Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
Seán óg’s is its usual Saturday-lunchtime self, unless you look more closely.
Beneath the peaceful rhythms of conversation and the smell of toasted cheese, it has the edgy air of a place under a conditional truce.
A clump of the McHugh brothers are hunched protectively over their pints; all the voices are running a notch too low, tucked away under the TV football commentary like their talk needs to be kept close.
The families who would normally stop by for lunch after the weekend shopping are missing; only men are here.
Only some of them nod to Cal and Mart as they come in.
Senan and Francie and P.J. are in the alcove, around a table of pints and toasted sandwiches. Bobby isn’t there. Cal doesn’t ask.
“I shouted ye these,” Senan says, pushing glasses and plates across the table. “If ye didn’t want ham and cheese, tough shite.”
“Myself and the big fella’ll eat anything,” Mart says, pulling up a stool. “You don’t complain about the toastie fillings at a council of war. Tommy Moynihan’s after putting it about that Lena Dunne kilt that poor young one. He’s aiming to send her to jail for it.”
Francie’s overgrown eyebrows go up, which is as far as Francie goes towards showing emotion. “Ah, now,” P.J. says, shocked, putting down his toastie. “That’s dirty, that is.”
“Angela heard that, all right,” Senan says. He’s lowered his voice. To Cal: “I’d say that fucker’s in your bad books now.”
“He already was,” Cal said. “But yeah, I’m not gonna take this.”
“Damn right,” Senan says. “We shoulda sorted that fella a long time back.”
“Will we burn him out?” Francie asks.
Cal finds himself genuinely touched by the offer, which he knows to be sincere. He raises his pint to Francie.
Mart is less impressed. “We’re not burning him out,” he says, opening his toastie to squeeze a mayonnaise packet carefully onto the ham.
“Wouldja ever think things through, for fuck’s sake?
What’ll that do, only get Tommy a loada extra sympathy and a big aul’ insurance payout?
And that’s the best-case scenario. Worst case, the man gets some kinda evidence and we’re all up for arson.
Maybe you’ve got no better way to spend the next ten years, but I do. ”
“Then what’s your fuckin’ plan?” Francie demands.
“That’s what we’re here for, sure,” Mart says, gesturing expansively at the company with the mayo packet. “Brainstorming. Blue-skying. Thinking outside the box. Implementing solutions.”
“I’ll tell you what I figure we do,” Cal says.
His mind cleared, back in Mart’s sheep shed, as that shift within him and around him clicked into place.
For the first time in weeks, he’s thinking not in caged circles, but in patterns that lead somewhere.
He’s been turning this over all the way to the pub, while Mart drove with one hand and used the other to point out various issues with the state of the fields they passed. “I figure we get loud.”
“He’s already loud,” Francie says, pointing his chin at Senan. “You’re halfway there.”
“I haveta be loud,” Senan says, “to get things through your thick head. What’re you on about?”
He’s asking Cal. All of them have leaned in tighter, around the table.
“Eugene told Rachel Holohan what him and his daddy had planned,” Cal says, “and Rachel wasn’t happy about it. I know that part for a fact. I think she was gonna try and stop them, so Tommy killed her to shut her up.”
There’s a silence. P.J.’s mouth is open.
“You’re not the only one who’s thought that,” Senan says.
“Yeah,” Cal says. “That’s my point. You bet your ass plenty of people are thinking the same thing, only they’re all scared to say it out loud. Maybe some of them know something solid, and they’re scared to say that, too.”
“How would anyone know anything?” Francie demands.
“This place?” Cal says. “I can’t buy low-fat butter without half the townland asking me if I got cholesterol.
Someone knows something.” Francie tilts his head, reluctantly acknowledging the justice of this.
“I already got one person who Rachel told that she was gonna try stopping the Moynihans. I’d bet cash money there’s more out there.
” Cal is stretching it a little bit—Rachel didn’t get that concrete with Sheila—but he doesn’t care.
“That won’t prove Tommy done anything on her,” Senan says. He’s listening intently, watching his pint glass as he turns it in slow neat circles on the table. “If he did, he won’t be shouting it from the rooftops. He’s no fool.”
“Tommy’s not some evil genius supervillain,” Cal says.
“I’ve seen guys a lot smarter’n him do bad shit, and every one of them fucked up somehow.
Maybe Tommy dropped hints about what he did, to scare someone into line, or Eugene got sloppy drunk with his buddies.
Or everyone keeps telling me Tommy doesn’t do his own dirty work; maybe he got someone to do this for him, and that guy isn’t as careful as Tommy. ”
“ ’Twould be like him, all right,” Mart agrees. “Keep talking, Jean-Claude. I’m enjoying meself.” He takes a huge bite of toastie and watches Cal like he’s the best show on TV in a long time.
“From all’s I hear,” Cal says, “Rachel was a really good kid. People cared about her. If anyone knows anything, they’re not thinking, What the hell, good riddance.
They’re out there wishing they could do something about it.
” That gets nods of agreement from Senan and Mart.
“Right now, there’s nothing they can do.
They’re not gonna go to the police. They’re not gonna do anything to put themselves on Tommy’s shit list. But if we start telling the world straight out that we reckon he killed Rachel, there’s something they can do.
They can bring what they’ve got to one of us, and let us take it from there. We’re the ones on the shit list.”
There’s a silence. Senan sinks half his pint; Francie stares moodily into his.
P.J., his long legs twisted around the legs of his stool, is working away absently at his toastie and trying to puzzle this out.
Mart licks mayonnaise off his fingers and watches them all with interest. When he gets to Cal, he throws him a big cheerful wink.
Cal drinks and waits. He knows just how deeply he’s going against the grain.
Centuries where the only safe way was the hidden way have bent this place’s DNA like hard prevailing winds bend trees; Ardnakelty has been formed to the circuitous, the elliptical, the plausibly deniable.
Working in the open goes against every instinct, on a level as fundamental as poking yourself in the eyeball.
“You won’t put Tommy in jail,” Francie says. “Whatever you get, he’ll have a dozen witnesses to say it’s all bollocks.”
“I can live without him going to jail,” Cal says, “and so can you. What we need is him out of our business. We just need enough solid stuff that we can go to Moynihan and say, ‘Hey, motherfucker, back off, or else we take this to the Guards, and you can deal with them while your investors run for the hills.’ Like you said”—he nods to Mart—“the guy’s got scale.
He’s long-sighted. He’s not gonna go all in on a losing hand just ’cause he started.
He’s gonna fold while he’s ahead. Drop the compulsory purchases, drop Lena, get us off his back.
Then get Eugene on the council, build houses or some shit on the land he’s got, and wait for some other chance to crown himself king of this place. ”
“Now this,” Mart says, leaning back on his stool and pointing at Cal like he’s a prize ram, “d’ye see this? This is why we need a bitta new blood around here, every now and then. Don’t be telling me any of ye woulda come up with this, ’cause I know fine well ye wouldn’t.”
“Tommy won’t lie back and take it,” Francie says. “He’ll do something.”
“Yeah,” Cal says. “No point pretending he won’t. So we need to get the word out as loud and as fast as we can. Once we’ve got enough on Tommy, he can’t do a damn thing to us. Up until then, though: yeah, he’s gonna do plenty.”
Senan is turning his glass carefully between his fingers again. “If you put that around,” he says, “it’ll get back to Claire and Fintan.”
“I know,” Cal says. This has been on his mind, too. The Holohans have too much to bear already. “I’m barely acquainted with them, but someone who knows them should go talk to them. So this doesn’t hit them out of the blue.”
All four guys recoil. “Jesus, Sunny Jim,” Mart says, shocked. “Are you outa your head?”
“No fuckin’ way,” Francie says.
Cal expected this reaction, but it irks him anyway. “OK,” he says. “Then what did you have in mind?”
“Claire and Fintan’ll have to manage the best they can,” Mart says gently but inflexibly, both to Cal and to Senan, “the same as the rest of us. They’ve more right to know the story than anyone, sure, and the likes of me showing up at their door to break it to them won’t make it any easier to take. ”
Senan glances up from his glass. “What if there’s nothing out there to get?” he asks. “Say we’re wrong, and Tommy never done anything on Rachel. Then what?”
“Then we’re in deep shit,” Cal says. “But I don’t think we’re wrong. Eugene thinks his daddy did something to her, and he oughta know.”
“Go at Eugene, so. Instead of bringing Tommy down on us.”
“I’m gonna talk to Eugene,” Cal says. “Just not yet. If I rock up with nothing and go ‘Gee, Eugene, how come you think your daddy killed your girlfriend?,’ he’s gonna tell me to go fuck myself. If I want to make that conversation work, I need to bring something good with me.”
“Then get it on the QT,” Senan says. “We’ll all go out and have a few chats, feel out who knows what, subtle-like. Then you can go in and get the goods. You were a detective, for fuck’s sake; no better man for the job.”