Tana French - The Searcher - A Novel

“You heard me say twenty,” the chubby guy says to his pal. “Go on and tell them.”

The pal is lanky and big-footed, with buckteeth that keep his long jaw hanging and a general air of being the last person to figure out what just happened. “I wasn’t listening right,” he says, blinking. “Sure, it’s only a couple of quid, Donie.”

“Nobody calls me a cheater,” Donie says. He’s getting a bull-eyed stare that Cal doesn’t like.

“I do,” Mart informs him. “You’re a cheater, and d’you know what’s even worse, you’re fecking useless at it. A babby’d do a better job.”

Donie shoves his stool back from the table and spreads his arms, beckoning Mart. “I’ll take you. Come on.”

Deirdre lets out a halfhearted yelp. Cal has no idea what to do, and this fact baffles him further. At home this is the point where he would have stood up, after which Donie would have either settled down or left, one way or another. Here, that doesn’t seem like an option—not because he’s short his gun and his badge, but because he doesn’t know how things are done in these parts, or whether he has a right to do anything at all. That feeling of lightness overtakes him again, like he’s perched on the edge of his stool like a bird. He finds himself wanting Donie to go for Mart, just so he’ll know what to do.

“Donie,” Barty says from behind the bar, pointing at the young guy with a glass-cloth. “Out.”

“I did nothing. This prick called me—”

“Out.”

Donie folds his arms and slumps down on his stool, bottom lip jutting, staring mulishly into space.

“Ah, for fuck’s sake,” Barty says in disgust. He throws down his cloth and comes out from behind the bar. “Give us a hand,” he says to Cal, on his way.

Barty is a few years younger than Cal and not much smaller. Between them they pick Donie up by the armpits and maneuver him the length of the pub, dodging stools and tables, towards the door. Most of the old guys are grinning; Deirdre’s mouth hangs open. Donie goes limp and makes himself into dead weight, his feet dragging on the linoleum.

“Stand up like a man,” Barty orders him, wrestling with the door.

“I’ve a full pint back there,” Donie says, outraged. “Ow!” as Barty semi-accidentally whacks his shoulder off the door frame.

On the sidewalk, Barty hauls Donie backwards for maximum momentum, then gives him a hefty swing forwards and lets go. Donie flies staggering across the road, arms flailing. His tracksuit pants come down and he falls over them.

Barty and Cal watch, getting their breath back, while he scrambles to his feet and hauls at his pants. He’s wearing tighty whities. “Next time get your mammy to buy you big-boy underpants,” Barty calls across to him.

“I’ll burn you out of it,” Donie yells, without much conviction.

“Go home and pull your lad, Donie,” Barty calls back. “That’s all you’re fit for.”

Donie casts around and spots a discarded cigarette packet, which he hurls at Barty. It falls six feet short. He spits in Barty’s direction and stamps off up the road.

There are no streetlights, and only a couple of lights are on in the houses lining the road; half of them are empty. He’s invisible in seconds. His footsteps take longer, echoing off the buildings away into the dark.

“Thanks,” Barty says. “On my own I’d’ve put my back out. Fat little fucker.”

The lanky guy comes out of the pub and stands on the step, silhouetted against the yellow light, scratching his back. “Where’s Donie?” he asks.

“Gone home,” Barty says. “You go on, too, J.P. You’re done here for tonight.”

J.P. thinks this over. “I’ve got his jacket,” he says.

“Then bring it to him. Go on.”

J.P. lopes obediently off into the darkness. “That guy make trouble often?” Cal asks.

“Donie McGrath,” Barty says, and spits on the sidewalk. “Fuckin’ latchico.”

Cal has no idea what this means, although the tone implies something akin to a bum. “I’ve seen him in here before.”

“Now and again. The young lads mostly go into town, looking for the ride, but if they haven’t the money for that, then they come in here. He’ll stay away for a while, anyway. Then he’ll swan in with his pals, pretending it never happened.”

“He actually gonna try and burn you down?”

Barty snorts. “Jaysus, no. Donie hasn’t the guts of a louse. And that’d be too much like hard work.”

“You reckon he’s harmless?”

“He’s pure fucking useless,” Barty says with finality. Behind him the tin whistle starts up again, neat and jaunty. He dusts Donie off his hands and heads back into the pub.

Nobody else seems particularly unnerved by the incident, either. Mart and his buddies have reshuffled and started a new round of Fifty-Five; the argument at the bar has shifted to the merits of this year’s hurling team. Barty gives Cal a free pint. Deirdre finishes her drink, casts a long hopeless look around the pub, and drifts out when nobody meets her eye.

All the same, Cal hangs around, making his freebie last, till Mart and his buddies finish up their game and start gathering their things. Mart was the one who called Donie a cheat. When he offers Cal a ride home—which he does every time, purely for the pleasure of ribbing Cal when he turns it down—Cal says yes.

Mart is moderately drunk, enough that he drops his keys in the footwell of the car and has to get out again to fumble around for them. “Don’t be worrying,” he says with a grin, reading Cal’s expression and giving a slap to the side of his car, a decrepit blue Skoda covered in mud splatters and smelling strongly of wet dog. “This yoke knows her way home from the pub, even if I fall asleep at the wheel. She’s done it before.”

“Great,” Cal says, retrieving the keys and handing them over. “I feel better now.”

“What happened to your hand?” Mart inquires, clambering painstakingly back into the car.

Cal’s hand is healing up fine, but he still has that Band-Aid on so no one can see the tooth marks. “Caught myself with a saw,” he says.

“That’s what you get,” Mart says. “Next time you’ll listen to me and go to them websites.” He fires up the car, which coughs, shudders and springs off up the road at an alarming pace. “What was that big lump Senan going on about? Was it Bobby’s ewe?”

“Yeah. Bobby figures it was aliens. Senan doesn’t agree.”

Mart wheezes with laughter. “I’d say you think Bobby’s mad as a brush, do you?”

“Nah. I told him about the time my grandpa saw a UFO.”

“You made him a happy man, so,” Mart says, turning off the main road and shifting gears with a nasty crunching noise. “Bobby’s not mad. All that’s wrong with him is he spends too much time at the farm work. It’s grand work, but unless a man’s pure thick, it can leave his mind restless. Most of us have something to look after that: the family, or the cards, or the drink, or what-have-you. But Bobby’s a bachelor, he’s got no head for the drink, and he’s that bad at cards we won’t have him in our game. When his mind does get restless, he’s got no option but to head up the hills hunting UFOs. The lads want to buy him a harmonica, give him something else to occupy him, but I’d rather listen to him go on about aliens any day.”

Cal considers this. It seems to him that aliens are probably a healthier antidote to restlessness of the mind than some of the others on Mart’s list. The way Mart is driving supports this theory.

“You don’t reckon the aliens got his sheep?” he asks, just to yank Mart’s chain.

“Arrah, fuck off, would you.”

“He says there’s nothing round here that would do it.”