“Ah, you wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Mart tells him. “Not without a good reason. I’ll be sure Detective Nealon knows that.”
“How does it feel?” Malachy inquires, giving Cal a grin that has a slip of malice in it. “Being on the wrong side, for a change?”
“Doesn’t feel like much of anything,” Cal says, shrugging and reaching for his pint. “It’s just where I happened to land.” In truth, it feels deeply, turbulently strange. It has the ominous savagery of a tornado siren: all bets are off.
“Did your man Nealon interrogate you?”
“He wanted to hear about finding the body,” Cal says. “That was pretty much it.”
“My God,” Bobby says, struck by this, “and I never asked you. How was it? Were you awful shook up?”
“He’s a
“I’m OK,” Cal tells Bobby. “Thanks.”
“Was he in a terrible state? Rushborough, like. Not Nealon.”
“The man was dead,” Francie says. “It doesn’t get much worse than that.”
“I heard his guts was spilling out,” Bobby says. His eyes are round. Cal knows that Bobby is capable of being genuinely shaken, and genuinely concerned for his state of mind, and at the same time probing for information that might come in useful.
“His guts looked fine to me,” he says.
“I know where you got that,” Mart tells Bobby. “Your mammy heard it off Clodagh Moynihan. I know ’cause I was the one that said it to her. I can’t stomach that bitch; I wanted her outa Noreen’s so I could do my shopping in peace, and I knew that’d send her running off to tell the world before Noreen could get in there first.”
“So what does Nealon reckon?” Senan asks Cal.
“You tell me,” Cal says. “You probably know more’n I do. What does Nealon think?”
“He thinks it was someone from around here that done it,” Francie says, “is what he thinks.”
His voice leaves a small silence in its wake. P.J. scrapes at something on the table; Mart picks a midge out of his pint.
“Huh,” Cal says, feeling a response is expected from him. “How do you know?”
“ ’Cause he’s got his posse going all around the place asking who was up the mountain, night before last,” Senan says. “They’re not asking that in Knockfarraney, or Lisnacarragh, or across the river. Just here.”
“The way he went about it was awful confusing,” P.J. says, rubbing his head as he remembers. “He didn’t go asking, ‘Were you up the mountain? D’you know anyone that was?’ I’da known how to answer that. ’Twas all like, ‘What would you be doing up there in the middle of the night? Would you have a good reason for being up there? What about your neighbors, what reason would they have?’ I didn’t know how to answer him at all, at all.”
“He was aiming to confuse you,” Francie says. “He’s a cute hoor, that fella.”
“Sure, I’m up the mountain anyhow,” Malachy says, “no excuse needed. They came asking me what cars passed by my house that night, coming from this side or going back down. They’ve got no interest in the other side; themens coulda been drag racing up and down the mountain, for all Nealon cares. He’s got his eye on this place.”
All of them are watching Cal. He looks back at them and keeps his mouth shut. Trey’s story has taken root and is spreading, underground, sending out tendrils.
“Now, d’you see,” Mart says, leaning back in his seat to gaze up at the damp stains on the ceiling, “that’s the part that came as a surprise to me. Detective Nealon’s feeling awful specific, and I can’t see any reason why. He hasn’t brought up the subject of gold, that I’ve heard of; if anyone’s mentioned it to him, he’s keeping it awful quiet. So what’s got him narrowing things down to our wee neck of the woods?” He cocks an inquisitive eye at Cal.
“Could be anything,” Cal says. “Maybe he tracked Rushborough’s phone, and it says he was round here all night. Or maybe it’s just ’cause here’s where he mostly hung out.”
“Or he could have a witness,” Mart says, with a musing twist to his voice, like the word is foreign and interesting. “What would that mean, now, Sunny Jim? What would a witness have witnessed?”
