“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?”