“Cal’s,” Trey says. “Hadta wait for the detective.” Her dad gives no explanation of what he was doing among the trees, but Trey knows. He’s been waiting for her out here, because he wants to find out all about the detective before he faces him. When he heard the car coming, he hid like a kid who broke a window.
“Ah, God, that’s right,” Johnny says, slapping his forehead. Trey is under no illusion that he was worried about her, but he’s worried all the same: his feet are jittering like a fighter’s. “Your man Hooper said they’d need to talk to ye, didn’t he? What with everything else, it went straight outa my head. How’d it go? Did they treat you all right?”
He’s in luck: Trey wants to talk to him, too. “Yeah,” she says. “It was just the one detective, and a fella taking notes. They were grand.”
“Good. They’d want to be nice to my wee girl,” Johnny says, wagging a finger, “or they’ll have me to deal with. What did they ask you?”
“Just wanted to know about me finding your man. What time it was when I first saw him. Did I touch him, what did I do, did I see anyone.”
“Didja tell them I came by?”
“Cal did.”
Behind Johnny, there’s a movement in the sitting-room window. The light on the glass blurs the figure so that it takes Trey a second to identify it: Sheila, watching them, her arms folded at her waist.
Johnny rubs the corner of his mouth with a knuckle. “Right,” he says. “Grand; no panic. I can sort that. What about the gold? Didja say anything about that? Even a mention?”
“Nah.”
“Did they ask?”
“Nah.”
“What about your man Hooper, do you know did he say anything?”
“Nah. They just asked him the same as me. What he did with Rushborough, did he touch him. He said nothing about gold.”
Johnny lets out a quick, vicious laugh, up into the sky. “Thought so. That’s the fuckin’ pigs for you. Hooper’d beat the shite outa any poor bastard that kept anything from him, I’d say he’s done it many a time, but he’s got no problem staying quiet when it’s his own neck on the line.”
Trey says, “Thought you didn’t want them knowing.”
That gets his attention back on her. “Jesus, no. You done great. Even if they come back asking about it, you never heard of any gold, d’you get me?”
“Yeah,” Trey says. She hasn’t decided yet what she’s going to do about the gold.
“I’m not complaining about Hooper, now,” Johnny reassures her. “I’m delighted he kept his mouth shut. I’m only saying: there’s one rule for them, one for everyone else. You remember that.”
Trey shrugs. He looks like shite: older and white, except where the bruises are fading to a dirty green that makes her think of Cal’s scarecrow.
“What’d you say about me and your man Rushborough? Did you say we were mates, or what?”
“Said you knew him a bit from London, but he wasn’t over to see you or anything. He was just here ’cause it’s where his family was from.”
“Good,” Johnny says. He blows out a long breath. His eyes are skittering to every rustle in the trees. “Good good good. That’s what I like to hear. Good girl yourself.”
Trey says, “I told the detective I heard people talking down the road, late last night. So I went out, and there was fellas down at the fork, where I found your man. Didn’t get close enough to see them, but fellas with local accents.”
That finally stops Johnny moving. He’s staring at her. “Didja?”
Trey shrugs.
After a second Johnny slaps the top bar of the gate so hard it shakes, throws back his head and bursts out laughing. “Holy God almighty,” he says, “where did I get you from, at all? That’s my girl. That’s my wee chip off the old block. Jesus, the brains on you, if brains was money we wouldn’t need to be feckin’ about with any aul’ gold, we’d be billionaires—” He flings the gate open and reaches to catch Trey in a hug, but she steps back. Johnny doesn’t register that, or doesn’t care. “You saw where them Garda fuckers were headed, didn’t you? You were miles ahead of them. You weren’t going to let them pin a murder on your poor daddy. That’s my girl.”
“You oughta tell them the same thing,” Trey says. “In case they think I made it up for notice.”
Johnny stops laughing to run that through his mind. “That’s some great thinking,” he says after a second, “but no. If I say the same as you, they’ll think I put you up to it. I’ll tell you what we’ll do: I’ll say I heard you going out, sometime in the night. And maybe I oughta have gone after you”—he’s pacing in zigzags, thinking it out as he goes—“but I was half asleep. And I thought I heard voices somewhere, so I reckoned you were off to meet your pals for a bitta mischief, maybe someone had a naggin—I wasn’t going to spoil your fun, sure haven’t we all done the same at your age, and worse? So I left you to it. But I didn’t hear you coming back in, so when I woke up this morning and you weren’t in the house, I was a wee bit worried about my girl. So I went looking for you, and that’s why I was out and about bright and early. Now.” He stops moving and spreads his arms, smiling at Trey. “Doesn’t that all hang together lovely?”
“Yeah.”
