The Searcher

TWENTY

Cal sleeps late, and would sleep later except that Lena wakes him. His first movement rips a growl of pain out of him, but gradually his muscles loosen enough that he can sit up, wincing in half a dozen different ways. “Jesus,” he says, slowly getting a handle on things.

“Breakfast,” Lena says. “I figured you wouldn’t smell it, with that nose.”

“You were snoring,” Trey informs him, from the table.

“Anything happen?” Cal asks. He hurts in all the places he expected and then some, but at least his voice sounds a little bit clearer. “Anyone come?”

“Not a peep,” Lena says. “I saw nothing, heard nothing, Nellie didn’t even twitch, I didn’t have to shoot a single bandit. Come have your breakfast. And you snore too,” she adds, to Trey, who gives her a skeptical stare.

The table is loaded with what looks like every piece of crockery Cal owns, all of it full of food and drink: bacon, eggs, a tower of toast. Trey is already stuffing her face. It’s been so long since anyone made Cal breakfast that he finds this more touching than Lena probably intended it to be. “I only did it ’cause I didn’t know if you’d make a decent job of it,” she says, laughing at the look on his face. “For all I know, you can’t cook for shite.”

“He can cook rabbit,” Trey tells her, through a mouthful. “And fish. ’S only gorgeous.”

“I don’t eat rabbit for breakfast,” Lena informs her. The two of them appear to have established some kind of understanding while Cal was asleep. “Or fish either. And I don’t know your standards. I’d rather trust my own.”

“I’ll prove it to you sometime,” Cal says, “if you’d like. As a thank-you. When things settle down a little bit.”

“You do that,” says Lena, who clearly doesn’t care for the odds of things settling down in her lifetime, or at any rate in Cal’s. “Eat this meanwhile, before it goes cold on you.”

The breakfast is good. Cal finds himself craving rich salty things, and Lena has a lavish hand with them; she’s fried every piece of bacon he had, and the toast is buttered till it drips. It’s raining, not heavily but steadily, in long meandering sheets; out in the fields, the cows have banked themselves together under a flat gray sky and are keeping their heads to the grass. The day has a strange, unshakable wartime calm, as if the house is besieged so thoroughly that there’s no point thinking about it until they see what happens next.

“Did you talk to her mama?” Cal asks, when Trey is in the bathroom.

“I did,” Lena says, giving him a dry glance. “She’s relieved enough that she didn’t ask too many questions. All the same, but, Trey needs to go home soon enough. Sheila’s got plenty on her plate without worrying about this one as well.”

“She can’t leave here till I get things under control,” Cal says. “She’s gone and pissed off some bad people.”

“And when are you planning on getting things under control?” Lena inquires politely. “Just outa curiosity, like.”

“I’m working on it. I’m aiming for sometime today.” One good phone conversation should get Austin to rein in his boys till they can meet up and arrange matters to everyone’s satisfaction. Cal tries to think how much cash he has in the bank, just in case.

“That’ll be lovely,” Lena says. “Let me know if you need a lift to the hospital.”

“Could I ask you to stick around awhile?” Cal asks, ignoring that. “I need to go out for a little bit, and I don’t want to leave the kid alone.”

Lena gives him a long unimpressed look. “I’ve to go see to the other dogs,” she says. “Then I can come back for a bit. I’ve to be in work at one, though.”

“That’ll give me plenty of time,” Cal says. “Thanks. I appreciate it.” He feels like this is the main thing he’s said to her during their acquaintance.

Lena leaves Nellie behind to hang out with Trey, who is smitten with that dog to the point of sprawling on the floor with her, ignoring everything else. The kid seems fully recovered, mentally if not physically—although Cal isn’t about to trust this—and she doesn’t appear to find anything remarkable about the current arrangement. As far as she’s concerned, apparently, the three of them could keep on going like this for the rest of their lives.

Cal, with large amounts of caution, time and swearing, manages to change into clean clothes. When he comes out of his bedroom, Trey is using the leftover bacon to try and teach Nellie to roll over. Cal wouldn’t bet money on the outcome either way: Nellie doesn’t strike him as the smartest dog around, but Trey has plenty of persistence, and Nellie is happy to humor her as long as the attention and the bacon hold out.

“Your nose looks better,” Trey says.

“Feels better, too,” Cal says. “Sort of.”

Trey moves the bacon in a circle, which just makes Nellie bounce and snap at it. She says, “Are you gonna give up on looking for Bren?”

Cal doesn’t want to let her know that, after last night, walking away isn’t an option any more. Austin and his boys aren’t going to walk away from the fact that she shot one of them. “Nope,” he says. “I don’t take well to people trying to push me around.”

He expects the kid to come at him with a volley of questions about his investigative plans, but that seems to be all she needs from him. She nods and goes back to waving the bacon at Nellie.

“I reckon you’d have better luck trying to train one of the rabbits outa the freezer,” Cal says. Her matter-of-fact trust moves him so much that he has to swallow. This morning he feels like he’s made of marshmallow. “Leave that poor dumb dog alone and come do the dishes. I can’t manage it with this arm.”

When Lena gets back, it’s almost eleven. Mart mostly takes a break around that time, for a cup of tea. Cal finds the cookies he bought yesterday and heads for the door, before Mart can take a notion to come calling. Mart had to hear those rifle shots, but with any luck he couldn’t tell where they came from. Cal wants to make it clear that they had nothing to do with him.

“Take a bath,” he tells Trey, on his way out. “I left you a towel in the bathroom. The red one.”

Trey looks up from Nellie. “Where you going?” she asks sharply.

“Got stuff to do,” Cal says. Lena, who has joined Trey on the floor to watch her patchy progress, doesn’t react. “I’ll be back in half an hour or thereabouts. You better be washed by then.”

“Or what?” Trey inquires with interest.

“Or else,” Cal says. Trey, unimpressed, rolls her eyes and goes back to the dog.

Cal’s knee has settled down enough that he can walk that far, although he has a limp that feels set to last him a while. As soon as he’s far enough up the road to be out of sight of his windows, he shelters against a hedge from the worst of the rain, changes his phone settings to hide his number, and calls Austin, who he feels can reasonably be expected to be awake at this hour. The call rings out to a snooty voicemail woman who sounds disappointed in Cal. He hangs up without leaving a message.

Mart’s house, hunkered down among the fields, looks gray and deserted through its veil of rain, but Mart and Kojak answer the door. “Hey,” Cal says, holding out the cookies. “Went to town yesterday.”

“Well, holy God,” Mart says, looking him up and down. “Look what the cat dragged in. What’ve you been doing with yourself at all, Sunny Jim? Have you been fighting banditos?”

“Fell off my roof,” Cal says ruefully. Kojak is sniffing at him cautiously, tail down; the clean clothes haven’t stripped away the reek of blood and adrenaline. “Climbed up there to check the slates, after that wind we got, but I’m not as limber as I used to be. Lost my footing and went flat on my face.”

“G’wan outa that. You fell offa Lena Dunne,” Mart tells him, cackling. “Was it worth it?”

“Aw, man, gimme a break,” Cal says, rubbing the back of his neck and grinning sheepishly. “Me and Lena, we’re buddies. Nothing going on there.”

“Well, whatever nothing is, it’s been going on two nights running. D’you think I’ve lost the use of my eyes, young fella? Or the use of my wits?”

“We were talking. Is all. It got late. I’ve got one of those, what do you call them, for guests, the air mattresses—”

Mart is giggling so hard he has to hold himself up on the door frame. “Talking, is it? I did a bit of talking to women myself, back in the day. I’ll tell you this much, I never made them sleep on an air mattress all on their ownio.” He heads into the kitchen, waving Cal after him with the cookie packet. “Come in outa that and have a cup of tea, and you can give me all the details.”

“She makes a mean bacon-and-egg breakfast. That’s all the details I got.”

“Doesn’t sound like ye did that much talking,” Mart says, switching on the kettle and rooting around for mugs and the Dalek teapot. Kojak flops down on his rug in front of the fireplace, keeping one wary eye on Cal. “Was it her brothers done that on you?”

“Uh-oh,” Cal says. “She’s got brothers?”

“Oh, begod, she does. Three big apes that’d rip your head off as soon as look at you.”

“Well, shit,” Cal says, “I might have to skip town after all. Sorry ’bout your twenty bucks.”

Mart snickers and relents. “Don’t worry your head about those lads. They know better than to get between Lena and anything she wants.” He throws a generous handful of tea bags into the Dalek. “Tell me this and tell me no more: is she a wild one?”

“You’d have to ask her,” Cal says primly.

“Come here,” Mart says, his tangle of eyebrows shooting up as a new idea strikes him, “is that what happened to you? Did Lena give you a few skelps? I’d say she’d have a fine aul’ right hook on her. Does she have one of them fetishes?”

“No! Jesus, Mart. I just fell off the roof.”

“Give us a proper look,” Mart says. He leans in and peers at Cal’s nose from various angles. “I’d say that’s broken.”

“Yeah, me too. It’s straight, though, or as straight as it ever was. It’ll heal.”

“It’d better. You don’t wanta lose your good looks, specially not now. What’s the story on the arm? Didja break that too?”

“Nah. I think I cracked my collarbone. Gave my knee a pretty good whack, too.”

“Sure, it could’ve been worse,” Mart says philosophically. “I know a fella up near Ballymote that fell off his roof, the exact same as yourself, and didn’t he break his neck. He’s in a wheelchair to this day. His missus has to wipe his arse for him. You were lucky. Didja go to the doctor?”

“Nah,” Cal says. “Nothing they could do except tell me to take it easy for a while, and I can do that myself for free.”

“Or Lena can do it for you,” Mart says, the grin creeping back onto his face. “She won’t be happy if you’re out of commission. Better rest up and mind yourself, so you can get back in the saddle.”

“Jeez, Mart,” Cal says, biting back a grin and getting very interested in his toe poking at a chair leg. “Come on.” Under the chair is a towel stiff with dried blood.

When he looks up, he looks into Mart’s eyes. He sees Mart think about saying he had a nosebleed, and then think about saying a nameless stranger staggered in with a mysterious wound. In the end he says nothing at all.

“Well,” Cal says, after a long while. “Don’t I feel like the idiot.”

“Ah, no,” Mart reassures him charitably. He stoops to pick up the towel, bracing himself on the chair-back and grunting, and stumps unhurriedly across the kitchen to put it in the washing machine. “No need for that. Sure, how would you know the lie of the land, and you a stranger?” He closes the washing machine door and looks up at Cal. “But you know now.”

Cal says, “You gonna tell me what happened?”

“Leave it be,” Mart says, gently and firmly, in a voice Cal has used a hundred times to tell suspects that they’ve come to the end, to the place where there’s no choice left, no journey and no struggle. “Go home to the child and tell her to leave it be. That’s all you need to do.”

Cal says, “She wants to know where her brother is.”

“Then tell her he’s dead and buried. Or tell her he done a runner, if you’d rather. Whatever’ll make her leave it.”

“I tried that. She wants to know for sure. That’s her line. She won’t budge off it.”

Mart sighs. He pours detergent into the washing-machine drawer and sets it going.

“If you don’t give her that,” Cal says, “she’s gonna keep on coming till you have to kill her. She’s thirteen years old.”

“Holy God,” Mart says disapprovingly, glancing over his shoulder, “you’ve an awful dark mind on you altogether. No one’s got any intention of killing anyone.”

“What about Brendan?”

“No one intended to kill him, either. Would you ever sit down there, Sunny Jim, you’re giving me the fidgets.”

Cal sits at the kitchen table. The house is chilly and smells of damp. The washing machine pulses in a slow, rhythmic trudge. Rain trickles steadily down the windowpane.

The kettle has boiled. Mart pours water into the Dalek and swirls the tea bags with a spoon. He brings over the mugs and the teapot, then the milk and sugar, and then lowers himself into a chair, joint by joint, and pours the tea.

“Brendan Reddy was headed that way anyway,” he says, “as fast as he could run. If it hadn’t been us that done it, it woulda been someone else.”

“P.J. noticed his anhydrous getting swiped,” Cal says. “Right?” The walk to Mart’s has raised a vicious throbbing in his knee. He feels a weight of dull anger that this should have landed at his feet today, of all days, when he’s in no condition to handle it with skill.

Mart shakes his head. He shifts one hip, painfully, and pulls his tobacco out of his pants pocket. “Ah, God, no. P.J.’s an innocent, sure. He’s not unfortunate or nothing, but he’s got no suspicion in him. That class of carry-on wouldn’t even occur to him. I’d say that’s why Brendan chose his farm to begin with.” He spreads out a cigarette paper on the table and starts carefully sprinkling tobacco along it. “No: P.J. was told.”

Cal says, “Donie.” Apparently he’s been everyone’s fool around here, even that fool Donie’s. He should have seen it straightaway, back in the fug of body smells and smoke in Donie’s room. He knows how the Dublin boys found out that Brendan had been snared, too. Donie understands the ways of trouble well enough to sow plenty of it himself, when he wants to.

“It was. Donie and Brendan never got on, even when they were little lads; I’d say he leaped at the chance to do Brendan a bad turn. Only the feckin’ eejit went and told P.J., instead of coming to me, the way he woulda done if he had the brains of an ass. And what did P.J. do only call in the Guards.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Cal asks, giving Mart something to argue with. “That’s what I’da done.”

“I’ve nothing against the Guards,” Mart says, “in their place, but I didn’t see what they’d contribute to this situation. We’d enough of a mess on our hands already, without them traipsing about the place asking questions and arresting all round them.” He rolls the paper into a stingy cigarette, squinting carefully to keep it even. “Lucky enough, they took their time arriving. Enough time that P.J. came up to tell me the news, and I was able to make him see sense. Myself and P.J. sent the Guards off about their business, and I rang another coupla lads—lads that live alone, that wouldn’t have to explain themselves to anyone—to get back P.J.’s anhydrous meanwhile.” He cocks an eyebrow at Cal over the rollie, as he licks the edge. “You know the place, sure.”

“Yep,” Cal says. He wonders who was watching him and Trey on that mountain path.

“They found a big loada Sudafed, as well, and a big loada batteries. No surprise there. They took all that away with them, too, for good measure. If you have a cold this winter, Sunny Jim, or if your alarm clock gives up on you, you just let me know and I’ll sort you out.”

Cal learned a long time back to know when there’s nothing he needs to say. He warms his hands on his mug, drinks his tea and listens.

“Mind you,” Mart says, pointing with his rollie, “I wasn’t taking Donie’s word for anything. For all we knew, he robbed that anhydrous himself, then his deal went arseways and he thought he’d take the opportunity to drop Brendan in a bitta shite. But I know a lad whose place looks out over the road to that aul’ cottage; he kept an eye out. And sure enough, not long after the Guards came calling, didn’t Brendan Reddy go rushing up that road in a terrible hurry altogether. So then we knew for certain.”

He clicks his lighter and takes a leisurely, pleasurable drag on the cigarette, turning his head to blow the smoke away from Cal. “Brendan laid low for a few days after that,” he says. “Considering his options, I’d say. But we had an eye on him. Sure, he couldn’t stay indoors forever; his pals from Dublin were bound to want a word with him. Myself and the lads had no problem with that, but we wanted to get our word in first, so young Brendan’d know where he stood. We were trying to do him a favor; we didn’t want him making any foolish commitments to the Dublin boyos. Next time he headed up to that cottage, we were there to meet him.”

Cal thinks of how Trey said Brendan went bouncing out the door, chirpy as a cricket, on his way to give Austin the cash to replace what Mart’s boys had annexed, get all his plans patched up and back on track. He says, “He wasn’t expecting that.”

“That he wasn’t,” Mart says, momentarily diverted from his story to consider this point. “The face on him: like he’d walked into a room fulla hippopotamuses. A lad as sharp as that, you’d think he woulda seen it coming, would you not? But then, you’d think he’d be a step ahead of a thick like Donie, too. If he’d been a little less sharp when it came to the aul’ chemistry and a little sharper when it came to human beings, he’d be alive today.”

Cal finds himself with no feelings and no thoughts. He’s moved into a place that he knows well from the job: a circle where even the air doesn’t move, nothing exists but the story he’s hearing and the person telling it, and he himself has dissolved away to nothing but watching and listening and readiness. Even his aches and pains seem like distant things.

“We were intending to explain the situation to him, was all,” Mart says. He nods at Cal’s beat-up face. “You know the way yourself, sure. Just a bitta clarification. Only this lad didn’t want anything clarified. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but he was a cheeky little fecker, d’you know that? Telling us we didn’t know what we were dealing with, if we had any brains we’d fuck off back to our farms and not be sticking our noses into things we didn’t understand. I know that fella was dragged up, not brought up, but my mammy would’ve wore out her wooden spoon on me if I ever talked that way to men old enough to be my grandfather.” He reaches for an old jam jar that’s become an ashtray and unscrews the lid to tap ash. “We went to put manners on him, but didn’t he get rambunctious and try to fight back, and matters got a wee bit outa hand. The blood was up all round, like. The lad landed a few punches, someone lost his temper and caught him a great clatter to the jaw, and he went flying over backwards and hit his head on the edge of one of his own propane tanks.”

Mart takes a long drag on his rollie and tilts his head back to blow the smoke at the ceiling. “I thought at first he was only knocked out,” he says. “When I looked closer, but, I knew he was bad. I don’t know what done it, was it the punch or the fall, but whatever way it happened, his head was twisted round and his eyes were rolling up. He made a bit of a snoring noise and he done a few twitches of his legs, and then he was gone. Quick as that.”

In the window behind his head, the fields are a green so soft and deep you could sink into them. Wind blows a whisper of rain against the glass. The washing machine trudges on.

“I seen a man die quick once before,” Mart says, “when I was fifteen. The hay baler wasn’t clearing right, and he went to see what was wrong, only he left the power running. His hand got caught and the baler pulled him in. By the time I got it turned off, his arm and his head were gone. It shredded him like you’d shred a bitta wet kitchen roll.”

He watches his smoke trickle and spread through the air of the kitchen. “My granddad was after dying the month before that, of a stroke. That took him four days. Life seems like a big thing when it takes four days for all of it to leave a man. When it’s gone in a few seconds, it looks awful small all of a sudden. We don’t like to face up to that, but the animals know it. They’ve no notions about their dying. It’s a little thing, only; you’d get it done in no time. All it takes is one nip from a fox. Or a hay baler, or a propane tank.”

Cal says, “What’d you do with the body?”

Mart’s eyebrows twitch up. “Sure, we didn’t get the chance to do much of anything with it at all; not then, anyway. ’Twas a bit of an action-packed day all round. Before we’d properly got the hang of what was after happening, we got the call from the lad on the lookout, to say that the Dublin boyos were on their way. We put your man on an aul’ bedsheet that was in the back room and carried him up the hillside behind the cottage, as far into the trees as we’d time for. When we heard their car—big bull of a black Hummer, they had, I don’t know how they got it round the bends in them roads—we laid him down among the bushes and crouched down next to him.”

He glances at Cal, through the twists of smoke. “I thought of leaving him in the house for them to find. A message, like. But in the heel of the hunt I decided against it. No point in telling them more than they needed to know, sure. They’d get the gist of things anyway, once he turned up gone.”

“What’d they do?” Cal asks.

Mart grins. “They weren’t pleased with the situation at all, at all. They went and had a look in the cottage, and then they came out and looked around the yard, and then they went back in and did it all over again. Four of them, there was, and not a one of them could stay still for a bloody second; they were hopping about like they’d fleas. And the language out of them, holy God. We were close enough to hear them— ’twas a grand spring day, not a breath of wind. I’m no prude, but it nearly melted the ears right offa me.”

His grin widens. “D’you know what else they did? They rang Brendan. Half a dozen times. I knew they would, so I was after taking the phone outa his pocket, but I couldn’t unlock it to turn down the volume. We tried using the lad’s fingerprint, but he’d put a code on it. So will I tell you what we did with that phone? I had Bobby sit his great fat arse on it. That’d muffle anything. The face on him when it vibrated, trying not to leap up off it. Red as a big aul’ beetroot. The rest of us near burst with trying not to laugh.”

He stubs out his rollie in the lid of the jam jar. “In the end they gave up on him,” he says, “and off they went back down the mountain. D’you know what one of them was doing, on his way to their lovely shiny Hummer? He was whinging and whining out of him about his good shoes getting all mucky. Like a woman on her way to a fancy ball.”

Cal is pretty sure that every word is true. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be—it’s not like he can do anything with any of it—except for Mart’s habit of keeping people in the dark on principle. It seems to Cal that they’ve moved out on the other side of that.

He says, “Where’s Brendan now?”

“He’s still up the mountains. Buried, now, not just left there; the child doesn’t need to worry that there was crows and rats at him, or nothing like that. We said a few prayers over him and all.”

Mart reaches for his packet of cookies and opens it, carefully, so as not to crumble any edges. “And that was the end of that,” he says.

“Except for Donie and his messing around with the sheep,” Cal says.

Mart blows out a scornful puff of air. “I don’t count that, sure. I don’t count that feckin’ eejit on principle.” He offers the packet to Cal. “Go on, get one of those into you. You deserve it. You’re a cute hoor, aren’t you? Here you were feeling like an eejit yourself, but you’d it all figured out already, sure. You only had the one bit wrong. There’s no shame in that.”

Cal says, “Donie figured P.J. had to be involved, since it was his anhydrous. How’d he find out you and Bobby and Francie were on board too?”

Mart selects a cookie, taking his time over the decision. “I’d say Donie had an eye on things himself. He musta caught a glimpse of the four of us somewhere along the way and gone running to the Dublin lads—that fella’d make a great double agent, if only he had a brain in his head. And them fine boyos told him to send us a wee message to stay out of their business.” He smiles at Cal. “We got the message, anyway. Even if we didn’t take it the way they expected.”

Cal asks, “Does Bobby still think it was aliens?”

“Ah, God, Bobby,” Mart says indulgently, dipping his cookie in his tea. “He’s only delighted to have aliens at his sheep. I wouldn’t ruin it for him. I couldn’t, anyhow; even if I had a video of Donie working away, he still wouldn’t believe me. Sure, it doesn’t matter what Bobby thinks. Donie knew I’d get the message, after two sheep or three. But he didn’t think I’d find out it was him that sent it. He thought I’d take for granted it was the big bold Dublin lads, or someone they sent down from town maybe, and I’d be that petrified of them I wouldn’t dare lift a finger. He knows better now.”

“Seems to me,” Cal says, “if you boys wanted to raise the tone around these parts, the one you oughta have gotten rid of was Donie.”

“There’s Donies everywhere,” Mart says. “They’d do your head in, the little fuckers, but they make no difference in the long run. They’re ten a penny, so they are; if you get rid of one, another one’ll only pop up in his place. Brendan Reddy was another matter entirely. There’s not a lot of those about. And what he was doing woulda made a difference to this townland, all right.”

“You’ve already got drugs round here,” Cal says. “Plenty of ’em. It’s not like Brendan was bringing ’em into the Garden of Eden.”

“We lose enough of our young men,” Mart says. It seems to Cal that he should sound like he’s defending his actions, but he doesn’t. His eyes across the table are steady and his voice is calm and final, underlaid by the quiet patter of rain all around. “The way the world’s after changing, it’s not made right for them, any more. When I was a young lad, we knew what we could want and how to get it, and we knew we’d have something to show for it at the end of the day. A crop, or a flock, or a house, or a family. There’s great strength in that. Now there’s too many things you’re told to want, there’s no way to get them all, and once you’re done trying, what have you got to show for it at the end? You’ve made a buncha phone calls selling electricity plans, maybe, or had a buncha meetings about nothing; you’ve got your hole offa some bitta fluff you met on the internet, got yourself some likes on the aul’ YouTube. Nothing you can put your hands on. The women do be grand anyway; they’re adaptable. But the young men don’t know what to be doing with themselves at all. There’s a few of them, like Fergal O’Connor who you met there, that keep their feet on the ground regardless. The rest are hanging themselves, or they’re getting drunk and driving into ditches, or they’re overdosing on the aul’ heroin, or they’re packing their bags. I don’t want to see this place a wasteland, every farm looking the way yours did before you came along: falling to wrack and ruin, waiting for some Yank to take a fancy to it and make it into his hobby.”

Kojak, smelling the cookies, shambles over and stands by Mart’s chair, waiting. Mart holds out the remains of the cookie for him to snap up. He says, “I wasn’t going to stand by and watch us lose more of our young men to Brendan Reddy and his notions.”

“You lost Brendan,” Cal points out.

“I’m only after telling you that wasn’t intentional,” Mart says, put out. “Besides, if we’d left him at it, we’da lost a lot more than one, one way or another. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, isn’t that what they say?”

Cal says, “Is that what you were thinking when you went to talk to Sheila Reddy, the other night?” He tries to keep his voice even, but he can hear the rumble of danger rising up.

Mart ignores it. He says, “It needed doing. That’s all I was thinking. That’s all there was to think.”

He gives Kojak a slap on the flank to send him back to the fireside. “And that’s what you were thinking when you gave Donie the few skelps, sure. You weren’t thinking, ‘Ah, sure, what harm?’ You were thinking that every now and then there’s a thing that needs doing and there’s not a lot any man can do to change that, so there’s no point in fussing and foostering; you might as well go ahead and get it done. And the pity of it is, you were right.”

“Not sure I’d put it that way,” Cal says.

Mart laughs. “That’s what Theresa Reddy was thinking last night, anyway, when she shot off that rifle. You weren’t raising any objections then.”

“Whichever one of the guys got hit,” Cal says. “How’s he doing?”

“He’ll be grand. He bled like a stuck pig, but there’s no real harm done.” Mart takes another cookie and grins at Cal. “Will you look at all the action we’ve had around here, the last while? I don’t want you getting it in your head that the townland’s always this exciting. You’ll be fierce disappointed when the biggest thrill of the next year is someone’s ewe dropping quadruplets.”

Cal says, “Were you there last night? At my place?”

Mart laughs, his face creasing up. “Ah, God, no. Me? With my joints, I’m not able for the aul’ roola-boola any more.”

Or else he didn’t want to risk Cal recognizing him. “You’re more of an ideas man,” Cal says.

“I wish you well, Sunny Jim,” Mart says. “I always have. Now drink up your tea, go home and tell the child as much of that story as you like, and tell her it’s done now.”

“It’s not about the story,” Cal says. “All’s she needs to know is that he’s dead, and that it was a fight that went wrong; she doesn’t need to know who did it. But she’s gonna want proof.”

“She can’t have everything she wants. She oughta know that by her age.”

“I’m not talking about the kind of proof that could get anyone in any shit. But she’s had too many people feeding her bullshit. She can’t stop unless she gets something solid.”

“What kind of something did you have in mind?”

“Brendan had a watch on him. Used to be his granddaddy’s.”

Mart dips his cookie and watches Cal. He says, “He’s been dead six months.”

“I’m not asking you to get it for me. You tell me where to look, I’ll get it myself.”

“Seen worse on the job, hah?”

Cal says, “I’ve got nothing to do with any job.”

“Not any more, maybe. But old habits die hard.”

“No maybe about it. And I came here to get away from old habits.”

“You’re not making a very good job of it, Sunny Jim,” Mart points out. “No offense meant.”

“Brendan Reddy isn’t my problem,” Cal says. Even though he understands that in many ways it’s the truth, the words don’t come out easily. It frightens him that he can’t tell whether he’s doing the right thing or the wrong one. “I’m not gonna do anything about him. I wish I’d never heard of him. I’m just trying to get a kid some peace of mind, so she can put this down and move on.”

Mart thinks this over, savoring his cookie. He says, “And you think she’ll do that?”

“Yeah. She’s not out for revenge, or justice. All she wants is to leave it.”

“Maybe she does now. What about a few years down the line?”

“The kid’s got her own code,” Cal says. “If she gives her word to let this lie, I believe she’ll stick to it.”

Mart sucks the last soggy crumb off his finger and watches Cal. His eyes might have been blue once, but the color has faded out of them and they have a watery rim. It gives him a dreamy, almost wistful look. He says, “You know what’ll happen, now, if anything comes out of this.”

“Yeah,” Cal says. “I do.”

“And you’re willing to risk it.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, holy God,” Mart says, “we’ll have to get you in on the card game, because you’re some gambler. You’ve more faith in that child than I would, or anyone else round here would. But then, maybe you know her better.”

He pushes back his chair and reaches for the mugs. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, now. You’re in no fit state to be clambering up mountains; sure, you’d collapse on me halfway, and I’m not carrying you back. You’d squash me flat. You go home and talk to the child. Test the waters. Have a good aul’ think about it. After that, if you’re still up for the risk, you get a few days’ rest, get yourself in fighting form, and then come back to me. And we’ll go out digging.”

He smiles at Cal over his shoulder, as he puts the mugs in the sink. “Go on, now,” he says, the way he’d say it to Kojak. “And get some rest. If you don’t get back up and running soon, Lena might get impatient and find herself another fella.”

While Cal was out, which he feels like he has been for a very long time, Trey gave up on training Nellie. She and Lena have broken out the painting gear and are working on the front-room skirting boards. The iPod is playing the Dixie Chicks, Lena is humming along, Trey is sprawled on her stomach on the floor to get a corner perfect, and Nellie has taken over the armchair. Cal wants to turn around and walk straight out again, taking his knowledge with him.

Trey glances over her shoulder. “Check this,” she says. She sits up and spreads her arms. Lena must have somehow convinced her to take that bath; she’s noticeably cleaner than she was when Cal left, and she’s wearing the new clothes he brought her from town.

“Looking snazzy,” Cal says. The clothes are a size too big. They make her look so little it hurts. “Till you get paint all over yourself.”

“She was restless,” Lena says. “She wanted to be doing something. I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

“I can just about live with it,” Cal says. “The reason those aren’t done yet is ’cause I wasn’t looking forward to getting down on the floor like that.”

“You know what we oughta do,” Trey says.

“What’s that?” Cal says.

“That wall.” She points at the fireplace wall. “In the evenings it goes gold, like, from the sun coming in through that window. Looks good. We oughta paint it that color.”

Cal is startled by something rising up inside his chest that might be a laugh or a sob. Mart was right again: here he is, with a woman bringing ideas into his house. “Sounds good to me,” he says. “I’ll get in a few paint samples, we can pick the one that matches best.”

Trey nods. Something in Cal’s voice has caught her; she gives him a long look. Then she picks up her paintbrush and goes back to the skirting board.

Lena looks at the two of them. “Right, so,” she says. “I’ll be off.”

“Could you maybe hang around a little longer?” Cal asks.

She shakes her head. “I’ve things to do.”

Cal waits while she puts on her big jacket and packs her accoutrements away in its pockets, and snaps her fingers for Nellie. He walks them out. “Thanks,” he says, on the step. “Could you give the kid a ride home, later on?”

Lena nods. “You got things under control,” she says, not really asking a question.

“Yeah,” Cal says. “I did. Or close enough.”

“Right,” Lena says. “Good luck.” She touches Cal’s arm for a second, in something between a pat and a shake. Then she heads off through the rain towards her car, with Nellie lolloping along beside her. It comes to Cal that, while she doesn’t know anything for sure and doesn’t want to, she’s had a pretty fair idea all along.

He closes the door behind them, turns off the Dixie Chicks and goes to Trey. His knee still hurts enough that he has a hard time finding a position he can take up on the floor; he eventually settles for sitting with his leg stretched out at an awkward angle. Trey keeps on painting, but he can feel her stretched taut as a wire, waiting.

He says, “I talked to some people, while I was out.”

“Yeah,” Trey says. She doesn’t look up.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, kid. I got some sad news for you.”

After a moment she says, like her throat is tight, “Yeah.”

“Your brother died, kid. The same day you last saw him. He met up with some people, they got in a fight. Your brother took a punch, and he fell over and hit his head. No one meant for him to die. Things just went bad that day.”

Trey keeps on painting. Her head is down and Cal can’t see her face, but he can hear the hard hiss of her breathing.

She says, “Who was it?”

“I don’t know who threw the punch,” Cal says. “You said all you need is to know for sure what happened, so you can leave it. Did that change?”

Trey says, “Did he die quick?”

“Yeah. The punch knocked him out, and he died just a minute later. He didn’t suffer. He never even knew what was happening.”

“D’you swear?”

“Yeah. I swear.”

Trey’s brush scrubs back and forth over the same patch of skirting board. In a little bit she says, “It might not be true.”

“I’m gonna get you proof,” Cal says. “In a few days’ time. I know you need that. But it’s true, kid. I’m sorry.”

Trey keeps up the painting for another second. Then she lays down the brush, leans back against the wall and starts to cry. At first she cries like a grown adult, sitting there with her head back, her jaw and eyes tight, tears trickling down the sides of her face in silence. Then something breaks and she sobs like a child, with her arm across her knees and her face buried in her elbow, crying her heart out.

Every cell in Cal’s body wants to grab his rifle, head back up to Mart’s place and march that bastard all the way to town and into the police station. He knows it wouldn’t be the slightest bit of use, but he still wants to do it, with such ferocious urgency that he has to stop his muscles from propelling him onto his feet and right out the door.

Instead he gets up and fetches a roll of paper towels. He puts it down by Trey and sits against the wall next to her while she cries. Her arm crooked over her face makes him think of a broken wing. After a while he lays his hand on the back of her neck.

In the end Trey runs out of crying, for now. “Sorry,” she says, wiping her face on her sleeve. She’s red and blotchy, with her good eye swollen almost as small as her black one and her nose swollen almost as big as Cal’s.

“No need,” Cal says. He hands her the roll of paper towels.

Trey blows her nose loudly. She says, “Just seems like there oughta be some way to fix it.”

Her voice wavers, and for a second Cal thinks she might break down again. “I know,” he says. “I’ve never quite come to terms with that myself.”

They sit there, listening to the rain. Trey catches the occasional long shuddering breath.

“Do I still haveta go into Noreen’s today?” she asks, after a while. “I’m not having any of them nosy fuckers seeing me like this.”

“No,” Cal says. “That’s taken care of. Those guys won’t be bothering any of us any more.”

That gets Trey’s attention. “You beat ’em up?”

“I look like I could beat anyone up right now?”

The kid manages a watery grin.

“Nah,” Cal says. “Just talked to ’em. But it’s OK.”

Trey refolds her wad of paper towel to find a clean patch and blows her nose again. Cal can see her taking in, piece by piece, the ways things have changed.

“That means you can go home now,” he says. “I enjoy having you around, but I think it’s time you went home.”

Trey nods. “I’ll go. Later, just. In a while.”

“Fair enough,” Cal says. “I can’t drive you, but Miss Lena will, once she’s finished work. You want me or her to come in with you? Help you explain things to your mama?”

Trey shakes her head. “I’m not gonna say it to her yet. Not till you get that proof.” She glances up from her wad of paper towel. “You said a few days.”

“Give or take,” Cal says. “But there’s one condition. You gotta give me your word of honor that you won’t try to do anything about this. Ever. Just put it down and go back to normal, like you said. Put your mind into going to school, hooking back up with your friends. Maybe making it through a few days without pissing off your teachers. Can you do that?”

Trey takes a deep, shaky breath. “Yeah,” she says. “I can.” She’s still slumped against the wall; her hands, holding the paper towel, lie in her lap like she doesn’t have the energy to move them. She looks like a long cruel tension is leaching out of her, notch by notch, leaving her whole body slack to the point of helplessness.

“Not just for now. For the rest of your life.”

“I know.”

“You swear. Word of honor.”

Trey looks at him. She says, “I swear.”

Cal says, “ ’Cause I’m taking a pretty big chance here.”

“I took a chance on you last night,” Trey points out. “When I let them lads go.”

“I guess you did,” Cal says. He has that shaky feeling up under his breastbone again. He can’t wait for it to be tomorrow, or next week, or whenever he’ll have got his strength back enough to react to things like his normal self. “OK. Give me a week. Say two, to be on the safe side. Then come back.”

Trey takes another long breath. She says, “What do we do now?”

The idea of a world with no quest in it has left her lost. “You know what I want to do today,” Cal says, “is go fishing. That’s about all I’ve got in me. You think us beat-up stray mutts can make it that far?”

Trey makes sandwiches. Cal lends her an extra sweater and his padded winter coat, in which she looks ridiculous. She helps him get into his jacket. Then they walk, taking it slowly, down to the riverbank. They spend the afternoon sitting there, without saying a single word that doesn’t relate to fish. When they have enough perch to feed Cal, Trey’s family, and Lena, they pack up and go home.

They split up the fish, and Cal finds a plastic bag to hold Trey’s old clothes and her pajamas. Lena, on her way back from work, stops by to pick Trey up. She stays in the car, but when Cal comes out to her she rolls down her window to look at him. “Give me a bell when you’re through doing stupid things,” she says.

Cal nods. Trey gets into the car and Lena rolls up her window, and Cal watches them drive off, with the darkness gathering above the hedges and the headlight beams glittering on the falling rain.