There are three or four black-faced sheep meandering across the path and among the trees, cropping at weeds. “You know whose sheep those are?” Cal asks.
“Malachy Dwyer’s. There was more of ’em in our yard. I was gonna go tell him they were loose, only…” Trey motions with her head at the body.
“That’d take your mind off sheep, all right,” Cal says, handing her back the water bottle. So Malachy’s sheep have been out since before dawn, trampling all over any footprints or tire tracks that a killer might have left behind, and covering up any scent that a K-9 could have followed. Sheep do get loose on a regular basis around here, what with most of the mountain fields being bounded by ancient, patched-up stone walls; nobody much cares, and they all end up back where they belong in the long run. But this escape came in pretty handy for someone.
The crows have transferred themselves by degrees to lower branches, testing the waters. They’re a dirty ash-gray, with a sheen like a bluebottle’s on their black wings. Their heads twitch back and forth so they can keep tabs on Cal and Trey while evaluating Rushborough possessively. Cal leans over to find a good-sized rock and throws it at them, and they flap lazily up a few branches, unimpressed, prepared to bide their time.
“When you talk to the cops,” he says, “they’ll likely let you have an adult there. I can do it if you want. Or you could have your mama. Or your dad.”
“You,” Trey says promptly.
“OK,” Cal says. And she came to him rather than to Johnny when she found Rushborough, even though Johnny’s interest in this development would be considerably more intense than his. Something has changed for her. Cal would very much like to know what, and whether it’s something to do with the body lying on the stained dirt. He believes the kid that she had nothing to do with it getting there, but the question of what she might know or suspect is smudgier. “Once the Guards get here, we’ll head back to my place. They can come talk to you there, when they’re ready. We’ll make them tea and everything.”
The sheep have stopped cropping and raised their heads, looking up the road towards Trey’s house. Cal straightens up off the car. There’s the crunch of feet on pebbles, and a flash of white between the trees.
It’s Johnny Reddy himself, freshly shaved and shiny, hurrying down the road like a man with important places to be. He sees Cal’s red Pajero first, and stops.
Cal says nothing. Neither does Trey.
“Well, and good morning to the pair of ye, too,” Johnny says, with a whimsical cock of his head, but Cal can see the wariness in his eye. “What’s the story here? Is it me ye’re waiting for?”
“Nope,” Cal says. “We’re waiting with your buddy Rushborough over there.”
Johnny looks. His whole body goes still, and his mouth opens. The shock looks genuine, but Cal doesn’t take anything out of Johnny at face value. Even if it’s real, it could just mean he didn’t expect the body to be where it is, not that he didn’t expect it at all.
“What the fuck,” Johnny says, when the breath goes back into him. He makes an instinctive move towards Rushborough.
“I’m gonna have to ask you to stay where you are, Johnny,” Cal says, in his cop voice. “We don’t want to compromise a crime scene.”
Johnny stays put. “Is he dead?”
“Oh yeah. Someone made good and sure of that.”
“How?”
“I look like a doctor to you?”
Johnny makes an effort to get himself together. He eyes Cal and gauges his chances of convincing him to dump Rushborough in a bog and forget the whole thing. Cal doesn’t feel inclined to help him reach a decision. He gazes blandly back.
Eventually Johnny, genius that he is, concludes that Cal is unlikely to play along. “Go home,” he says sharply to Trey. “Go on. Get home to your mammy and stay there. Say nothing about this to anyone.”
“Trey here’s the one that found the body,” Cal explains, nice and reasonable. “She’s gonna have to give a statement. The police are on their way.”
Johnny looks at him with pure hatred. Cal, after weeks of feeling that way about Johnny and being powerless to do a thing about it, looks back and savors every second.
“You say nothing to the Guards about that gold,” Johnny tells Trey. Trey may not be taking on board the implications here, but Johnny sure is; Cal can practically see his brain cells ricocheting among them all. “D’you hear me? Not a fucking word.”
“Language,” Cal reminds him.
Johnny bares his teeth in what’s supposed to be a smile but lands closer to a grimace. “I don’t need to tell you, sure,” he says to Cal. “You don’t want that hassle either.”
“Gee whiz,” Cal says, scratching his beard. “I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll take it under advisement.”
Johnny’s grimace tightens. “I’ve somewhere to be. Am I allowed to head over that way, am I? Guard?”
“Be my guest,” Cal says. “I’m sure the police’ll find you when they need you. Don’t you worry about us; we’re just fine here.”
Johnny throws him one more vicious look, then cuts through the trees to give the body a wide berth and heads up the higher path, towards the Dwyers’ places and incidentally towards Rushborough’s holiday home, at a near-run. Cal allows himself the hope that the little fuck will trip and go head over heels into a ravine.
“Bet he’s going to get your camera,” Trey says. “Rushborough took it offa me. I was gonna rob it back, only I didn’t get a chance.”
“Huh,” Cal says. That camera has been on his mind, along with the fact that it stopped being mentioned right around the time Trey got that fat lip. He was blaming Johnny. “What’s on there that Rushborough wanted?”
“You and them lads putting the gold in the river.”
There’s a moment of silence.
“Didja know I was there?”
“Nope,” Cal says, carefully. She’s not looking at him; she’s watching the path where her father vanished, eyes narrowed against the sun. “I half wondered, but nope, I didn’t know. How come you filmed it?”
“To show Rushborough. So’s he’d fuck off.”
“Right,” Cal says. He adjusts his ideas. Trey wasn’t just doing her filming behind Johnny’s back; she was doing it, with preparation and care, to fuck him over. This leaves Cal even more baffled about what she was doing waving Johnny’s cute little gold nugget around the pub.
“I didn’t know you’d be there,” Trey says. “At the river. You never told me.”
She’s turning the water bottle between her knees, head bent over it. If she’s watching Cal out of the corner of her eye, he can’t tell.
“You figure I should’ve,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“I was planning to. The day before, when I lent you that camera. Only then your dad showed up and took you off home, and I didn’t get a chance.”
“How come you went with them? To the river?”
Cal is moved by the fact that she’s asking: she knows him well enough to take for granted that he wasn’t there to rip off some damn fool tourist. “I wanted to keep an eye on things,” he says. “Rushborough always looked squirrelly to me, and the situation seemed like it could get messy. I like having a handle on what’s going on around me.”
“You shoulda said it to me from the start. I’m not a fuckin’ kid. I keep telling you.”
“I know that,” Cal says. He’s still picking his way with every bit of care and delicacy he has. He knows better than to lie to her, but he also knows better than to tell her he needs to look out for her. “I wasn’t thinking you were too little to understand, or anything. All’s I was thinking is that Johnny’s your dad.”
“He’s a fuckin’ tosspot.”
“I’m not denying that,” Cal says. “But I didn’t want to put you in the middle of anything by sounding like I was bad-mouthing him or his big idea, and I didn’t want to go pumping you for information. I figured I oughta leave you to make your own calls. I just wanted to stay clear on what was going on.”