Chapter Ten #2
Mrs. Duggan snorts. “Anything’s an accidental if the coroner feels sorry for a poor widda woman. How would you not know? You were the last one that saw him, and the first one that found him. You’d know.”
Lena knows better than to lie. “Sean drank,” she says, “and he had medication for when his nerves were at him. He took both at once, when he shouldn’ta, and his heart stopped.
” Her mouth forming the shapes of the words feels numb, an alien thing whose movements have nothing to do with her.
“I’ve no way of knowing whether he did it on purpose, or whether he just lost track. ”
“Everyone’s always got no way of knowing,” Mrs. Duggan says. “ ’Tis awful convenient altogether. You’re no fool. The two of ye were always together. You woulda seen it coming. Didja?”
“I saw it coming for ten years,” Lena says. “That doesn’t mean it came.”
Mrs. Duggan’s flat pale eyes are on hers, unblinking. Her cigarette is burning away forgotten. “Did he not leave a note?”
“No,” Lena says. The room feels sealed, like the door vanished when she closed it behind her. “Nothing.”
“Where was he?”
“In the bed,” Lena says.
“Was he already gone when you found him?”
“He was, yeah,” Lena says. She keeps her gaze blank, but she can feel Mrs. Duggan groping through her mind, probing the corners, exploring the silent room where she lay down and held Sean, the same way she had held him thousands of times before, while he turned cold.
That room was hers and Sean’s alone, and now Mrs. Duggan is there too.
At last Mrs. Duggan nods, satisfied. She takes a long drag of her cigarette, eyes half closed to savor it. The gas fire sings its shrill single note.
“If I knew,” she says. “One way or the other. Wouldja ask me?”
Lena says, “You know nothing about Sean.”
Mrs. Duggan chuckles. “Maybe I do and maybe I don’t,” she says. “Wouldja ask?”
“No,” Lena says.
Mrs. Duggan’s eyebrows lift. “You don’t want that,” she says, “but you want all kindsa shite about the Moynihans. What for? Lena Dunne’s above this place’s goings-on. Why d’you care, all of a sudden, what Tommy Moynihan’s at?”
Lena is done. She says, “You’ve got all you’re getting.”
Mrs. Duggan is too expert to try and push someone who’s reached her limit.
“For now, anyhow,” she agrees. She readjusts herself to sit up straighter in her chair, in slow, effortful notches, and tamps out her cigarette.
Her pleasure is over; she’s getting down to business.
“Tommy Moynihan’s not trying to run the Reddys outa town,” she says.
“He wants them outa that house, is all. He wants that field, and Rory Dunne won’t sell the house out from under the poor fatherless childer. ”
Lena says, “Why would he want the field that bad?”
“That’d be extra,” Mrs. Duggan says, “only for ’tis the same as your other question.
” She smiles at Lena. “We think alike, you and me. I called Tommy in here just a month or two back, to ask him what he wants all that land for.” She chuckles.
“He tried to make out he came outa charity, brightening up a poor old woman’s day, but we both knew better.
Tommy likes to think he’s the one that gives the orders in this place, but when I called him, he came running like a scared pup.
He was right to. I’m not fond of being kept waiting. ”
Lena’s heart is still going too hard. She breathes slowly and pictures Cal, moving about his business in the small warm kitchen, whistling along to Johnny Cash while he peels potatoes.
“Tommy’s getting old,” Mrs. Duggan says.
“When men start getting old, they do get all in a tizzy about what they’re leaving behind.
Like a buncha wee dogs running around pissing on lampposts, ’cause deep down they know all their yapping means nothing, and they’re desperate to leave their mark.
Tommy wants to make his mark.” Her lip curls in derision.
“He’s got the meatpacking plant doing that already,” Lena says.
Mrs. Duggan blows out a thin dismissive stream of air. “Ah, God, that wouldn’t do for the likes of Tommy. That’s small stuff. You mightn’ta noticed, keeping to yourself the way you do, but Tommy’s a man that thinks big. Isn’t that a great thing to have around the place?”
Her hand plays in the box of dominoes, picking them up and letting them fall through her fingers with little clicking noises. “You know there’s a factory going up over towards Kilhone,” she says, “making bits for computers. Everyone knows that, sure. Even you.”
“I heard,” Lena says.
“Here’s what most people don’t know,” Mrs. Duggan says.
“Awful hush-hush, so ’tis. There’s men in suits talking about it behind closed doors, but they wouldn’t want word getting out to the likes of us.
They’re after getting more investors in.
They want that factory bigger than they planned it. And for that, they need more land.”
She waits, her eyes hooded, stirring the dominoes with a finger, to see where Lena will follow this.
Lena says, “So Tommy’s buying up all the land he can, and then he’ll sell it to the factory at a markup.”
“You’re close,” Mrs. Duggan says. “Only what would a factory do with the bits he’s bought up? A few acres of Bobby Feeney’s here, and Fat Pat McHugh’s field over there, and a big aul’ herd of cattle in between. What use is that to anyone?”
Lena says nothing. Her side of the transaction is done; she’s not going to play guessing games.
Mrs. Duggan sees that, and is amused by it. “Let’s say Tommy had someone on the county council,” she says. The dominoes tick against each other. “Someone to guarantee the factory that, if they buy up Tommy’s bits and bobs, they’ll be able to get compulsory purchase orders on the land in between.”
Lena hears the rush rising in her ears as this floods outwards all around her like dark water, spreading across the townland, insatiable.
Probably there are farmers who’ll grab at the chance to offload their backbreaking existence of being battered about by the obdurate, unfathomable whims of bureaucracy and weather.
There are more who’ll go down shooting sooner than give up their land.
This is a depth charge; when it detonates, the whole townland will shake.
“Tommy’d be able to name his price, then,” Mrs. Duggan says.
“But that’s the start of it, not the heart of it.
Once the dust settles, Tommy’ll have alla the big men behind the factory owing him favors, and the council in his pocket, and everyone that’s left round here afraid to say boo to him in case they’d be next out.
He’ll own this place. He can make it into whatever he wants.
If Tommy wants a coupla new housing estates, or a golf club, he’ll get them.
If someone wants to put in one a them data centers, they’ll know who the go-to man is.
Tommy’ll leave his mark, all right. There’ll be nothing left of this townland, only Tommy’s mark. ”
Mrs. Duggan’s mouth spreads in a slow, wide smile of pleasure. “I’d say that mighta upset Rachel Holohan,” she says, “if she hadda known about it.”
It fits with what Rachel said, both to Lena and to Sheila. God knows Rachel would have lost friends, if her man was at the heart of something like this. And she was young enough, and na?ve enough, to believe there might be some way she could stop him.
Lena says, “Where’s Clodagh in alla this?”
“Clodagh’s where she’s always been,” Mrs. Duggan says. “Wherever’ll get the fanciest crown for her little prince. ’Twasn’t her idea—that one never had an idea of her own in her life—but she’s well on board.”
“How’d you get all that outa Tommy?” Lena asks. “I wouldn’t say he wants word getting around.”
Mrs. Duggan laughs, a low, private wheeze.
“I know that fella since he was born,” she says.
“Him and his mammy and daddy before him. I know a lot more than Tommy likes. He’s no fool; he knows better than to say no to me.
” The dominoes shift and click. “And anyhow, Tommy needed me. Same as everyone does, sooner or later. Mick Scully from Kilhone’s been on the council for twenty year now, and Tommy needs him gone; Mick wouldn’t stand for any compulsory purchases.
I told Tommy what to say to him, and now Mick’s stepping down at Christmas. ”
Lena says, “Has Tommy been here asking you about Rachel?”
Mrs. Duggan pushes the dominoes away from her. “Let’s have a wee guessing game,” she says. “How many people would you guess have called in to me to ask about Rachel Holohan?”
Lena says, “A few.” Plenty might want to, but Mrs. Duggan is an undertaking that no one enters into lightly.
“Not a one,” Mrs. Duggan says. “You’d think there’d be a queue at my door, wouldn’tja? You’d think this room would be knee-deep in jars of jam and boxes of chocolates. Not a one. No one’s asking.” She smiles at Lena. “Except for you. Asking your wee questions all round the townland.”
Everyone else either believes they know what took Rachel to the river, or doesn’t want to know; they’ve picked the story they need. The exception is Tommy Moynihan, who wants to know something badly enough to try and hire himself a PI, but not badly enough to walk in here and ask.
“That’s why I called you in here,” Mrs. Duggan says. “I’d high hopes of you—I still have, sure, even if you’re after letting me down today. Now you’ve got what you came for, what’ll you do with it? Will you keep it to yourself, or will you tell the world?”
“You’ll have to wait and see,” Lena says. She stands up. She’s been bracing her feet so hard that her legs have gone shaky; it takes her a second to be sure they’ll carry her.