The Hunter

Sixteen

The mountainside is sticky-hot; Banjo spent the whole time in the car moaning loudly, to make the point that this weather is animal cruelty. Cal brought them the long way round, up the far side of the mountain and over, to stay clear of the crime scene.

As his car disappears in a cloud of dust, Trey pauses at her gate to listen, ignoring Banjo’s dramatic gasping. The sounds rising up the road from the fork seem ordinary: unworried birds and deft minor rustles, no voices or clumsy human movement. Trey reckons the Guards must have finished up and taken Rushborough away, to scrape under his fingernails and pick threads off his clothes. She wishes she had known about all that stuff earlier, when she had a chance to do something about it.

She turns her head at the crunch of a footstep. Her dad appears out of the trees at the edge of the yard and heads towards her, waving like it’s urgent.

“Well, there’s my sweetheart at last,” he says, giving her a reproachful look. He has a twig in his hair. “About time. I was keeping a lookout for you.”

Banjo, ignoring him, squeezes his belly through the bars of the gate and heads for the house and his water bowl. “ ’S only lunchtime,” Trey says.

“I know that, but you can’t be going off without telling your mammy, not on a day like this. You had us worried there. Where were you, at all?”

“Cal’s,” Trey says. “Hadta wait for the detective.” Her dad gives no explanation of what he was doing among the trees, but Trey knows. He’s been waiting for her out here, because he wants to find out all about the detective before he faces him. When he heard the car coming, he hid like a kid who broke a window.

“Ah, God, that’s right,” Johnny says, slapping his forehead. Trey is under no illusion that he was worried about her, but he’s worried all the same: his feet are jittering like a fighter’s. “Your man Hooper said they’d need to talk to ye, didn’t he? What with everything else, it went straight outa my head. How’d it go? Did they treat you all right?”

He’s in luck: Trey wants to talk to him, too. “Yeah,” she says. “It was just the one detective, and a fella taking notes. They were grand.”

“Good. They’d want to be nice to my wee girl,” Johnny says, wagging a finger, “or they’ll have me to deal with. What did they ask you?”

“Just wanted to know about me finding your man. What time it was when I first saw him. Did I touch him, what did I do, did I see anyone.”

“Didja tell them I came by?”

“Cal did.”

Behind Johnny, there’s a movement in the sitting-room window. The light on the glass blurs the figure so that it takes Trey a second to identify it: Sheila, watching them, her arms folded at her waist.

Johnny rubs the corner of his mouth with a knuckle. “Right,” he says. “Grand; no panic. I can sort that. What about the gold? Didja say anything about that? Even a mention?”

“Nah.”

“Did they ask?”

“Nah.”

“What about your man Hooper, do you know did he say anything?”

“Nah. They just asked him the same as me. What he did with Rushborough, did he touch him. He said nothing about gold.”

Johnny lets out a quick, vicious laugh, up into the sky. “Thought so. That’s the fuckin’ pigs for you. Hooper’d beat the shite outa any poor bastard that kept anything from him, I’d say he’s done it many a time, but he’s got no problem staying quiet when it’s his own neck on the line.”

Trey says, “Thought you didn’t want them knowing.”

That gets his attention back on her. “Jesus, no. You done great. Even if they come back asking about it, you never heard of any gold, d’you get me?”

“Yeah,” Trey says. She hasn’t decided yet what she’s going to do about the gold.

“I’m not complaining about Hooper, now,” Johnny reassures her. “I’m delighted he kept his mouth shut. I’m only saying: there’s one rule for them, one for everyone else. You remember that.”

Trey shrugs. He looks like shite: older and white, except where the bruises are fading to a dirty green that makes her think of Cal’s scarecrow.

“What’d you say about me and your man Rushborough? Did you say we were mates, or what?”

“Said you knew him a bit from London, but he wasn’t over to see you or anything. He was just here ’cause it’s where his family was from.”

“Good,” Johnny says. He blows out a long breath. His eyes are skittering to every rustle in the trees. “Good good good. That’s what I like to hear. Good girl yourself.”

Trey says, “I told the detective I heard people talking down the road, late last night. So I went out, and there was fellas down at the fork, where I found your man. Didn’t get close enough to see them, but fellas with local accents.”

That finally stops Johnny moving. He’s staring at her. “Didja?”

Trey shrugs.

After a second Johnny slaps the top bar of the gate so hard it shakes, throws back his head and bursts out laughing. “Holy God almighty,” he says, “where did I get you from, at all? That’s my girl. That’s my wee chip off the old block. Jesus, the brains on you, if brains was money we wouldn’t need to be feckin’ about with any aul’ gold, we’d be billionaires—” He flings the gate open and reaches to catch Trey in a hug, but she steps back. Johnny doesn’t register that, or doesn’t care. “You saw where them Garda fuckers were headed, didn’t you? You were miles ahead of them. You weren’t going to let them pin a murder on your poor daddy. That’s my girl.”

“You oughta tell them the same thing,” Trey says. “In case they think I made it up for notice.”

Johnny stops laughing to run that through his mind. “That’s some great thinking,” he says after a second, “but no. If I say the same as you, they’ll think I put you up to it. I’ll tell you what we’ll do: I’ll say I heard you going out, sometime in the night. And maybe I oughta have gone after you”—he’s pacing in zigzags, thinking it out as he goes—“but I was half asleep. And I thought I heard voices somewhere, so I reckoned you were off to meet your pals for a bitta mischief, maybe someone had a naggin—I wasn’t going to spoil your fun, sure haven’t we all done the same at your age, and worse? So I left you to it. But I didn’t hear you coming back in, so when I woke up this morning and you weren’t in the house, I was a wee bit worried about my girl. So I went looking for you, and that’s why I was out and about bright and early. Now.” He stops moving and spreads his arms, smiling at Trey. “Doesn’t that all hang together lovely?”

“Yeah.”

“There we go. Sorted and ready for the detectives; they can come whenever they like, now. Aren’t you great, coming straight back to tell me?”

“Prob’ly,” Trey says. She knows he’ll be grand talking to the detectives. Her dad isn’t a fool; he’s well able to do a good job, as long as there’s someone with more focus to keep him moving along the right track. Trey has focus.

“One more thing,” Johnny says. “While we’re at it. D’you remember I went out for a walk, last night after the dinner? Just to clear the head?”

“Yeah.”

Johnny wags a finger at her. “No I didn’t. We don’t know what time Mr. Rushborough died, do we? For all we know, it coulda been while I was out and about, with no one to vouch for me but the birds. And we don’t want that detective fella taking any notions into his head, wasting his time and letting a murderer get away. So I was home all evening, clearing up after the dinner and watching the telly. Have you got that?”

“Yeah,” Trey says. She approves of this. Her dad being suspected would get in her way. “Didja say it to Mam and the little ones?”

“I did. That’s all done and dusted and ready for action. It’ll be no bother to you; the whole lot of ye are as sharp as a handful of brand-new shiny tacks, isn’t that right?”

“Alanna might get mixed up,” Trey says. “I’ll tell her not to go talking to the detective. Just act scared of him.”

Her dad winks at her. “Brilliant. She can hide away in her mammy’s skirts and not say a word. Much easier for the child than trying to remember this, that, and t’other. Oh, and come here till I tell you,” he says, snapping his fingers as he remembers. “I’ve your man Hooper’s camera for you; I put it inside, in your room. That’s where I went this morning, after I saw you. I knew you wouldn’t want Hooper mixed up in this, so I went and got that camera before the Guards could find it. You hang on to it for a few days and then give it back to him, nice and casual-like, tell him you finished your school yoke. Don’t be worrying; I deleted everything from the river.”

“Right,” Trey says. “Thanks.”

“So everything’s tickety-boo,” Johnny says merrily. “Not for poor Mr. Rushborough, o’ course, God rest his soul,” he adds as an afterthought, crossing himself. “But we’re right as rain. The detective’ll have his wee chats, he’ll hear nothing interesting, and away he’ll go to annoy some other poor feckers. And them lads that called round the other night won’t be bothering us any more. All sorted: we’ll live happy ever after.”

His plan to keep the family in luxury appears to have conveniently erased itself from his mind, overwritten by this new set of circumstances and their demands. Trey, who took it for granted that this would happen one way or another, is still impressed by the thoroughness of it. She’s shifted goals herself a few times in the past couple of weeks, but she still remembers the old ones existed.

The thought reminds her. “Do you still have to pay back that money?” she asks.

“Rushborough’s few bob?” Johnny laughs. “That’s gone. Dust in the wind. I’m free as a bird.”

“His mates won’t come looking?”

“Jesus, no. They’ll have enough on their plates. More than enough.” He gives her a big reassuring smile. “Don’t you worry your little head about that.”

Trey says, “So are you gonna leave?”

Johnny rears back reproachfully. “What are you on about?”

“Now that you don’t need to pay Rushborough back. And no one’s gonna put their money into the gold, with him gone.”

Johnny comes closer and crouches, hands on her shoulders, to be face-to-face with her. “Ah, sweetheart,” he says. “Would I leave you and your mammy to deal with the big bold detectives all by yourselves? God, no. I’m staying right here, as long as ye need me.”

Trey translates this without effort: if he does a runner now, it’ll look suspicious. She’s stuck with him until the detectives have done their work. This doesn’t bother her as much as it would have a few days ago. At least now, for once in his life, the fucker looks like coming in useful. “Right,” she says. “Grand.”

He’s looking at her like the conversation isn’t over. It occurs to Trey that he’s waiting for her to ask if he killed Rushborough. She reckons he might have—he was afraid for his life of that fella, but it didn’t take any guts to hit the man from behind—but she assumes he would lie if she asked, and it makes no difference to her either way. She just hopes that, if he did it, he had the brains not to leave anything for the detective to find. She looks back at him.

“Ah, sweetheart, you look wrecked,” Johnny says, tilting his head sympathetically. “You musta got an awful shock, finding him like that. D’you know what you need? You need a good sleep. Go inside and get your mammy to make you a nice bitta lunch and tuck you into bed.”

Out of nowhere, Trey finds herself browned off right down to her bones. She should be over the moon with herself, everything is going great guns, but she hates her dad’s guts and she misses Cal so hard she wants to throw back her head and howl at the sky like Banjo. This is idiotic, when she spent half the day with him, but she feels like he’s a million miles away. She’s grown accustomed to the sense that she could tell Cal anything; not that she does, but she could if she wanted to. What she’s doing now is something she can never tell him. Trey is pretty sure Cal’s code doesn’t allow for straight-out lying to detectives about a murder to dump innocent men in the shite. When it comes to his code, Cal is inflexible. He’s equally inflexible about keeping his word, which he takes as seriously as Trey does, and if he doesn’t see this the same way as her, he’ll think she’s breaking her word about Brendan. Cal would forgive her many things, but not this.

She can’t remember how any of this is worth it. In practical terms, this makes no difference: she isn’t doing this because it’s worth it, but because it needs to be done. But it lowers her spirits even further.

All she wants is in fact to go to sleep, but at this moment she despises her dad too much to stay that near him, now that she’s done what she needed with him. “Going to meet my mates,” she says. “Just came back to leave Banjo. Too hot for him out here.”

It might as well be true; she can go over the mountain and find a couple of her mates, and start putting out her story. Once it takes root, it’ll spread, change shape, shake off her mark, and find its way back to Nealon.

“Don’t forget to talk to Alanna,” Johnny reminds her, as she turns away. “You’re great with her altogether; she’ll do anything you say.”

“Do it when I get back,” Trey says, over her shoulder. Sheila is still standing in the window, watching them.

The minute Cal is wrist-deep in harvesting carrots, Mart appears, stumping across the defeated grass with the brim of his donkey hat flapping. Rip bounces up and tries to get Kojak to go for a run, but Kojak is having none of it; he flops down in the raggedy shadow of the tomato plants and lies there, panting. The heat is thick as soup. Cal has already sweated right through the back of his T-shirt.

“The size of them carrots,” Mart says, stirring Cal’s bucket with his crook. “Someone’ll rob one of them and give your scarecrow a fine big mickey.”

“I got plenty to spare,” Cal says. “Help yourself.”

“I might take you up on that. I got a recipe offa the internet for some Moroccan lamb yoke; a few carrots’d liven it up. Do they have the aul’ carrots in Morocco?”

“Dunno,” Cal says. He knows why Mart’s here, but he’s not in the mood to do the work for him. “You can go ahead and introduce them.”

“I won’t get the chance. There’s not a lot of Moroccans around these parts.” Mart watches while Cal pulls up another carrot and brushes the dirt away. “So,” he says. “Paddy Englishman, Paddy Irishman, and Paddy American walked into a gold rush, and Paddy Englishman never walked out. Is it true ’twas your Theresa that found him?”

“Yep,” Cal says. “Took the dog out for a walk, and there he was.” He has no idea how Mart came by that information. He wonders if some mountainy man was watching from the trees, the whole time they were by the body.

Mart pulls out his tobacco pouch and starts rolling himself a cigarette. “I saw the Guards calling in to you earlier,” he says, “doing their aul’ detectivating and investimagating. That car won’t stay shiny for long, on these roads. What kinda men were they?”

“The uniform didn’t say much,” Cal says, yanking up another carrot. “The detective seems like he knows his job.”

“And you’d be the man to spot that. Wouldja look at that, Sunny Jim: after all this time, you’re finally coming in useful.” Mart licks the rolling paper in one neat sweep. “I’m looking forward to having the chats with them. I never talked to a detective before, and you say we’ve got ourselves a fine specimen. Is he a countryman?”

“Dublin. According to the kid.”

“Ah, fuck’s sake,” Mart says in disgust. “I won’t be able to enjoy myself talking to him, if I’ve to listen to that noise the whole time. I’d rather have a tooth drilled.” His lighter isn’t working; he gives it a pained look, shakes it, and tries again, with more success. “Didja get any idea of what way he’s thinking?”

“This early on, probably he’s not thinking anything. And if he was, he wouldn’t tell me.”

Mart’s eyebrow lifts. “Would he not? And you a colleague?”

“I’m not a colleague,” Cal says. “I’m just another guy who could’ve done it. And I sure as hell won’t be a colleague once he hears about us fooling around in that river.”

Mart shoots him an amused glance. “Musha, God love you. Are you after getting yourself all in a tither about that bitta nonsense?”

“Mart,” Cal says, sitting back on his haunches. “They’re gonna find out.”

“Did you mention it to him, didja?”

“It didn’t come up,” Cal says. Mart’s grin widens. “But someone will, sooner or later.”

“D’you reckon?”

“Come on, man. This whole county knows Rushborough was looking for gold. Half of them have to know about us salting the river. Someone’s gonna say something.”

Mart smiles at him. “D’you know something,” he says, “you’re after settling in so well around here, sometimes I do forget you’re a blow-in. Sure, it feels like you’ve always been here.” He lets out a thin ribbon of smoke between his teeth. The air is so still that it hangs in front of him, slowly dissipating. “No one’ll say nothing about that, Sunny Jim. Not to the Guards. And if someone did…” He shrugs. “This townland’s a terrible place for the rumors. Everyone passing on what their auntie’s cousin’s missus said, adding a wee bitta decoration here and there to make it interesting…Stories do get terrible twisted up, along the way. Someone musta got the wrong end of the stick.”

“What if they check the story out, look for online purchases of gold delivered to this area in the last couple of weeks? You’re gonna pop right up.”

“I don’t trust them banks up in the Big Smoke,” Mart explains. “Sure, what with the Brexit and all, they could collapse any day. Any man of sense’d feel safer with some of his savings where he can put his hand on them. I’d recommend the same financial strategy to you, sunshine. The gold standard: you can’t beat it.”

“They’re gonna go through Rushborough’s phone. And Johnny’s.”

“God, ’tis great having the inside scoop,” Mart says admiringly. “I knew there was a reason we kept you around. I’ll tell you why I’m not worried about what might be on them phones. It’s ’cause them two fine examples of manhood weren’t just a pair of messers chancing their arm, like myself and the lads. Them two are professionals. They went about this the right way. Thorough-like.”

“Johnny never went about anything thorough-like in his life,” Cal says.

“Maybe not,” Mart agrees. “But your man Rushborough’d keep him up to the mark, all right. Johnny wouldn’t put a toe outa line around that gazebo. There’s nothing on them phones.”

His voice has a flat, gentle finality. “OK,” Cal says. “Maybe the Guards’ll never prove anything about the gold. But they’re gonna hear about it. Maybe not what Rushborough and Johnny were trying to pull, but what you and the guys were.”

“And yourself,” Mart reminds him. “Credit where credit’s due.”

“Whatever. Point is, either way, that’s motive for someone. Rushborough found out about the river, he was going to go to the cops, someone got scared and shut his mouth. Or someone found out about Rushborough’s scam and didn’t appreciate it.”

“Is that what you reckon happened?” Mart inquires.

“I didn’t say that. I said Nealon, the detective, he’s gonna be looking at that possibility.”

“The man’s welcome to look all he likes,” Mart says, with a magnanimous wave of his smoke, “and good luck to him. I wouldn’t wanta be in his shoes, but. He can have all the motive in the world, but it’s no good to him without a man on the other end. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, someone lets slip something about gold. Paddy Joe says he heard it from Michael Mór, and Michael Mór says it was Michael Beag that told him, and Michael Beag says it mighta been Pateen Mike that said it but he was six pints in so he couldn’t swear to it, and Pateen Mike says he got it from Paddy Joe. I’ll tell you one thing for certain: there won’t be a soul saying he was at that river, or can name a single man that was. If the gold is anything at all, it’ll be just one of them mad rumors that do spring up in a backward wee community the likes of this one. Morning mist, Sunny Jim, if you’re feeling poetical. The minute you try to nail it down, it turns to nothing.”

He mimes it, catching air and holding up an empty hand.

“Someone might have a motive, all right, but who would it be? Here we go round the mulberry bush, bucko, all on a sunny morning.”

Cal goes back to his carrots. “Maybe,” he says.

“Don’t be worrying your head,” Mart says. “Not about that, anyhow.” He drops his cigarette butt and grinds it out with the end of his crook. “Tell me something, Sunny Jim,” he says. “Just to satisfy the aul’ curiosity. Was it you that done it?”

“Nope,” Cal says, working his hand fork around a stubborn carrot. “If I was gonna whack anyone, it woulda been Johnny.”

“Fair enough,” Mart acknowledges. “To be honest with you, I’m amazed no one’s done that long ago. You never know your luck, but; it could happen yet. Was it the child?”

“No,” Cal says. “Don’t even go there.”

“I’ll admit I can’t see any reason why she woulda bothered her arse,” Mart says agreeably, ignoring his tone, “but you’d never know with people. I’ll take your word for it.”

“I oughta be asking you the same thing,” Cal says. “You said you were aiming to do something about Rushborough and Johnny and their con. Did you?”

Mart shakes his head. “You oughta know me better than that by now, bucko,” he says. “ ’Twouldn’t be my style at all, at all. I’m a man of diplomacy, so I am. Communication. There’s seldom any need for anything extreme, if you’ve the knack of getting your message across.”

“You oughta be a politician,” Cal says. He was just making a point; he doesn’t in fact suspect Mart. He can see Mart killing someone, but not until all the more economical options had been exhausted.

“D’you know,” Mart says, pleased, “I’ve often thought that myself. If ’twasn’t for the farm, I’d love to head for Leinster House and pit my wits against that shower. I’d back myself against that eejit outa the Greens with the prissy aul’ Mother Superior head on him, any day. That fucker hasn’t a clue.”

He bends over in installments, favoring his worse hip, to make a careful selection from the bucket. “I’d love for it to be Johnny,” he says. “Wouldn’t that be nice and tidy altogether? We could be rid of the two of them rapscallions, all in one go. No question about it: if I’d my pick, I’d go for Johnny.”

He straightens up, holding his handful of carrots. “At the end of the day,” he says, “it doesn’t matter a tap what I think, or what you think. All that matters is what the pride of Dublin City thinks, and for that we’ll have to wait and see what way the wind blows him.” He waves the carrots at Cal. “I’ll enjoy these, now. If you spot any Moroccans, send them my way for the dinner.”

After letting it sit in her mind all day, Lena still isn’t sure what she thinks about Rushborough being killed. She’s hoping Cal, with his experience in this field, will help to clarify it for her. When she arrives at his place, she finds him working his way through a vast heap of carrots on the kitchen table, peeling them, chopping them, and packing them into freezer bags. Lena, who knows Cal’s ways, doesn’t take this as a good sign. He’s like a man buckling down to face a hard winter, or a siege.

She’s brought a new bottle of bourbon. While Cal tells her about his morning, she pours them each a drink, heavy on the ice, and settles herself opposite him at the table, to take over the chopping. Cal is peeling carrots like they threatened his family.

“I’d bet on the guy being good,” he says. “Nealon; the detective. He’s easy with the job, got a light hand, knows how to take his time, but you can tell he can pull out the hard-core stuff when it’s needed. If I’da been partnered with him, back in the day, I wouldn’t’ve complained.”

“You reckon he’ll get his man,” Lena says, cutting herself a bit of carrot to eat.

Cal shrugs. “Too early to say. He’s the type that does. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Well,” Lena says, testing, “the sooner he gets him, the sooner he’ll be outa our hair.”

Cal nods. There’s a silence: only the soft monotonous snicks of the peeler and the knife, and the dogs sighing in their sleep, and the buzz of a faraway tractor.

Lena knows Cal is waiting for her to ask whether he killed Rushborough, and she’s not going to do it. Instead she takes a sip of her drink and informs him, “I never laid a finger on your man. Just so you know.”

Cal’s taken-aback face makes her laugh, and after a second he grins too. “Well, it woulda been indelicate to ask,” he says, “but I guess that’s good to know.”

“I didn’t want you too scared to go to sleep tonight,” Lena explains. “I couldn’t be doing with you tossing and turning in the bed, wondering were you in with a homicidal maniac.”

“Well,” Cal says, “neither are you. I’m not mourning the guy, but I didn’t touch him either.”

Lena reckoned that anyway. She doesn’t consider Cal to be incapable of killing, but if he did, she doesn’t believe this is who or how it would be. Trey needs him around; that ties his hands.

She says, “So who’s your money on?”

Cal, turning back to his carrots, tilts his head noncommittally. “Nealon asked me that too. I said Johnny. I don’t know if I believe that, but he’s the one that makes the most sense.”

Lena says, “He showed up at my house last night.”

Cal looks up fast. “Johnny did?”

“The man himself.”

“What’d he want?”

“He wanted rescuing from his own eejitry, is what. It’s after getting out that his gold is a loada shite.”

“Yeah,” Cal says. “I told Mart.”

From the moment she drove off and left Mart waving by Cal’s gate, Lena suspected that would happen. Hearing it confirmed still makes her shoulders brace. Lena, who has been called cold plenty of times and acknowledges some truth in that, recognizes it when she sees it: under all the chat and the mischief, which are real enough, Mart is cold as stone. She understands why Cal did what he did. She just hopes he turns out to be right.

“Well,” she says, “Mart listened. Johnny had a warning, he said. He wasn’t sure from who, but it was clear enough: get out or we’ll burn you out.”

“What the fuck,” Cal says, putting down what’s in his hands.

“What’d you expect?”

“Mart’d tell Johnny his big idea was tanked and there was no point sticking around. Maybe a few of them would give him a beat-down, I dunno. I was just trying to get the kid out of this mess. Not get her set on fire.”

He’s ready to speed up the mountain and rip Trey away from that house, by force if needed. “They won’t be burned out,” Lena says. “Not when they’re at home, anyhow. The lads’d be careful about that.”

“Jesus Christ,” Cal says. “The hell am I doing in this fucking place?”

“Johnny was panicking, last night,” Lena says. “That’s all. He didn’t think this through, he got in deeper than he expected, and he lost the head. He could only ever handle things when they went his way.”

“Right,” Cal says. He shakes off the shot of fear and makes himself go back to his carrots. “What’d he want you to do about it?”

“Talk to people. You. Noreen. Get the dogs called off.”

“What the hell,” Cal says. “Why you?”

Lena raises an eyebrow at him. “You don’t reckon I’ve the diplomatic skills for it?”

She doesn’t get a grin. “You don’t get mixed up in townland business. Johnny’s not a moron, he has to know that. Why’d he go hassling you?”

Lena shrugs. “I’d say that’s why. He reckoned I wouldn’t care what he was trying to put over on this place. He started off with old times’ sake—you know I don’t deserve this, I’m no angel but you know I’m not as bad as I’m painted, you’re the only one that ever gave me a chance, all that jazz. He’s awful charming when he wants to be, is Johnny, and he wanted to last night. He was scared, all right.”

“Gee,” Cal says. “Sure sounds charming. ‘Hey, I got myself in trouble by being a shitheel and not even being smart about it, could you be a doll and pull me out?’ ”

“That’s what I said to him, more or less: his poor misunderstood self wasn’t my problem. He switched tack then: if I wouldn’t help him for his own sake, I had to do it for Trey’s.”

“Surprise,” Cal says. If Lena didn’t know him so well, she wouldn’t have caught the flash of anger.

“Yeah. He said he owed Rushborough money—did you know that?”

“Yeah.”

“And he had to make this work, or else Trey would end up either bet up or burnt, and did I want to see that happen. I’d had my fill of him by then. I told him if he gave a shite about Trey, he’d fuck off back to London and take his mess with him. We didn’t part on the best of terms.”

Cal’s eyebrows draw down. “He give you any hassle?”

Lena blows out a contemptuous puff of air. “God, no. He threw some kinda tantrum, but I don’t know the details, ’cause I shut the door on him. In the end he flounced off.”

Cal goes silent, and Lena watches his face while he thinks. The knot between his eyebrows loosens, leaving him intent and closed. “What time was he at your place?”

“Eight o’clock, maybe. Mighta been a bit after.”

“He stay long?”

“Half an hour, about. It took him a while to work round to what he was after; he had to go on about the view first, and a lovely wee pair of lambs he saw on his way over. That fella can’t go at anything straight.”

Lena was wondering whether Cal would react like this, like a cop. He got there in the end, but it came last.

“A tantrum,” Cal says. “What kind? Like sobbing and begging, or like yelling and banging on the door?”

“In between. I went in the kitchen and turned on a bitta music for myself, so I didn’t catch the whole thing, but there was drama. Loads of shouting about how it’d be my fault if the lotta them ended up burnt to death, and would I be able to live with myself. I didn’t pay him any notice.”

“You see which way he went?”

“I wasn’t looking out the window. If that little fecker’s face popped up, I didn’t want to see it.”

“Anyone else he mighta gone to, asked them to call off the dogs?”

Lena considers this and shakes her head. “No one I can think of. Most people had no time for him before this. And everyone got awful caught up in that gold: if they found out it was all a load of bollox, they’d reckon he deserved to be burnt out. There might be a woman somewhere that’s got a soft spot left over for him, but if there was, he’da gone to her before he came to me.”

“He could’ve killed Rushborough,” Cal says. “You said he was panicking. When he realized you weren’t gonna pull him out of his mess, he could’ve been desperate. Had a few drinks to console himself, maybe, enough to get dumb. Then called Rushborough, gave him some reason why they had to meet.”

Lena watches him, seeing the detective still working in him, fitting together scenarios and turning them over for examination, giving them a tap to see if they hold.

“Would he do it?” Cal asks her. “Best guess.”

Lena thinks over Johnny. She remembers him all the way back to a cheeky, angel-faced child sharing robbed sweets. The memories overlay themselves too easily on the man; he hasn’t changed, not the way he should have. For a moment she sees the full strangeness of where she is now, sitting at a foreigner’s table, considering whether he makes a suitable murderer.

“Drunk and desperate,” she says, “he might. There’s nothing in him that’d hold him back from it. I never knew him to be that kinda violent, but I never knew him backed into that kinda corner. He always had a way out, before.”

“That’s what I figure,” Cal says. “This time, he couldn’t see any way out. I’d favor Johnny hands down, except for one thing: someone moved Rushborough after he died. They coulda left him anywhere, but they left him right in the middle of the road, where he’d be found inside a few hours. I can’t see any reason why Johnny would want that. He’d just dump the guy in a bog, tell everyone Rushborough went off to London and he was gonna go bring him back, and never be seen in these parts again.”

“He would,” Lena agrees. “Johnny was never one to deal with any hassle he could avoid.”

“I’d love it to be Johnny,” Cal says, “but I can’t get round that.” He passes another peeled carrot across the table to her.

Lena knows the signs of Cal not saying something. His shoulders are hunched too hard, and his eyes spend too little time on hers. Something, beyond the obvious, is at him.

“Did you tell Nealon about the gold?” she asks.

“Nope,” Cal says. “And I told Trey to keep her mouth shut, too.”

Lena hides her surprise in a sip of her drink. She knew he wanted to leave his job behind, but she doubts he had this distance in mind, not till Trey needed shielding. His face tells her nothing about what this means to him.

“Well,” she says, “she’s good at that, anyhow.”

“According to Mart,” Cal says, “everyone in the whole townland is gonna do the same.”

“He might be right,” Lena says. “And without that, your man Nealon won’t have a lot to go on. We’ll have to wait and see what way the cat jumps.”

“He’s not gonna tell me.”

“Not Nealon,” Lena says. “This place.”

The surprise on Cal’s face, as he looks up, tells her this hasn’t even occurred to him. Just because he’s seen more than enough of what this place is willing to do, he thought he knew its boundaries. She’s caught by fear for him, so overwhelming that for a moment she can’t move. After two years in Ardnakelty, he’s still innocent, as innocent as the tourists who show up looking for leprechauns and redheaded colleens in shawls; as innocent as Rushborough, swanning in to rip off the gullible savages, and look where that got him.

“What are they saying?” he asks.

“I came here straight from work,” Lena says, “in case you can’t smell that. I’ve heard nothing, except from you. I’ll go down to Noreen tomorrow and find out.” Her impulse is to get up and head straight for the shop, but there’s no point. The whole of Ardnakelty will have headed for the shop this afternoon, to feed information and speculation into the formidable machine that is Noreen, and see what it pours out in exchange. Tomorrow, when Noreen’s had a chance to sort through her harvest, Lena can find a way to catch her alone.

Cal says, “Trey’s giving Nealon the townland.”

Lena stops cutting, more at the note in his voice than at the words. “Like what?”

“She told him she heard guys talking and moving around, middle of last night, right where the body was. Guys with local accents.”

Lena goes still again while she takes this in. “Did she?”

“Nah.”

Lena finds her breath taken away by a rush of something that’s half pride and half awe. Back when she was a teenager hating the bones of Ardnakelty, all she could think of to do was run as fast and as far as she could. It never occurred to her to stand her ground and blow the place sky-high.

She says, “Does your man believe her?”

“So far. No reason he shouldn’t. She was pretty convincing.”

“What’ll he do about it?”

“Ask a whole lotta questions. See what he digs up. Take it from there.”

Lena has her breath back. Trey may be magnificent, but she’s in dangerous territory. She’s no innocent and no blow-in, but, like Lena, she’s kept herself deliberately separate from this place. Lena is only starting to realize how much of the protective barrier this offers is an illusion.

She says, “I feel like I shoulda seen that coming.”

“How?”

“I dunno. Somehow.” She’s thinking of Trey asking her who did that to Brendan. She’s glad she didn’t share any guesses.

“Yeah,” Cal says. He gives up on his peeling and runs a hand down his face. “Probably I should’ve too. It didn’t occur to me ’cause she gave me her word not to do anything about Brendan, but I guess she figures she just got lucky and found a loophole.”

His voice is raw with too many things, anger and fear and hurt. Lena has never heard it like this before. “How far would she take it?”

“Who knows. Nealon could line up half the guys around here and pull her in for a voice ID tomorrow, and I have no idea what she’d do. Identify someone, or what. Her head, these days, I don’t have a clue what’s going on in there. Every time I think I’ve figured it out, she pulls something new, and I find out I had the whole thing ass-backwards.”

Lena says, “Should we do something?”

“Like what? If I tell her I know what she’s doing and it’s a dumbass, dangerous, shitty plan that actually could get her beat up or burned out or whatever people do around here, you think she’s gonna listen? All that’ll happen is she’ll do a better job of hiding stuff from me. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

Lena stays silent. Cal is not, under normal circumstances, a man who lets his moods spill onto other people. She’s not upset by it, but she’s deeply unsettled by the implications. She finds she can’t gauge him any more, what he’s capable of once brought to this point.

Cal says, more quietly, “You figure maybe she’d listen to you?”

“Probably not. I’d say she’s got her mind set.”

“Yeah. Me too.” He slumps back in his chair and reaches for his glass. “As far as I can see,” he says, “there’s not one single thing we could do. Not right now.”

Lena says, “Is she coming here for dinner?”

“Who knows,” Cal says, rubbing his eyes. “I doubt it. Which is probably a good thing, because what I feel like doing is giving the kid a good slap upside her head and telling her to smarten the hell up.”

Lena knows to leave it. “Whatever we make,” she says, “it’d better be something with carrots.”

Cal lowers his hands and blinks at the table like he’d forgotten what they were doing. “Yeah,” he says. “I didn’t know if they’d take; I never grew them before. I think maybe I put in too many.”

Lena lifts an eyebrow. “D’you reckon?”

“This is only half of ’em. The rest are still out there.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Lena says. “This is what you get for going all back-to-nature. You’ll be eating ’em till you turn orange. Carrot soup for lunch, carrot omelet for dinner—”

Cal comes up with a grin. “You can teach me how to make carrot jam. For breakfast.”

“Come on,” Lena says, finishing her drink and getting up. She figures tonight is a good night for an exception to her no-cooking policy. “Let’s go make a carrot fricassee.”

In the end they settle on beef stir-fry, heavy on the carrots. Cal puts on Steve Earle while they cook. The dogs wake up at the smell and come hinting for scraps. Through the music and their talk and the sizzle of food, Lena can almost hear, all around them out in the warm golden air, the rising buzz and scurry of the townland, and the steady dark pulse of Nealon moving through it.