The Searcher

TWELVE

Cal wakes up late: sun is pouring in at his bedroom window. His head is a little tender and feels like it’s been stuffed with sticky carpet fluff, but apart from that he’s in surprisingly OK shape. He runs his head under the cold tap, which clears it a little bit, and fixes himself some fried eggs and sausages, a couple of painkillers and a lot of coffee for lunch. Then he tosses his bag of dirty laundry into the trunk of his car and heads for town.

The day is deceptively bright, with a hard chill in the shadows and a little breeze that flirts its way close and then slices right in. The Pajero bumps rhythmically over the potholes at an easy lope. Alongside, the shadows of small clouds glide across the brown mountains.

Cal is clear that last night he got warned. The warning, however, was done with such subtlety that—whether by design or not—he’s unsure what, exactly, he was being warned off. He has no idea whether Ardnakelty has worked out that he’s looking into Brendan Reddy’s disappearance and wants him to knock that shit off, or whether he’s just been poking around too much for a stranger and needs instruction in local customs.

One interesting part is where and how the warning was delivered. Mart could have just given him a few quick pointers in private, over the gate some afternoon; instead, he saved it up for the poteen party. Either he wanted Cal to hear the message from a bunch of people at once, to drive it home, or he wanted to make sure everyone else knew Cal had been warned. Cal has come away with the strong impression that it was the second one, and that this was for his protection.

He’s unsure what circumstances might make this necessary. Cal is accustomed to being in the dark at the start of an investigation, which means it’s taken him a while to realize that this is an entirely different thing. He has no idea, not just what the people around him know and what they believe, but also what they might think of it, what they want, why they want it, or how they might go about achieving it. Their decades of familiarity, which seemed like a comfort at the beginning of last night, weave themselves into an impenetrable thicket; its layers obscure every action and every motivation till they’re near indecipherable to an outsider. He understands that this effect is, at least in part, deliberate and practiced. The guys like him blindfolded. It’s not personal; keeping him that way is, to them, an elementary and natural precaution.

Cal is aware that he seems like the kind of placid, amenable guy who would heed that warning. That appearance has come in handy plenty of times. He’d love to let it keep being useful here: let the townland relax into the belief that he’s gone back to minding his own business and painting his house. The trouble is, he has no options that allow for that. Back on the job, he could have stayed accommodatingly away from Brendan’s associates and focused on the behind-the-scenes stuff for a while: hooked up with the techie guys to dump Brendan’s phone and track his locations and go through his emails, got the bank to check whether and where his bank card had been used, run all those associates through the system, talked to Narcotics about the Dublin drug boys. He could have bounced possibilities off his partner, O’Leary, a little cop-bellied cynic with a deceptive air of laziness and a keen sense of the ridiculous, and got O’Leary to do some legwork for him.

Here, all that artillery and all those allies have been stripped away. There is no behind the scenes to take cover in. He’s in this empty-handed and alone, out in the wide open.

Cal’s original plan for today was to track down Donie McGrath, but that’s changed. For one thing, Donie is likely to be a huge pain in the ass to interview, and Cal’s head can’t take it. More importantly, he doesn’t have a good enough handle on what’s going on. Even if people were warning him away from Brendan, all they know so far is that he’s trying to find out where a runaway kid ran to, in order to reassure his worried mama or just out of pure nosiness. But Cal knows they’ll be keeping an eye on him. If he talks to Donie, or anyone else who has connections to the Dublin drug boys, they’ll know what he’s thinking. Cal isn’t inclined to take that step until he’s good and ready.

He does have one thing on his list that won’t show any more of his hand and that needs a weekend. In town, he hands in his clothes to the laundromat and heads for the gift shop.

Caroline Horan is still Facebook friends with Brendan, which makes Cal figure the breakup wasn’t too shitty. Her profile shot shows her and two other girls on a beach with their arms around each other, laughing and windblown. Caroline has disorganized brown curls and a round, freckled face with an engaging smile. She also has “Studies at Athlone Institute of Technology” on her profile, meaning that if she’s still working at the gift shop, she’s likely to be pulling weekend shifts.

Sure enough, when he pushes open the gift-shop door with a tinkle of bells, there she is, reorganizing a stand of nameplates with leprechauns on them. She’s shorter than Cal expected, with a neat, rounded figure. Her curls are smoothed into a ponytail and she’s wearing a little bit of makeup, just enough to look groomed but still wholesome.

“Afternoon,” Cal says, looking around, a little bewildered by the amount of stuff. The place is small and chockablock with green things, things made of wool, and things made of marble. Most of them have either shamrocks or twirly Celtic symbols on them. In the background some guy is singing a cheesy ballad that even Cal can tell has nothing in common with the music in Seán Óg’s.

“Hiya,” Caroline says, turning to smile. “Can I help you with anything?”

“Well, I’m looking to buy a present for my niece in Chicago,” Cal says. “She’s gonna be turning six. Maybe you could give me a few recommendations?”

“No problem,” Caroline says cheerfully. She heads behind the counter, picking things off racks and shelves on her way: a gauzy green fairy doll, a shamrock T-shirt, a silver necklace in a little green box, a fuzzy black-faced toy sheep. “If she likes fairies, she’d love this. Or if she’s more sporty, maybe a top and a baseball cap?”

Cal leans on the countertop, keeping a respectful distance, and nods along, taking stock of Caroline. She hasn’t scraped off her accent for college, the way Eugene has; it’s almost as strong as Trey’s. Cal, who after nearly thirty years in Chicago still sounds like a North Carolina boy, approves of that. He likes her readiness of response and the efficiency of her movements, too. Brendan went for confident and competent. And if this girl wanted him, then he was no dummy, either.

“Or you can’t go wrong with a claddagh necklace. It’s the traditional Irish symbol for love, friendship and loyalty.”

“This is pretty cute,” Cal says, picking up the sheep. Alyssa used to love small soft creatures. Her room had them on every surface, neat clusters arranged with care to look like they were having conversations or playing games. He would pick up a couple of them and make them talk to each other, while Alyssa giggled her head off. There was a raccoon who would sneak up on the others and tickle them and then bounce away.

“They’re as local as you can get,” Caroline tells him. “A lady in Carrickmore hand-felts them with wool from her brother’s sheep.”

Cal glances up at her with his brows twitching together. “I got a feeling you live round my way,” he says. “Did I see you helping Noreen out in Ardnakelty store, one time?”

Caroline smiles. “You probably did, yeah. It’s hard to say no to Noreen.”

“Tell me about it,” Cal says, grinning and putting out a hand. “Cal Hooper. The American that’s bought the O’Shea place.”

His name gets no reaction from Caroline, for whatever that’s worth. Her handshake is older than she is, a professional’s. “Caroline Horan.”

“OK,” Cal says, “lemme see if Noreen’s taught me anything. If you’re Caroline, then you’re the one that broke her wrist falling off Noreen’s ladder trying to snitch some cake sprinkles. I get that right?”

Caroline laughs. “God, I was six. I’ll never live that down. And I didn’t even get the sprinkles.”

“Don’t worry,” Cal says, grinning back. “That’s as bad as it gets. Only other things I know are you used to date Brendan Reddy, the guy who’s not available to do my wiring because he took off somewhere, and you’re in college. What’re you studying?”

Brendan’s name does make Caroline blink. “Hotel management,” she says, easily enough, turning away to get more sheep off the shelf. “You can go anywhere with that, you know?”

“Planning on traveling?”

She smiles over her shoulder. “Oh God, yeah. The more the better. And this way I can get paid for it.”

Cal reckons Brendan’s big mistake, or one of them anyway, was doing whatever he did to make Caroline dump him. This girl has the spark of a woman who’s going places. She would have taken the pair of them as far as Brendan could dream of, and then some.

“Now,” she says, lining up half a dozen more sheep in different colors on the counter. “Take your pick. I like the expression on this one.”

“Looks kinda loco to me,” Cal says, examining the sheep’s white-rimmed stare. “Like it’s waiting for the right moment to attack.”

Caroline laughs. “It’s just got personality.”

“If I give my niece nightmares, my sister’s gonna come over here and beat me up.”

“How about this one?” She picks out a cream-colored one with a black head. “Look at the face on that. It wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“That one’s scared of the crazy one. Look.” Cal puts the timid sheep hiding behind the others, with the loco one staring them down. “It’s shaking in its hooves.”

Caroline is laughing again. “Then you oughta get it out of here. Give it a safe new home and it’ll be grand.”

“OK,” Cal says. “I’ll do that. My good deed for the day.”

“You can tell your niece it’s a rescue sheep,” Caroline says. She starts putting the extra sheep back on their shelf.

“You know,” Cal says, turning the green baseball cap in his hands, “I don’t want to interfere, but I was talking with Brendan Reddy’s mama the other day, and she’s pretty worried about him. If you’ve heard from him, maybe you might take a minute to let her know he’s OK.”

Caroline glances back at him, but only for a second. She says, “I haven’t heard from him.”

“You don’t need to tell me. Just tell his mama.”

“I know. I haven’t, though.”

“Even if he mentioned somewhere he might be headed. She’s not handling it too well. Anything would help.”

Caroline shakes her head. “He never said anything about it to me,” she says. “There’s no reason he would, sure. We weren’t really in touch, after we broke up.”

The hurt in her voice hasn’t healed over. Whatever went wrong between the two of them, she liked Brendan a lot.

“He took it hard?” Cal asks.

“Sort of. Yeah.”

“You worried about him too?”

Caroline comes back to the counter. She runs a finger down the sheep’s nose.

“I’d like to know,” she says.

“You got any guesses?”

Caroline picks a curl of gray fuzz off the sheep’s back. “The thing about Brendan,” she says. “He gets ideas, and he gets carried away by them. He forgets to take other people into account.”

“How’s that?”

“Like,” Caroline says, “OK, we both really like this singer Hozier, right? And he was playing in Dublin last December. So Brendan picked up any bits of work he could find, to get together the money for tickets and the bus and a B and B. For my Christmas present. Which would have been amazing, only he got them for the night before my last exam.”

“Oh, man,” Cal says, grimacing.

“Yeah. Not on purpose, like; he just forgot to check with me. Then when I said I couldn’t go, he was genuinely shocked. And angry. Like, ‘You only care about college, you think I’m not worth the hassle because I’m going nowhere . . . ’ Which I didn’t think at all, but . . . yeah.”

“But you’re not gonna get that through to a guy who’s feeling sensitive,” Cal says.

“Yeah. That’s why we broke up, basically.”

Cal considers this. “So you think he went off chasing a big idea,” he says, “and he forgot his mama would worry?”

Caroline glances at him; then her eyes slide away again. “Maybe,” she says.

Cal says, “Or . . . ?”

Caroline asks, “Will I gift-wrap this for you?”

“Well, that’d be great,” Cal says. “I’m not much of a hand with wrapping stuff.”

“No problem,” Caroline says, deftly whipping out some green tissue paper from under the counter. “Sure, if she’s six she won’t care either way, but your sister might. Let’s do it right.”

Cal tries spinning the baseball cap on one finger, listens to the singer crooning about homesickness, and considers Caroline, who is layering sheets of tissue paper in various shades of green. With Eugene, he played dumb, because Eugene wants people to be dumb. It’s clear to Cal that Caroline wants people to be smart, and to get things done.

“Miss Caroline,” he says, “I’m gonna ask you a couple of things, because I figure you’re my best chance at getting good answers.”

Caroline stops wrapping and lifts her head to look at him. She says, “About what?”

“Brendan Reddy.”

Caroline says, “Why?”

She and Cal look at each other. Cal knows he’s been lucky to get this far without anyone asking him that question.

“You could say I’m just nosy,” he says, “or restless, or both. I can promise you this much: I’m not aiming to do him any kind of harm. Just find out where he’s gone, is all.”

Caroline nods, like she believes him. She says, “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

Cal says, “You want to know where he went. You gonna go asking around yourself?”

Caroline shakes her head. The sharp jerk makes Cal understand that she’s afraid.

He says, “Then I’m the best hope you’ve got.”

“And if you find out, you’ll tell me.”

“I can’t promise you that,” Cal says. A minute ago he might have, but that shake of her head has turned him wary. She doesn’t seem like the type who scares easy. “But if I find him, I’ll tell him he should give you a call. That’s better’n nothing.”

After a moment she says, without any expression, “OK. Fire away.”

“How was Brendan, in his mind?”

“What way?”

“Was he depressed?”

“I don’t think so,” Caroline says. The answer comes promptly enough to tell Cal that she’s thought about this before. “He wasn’t happy, but that’s a different thing. He didn’t seem dragged down by it, you know? More just . . . frustrated. Annoyed. He’s basically an optimist. He always reckoned something would turn up, in the end.”

“I apologize for putting this harshly,” Cal says, “but do you think there’s any chance he might have taken his own life?”

“I don’t,” Caroline says. This comes out instantly, too. “I know you can’t say someone’s not the type for suicide, and people might be a lot worse off than they let on, but . . . the way Brendan thinks: always ‘Sure, I’ll find a way, it’ll be grand in the end one way or another . . . ’ That doesn’t seem like it goes with suicide.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” Cal says. He tends to agree with Caroline, although he also shares her reservations. “He ever seem out of touch with reality? Saying stuff that didn’t make sense?”

“You mean like schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder.”

“Or anything else along those lines.”

Caroline thinks for a moment, her hands lying still on the tissue paper. Then she shakes her head. “No,” she says, with certainty. “He gets unrealistic, sometimes, like with the tickets and my exam—‘It’ll be grand, just do all your studying beforehand and we’ll catch the early bus home the next day . . . ’ But that’s different from being out of touch with reality.”

“That it is,” Cal says. He’s, he gets. Caroline, just like Fergal and Eugene, thinks Brendan is alive. Cal doesn’t set too much store by that. To them, the idea of someone their age dying is impossible. He hopes it can stay that way a while longer. “That unrealistic attitude make him any enemies?”

Caroline’s eyes widen, just a flicker, but her voice stays even. “Not like you’re talking about. People got annoyed with him, sometimes. But . . . sure, we’ve all known each other all our lives. Everyone knows what he’s like. It was never a big deal.”

“I know how that goes,” Cal says. “Is he reliable? Say he tells you he’s gonna do something for you, or get you something. Would you expect that he’d get it done, or that he’d forget the whole thing?”

“He’d follow through,” Caroline says immediately. “It’s a matter of pride for him, like. His dad was an awful man for making promises and forgetting them. Brendan hated it. He didn’t want to be like that.”

“Well, there you go. People can forgive a man for being a little bit unrealistic, as long as he’s reliable.” Cal puts the baseball cap back on the counter and pats it into shape. “I’m guessing that means he wouldn’t have up and left if he thought you were pregnant.”

He’s betting on Caroline having more sense than to get huffy about that. Sure enough, she says matter-of-factly, “No way. He’d’ve done everything he could to be the perfect daddy. Anyway, there’s no reason he’d think that. I’d no scare or anything.”

“You said money was tight for Brendan, and he worried that you thought he was going nowhere. He have any plans to try and fix that?”

Caroline blows out air through a small wry smile. “I bet he did, yeah. He said—when we were breaking up, like—he said he’d show me he was going places.”

“He mention how?”

She shakes her head.

Cal says, “Maybe by getting involved in something he shouldn’t’ve?”

“Like what?”

Caroline’s voice has sharpened. “Well, like something against the law,” Cal says mildly. “Stealing, maybe, or running drugs.”

“He never did anything like that. Not when we were going out.”

“How’d he get the money for the band tickets?”

“One of our friends’ uncle does furniture removals, so Brendan got a few days with him. And he gave grinds.” At Cal’s uncomprehending look, she says, “Tutored people from our school in chemistry, and engineering—they’re his best subjects. Stuff like that.”

Back on the job, Cal could have verified all this. Now all he’s got is his gut, which is telling him that Caroline wants to think well of Brendan, but also that she’s no fool. “Smart thinking,” he says. “Not gonna make a guy rich, though.”

“No, but you see what I mean. He didn’t do anything dodgy.”

“You’re not telling me he never would, though,” Cal points out.

Caroline goes back to her tissue paper, folding it around the sheep with deft quick fingers. Cal waits.

“There were rumors going round,” Caroline says in the end, “after Brendan went.” Her hands are moving faster, and her voice has tightened. She doesn’t enjoy talking about this. “People were saying he’d raped me, and he went on the run because I was going to the Guards.”

“And that wasn’t true?”

“No, it wasn’t. Brendan never laid a finger on me that I didn’t want. I squashed that one quick, once I heard about it. But there were plenty of others I couldn’t do anything about. That he ran because he beat up his mam. Or because he got caught peeping in women’s windows. Probably worse ones that no one told me.”

She pulls a piece of tape off the dispenser with a snap. “That’s what Ardnakelty was like to Brendan, all his life. Because he came from that family, people always believed the worst about him, whether there was any reason to or not. Even my parents—and they’re not like that—they were horrified when I started going out with him, only they said I had sense, so if I saw something in him then it was probably there. But they didn’t like it. Even when they saw he was good to me, they didn’t like it.” She glances up at Cal. The fast jerk of her head has anger in it. “So I’m just saying, don’t be believing everything people tell you about Brendan. Most of it’s a load of shite.”

“Then you tell me,” Cal says. “Would he do anything criminal, or not?”

“I’ll tell you what Brendan’s like,” Caroline says. Her hands have stopped moving; she’s forgotten all about the toy sheep. “He has a rake of little brothers and sisters, right? Most people, when they start going out with someone, they ignore everyone else. But Brendan: even when we first started going out, when we were pure mad about each other, he’d be saying, ‘I can’t meet up tonight, I’ve to go watch Trey’s football match,’ or ‘Maeve’s after having a row with her best friend, I’ll hang around home and cheer her up.’ Their parents weren’t doing any of that, so Brendan did it. Not like it was a pain in the arse. Like he wanted to.”

“He sounds like a good man,” Cal says. “But good men break the law, sometimes. You haven’t told me whether he would or not.”

Caroline goes back to folding the edges of the paper. In the end she says, “I hope not.”

Her face has tightened up. Cal waits.

She starts to say something, and then stops. Instead she says, “I’d just like to know he’s OK.”

Cal says gently, “I haven’t heard anything to say he’s not.”

“Right.” Caroline takes a quick breath. She’s not looking at Cal any more. “Yeah. I’d say he’s grand.”

“Tell you what,” Cal says. “I’ll say to Miz Reddy, if she does hear from Brendan, she should let you know.”

“Thanks,” Caroline says politely, unrolling green ribbon from a spool. The conversation is over. “That’d be great.”

She wraps up the sheep nice and pretty, and twirls the green ribbon in ringlets. When Cal thanks her for all her help, he leaves a second in case she might say something else, but she just gives him a bright impersonal smile and wishes his niece a happy birthday.

The outdoors, away from the clutter and the syrupy ballads, feels spacious and loose, peaceful. In the main square, families in their good clothes and old women in head scarves are coming out of the church; behind its spire, the wind chivvies scraps of cloud across the blue sky.

Cal was hoping Brendan might have talked to Caroline about his big moneymaking plan. Boys run their mouths, when they’re trying to impress girls. Caroline isn’t the type to be impressed by criminal activity, but Brendan could have been too young, too hasty and too desperate to notice that. Cal believes Caroline, though. Whatever was in the works, Brendan kept it to himself.

Cal hasn’t come away empty-handed, though. Suicide is off the table, or as good as. Not because Caroline thinks Brendan wasn’t the type, but because Caroline—and Cal considers her to be the best witness he’s talked to so far—Caroline says Brendan set a lot of store by keeping his promises. Brendan said he’d get Trey a bike for his birthday, and Brendan said he’d pay back Fergal’s hundred bucks—money he wouldn’t have needed if all he was aiming to do was go up the mountain and hang himself. If Brendan was planning on going anywhere, he was also planning on coming back.

And Caroline thinks there was nothing going wrong in Brendan’s mind. Cal is glad of this. If Brendan got spooked, if he ran, if he’s hiding out in the mountains, then he had a reason that existed outside his mind. That means it must have left solid tracks, somewhere along the way.

It might be that Caroline does have a guess at what Brendan was doing and it’s not something she wants to discuss, at least not with a stranger and an ex-cop. On the other hand, it might be that Cal isn’t the only person who’s had a warning.

Cal doesn’t hold out much hope of finding the police station open on a Sunday, but Garda O’Malley is sitting at his desk, reading his paper and eating a big piece of chocolate cake with his fingers. “Ah, God, it’s Officer Hooper,” he says, beaming and trying to work out whether to stand up. “I won’t shake your hand, look—” He holds up his sticky fingers. “My little fella’s after turning eight, and the size of the cake my missus made, we’ll be ating it for his ninth as well.”

“No problem,” Cal says, grinning. “Looks like good cake.”

“Ah, it’s gorgeous. She does watch all them bake-off shows. If I’da known you were coming, I’da brought you a slice.”

“Catch you next year,” Cal says. “I just dropped in to let you know I got that rifle in the end. Thank you kindly for your help.”

“No problem at all,” O’Malley says, relaxing back into his seat and sucking frosting off his thumb. “Have you taken it out yet?”

“Just shooting at tin cans, getting my eye back in. It’s a good gun. I got rabbits on my land, so I’m gonna try and bag me a few of those.”

“Cunning little bastards,” O’Malley says, with the melancholy of experience. “Good luck.”

“Well,” Cal says, “the only other thing I got to hand is a tree full of rooks messing up my lawn. Maybe you can tell me: they good eating?”

O’Malley looks startled, but he considers the question out of politeness. “I’ve never et rook myself,” he says. “But my daddy told us his mammy used to make rook stew when he was a little fella, if they’d nothing else. With potatoes, like, and the bit of onion. I’d say you’d get a recipe on the internet; sure, they’ve everything on there.”

“Worth a try,” Cal says. He has no intention of shooting any of his rooks. He has a feeling the survivors would make bad enemies.

“I wouldn’t say it’d be nice,” O’Malley says, thinking it over further. “Awful strong-tasting, I’d say.”

“I’ll save you a helping,” Cal says, grinning.

“Ah, no, you’re grand,” O’Malley says, slightly apprehensive. “Sure, I’ll still be working my way through this cake.”

Cal laughs, gives the counter a slap and is turning for the door when a thought strikes him. “Almost forgot,” he says. “Some guy was telling me a couple of officers got called out to Ardnakelty, back in March. Would that have been you?”

O’Malley thinks that over. “ ’Twasn’t, no. The only times I’ve been out that way this year, I was up the mountain, trying to get those Reddy childer to get an education. Ardnakelty doesn’t have much call for our services.”

“Well, that’s what I thought,” Cal says, frowning a little. “You got any idea what that thing in March was about?”

“Can’t have been anything serious,” O’Malley assures him. “Sure, if it was, I’d have heard about it.”

“I’d love to know, all the same,” Cal says, his frown deepening. “I can’t rest easy unless I know what I’m living with. Side effect of the job—I mean, hey, who am I telling, right?”

O’Malley doesn’t look like this angle has ever occurred to him before, but he nods along vigorously all the same. “Tell you what I’ll do,” he says, an idea striking him. “You hang on here a minute, and I’ll look it up in the system.”

“Well, that’s kind of you,” Cal says, surprised and pleased. “I’d appreciate that. I’ll bring you some rook stew for sure.”

O’Malley laughs, extracts himself from his chair with a few loud creaking noises, and heads back to the office. Cal waits and looks out the window at the sky, where the clouds are thickening, getting darker and more ominous. He can’t imagine ever getting accustomed to the effortless hairpin turns of the weather around here. He’s used to a hot sunny day being a hot sunny day, a cold rainy day being a cold rainy day, and so on. Here, some days the weather seems like it’s just fucking with people on principle.

“Now,” O’Malley says, coming back out, happy with his results. “Like I told you: nothing serious at all, at all. March the sixteenth, a farmer reported signs of intruders on his land and a possible theft of farm equipment, but when the boys got out there, he told them ’twas all a mistake.” He resettles himself in his chair and pops a chunk of cake into his mouth. “I’d say he found out ’twas the local young scallywags messing, like. They do get bored; sometimes the bold ones’ll hide something just for the crack, to see the farmer go mental looking for it. Or maybe it was robbed, but the farmer found out who done it and got the stuff back, so he left it at that. They’re like that, around here. They’d rather keep us out of it, unless they’ve no choice at all.”

“Well, either way,” Cal says, “that sets my mind at ease. I don’t have any farm equipment to get stolen. I got an old wheelbarrow that came with the place, but if anyone wants it that bad, they’re welcome to it.”

“They’re more likely to put it on top of your roof,” O’Malley says tolerantly.

“It’d probably improve the look of the place,” Cal says. “There’s designer guys who charge yuppies thousands of bucks for ideas like that. Who was the farmer?”

“Fella called Patrick Fallon. I don’t know the man. That means he’s not a regular, anyway; there’s no local feud going on, nor nothing like that.”

Patrick Fallon is presumably P.J. “Huh,” Cal says. “That’s my neighbor. I haven’t heard him mention any trouble since I got here. I guess it must’ve been a once-off thing.”

“Lads messing,” O’Malley says, with comfortable finality, breaking off another big hunk of cake.

Looking at that cake has made Cal hungry. He finds a café and gets himself a slice of apple pie and more coffee, to pass the time till his laundry is ready. While he finishes the coffee, he gets his notebook out of his jacket pocket and turns to a fresh page.

He tosses around the possibility that Brendan was setting himself up as a source of stolen farm equipment, boosted P.J.’s stuff, got spooked and gave it back when he found out the cops had been called in, and skipped town to avoid the fallout or was run out, like the cat-killing Mannion kid. It doesn’t sit quite right—anyone with half a brain would have expected police, and Brendan is or was no dummy—but maybe he didn’t think the theft would be noticed so soon. Caroline said he didn’t take people’s reactions into account.

He writes: Farm equipment 3/16. What was stolen? Was it recovered?

The other thing hanging around the edges of his mind is the thought of those dead sheep. Mart isn’t sitting up in those woods on the off chance. He has some reason for thinking P.J.’s sheep are next.

Cal draws himself a quick sketch of Ardnakelty townland, with help from internet maps. He marks in Mart’s land, P.J.’s and Bobby Feeney’s; he doesn’t know where Francie Gannon’s is exactly, but “beside the village” gives him a rough idea. Then he marks in all the other sheep farms he knows about.

Geographically, those four have nothing to single them out from the rest. They’re not the nearest ones to the mountains or a wood where some creature might stay hidden, not all close together, not the nearest to the main road for a quick getaway. There’s no reason, at least none that Cal can see, why they would be an obvious set of targets for either man or beast.

He writes: Francie/Bobby/Mart/P.J. Links? Related? Beef w Brendan? W anyone?

He can think of one person who had beef with Mart, anyway, not long before Mart’s sheep got killed. He writes: W Donie McG?

The last of the coffee has got cold. Cal buys his groceries, including Mart’s cookies and a three-pack of socks, picks up his laundry, and heads out of town.

The road up into the mountains feels different in a car, rockier and less welcoming, like it’s biding its time to puncture Cal’s tire or send him sideslipping into a patch of bog. He parks outside the Reddys’ gate. There’s no shoulder, but he’s not too worried that another car will need to get by.

This time the Reddys’ yard is empty. The breeze nips at his neck, and the ropes hanging from the climbing structure sway restlessly. The front windows of the house are blank and dark, but as Cal crosses the yard, he feels watched. He slows down, letting them get a good look.

It takes Sheila a long time to come to the door. She holds it a foot open and looks at Cal through the gap. He can’t tell whether she recognizes him. From somewhere inside the house comes faint, bright cartoon laughter.

“Afternoon, Miz Reddy,” he says, staying well back. “Cal Hooper, who you helped out with dry socks a couple of days back, remember?”

She keeps looking at him. This time the wariness doesn’t dissolve.

“I brought you these,” he says, holding out the socks. “With my thanks.”

That brings a spark of life into Sheila’s eyes. “I don’t need them. I’m not so poor that I can’t afford to give away a pair of old socks.”

Cal, taken aback, ducks his head and shifts his feet on the step. “Miz Reddy,” he says, “I didn’t intend to give any offense. You saved me a long wet walk home, and I was raised not to be ungrateful. My gramma would sit up in her grave to yell at me if I didn’t bring you these.”

After a moment the resentment fades and she looks away. “You’re grand,” she says. “Just . . .”

Cal waits, still abashed.

“I’ve the children. I can’t be letting strange men call round.”

When Cal lifts his head, startled and affronted, she says almost angrily, “It’s nothing to do with you. People are fierce talkers, round here. I can’t give them an excuse to say worse about me than they already do.”

“Well,” Cal says, still being a little miffed, “I apologize. I don’t mean to cause you any trouble. I’ll get out of your hair.”

He holds out the socks again, but Sheila doesn’t take them. For a moment he thinks she’s going to say something more, but then she nods and starts to close the door.

Cal says, “You hear anything from your boy Brendan?”

The flash of fear in Sheila’s eyes tells him what he was looking to know. Sheila’s been warned, too.

“Brendan’s grand,” she says.

“If you do,” Cal says, “you might let Caroline Horan know,” but before he’s finished the sentence, Sheila has shut the door in his face.

On his way home Cal drops off the cookies at Mart’s place, as a thank-you for last night and an indication that he spent today behaving himself. Mart is sitting on his front step, watching the world go by and brushing Kojak.

“How’s the head?” he inquires, shoving Kojak’s nose away from the cookies. He looks perky as ever, although he could do with a shave.

“Not as bad as I expected,” Cal says. “How ’bout you?”

Mart throws him a wink and a finger-point. “Ah, you see, now, that’s why we love Malachy. His stuff’s pure as holy water. It’s the impurities that’ll destroy you.”

“Here I thought it was the alcohol,” Cal says, rubbing behind Kojak’s ears.

“Not at all. I could drink a bottle of Malachy’s finest, get up in the morning and do a day’s work. But I’ve a cousin over the other side of the mountains, I wouldn’t touch his stuff with a ten-foot pole. The hangover’d last till Christmas. He does always be inviting me to call in for a wee drop, and I’ve to find a new excuse every time. It’s a social minefield, so ’tis.”

“P.J. see anything last night?” Cal asks.

“Not a sausage,” Mart says. He pulls a fluff of fur out of the bristles and tosses it onto the grass.

Cal says, “That guy Donie McGrath isn’t too fond of you right now.”

Mart stares at him for a second and then bursts into high-pitched giggles. “Holy God,” he says, “you’ll be the death of me. Are you talking about that wee kerfuffle in the pub? If Donie McGrath went around killing sheep on every man who put him back in his box, he’d never get a night’s sleep. He hasn’t got the work ethic for it.”

“P.J. put him back in his box lately?” Cal inquires. “Or Bobby Feeney?”

“If it’s not one thing with you, Sunny Jim, it’s another,” Mart says, shaking his head. “Never mind that telescope; what you need is a game of Cluedo. I’ll buy you one myself, and you can bring it down to Seán Óg’s for us all to play.” He gets rid of the last of his giggles and snaps his fingers for Kojak to come back to the brush. “Will you be in tonight, for a straightener?”

“Nah,” Cal says. “I gotta recover.” He doesn’t feel any desire to go to Seán Óg’s, tonight or in general. He always liked the glint and speed of the men there, of their talk and their shifting expressions, but now, when he thinks back, all that looks different: light flashing on a river, with who knows what underneath.

“A fine strong fella like you,” Mart says, more in sorrow than in scorn. “What’s the younger generation coming to, at all?” Cal laughs and heads back to his car, with the pebbles of Mart’s driveway crunching under his feet.

When he gets home, he takes out his notebook and settles himself in the armchair to read through everything he’s got. He needs to order his thoughts. He’s never much liked this phase of an investigation, when things are messy and layered, forking off in multiple directions, and too many of them didn’t actually happen. He hangs in there for the part when, if he’s lucky, he gets to strip away the misty theories and take hold of the solid things hidden among them.

This time the process has a personal quality that he’s not accustomed to. The fear in Sheila’s eyes, and Caroline’s, told him that last night’s warning wasn’t a general caution against being a busybody. It was about Brendan.

Cal would love to know what or who, exactly, he’s supposed to be scared of. Brendan appears to have been frightened of the Guards, and Sheila might well be wary of them either on his behalf or by reflex. But Cal has a hard time finding a reason why Caroline, or Mart, or he himself should be terrified of Garda Dennis, unless the whole townland is up to its neck in some vast criminal enterprise that could be blown sky-high if he goes asking too many questions, which seems unlikely.

The obvious alternative, in that they seem to be the only threat anyone can point to, is the drug boys from Dublin. Cal assumes that, like drug gangs everywhere else, they wouldn’t think twice about getting rid of anyone who caused them inconvenience. If Brendan became inconvenient one way or another, and they disappeared him, they wouldn’t be best pleased about some nosy Yank poking around. The question is how they would know.

Cal feels it’s getting close to time for him to talk to Donie McGrath. Now, at any rate, he has an unimpeachable reason for doing that. Mart knows Cal was feeling protective after the pub argument. It would be only natural for him to go rattle Donie’s cage a little bit about that sheep. That wouldn’t violate last night’s warning; not unless Mart thinks the sheep have something to do with Brendan. Cal is interested to see what happens after he talks to Donie.

He sits with his notebook for a while, looking at the map and considering where Ardnakelty, rightly or wrongly, thinks Brendan has gone, and why.

Outside the window, the clouds are still holding their rain, but the green of the fields is dimming as the light starts to fade. Evening has its own smell here, dense and cool, with a heady tinge of plants and flowers that play no part in the daytime. Cal gets up to turn on the light and put his shopping away.

He was planning to send the woolly sheep to Alyssa, but now he’s not sure whether that would be a dumb idea. She might think he’s treating her like a little kid, and take offense. In the end he unwraps the sheep from its green tissue paper and stands it on his living-room mantelpiece, where it leans wearily to one side and gives him a sad reproachful stare.