They followed a pathway that skirted the marina, looking for Johnny Scanlan, the night-crew worker, and came upon him at the fuel dock, where he was topping off the tank of a sleek-looking powerboat. When he’d finished and the skipper had pulled away, Fitzmaurice approached and flashed his police credentials.
“Doherty said you’d be coming to see me,” Scanlan said, with a thick brogue that reminded Sara of the villagers she’d met on her honeymoon in Connemara.
“Have you seen this woman?” Fitzmaurice asked, holding up a photograph of Paquette.
“I have,” Scanlan replied as he put the fuel hose in the cradle. “She came looking for the Sapphire, Mr. McGuire’s boat, one evening no more than a week ago. Spent two or three hours on board before leaving. I saw her walking toward the rail station.”
“Did Mr. McGuire sleep on board his yacht during his stay?” Sara asked.
Scanlan locked the fuel hose to the pump. “Yes. I’d see him most evenings, or notice his lights on late into the night.”
“Did anyone visit him besides Paquette?”
“None that I saw.”
“Did he have any crew members?” Fitzmaurice asked.
Scanlan shook his head. “With a boat like that you don’t need a crew.” “Did he say where he was sailing?”
“No, but the way he provisioned his boat before he left, I’d say he was planning a long cruise.” Scanlan eyed the fuel-pump gauge and recorded the amount of petrol he’d delivered to the speedboat. “Is that it, then? I’ve got work to do.”
“Thank you,” Sara said.
On the way to the car Fitzmaurice’s phone rang, and after a brief exchange with the caller he told Sara the owner of Celtic Sailing would meet them at his pierside business establishment in fifteen minutes. The phone rang immediately again and Fitzmaurice broke into a smile when he took the call.
“Just a minute, luv,” he said, winking at Sara, “let me ask her. My wife wants to know if you’re still beguiling me.”
Sara smiled. “Tell her I am doing no such thing.”
“The good colonel refuses to take any responsibility for her flirtatious ways,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. He paused to listen and then turned to Sara. “Would you be up to having a late meal with us?”
“That would be lovely,” Sara replied.
Fitzmaurice glanced at his wristwatch. “Give us two hours, luv,” he said to his wife before disconnecting.
At the Bray pier Desmond Phelan, the owner of Celtic Sailing, waited for them under the shop’s Boats for Hire sign. In his thirties, Phelan was a small-boned man with light-brown hair, a wide forehead, and an aquiline nose. Inside the shop two young boys, no more than four and six years old, sat on stools at a customer-service counter, drawing pictures on scraps of paper.
Phelan told the boys to stay put and led Fitzmaurice and Sara to a small back room that served as both office and a storage room. He nodded at the photograph Fitzmaurice placed before him on his cluttered desktop.
“George McGuire,” Phelan said. “A genial fellow, quite the eager student. I couldn’t imagine why a Garda would come to my house at suppertime to ask me to talk to you. I surely didn’t think it had anything to do with Mr. McGuire.”
“We need to locate Mr. McGuire,” Sara said, “to inform him of a family emergency. Do you know where he might be?”
“On the water this fine evening in a smooth sea. You should be able to reach him by marine radio.”
“When did you last see him?”
“He sailed this morning.”
“Going where?” Sara asked.
“He didn’t say. He came down from Dun Laoghaire five days ago and retained me to tutor him on celestial navigation techniques so he could prepare for his yachtmaster ocean certification, which requires making a passage without the use of electronic aids. He did the shore-based class-work in the mornings and then we went out later in the day for his practice exercises.”
“Was he planning to do his qualifying trip for his certification right away?” Sara asked.
Phelan perched on the corner of the desk. “He said nothing to me about it.”
“How did he pay for your services?” Sara asked.
“By credit card.”
“Could we see the charge slip?”
“Of course.”
Sara stood on the Bray pier looking out at the horseshoe bay while Fitzmaurice made phone calls on his mobile to learn if the writ had been approved to access Paquette’s Internet account, and to arrange for a detective to speak to the solicitor who’d prepared the conveyancing documents for the sale of the villa. A paved promenade ran along the shoreline just behind a rock barrier where waves lapped at a slender ribbon of beach. A hilly spit of land rose up at one end of the bay, and the quiet sea, as pale gray as the evening sky, seemed to absorb the fading light.
At Sara’s back pitched-roof buildings crowded Bray’s waterfront high street. The shoreline curved toward the spit of land where a new residential development stood and the houses, all with matching red tile roofs in an Italianate style, climbed up the hillside to take in views of the bay.
Phelan had said it was a fine evening with a smooth sea, and indeed it was so. Sara wondered where Spalding might be out on the water. Was he anchored in some nearby cove or at an offshore island? Or cruising slowly southward in St. George Channel? She was less than a day behind Spalding now, but catching him remained no easy matter. They could probably reach him by ship to shore radio, but doing so could easily raise his suspicions.
Fitzmaurice motioned to her, and she walked back along the pier to the car where he waited. He told her the solicitor would be interviewed first thing in the morning and the order to inspect Paquette’s Internet account and e-mail records had been served.
“Do we have her picked up?” he asked.
“I’d rather wait until we know Spalding’s exact location,” Sara replied.
“I’ve put in a query to his credit-card company,” Fitzgerald said. “We’ll have him the next time he uses it.”
On their return to Dublin, Fitzmaurice avoided the motorway and drove through the coastal towns of Shankill, Killiney, and Dalkey until they reached Dun Laoghaire. Sara fell silent, gazing out the car window at the glimpses of the sea and the plots of pastureland that dotted the inland side of the coastal hills. Along a winding, narrow road bordered by hedgerows they passed by granite cliffs covered in yellow shrubs, huge estates on promontories overlooking the water, and a seaside park along an inlet with rock outcroppings and tall trees that were dark green against the backdrop of gray sky and water.
In the towns they passed by weathered cut-stone churches with towering spires, an old castle with high turrets and parapets, and rows of Victorian and Georgian houses behind stone walls on finely tended lawns.
Although Fitzmaurice had said nothing about taking her on an impromptu Cook’s tour, Sara appreciated his thoughtfulness and said so as they drove through Rathfarnham, a suburb of the city nestled against the foot of the Dublin Mountains several miles south of St. Stephen’s Green.
So this is his semidetached, she thought, as Fitzmaurice pulled to a stop in front of a two-story modern town house in an established subdivision. It had brick facing on the ground floor, a plastered exterior wall above with several windows that looked out on the street, and a pitched, shingled roof with shallow eaves. A common lawn in front of the building had separate walkways leading to the two ground-floor entrances.
Fitzmaurice pointed to his side of the semidetached before killing the engine. “Here we are, then,” he said. “Clan Fitzmaurice’s castle, wherein the lady of the house awaits along with my infant son, should he be home from university.”
Sara climbed out of the car. “It’s sweet,” she said.
Fitzmaurice shut the door and locked the car. “And within a very short distance of a real castle, where my grandfather worked as a groundskeeper when the Jesuits owned it. Sometime back they found secret tunnels at the castle, one of which runs to the golf course where I spend many pleasant afternoons slicing balls into the rough. We have megalithic tombs on the mountaintops and are home to the abbey where Mother Teresa of Calcutta first entered the religious life.”