“More than that. Tourists coming through, new businesses coming in to look after them, people moving in to work for the new businesses. Young people staying on, instead of clearing out to Dublin as soon as they’re able. New houses being built, and decent roads. A school of our own again, instead of sending the children up to Rathowen. Work for teachers, for a doctor, for estate agents maybe-educated people. Not all at once, like, it would’ve taken years, but once the ball starts rolling… That was all we needed: just that one push. That one chance. We’d have had Glenskehy coming back to life.”
Four or five years back: just before the attacks on Whitethorn House began. He was matching my profile immaculately, piece by piece. The thought of Whitethorn House turned into a hotel made me feel a lot better about the state of Naylor’s face, but still: you couldn’t help being pulled in by the passion in his voice, seeing the vibrant vision he was in love with, the village turned bustling and hopeful again, alive.
“But Simon March wouldn’t sell?” Sam asked.
Naylor shook his head, a slow angry roll; winced, touched his swollen jaw. “One man, on his own in a house that could fit dozens. What good was it to him? But he wouldn’t sell. It’s been nothing but bad news since the day it was built, that house, and he held onto it for dear life sooner than let it do anyone a scrap of good. And the same when he died: the young fella hadn’t been near Glenskehy since he was a child, he has no family, he had no need for the place, but he held on. That’s what they are, the Marches. That’s what they’ve been all along. What they want, they keep, and the rest of the world be damned.”
“It’s the family home,” Sam pointed out. “Maybe they love it.”
Naylor’s head came up and he stared at Sam, pale blazing eyes amid the swelling and the dark bruises. “If a man makes something,” he said, “he has a duty to look after it. That’s what a decent man does. If you make a child, it’s yours to care for, as long as it lives; you’ve no right to kill it to suit yourself. If you make a village, it’s yours to look after; you do what it takes to keep that place going. You don’t have the right to stand by and watch it die, just so you can keep hold of a house.”
“I’m actually with him on this one,” Frank said, beside me. “Maybe we’ve got more in common than we thought.”
I barely heard him. I had got one thing wrong in my profile, after all: this man would never have stabbed Lexie for being pregnant with his baby, or even for living in Whitethorn House. I had thought he was an avenger, obsessed with the past, but he was a lot more complicated and more ferocious than that. It was the future he was obsessed with, his home’s future, seeping away like water. The past was the dark conjoined twin wrapped round that future, steering it, shaping it.
“Is that all you wanted from the Marches?” Sam asked quietly. “For them to do the decent thing-sell up, give Glenskehy a chance?”
After a long moment Naylor nodded, a stiff, reluctant jerk.
“And you thought the only way to make them do it was to put the frighteners on them.”
Another nod. Frank whistled, softly, through his teeth. I was holding my breath.
“No better way to frighten them off,” Sam said, thoughtful and matter-of-fact, “than to give one of them a little cut, one night. Nothing serious, not even meant to hurt her. Just to let them know: you’re not welcome here.”
Naylor’s mug went down hard on the table and he shoved his chair back, arms folding tight across his chest. “I never hurt anyone. Never.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “Someone handed out a fair old beating to three of the Whitethorn House people, the same night you got those bruises.”
“That was a fight. An honest fight-and they were three to one against me. Do you not see the difference? I could have killed Simon March a dozen times over, if I’d wanted to. I never touched him.”
“Simon March was old, sure. You knew he was bound to die within a few years, and you knew there was a decent chance his heirs would sell up, sooner than move out to Glenskehy. You could afford to wait.”
Naylor started to say something, but Sam kept talking, level and heavy, cutting across him. “But once young Daniel and his mates arrived, it was a whole different story. They’re going nowhere, and a bit of spray paint wasn’t scaring them. So you had to up the stakes, didn’t you?”
“No. I never-”
“You had to tell them, loud and clear: get out, if you know what’s good for you. You’d seen Lexie Madison out walking, late at night-maybe you’d followed her before, had you?”
“I don’t-”
“You were coming out of the pub. You were drunk. You had a knife on you. You thought about the Marches letting Glenskehy die, and you went up there to end it once and for all. Maybe you were just going to threaten her, is that it?”
“No-”
“Then how did it happen, John? You tell me. How?”
