Читать книгу The Whisper - Carla Neggers - Страница 8

Beara Peninsula, Southwest Ireland

A wild hurling match was on the small television in the sole village pub. Scoop sat on a stool at the five-foot polished wood bar. He’d had soup and brown bread, then settled in with a Guinness during an afternoon shower. The peat fire was lit. The bartender’s brown-and-white springer spaniel was asleep on the hearth.

Life could be worse.

“I miss my garden,” he said to Eddie O’Shea, the wiry, energetic barman. In late June, Eddie had helped identify Jay Augustine as the man responsible for the sheep’s blood up at Keira’s ruin.

Eddie busied himself at the sink behind the bar. “Time to go home, is it?”

“Past time, probably. I might have some butternut squash I can save. The firefighters and paramedics trampled the hell out of my tomatoes and cauliflower. Of course,” Scoop added with a grin, “they also saved my sorry life.”

“And you saved Bob’s daughter,” Eddie said. He’d met Bob O’Reilly on Bob’s trip to Ireland earlier in the summer. Bob’d had to see Keira’s ruin, too. “A few tomatoes are a small price, don’t you think?”

“No price at all.” Scoop stared into his Guinness, but he was back in Boston on that hot summer afternoon, minutes before the bomb went off. Fiona O’Reilly, Bob’s nineteen-year-old daughter, had dropped by to see her father. She was a harp player, as smart and as pretty as her cousin Keira and as stubborn as her father. “This wasn’t Fiona’s fight. She was an innocent bystander.”

“Was it your fight?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s my fight now.” He thought of the special investigation back in Boston. Had his bomber been staring him in the face? Had he missed something? “I want to know who planted that bomb, Eddie. It could have been anyone. The meter-reader, the plumber, the mailman, a cab driver. Pigeons. Who knows?”

Eddie reached for Scoop’s empty glass. “You go after police officers suspected of wrongdoing. Do you suspect it’s a cop you’re after?”

Scoop didn’t respond, and Eddie didn’t push him for an answer. Few of the handful of people in the pub seemed to be paying attention to the game on the television. Most were locals, but Scoop picked out a young couple who undoubtedly had come in on the bicycles he’d seen outside the pub. He could hear the pair chatting in German. They looked happy and carefree, but probably they weren’t. There’d be issues back home—jobs, relatives, health issues. Something.

No one’s life was simple.

Definitely time to go home. Maybe being back in Boston would jog his memory about the minutes, hours and even days before the bomb blast. After three weeks recuperating on the other side of the Atlantic, he hadn’t produced a face, a name, an incident—a shred of a memory that would take him from the shadows of uncertainty to the identity of the person who had assembled the bomb and delivered it to the home of three detectives.

He’d have to face finding temporary housing when he returned to Boston. The triple-decker was badly burned and under repair. Bob O’Reilly was from Southie and knew carpenters, electricians and plumbers and was overseeing the work, but it’d be a while before any of them could move back in.

Scoop eased off the stool, left enough euros to cover the tab and headed back outside. The village was quiet, the sun shining again, glistening on the rain-soaked sidewalk. Brightly painted houses lined both sides of the street. He half expected Sophie Malone to walk up from the harbor.

It was eerie, that certainty that he hadn’t seen the last of her.

He shook off his strange mood and turned onto a narrow lane that ran parallel to the bay, at the foot of the steep hills that formed the spine of the peninsula. A half-dozen brown cows meandered down the middle of the lane toward him. City cop though he was, Scoop had grown up in the country and didn’t mind cows. He stepped close to an ancient stone wall and let them pass. As he continued down the lane, he tried to pay attention to the details around him and not get lost in his own thoughts. He noticed a half-dozen sheep in a pen and heard more sheep baaing up in the hills.

He came to the traditional stone cottage Keira had rented back in June and let him use the past two weeks. She’d come to Ireland to paint, walk, research her old story and delve into her Irish roots, but her summer hadn’t worked out the way she’d meant it to. The cottage was just the sort of place he’d have expected her to stay. Getting blown against his compost bin and almost bleeding to death had helped him realize he could have fallen in love with her, but being here in Ireland had convinced him that he hadn’t—that it wasn’t meant to be.

Keira was meant for Simon Cahill, the bull of an FBI agent who’d come here to search for her when she’d gone missing in the Irish hills.

It’d been a hell of a summer, Scoop thought.

A massive rosebush dominated the otherwise prosaic front yard, its pink blossoms perking up in the sunshine. He noticed the kitchen door was partially open and immediately tensed, although more out of force of habit than any real alarm. He wasn’t expecting company, and his rental car was the only vehicle in the gravel driveway. Most likely he simply hadn’t shut the door properly when he’d left for the ruin that morning.

Wrong on all accounts, he observed as a man with medium brown hair eyed him from the small pine table where Keira had left an array of art supplies. He had several days’ growth of beard and looked exhausted, if also intense and alert. He wore canvas pants and a lightweight leather jacket. “I never could draw worth a bloody damn.” He spoke with a British accent. He leaned back in his chair and held up a sheet of paper with a crude pencil drawing. “What do you think?”

“Is it a sheep?”

“There you go. No. It’s an Irish wolfhound.”

“I was just kidding. I knew it was a dog.” Scoop pulled off his jacket and set his backpack on the floor. “Myles Fletcher, right?”

“Right you are,” Fletcher said matter-of-factly, setting his sketch back on the table. “Did you ever want to be an artist when you were a boy, Detective Wisdom?”

“Nope. Always wanted to be a cop. I bet you always wanted to be a spy.”

The Brit grinned. “Simon Cahill warned me you were no-nonsense.”

“You’re SAS and British SIS. Secret Intelligence Service—MI6. James Bond’s outfit.”

“All right, then.” Fletcher yawned, his gray eyes red-rimmed. Wherever he’d come from, he hadn’t had much sleep. “You’ll want to know why I’m here. I’ll get straight to the point. I have information that a Boston police officer was involved in making and planting the explosive device that gave you those scars.”

Scoop remained on his feet, silent, still.

“This police officer worked with the men who engineered the kidnapping of Abigail Browning. Smart businessman that he was, Norman Estabrook delegated the job. He wanted Abigail. He didn’t care how he got her.”

Scoop leaned against a counter. During Abigail’s three-day ordeal, he had been in the hospital, out of commission. Fletcher’s role in helping her wasn’t common knowledge even in the police department, but Scoop had managed to piece together various tidbits and drag more out of his friends and colleagues in law enforcement. The Brit had latched onto a connection between drug traffickers and a terrorist cell and following their trail had taken him to American billionaire Norman Estabrook. For at least two years, no one, including Fletcher’s own people back in London, knew Fletcher was even alive.

In the meantime, the FBI was on to Estabrook’s association with the drug traffickers and had him under surveillance in the form of Simon Cahill. They arrested the hedge-fund billionaire in June. By late August, he was free again. He disappeared, and Myles Fletcher, still deep undercover, still on the trail of his terrorists, found himself in the middle of the angry, entitled billionaire’s elaborate scheme to exact revenge on the FBI for his downfall. Estabrook’s scheme included setting off a bomb as a diversion to kidnap Abigail, FBI Director John March’s daughter, a Boston homicide detective and Scoop’s friend.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Fletcher had done what he could to help Abigail. Once she was safe, he took off again.

Now he was sitting in an Irish cottage kitchen drawing pictures of dogs.

What a day, Scoop thought. First Sophie Malone, now Myles Fletcher.

A coincidence? Not a chance. “You wouldn’t be here if the main thrust of your mission wasn’t completed,” Scoop said.

Fletcher shrugged. “I suspect your bad cop is someone you know,” he said. “Someone you wouldn’t think twice to have over for a pint or two.”

“Any names?”

“No. Sorry.” Fletcher stretched out his legs, looking, if possible, even more tired. “I’ve done no research on my own. My focus has been on other matters. This is your fight. You were injured in the blast, and you work in internal affairs. Even if you don’t know this particular officer yourself, you’ll have instincts about those who go bad.”

“Where did you get this information?”

“Here and there,” Fletcher said vaguely as he rose, visibly stiff. “It’s my guess that these thugs, including your bad cop, were involved in other illegal activities in Boston, and that’s how they hooked up with Norman Estabrook.”

Scoop stood up from the counter but said nothing. The Brit was the one doing the talking.

Fletcher picked up a rust-colored pencil from the table. “But you were on to a connection between these thugs and a member of the department before Estabrook snatched Abigail, weren’t you, Detective?”

Scoop thought a moment before he responded. “I had a few whispers. Nothing more.”

“I imagine that’s the truth, as far as it goes. Frustrating, when you know some but not enough…” Fletcher let it go at that. “I expect that you’re very good at your job.”

“So are you. You’re more adept than most at lies and deception.”

“That’s why I’m alive, here, trying my hand at a sketch. Let’s spare each other, then, shall we?” He ran his thumb over the sharp tip of the pencil. “I’m impressed with what Keira can do with colored pencils. I’d always thought they were for children, not working artists.” He set the pencil back on the table and flipped through a stack of sketches Keira had started of various bucolic Irish scenes, pausing at one of a shovel laid across an old, muddy wheelbarrow in a garden. “I wouldn’t mind living inside one of these pictures. A green pasture, a stream, prancing lambs. A beautiful fairy princess. What about you, Detective?”

“I grew up on a farm. I liked it, but I’m not nostalgic about that life. What else can you tell me?”

“There’s a woman. An American archaeologist. She’s been doing scholarly work in Ireland and Great Britain for the past several years.”

“Sophie Malone,” Scoop said.

Fletcher glanced at him, then continued, “You ran into her when she was here in the village earlier today, didn’t you?”

“Yep. I did. Red hair, blue jacket. Had a big black dog with her and talked about the wee folk.” Scoop picked up the pencil Fletcher had used and realized it was nearly the same shade as Sophie’s hair. A deliberate choice on the Brit’s part? “The dog wasn’t hers. Want to tell me what’s going on, Fletcher?”

“I wish I knew. I strongly suspect the men our dead billionaire hired were also involved with Jay Augustine. I don’t know in what capacity.”

Nothing legal, Scoop thought, but he said, “Augustine’s a serial killer. Serial killers tend to be solitary.”

“I’m not talking about his violence. Augustine was also a respected dealer in fine art and antiques.”

“What’s that got to do with Sophie Malone?”

Fletcher grinned suddenly. “I’ve no idea. As I said, I haven’t done any research of my own. I suppose Augustine could have consulted her as an expert in his role as a legitimate dealer.”

“Are you linking her to this bad cop?”

“I’m saying her name came up at the same time as the likelihood that a police officer constructed and planted the bomb that exploded at your house last month.” Fletcher walked over to the front window, determined and focused but also obviously past being dead tired. “I wish I could be more helpful.”

“Funny, you and Sophie Malone turning up here within a few hours of each other.”

“Isn’t it, though?” He nodded out the window. “Here we go. Just what we need.”

For all Scoop knew, the big black dog was back with a troop of fairies.

Instead, FBI Special Agent Simon Cahill and Will Davenport—a British lord and another James Bond type—entered through the kitchen door. Casual, irreverent, black-haired Simon and wealthy, regal, fair-haired Will, both around Scoop’s age, in their mid-thirties, were as different in appearance as they were in temperament and background, but they were close friends.

Right behind them was Josie Goodwin. She had on a sleek belted raincoat, her chin-length brown hair pulled back and her mouth set firmly as she shut the door behind her. She pretended to be Will’s able assistant but was undoubtedly SIS herself. Scoop had met Josie and Will at Abigail’s wedding at Davenport’s country house in the Scottish Highlands. Josie, who was in her late thirties, had muttered over hors d’oeuvres at the reception that if she ever saw Myles Fletcher again, she would smother him with a pillow.

As far as Scoop knew, this was their first meeting since Fletcher had slipped undercover two years ago, leaving everyone he knew—including Josie Goodwin and Will Davenport—to think he was dead.

She entered the kitchen without a word and leaned against a counter. Strongly built and obviously well trained, she looked as if she’d have no problem dispatching even a hard-assed spy like Myles Fletcher.

Fletcher ignored her and directed his attention at the two men. “Simon. Will. It’s good to see you.” Finally he turned to Josie and winked at her. “Hello, love.”

“Bastard,” she said, then beamed a friendly smile at Scoop. “You’re looking well, Detective. Much better than at Abigail’s wedding. Some of your scars seem to be fading already.”

“I feel fine,” Scoop said. “I’m ready to get back to work.”

Simon stood by the kitchen door, near Josie’s position at the counter. “Moneypenny here wouldn’t listen to good advice and stay in London. She had to follow us to Ireland.”

She gave Simon a good-natured roll of her eyes.

Across the tiny cottage, Fletcher was at the front window again. “More company.”

Scoop noticed Simon’s expectant, troubled expression, but Will Davenport was more difficult to read. The kitchen door opened on a gust of wind, and flaxen-haired Keira Sullivan entered the cottage, followed in another half second by black-haired Lizzie Rush. They were both thirty, both coming to terms with the dramatic changes in their lives over the past summer. Lizzie was Will Davenport’s new love, and however she and Keira had gotten to the little Irish village, it hadn’t, obviously, been with either him or Simon. Scoop was trained in reading body language, but it didn’t take an expert to detect the tension between the two pairs of lovers.

With a curt nod at Davenport, Keira swept past Simon and greeted Scoop with a kiss on the cheek. “This place agrees with you,” she said, then, without waiting for an answer, turned to Josie. “Lizzie and I were in Dublin. It took a bit of doing on our part to figure out what was going on. I’m glad you could get here.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Josie said dryly.

Fletcher returned to the table of art supplies. He looked less tired as he smiled at Keira. “Your charming cottage suddenly seems very small, indeed, doesn’t it?”

“I have a feeling not for long,” she said, no curtness to her now. Her breathing was shallow, her cornflower-blue eyes filled with fear and anticipation.

Something was up, Scoop thought, observing his half-dozen visitors.

Fletcher picked up the sketch he’d done and handed it to Keira, her hands trembling visibly as she took it. “Here you go,” he said. “It’s an Irish wolfhound. I think of him as a shape-shifter in the midst of going from man to dog. That explains the quirks in my rendition, don’t you think?”

Josie Goodwin snorted from the kitchen. “So does being a bad artist.”

“It’s wonderful,” Keira said, gracious as always.

Lizzie Rush walked over to the unlit stone fireplace and stood with her back to it. She was the director of concierge services for her family’s fifteen boutique hotels, including in Dublin and Boston. She was small and black-haired, with light green eyes and an alertness about her that supported the rumors Scoop had heard that her father wasn’t just a hotelier but also a spy who had taught his only child his tradecraft.

She was the one who’d called Bob O’Reilly with the split-second warning that a bomb was about to go off on Abigail’s back porch.

Davenport, clad in an open trench coat, kept his focus on Fletcher, who had quietly moved away to the front door. Without raising his voice, Will said, “Simon and I are going with you, Myles.”

Fletcher pulled open the door and left without responding. The door shut with a thud behind him. Unless the departing Brit could shape-shift himself into a bird, Scoop figured Fletcher had a vehicle stashed nearby.

Davenport—well educated, well trained and very experienced—looked over at Lizzie, but he didn’t smile or go to her, didn’t speak, just tapped one finger to his lips and blew her a kiss, then turned and headed out after Fletcher.

“Damn Brits,” Simon muttered, then shrugged at Josie. “Sorry, Moneypenny.”

“I had much the same thought.” She stood up from the counter and inhaled sharply as she nodded toward the front door. “You’re going after them, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” There was no irreverence in Simon’s manner now. He was deadly serious. He walked over to Keira by the table of art supplies and half-finished sketches and touched her long, pale hair. “Keira…”

“You have a job to do. Go do it. Stay safe. Keep your friends safe.” She placed Fletcher’s sketch back on the table and caught Simon’s big hand in hers, no sign she was trembling now. “Come back to me soon.”

Simon kissed her but said nothing more as he went after the two British spies.

Once the door shut behind him, Josie let her arms fall to her sides. “All right, then. They’re off, and now it’s just us girls again.”

Scoop raised his eyebrows.

Her strain was evident even as she smiled at him. “Sorry, Detective.”

“Honestly, Scoop,” Keira said, attempting a laugh, “you look even more ferocious these days. Who’d ever know you adopted two stray cats?”

“The cats know,” he said.

Tears shone in her eyes. “They must miss you.”

“They’re in good hands. Your cousins are taking care of them.” Not Fiona but her two younger sisters, who lived with their mother—Bob O’Reilly’s first wife. Scoop tried to keep his tone light. “Your uncle’s having fits. Now Maddie and Jayne want him to adopt cats.”

“I’m just glad yours survived the fire,” Keira said quietly. “When are you going back to Boston?”

“Tomorrow,” he said, deciding on the spot. First the mysterious archaeologist, now British spies and the FBI. Too much was going on for him to justify even one more day in Ireland. Answers weren’t here, in Keira’s idyllic cottage.

Lizzie sank onto the sofa where, in his first days at the cottage, Scoop had lain on his stomach for hours at a stretch, easing himself off medication and trying to remember anything that could help with the investigations back in Boston. She kicked out her legs and propped her feet up on a small coffee table. Although she was a hotel heiress accustomed to five-star surroundings, she didn’t look out of place in the simple cottage. From what Scoop had seen of them, Lizzie Rush and Lord Davenport—who was accustomed to castles—were at home wherever they happened to find themselves.

“I have a room all set for you at our hotel in Boston anytime you want it,” she told Scoop.

“That’s very kind of you, Lizzie, but another detective’s offered me his sleeper sofa.”

“Who?” Keira asked, skeptical.

“Tom Yarborough.”

She sputtered into incredulous laughter. “You two would kill each other.”

Probably true. Yarborough was a homicide detective—Abigail’s partner—and not an easy person on a good day. He hadn’t had a good day in months.

“My family would love to have you at the Whitcomb,” Lizzie said. “Consider it done, Scoop. I’ll text Jeremiah and let him know.”

Jeremiah Rush was the third eldest of Lizzie’s four male Rush cousins. With her father frequently gone and her mother dead since she was an infant, she had practically grown up with them north of Boston.

“What about you three?” Scoop asked, taking in all three women with one look.

“We’ll keep ourselves busy,” Josie said. She opened up the refrigerator, giving an exaggerated shudder of disgust as she shut it again. “Rutabagas and beer do not a meal make.”

“I’ve been eating mostly at the pub,” Scoop said.

“Yes, well, one would hope.”

He went over to the front window and looked out into the fading daylight. The weeks of healing—of being on medical leave, away from his job—finally were getting to him. He turned back to the women. “When did you all get here?”

“Just now,” Keira said. “Lizzie and I came on our own.”

“Chasing Will and Simon?”

Her cheeks turned a deep shade of pink, but Lizzie was the one who spoke. “Not chasing. Following. They tried to divert us with a few days of shopping in Dublin.”

“Guess they had to give it a shot,” Scoop said with a smile.

“I flew from London,” Josie said. “I hired my own car at the airport.”

“Were you following Will and Simon—or Myles?”

She walked briskly to the table Fletcher had vacated and gazed down at his drawing. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m the trusted assistant of Will Davenport, the second son of a beloved marquess. Whatever else you’re thinking is pure fancy.”

Scoop didn’t argue. What Josie Goodwin knew and how she knew it was a matter he preferred to leave to speculation. He shifted to Keira, staring blankly at a sketch she’d started of the tranquil village harbor.

“Do you know an archaeologist named Sophie Malone?” he asked abruptly.

“I’ve heard of her, yes,” Keira said, perking up. “Absolutely. She’s a very well respected archaeologist. She’s volunteered to chair a panel on the Irish Iron Age at the folklore conference in April. The conference is shaping up to be quite an event. It’s good to have something fun to focus on after this summer.” She abandoned her sketch. “Was Dr. Malone here?”

Scoop nodded. “We ran into each other up at the ruin where you found your stone angel. She mentioned she’d talked to Professor Dermott. She didn’t stay long. I could have scared her off.”

“Not you, Scoop,” Keira said, a welcome spark of humor in her eyes.

Lizzie lowered her feet to the floor and sat up straight, frowning at Keira and Scoop. “Did you say Sophie Malone?”

“What,” Scoop said, “am I the last person to know who she is?”

“She worked at the pub at our Boston hotel when she was in college,” Lizzie said, rising. “We’re about the same age. I was in and out of town a lot at the time, but I remember her. We were both interested in all things Irish.”

“Have you seen her since?”

“Not that I recall. She and her twin sister and their older brother were born here in Ireland. Their parents worked in Cork. I took special note, I suppose, because of my mother, who was Irish.” Her tone softened. Shauna Morrigan Rush had died in Dublin under mysterious circumstances when Lizzie was a baby. “Strange, isn’t it? The ripple effects of life.”

Josie, who hadn’t stirred during the exchange, picked up the electric kettle on the counter and lifted the lid as she shoved it under the faucet. “Sophie Malone’s not another of John March’s informal spies, is she?”

“Not that I know of,” Lizzie said. For the better part of a year, she herself had anonymously provided the FBI director with information on Norman Estabrook, who had been a frequent guest at various Rush hotels.

Josie filled the kettle, then plugged it in and switched it on, her movements brisk, efficient. “You do have tea, don’t you, Detective?”

“On the shelf above you.”

She reached up and got down a tin of loose-leaf tea and set it on the counter, her casualness studied, as if she didn’t dare go where her mind wanted to take her. “Did Myles happen to run into this Sophie Malone?” she asked without looking at Scoop.

“I don’t think so, no.”

She turned to him, her gaze direct and unflinching. “But he mentioned her, didn’t he?”

“He had his reasons for coming here.”

Josie opened the tin of tea. Scoop figured that even someone who wasn’t trained in detecting lies and deception—which surely Josie Goodwin was—would guess he hadn’t told all he knew. She didn’t push him further. Keira and Lizzie eyed him but said nothing.

He retreated to the small bedroom and got his suitcase out of the closet. He had the bones of a plan. He’d head to the airport in Shannon and book the first flight he could get to Boston tomorrow.

He was packed in less than ten minutes. When he returned to the main room, Keira had torn off a fresh sheet of sketch paper and placed it in front of her on the pine table. She was staring at it as if she were trying to envision a pretty, happy scene—as if she’d had enough of violence, mystery and adventure and just wanted to hole up with her paints and colored pencils.

Lizzie Rush was back on the sofa, frowning, the spy in the making.

Josie lifted the lid on an old teapot and peered inside. “The tea’s ready, but I gather you’re not staying.”

“No,” Scoop said.

Her deep blue eyes narrowed slightly as she answered. “Safe travels, then.”

“Jeremiah will be expecting you at the Whitcomb,” Lizzie said.

Keira looked up from her blank page. “Tell my uncle not to worry about me.”

Scoop smiled at her. “That’s like telling the rain to stop falling in Ireland. It’s just not going to happen.”

As he headed out the side door, the three women didn’t interrogate him or try to stop him. He didn’t know whether they could guess what he was doing and approved, or if they just were resigned that he’d made up his mind and there’d be no stopping him.

Unlike Simon Cahill and Will Davenport, he had no one to kiss goodbye.

And no one waiting for his return to Boston.

Except his cats, unless they’d decided they preferred the company of Keira’s young cousins.