“And he’ll keep hanging about,” Mart says, “being a blot on the landscape, till one of three things happens.” He holds up a finger. “Nealon hauls him away in handcuffs. And then he’ll sing like a wee birdie.” A second finger. “Or Johnny gets frightened enough—of Nealon, or of someone else—that he makes a run for it.” A third. “Or else Nealon hauls someone else away, and Johnny feels safe to jog on.”
“If Nealon went after him hard,” Francie says, “he’d jog on all right.”
“Life’s a balance, Sunny Jim,” Mart says, to Cal. “We’re always weighing up the things we’re most afraid of, and seeing which one weighs heaviest. That’s what Johnny Reddy’s doing this minute. I’d like to see his personal balance tilt the right way. Wouldn’t you?”
Cal can think of few things he would like better than setting Nealon on Johnny’s trail. He has no doubt that the guys have an excellent strategy all ready to roll, and that having him on board would help it go down smoothly with Nealon. He finds he doesn’t give a shit about the prospect of lying to a detective, as long as it would get rid of that little asswipe Johnny once and for all, shut down this Rushborough business before it gets out of control, and whip Trey’s plan out of her hands before it can detonate.
Trey has made it crystal clear that this isn’t Cal’s territory, and he has no right to trespass on it. It’s her place, not his; her family, and her quarrel. Regardless of what level of shit she’s pulled, he can’t bring himself to go up against her. She isn’t a little kid any more, for him to take decisions away from her and make them himself in the name of her own good. She has her plan; all he can do is keep following along behind her, in the hope that, if things go wrong, he’ll be close enough.
“One reason I retired,” he says, “was so I could stop having to deal with people I don’t like. Johnny Reddy’s a shitbird and I don’t like him. That means I don’t plan on having any dealings with him ever again. As far as I can, I plan on ignoring that he ever walked into this town.”
None of the men answer that. They drink, and watch Cal. Dull patches of color from the window slide along their sleeves and their faces as they move.
Mart sips his pint and regards Cal meditatively. “D’you know something, bucko,” he says, “I’ve a bone to pick with you. You’re here, what, two year now?”
“Two and a half,” Cal says. “Near enough.”
“And you’re still refusing to play Fifty-Five. I was willing to cut you a bitta slack while you settled in, but at this stage you’re only taking up space, and plenty of it. It’s time you started earning your keep.” He shifts on the banquette, with difficulty, and fishes a battered pack of cards out of his pocket. “Now,” he says, slapping it down on the table. “Whatever money Johnny left you, get ready to lose it.”
“D’you know what goes well with Fifty-Five?” Malachy says, leaning to reach under the table.
“Oh, shit,” Cal says.
“Quit your whinging,” Malachy says, coming up with a two-liter Lucozade bottle half full of innocent-looking clear liquid. “This stuff’s great for sharpening the mind; you’ll learn twice as fast.”
“And you can’t get engaged without it,” Mart says. “ ’Twouldn’t be legal. Barty! Give us a few shot glasses there.”
Cal resigns himself to the ruin of everything he had planned for tomorrow, which luckily wasn’t much. The night’s business was serious enough that Malachy saved the poteen for afterwards, to make sure everyone kept a relatively clear head, but it’s over and put aside, at least for now. Mart is shuffling the cards, more deftly than anyone could expect from his swollen fingers; Senan is holding the poteen bottle up to the light and squinting at it to assess its probable quality. “You asked Lena to marry you?” P.J. asks Bobby, his head suddenly popping up as he chews over the conversation. “Lena Dunne, like?”
Everyone starts ribbing Bobby about his proposal, and P.J. about his slowness on the uptake, and giving Cal another round of shit just for the sake of thoroughness. The warmth has flowed back into the air, stronger than ever. What gets to Cal is that, just like everything else that’s passed in the alcove that evening, it’s real.
Eighteen
Johnny won’t go beyond the boundaries of the yard. During the day he sleeps, fitfully, surfacing every couple of hours to demand a cup of coffee or a sandwich, most of which he leaves uneaten, and to pace around the edges of the yard, smoking, peering into the trees and twitching at the strident buzzes of grasshoppers. Sometimes he watches telly with the little ones on the sofa, and does Peppa Pig noises to make Alanna laugh. Once he kicks a football around the yard with Liam for a while, till the rustles among the trees make him edgy and he heads inside again.
At night he’s awake: Trey hears the faint insistent yammer of the telly, the creak of the floorboards as he moves around, the front door opening as he looks out and then closing again. She can’t tell who he’s afraid of. It could be Cal, or the men of the townland. In her opinion, he’d be right to be afraid of either, or both.
He’s still afraid of Nealon, even though the interviews went smooth as silk. Sheila dredged up some reserve of energy and became suddenly more ordinary than Trey has ever seen her, politely offering tea and glasses of water, laughing at the detective’s jokes about the weather and the roads. Maeve and Liam, both of whom have known the Guards for the enemy since the first time Noreen threatened them for robbing sweets, explained to Nealon without a blink that Johnny never left the house on Sunday; Alanna peeped out shyly from under Trey’s arm, and dived back into hiding whenever Nealon looked at her. Every one of them was perfect, like they were born and bred to it. When the sound of the detective’s car faded down the mountainside, Johnny was cock-a-hoop, hugging everyone he could catch, praising them for their brains and their bravery, and assuring them that they’re out of the woods with not a thing to worry about in the world. He still jumps every time he hears an engine.
Trey doesn’t stay within the yard. She’s as restless as her dad, not from fear, but from waiting. She has no way of knowing whether the detective believed her story, whether he’s following it up, whether he’s getting anywhere, or whether he ignored it completely. She has no idea how long it should take for the story to work, if it’s going to. Cal could tell her, but she doesn’t have Cal.
She goes out; not down to the village and not to Cal’s, but to meet up with her mates, in the evening. They climb walls in a ruined cottage and sit there, sharing a packet of robbed cigarettes and a few bottles of cider that Aidan’s brother bought for him. Below them, the sun sits heavily on the horizon, turning the west a sullen red.
Her mates, none of whom are from Ardnakelty, haven’t heard anything useful. They don’t really give a shite about the detective; mainly they want to talk about Rushborough’s ghost, which apparently is already haunting the mountain. Callum Bailey claims a see-through gray man came at him through the trees, snapping its jaws and ripping down branches. He’s only saying it to scare Chelsea Moylan so he can walk her home and maybe shift her, but of course after that Lauren O’Farrell saw the ghost too. Lauren will believe anything and has to be part of everything, so Trey tells her there were men in a car hanging around the mountain the night Rushborough got killed. Straightaway, easy as that, Lauren was looking out her window that night and saw car headlights going up the mountain and stopping halfway. She’ll tell everyone who’ll listen, and sooner or later someone will tell the detective.