‘Gentlemen, how are you? Come in,’ she said. ‘You’re very good to come out to me. But you’re early. I haven’t had a chance to throw a shape on myself at all.’ She placed her hand to her chest, demurring, even though she knew she looked respectable enough in the black slacks and white tunic she was wearing.
‘Oh, will you stop,’ Pat Farrelly said, in that clipped way of his. ‘You don’t need to be dressing up for the pair of us. Sure we’re just here for a chat.’
She was introduced to a Detective Blakemore, shook his hand. She ushered the men into the sitting room.
‘That’s an unusual surname,’ she said. ‘What part of the country is that from?’ But the detective did not answer. She seated the men on the sofa and went to fetch a dustpan. She got down on her knees, scooped up the debris, and presented it to them. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘have you ever seen two hundred pounds in a dustpan before?’ She turned her wrist, shifting the remains around in the pan like a prospector, then sank down on her heels and laid it aside on the hearth.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘That’s all right,’ Pat Farrelly said. ‘Take your time.’
But the other man did not appear to be as sympathetic. Her resolve had deserted her, and he was looking at her doubtfully, like she might never get up off the floor. She heard a car coming up the drive – James, early as usual. She rose stiffly, pushing herself up off one knee, and sat on the sofa opposite the two men. She felt like giving up already, telling them there had been some kind of mistake. And then James appeared in the doorway. She knew he’d be annoyed that they’d arrived before him and he hadn’t quite had the time to adjust his expression. But she was glad to see he had a blazer on over his shirt and tie rather than the ratty old anorak he usually wore. He shook hands with the detective.
‘Will you make the tea, James. I haven’t had a minute all morning.’
‘Aye,’ James said, but he just stood there with his hands behind his back, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Not until she cast an angry glance at him and mouthed ‘go on’ did he depart the room.
‘Do you want your husband to be present, before we start, Mrs Keaveney?’ the detective asked.
She didn’t trust the man with his small, watchful eyes. Two deep lines furrowed his forehead so it was forever scored with suspicion. His eyebrows were grey and wiry but his head of tight curls was jet black. He dyes his hair, she thought, and that made her trust him even less.
‘I’m grand,’ she said, and focused her attention instead on Pat Farrelly. He was a big man, broad in the shoulders, and the thick, heavy material of his uniform made him appear even more substantial. She had spent so much time imagining this moment, but of all the things, the pure, irreducible fact of Pat Farrelly sitting on her sofa in his stiff navy cap – this was the thing that made it most real to her.
‘So, Izzy,’ Pat said. ‘You said you had some information for us.’
The detective turned over the cover of the notepad he was holding.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid I do, and I’m afraid that I’ve been sitting on it for a while. I should have said something straight away but I suppose I was in shock. Because I knew as soon as it happened.’
There was a tap at the door, rattling – it edged open a few inches. Izzy walked over and opened the door for James, took the tray from him. ‘Didn’t I say it to you, James?’ she said, laying the tray on the coffee table. ‘The morning after the fire – didn’t I say to you that something terrible had happened?’
‘Oh Jesus,’ he said. ‘She was in a bad way. I couldn’t settle her at all.’
‘Because I knew something had happened. Even before I really knew, I knew – do you know what I mean?’
The two men stared back at her.
‘I couldn’t sleep that night,’ she said, ‘I was awake at all hours and at some point I got up to use the bathroom and when I looked out the window—’
‘Was there a particular reason you were awake?’ the detective asked.
‘Sure I hardly sleep a wink at the best of times.’
‘And do you remember what time that was, Mrs Keaveney?’
‘It must have been near morning because there was a bit of light in the sky. I don’t have a clear view of the cottage from here, you can just make out the gable. But I thought it was strange – all that black smoke. And I just knew.’
‘But how did you know, Izzy?’ Sergeant Farrelly asked her.
‘Well, when I saw the smoke I—’
‘No, Mrs Keaveney,’ the detective said. ‘How did a woman living two miles across the bay look out her window and see a bit of smoke and know the fire had been set intentionally?’
‘Oh. That’s another story altogether,’ she said. ‘On the day of the fire, I visited her at the cottage and she told me that she was pregnant with Donal Mullen’s child and that he’d threatened her.’
The detective stared down at the blank page in front of him and then glanced up at Pat Farrelly, who sat there, silent. Oh dear, oh dear, Izzy heard him saying in her head. The detective drummed his pen a couple of times against the pad. And despite the stunned aspect of the two men, Izzy was uncertain she had said anything at all. To have agonised for two weeks over speaking this information, and to have been able to deliver the sum total of it in one sentence seemed impossible.
She poured tea for the detective and handed the cup and saucer to him. He took a sip and, as though something had been righted by the sheer ordinariness of the ritual, he continued his questioning in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘And what was the reason for your visit to Mrs Crowley’s home that day?’ he asked.
‘Well, I had a few bits and pieces to give her, sort of hand-me-downs to help her decorate the cottage a bit.’
‘So you and Mrs Crowley were close?’
She felt James adjusting his position beside her and something of the slow, deliberate way he moved reminded her to proceed with caution. ‘Well, not really,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t say that, but we had certainly become closer over the past six months. I’d started to attend the creative writing classes she was doing up at the Community Centre.’
‘And Mrs Crowley confided in you about her relationship with Mr Mullen?’
‘No, you see, what happened was I saw her in the bar of the Harbour View one night, back in January. The thirty-first it was. I was having dinner with my friend Margaret Brennan, and just as we were walking out the door of the hotel, didn’t I see Colette sitting up at the bar.’
‘Was she alone?’ Pat Farrelly asked.
‘She was, yes.’ She noticed this was the first time the detective had written down anything she’d said.
‘And what time of night was this?’ the detective asked.
‘I can’t remember exactly but it was near closing time ’cause they were throwing people out. Anyway, I offered to give her a lift home—’
‘Because she’d been drinking?’
