“Not really. They’re not mates, not properly. Your man’s family was from round here. I think he mostly came ’cause of that.”
“Ah, yeah, one of those,” Nealon says tolerantly. Cal can’t place his accent. It’s faster than he’s used to, and flatter, with a snap that gives ordinary sentences an edge of challenge; it has a city ring. “What’s he like? Nice fella?”
Trey shrugs. “I only met him a coupla times. Didn’t take much notice. He was OK. Bit posh.”
“Will we see can we work out what time you found him?”
“Haven’t got a phone,” Trey explains. “Or a watch.”
“No worries,” Nealon says cheerfully. “We’ll do a bitta the aul’ maths instead. Let’s see do I have this right: you found the body, you walked straight down here to Mr. Hooper, and the pair of yous drove back up to the scene. Is that it?”
“Yeah.”
“Mr. Hooper rang us at nineteen minutes past six. How long before that did yous reach the scene?”
“Coupla minutes, only.”
“We’ll say quarter past, will we? Keep our lives simple. How long would you take driving up there?”
“Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. The road’s not great.”
“D’you see what I’m doing, now?” Nealon asks, smiling at Trey like a favorite uncle.
“Yeah. Counting backwards.”
Trey is playing it well: attentive, serious, cooperative but not over-helpful. It’s taken Cal a minute to realize that that’s what she’s doing, and why she seems suddenly unfamiliar. He’s never seen the kid play anything any way before. He didn’t know she had the capacity. He wonders if this is something she learned by watching Johnny, or if it was in there all along, waiting for the need to arise.
“That’s it,” Nealon says. “So we’re at around six o’clock when you left this place. How long were you here?”
“Like a minute. I told Cal and we went.”
“Still around six, so. How long would it take you to walk down here?”
“Half an hour, about. Maybe a bit more. I was walking quick. So I musta started just before half-five.”
Cal’s need to know what Trey is doing has intensified. In normal circumstances, the kid would no more volunteer an unnecessary word to a cop than she would gnaw off her own fingers.
“Now you’re sucking diesel,” Nealon says approvingly. “How long were you up by the body, before you headed here?”
Trey shrugs, reaching for her mug. For the first time, there’s a hitch in her rhythm. “Dunno. A bit.”
“A long bit?”
“Fifteen minutes, maybe. Coulda been twenty. Haven’t got a watch.”
“No problem,” Nealon says easily. Cal knows he caught the reluctance, and that he’ll come back to this once Trey thinks he’s forgotten about it. Cal has played out this scene so many times before that it feels like he’s seeing it double: once from his accustomed seat in Nealon’s chair, calibrating and recalibrating his balance of amiability and insistence as his assessment develops in more detail; once from his actual perspective, an entirely different place where the balance is a defensive one and the stakes are suddenly sky-high and visceral. He doesn’t like either position one little bit.
“So,” Nealon says, “what time’s that we’re at now? When you first found him?”
Trey thinks. She’s back on track, now that they’ve moved away from that gap by the body. “Like just after five, musta been.”
“There you go,” Nealon says, pleased. “We got there in the end. Didn’t I tell you?”
“Yeah. We got there.”
“Just after five,” Nealon says, tilting his head at a friendly angle, like a bushy dog’s. “That’s awful early to be up and about. Had you got plans?”
“Nah. I just…” Trey moves one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I heard noises, during the night. Wanted to see what was the story, had anything happened.”
That has to prick up Nealon’s ears, but he doesn’t show it. The guy knows what he’s doing. “Yeah? What kind of noises?”
“People talking. And a car.”
“Just before you got up? Or earlier in the night?”
“Earlier. I wasn’t sleeping right; too hot. Woke up and heard something outside.”
“Would you know what time?”
Trey shakes her head. “Late enough that my mam and my dad were asleep.”
“Did you call them?”
“Nah. I knew it wasn’t on our land, too far away, so I wasn’t worried, like. I went out to the gate, but, to see what was the story. There was lights down the road, like headlights. And men talking.”
Nealon is still at ease in his chair, drinking his tea, but Cal can feel the attention humming from him. “Down the road where?”
“Towards where your man was, at the fork. Coulda been there, coulda been a bit closer.”
“Did you not go check, no?”
“Went a little way down the road, but I stopped. I thought maybe they wouldn’t want anyone seeing them.”
This is plausible enough. Stuff goes on, up the mountain: moonshining, dumping, diesel-running from across the border, probably more hard-core stuff. Any mountain kid would know to stay clear. But Trey mentioned none of this to Cal.
“Looks like you might’ve been right,” Nealon says. “Did you see them?”
“Sorta. Men moving around, just. The car lights were in my eyes, and they were outside the light. Couldn’t tell what they were doing.”
“How many of them?”
