He straightens up, holding his handful of carrots. “At the end of the day,” he says, “it doesn’t matter a tap what I think, or what you think. All that matters is what the pride of Dublin City thinks, and for that we’ll have to wait and see what way the wind blows him.” He waves the carrots at Cal. “I’ll enjoy these, now. If you spot any Moroccans, send them my way for the dinner.”
—
After letting it sit in her mind all day, Lena still isn’t sure what she thinks about Rushborough being killed. She’s hoping Cal, with his experience in this field, will help to clarify it for her. When she arrives at his place, she finds him working his way through a vast heap of carrots on the kitchen table, peeling them, chopping them, and packing them into freezer bags. Lena, who knows Cal’s ways, doesn’t take this as a good sign. He’s like a man buckling down to face a hard winter, or a siege.
She’s brought a new bottle of bourbon. While Cal tells her about his morning, she pours them each a drink, heavy on the ice, and settles herself opposite him at the table, to take over the chopping. Cal is peeling carrots like they threatened his family.
“I’d bet on the guy being good,” he says. “Nealon; the detective. He’s easy with the job, got a light hand, knows how to take his time, but you can tell he can pull out the hard-core stuff when it’s needed. If I’da been partnered with him, back in the day, I wouldn’t’ve complained.”
“You reckon he’ll get his man,” Lena says, cutting herself a bit of carrot to eat.
Cal shrugs. “Too early to say. He’s the type that does. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Well,” Lena says, testing, “the sooner he gets him, the sooner he’ll be outa our hair.”
Cal nods. There’s a silence: only the soft monotonous snicks of the peeler and the knife, and the dogs sighing in their sleep, and the buzz of a faraway tractor.
Lena knows Cal is waiting for her to ask whether he killed Rushborough, and she’s not going to do it. Instead she takes a sip of her drink and informs him, “I never laid a finger on your man. Just so you know.”
Cal’s taken-aback face makes her laugh, and after a second he grins too. “Well, it woulda been indelicate to ask,” he says, “but I guess that’s good to know.”
“I didn’t want you too scared to go to sleep tonight,” Lena explains. “I couldn’t be doing with you tossing and turning in the bed, wondering were you in with a homicidal maniac.”
“Well,” Cal says, “neither are you. I’m not mourning the guy, but I didn’t touch him either.”
Lena reckoned that anyway. She doesn’t consider Cal to be incapable of killing, but if he did, she doesn’t believe this is who or how it would be. Trey needs him around; that ties his hands.
She says, “So who’s your money on?”
Cal, turning back to his carrots, tilts his head noncommittally. “Nealon asked me that too. I said Johnny. I don’t know if I believe that, but he’s the one that makes the most sense.”
Lena says, “He showed up at my house last night.”
Cal looks up fast. “Johnny did?”
“The man himself.”
“What’d he want?”
“He wanted rescuing from his own eejitry, is what. It’s after getting out that his gold is a loada shite.”
“Yeah,” Cal says. “I told Mart.”
From the moment she drove off and left Mart waving by Cal’s gate, Lena suspected that would happen. Hearing it confirmed still makes her shoulders brace. Lena, who has been called cold plenty of times and acknowledges some truth in that, recognizes it when she sees it: under all the chat and the mischief, which are real enough, Mart is cold as stone. She understands why Cal did what he did. She just hopes he turns out to be right.
“Well,” she says, “Mart listened. Johnny had a warning, he said. He wasn’t sure from who, but it was clear enough: get out or we’ll burn you out.”
“What the fuck,” Cal says, putting down what’s in his hands.
“What’d you expect?”
“Mart’d tell Johnny his big idea was tanked and there was no point sticking around. Maybe a few of them would give him a beat-down, I dunno. I was just trying to get the kid out of this mess. Not get her set on fire.”
He’s ready to speed up the mountain and rip Trey away from that house, by force if needed. “They won’t be burned out,” Lena says. “Not when they’re at home, anyhow. The lads’d be careful about that.”
“Jesus Christ,” Cal says. “The hell am I doing in this fucking place?”
“Johnny was panicking, last night,” Lena says. “That’s all. He didn’t think this through, he got in deeper than he expected, and he lost the head. He could only ever handle things when they went his way.”
“Right,” Cal says. He shakes off the shot of fear and makes himself go back to his carrots. “What’d he want you to do about it?”
“Talk to people. You. Noreen. Get the dogs called off.”
“What the hell,” Cal says. “Why you?”
Lena raises an eyebrow at him. “You don’t reckon I’ve the diplomatic skills for it?”
She doesn’t get a grin. “You don’t get mixed up in townland business. Johnny’s not a moron, he has to know that. Why’d he go hassling you?”
Lena shrugs. “I’d say that’s why. He reckoned I wouldn’t care what he was trying to put over on this place. He started off with old times’ sake—you know I don’t deserve this, I’m no angel but you know I’m not as bad as I’m painted, you’re the only one that ever gave me a chance, all that jazz. He’s awful charming when he wants to be, is Johnny, and he wanted to last night. He was scared, all right.”
“Gee,” Cal says. “Sure sounds charming. ‘Hey, I got myself in trouble by being a shitheel and not even being smart about it, could you be a doll and pull me out?’ ”
“That’s what I said to him, more or less: his poor misunderstood self wasn’t my problem. He switched tack then: if I wouldn’t help him for his own sake, I had to do it for Trey’s.”
“Surprise,” Cal says. If Lena didn’t know him so well, she wouldn’t have caught the flash of anger.
“Yeah. He said he owed Rushborough money—did you know that?”
“Yeah.”
“And he had to make this work, or else Trey would end up either bet up or burnt, and did I want to see that happen. I’d had my fill of him by then. I told him if he gave a shite about Trey, he’d fuck off back to London and take his mess with him. We didn’t part on the best of terms.”
Cal’s eyebrows draw down. “He give you any hassle?”
Lena blows out a contemptuous puff of air. “God, no. He threw some kinda tantrum, but I don’t know the details, ’cause I shut the door on him. In the end he flounced off.”
Cal goes silent, and Lena watches his face while he thinks. The knot between his eyebrows loosens, leaving him intent and closed. “What time was he at your place?”
“Eight o’clock, maybe. Mighta been a bit after.”
“He stay long?”
“Half an hour, about. It took him a while to work round to what he was after; he had to go on about the view first, and a lovely wee pair of lambs he saw on his way over. That fella can’t go at anything straight.”
Lena was wondering whether Cal would react like this, like a cop. He got there in the end, but it came last.
“A tantrum,” Cal says. “What kind? Like sobbing and begging, or like yelling and banging on the door?”
“In between. I went in the kitchen and turned on a bitta music for myself, so I didn’t catch the whole thing, but there was drama. Loads of shouting about how it’d be my fault if the lotta them ended up burnt to death, and would I be able to live with myself. I didn’t pay him any notice.”