Kenneth Bulmer - Land Beyond the Map

He smiled. They were establishing a rapport already and he found the sensation pleasant, restful — and direfully alarming.

“In the morning. I can catch the early train and the plane—”

“I’m coming too, of course.”

“But—”

It took Roland Crane less than thirty seconds to realize that he was seldom going to win arguments with Polly Gould.

He was still pointing out when they left the plane at Nutt’s Corner and took the bus into Belfast that this didn’t seem the sort of adventure for a girl. She merely told him to contact his book-selling friends and start the hunt for a mid-nineteenth century guide book of some indeterminate part of Ireland, containing in the back cover the torn half of a map. Neither of them entertained much hope of success with that approach; merely coming to Ireland wouldn’t bring the catalogues of the booksellers any closer than back at Crane’s home, Bushmills. But it was one avenue of investigation, and they had so few it bulked larger in importance than it really was.

Polly went off tracking down the last people Allan had seen before setting off.

They reported back to each other, sitting at a low table in the lounge of their comfortable hotel. Results — nil.

“The booksellers were pleased to see me, naturally,” said Crane, leaning back in the deep leather armchair and yawning. “Whew, I’m tired. I’ve been a better than average customer. But they shook their heads and expressed a sympathy that was sincere and universal. Not a one.” He scratched his nose. “Except for one, that is. An old character who advised me to try Smithfield. I told him I was looking for a book and not a side of beef—”

Polly chuckled. “Yes, I know. It is disconcerting to find a general market and junkshop area called Smithfield. Difficult for an Englishman to disassociate his Smithfield Market from his mind.”

“I agree. Especially when Smithfield was the scene of many a tournament with knights in full armor jousting there — or didn’t you know that?”

“No. Anyway, what about it? That’s a world deader than the do do.”

“True. I’m no dreamer of medieval follies; but they did have values that make our material grasping look like the second-rate emptiness it is.”

“With your wealth you’d have been all right. Wait” — she held up a hand at his immediate protest. “That’s not meant offensively or even personally. I know the middle ages believed in values of service instead of money and we laugh at them for it. Our values are money from beginning to end, the lust after material possessions. But even so, if that is the price we have to pay for decent living and freedom from the foulness of those days, then the majority of people today pay it willingly.”

At another time Crane would have welcomed an argument about the progress of civilization; but right now a map that had been torn down the center obsessed him. He contented himself with: “One thing’s certain. People in those days before the Renaissance cult of the persona would readily believe the Map Country exists.”

She smiled obliquely at him, vaguely unsettling his impression that he was getting to know her better. “I think I believe you. I’d still be here even if I didn’t, so there’s no comfort for you in that. Anyway, did you go?”

“Smithfield? No. Tomorrow.” He frowned. “The biggest upset of all is what this same old character told me in passing. Apparently another man has been looking for a guide book, and from his description of what he wants to buy, I’d wager half my collection he’s after the same book as us.”

“Someone else — after the map!”

“That’s what the man said.”

“That sheds a totally new light on this—”

“Does it? I don’t really think so. If the map is being put back into circulation again, then it must be sought after.”

“I really can’t go along with your theory there—”

“You’re right, of course, Polly. It is only a theory and so wild and woolly a one as to make nonsense of the sanity of the world we live in.” He stood up, lean and tall, and smiled down on her. “Me for shut-eye. Tomorrow, Smith-field.”

Though he tramped the fascinating alleyways of Smith-field, amid the noise and bustle, penetrating into the quieter, dusty and time-corroded sections, and turned over so many tattered books — all guide books — that he wondered how anyone ever found their way about without them, he did not turn up a guide book with a torn map in the back. Correction — he turned up many guide books with ripped and frail maps in the back; but that warning zephyr he knew would creep up his spine when he found the right one did not happen. He returned to the hotel, discouraged. Everyone to whom he had spoken had been helpful, bringing out piles and arm-loads and old tea chests full of books, had even helped him to turn them over — but one and all they’d shaken their heads.

“Sorry, sir. Feller called McArdle was here, askin’ the very same questions, sure he was.”

McArdle.

“Who the hell was this McArdle to come poking into Crane’s life, trying to steal his map?”

In the loquacious, easy-talking way of the Irish the booksellers would have told McArdle about Crane. That was a surety and Crane felt uncomfortable at the thought. He felt exposed in a way he could not explain even though that, too, was all of a piece with the rest of the mystery surrounding the torn map and the existence or otherwise of the place called the Map Country.

Polly, too, that evening looked crestfallen. “I found the hotel where Allan stayed that last night. Run-down sort of place. I spoke to the proprietor. The place has changed hands since then. It was five years ago, after all.”

“Hard luck, Polly.”

“I’ve a lead to the man who owned it at the time, though. Thought we could hire a car and run out there tomorrow. Little place called Ballybogy, about four miles northwest of Ballymoney.”

“All right. I’m game.” The obvious thought occurred to Crane. “I suppose his name isn’t McArdle?”

“No. Should it be?”

“If this was straight detection, yes, it should be. But we’re mixed up in something a little stronger than mere crime and sudden death. The death’s there, well enough, but I don’t believe it to be sudden.” Crane could not have explained the dark thoughts crowding his brain except by bringing in the fey influences of Ireland — influences he had heretofore scoffingly derided.

“His name,” Polly said, “is O’Connell. Will you see about the car?”

Crane, thinking back to that filthy night he had first met Polly Gould, said: “On condition you drive.”

“Done.”

Crane found it easy enough to obtain a car, a late model Austin, and Polly took it through the traffic the next morning and out along the excellently surfaced roads with a sure, gentle touch that amused and impressed Crane. The green countryside sped past. The sun shone and fluffy clouds wallowed in a mild blue sky like a fleet of white-winged galleons. And, like true ships of war, they could congregate in an instant and open up devastating broadsides, deluging everything in their wrath. Crane held the Ordnance Survey on his knee and followed their progress through the enchanted names of Ireland.

Ballybogy turned out to be just a tiny whitewashed village of closed front doors lining the main street. They were directed to O’Connell’s cottage, knocked, and, after stating then-business, were admitted into the neat, snug, dark little parlor. O’Connell was a brown-faced, wiry, sharp-eyed gnome of a man. He twinkled at them.

As his daughter brewed tea and laid out pan bread and Irish butter, scones and home-made jam from the strawberries of the previous summer, O’Connell racked his brain, thinking back to a single night five years ago when a man and a girl had stayed at his hotel. Amazingly, he remembered.