We present an extract from All The Old Clocks, the debut novel by R.P. O'Donnell.
Ireland, 1988. Storm Cordelia rages through the village of Kilcraven. Still reeling from a devastating love affair and the collapse of a promising career in the Gardaí, Emma Daly is stuck. She's moved back in with her dad and taken a job as a librarian in Kilcraven, the small West Cork village she thought she left behind. But when Emma witnesses a murder and the local police arrest the wrong man for the crime, she’s forced to act. To prove a man innocent, she must sift through the village’s past - before either the police or the murderer can stop her.
Emma always felt safe in Kilcraven, even on a dark lane like this one. But every so often, a line from Sherlock Holmes popped up out of nowhere. (Not exactly nowhere, of course – her anthology of The Adventures was falling apart, and it was her third one.) It was a throwaway line – how the lonely houses of the country, each in its own field, were filled with more horrors than any of the darkest alleyways in London. Because in the country, Sherlock argued, nobody could hear you scream. Emma shuddered: it was as jarring now as it was when she was twelve years old and living in one of those lonely houses in the country. A loving, peaceful house, of course, but lonely in its field.
They lived on the edge of the village now, but every so often, on a night like this, as she stared out the window, down the hill and across the field to the village stirring restlessly in the rain, she sometimes wondered. Was Sherlock right? Was there something terrible happening? Somewhere behind those curtains, somewhere in the darkness of the house, was there a fire burning?
A noise broke her reverie. It was coming from the house just beyond the trees – the sound of shouting. The house was dark,and at this distance the words were muffled, but it was definitely shouting. Angry, too. Emma frowned. Mr Hollis lived alone in the Big House – he was an old man and not the type to be entertaining late at night. People said he hadn't even left the house in over ten years. As Emma considered whether or not to go down and knock on the door, a sudden CRACK split the air. And then a cry of pain.
A gunshot. Rifle, .38 calibre? It came from inside the house. Emma flattened herself on the ground and crawled forwardsto the tree line. Her heart was pounding, her mind racing, but her body was on autopilot, tensed and ready for action.
A second CRACK. Emma had made the tree line now; this time she saw the orange flash behind the window, against the darkness. Different this time. Not a rifle. Pistol – maybe a .45 calibre? Different gun.
She stayed as still as she could, keeping her eyes trained on the house. Data, data, give me data! Sherlock Holmes shouted in her mind. An engine needs coal, damn it! She took a deep breath and blocked out the shouting fictional coke-head. She thought about the real world and what she had learned in another life, in Templemore Garda College.
Deep breaths. Quiet your mind. Take stock of the situation. Two guns – that means at least two people. There could bemore. Exits? From this vantage point, she could only count one door and three windows, but she had a clear line of view to the surrounding tree line. She’d see if anyone left.
If you can’t help – collect evidence. Well, she couldn’t help. She didn’t have a gun, for starters. She could call the guards, but the closest phone was back in the village at Nolan’s pub. The council had been promising to repair the two public phone boxes for three years, and most of the village hadn’t paid their phone bills so the phone at Nolan’s had become a major part of the village infrastructure. But it was a long run from here.
The front door of the house slammed open. A man stood in the dark doorway, looking all around him. For a moment, Emma thought he might see her, or worse, start to head in her direction. It was too dark; she couldn’t make out any features, just a silhouette. He was tall, nearly two metres – he seemed well built, but a long coat mixed unevenly with the shadows and made it impossible to tell for sure. He stood there for a second, as if he were listening for something, andthen ran off towards the woods in the opposite direction and was gone.
Every muscle in Emma’s body screamed against the silence; her whole body ached from tension and the cold wet ground. But she waited. Her heart pounded, but her breath, visible now in the night air, was steady. She couldn’t hear anything in the woods or see any movement from the house – all she could hear was theroar of what sounded like the ocean in her ears. But she waited.After what she guessed was five minutes, Emma stood up and slowly made her way to the house, padding softly across the dark loam, ready to hit the ground again if she needed to. There was nothing but silence. She made it to the side of the house and looked through the window.
And then she gasped.
All The Old Clocks is published by New Island Books
