The Nameless Dead (7 page)

‘Mr Reddin,’ I said, moving across to him. ‘I’m Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin. I was wondering if I could speak to you.’

He looked up at me. One of his eyes was clouded in the centre, as if thick with cataracts.

‘Come closer,’ he said.

I squatted down to his level, near the seat. ‘I’m Inspector Benedict Devlin. Chief Super Costello suggested I speak to you.’ I handed him a brown bag containing a bottle of
whiskey, as Costello had suggested.

‘Old Elvis isn’t Chief Super anymore,’ Reddin said, wagging his finger at me. He slipped the bottle from my grip with his other hand and hid it down the gap between his leg and
the arm of the chair. ‘Once a smuggler,’ he commented, winking conspiratorially. I had assumed that his presence in the home was due to mental degeneration, but it seemed I was
wrong.

‘So what can I help the Garda with?’

‘Tra na Cnamha.’

He nodded, his good eye rolling to the side, as if he were trying to recall the place.

‘Declan Cleary.’

‘You knew he was there?’ I said.

‘I heard on the TV today,’ he said. ‘What can I help you with?’

‘The person who passed on the information about Cleary’s body being on the island referred to Tra na Cnamha. Costello said the only people who knew that name would have been
smugglers and net men. There aren’t that many of either left. He thought I should speak to you.’

‘The old smugglers have all gone – all the stuff across the border now is organized criminals’ doing. Not like us; what we did was harmless. Foodstuffs and that.’

I decided not to get involved in arguments about so-called victimless crimes.

‘You started young in them days,’ he said, laughing lightly. ‘Me mother took me across to Strabane when I was just a wee’un. She’d be over to buy sugar; you could
bring a two-pound bag back with you, but not tobacco. The shops in Strabane used to hide a couple of ounces of shag inside the sugar bags. And my mother used to tie her stocking to the inside of me
belt, running down inside me legs. You’d get them filled with flour and sugar and that; or butter, flattened and pressed against your thighs when you walked. The customs must have known, the
shuffling of all the kids across the bridge like they was desperate not to wet themselves. Now it’s drugs and oil and that. It’s not the same.’

‘Who would still be around from the early-seventies?’ I asked.

‘Smugglers?’ Reddin said. ‘Not many. There were only three or four of us running the border by that stage anyway; the Fisheries men confiscated all the boats. Then when they
shot that young fella Callan under the bridge, well that stopped everyone. Being caught bringing across a few cows was one thing; being shot for a Provo was something else.’

He leaned past me and winked sharply at someone. ‘All right, Maisie,’ he said. ‘I’ll be looking a waltz later, whatever time the boyos get started.’ He smiled
wolfishly.

I turned to the recipient of his request. Opposite us sat a small, frail woman, her skin fine, her hands small and neat where they folded on her lap. She raised one slender hand and shooed away
the comment. Despite that, her face was bright and keen, her smile at the comment radiant.

‘She’s a lovely old girl,’ Reddin said. ‘Poor woman, no one ever visits her. I’m here five years, I’ve never once seen any of her family come near the place;
even at Christmas. They just let her vanish.’

‘How about you?’ I asked. ‘Do you like it here?’

‘It’s all right,’ Reddin said. ‘My eyesight kept going, and I couldn’t gauge things anymore. I’d be pouring tea and not know I’d missed the cup till
I’d scorched me feet with the boiling water.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said.

Reddin shrugged. ‘There’s worse things happen to people. The band will be starting soon, son, so you may finish your questions.’

I nodded. ‘I appreciate your speaking to me. Can you think of anyone from that time; net men or smugglers who would still be about?’

Reddin’s clear eye swivelled toward me. ‘I thought anything that went to the Disappeared crew couldn’t be investigated.’

‘It can’t,’ I said. ‘They found a child on the island. That’s what I’m more interested in.’

Reddin nodded. ‘The place was coming down with them; wee limbo babies.’

‘This one is different. From the late-seventies probably. We think it was murdered.’

Reddin squinted slightly, as if trying to focus on something.

‘The bridges were down by then. Whoever took that child onto the island needed a boat. Net men and smugglers would be the most likely to provide transit across,’ I explained.
‘They would know who brought the baby across. It was buried in another part of the island from the rest of the
cillin
.’

‘The same goes for Cleary, too, if you find him on that place – someone would have had to bring him across, too. Someone could get into trouble for that,’ Reddin said
shrewdly.

‘No one can be prosecuted in either case. To be honest, I just want to know what happened to the child. I want to find out her name. So she doesn’t just disappear.’

Reddin considered the response. ‘In terms of smugglers, the only ones I knew of left were Pete Cuthins and Alex Herron. The net men were different. Their numbers have been dropping
constantly; the Fisheries stopped them as well. Bloody stupid, too. You can have a thousand people with rods fishing above the Lifford bridge, but the net men fishing for a living beyond the bridge
is having their licences cut every year. There would only be three left I can think of: Tony Hennessy, Finbar Buckley and Seamus O’Hara.’

‘Thank you, Mr Reddin,’ I said, as I jotted the names down.

‘O’Hara might be able to help you best. He was the ferryman, you know?’ He winked blindly as he spoke.

‘The ferryman?’

‘From when people used the island for their babies. A
cillin
.’

I nodded, worried that the conversation was simply going to be repeated.

‘It means little church, did you know that?’ Reddin said, raising his chin interrogatively.

‘I didn’t.’

‘O’Hara ferried across the babies. To bury them. The church knew all about it; they were happy for him to do it.’

I could see that Reddin was no longer looking at me, his vision seemingly locked on something in the middle distance, which I knew he could not see.

‘I used him once. The missus lost one of ours. He came too early, hadn’t a chance. I called the priest but he wouldn’t do anything for us. He said a quick prayer. We asked him
to baptize the wee critter. Padraig, we wanted to call him, but he wasn’t allowed, he said. “Put him in a shoebox, with a scrap of white wrapped round him and take him to Seamus
O’Hara. I’ll tell him to expect you; down at the island.”’

The whiteness of his eyes shone through the tears that had gathered over them.

‘It was a spring morning, the mist on the river just beginning to burn off. I carried him down there, the shoebox under me arm, like a lunchbox, like I was going to work for the day.
Marion wanted to see him one more time; she wrapped him in a white sheet. We blessed him ourselves, with holy water. I didn’t give a tinker’s curse whether it was right or wrong. We
christened him ourselves, then we laid him in the box like he was sleeping. Marion wouldn’t let me dry the water off his wee head. I could still see the dampness of the cross we’d made
with our thumbs when I reached the island.’

He turned towards me, lifting his hand and wiping his eyes.

‘O’Hara was there. Him and his boat coming across through the mist. “I’ve it dug already,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.” I wanted to go with
him, but he wouldn’t let me. “You can’t cross over,” he said. “Don’t be fretting about it. I’ll look after it for you.” I had to hand him over the
wee boy, laid the box on the floor of the boat. O’Hara stood there waiting, until I palmed him a few florins. Then he pushed away from the bank. I never saw where he laid him.’

He raised his head as if to stymie any further tears. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, though. That wee lad is with Marion now, and the two of them are looking down on me, waiting for me to
join them. Padraig was on God’s right hand the day he was buried, baptized or not, and no bastard will ever tell me otherwise.’

I laid my hand on Reddin’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said.

My speaking seemed to bring him back to the present, for he wiped his face quickly with the sleeve of his cardigan and turned to me. ‘I didn’t give you those names,’ he said,
raising a finger towards me. As he spoke he looked past me, waving and smiling genially to one of the other residents who was being led into the room.

‘Your eyesight seems to be okay now,’ I said, following his gaze.

‘I’ve no bloody idea who they all are,’ he muttered, blinking like Tiresias as he continued to wave. ‘They’re all just outlines. I imagine they’re
good-looking, which helps. I know Maisie, for she always sits in that seat. The rest of them are a blur.’

My sergeant, Joe McCready, was standing in the small kitchen in the station in Lifford when I stopped off on the way home. He was pouring himself a coffee with one hand while
his other held his mobile.

‘That’s fine, I think. Didn’t he say that was okay?’ His tone was nervous, the speech hesitant, unconvinced.

I could hear the ghost of the voice on the other end of the call while I poured myself the final coffee from the flask.

‘Maybe you should phone and double-check with him.’

He nodded, though the speaker could clearly not see the gesture.

‘I’m not worrying,’ he said. He shifted away from where I was standing and lowered his voice. ‘I just want to be sure everything is okay.’

I took my coffee and walked down to the office where we worked. It had once been a sizable cleaning store but had been converted for a murder enquiry and had never been changed back again. As I
sat down, the door opened and McCready followed me in. Outside I could hear the main phone ringing.

‘Everything all right, Joe? I thought Burgess was the only one in today.’

He nodded. ‘I’ve bits and pieces of paperwork to do. I fancied getting out of the house for half an hour, to be honest.’

I nodded at the phone still in his hand. ‘Things getting a bit heavy?’

‘Ellen’s having contractions. But it’s too early. She says they’re Branston Hicks.’

‘Braxston. I remember Debbie having them.’

‘They’re okay, aren’t they?’

I nodded. ‘She’s how long left?

‘About six weeks.’

‘They’re perfectly normal.’

During the conversation, our desk sergeant, Burgess, had pushed open the door. He held a Post-it note in his hand.

‘I’m too long in the job when the station chat is about babies,’ he said, without humour. ‘This one will be right up your street. It’s the partner of one of the
Cashell girls. He asked for you directly, Inspector. Apparently his missus’s hearing a baby crying in her baby monitor.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t make the calls, Inspector, I just answer them. He asked for you by name; what do you want me to do?’

The last time I had seen Christine Cashell had been a year or so after I’d investigated the murder of her sister, Angela. Christine’s father had been a career
criminal, a petty thief and enforcer whose actions had resulted in the death of his daughter. Christine had had a baby then and was working in the local pharmacy, despite being only in her late
teens; she would now be in her mid-twenties.

When we knocked at the door, it was a young ferret-faced man who answered, snuffling into his hand.

‘Are you Devlin?’

‘That’s right. This is Garda McCready.’

He raised his head in acknowledgement of Joe, then nodded at me. ‘She wants you.’

He stood back to allow us to enter the house, pointing across the hallway to where a door lay ajar. We passed him and went into the room. Christine was lying on the sofa. Though older, she had
not changed that much physically. Her red hair was still striking in its lustre, her expression still one of defiant vulnerability. But, when I saw her now, it was clear something fundamental had
changed, something had broken inside her.

She smiled when she saw us, though the gesture did not reach her eyes, which were puffy and raw with crying. I noticed that a baby monitor perched on the arm of the sofa by her head, its hiss a
constant, unbroken soundtrack to our conversation.

‘Hello, Inspector.’

‘Miss Cashell. Or are you
Mrs
now?’

It was Christine’s partner who responded. ‘Christ, no,’ he said quickly. ‘We’re not married. We’ve moved in together.’

Christine looked at him and I suspected for a moment that the speed of his denial had hurt her.

‘You wanted to see me, Christine.’

She nodded. ‘Thanks for coming out. I wondered if you were still about.’

‘Is everything okay?’ The man’s fidgeting, her recent tears, his nervous pacing near the doorway bore all the hallmarks of the aftermath of a domestic-violence incident.

‘She’s hearing a baby crying. In that thing,’ he nodded towards the monitor. He snuffled again into one hand, rubbing at his nose, then wedged his fist into his pocket
again.

‘What’s your name, sir?’

‘Andrew,’ he said, pausing in his pacing. ‘Andrew Dunne.’

‘Would you like to sit down, Mr Dunne, and tell me what’s wrong?’

He stared at me a second, as if reluctant to capitulate to my request. In the end, he moved across to the armchair in the corner and rested one buttock on the arm of it in a vague
compromise.

‘She says she’s hearing things in that thing. A baby crying.’

I nodded, looking at Christine. She returned my glance, her eyes a little wide.

‘Is that not normal?’

‘It’s not my baby crying.’

‘And where is your baby?’ I said, smiling. I glanced around the room, half expecting to see a child sleeping in a carry-cot, but could see none. I nodded to Joe who drifted out into
the hallway to take a look around.

‘My baby’s Michael.’

I nodded. ‘That’s a nice name. You have an older child, don’t you?’

Christine smiled briefly. ‘Tony. He’s at school.’