“He ever catch one?” he asks.
“He’s caught a few rats,” Cal says. “He’d give a lot to catch a rook, with all the shit they give him, but I don’t think much of his chances.”
“You never know, man,” Nealon says, wagging a finger. “Don’t write him off. He’s got the persistence, anyhow. I’m a big believer in the aul’ persistence.”
The swallows, unworried by Rip’s persistence, loop blithely above his head like he’s been put there for their enjoyment. Cal would bet Nealon wants a smoke with his beer, but he hasn’t asked permission; he’s being the perfect guest, not presuming on Cal’s hospitality. Cal doesn’t offer. He isn’t aiming to be the perfect host.
“We got the postmortem results back,” Nealon says. “Your man Blake died somewhere between midnight and two in the morning, give or take. He took a fierce belt from a hammer, or something like it, to the back of his head. That would’ve probably done the job on its own, over an hour or two, only it didn’t get the chance. Someone stabbed him three times in the chest. Got the heart, boom, finished him off inside a minute.”
“That woulda taken some strength,” Cal says.
Nealon shrugs. “A bit, yeah. A little kid couldn’t’ve done it. But Blake was out cold, remember. Our fella had plenty of time to pick his spot, lean on the knife to get it through the muscle. You wouldn’t need to be a great big bodybuilder.” He takes another swig of beer and grins. “Imagine that: a bad bastard like Blake, getting taken out by some scrawny little bollox from the arse-end of nowhere. You’d be scarlet for him.”
“I bet he never saw that coming,” Cal agrees. He thinks of Blake in the pub, the arrogant sweep of his eyes around the alcove, faintly amused by the halfwit peasants who believed they had the reins. It strikes him that he’s hardly thought about Blake once since he walked away from the body. Alive, the guy spread through the whole townland like poison through water. Now it feels like he barely even existed; all that’s left of him is hassle.
“So that does fuck-all to narrow things down,” Nealon says. “One thing that’s going to help, but: the man was a bleedin’ mess. Covered in trace evidence: dirt, fibers, bits of plants, bits of insect, cobwebs, rust flakes, coal dust. Some of it was stuck to the blood, so it got there after he was kilt. And not all of it came from the place where you found him.”
“I figured he was moved,” Cal says. And, when Nealon raises an inquiring eyebrow: “It didn’t look like there was enough blood.”
“Once a cop,” Nealon says, giving him a nod. “You were bang on.”
“Well,” Cal says, “that fits with what the kid saw.”
Nealon doesn’t bite on that. “And,” he says, “you know what all that trace means, yeah? When we find the place where he was killed, or the car he was moved in, we should have no trouble showing a match.” His eyes skim leisurely across Cal’s back yard, pausing for a second with mild interest on the shed. “The problem’s pinning them down. Sure, you know yourself, I can’t just get a warrant to search every building and every car in the townland. I need a nice little bitta probable cause.”
“Damn,” Cal says. “Long time since I heard those two words. I don’t miss ’em one bit.”
Nealon laughs. He stretches out his legs and lets out something between a sigh and a groan. “Jaysus, this is great. I needed a break. This place is doing my head in.”
“They take some getting used to,” Cal says.
“I’m not talking about the people, man. I’m well used to bog monsters. I’m talking about the actual place. If this fella had got himself killed in a city, or even a half-decent town, I could’ve tracked his every move, and yours, and everyone else’s, off your phones. Sure, you’ve done it yourself. Easy as watching a game of Pac-Man, these days.” Nealon mimes with his fingers in the air. “Beep-beep-beep, here comes Blake, beep-beep-beep, here comes one of them ghost yokes to eat him all up; beep-beep-beep, here comes me with my handcuffs to take the ghost yoke away. In this place, but…” He casts his eyes up to heaven. “Christ al-bleedin’-mighty. There’s fuck-all reception. There’s fuck-all wi-fi. The GPS works grand until you get too close to the mountain, or in among trees, and then it loses the plot altogether. I know Blake was somewhere near his cottage till around midnight, and after that, fuck me. He’s halfway up this side of the mountain, a minute later he’s on the other side, then he’s back, then he’s halfway to Boyle…That goes on all fuckin’ night long.”
He shakes his head and consoles himself with a swig of his beer. “Once I get a decent line on a suspect,” he says, “I can try tracking him, but it’ll be no better. And that’s if the fella even brought his phone along. Nowadays, with all the CSI, they know more about forensics than I do.”
“One time I pulled in this guy that broke into a house,” Cal says. “Kid had watched way too many cop shows. Started giving me a hard time about whether I had his DNA, fibers, I don’t know what-all. I showed him his dumb ass on CCTV running away. He said that’s from the back, you can’t prove it was me. I said yeah, but see that bystander watching you run? You’re reflected in his cornea. We enhanced the image and matched it to the biometric data from your mug shot. Dumb shit folded like origami.”
That gets a great big laugh out of Nealon. “Jaysus, that’s beautiful. It’d be great if this one turned out to be that thick, but…” He’s stopped laughing. Instead he sighs. “If he was, I’d have a line on him by now. But we’ve talked to every man in this townland, and not one of ’em jumps out at me.”
Cal says, knowing he’s taking the bait, “You’re sticking to this townland?”
Nealon’s eyes flick to him for a second, intrigued and assessing. “Theresa Reddy’s story checks out,” he says. “As far as I can check it, anyway. Her da says he heard voices and heard her going out that night, but he thought she just snuck out meeting some pals, so he left her to it. The ma says she heard nothing, but she remembers Johnny sitting up in bed like he was listening to something, and then lying back down again. And my lads found another kid, round by Kilhone, who says she saw headlights going up the mountain and stopping halfway.”
“Well,” Cal says. “That should help narrow things down.”
“You could still be right about Johnny,” Nealon reassures him. “He could have pals that’d be willing to come help him move a body, if the shit hit the fan. And himself and the missus could be lying their arses off. Theresa didn’t check if her daddy was in his bed before she went out.”
“You get any tire tracks?” Cal asks. “Footprints?”
“Ah, yeah. Both, all round where the body was found. Only little bits of them here and there, but; not enough to get a match. Those bleedin’ sheep got rid of the rest. And with the weather the way it’s been, we can’t tell which tracks were fresh and which were there for days. Weeks, even.” He reaches down for his glass. “Dublin may not be this good-looking, but at least there I don’t have to worry about sheep trampling my evidence.”
He laughs, and Cal laughs along.
“So Theresa’s story holds,” Nealon says, “so far. And it’s great to have things narrowed down to Ardnakelty. But not one man in the place admits to being up that mountain.”
“I’d be more surprised if they did,” Cal says. “Guilty or innocent.”
Nealon snorts. “True enough. And sure, it’s early days. I’m only after doing the preliminary stuff. I haven’t gone at anyone hard; it’s all been the tippy-toes and the nice light touch.” He smiles at Cal. “Time to start rattling the cages.”
He’ll do it well, and thoroughly. Cal can’t tell whether he likes the guy or not—he can’t see him straight, through all the layers of things going on between them—but he would have liked working with him.