The Hunter

Eleven

It’s early enough that Seán Óg’s is mostly empty, just a few old guys eating toasted sandwiches and bitching at the racing on the TV; most of the Friday crowd are still at home digesting their dinners, laying the proper groundwork for the serious drinking ahead. Daylight still slants in at the windows, in long rays turned solid by the lazy hang of dust motes. Only the alcove is full and raucous. The guys are scrubbed and combed, buttoned into good shirts; their faces and necks are reddened in odd spots, from the sun off the river. Rushborough is holding court in the middle of it all, spread wide on a banquette telling some story with sweeping arm gestures, and getting all the laughs he could want. On the table among the pints and the beer mats, mottled rich red and green and yellow by the drops of colored sunlight through the stained glass, is the little bottle of gold dust.

“Sorry I’m late,” Cal says to the alcove in general, pulling up a stool and finding space for his pint on the table. He took his time getting ready. He feels no urge to spend any longer with Rushborough and Johnny than he needs to.

“I was as well,” P.J. tells him. P.J., like Bobby, has a tendency to confide in Cal, possibly because Cal lacks the long familiarity to give them shit. “Listening to music, I was. I was all stirred up when I got in; couldn’t sit still. I tried to sit down to my tay, and wasn’t I up and down like a hoor’s knickers, forgetting the fork and then the milk and then the red sauce. When I do be like that, the only thing that’ll set me straight is a bitta music.”

Clearly the music only partly did its job. This is a very long speech for P.J. “What’d you listen to?” Cal asks. P.J. sings to his sheep sometimes, mostly folk songs.

“Mario Lanza,” P.J. says. “He’s great for settling the aul’ spirits. When I’m the other way, when I can’t get outa the bed, I’d listen to this English young one called Adele. She’d put enough heart in you for anything.”

“What the hell were you all stirred up for?” Mart inquires with interest, glancing across at Rushborough to make sure his voice is low enough. “Sure, you knew what was in there all along.”

“I know,” P.J. says humbly. “But ’twas some day, all the same.”

“We don’t get many like this,” Mart concedes.

Rushborough, taking a brief second to scan Cal as the rest of the men laugh at his punch line, has picked up on the tail end of this. “My God, you must lead more exciting lives than I do, I’ve never had a day like this,” he says, laughing, leaning forward over the table. “You do see what this means, don’t you? It means we’re on the right track. I knew the gold was out there, I always knew that. But what I was afraid of, what I was terrified of, was that my grandmother’s instructions weren’t good enough. It’s not as if she gave me a map, you know, X marks the spot. She was playing a game of Telephone that had been going on for centuries, describing a place she hadn’t seen in decades—all these directions like ‘And then follow the old streambed down to the west but if you reach Dolan’s back field you’ve gone too far,’ my God”—he throws himself back on the banquette, arms flying wide—“sometimes I wondered if I was stark raving bonkers to go chasing after something so vague. She could have been miles off target, literally miles. I was braced to find nothing but mud today, and go home with my tail between my legs—not that it would have been a waste of time, it’s been entirely worth it just to meet you and see this place at last, but I can’t deny it: I would have been heartbroken. Devastated.”

Cal has professional experience of shitbirds like this, whose lies take up so much space that people believe them just because disbelieving all of that would be too much work. He has no certainty that, when he says his own piece, the guys will be swayed. He’s sharply aware that he’s a stranger, no less than Rushborough, and one who’s given them trouble before.

“But this”—Rushborough seizes the bottle of gold and clasps it between his hands, like he can’t keep away—“this is proof. My grandmother, God bless her—I’ll have to, I don’t know, lay flowers on her grave or light a candle in the church, to beg her forgiveness for doubting her. She led me straight as a, what am I looking for? not a die, a, an arrow, that’s it, straight as an arrow to the spot—”

“Jaysus, man,” Johnny says, laughing and clapping Rushborough on the shoulder. “You’re bouncing off the walls here. You need something to settle you, before you give yourself a heart attack. Barty! Get this fella a brandy.”

“And the same for all of us!” Rushborough calls over his shoulder, laughing. “I know, I know, I’m excited, but do you blame me? It’s the gold at the end of the rainbow!”

The other thing that strikes Cal is how much the guy is putting into it. This is some Hallmark-level emotion he’s got going on. For it to be worth this amount of effort, he and Johnny must be planning to take Ardnakelty for everything it’s got.

The brandy goes down with a toast to Rushborough’s granny and a scattering of cheers. Cal holds his, but doesn’t drink it; he’s not going to take anything from this guy. He sees Rushborough’s eye slide over him again, noting.

“Well, chaps,” Rushborough says, putting down his glass and stifling a yawn, “or lads, I should say, shouldn’t I? Lads, I’m afraid I’m going to have to call it a night. I hate to break up a lovely party, and I don’t know whether it’s the adrenaline or simply my shameful city lifestyle taking its toll, but I’m exhausted.”

There’s plenty of protest, but not the kind that risks making Rushborough change his mind and stick around. Just like Cal expected, the men want some time to themselves.

“Would you mind,” Rushborough says a little shyly, putting a finger on the bottle of gold dust, “if I kept this? I’ll get it properly weighed and pay each of you for your share, of course. But—I know it’s sentimental, but…the first fruits, don’t you know. I’d like to have something made out of this. A new setting for my grandmother’s nugget, maybe. Would that be all right?”

Everyone thinks this is a wonderful idea, so Rushborough pockets the bottle and jabbers himself out. The place is starting to fill up; people turn to nod and lift their glasses as he goes by, and he doles out smiles and waves in exchange.

“He went for it,” Con says, leaning forward over the table, as soon as the pub door closes behind him. “He did, didn’t he? He went for it.”

“Et it up with a spoon,” Senan says. “The fuckin’ sap.”

“Ah, here,” Johnny says, pointing at him. “ ’Twouldn’t take a sap. Ye were only magnificent, every one of ye. I almost believed ye myself. That’s what done it. Not him being a sap. The lot of ye playing a fuckin’ blinder.” He raises his pint to them all.

“Don’t be getting all modest on us, young fella,” Mart says, smiling at him. “Credit where credit’s due: you did the heavy lifting. You’re very convincing altogether, when you wanta be. Hah?”

“I know Rushborough,” Johnny assures him. “I know how to handle the man. I won’t let ye down.”

“What now, so?” Francie demands. Francie is looking stubbornly skeptical. His face naturally inclines that way, being bony and thin-lipped, heavy on the eyebrows, but its usual cast has intensified.

“Now,” Johnny says, relaxing back on the banquette, his face shining with glee, “we’ve got him. That fella’ll do whatever it takes to get stuck into the serious digging. All we haveta do is take the cash and let him at it.”

“If there’s anything worth having on my land,” Francie says, “and I’m not saying there is, I don’t fancy waking up one morning and finding out I’ve handed over the rights to millions for a coupla grand.”

“Fuck’s sake, Francie,” Johnny says, exasperated. “What is it you want, at all? If you think there’s millions on your land, then ask Rushborough can you buy into his company and get your share. If you believe there’s nothing there, then take the few grand for the mining rights, and let him dig his wee heart out. You can’t have it both ways. Which is it?”

Cal is becoming clearer on the next step in Johnny and Rushborough’s plan. He stays quiet, letting things play out a little longer. The more Johnny says, the more the guys will have to chew on, after Cal throws his grenade.

“It’s none a your business, is what it is,” Francie tells Johnny. “Ye can all do whatever you want. I’m only saying, he can’t walk onto my land and take what he likes.”

“Jesus fuck, you’re some dose, d’you know that?” Sonny explodes at Francie. “Here’s everything going great guns, and you sitting there with a puss on you that’d sour milk, looking for holes to pick. Would you not shut your gob just for the one evening, and let the rest of us enjoy ourselves?”

“He’s thinking a-fuckin’-head,” Senan snaps. “You should try it yourself sometime.”

“He’s being a fuckin’ moan.”

“Arrah, shut the fuck up, wouldja, and let the men with sense do the talking—”

All of them are too loud and too quick off the mark. Cal can feel the electric charge jittering through the air. Someone is liable to get his ass kicked tonight. Cal is aware that, once he says his piece, there’s a fair-to-middling chance it could be him.

“D’you know something?” Bobby demands suddenly, of Senan. “You’re awful fond of telling people to shut up. No one made you king of this place. Maybe you oughta shut up yourself, once in a while.”

Senan stares at Bobby like he just grew another head. Bobby, terrified by his own new daring but not about to back down, pulls himself up to his full height and stares back. Mart looks like he’s having the night of his life.

“Sweet fuck,” Senan says. “If this is what just the smell of gold does to you, I’d hate to see what you’ll be like if anything’s found on your land. You’ll lose the run of yourself altogether. You’ll be swanning around with a tiara and a big diamond ring on you, expecting people to kiss it—”

“I’m only saying,” Bobby tells him, with dignity. “He’s as much right to an opinion as you have.”

“Sir Bobby, will it be? Or Your Lordship?”

“Ah, lads, lads,” Johnny says soothingly, raising his hands to quell the argument and bring everyone back on track. “Listen to me. Francie here’s got a point. The man just wants to be sure he’ll get value. What’s wrong with that? Don’t we all?”

“Fuckin’ right,” Senan says.

“Sure, I wouldn’t want your man walking away with the lot, either,” Con says. “Not off my land.”

A shift runs through the other men, a low mutter of assent.

“Do we haveta let him?” P.J. asks, worried.

“You don’t haveta do anything you don’t wanta,” Johnny reassures him. “Have a think about it. Take your time. The only thing you oughta keep in mind is, let’s say you reckon there’s gold there, and you decide to ask Rushborough can you invest in his company: you’d want to do it soon. Once he finds gold, them shares’ll get an awful lot dearer.”

This silences P.J.; he takes refuge in his pint while he tries to disentangle it. Sonny and Con glance at each other, questions passing between them.

“How much would it be?” Dessie asks. “Investing, like.”

Johnny shrugs. “Depends, man. On what percentage you want, how much he reckons he’ll find, all that. I threw in a few grand and that got me a fair aul’ chunk, but that was when all your man had was some fairy tale off his granny. He might rate it higher now, after today.”

“If we all stick together,” Senan says, “he’ll rate it at whatever we say, or he can do his digging in his own back garden.”

“I’m not promising he wants investors at all,” Johnny cautions them. “He’s got other lads sniffing around, back in London; he might not have the room for anyone else.”

“Like I said. If there’s the lot of us in it, he can take it or leave it.”

“Who says I want to invest anything?” Francie demands.

Sonny throws himself back on the banquette with a roar of frustration. “Fuck’s sake, you’re the one that started all this—”

“Lads, lads,” Johnny says, soothing again. “No one needs to decide anything tonight. Just talk to Rushborough. Nice and delicate, now; don’t go wading in like you’re dealing with some aul’ bull of a lad at the cattle mart. Just put out the feelers, and see what he says.”

Cal is done waiting. He figures this should be plenty to help the guys put the situation into a fresh perspective, once they have his two cents’ worth to get them started.

“Johnny,” he says. He doesn’t raise his voice, but he makes sure it takes up enough space that the guys fall silent. “I got a question for you.”

For one blink, Johnny stares. Then: “Oh, holy God,” he says, mock-terrified, putting a hand to his heart. “This sounds awful serious altogether. Did I forget to pay my telly license, Guard? Are the treads gone on that aul’ banger of ours? Give us one more chance, I’m begging you, I’ll be a good boy…”

Cal waits for him to run himself down. The other men are watching. Some of them, Sonny and Dessie and Bobby, are grinning along at Johnny’s little song-and-dance routine. P.J. merely looks bewildered. Senan and Francie aren’t smiling.

“No, hang on,” Johnny says, lifting a finger like Cal tried to break in on him, which he didn’t. “Don’t tell me. I’ve got it. I’ve been very bold, Guard. I crossed the road without—”

Then his eyes slip away, over Cal’s shoulder, and Trey’s voice says, “Dad.”

Cal turns fast. Trey is standing at the entrance to the alcove. She’s just standing like always with her feet planted and her hands shoved in her pockets, wearing an old blue T-shirt and her worn-out jeans, but out of nowhere Cal is slammed by the sight of her. Browned by the summer and muscled by their work, her features stronger and more marked than he remembers them being just a couple of days ago, she doesn’t look like a kid; she looks like someone who could handle herself. Cal’s heart squeezes so tight he can’t breathe.

“Well, wouldja look who it is,” Johnny says, after a fraction of a second. “What’s the story, sweetheart? Is there something wrong at home?”

“Nah,” Trey says. “Got something to tell you.”

Johnny’s eyebrows go up. “Well, holy God,” he says, “isn’t this all very mysterious. D’you want me to come outside, is it?”

“Nah. Here’s good.”

Johnny is eyeing Trey with an indulgent half-smile, but Cal can see him thinking fast. He’s not at sea, exactly, but something here has taken him by surprise. Something is going on.

“Are you after doing something a wee bit bold,” he says, “and you’re worried I’ll be angry with you?” He wags his finger playfully at Trey. “Ah, now. Daddy won’t be angry. Sure, didn’t I do plenty of bold things myself, when I was your age?”

Trey shrugs. P.J., trapped amid what looks like family complications, is shuffling his feet around and trying to come up with a conversation to have with Mart. Mart is ignoring him and unabashedly soaking up the drama.

“All right,” Johnny says, reaching a decision. “Come sit here and tell me all about it.” He pats the banquette beside him. Trey moves over to him, but she stays standing. Her bottom lip looks swollen.

“When your man Rushborough called round, that evening,” she says. “And he was telling you where his granny said there was gold. I listened in.”

“Ah, God. And you were worried I’d be angry with you for that?” Johnny laughs affectionately up into her face, giving her arm a pat. Trey doesn’t move away. “God love you, no one coulda resisted the temptation. Sure, any of these great big grown-up lads, if they’da been there”—he wags a finger teasingly around the table—“they’da had an ear up against the door. Wouldn’t they?”

“Dunno,” Trey says. Banter has never been Trey’s strong suit.

“They would, o’ course. Is that all you wanted? To get that off your chest?”

“Nah,” Trey says. She hasn’t looked at Cal once; her eyes are on Johnny. “I went out to where your man Rushborough said. Did a bitta digging around. Just to see, like.”

“Ah, now,” Johnny says reprovingly, waving a finger at her. “You know better than that, missus. I won’t give out to you this time, ’cause you came clean to me, but from now on, if you wanta—”

“Yeah,” Trey says. “Found this.” She fishes in her jeans pocket and pulls out a small, squashed click-seal bag.

“What’s this, now? Didja dig up something pretty?” Johnny takes it from her with a half-puzzled, half-amused glance, and bends his head to peer at it. Under the men’s watching eyes, he turns it over and tilts it to the light.

Cal’s muscles almost launch him before he knows it. He wants to flip the table in Johnny’s face, get Trey by the shoulder, spin her around and march her straight out of all this. He holds himself still.

Johnny lifts his head to stare at Trey. “Where’d you get this?” he asks.

“Told you,” Trey says. “Where your man was saying. There at the foot of the mountain.”

Johnny looks around at the men’s faces. Then he tosses the bag into the center of the table, among the glasses and the beer mats.

“That’s gold,” he says.

Out in the main bar, the TV commentator’s voice gallops along with the horses. Someone swears, and someone else cheers.

Con, leaning in to gaze at the bag, starts to laugh first, then Dessie, then Sonny.

“What?” Trey demands, baffled and prickling up.

“Oh, Jesus,” Con gasps. Senan has started laughing too. “And us feckin’ about in that river at the crack of dawn, up to our oxters—”

Bobby is doubled up with giggles, beating his hands on the table. “State of us—”

“And hundreds outa our pockets,” Sonny manages, “and all the time, we coulda just sent out—” He points at Trey and dissolves into helpless wheezes.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Johnny says, chuckling, patting her arm. “No one’s laughing at you, sweetheart. We’re laughing at ourselves, only.”

Trey still looks unconvinced and prickly. Cal takes a look at Mart. He’s laughing along, but his eyes are sharp and steady, moving between Johnny and Trey.

“ ’Tis ’cause we thought we were awful cute,” P.J. explains to Trey, grinning. “Only we were thick.”

Trey shrugs. “ ’F you don’t want it,” she says, jerking her chin at the bag on the table, “I’ll have it back.”

“And why not,” Johnny says, catching up the bag and pressing it into her hand. “No one’ll grudge you that. You’ve earned it. Amn’t I right?”

“Go on,” Dessie says, still giggling, flapping a hand at her. “Plenty more where that came from.”

“Whatever,” Trey says, pocketing the bag. “Thought you might wanta see it, is all.”

“Ah, sweetheart,” Johnny says remorsefully, catching her arm. Cal is starting to wonder if the guy even remembers her name. “You done great. Daddy’s only delighted with you, and so are all these other nice lads. OK? You go along home now and tell your mammy to put that somewhere safe, and we’ll have it made into a lovely necklace for you to wear.”

Trey shrugs, detaches her arm from his hand, and leaves. Her eyes skid right over Cal.

“Well, God almighty, lads,” Johnny says, running his hands through his hair and gazing after her with a mixture of fondness and bemusement. “Doesn’t that beat Banagher? I didn’t know whether to give her a hug or a skelp. That child’ll be the death of me.”

“She’s got good timing, anyway,” Mart says amiably. “Isn’t that a great talent to have?”

“Where was it she went digging?” Senan asks.

“Fuck’s sake, man,” Johnny says, giving him a disbelieving stare. “Are you serious? I’m handing nothing over for free. And even if I did, ’twouldn’t do ye a blind bitta good: like I told you before, there’s no use in heading out digging with no license. No: we’ll do this right.”

“Foot of the mountain, she said,” Sonny says to Con. “That’ll be our land.”

“Hang on,” Johnny says, turning to Cal, holding up a hand to silence the rest. “Mr. Hooper had a question for me, before my Theresa came in and interrupted him. Mostly I’d apologize for her, only this time I reckon what she had to say was worth hearing, amn’t I right?”

“Jesus fuck,” Sonny says, from the heart, agreeing.

Johnny sits there smiling at Cal, waiting.

“Nope,” Cal says. “Nothing.”

“Ah, there was. Something awful serious, going by the face on you. You put the heart crossways in me there, man; I was afraid maybe I’d run over your dog and never noticed.”

“Not that I know of,” Cal says. “Can’t’ve been that serious; it’s gone right outa my head. It’ll come back, though. I’ll be sure and let you know when it does.”

“You do that,” Johnny says, giving him an approving nod. “Meanwhile, lads, I think we all deserve another shot of the good stuff, amn’t I right? This one’s on me. We’ll have a toast to that mad young one of mine.”

“Count me out,” Cal says. “I’m gonna head home.”

“Ah, now,” Johnny says reproachfully. “You can’t stay for just the two; that’s not the way we do things around here. Sit where you are a while longer and then I’ll see you safe home, if you’re worried about overdoing it. I reckon we could do with a chat anyway.”

“Nah,” Cal says. He drains his pint and stands up. “I’ll see you round.” As he leaves, he hears Johnny say something that gets a big old laugh.

The moon is almost full. It turns the mountain road white and treacherously narrow, a trickle of safety wavering upwards between the thick dark scribbles of heathery bog and the formless looming of trees. A fidgety breeze roams among the high branches, but it takes none of the heat out of the air. Cal keeps climbing, sweating through his shirt, till the road splits and he strikes off down the fork that leads to the Reddy place. It leaves him a little closer to the Reddys’ than he’d like, but he doesn’t need someone irrelevant passing by at the wrong time. He finds a boulder in the shadow of a low, gnarled tree, with a clear view of the path below him, and sits down to wait.

He’s thinking of Trey, standing in the entrance of the alcove with her eyes on Johnny and her jaw set, close enough to touch and unreachable. He wonders where she is now, and what she’s thinking, and what happened to her mouth. It aches right through him that he failed her: he didn’t find a way to make her able to come to him with this.

He understands that it’s not surprising. When Johnny first came home, she had no use for him, but the more Cal sees of Johnny, the more he figures there are ways Trey’s brother Brendan took after his daddy. Trey idolized Brendan. If she saw in Johnny flashes of things she had thought were lost to her, she might find it hard to turn away.

Cal knows, not that it makes any difference, that Johnny isn’t deliberately trying to put the kid in harm’s way. He doubts that the extent of the possible harm has even crossed Captain Chucklefuck’s mind. Johnny has a plan, and everything is going to plan, so in his head, everything is hunky-dory. He has no conception of the dangers of being the one with a plan, when your targets have no such thing and are willing instead to do whatever the situation demands.

The undergrowth ticks and twitches as things follow their accustomed trails among it; a weasel or a stoat streaks neatly across the path, fine as a brushstroke, and vanishes into the other side. The moon moves, shifting the shadows. Cal wishes, with a surge of something that feels like vast dawning grief, that Johnny had waited even one more year, till Cal had had just a little more time to shore up the kid’s cracked places, before he came prancing into town breaking things.

He hears Johnny coming before he sees him. The dumb fuck is sauntering up the mountain singing to himself, softly and happily: “But I’m tired of all this pleasure, so I’m off to take my leisure, and the next thing that you’ll hear from me is a letter from New York…”

Cal stands up quietly, in the shadow of the tree. He lets Johnny get within ten feet before he steps out onto the path.

Johnny leaps and shies sideways like a spooked horse. Then he recognizes Cal and recovers himself. “Fuck, man, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” he says, hand to his chest, managing to pull out a laugh. “You’d want to watch yourself, doing that. Another man woulda given you a clatter, if you took him by surprise like that. What are you doing out here, anyhow? I thought you were headed home to the bed.”

Cal says, “You said you wanted to talk to me.”

“Jesus, man, cool the jets. ’Tisn’t life-or-death. It can wait—I’ve been celebrating here, I’m in no state to be having delicate conversations. And neither are you, if you’re out here getting brambles stuck in your arse at this hour; you musta got a touch of the sun on that river. Go on home. I’ll buy you a straightener tomorrow, and we’ll have a nice civilized chat then.”

Cal says, “I been waiting here two hours to hear whatever you’ve got to say. Go ahead and say it.”

He watches Johnny eye him and the escape routes. Johnny isn’t drunk, but he’s considerably closer to it than Cal is, and the terrain has too many surprises to favor a quarry with no head start.

Johnny sighs, running a hand over his hair. “All right,” he says, marshaling his resources to humor the pushy Yank. “Here’s the story. No offense, now, and don’t be shooting the messenger, yeah?”

“Takes a lot to offend me,” Cal says.

Johnny grins automatically. “That’s a great thing, man. Listen: I hate to say it, but my friend Mr. Rushborough, he’s after taking against you. No reason that he’s given me; he just doesn’t like the cut of you. You make him nervous, he says. I’d say ’tis just that you don’t fit the idea of the place that he’s got into his head, d’you know what I mean? Them hairy aul’ farm fellas that smell of sheep shite and tin whistles and forty shades of green, they’re what he came looking for. A street-smart Chicago cop like yourself…” He turns up his palms. “That doesn’t fit the image at all, at all. ’Tisn’t your fault, but you’re upsetting the dream. And men get awful edgy if you upset their dreams.”

“Huh,” Cal says. “You know what, I had a feeling it was gonna be something along those lines. Maybe I’m psychic.”

“Sure, you’re a man of experience,” Johnny explains. “A man that’s seen as much of the world as you have, he can spot when another man’s taken against him. It happens sometimes, no rhyme nor reason to it. But you see where that leaves us, don’t you? If you were to stay on board with this, Rushborough’d only keep getting edgier, till in the end he’d decide, Ah, here, I’m not enjoying myself any more. And off he’d go, back to London. So…” He gives Cal a regretful look. “I’ll need you to step back outa this, Mr. Hooper. You won’t be leaving empty-handed, now, don’t be worrying about that; myself and the lads, we’ll make up your share outa what we get. ’Tis fierce unfair, I know that, but we’ve a delicate situation on our hands, and ’tis this or lose the man altogether.”

“Yeah,” Cal says. “Like I said, no surprises there. Now it’s my turn. Run whatever con you want, I don’t give a shit. Like you said, I’m not from around here. But you don’t get to bring Trey into it. She has to live here, once you and Whatshisname are done and gone.”

He watches Johnny think about going into outraged-daddy mode, and then think better of it. He goes for baffled innocent instead. “Man,” he says, spreading his hands, injured, “I didn’t bring her into anything. Maybe I shoulda checked that she wasn’t listening in, but how was I supposed to know she’d go digging? And where’s the harm in it, anyhow? There’s plenty there for everyone, no need to grudge the child her bitta fun—”

“Johnny,” Cal says, “I’m not in the mood. You gave the kid that piece of gold. There’s nothing to find.”

“Ah, God,” Johnny says, rolling his eyes in exasperation, “there’s always one. The feckin’ pessimist. Debbie Downer, isn’t that what you Yanks call it? Here, I’ll tell you what we’ll do: I’ll give you back your few quid, so you won’t need to be worrying about what’s out there, and you can jog on. That way we’re all happy.”

“Nope,” Cal says. “You’re done here. Pack your stuff, pack your Brit, and get out.”

Johnny rears back in the moonlight, eyebrows going up. “Ah, here. Are you joking me? You’re trying to order me outa my own home place? You’ve got some brass neck on you, Hooper.”

“I’ll give you two days,” Cal says. “That oughta be long enough for you to come up with a story that’ll keep the kid clear.”

Johnny laughs at him. “Jesus, man, who d’you think you are? Vito Corleone? You’re not in the States now; that’s not how we do things round here. Relax on the fuckin’ jacks. Get yourself some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the show. It’ll all be grand. Rushborough’ll go away happy, whatever we find or don’t find—”

“Johnny,” Cal says. “I’m trying real hard to be patient here, but you need to cut the bullshit. You’re not running a con on Rushborough; you and him are running it on the guys. The more cash you scam out of them, the more flak the kid’ll take when the shit hits the fan. You’re done.”

Johnny looks at him with no expression at all. Then he lets out a short, meaningless laugh. He sticks his hands in his pockets and turns to scan the long slow curves of the mountains against the stars, giving himself time to pick his new tack. When he turns back to Cal, his tone has lost its lilting charm, turned crisp and businesslike.

“Or what, man? Quit throwing shapes and look at it straight for a minute. Or what? You’ll go to the Guards and tell them you and the lads are trying to run a scam on some poor tourist, only it’s not working out for ye? Or you’ll go to the lads and tell them they’re the ones getting conned? Here’s you making out you care so much about Theresa: how d’you reckon that’ll pan out for her?”

“There’s no ‘or,’ ” Cal says. He wants his gun. He wants to shoot the balls right off this little shitweasel for fathering the kid, when she deserves so much better. “You got till Sunday night.”

Johnny looks at him for a minute and sighs. “Man,” he says, in a new, simpler voice, “if I could, I would. Believe me. D’you think I wanta be here? I’d be gone in a second, if I’d the choice.”

For the first time in their acquaintance, he doesn’t sound like he’s trying to bullshit Cal. He sounds tired and powerless. When he brushes his hair out of his eye, screwing up his face and catching a sudden breath like a kid, he looks like he wants to lie down right there on the path and sleep.

“There’s four buses a day,” Cal says. “Right up on the main road. Pick one.”

Johnny shakes his head. He says, “I owe money.”

“That’s your problem. Not the kid’s.”

“She wanted to help. I never twisted her arm.”

“You shoulda said no.”

Johnny looks up at Cal. “I owe your man Rushborough,” he says. His voice is so sodden with defeat and fear that it weighs down the night air. “And he’s not someone you wanta fuck around with.”

“Great. Him and me got something in common after all.”

Johnny shakes his head again. “Nah, man,” he says. “Talk tough all you want. I seen that fella hold a wee girl down and slice lines in her arm with a razor—a child, like, no bigger than my Alanna—till her daddy paid up.”

Cal says, no louder, “So you brought him here.”

Johnny gives a shrug, wry and appealingly rueful: Gee, man, what do you want from me, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do. Cal, at long last, punches him right in the mouth.

Johnny never saw it coming and he goes down hard, hitting the verge with a thud and a crunch of undergrowth. But he recovers fast, and by the time Cal comes after him he’s got a foot up, aiming for Cal’s stomach. He misses and gets Cal in the thigh, and Cal falls on him, full weight, hearing the breath retch out of him. Things turn messy then, crowded with grunts and elbows. Johnny is a better fighter than Cal expected. He fights desperate and dirty, jabbing for the eyes and scrabbling for fishhooks. Cal welcomes it. He doesn’t want a clean fight, not with this guy.

Johnny is rolling them over and over among the rocks and brambles, trying not to let Cal get a solid purchase where his weight will tell, pressing close so Cal can’t get the reach for a decent punch. He smells of shitty fake-fancy aftershave. Cal sees flashes of his bared teeth, the heather, the stars. It streaks across his mind that if they roll too far and land in a bog, the mountain will take them and no one will ever know.

He gets Johnny by his pretty haircut and mashes his face into the dirt, but Johnny finds Cal’s ear, tries to rip it off, and twists away quick as a fox when Cal jerks backwards. Cal lunges after him, on hands and knees, blinded by the crisscross of moonlight and shadow, following Johnny’s scrabbles and the painful whine of his breath. He grabs a limb and drags Johnny back towards him, punching at anything he can reach, taking a vicious heel to the forehead. Neither of them yells out. Cal has never been in a fight this close to silent. If anyone or anything else is out on the mountain, neither of them wants to draw its notice.

He tries to get hold of Johnny’s arms, takes a thumb to the eyeball and sees a bright burst of stars, but the fresh shot of rage lets him force a knee up between their bodies and slam Johnny in the balls. While Johnny is curled up wheezing, Cal straddles him and lands one more punch to his nose, just to put a dent in his good looks, save a girl or two from falling for his wheedles. He forces himself to stop there. He wants to keep hammering the guy’s face till there’s nothing left of it, but he needs Johnny to hear what he has to say.

Johnny gets his breath back and tries to heave himself free, but Cal is a lot bigger than him. When Johnny goes for his eye, Cal catches his wrist and bends it backwards till Johnny yelps.

“If you’re still in town Monday morning,” he says, so close to Johnny’s face that he can smell the blood and booze, “I’m gonna shoot you and dump your carcass in a bog where it belongs. We clear?”

Johnny laughs, which makes him cough blood. Fine droplets of it hit Cal’s cheek. In the moonlight his face, stippled and smeared black and white, barely looks like a face at all; its edges blur into the black and white of the undergrowth, like he’s dissolving away.

“No you won’t, man. If you do that, Rushborough’ll think I took off, and he’ll come looking to get me back by going after my family. You think he’ll stop at Theresa?”

Cal gives his wrist an extra twist, and Johnny catches his breath with a hiss. “You don’t give two shits about your family, fuckhead. He could shove ’em all in a wood chipper, and you wouldn’t budge an inch outa cover. He knows that.”

“Then he’ll do it just to get his money’s worth. You don’t know the man.”

“I’ll worry about Rushborough. All you gotta worry about is packing your shit.”

“Are you planning on putting him in a bog as well? ’Cause I’ll tell you something for nothing, boy: you won’t catch him napping as easy as you caught me. Try anything on him, and you’ll be the one lands in the bog.”

Johnny’s voice is staticky, clogged with blood. “I’ll take my chances,” Cal says. “All you need to know is, your chances are a lot better out of this place than in it. You got the whole world to dodge Rushborough in. You’re not gonna dodge me. Are we clear?”

They are very close together. Johnny’s eyes, made of fractured slashes of light and shadow, hold nothing but refusal, pure as an animal’s. For a moment Cal thinks he’s going to have to break Johnny’s wrist. Then he sees the vivid flash of fear as Johnny reads that thought and realizes that Cal means every word.

“Yeah!” Johnny yells, just in time. He jerks his head, trying to shake blood out of his eyes. “Jesus, man, I get it. Get the fuck off me.”

“Great,” Cal says. “About fucking time.” He picks himself up, starting to feel the throbbing in various parts of him, and hauls Johnny to his feet by his shirt collar.

“Bye, Johnny,” he says. “It’s been something.” The struggle carried them farther off the path than he realized; it takes him a minute to get his bearings, amid the maze of shadows, and aim Johnny in the right direction. He gives Johnny a good hard shove and Johnny stumbles off towards home, blotting his nose on his sleeve, with the autopilot obedience of a guy who’s lost enough fights to know the protocol. Cal resists the urge to speed him on his way with a kick in the pants.

He hasn’t worked out what, if anything, he’s going to do about Rushborough. His instinct is that Johnny was just blowing smoke, and that if Johnny goes, Rushborough will go after him. Cal has encountered plenty of men, and women too, who hurt people for pleasure, but he doesn’t get that scent off Rushborough. Rushborough smells like a different kind of predator, the ice-minded kind that locks on to his prey and doesn’t turn loose unless you shoot him off it. Regardless of what he said, Cal doesn’t rate Johnny’s chances of giving Rushborough the slip, here or anywhere.

He knows he has to factor in the possibility that Johnny was telling the truth for once, but this seems like a problem for after he’s washed off some of the blood. He also knows that Johnny may not be going anywhere. Johnny’s fears right now are an intricate spread, and Cal has no idea how the odds are weighted, or what bets his private, desperate algorithms might finally land on.

The sounds of Johnny blundering away are slowly fading into the distance. Cal makes his way to the edge of the path and listens till he’s sure the little shit is gone. He tests his injuries. There’s a goose egg above his eyebrow and a swelling bruise on his jaw, his thigh hurts where Johnny’s foot jabbed deep into the muscle, something has ripped through his shirt and dug a long gouge up his side, and about every part of him has small sharp grazes and bruises, but all of it seems minor enough to mend by itself. More importantly, he’s damn sure Johnny is a lot worse off.

He wonders where Johnny is heading, whether Trey is home, what Johnny will tell her, and what she’ll make of it. He wonders whether he just fucked up bad. He has no qualms about having given Johnny a beat-down—it needed doing, and if anything he feels like he did well to hold out so long—but he’s made uneasy by the fact that he did it because he lost his temper. It feels unmanaged, and this situation needs managing.

He starts homewards, listening for any movement in the shadows.

Trey knows she’s not the only one still awake. Everyone else has gone to bed, Liam is snoring softly and Maeve is sleep-muttering her annoyances, but Trey can hear her mother moving about the bedroom, and the occasional loud heave and sigh as Alanna turns among the sheets, hoping someone will come see what’s wrong. The house isn’t at rest.

Trey is sprawled on the sofa, automatically rubbing Banjo’s head propped on her knee. Banjo’s paw is better, but he’s still holding it up and looking pathetic when he wants treats and fusses. Trey is giving him plenty of both.

She’s listening for her father to come home. She reckons most likely he’ll be pleased with her, but with him you can never be sure. She’s left her bedroom window open, in case he’s raging and she needs to run.

She considered doing what he said, showing Noreen or Mrs. Cunniffe the piece of gold and letting them talk. It wouldn’t have worked. Trey, like anyone from Ardnakelty, has a gut-deep understanding of the ferocious power of talk, but it’s the wrong kind of power for this: fluid, slippery, switchbacking, forging twisting channels you can’t predict. She can see why her father went that way without a second thought. He’s all those things distilled; regardless of what either he or the townland might like to think, he’s Ardnakelty to the bone. Trey isn’t and doesn’t want to be, which means she sees angles that he misses. A solid thing appearing in front of the men’s faces, brazen and undeniable, has a different kind of power, to which they’re unaccustomed and against which they have few defenses. She let the gold do its own talking.

Banjo jerks in his sleep, eyebrows twitching and paws starting to work. “Shh,” Trey says, running his soft ear between her fingers, “it’s grand,” and he relaxes again.

She went to Cal’s in the morning, to warn him. She wasn’t clear on exactly how to do that, because she doesn’t want Cal knowing too much about what way she’s thinking; there’s a chance he might consider this to be a breach of her promise to do nothing about Brendan, and tell her to back off. It made no odds in the end, anyway, because Cal wasn’t home. Trey waited on his back porch for hours, her and Banjo eating the ham slices she’d brought to make sandwiches for lunch, but he didn’t come. He was out with the men, going about the business he doesn’t want her to know. In the end she left.

She doesn’t underestimate what she’s got into. The things she’s done before, robbing off Noreen and breaking into abandoned houses with her mates and drinking their parents’ booze, those were baby stuff. This is real. It feels good.

When she hears her dad at the door, she thinks at first, from the sounds of fumbling and staggering, that he’s drunk. Then he comes into the sitting room, and she sees his face. She stands up, spilling Banjo off her lap.

Johnny’s eyes go over Trey like she’s not there. “Sheila,” he says, and then, louder and more savagely, “Sheila!” Blood is all round his mouth and chin like a bright beard, and a flood of it is stiffening his shirtfront. When he puts his right foot down, he flinches like Banjo.

Sheila comes to the doorway and looks him over. The state of him doesn’t appear to cause her either surprise or upset. She seems like she’s been expecting this to happen ever since he came back.

“Your nose is broke,” she says.

“I fuckin’ know that,” Johnny snaps, with enough of a snarl in his voice that Trey goes up on her toes, but he’s too focused on himself to take time out for anyone else. He dabs his fingers gingerly at his nose and examines them. “Get me cleaned up.”

Sheila goes out. Johnny turns like he can’t stay still, and his eyes catch on Trey. Before she can move, he’s lunged across the room and grabbed her by the wrist. His eyes are dilated almost black, and there are bits of brush in his hair. He looks animal.

“You fuckin’ squelt to that Yank. What the fuck are you—”

“I did not—”

“You’ll get me kilt. Is that what you want? Is it?”

He jerks her wrist, hard, digging in to bruise her. “I said fuckin’ nothing,” Trey snaps, right in his face and not flinching. Banjo is whining.

“Then how the fuck does he know? No one knew, only you. What the fuck, what are you playing at—”

His hand on her wrist is shaking in sharp spasms. Trey wrenches herself free with such unexpected ease that she stumbles backwards. Johnny stares, and for a second she thinks he’s going to come after her. If he does, she’ll punch him bang in his broken nose. The only time she’ll bow to her dad’s will, from now on, is when it matches her own purposes.

Maybe Johnny sees that. Either way, he stays put. “Lena Dunne,” he says. The injuries have turned his voice clotted and ugly. “Didja talk to her? She’d squeal on me, no problem to her, uppity bitch—”

“I said nothing. To anyone.”

“How the fuck does Hooper know, so?”

“He coulda just guessed. He’s not thick. Just ’cause the rest fell for it—”

Johnny spins away from her, lurching around the room, hands in his hair. “This is what you get when you mess with fuckin’ cops. I knew it, the minute I got a smell of him, I knew he was trouble— What the fuck are you doing hanging around with a cop? Are you fuckin’ simple?”

“Don’t wake the children,” Sheila says, in the doorway. She’s holding a saucepan of water and an old red-checked dish towel. “Sit down.”

Johnny stares at her for a second, like he’s forgotten who she is. Then he drops onto the sofa.

“Get to bed,” Sheila tells Trey.

“You stay put,” Johnny says. “I’ve use for you.”

Trey moves closer to the door, just in case, but she stays. Sheila sits on the sofa beside Johnny, dips the towel in the water, and squeezes it out. When she dabs at his face, he hisses. Sheila ignores it and keeps working, in short systematic swipes like she’s getting a spill off the cooker.

“He’s got nothing,” Johnny says, wincing as Sheila catches a sore place. He sounds like he’s talking to himself. “He can say what he wants. No one’ll believe the likes of him.”

There’s silence in the room, only the drip as Sheila wrings out the cloth. Alanna has stopped tossing. The water in the pan is turning red.

“You tell me,” Johnny says, twisting to get one eye on Trey. “You know the man. Is Hooper going to run around this townland bleating it to everyone that there’s no gold?”

“Dunno,” Trey says. “He might not.” Cal’s relationship with Ardnakelty baffles her. He would have every right to a handful of well-honed grudges, but he’s easy and mannerly with everyone, to the point where she can’t even spot where the grudges might lie. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, though. Cal, even if he’s pissed off with Johnny for fooling him, might accept this chance to sit back and let the townland walk into Johnny’s trap. She knows, from stories he’s told her about his childhood, that his code allows for revenge, and that he knows how to take his time.

“If he does, will the place believe him?”

“Dunno. Some of ’em will.”

“Francie fuckin’ Gannon. That dry aul’ shite’s just looking for an excuse to wreck everything.” Johnny spits blood into the pan. “I can do without Francie. Everyone knows what he’s like, sure. How about the rest? Do they trust Hooper?”

The question is a complicated one, and Trey has no intention of going into the details. “Sorta,” she says.

Johnny gives a harsh laugh. “Look at that. A fuckin’ cop, and a Yank, and my own home place’d take his word over mine.” His voice is rising. “Every fuckin’ time, any chance they get, spitting in my face like I’m—Aah!” He flinches and slaps Sheila’s hand away furiously. “The fuck was that?”

“I said not to wake the children,” Sheila says.

They stare at each other. For a second Trey thinks he’s going to hit her. She readies herself.

Johnny slumps back into the sofa. “Sure, it’s not the end of the world,” he says. His nose is still bleeding; Sheila mops up the trickle. “No need to panic. Some of the lads’ll stick. And they’ll bring in more. We’ll find a way. It might take a wee bit longer, but we’ll get there in the end, so we will.”

“Course,” Trey says. “It’ll be grand. I’ll help.” She’s not going to let her dad give up and do a legger, when he’s only taken a few hundred quid off each of those men. Brendan is worth more than that.

Johnny focuses on her and brings out a smile, which makes him wince. “Someone’s got faith in me, anyway,” he says. “Daddy’s sorry for giving out. I shoulda known better, isn’t that right? I shoulda known you’d never say a word.”

Trey shrugs.

“That was only brilliant tonight, the way you walked into the pub. I shoulda thought of that. The faces on those great eejits, hah? I thought Bobby Feeney’s big fat head was going to explode.”

“They fell for it,” Trey says.

“They fuckin’ did. Hook, line, and sinker. ’Twas only beautiful; I’da watched that all night long. We’ll teach them to fuck with the Reddys, hah?”

Trey nods. She expected to hate bringing out the gold in the pub, talking shite with everyone staring at her; she was unprepared for the burst of power. She had those men by the noses, to lead wherever she wanted. She could have made them get up out of their seats, leave their pints and traipse obediently around the mountain, along every trail she took when she was hunting for Brendan. She could have walked the lot of them straight into a bog.

Sheila turns Johnny’s chin towards her so she can get at the other side of his face. “Now,” he says, rolling an eye over his shoulder to catch Trey’s, “I’ve another wee job for you. Tomorrow morning, you go down to that smartarse Hooper and ask him, nice and polite like, to mind his own fuckin’ business, as a favor to you. Can you do that for me?”

“Yeah,” Trey says. “No problem.” She wants Cal out of this as much as her dad does. She doesn’t like being on the same side as her dad. It leaves her with a strange, prickly sense of outrage.

“You explain to him that no one’ll believe him. If he meddles, he’ll do nothing but get you in trouble. That oughta do it.” Johnny smiles at her, lopsided. “And after that, it’s plain sailing all the way. Happy days, hah?”

The door creaks. Alanna stands half in, half out of the room, wearing an old T-shirt of Trey’s, with her stuffed rabbit tucked under her arm. “What happened?” she says.

“Go back to bed,” Sheila says sharply.

“Ah, sweetheart,” Johnny says, snapping alert to give Alanna a big smile. “Your big silly daddy fell over. Wouldja look at the state of me? Your mammy’s just tidying me up a wee bit, and then I’ll be in to give you a good-night hug.”

Alanna stares, wide-eyed. “Get her to bed,” Sheila says to Trey.

“Come on,” Trey says, steering Alanna back into the hall. Johnny waves to them both as they go, grinning like a fool through the blood and the dish towel.

“Did he fall over?” Alanna wants to know.

“Nah,” Trey says. “He got in a fight.”

“With who?”

“None a your business.”

She’s heading for Alanna and Liam’s room, but Alanna balks and pulls at her T-shirt. “Want to come in with you.”

“If you don’t wake Maeve.”

“I won’t.”

The bedroom is too hot, even with the window open. Maeve has kicked off her sheet and is sprawled on her stomach. Trey guides Alanna through the tangle of clothes and who knows what on the floor. “Now,” she says, pulling the sheet over the two of them. “Shh.”

“I don’t want him to stay,” Alanna tells her, in what’s meant to be a whisper. “Liam does.”

“He won’t stay,” Trey says.

“Why?”

“ ’Cause. That’s how he is. Shh.”

Alanna nods, accepting that. In no time she’s asleep, snuffling into her rabbit’s head. Her hair smells of gummy bears and is faintly sticky against Trey’s face.

Trey stays awake, listening to the silence from the sitting room. The curtain stirs sluggishly in the feeble breeze. Once there’s a sudden strangled roar of pain from Johnny and a sharp word from Sheila, which Trey reckons is her setting his nose back into line. Then the silence rises to wall them off again. Alanna’s breathing doesn’t change.

It takes Cal a long time to get home. The adrenaline has leached out of him, leaving his limbs heavy and unwieldy as wet sandbags. The moon has sunk behind the mountains, and the night is dark and simmering hot. When he finally rounds the bend and his house comes into view, the living-room windows are lit, small and valiant against the black huddle of the mountains.

Cal stands still among the moths and rustles, leaning on the roadside wall with both hands, his mind groping for what intruder this might be and where he’s going to find the force to drive them out. His thigh and his forehead are throbbing. For a second he considers just lying down and going to sleep under a hedge, and dealing with this in the morning.

Then a shape crosses the window. Even at this distance, Cal knows it for Lena, by the line of her back and by the moving sheen of the lamplight on her fair hair. He takes a breath. Then he straightens up and heads down the dark road, his big old sandbag feet catching in potholes, towards home.

The dogs signal his arrival early enough that Lena is at the door to meet him. She’s barefoot, and the house smells of tea and toast. She’s been waiting awhile.

“Hey,” Cal says.

Lena’s eyebrows go up, and she moves him into the light so she can examine his face. “Johnny, yeah?” she inquires.

“He looks worse’n I do.”

“That’s nice,” Lena says. She turns his head to one side and the other, assessing the damage. “Dessie went home and told Noreen about Trey coming into the pub,” she says, “and Noreen was onto me so fast she left skid marks. So I thought I’d call round and see what you made of it. I guessed right, or near enough.”

Cal takes her hand away from his cheek and wraps his arms around her. He stands there for a long time, with his face down in the warmth of her hair, feeling the steady thump of her heart against his chest and the strength of her hands on his back.