Lena says, giving a T-shirt a neat flick to straighten it, “I’ve got nothing to say about Cal to anyone.”
Mart laughs. “God almighty, you’re the same as you ever were. I remember one morning—you were a wee bit of a thing, only this high—you came marching past my gate wearing your First Communion getup, veil and all, and a pair of welly boots. I asked you where were you off to, and you stuck your chin up just like you’re doing now, and you said to me, ‘That’s classified information.’ Where were you headed, at all?”
“Haven’t a notion,” Lena says. “That’s forty years ago.”
“Well,” Mart says, sprinkling tobacco into his rollie paper, “you’re the same today, only now you’re no wee bit of a thing. You’re the woman of the house now, is what you are—whichever house ye settle on in the end. If there’s trouble with the man or the child, you’re where people will come. And you’re where I’m coming.”
None of this is surprising to Lena; it’s what she bargained for. She’s having second thoughts all the same.
“Lucky for me,” she says, “neither one of them’s the type to make trouble. Unless they’ve no choice.”
Mart doesn’t answer that. “I like your fella,” he says. “I’m not the sentimental type, so I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say I’ve got fond of him, but I like the man. I’ve respect for him. I wouldn’t want to see him come to any harm.”
“ ‘Nice fiancé you’ve got there,’ ” Lena says. “ ‘Be a shame if anything was to happen to him.’ ”
Mart, tilting his head to lick his cigarette paper, glances at her. “I know you’re not mad about the idea of yourself and myself being on the same side. But that’s where we’ve landed. You’ll haveta make the best of it.”
Lena has had enough of Mart’s sidelong ways. She leaves her washing and turns to face him. “How did you have in mind?”
“The fine Detective Nealon’s been all round the townland,” Mart says. “Interviewing people, like, although he’s not calling it that. ‘Would you have time for a chat?’ That’s what he says, when he does show up at the door. Very civilized; as if you could say to him, ‘Go on outa that, young fella, I’ve the dinner burning on me,’ and off he’d trot, no problem. Has he been round to you?”
“Not yet. Or I missed him, maybe.”
“I’d say he’s starting off with the men,” Mart says. “And I’d say I know why. He said to me—halfway through our wee chat, all casual like—‘Were you up on the mountain at all, Sunday night?’ I told him the farthest I went from home was the back garden, when my fella Kojak here had a bitta business with a fox. And Detective Nealon explained to me that he’s been told there was a buncha lads messing about up the mountain, just about the time Rushborough died and just about the place he was found. And he needs to talk to them, ’cause they mighta seen or heard something valuable to the investigation. He can do a voice lineup with his witness, if he has to, but it’d be easier on everyone if the lads cut to the chase and come tell him all about it.” Mart examines his cigarette and nips away a loose thread of tobacco. “That, now,” he says, “that’s what you might call problematic.”
“Cal said nothing like that to Nealon,” Lena says.
“He didn’t, o’ course. I never thought he did. Nor does anyone.”
“Then what’s he got to do with it?”
“Not a sausage,” Mart says promptly. “That’s what I’m telling you: I’d like to see things stay that way. If I haveta have a blow-in living next door, I could do a lot worse.”
“He’s no blow-in now,” Lena says. “He’s my man.”
Mart’s eyes flick over her, not in the mindless way a man assesses a woman, but with thought behind them. It’s the way he might assess a sheepdog, trying to prize out its capabilities and its temperament, whether it might turn vicious and how well it would come to heel.
“ ’Twas a good move, getting engaged,” he says again. “I haven’t heard a whisper about your fella since you done that. But if Detective Nealon keeps on making a nuisance of himself, I will. I’ll be honest with you: you haven’t the same clout as, we’ll say, Noreen, or Angela Maguire, or another woman that’s coaching the camogie and helping out with the parish fundraiser and spreading gossip over the tea and custard creams. If Mr. Hooper was Noreen’s man, or Angela’s, no one would touch him with a ten-foot pole. As it is, they’d prefer to leave him be, outa respect for you as well as for him. But if they haveta, they’ll hand him over to Detective Nealon tied up in a bow. If I haveta, so will I.”
Lena knew all this already, but coming from him and like this, it reaches her in new terms. Cal is a foreigner, and she’s spent the last thirty years trying to make herself into one. She only ever managed to get one foot outside the circle, but when the enemy is closing in, it’s enough.
She says, “You can hand over whatever you like. Nealon can’t throw a man in jail with no evidence.”
Mart, unfazed, takes off his straw hat to wave it leisurely in front of his face. “D’you know something that gives me a pain in the backside?” he asks. “Shortsightedness. ’Tis a feckin’ epidemic. I’ll believe a man has good sense—or a woman, or a child—and then, outa the blue, they’ll come out with some piece of nonsense that shows they haven’t spent two minutes thinking it through. And bang goes another little bitta my faith in humanity. I haven’t enough in stock that I can afford to go losing much more of it. Honest to God, I’m ready to start begging people on my knees to just take the two minutes and think things through.”
He blows smoke and watches its slow spread in the motionless air. “I don’t know who fed Nealon that loada flimflam about lads up on the mountain,” he says. “It coulda been the bold Johnny, o’ course, but somehow I don’t reckon he’d go outa his way to stir up the townland against him just now, unless he had no choice. If Nealon arrests him it’ll be a different story altogether, but for now, I’d say Johnny’s got enough sense that he’s keeping his mouth shut and his ears open. So let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that ’twas young Theresa Reddy that did the talking. Will you humor me on that for a moment?”
Lena says nothing.
“And in exchange, we’ll say you’re right, and there’s not enough to tie Mr. Hooper to the murder. Or we’ll say he doesn’t appeal to Detective Nealon as a suspect—sure, aren’t the cops known for sticking together, the whole world over? And we’ll say there’s no evidence to put anyone else up the mountain that night, either. There’s poor aul’ Detective Nealon, empty-handed—except he’s got one person, ready and waiting, in his sights.”
Lena’s hands feel weak before she understands why. She stays still and watches him.
“There’s one person that admits straight out they were at the scene of the crime. They say there was a few men there, but they’ve nothing to back that up. And they mighta had a good reason to want Paddy Englishman dead. We all know Rushborough had a hold on Johnny, and we all know Johnny Reddy’d sell his own flesh and blood to save his own skin, not a bother on him.”
He watches Lena from under his tangle of eyebrows, steadily fanning himself. Somewhere a sheep calls, a familiar undemanding sound, far away in the fields.
“Think it through,” Mart says. “This isn’t the time for shortsightedness. What’ll happen next? And then what’ll happen after that?”
Lena says, “What is it you want off me?”
“It was wee Johnny Reddy that killed Rushborough,” Mart says, gently but with great finality. “ ’Tis a sad thing to say about a man we all knew from a baba, but let’s be honest: Johnny was always a charmer, but he was never what you’d call a man of conscience. There’s people saying Johnny wouldn’ta done it because Rushborough was more good to him alive than dead, but the fact is, the two of them brought over some unfinished business from London. Johnny owed your man a fair bitta cash, and your man wasn’t the type that’d take well to being left outa pocket. That’s why Johnny came home: he was hoping people here had enough fondness for one of their own that they’d dip into their savings to keep him from getting his legs broke, or worse. And that’s why Rushborough came after him: he wasn’t going to have Johnny giving him the slip. There might be a few people that heard some wild rumor about gold, but I’d say that’s a story Johnny put about to explain what the two of them were doing here.”