Mart shakes his head. “You oughta know me better than that by now, bucko,” he says. “ ’Twouldn’t be my style at all, at all. I’m a man of diplomacy, so I am. Communication. There’s seldom any need for anything extreme, if you’ve the knack of getting your message across.”
“You oughta be a politician,” Cal says. He was just making a point; he doesn’t in fact suspect Mart. He can see Mart killing someone, but not until all the more economical options had been exhausted.
“D’you know,” Mart says, pleased, “I’ve often thought that myself. If ’twasn’t for the farm, I’d love to head for Leinster House and pit my wits against that shower. I’d back myself against that eejit outa the Greens with the prissy aul’ Mother Superior head on him, any day. That fucker hasn’t a clue.”
He bends over in installments, favoring his worse hip, to make a careful selection from the bucket. “I’d love for it to be Johnny,” he says. “Wouldn’t that be nice and tidy altogether? We could be rid of the two of them rapscallions, all in one go. No question about it: if I’d my pick, I’d go for Johnny.”
He straightens up, holding his handful of carrots. “At the end of the day,” he says, “it doesn’t matter a tap what I think, or what you think. All that matters is what the pride of Dublin City thinks, and for that we’ll have to wait and see what way the wind blows him.” He waves the carrots at Cal. “I’ll enjoy these, now. If you spot any Moroccans, send them my way for the dinner.”
—
After letting it sit in her mind all day, Lena still isn’t sure what she thinks about Rushborough being killed. She’s hoping Cal, with his experience in this field, will help to clarify it for her. When she arrives at his place, she finds him working his way through a vast heap of carrots on the kitchen table, peeling them, chopping them, and packing them into freezer bags. Lena, who knows Cal’s ways, doesn’t take this as a good sign. He’s like a man buckling down to face a hard winter, or a siege.
She’s brought a new bottle of bourbon. While Cal tells her about his morning, she pours them each a drink, heavy on the ice, and settles herself opposite him at the table, to take over the chopping. Cal is peeling carrots like they threatened his family.
“I’d bet on the guy being good,” he says. “Nealon; the detective. He’s easy with the job, got a light hand, knows how to take his time, but you can tell he can pull out the hard-core stuff when it’s needed. If I’da been partnered with him, back in the day, I wouldn’t’ve complained.”
“You reckon he’ll get his man,” Lena says, cutting herself a bit of carrot to eat.
Cal shrugs. “Too early to say. He’s the type that does. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Well,” Lena says, testing, “the sooner he gets him, the sooner he’ll be outa our hair.”
Cal nods. There’s a silence: only the soft monotonous snicks of the peeler and the knife, and the dogs sighing in their sleep, and the buzz of a faraway tractor.
Lena knows Cal is waiting for her to ask whether he killed Rushborough, and she’s not going to do it. Instead she takes a sip of her drink and informs him, “I never laid a finger on your man. Just so you know.”
Cal’s taken-aback face makes her laugh, and after a second he grins too. “Well, it woulda been indelicate to ask,” he says, “but I guess that’s good to know.”
“I didn’t want you too scared to go to sleep tonight,” Lena explains. “I couldn’t be doing with you tossing and turning in the bed, wondering were you in with a homicidal maniac.”
“Well,” Cal says, “neither are you. I’m not mourning the guy, but I didn’t touch him either.”
Lena reckoned that anyway. She doesn’t consider Cal to be incapable of killing, but if he did, she doesn’t believe this is who or how it would be. Trey needs him around; that ties his hands.
She says, “So who’s your money on?”
Cal, turning back to his carrots, tilts his head noncommittally. “Nealon asked me that too. I said Johnny. I don’t know if I believe that, but he’s the one that makes the most sense.”
Lena says, “He showed up at my house last night.”
Cal looks up fast. “Johnny did?”
“The man himself.”
“What’d he want?”
“He wanted rescuing from his own eejitry, is what. It’s after getting out that his gold is a loada shite.”
“Yeah,” Cal says. “I told Mart.”
From the moment she drove off and left Mart waving by Cal’s gate, Lena suspected that would happen. Hearing it confirmed still makes her shoulders brace. Lena, who has been called cold plenty of times and acknowledges some truth in that, recognizes it when she sees it: under all the chat and the mischief, which are real enough, Mart is cold as stone. She understands why Cal did what he did. She just hopes he turns out to be right.
“Well,” she says, “Mart listened. Johnny had a warning, he said. He wasn’t sure from who, but it was clear enough: get out or we’ll burn you out.”
“What the
“What’d you expect?”
