The Hunter

“Well,” Cal says. “We can’t all have the same gifts.” Johnny gives him the urge to pat him down and ask him where he’s headed. There are guys like that, who flunk the sniff test just going to the store; it’s a good cop’s job to work out whether they’re actually doing something hinky, or whether it’s just that they will be sooner or later, probably sooner. Cal reminds himself, which he hasn’t needed to do in a long time, that hinkiness, imminent or otherwise, is no longer his problem. He motions to release Rip, who’s twitching to investigate. Rip circles Johnny at a distance, deciding whether he needs destroying.

“And now here’s Theresa making coffee tables,” Johnny says, offering Rip a hand to smell. He shakes his head, marveling. “When I was a young fella, people woulda broke their hearts laughing at that. They’d have said you were wasting your time teaching a girl, when she oughta be learning to cook a roast dinner.”

“That so?” Cal inquires politely. Rip, who is a creature of sense, has taken one sniff of Johnny and decided that nibbling his own ass for fleas is a better use of his time.

“Ah, yeah, man. Do the lads not slag you for it, down the pub?”

“Not that I know of,” Cal says. “Mostly they just like getting their furniture fixed.”

“We’ve come a long way,” Johnny says, promptly switching tack again. Cal knows what he’s doing: testing, aiming to get a handle on what kind of man Cal is. Cal has done it himself, plenty of times. He doesn’t feel any need to do it now; he’s learning plenty about Johnny as it is. “It’s great for Theresa, having the opportunity. There’s always room for a good carpenter; she can go anywhere in the world with that. Is that what you did yourself, before you came here?”

There is not a chance in hell that Johnny doesn’t know what Cal used to do. “Nope,” Cal says. “I was a police officer.”

Johnny raises his eyebrows, impressed. “Fair play to you. That’s a job that takes guts.”

“It’s a job that pays the mortgage,” Cal says.

“A policeman’s a great thing to have handy, in an outa-the-way place like this. Sure, if you’d an emergency, you’d be waiting hours for them eejits up in town to get to you—and that’s if they bothered getting up off their arses at all, for anything less than murder. There was a fella I knew one time—naming no names—he took a bit too much of a bad batch of poteen and went mental altogether. He got lost on the way home, ended up on the wrong farm. He was roaring at the woman of the house, wanting to know what she’d done with his missus and his sofa. Smashing all round him.”

Cal does his part and laughs along. It’s easier than it should be. Johnny tells a story well, with the air of a man with a pint in his hand and a night of good company ahead.

“In the end he hid under the kitchen table. He was waving the saltshaker at her, yelling that if she or any other demon came near him, he’d sprinkle them all to death. She locked herself in the jacks and rang the Guards. Three o’clock in the morning, that was. It was afternoon before they were arsed sending anyone out. By that time the fella had slept it off on her kitchen floor, and he was busy begging the poor woman to forgive him.”

“Did she?” Cal asks.

“Ah, she did, o’ course. Sure, she’d known him since they were babas. But she never forgave the Guards up in town. I’d say the townland’s over the moon to have you.”

Neither is there a chance in hell that Johnny believes Ardnakelty was over the moon about a cop moving in. Like most nowhere places, Ardnakelty is opposed to cops on general principle, regardless of whether anyone is currently doing anything that a cop might take an interest in. It allows Cal, but that’s in spite of his job, not because of it. “I’m not much good to them in that department,” Cal says. “I’m retired.”

“Ah, now,” Johnny says, smiling roguishly. “Once a policeman, always a policeman.”

“So I’ve been told,” Cal says. “Myself, I don’t police unless I’m getting paid for it. You hiring?”

Johnny laughs plenty at that. When Cal doesn’t join in this time, he settles down and turns serious. “Well,” he says, “I suppose that’s good news for me. I’d rather Theresa got a taste for carpentry than for policing. No harm to the job, I’ve a great respect for anyone who does it, but it’s got its risks—sure, who am I telling? I wouldn’t want her putting herself in harm’s way.”