The Hunter

Nine

Trey takes it for granted that there are unseen things on the mountain. The assumption has been with her from as far back as she can remember, so that the edge of fear that comes with it is a stable, accepted presence. The men who live deeper in the mountain’s territory have told her about some of the things: white lights luring from the heather at night, savage creatures like great dripping otters snaking out of the bogs, weeping women who once you get close aren’t women at all. Trey asked Cal once if he believed in any of these. “Nope,” he said, between delicate hammer-taps on a dovetail. “But I’d be a fool to rule them out. It’s not my mountain.”

Trey has seen none of them, but when she’s on the mountain at night, she feels them there. The sensation has changed in the last year or two. When she was younger she felt herself glanced over and dismissed, too slight to be worth any time or focus, just another small animal going about its business. Now her mind is a denser, more intricate thing. She feels herself being noted.

She sits with her back to an old wall, watching dusk fill up the air with hazy purple. Banjo is slouched comfortably against her calf, his ears and nose up to track the progress of the evening. Farmhouse windows are sprinkled, neat and yellow, among the dimming fields below them. A lone car curves down the road, its headlight beams long in the emptiness. The small gray cottage where Rushborough is staying stands alone in the shadow of the mountain, unlit.

Whatever lives here, Trey expects to meet it in the next week. She’s used some of her carpentry money to buy five days’ worth of supplies, mainly bread, peanut butter, biscuits, bottled water, and dog food. She’s stashed them, and a couple of blankets and some toilet roll, in an abandoned house up the mountainside. Five days should be more than enough. Once she does what she’s about to do, Rushborough will be gone as fast as he can pack. And once the men find out he’s left, her dad will be gone in no time. All she needs to do is stay out of his way till then.

She doesn’t trust Rushborough, but she can’t see any reason why he would rat her out. To her dad, maybe, but not to the other men. If anyone asks why she was gone, she’ll say her dad came home raging because he’d slipped up and Rushborough got suspicious, and she ran for fear he’d take it out on her, which is close to true. She’s left a note in her bed saying “Have to go somewhere. Back in a few days” so her mam won’t worry.

She even remembered a knife for the peanut butter. She grins, thinking how proud Cal will be of her manners, till she remembers she can’t tell him.

Trey has been thinking about Brendan. She doesn’t think about him as much, these days. When she first learned what had happened to him—by accident, Cal said it happened, things just went bad that day, with the implication that that should make some kind of difference—she never stopped. She spent hours going back and redoing things in her mind so that she kept him from leaving the house that afternoon, warned him what to look out for, went along with him and shouted the right words at the right moment. She saved him a million times over, not because she believed it would change anything, just for respite from a world where he was dead. She stopped when she realized Brendan was starting to feel like someone she had made up. After that she thought only, ever, about the real him: she went over every word and expression and movement she could recall, tattooing them on her mind and pressing deep so the marks would stay sharp. Every one of them hurt. Even when she was doing something, working with Cal or playing football, what happened to Brendan was a cold fist-sized weight below her breastbone, dragging downwards.

Over time it’s eased. She can do things free of that weight, see things without that blackness blotting out part of her vision. Sometimes this makes her feel like a traitor. She’s thought of cutting Brendan’s name into her body, only that would be stupid.

What she hopes to meet on the mountain is ghosts. She has no idea whether she believes in them or not, but if they exist, Brendan’s will be here. She doesn’t know what form he might take, but none of the possibilities are enough to deter her.

Bats are out hunting, quick deft swoops and shrills. The first stars are showing. Another car sweeps down the road and stops at Rushborough’s cottage, barely visible now in the thickening dark. After a moment it sweeps away again, and the cottage lights flick on.

Trey unfolds herself and starts to make her way down the mountainside, with Banjo at her heel. She has the camera zipped under her hoodie, to leave her hands free in case she trips, but she won’t.

She watched Rushborough all yesterday morning, just like she’d promised her dad. Mostly he just wandered around the lanes and took photos of stone walls, which to Trey seem like an idiotic thing to photograph; once he scraped around in the dirt for a while, held something up to squint at it, and then put it in his pocket. He stopped a few times to chat to people he came across: Ciaran Maloney, moving sheep between fields; Lena, out walking her dogs; Áine Geary, watering plants in the garden with her kids pulling at her. Once or twice Trey thought she saw his head turn towards her, but it always kept on turning. It was worth a wasted morning to find out where he’s staying. When she reported back to her dad, at first he looked like he’d forgotten what she was talking about. Then he laughed and told her she was a great girl, and gave her a fiver.

Rushborough, when he opens the door, looks taken aback to see her. “My goodness,” he says. “Theresa, isn’t it? Your father’s not here, I’m afraid. He very kindly took me to see a few sights, and then dropped me back here. He’ll be sorry to have missed you.”

Trey says, “Got something to show you.”

“Oh,” Rushborough says, after a second. He steps back from the door. “In that case, do come in. You’re welcome to bring your friend.”

Trey doesn’t like this. She meant to show him there on the doorstep. It seems to her that Rushborough should be warier of a kid he doesn’t know. Her dad said Rushborough is an innocent who thinks all of Ardnakelty is leprechauns and maidens dancing at the crossroads, but Rushborough is no innocent.

The sitting room is very clean and very bare, just a few bits of pine furniture arranged in unnatural spots and a painting of flowers on the wall. It smells like no one has ever lived there. Rushborough’s coat, hanging on a coat tree in the corner, looks faked.

“Won’t you have a seat?” Rushborough asks, gesturing to an armchair. Trey sits, measuring the distance to the door. He arranges himself on the flowery sofa and cocks his head at her attentively, his hands clasped between his knees. “Now. What can I do for you?”

Trey wants to be out of there. She doesn’t like the way his teeth are too little and even, or the disconnect between his pleasant voice and the expert way he watches her, like she’s an animal he’s deciding whether to buy. She says, “No one hasta know it was me that told you.”

“My goodness,” Rushborough says, his eyebrows going up. “How mysterious. Of course: my lips are sealed.”

Trey says, “You’re going out tomorrow to look for gold in the river.”

“Oh, your father let you in on the secret?” Rushborough smiles. “I am, yes. I’m not getting my hopes up too high, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if we found some? Is that what you have to show me? Have you found a bit of gold of your own?”

“Nah,” Trey says. She unzips her hoodie, takes the camera out of its case, pulls up the video, and hands it over.

Rushborough gives her a look that’s somewhere between amused and quizzical. As he watches, it fades off his face till there’s nothing there at all.

“That’s gold,” Trey says. All her instincts are pulling towards silence, but she makes herself say it. “That they’re putting in the river. For you to find.”

“Yes,” Rushborough says. “I see that.”

Trey can feel his mind working. He watches the video to the end.

“Well,” he says, with his eyes still on the display. “Well well well. This is unexpected.”

Trey says nothing. She stays ready for any sudden move.

Rushborough glances up. “Is this your camera? Or do you have to give it back to someone?”

“Gotta give it back,” Trey says.

“And do you have this backed up anywhere?”

“Nah,” Trey says. “Don’t have a computer.”

“In the cloud?”

Trey gives him a blank look. “Dunno about the cloud.”

“Well,” Rushborough says again. “I do appreciate you looking out for me. It’s very kind of you.” He taps his front teeth with a fingernail. “I think I need to have a conversation with your father,” he says. “Don’t you?”

Trey shrugs.

“Oh, definitely. I’ll give him a ring and ask him to pop round now.”

“I’ve to go,” Trey says. She gets up and holds out her hand for the camera, but Rushborough doesn’t move.

“I need to show this to your father,” he explains. “Are you afraid that he’ll be angry? Don’t worry. I won’t let him do anything to you. I’m delighted that you brought me this.”

“I said. No one hasta know it was me. Just say someone told you.”

“Well, he’s hardly going to spread this around,” Rushborough points out reasonably. He pulls a phone out of his pocket and dials, keeping his eyes on Trey. “This won’t take long,” he tells her. “We’ll clear everything up in no time. Johnny? We’ve got a bit of a situation. Your lovely daughter is here, and she’s brought me something that you ought to see. When can you be here?…Marvelous. See you then.”

He puts the phone away. “He’ll just be a few minutes,” he says, smiling at Trey. He sits back on the sofa and flicks through the other photos on the camera, taking his time over each one. “Did you take all of these? They’re very good. This one wouldn’t look out of place in a gallery.” He holds up a photo Cal took of the rooks in their oak tree.

Trey says nothing. She stays standing. Banjo, getting restless, nudges her knee with his nose and makes the ghost of a whine; she puts a hand on his head to quiet him. Something is wrong. She wants to make a run for the door, but she can’t leave without Cal’s camera. Rushborough keeps scrolling, examining the photos with interest, giving one of them a little smile every now and then. The windows are black and she feels the distances outside them, the spread and the silence of the fields.

Her dad is there faster than he should be. The car speeds up the drive with a rip of spraying gravel. “There we are,” Rushborough says, getting up to open the door.

“What’s the story?” Johnny demands, his eyes skittering back and forth between Trey and Rushborough. “What are you doing here?” he asks Trey.

“Shh,” Rushborough says. He hands Johnny the camera. “Have a look at this,” he says pleasantly.

Johnny’s face as he watches the video gives Trey a savage flare of exultation. He’s white and blank, like the thing in his hand is a bomb and he’s helpless against it; like he’s holding his death. He lifts his head once, his mouth opening, but Rushborough says, “Finish watching.”

Trey puts a hand on Banjo and gets ready. She puts no store in Rushborough’s talk about not letting her dad be angry with her; she’d rather put her faith in the mountain. The minute her dad loosens his hold on the camera to start coming up with excuses, she’s going to grab it, shove her dad into Rushborough, and run for her abandoned house. You could look for someone all year, on this mountain, and never find a sign. And once the townland learns that Rushborough is gone, her dad won’t have a year.

When the video ends and Johnny lowers the camera, Trey waits for him to start spinning whatever story he thinks Rushborough’s thick enough to believe. Instead he lifts his hands, still holding the camera, its strap swinging crazily.

“Man,” he says. “It’s not a problem. Honest to God. She’ll say nothing. I guarantee it.”

“First things first,” Rushborough says. He takes back the camera. He asks Trey, “Who have you told about this?”

“No one,” Trey says. She doesn’t get why Rushborough is acting like the boss, giving her dad orders. None of this makes sense. She has no idea what’s going on.

Rushborough looks at her with curiosity, his head to one side. Then he backhands her across the face. Trey is flung sideways, trips over her feet, slams into the arm of the chair, and falls. She scrambles up, putting the chair between herself and Rushborough. There’s nothing to grab for a weapon. Banjo is on his feet, growling.

“Call your dog,” Rushborough says. “Or I’ll break his back.”

Trey’s hands are shaking. She manages to snap her fingers, and Banjo reluctantly eases back to her side. He’s still growling, low in his chest, ready.

Johnny hovers, his hands fluttering. Rushborough asks again, in the same tone, “Who have you told?”

Trey says, “I never said a word. Them bastards can all go fuck themselves. Alla this place.” Blood comes out when she talks.

Rushborough lifts his eyebrows. Trey can tell by him that he knows she means it. “Well,” he says. “Why?”

Trey lets her eyes slide over his shoulder to her dad, who’s trying to find something to say. “If it hadn’ta been for them treating you like shite,” she says, “you wouldn’ta gone.”

It comes out perfect, raw with just the right mix of anger and shame, something she would never have said unless it was ripped out of her. Her dad’s face opens and melts.

“Ah, sweetheart,” he says, moving forward. “Come here to me.”

Trey lets him put his arms around her and stroke her hair. Under the spices, he smells like burnt rubber from fear. He says stuff about how he’s home now and they’ll show those bastards together.

Rushborough watches. Trey knows he isn’t fooled. He knew when she was lying, just like he knew when she was telling the truth, but he doesn’t seem to care.

Trey doesn’t fear easily, but she’s afraid of Rushborough. It’s not that he hit her. Her dad has hit her before, but that was just because he was angry and she happened to be there. This man has intention. She can feel his mind working, a glinting efficient machine ticking along dark tracks she doesn’t understand.

He gets bored and flicks Johnny’s arm away from Trey. Johnny moves back fast. “What about the American bloke?” Rushborough asks Trey.

“Said nothing to him,” Trey says. Her cut lip has left blood on her dad’s shirt. “He’d tell the others.”

Rushborough nods, acknowledging this. “This is his camera, right? What did you tell him you wanted it for?”

“School project. Wildlife photos.”

“Oh, the birds. That’s not bad. I like that. Actually,” he says to Johnny, “this could all work out very very nicely.”

He points Trey back to the armchair. Trey sits, taking Banjo with her, and blots her lip on the neck of her T-shirt. Rushborough takes his place on the sofa again.

“Just making sure I’ve got this right,” he says. “Your idea was, I’d see this”—he taps the camera—“and I’d piss off back to England. These blokes would be left with their dicks in their hands, no cash payout, buggering about in the river trying to get some of their gold back. Is that right?”

His accent has changed. It’s still English, but it’s not posh any more; he just sounds ordinary, like someone that would work in a shop. It makes him more frightening, not less. He feels nearer this way.

“Yeah,” Trey says.

“Because you don’t like them.”

“Yeah.” Trey presses her hands on her thighs to still them. Bit by bit, things are coming together.

“I’da been run outa town,” Johnny says, outraged, the thought suddenly occurring to him. “Without a cent to show for any of this.”

“Didn’t think that far,” Trey says.

“For fuck’s sake,” Johnny says. All his other feelings are getting turned into anger, for ease of use. “The fuckin’ ingratitude. Here was me promising you anything you want—”

“Shut up,” Rushborough says. “I’m not upset about that. I’m upset that I’m working with a fucking cretin who got the wool pulled over his eyes by a fucking child.”

Johnny shuts up. Rushborough turns back to Trey. “It’s not a bad plan,” he says. “I’ve got a better one, though. How would you like to make those blokes lose a few grand each, instead of a few hundred quid?”

“Yeah,” Trey says. “Maybe.”

“Wait here,” Rushborough says. He goes into the bedroom. He takes the camera along, with a small knowing smile at Trey.

“You’ll do whatever he says,” Johnny tells Trey, under his breath. She doesn’t look at him. Banjo, disturbed by the smell of blood and fear, licks at her hands, looking for reassurance. She rubs his jowls. It helps her hands stop shaking.

Rushborough comes back carrying a little click-sealed plastic bag. “The original idea was that I found this, yesterday morning,” he says. “You saw me, didn’t you? You’d have been able to tell people you saw me find it. But it’ll be much better coming straight from you.”

He hands the bag to Trey. In it is what looks like a bit of gold foil, off a bar of chocolate or something, that’s been squashed in a pocket for too long. It’s about the size of a nail head, the big old handmade ones that are bastards to replace when they rust. There are bits of white rock and dirt mashed in with it.

“You found it just at the foot of the mountain,” Rushborough says, “about half a mile east of here. You overheard me talking to your dad, you recognized the place I was describing, and you went off to do a little private gold-mining of your own. You can be cagey about the exact spot, because you shouldn’t have been digging without the landowner’s permission, but you’re dead pleased with yourself, and you can’t resist showing this around. Have you got all that?”

“Yeah,” Trey says.

“Has she got it?” Rushborough asks Johnny. “Can she pull it off?”

“Oh, God, yeah,” Johnny assures him. “The child’s smart as a whip. She’ll do a great job. If you think about it, this is all for the—”

“Good. That’s all you have to do,” Rushborough says to Trey, “and you’ll be taking thousands straight out of those blokes’ pockets. Won’t that be fun?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t lose it,” Rushborough says. He smiles at her. “If you do a good job, you can keep it. Little present. Otherwise, I’m going to want it back.”

Trey rolls up the bag and tucks it in her jeans pocket. “There,” Rushborough says. “See? All on the same side here. It’s all going to be lovely-jubbly, and it’s going to make us all happy.” To Johnny he says, “And you’re not going to give her any shit. Stay focused.”

“Ah, God, no,” Johnny assures him. “I wouldn’t. Sure, everything’s grand, man. All coola-boola.” He’s still white.

“Eyes on the prize,” Rushborough says.

“I gotta give back the camera,” Trey says.

“Well, not yet,” Rushborough says reasonably. “I’ll hold on to it for a little while, just in case it might come in useful. There’s no reason your school project shouldn’t take a few days.”

“All sorted, so,” Johnny says, heartily and too fast. “All tickety-boo. Let’s get this girl home to bed. Come along, sweetheart.”

Trey knows she’s not getting the camera back, at least not tonight. She stands up.

“Let me know how it goes,” Rushborough tells her. “Don’t make a balls of it.” He brings his heel down on Banjo’s paw.

Banjo yelps wildly and snaps at him, but Rushborough is already out of range. Trey grabs Banjo’s collar. He whimpers, holding his paw high.

“Come on,” Johnny says. He gets a grip on Trey’s arm and pulls her towards the door. Rushborough moves out of the way, politely, to let them pass.

When the door shuts behind them, Trey shakes off her dad’s hand. She’s not worried that he’ll hit her for taking the video. He’s too afraid of Rushborough to step out of line.

Sure enough, all he does is blow out his breath in a comical puff of relief. “Christ almighty,” he says, “life’s full of surprises, all the same. I haveta hand it to you, I never saw that one coming. I’d say you got a bit of a shock yourself, hah?” He’s managed to get some of the whimsical note back into his voice. In the heavy moonlight Trey can see him grinning at her, trying to make her grin back. She shrugs instead.

“Is your lip sore?” her dad asks, ducking his head to peer at her face. He’s doing his gentlest, most sympathetic voice. “Sure, it’ll heal in no time. You can say you tripped over.”

“It’s grand.”

“Are you upset that I didn’t tell you the whole story? Ah, sweetheart. I just didn’t want to get you mixed up in this, any more than I hadta.”

“Don’t give a shite,” Trey says. Banjo lets out a whimper every time he puts that paw to the ground. She strokes his head. She doesn’t want to stop and look him over till they’re out of Rushborough’s sight.

“You’ll be a big help to us now, but. You’ll do a great job with that wee yoke. All you’ve to do is give one or two people a look at it—pick people that’ll talk, now—and the rest’ll do itself. I’d pay to see Noreen’s face when you pull that out.”

Trey heads past the car, towards the road. “Where are you going?” Johnny demands.

“Gonna get Banjo’s paw seen to,” Trey says.

Johnny laughs, but it has a forced sound. “Get away outa that. The dog’s grand; not a bother on it. You’re carrying on like he took its leg off.”

Trey keeps going. “Come here,” Johnny snaps after her.

Trey stops and turns. Once he has her, Johnny doesn’t seem to know what to say to her.

“That all turned out well, hah?” he says in the end. “I won’t lie to you, I was worried there. But he likes you. I can tell.”

“He’s got no granny that’s from here,” Trey says. “Right?”

Johnny moves, looking back at the house. The windows are empty. “He’s a mate of mine. Not a mate exactly, like, but I know him from around.”

“And there’s no gold.”

“Ah, you never know,” Johnny says, wagging a finger at her. “Sure, didn’t your own teacher say it’s out there?”

“Somewhere. Not here.”

“That’s not what he said. He just never said it is here. It might be. Here’s as good as anywhere.”

It strikes Trey with a new clarity that she hates trying to have conversations with her father. She says, “And your man’s not rich.”

Her dad makes himself laugh again. “Ah, now, depends what you mean by rich. He’s no billionaire, but he’s got more than I’ve ever had.”

“What’s his name?”

Johnny comes closer to her. “Listen to me,” he says, keeping his voice down. “I owe that lad money.”

“He lent you money?” Trey says. She doesn’t bother to conceal the disbelief. Rushborough isn’t thick enough to lend her dad money.

“Ah, no. I was doing a bitta driving for him, here and there. Only then I was driving something up to Leeds, and I got robbed. ’Twasn’t my fault, someone musta set me up, but he doesn’t care.” Johnny is still moving, his feet shifting in the gravel of the drive, making little crunching noises. Trey wants to punch him to make him stop. “I had no cash to pay him back. I was in big trouble, d’you get how much trouble I was in?”

Trey shrugs.

“Big trouble. D’you get what I mean? Big trouble.”

“Yeah.”

“Only I’d this idea. I’d had it in the back of my mind for years, bouncing it around, like—I had it all mapped out in my head where the gold oughta be, I knew whose land it hadta be on, I’d a wee ring with a nugget in that I picked up in an antique shop for proof…I’d to beg himself to give it a go. He didn’t want me coming over here alone, he said he’d never see hide nor hair of me again. So I said he could come with me if he wanted, be the other fella.” Johnny shoots a glance over his shoulder at the cottage. “I never thought he’d do it. Him stuck in a tip like this, for weeks, no nightlife, no women? But he likes something new. He gets bored awful easy. And he likes keeping people on their toes, the way you never know what he’d do next. I’d say ’twas that.”

Trey thinks of Rushborough, or whatever his name is, sitting at their kitchen table, smiling at Maeve, asking her about Taylor Swift. She knew then he was all wrong. She feels like a fool for not having seen the rest.

“I wouldn’ta chosen it,” Johnny says, with an injured note like she accused him. “Having him around you and your mammy, and the wee ones. But I had no choice. I couldn’t tell him no, could I?”

Cal would have, Trey knows. Cal wouldn’t have got himself into this in the first place.

“It’ll be grand,” Johnny assures her. “It’s all going great guns. You just do your wee bit, so the lads know there’s gold out there for the taking. Next thing, after himself finds the stuff in the river, he’s going to give them a choice: they can have a grand each to let him take samples on their land, or they can invest a few grand in his mining company and be in for a share of everything he finds. He’s got other people back in London looking to be investors, we’ll say, but he wants to give first shot to the boys from the auld sod. Only they have to decide quick, ’cause the London lads are at him. Keep things moving, bish bosh boom, keep them excited, keep the pressure on, d’you see? If all of them go for the investment, I’m paid off. Free and clear. If we can get more people on board after that, it’s all profit.”

“They’re not gonna give him money,” Trey says. “Not just ’cause they hear I found that thing.”

“They’ve already thrown in a few hundred, sure. That’s what they’ll be thinking of. Why not go that one extra step and be in for the big prize?”

“ ’Cause they’re not thick,” Trey says. “And they don’t trust you.” The way the evening has gone gives her a freedom that takes her by surprise. She doesn’t need to lick up to her dad any more.

Johnny doesn’t argue with that. He smiles a little, looking out over the dark fields. “I forget you’re only a child,” he says. “You haveta understand men. These lads around here, they’ve been hardworking men all their lives. Everything they’ve got, they earned. A man’s supposed to be proud of that, but the truth is, he can get awful weary of it. He gets to craving something he didn’t have to earn; something that fell into his hands, for no reason at all. That’s why people play the lottery. ’Tisn’t the money they want, even if they think it is; ’tis that moment when they’d feel like they’re one of God’s own handpicked winners. These lads want to feel lucky, for once. They want to feel like God and the land are on their side. They might not give five grand for the chance of fifty, but they’ll give it for the chance to feel lucky.”

Trey doesn’t know what he’s on about and doesn’t care. She says, “Leave Cal outa it.”

“I never wanted him in it to start with,” Johnny says, offended. “I wouldn’t take a penny off a man that’s been good to you. I turned him down flat. D’you know what that fella did? He threatened to go to the Guards if I didn’t let him in. That’s what you get for hanging off a Yank. Would any man from around here do that?”

Trey says, “Leave him outa it or I’ll throw this yoke in a bog.”

“You’ll do what you’re told,” Johnny says. He sounds like everything about him has worn thin. “Or I’ll beat the living shite outa you.”

Trey shrugs.

Johnny rubs a hand down his face. “Right,” he says. “I’ll do what I can. Just get your bit right. For Jesus’ sake.”

Trey heads off down the road. “Where d’you think you’re going?” Johnny calls after her. “There’s no vet open at this hour.”

Trey ignores him.

“Are you headed to your man Hooper’s?”

Trey wants to speed up, but she has to wait for Banjo. He isn’t whimpering any more, but he’s limping heavily, favoring the hurt paw.

“Ah, come back here,” Johnny calls. She hears the car door open. “I’ll give the pair of ye a lift.”

“Get fucked,” Trey calls back to him, without turning her head.

Trey cuts across fields till she’s sure her dad can’t have followed her. Then she finds a moonlit spot, near enough a wall that she won’t stand out too clearly, and squats down to examine Banjo’s paw. Her heart is still going hard.

The paw is swollen. When Trey tries to feel for lumps or breaks, Banjo whimpers, moans urgently, and finally growls, although he follows that up with a frenzy of licking to apologize. Trey sits back and rubs his neck the way he likes best. She isn’t going to push him till he snaps at her. It would break his heart.

“ ’S OK,” she says. “You’re grand.” She wishes she had kneed Rushborough in the goolies.

Rushborough and everything he’s brought with him are so alien to her that she can’t translate the evening into any terms she can comprehend. It feels like something that didn’t happen. She sits, trying to spread it out in her mind till she can see it straight. On the other side of the wall, cows chew in a steady, dreamy rhythm.

As far as Trey can see, she has two choices. She can stick to her original goal, which was to scupper her dad’s plan and set him running. That would be easy. She could take the scrap of gold to Cal, or to any of the men, and tell them where she got it. They’re suspicious of her dad already, by reflex. They’d have him and his Englishman run out of town within a day. Rushborough may be hard, but he’s outnumbered and off his patch: he’d be gone.

Against this is the fact that Trey would cut off her own hand sooner than do any of those men a favor. What she wants to do with them is splay open their rib cages and pull out their hearts. She wants to break her teeth on their bones.

This urge has never troubled her, morally speaking. She’s accepted it as something she can never act on, even if she somehow learned exactly where it should be directed, but she’s clear that she would have every right to act. What’s stopped her, too adamantly for the slightest questioning, is Cal. They made a deal: Cal found out for her what had happened to Brendan, as near as he could, and in exchange she gave him her word to do nothing about it, ever. But her dad’s doings have no connection to Brendan. She can do whatever she wants with them.

She could do what her dad and his Englishman need from her. Against that is the fact that she has no desire to do them any favors, either: her dad can fuck himself, and after what Rushborough did to Banjo, he can fuck himself a million times over. But their plan, if she helps them, could hit half of Ardnakelty. Somewhere in there, it’s bound to hit the people who did that to Brendan.

And her dad will be gone soon enough that way, too. Even if the plan goes perfectly, sooner or later it’ll run up against the fact that there’s no gold. He and Rushborough will grab as much cash as they can, and go.

It surfaces in Trey’s mind only gradually that her dad never had any intention of staying around. It seems like an obvious thing, something she knew all along, if she had bothered looking. She could have just fucked off to Lena’s and waited him out, without ever thinking twice about the shite he’s brought with him.

She would have done that, if she’d realized. She’s glad she didn’t. She sits in the field a little longer, running Banjo’s soft ears between her fingers and weighing up her different revenges in her mind.

“Come on,” she says to Banjo, in the end. She hoists him up in her arms and gets him draped over her shoulder, like a huge baby. Banjo is delighted with this. He snuffles at her ear and gets drool in her hair. “You weigh a fuckin’ ton,” Trey tells him. “I’m gonna put you on a diet.”

The warm, smelly weight of him is welcome. Trey feels, all of a sudden, savagely lonesome. What she wants to do is bring all this to Cal, dump it at his feet, and ask him what to do with it, but she’s not going to. Whatever Cal is at, he’s made it plain that he doesn’t want her in it.

“Salad,” she tells Banjo, as she starts down the road. “That’s all you’re getting.” He licks her face.

Trey was worried Lena would have gone to bed, but her windows are still lit. When she opens the door, music comes out from behind her, a woman with a throaty voice singing something restless and melancholy in a language Trey doesn’t recognize. “Jesus,” Lena says, raising her eyebrows. “What happened to you?”

Trey had forgotten her lip. “Tripped over Banjo,” she says. “He went under my feet. I stood on his paw. Will you have a look at it?”

Lena’s eyebrows stay up, but she doesn’t comment. “No problem,” she says, pointing Trey to the kitchen. “Bring him in here.”

At the sight of Nellie and Daisy, Banjo starts wriggling to get down, but when his paw touches the floor he lets out a pitiful yelp. “Ah, yeah,” Lena says. “That’s at him, all right. Out,” she says to Nellie and Daisy, opening the back door. “They’ll only distract him. Now. Sit, fella.”

She turns off the music. In the sudden silence, the kitchen feels very still and restful. Trey has an urge to sit down on the cool stone floor and stay there.

Lena kneels in front of Banjo and makes a fuss of him, rubbing his jowls while he tries to lick her face. “You get behind him,” she says. “Stand over him and hold up his jaw, in case he snaps. If he cuts up rough we can muzzle him with a bitta bandage, but I’d rather not.”

“He won’t,” Trey says.

“He’s hurt. Even the best dog in the world changes when it’s hurt. But we’ll try it this way first. Come here, fella.”

She takes up Banjo’s paw, very gently, and feels her way around it. Banjo squirms against Trey’s hand, goes through his full repertoire of whines and moans and yelps, and finally brings out his deepest, most impressive bark. “Shh,” Trey says softly, into his ear. “You big aul’ baby. You’re grand.” Lena, running her fingers over his other paw for comparison, doesn’t look up.

“I wouldn’t say anything’s broken,” she says in the end, sitting back on her heels. “Bruised, only. Don’t let him do much, the next few days.”

Trey releases Banjo, who goes in circles trying to lick them both at once, to show he forgives them. “Thanks,” she says.

“He oughta stay here for the night,” Lena says. “He shouldn’t walk all the way up that mountain.”

“I’ll carry him,” Trey says.

Lena gives her a look. “In the dark?”

“Yeah.”

“And if you trip once, the pair of ye’ll be in worse shape than you already are. Leave him where he is. Anyhow, if it’s worse in the morning, we’ll have to bring him to a vet for X-rays. You can stay too. The bed’s still made up from last time.”

Trey thinks of the wide cool bed, and of her dad waiting at home to fidget and nudge at her. She asks abruptly, “Do you know who done that on my brother?”

They’ve never talked about this before. Lena doesn’t show any surprise, or pretend not to understand her. “No,” she says. “No one was about to tell, and I wasn’t about to ask.”

“You could guess.”

“I could, yeah. But I might be wrong.”

“Who d’you guess?”

Lena shakes her head. “Nah. Guessing games are for who’s messing with your scarecrow, or who done a shite on the Cunniffes’ front step. Not this.”

“I already hate all of ’em round here,” Trey points out. “ ’Cept you and Cal.”

“There’s that,” Lena acknowledges. “If you knew who done what, would you hate the rest of ’em any less?”

Trey considers that. “Nah,” she says.

“Well then.”

“I’d know what ones to hate more.”

Lena tilts her chin, conceding the justice of this. “If I knew for definite,” she says, “I’d probably tell you. It might be a bad idea, but there you go. But I don’t.”

“Reckon that was Donie McGrath,” Trey says. “The Cunniffes’ step, not the scarecrow. ’Cause Mrs. Cunniffe gave out about him playing his music loud.”

“Sounds about right,” Lena says. “That’s different, but. You’re on solid ground there. There’s not a lot of people around here that would leave shite on a doorstep, and most of them’d use cow shite; Donie’s an exception. But there’s plenty of people here that’d hide things away if they go wrong, no matter how bad. I’d only be guessing blind.”

“Yeah,” Trey says. She wants to say that the real difference is that they have no right or need to know about the Cunniffes’ step, while she has both a right and a need to know about Brendan, but fatigue has suddenly hit her like a rock to the head. She loves Lena’s kitchen, which is worn and the right kind of messy and full of warm colors. She wants to lie down on the floor and go to sleep.

She has a third choice. She could walk away from all of this. Go up the mountain, and stay there till this all blows over: live in her abandoned cottage, or go to one of the mountainy men. They’re not talkers; they wouldn’t ask questions, and they wouldn’t rat her out, no matter who came looking. They’re not scared of the likes of Rushborough.

Lena is looking at her steadily. “What brought this on?” she inquires.

Trey looks blank.

“How come you’re asking me tonight, two years on?”

Trey didn’t expect this. Lena is the least nosy person she knows, which is among the reasons Trey likes her. “Dunno,” she says.

“Feckin’ teenagers,” Lena says. She gets up from the floor and goes to let the dogs in. They skid over to check out Banjo and sniff his paw. “Did that fella have his dinner yet?”

“Nah,” Trey says.

Lena finds an extra bowl and takes a bag of dog food from a cupboard. All three dogs forget about Banjo’s paw and close in on her, writhing around her legs and giving her the full blast of desperate beagle starvation.

“When I was sixteen,” she says, “one of my mates got pregnant. She didn’t want her parents knowing. So d’you know what I did? I kept my mouth shut.”

Trey nods in agreement.

“I was a feckin’ eejit,” Lena says. She nudges dogs out of the way with her knee so she can pour out their food. “Your woman needed a doctor keeping an eye on her; there coulda been something wrong. But all I thought was, adults would make a big fuss about it, make it all complicated. Simpler to leave them outa it, and handle it ourselves.”

“What happened?”

“One of our other mates had better sense. She told her mam. Your woman got to see a doctor, she had the baby, everything was grand. But she coulda ended up having it in a field and the pair of them dying. All because we reckoned adults were more hassle than they were worth.”

Trey knows what Lena is getting at, but it seems to her that, like with the Cunniffes’ step, Lena is overlooking differences that matter. She feels lonelier than ever. She almost wishes she hadn’t come to Lena’s, seeing as Banjo is grand anyway. “Who was it?” she asks.

“Feck’s sake,” Lena says. “That’s not the point.”

Trey picks herself up off the floor. “Can you keep him tonight?” she says. “I’ll come get him in the morning.”

Lena puts the dog food bag back in its cupboard. “Listen to me, you,” she says. “Me and Cal, we’d do anything for you. You know that, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Trey says, acutely embarrassed, staring at the dogs eating. “Thanks.” The idea does give her a kind of comfort, but a confusing, messy kind. It would be more solid if she could find something that she wanted them to do.

“Then remember it. And you need to wash your face and put something over that T-shirt, unless you want people asking what kinda wars you’ve been in.”

The mountain is busier on the way home, a busyness that keeps itself on the edge of perception, crowded with movements and rustles that might or might not be there. Its night activities are in full swing. Trey feels bare, without Banjo at her heel.

She’s not worried for Lena. If her dad tries convincing Lena to put money into Rushborough’s imaginary gold mine, he’ll be wasting his time. What Trey is worried about is Cal. He’s doing something, she can’t tell what, and he doesn’t know what Rushborough is. Cal has sustained enough damage through getting mixed up with her and hers. The whole of her mind balks at the thought of him taking any more. The fact that she’s pissed off with him only intensifies this: right now, in particular, she has no wish to be deeper in his debt than she already is.

She’ll find something to do about Cal. Somewhere along the way, her decision has clarified itself. Her dad and Rushborough are the only weapons she has, or is ever likely to get, against this townland. They’re locked and loaded, ready to her hand. She didn’t go looking for them; something laid them in front of her, the same something that brought Cal to Ardnakelty when she needed to find out what had happened to Brendan. She was scared to talk to Cal, then. She did it anyway because she could feel, the same way she can feel now, that walking away would be spitting in the face of that something.

Cal told her a long time back that everyone needs a code to live by. Trey only partway understood what he meant, but in spite of or because of that, she thought about it a lot. Her code has always been a rudimentary, inchoate thing, but since her dad came back, it’s been coalescing and sharpening, pointing ways and forming demands of its own. If she can’t kill anyone for what they did to Brendan, or even send them to prison, she needs a blood price.