dismiss it, but Jon's comment about the 'amazing thing' Margaret had done to protect him rang bells. Charley's words came back to him:
You'll have to do something pretty amazing to earn her trust and respect again.

"Do you know her father's name?" he asked.

"Alistair Stewart. She told us he's a lawyer in Newark in New Jersey."

He nodded. That should be enough to go on, especially if he asked his NYPD friend for help. There couldn't be many lawyers in Newark with that name, and he still had a week's leave.

Two days later, he checked in at the Aer Lingus desk at Dublin airport for the flight to New York.

* * * * *

"I'm beginning to feel like the Pied Piper," Kara said as she and Charley led the way down the drive on Friday morning, followed by the ten children, aged between seven and ten, who had comprised their designated group for the whole of this junior drama activity week.

This morning they were based in the cottage. The renovation was complete, the old furniture had been placed in the main room and bedroom, and Conor had cleared the shrubbery between the cottage and car park, and laid a path of paving stones. Last night, she and Charley had hidden various items in the cottage, ready for a scavenger hunt with the children today.

Once they reached the door, she divided them into two teams, gave each team leader a box, explained what they needed to look for, and stepped back as they all rushed inside to start their search.

Ten minutes later, she gathered them around the wooden table in the living room. "Okay, time's up. Let's see what you've found, and then we'll talk about how you can create a play with all your objects. Johnny, you go first. Something round?"

"A coin," said the boy, holding it up. "But it's not like our money. It's bigger and there's a hen on one side."

Kara nodded. "This is an old Irish penny, which people used in the past. Melissa, what did your team find?"

"A tin plate."

"Good. Now, did you manage to find something square?"

The children pulled the different items from their boxes, and Kara exchanged grins with Charley when one team offered a twig for something brown instead of the lump of peat they were supposed to find, and the other team produced a modern screwdriver as a long, thin item, and not the candle which was hidden near the stone fireplace.

"What about the last one, something shiny?" Kara asked. "I think that was the hardest to find, wasn't it?"

Johnny held up a silver spoon in triumph. "This was stuck to the back of the chair."

"Well done for finding it. Melissa, what about your team?"

"I found this!" Melissa beamed as she pulled a small white packet from her team's box.

It wasn't one of the objects they'd hidden, and Charley shot a quick frown at Kara before looking back at Melissa. "What is it, Mel?"

"Wow!" one of the boys cried when Melissa opened the packet and a sparkling bracelet fell on the table.

Kara's jaw dropped. This wasn't some cheap diamante and coloured glass jewellery. Even without inspecting it closely, she was certain the diamonds and rubies were real, and her heart started to race.

"Mel, where did you find this?" Charley asked.

"Under the bed," the girl replied.

"On the floor?"

"No, it was in the wall, in a gap between the stones."

"Come on, I think you'd better show me."

As Charley followed Melissa through the arch into the bedroom area, Kara smiled at the children. "Okay, while we're investigating this, I want you to try to invent a story that includes all your objects."

As they huddled around the table, she went into the bedroom. Charley pulled the wooden bedstead away from the wall, and Melissa crouched down. She pointed to a gap between two of the uneven large stones. "It was in there. I only saw it because it was white and the stones are grey, and I think there's something else, too, but my fingers aren't long enough to reach it."

As Charley bent down, and started to slide her hand into the gap, Kara's professional instincts kicked in. "Charley, leave it. If there is something, it might have fingerprints on it."

"Fingerprints? You mean—?"

Aware of the seven-year-old girl turning her head anxiously from one to the other, Kara smiled at her. "It's okay, Melissa, you did good finding the bracelet, but I think your team needs you to help with their story now."

Once Melissa returned to the living room, Kara turned to Charley. "I think I know what this is. Remember the press reports about Caitlyn Connolly's jewellery being stolen? Diamond and ruby pieces."

Charley stared at her. "Oh heavens, what do we do now?"