“I’d rather not tell the world that someone’s been here.”
Trey glances at him, but says nothing. He throws the stick onto the midden.
Up here has a silence that separates it from the lowlands. Down below, there’s always a lavish mix of birds fussing and flirting, sheep and cattle conversing, farmers shouting, but up here the air is empty; nothing but the wind and one small cold call like pebbles being tapped together, over and over again.
They work their way up the sides of the dip, poking into clumps of long grass, going systematically back and forth to make sure they miss nothing. They find a rusted garden hoe with half a handle, and a snarl of barbed wire, also rusty. When they reach the top they crunch through the spruce grove, kicking at piles of fallen needles and squinting up into the branches for caches. A couple of old nests make them look twice.
Cal knew from the start it was hopeless. There’s too much space up here for one man and a kid ever to cover. What he needs is a CSI team swarming all over the house, and a K-9 unit combing the mountainside. He feels like the world’s biggest fool, out here in a foreign country playing cop with no badge and no gun, and a thirteen-year-old kid and Officer Dennis for backup. He tries to imagine what Donna would say, but the truth is, Donna wouldn’t say anything at all; she would give him a stare where sheer incredulity beat out a number of other things for top spot, and then throw up her hands and walk away. Even Donna’s extravagant supply of words and noises didn’t contain anything to cover this.
“Well,” he says, in the end. “I guess we’ve seen about all there is to see around here.” It’s time to go. The light is starting to shift, the spruce shadows stretching down the side of the dip towards the house.
Trey looks up at him sharply, inquiring. Cal ignores that and heads deeper into the trees. He’s glad to get away from this place.
After a minute or two, he realizes he’s walking fast enough that the kid is trotting to keep up. “So,” he says, slowing down. “What do you make of that?”
Trey shrugs. He jumps to snap a branch off one of the spruces.
Cal feels a powerful need to have some idea of what’s going on in the kid’s head. “You know Brendan,” he says. “I don’t. That house give you any idea what he might’ve been planning?”
Trey whips the branch against a trunk as they pass. The hiss and smack are compressed by the trees all around. Nothing flaps or scuttles in response.
“When I went there,” he says, “after Bren went. I thought maybe he was living there. ’Cause I saw how he’d fixed it up, the roof and all, and the cooker and the cooler. Those didn’t use to be there before. I thought maybe he’d got sick of us and moved in there. I waited all night for him to come back. I was gonna ask could I come too.” He whips the branch against another trunk, harder this time, but the sound still flattens to insignificance. “I only copped on in the morning: I was fucking thick. There’s no mattress or sleeping bag or nothing. He wasn’t living there.”
This is the longest speech Cal has ever heard the kid make. He’s not surprised Trey didn’t mention the cottage earlier, not after that long night and that stinging slap of disappointment. “Doesn’t look like it,” he says.
After a shorter silence, Trey says, glancing up at him sideways, “All that stuff in the sideboard.”
Cal waits.
“Cleaning gear. Brendan coulda been meaning to do up the rest of the place. Rent it out, on the QT, like. To hikers, backpackers. Only the people who own the house found out, and they got pissed off. And that’s who Bren was going to meet. To sort it. Give them cash.”
“Could be,” Cal says, ducking under a branch. He can feel the kid watching him.
“And that’s who took him.”
“You know who owns the place? Who lived there last?”
Trey shakes his head. “But some of them up the mountains, they’re rough.”
“Well,” Cal says. “Looks like I might need to have a look at property registers.”
“You’re gonna find him,” Trey says. “Right?”
Cal says, “I’m aiming to.” He doesn’t want to find Brendan Reddy any more.
Trey starts to say something else, then checks himself and goes back to whacking tree trunks with his branch. They make their way through the spruces and back down the mountainside in silence.
When they get back onto the path, at the bend where they met up, Cal slows. “Where’s Donie McGrath live?” he asks.
Trey is kicking a rock down the path in front of him, but he looks up at that. “What for?”
“I want to talk to him. Where’s he live?”
“Just this side of the village. That gray house that’s in bits. With the dark blue door.”
Cal knows it. People in the village take pride in their homes, keeping their windows clean, their brasses polished and their trim painted. A run-down house means an empty house. Donie’s is the exception.
“By himself?”
“Himself and his mam. His dad died. His sisters married away, and I think his brother emigrated.” The rock has gone off the path. The kid nudges it out of a clump of heather with his toe. “Donie and his brother, they usedta pick on Bren, back in school. In the end they bet him up bad enough that my mam went in, and Donie’s mam hadta as well. She was like, ‘My boys would never, they’re lovely lads, we’re a decent family’—even though everyone knew the dad was a drunk and a waster. Thought she was great just ’cause she’s from town and her brother’s a priest. School didn’t give a shite either way, ’cause it was only us.” He glances up at Cal. “Now, but, Bren could beat the shite outa that little scut any day. Donie didn’t take him.”
“I never said he did,” Cal says. “I just want to talk to him.”
“How come?”
“Because. And I want you to stay away from him. Far away.”
“Donie’s only an arsewipe,” Trey says, with complete scorn.
“OK. Stay away from him anyway.”
Trey kicks his rock, hard, into the heather. He gets in front of Cal and stops, blocking the path. His feet are set apart and his chin is out.
“I’m not a fucking baby.”
“I know that.”
“‘Stay away from this, stay away from him, do nothing, you don’t need to know—’”
“You wanted me to do this ’cause I know how to do it right. If you can’t stay outa my way while I—”
“I wanta talk to Donie. He’ll say nothing to a blow-in.”
“And you think he’ll talk to some kid?”
“He will, yeah. Why not? He thinks the same as you: I’m a baby. He can say anything to me; there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Cal says, “What I’m telling you is, I find out you’ve been anywhere near Donie, I’m done here. No second chances. Clear?”
Trey stares at him. For a second Cal thinks the kid is going to flip his shit, the way he did when he smashed up the desk. He gets ready to dodge.
Instead, the kid’s face shuts like a door. “Yeah,” he says. “Clear.”
“Better be,” Cal says. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow. Come round the day after, I’ll update you.” He wants to tell the kid not to get seen on the way, but the sleazy ring of it stops him.
Trey doesn’t argue any more, or ask any more questions. He just nods and lopes off, into the heather and gone behind the shoulder of the mountain.
Cal understands that the kid knows. He knows something happened inside that house; something solidified and came into sharp focus, and the stakes shot up. He knows that was the moment when this situation went bad.
Cal wants to call the kid back and take him hunting again, or feed him dinner, or teach him how to build something. None of those will fix this. He turns and starts to walk home, by the same meandering route he took to get here. Below him the fields are yellowing with autumn. The shadow of the mountainside is spilling onto the path, with a chill inside when he crosses it. He wonders if, a week or two from now, the kid will hate his guts.