“No problem,” Cal says, grinning. “Looks like good cake.”
“Ah, it’s gorgeous. She does watch all them bake-off shows. If I’da known you were coming, I’da brought you a slice.”
“Catch you next year,” Cal says. “I just dropped in to let you know I got that rifle in the end. Thank you kindly for your help.”
“No problem at all,” O’Malley says, relaxing back into his seat and sucking frosting off his thumb. “Have you taken it out yet?”
“Just shooting at tin cans, getting my eye back in. It’s a good gun. I got rabbits on my land, so I’m gonna try and bag me a few of those.”
“Cunning little bastards,” O’Malley says, with the melancholy of experience. “Good luck.”
“Well,” Cal says, “the only other thing I got to hand is a tree full of rooks messing up my lawn. Maybe you can tell me: they good eating?”
O’Malley looks startled, but he considers the question out of politeness. “I’ve never et rook myself,” he says. “But my daddy told us his mammy used to make rook stew when he was a little fella, if they’d nothing else. With potatoes, like, and the bit of onion. I’d say you’d get a recipe on the internet; sure, they’ve everything on there.”
“Worth a try,” Cal says. He has no intention of shooting any of his rooks. He has a feeling the survivors would make bad enemies.
“I wouldn’t say it’d be nice,” O’Malley says, thinking it over further. “Awful strong-tasting, I’d say.”
“I’ll save you a helping,” Cal says, grinning.
“Ah, no, you’re grand,” O’Malley says, slightly apprehensive. “Sure, I’ll still be working my way through this cake.”
Cal laughs, gives the counter a slap and is turning for the door when a thought strikes him. “Almost forgot,” he says. “Some guy was telling me a couple of officers got called out to Ardnakelty, back in March. Would that have been you?”
O’Malley thinks that over. “ ’Twasn’t, no. The only times I’ve been out that way this year, I was up the mountain, trying to get those Reddy childer to get an education. Ardnakelty doesn’t have much call for our services.”
“Well, that’s what I thought,” Cal says, frowning a little. “You got any idea what that thing in March was about?”
“Can’t have been anything serious,” O’Malley assures him. “Sure, if it was, I’d have heard about it.”
“I’d love to know, all the same,” Cal says, his frown deepening. “I can’t rest easy unless I know what I’m living with. Side effect of the job—I mean, hey, who am I telling, right?”
O’Malley doesn’t look like this angle has ever occurred to him before, but he nods along vigorously all the same. “Tell you what I’ll do,” he says, an idea striking him. “You hang on here a minute, and I’ll look it up in the system.”
“Well, that’s kind of you,” Cal says, surprised and pleased. “I’d appreciate that. I’ll bring you some rook stew for sure.”
O’Malley laughs, extracts himself from his chair with a few loud creaking noises, and heads back to the office. Cal waits and looks out the window at the sky, where the clouds are thickening, getting darker and more ominous. He can’t imagine ever getting accustomed to the effortless hairpin turns of the weather around here. He’s used to a hot sunny day being a hot sunny day, a cold rainy day being a cold rainy day, and so on. Here, some days the weather seems like it’s just fucking with people on principle.
“Now,” O’Malley says, coming back out, happy with his results. “Like I told you: nothing serious at all, at all. March the sixteenth, a farmer reported signs of intruders on his land and a possible theft of farm equipment, but when the boys got out there, he told them ’twas all a mistake.” He resettles himself in his chair and pops a chunk of cake into his mouth. “I’d say he found out ’twas the local young scallywags messing, like. They do get bored; sometimes the bold ones’ll hide something just for the crack, to see the farmer go mental looking for it. Or maybe it was robbed, but the farmer found out who done it and got the stuff back, so he left it at that. They’re like that, around here. They’d rather keep us out of it, unless they’ve no choice at all.”
“Well, either way,” Cal says, “that sets my mind at ease. I don’t have any farm equipment to get stolen. I got an old wheelbarrow that came with the place, but if anyone wants it that bad, they’re welcome to it.”
“They’re more likely to put it on top of your roof,” O’Malley says tolerantly.
“It’d probably improve the look of the place,” Cal says. “There’s designer guys who charge yuppies thousands of bucks for ideas like that. Who was the farmer?”
“Fella called Patrick Fallon. I don’t know the man. That means he’s not a regular, anyway; there’s no local feud going on, nor nothing like that.”
Patrick Fallon is presumably P.J. “Huh,” Cal says. “That’s my neighbor. I haven’t heard him mention any trouble since I got here. I guess it must’ve been a once-off thing.”
“Lads messing,” O’Malley says, with comfortable finality, breaking off another big hunk of cake.
Looking at that cake has made Cal hungry. He finds a café and gets himself a slice of apple pie and more coffee, to pass the time till his laundry is ready. While he finishes the coffee, he gets his notebook out of his jacket pocket and turns to a fresh page.
He tosses around the possibility that Brendan was setting himself up as a source of stolen farm equipment, boosted P.J.’s stuff, got spooked and gave it back when he found out the cops had been called in, and skipped town to avoid the fallout or was run out, like the cat-killing Mannion kid. It doesn’t sit quite right—anyone with half a brain would have expected police, and Brendan is or was no dummy—but maybe he didn’t think the theft would be noticed so soon. Caroline said he didn’t take people’s reactions into account.
He writes: Farm equipment 3/16. What was stolen? Was it recovered?
The other thing hanging around the edges of his mind is the thought of those dead sheep. Mart isn’t sitting up in those woods on the off chance. He has some reason for thinking P.J.’s sheep are next.
Cal draws himself a quick sketch of Ardnakelty townland, with help from internet maps. He marks in Mart’s land, P.J.’s and Bobby Feeney’s; he doesn’t know where Francie Gannon’s is exactly, but “beside the village” gives him a rough idea. Then he marks in all the other sheep farms he knows about.
Geographically, those four have nothing to single them out from the rest. They’re not the nearest ones to the mountains or a wood where some creature might stay hidden, not all close together, not the nearest to the main road for a quick getaway. There’s no reason, at least none that Cal can see, why they would be an obvious set of targets for either man or beast.
He writes: Francie/Bobby/Mart/P.J. Links? Related? Beef w Brendan? W anyone?
He can think of one person who had beef with Mart, anyway, not long before Mart’s sheep got killed. He writes: W Donie McG?
The last of the coffee has got cold. Cal buys his groceries, including Mart’s cookies and a three-pack of socks, picks up his laundry, and heads out of town.
The road up into the mountains feels different in a car, rockier and less welcoming, like it’s biding its time to puncture Cal’s tire or send him sideslipping into a patch of bog. He parks outside the Reddys’ gate. There’s no shoulder, but he’s not too worried that another car will need to get by.
This time the Reddys’ yard is empty. The breeze nips at his neck, and the ropes hanging from the climbing structure sway restlessly. The front windows of the house are blank and dark, but as Cal crosses the yard, he feels watched. He slows down, letting them get a good look.