Chapter Fifteen #3
“Them’s the facts, Sunny Jim. No use shooting the messenger.” Mart throws Cal an inquiring slantways look. “Are you having second thoughts about putting Tommy in a bog? Just outa interest, like, so I know what’s what.”
“No,” Cal says. It takes him a second to make himself say it. “I need him gone, but not like that. What I need is the same thing you and the rest of the guys need: for people around here to quit buying into Tommy’s bullshit and run his uppity ass out of town.”
“Well, that’s great news,” Mart says happily, giving Cal a clap on the shoulder. “Isn’t it a beautiful thing when everyone’s on the same page?”
“Yeah,” Cal says. “We’re not gonna get it done by spray-painting shit on walls and telling people Eugene has a phone full of underage nudes.”
Mart smiles at him. “Then we’ll get it done some other way. Don’t worry, Jean-Claude: we’ve got your missus’s back.”
“You said that before,” Cal says. “You said no one was gonna find out that story came from her.”
Mart regards him steadily. The smile has fallen away. He says, “I told no one.”
“Yeah,” Cal says. “But Tommy found out. And you knew he would.”
“I knew he might,” Mart agrees. “But ’twas spread the word or else sit back and let that fella sell off this townland to the highest bidder, so I took the chance. Nothing personal; sure, I’da done the same if ’twas you in the firing line, or meself, or Bobby or P.J.”
His voice is tranquil and inexorable. Small echoes eddy in the high corners of the sheep shed. “I know you’re thinking you’da done different,” he says. “But that’s an easy thing to tell yourself, when you’re not the one holding all that in your hands.”
Cal says nothing. Probably he should be heading to Lena’s, but he can’t make himself go to her with nothing but this shitpile to offer.
Hey honey, guess what, this whole town is saying you’re a psycho killer, that sucks huh?
He would be failing her, starkly and irredeemably, at a level that might well crack them apart beyond repair.
If he’s going to give her this with one hand, he needs to have a way of fixing it ready in the other.
“And anyhow,” Mart adds, in a different tone, “this is what you’d call a temporary nuisance. We’ll get that fucker outa Lena’s hair; you’ve got my word on that. For better, for worse, isn’t that it?”
“You’re not married to her,” Cal says. “You don’t even like her.”
“I never said that,” Mart corrects him. “She doesn’t like me, is what I said.
I’d call her a woman of poor taste, only that’d be impolite to present company.
Either way, but, she’s your woman, bucko.
We won’t stand by and see her hauled off to jail, and you after treating my ewe’s scald. On top of everything else.”
The words hit Cal strangely. Mart could be bullshitting to keep him on side, but he doesn’t think so, not this time.
He feels some change in himself, or in his place within the sweep of fields and houses and rain that spreads all around the quiet shed: a new weight, a gravitational pull that he didn’t know he had.
“OK,” he says. “Good to hear.”
“D’you know what I’d love, Sunny Jim?” Mart says. He fishes around in his pants pocket for his phone, a battered old model with hairy Scotch tape over the cracks, and checks the time. “I’d murder a nice toastie. And a pint or two on the side. Will we head down to Seán óg’s for our lunch?”
“Go for it,” Cal says. “I got stuff to do.”
“No you don’t, sunshine,” Mart says. “You don’t fancy sitting in the pub wondering who there believes you’re a dirty aul’ man, and I don’t blame you: that’d curdle your pint, all right.
But ’tis no use hiding away. We’ve got work to do, so you’ll drink your sour pint and like it.
I’m paid up with Barty; how about yourself? ”
Barty lets regulars run tabs, but as the tab rises his attitude gets correspondingly saltier, until people can’t take it any more and pay up, which hits the reset button. Anyone who’s too far in the red isn’t getting any toasted sandwich. “Close enough,” Cal says.
“Then we’ll head down to Seán’s,” Mart says, “and I’ll see if a few of them other reprobates fancy joining us.” He opens the pen and gives the ewe a nudge with his toe, to start her heading back where she belongs.
When the knock at Lena’s door finally comes, it’s almost a relief.
She’s been moving on autopilot, going to work, doing her shopping in town, dressing and eating and washing when she’s supposed to, waiting for the axe to fall.
Her limbs feel numb and heavy, like she’s moving under cold water, and her muscles are so tight that sometimes it’s hard to breathe.
No one at work seems to notice anything amiss.
Lena thinks probably she should be glad of this, but in fact she finds it terrifying.
It feels like she’s moving on a parallel plane to everyone else, already a ghost.
The only person who’s come to the house is Trey. Lena didn’t open the door, and in the end she went away again, with Banjo trailing despondently behind her. Noreen and Cal have texted, and Lena’s left the texts unread. Nothing else has happened. All she can do is await Tommy’s pleasure.
Before she answers the knock, she shuts the dogs in the kitchen, with the back door left a crack open. “Stay,” she tells them. If she doesn’t come back, it could be a while before anyone notices she’s gone. The dogs will find someone who’ll look after them.
When she opens the front door, she finds a Garda car in her yard and Breege, the friendly Guard who came to ask her about Rachel, on the step. “How’s it going?” Breege says cheerfully. “Can I come in for a few minutes?”
Lena sees Cal’s face. Her heart rises and crashes down. She says, “Did something happen?”
“Ah, no,” Breege assures her, hands going up. “Everything’s grand; I’m only here for a wee chat. Can I come in?”
After a moment Lena stands aside. “That’s the worst of this job,” Breege says, as she follows Lena into the kitchen.
“Everyone thinks you’re bad news. Honest to God, sometimes I wish I’d gone into plumbing; everyone’s always delighted to see a plumber.
And I wouldn’t be out and about on a Saturday morning. ”
“Bed,” Lena says to the dogs, shutting the back door. She watches Breege’s eyes move around the kitchen, a Guard’s eyes, noting everything from the toast left uneaten on the table to the heap of washing she hasn’t ironed. “Will you have a cup of tea?”
“Go on, so,” Breege says, grinning at her.
Breege has her thick brown hair up in a bun, and no makeup except a smudge of concealer on a spot.
Lena reckons her face—good-natured and able for anything, the face of the neighbor you automatically turn to in trouble—must be worth its weight in gold on the job.
“That’s a great pair of dogs you’ve got there. ”
Nellie and Daisy have gone to their corner, but they can feel Lena’s tension and they’re watching, on the alert. “They’re good dogs,” Lena says. She flicks the kettle on and gets out the teapot and mugs.
Breege pulls out a chair and makes herself comfortable at the table.
She has the kind of sturdy, generous figure that automatically looks at home; on her, even the uniform is cozy and reassuring.
“I’ve a greyhound,” she says. “I thought I’d get in shape, giving him all that exercise, but you can see how that turned out.
” She laughs and slaps one broad thigh. “Come here, actually, have you lost weight since the last time I saw you?”
Lena has. All her clothes are loose. “God, I wouldn’t have a clue,” she says, putting the mugs on the table and taking the breakfast things away. “I don’t keep track.”
“Last time I was here, it was about that poor girl in the river,” Breege says. Her eyes are still doing their work, but now they’re on Lena, scanning her hair, her clothes, her hands. “How’ve you been getting on since?”
“Not too bad,” Lena says. She gets the milk out of the fridge and is relieved to see that it’s in date. “It’s been a tough time round here, but we’ll get through it.”
“Tougher on you than most. It’s not easy, being the last one to see a person alive.”
The kettle boils. “I didn’t know Rachel well,” Lena says, pouring. “I knew her mother, back in school. I’m upset for her, mostly.”
Breege cocks her head, waiting for more. When Lena outwaits her, she says, “You’ve got people worried about you, girl.”
Lena starts to see what Tommy has sent her. She says, “Who’s worried?”
“Sure, if I told you that, it’d only lead to awkwardness,” Breege says reasonably. “It doesn’t matter, anyhow. They want to be sure you’re OK, just.”
She’s right, it doesn’t matter. Tommy didn’t do the job himself.
Probably he, or more likely Clodagh, got a woman to do it; someone who would carry conviction, because she could convince herself she was genuinely worried.
Lena thinks of the women she drank and laughed with at the funeral, and wonders which one.
“Why would I not be OK?” she asks, baffled.
“You haven’t been acting like yourself, is what I’ve heard. You’ve been awful worked up about what happened to Rachel. And you’ve been saying a few things that have people concerned.”
Lena brings the teapot and the milk over to the table, and sits down opposite Breege.
She doesn’t ask for details. Some of it will be true, the stuff she handed Tommy like a gift; some of it will be made up, but she has no way of proving that.
She can feel Breege assessing her: what kind of woman she is, what kind of crazy she is, what strategies will work best here. It’s like having hands all over her.