The Hunter

“The fine Detective Nealon’s been all round the townland,” Mart says. “Interviewing people, like, although he’s not calling it that. ‘Would you have time for a chat?’ That’s what he says, when he does show up at the door. Very civilized; as if you could say to him, ‘Go on outa that, young fella, I’ve the dinner burning on me,’ and off he’d trot, no problem. Has he been round to you?”

“Not yet. Or I missed him, maybe.”

“I’d say he’s starting off with the men,” Mart says. “And I’d say I know why. He said to me—halfway through our wee chat, all casual like—‘Were you up on the mountain at all, Sunday night?’ I told him the farthest I went from home was the back garden, when my fella Kojak here had a bitta business with a fox. And Detective Nealon explained to me that he’s been told there was a buncha lads messing about up the mountain, just about the time Rushborough died and just about the place he was found. And he needs to talk to them, ’cause they mighta seen or heard something valuable to the investigation. He can do a voice lineup with his witness, if he has to, but it’d be easier on everyone if the lads cut to the chase and come tell him all about it.” Mart examines his cigarette and nips away a loose thread of tobacco. “That, now,” he says, “that’s what you might call problematic.”

“Cal said nothing like that to Nealon,” Lena says.

“He didn’t, o’ course. I never thought he did. Nor does anyone.”

“Then what’s he got to do with it?”

“Not a sausage,” Mart says promptly. “That’s what I’m telling you: I’d like to see things stay that way. If I haveta have a blow-in living next door, I could do a lot worse.”

“He’s no blow-in now,” Lena says. “He’s my man.”

Mart’s eyes flick over her, not in the mindless way a man assesses a woman, but with thought behind them. It’s the way he might assess a sheepdog, trying to prize out its capabilities and its temperament, whether it might turn vicious and how well it would come to heel.

“ ’Twas a good move, getting engaged,” he says again. “I haven’t heard a whisper about your fella since you done that. But if Detective Nealon keeps on making a nuisance of himself, I will. I’ll be honest with you: you haven’t the same clout as, we’ll say, Noreen, or Angela Maguire, or another woman that’s coaching the camogie and helping out with the parish fundraiser and spreading gossip over the tea and custard creams. If Mr. Hooper was Noreen’s man, or Angela’s, no one would touch him with a ten-foot pole. As it is, they’d prefer to leave him be, outa respect for you as well as for him. But if they haveta, they’ll hand him over to Detective Nealon tied up in a bow. If I haveta, so will I.”

Lena knew all this already, but coming from him and like this, it reaches her in new terms. Cal is a foreigner, and she’s spent the last thirty years trying to make herself into one. She only ever managed to get one foot outside the circle, but when the enemy is closing in, it’s enough.

She says, “You can hand over whatever you like. Nealon can’t throw a man in jail with no evidence.”

Mart, unfazed, takes off his straw hat to wave it leisurely in front of his face. “D’you know something that gives me a pain in the backside?” he asks. “Shortsightedness. ’Tis a feckin’ epidemic. I’ll believe a man has good sense—or a woman, or a child—and then, outa the blue, they’ll come out with some piece of nonsense that shows they haven’t spent two minutes thinking it through. And bang goes another little bitta my faith in humanity. I haven’t enough in stock that I can afford to go losing much more of it. Honest to God, I’m ready to start begging people on my knees to just take the two minutes and think things through.”

He blows smoke and watches its slow spread in the motionless air. “I don’t know who fed Nealon that loada flimflam about lads up on the mountain,” he says. “It coulda been the bold Johnny, o’ course, but somehow I don’t reckon he’d go outa his way to stir up the townland against him just now, unless he had no choice. If Nealon arrests him it’ll be a different story altogether, but for now, I’d say Johnny’s got enough sense that he’s keeping his mouth shut and his ears open. So let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that ’twas young Theresa Reddy that did the talking. Will you humor me on that for a moment?”

Lena says nothing.

“And in exchange, we’ll say you’re right, and there’s not enough to tie Mr. Hooper to the murder. Or we’ll say he doesn’t appeal to Detective Nealon as a suspect—sure, aren’t the cops known for sticking together, the whole world over? And we’ll say there’s no evidence to put anyone else up the mountain that night, either. There’s poor aul’ Detective Nealon, empty-handed—except he’s got one person, ready and waiting, in his sights.”

Lena’s hands feel weak before she understands why. She stays still and watches him.