Clearly Trey hasn’t considered this. “Dunno. Paddy’s an awful blow, he’d say anything. And Alan, he’s a spacer, wouldn’t know his arse from his elbow. Fergal, maybe.”
“Where’s Fergal live?”
“Out the other side of the village, ’bout half a mile down the road. Sheep farm, white house. You gonna question him?”
“Which one’s the smartest?”
Trey’s lip curls. “Eugene Moynihan thinks he is. He’s doing a course in Sligo Tech, business or something. Thinks he’s only brilliant.”
“Good for him,” Cal says. “He move to Sligo for that, or is he still around?”
“He wouldn’t want to be stuck in digs. Bet he goes in every day. He has a motorbike.”
“Where’s Eugene live?”
“In the village. That big yella house with the conservatory on the side.”
“What’re they like?”
Trey blows a scornful puff of air out of the side of his mouth. “Eugene’s a wanker. Fergal’s thick.”
“Huh,” Cal says. He figures this is as much detail as he can hope to get. “Sounds like Brendan doesn’t have much of a gift for picking good buddies.”
That gets him a glare. “Not a lot to choose from, round here. What’s he supposed to do?”
“I’m not criticizing, kid,” Cal says, lifting his hands. “He can run with whoever he wants.”
“You gonna question them?”
“I’m gonna talk to them. Like I told you before. We talk to the missing person’s associates.”
Trey nods, satisfied with this. “What do I do?”
“You do nothing,” Cal says. “You stay away from Eugene, stay away from Fergal, keep your head down.” When Trey’s mouth gets a mutinous set: “Kid.”
Trey rolls his eyes and goes back to work. Cal decides against pushing it; the kid knows the deal, and he’s no dummy. For now, anyway, the likelihood is that he’ll do what he’s told.
When the sky in the window starts to burn orange behind the tree line, Cal says, “What time do you reckon it is?”
Trey gives him a suspicious look. “Says on your phone.”
“I know that. I’m asking for your best guess.”
The suspicious look stays, but in the end Trey shrugs. “Seven, maybe.”
Cal checks. It’s eight minutes of. “Close enough,” he says. If Trey figures Brendan left at five, he probably isn’t too far off. “And late enough that you need to get home. I want you to keep away from here after dark, the next while.”
“Why?”
“My neighbor Mart, something killed one of his sheep. He’s not a happy guy.”
Trey thinks this over. “One of Bobby Feeney’s sheep got killed,” he says.
“Yep. You know of anything around here that might go killing sheep?”
“Dog, maybe. That happened before. Senan Maguire shot it.”
“Maybe,” Cal says, thinking of the neat flayed patch on the ewe’s ribs. “You ever see a dog running free, when you were hanging around here at night? Or any other animal big enough to do that?”
“It’s dark,” Trey points out. “You don’t always know what you’re seeing.”
“So you’ve seen something.”
The kid shrugs, one-shouldered, eyes on the neat back-and-forth of the toothbrush. “Seen people going into houses where they shouldn’ta been, coupla times.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I went away.”
“Good call,” Cal says. “Now get. You can come back tomorrow. Afternoon.”
Trey stands up, dusting his hands on his jeans, and nods at the desk. Cal goes over and examines it. “Looking good,” he says. “Another hour or two’s work and it’ll be back on track.”
“When I’m done,” Trey says, shoving an arm into his parka, “you can teach me that.” He jerks his chin at the gun and heads out the door before Cal can answer.
Cal goes to the door and watches the kid stride off, keeping to the hedge line. There are small flickers of movement among the long grass in his field, rabbits out for their evening meal, but the Henry and stew aren’t on his mind any more. Once Trey turns up the road towards the mountains, Cal gives him a minute and then goes to the gate. He watches the kid’s skinny back as he lopes up the road, hands in his pockets, between the blackberry brambles into the thickening dusk. Even after Trey is invisible Cal stays there, leaning his arms on the gate and listening.
NINE
Cal has always liked mornings. He draws a distinction between this and being a morning person, which he isn’t: it takes time, daylight and coffee to connect up his brain cells. He appreciates mornings not for their effect on him, but for themselves. Even smack in the middle of a temperamental Chicago neighborhood, dawn sounds rose up with a startling delicacy, and the air had a lemony, clean-scoured tinge that made you breathe deeper and wider. Here, the first light spreads across the fields like something holy is happening, striking sparks off a million dewdrops and turning the spiderwebs on the hedge to rainbows; mist curls off the grass, and the first calls of birds and sheep seem to arc effortless miles. Whenever he can make himself, Cal gets up early and eats his breakfast sitting on his back step, enjoying the chill and the earthy tang of the air. The doughnut Trey brought him yesterday is still in pretty good shape.
The Wi-Fi is in an obliging mood, so Cal pulls up Facebook on his phone and pokes around for Eugene Moynihan and Fergal O’Connor. Eugene is dark and narrow, with a semi-arty shot of him in profile on a bridge somewhere that looks Eastern European. Fergal has a big grin, a moon face with spit-shined red cheeks like a kid’s, and a raised pint.
Brendan has a Facebook account, too, although his last post was a year ago, some like-and-share attempt to win tickets to a music festival. His photo has him on a motorbike, grinning over his shoulder. He’s thin, brown-haired, with the kind of sensitive high-boned features that are good-looking in some moods and not in others, and that imply quick changes. Cal sees Sheila in him, in the cheekbones and around the mouth, but he can’t find any look of Trey.
If Eugene is a student and Fergal is a farmer, then Cal has no doubts about which of them is more likely to be up early on a Saturday morning. He walks down through the village, where Noreen’s and Seán Óg’s and the decorous little ladieswear boutique are still shuttered and asleep, and the road is empty: only an old woman putting flowers in the Virgin Mary grotto at the crossroads turns to say good morning. Half a mile on are a set of broad fields full of fat, feisty sheep, and a sprawling white farmhouse. In the yard, a big young guy in a fleece and work pants is unloading sacks from a trailer and hauling them to an impressive corrugated-iron shed.
“Morning,” Cal says, at the gate.
“Morning,” says the young guy, hefting the next sack. He’s a little out of breath. The exercise has given his face the same shine it has in the pub photo, and he has the same look of pleased expectation for Cal as he had for the camera, like Cal might be here to bring him a surprise snack.
“That’s a fine bunch of sheep you’ve got out there,” Cal says.
“They’ll do,” Fergal says, hoisting the sack more firmly onto his shoulder. He’s chubby, with soft brown hair and womanish hips. He looks like most things might take him a while. “Oughta be more of them, but sure, we’ll make the most of what we’ve got.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
That makes Fergal pause and give Cal a wide-eyed look, like he’s startled anyone might not know this. “The drought last summer, sure. We’d to sell off some of the flock because we couldn’t feed ’em.”
“That’s a bad blow,” Cal says. “Plenty of rain this summer, though.”
“ ’Twas better, anyway,” Fergal agrees. “Last year the drought went on right through breeding season. Hurt the lamb crop something fierce.”