Tana French - The Searcher - A Novel

Cal manages to freeze only for half a second before his roller starts moving again. He would know from the tone, even if he hadn’t heard the words: this is why Trey is here.

“Yeah?” he says. “When?”

“March.” Trey is still rollering his patch of wall, meticulously, not looking at Cal. “Twenty-first.”

“OK,” Cal says. “How old is he?”

“Nineteen. His name’s Brendan.”

Cal is feeling his way, toe by toe. “What’d the police say?”

“Didn’t tell them.”

“How come?”

“Mam wouldn’t. She said he went off, and he’s old enough if he wants.”

“But you don’t think so.”

Trey’s face, when he stops painting and looks at Cal at last, has a terrible, tight-wound misery. He shakes his head for a long time.

“So what do you think happened?”

Trey says, low, “Think someone’s got him.”

“Like, kidnapped him?”

Nod.

“OK,” Cal says carefully. “You got any idea who?”

Every cell in Trey’s body is focused on Cal. He says, “You could find out.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“Kid,” Cal says gently. “More than likely, your mama’s right. From what everyone tells me, people mostly do take off from here, soon as they’re old enough.”

“He’d’ve told me.”

“Your brother’s still a teenager. They do dumb shit like that. I know it’s gotta hurt, if you guys are close, but sooner or later he’ll grow up a little bit and realize it was a crappy thing to do. He’ll get in touch then.”

That stubborn chin has hardened. “He didn’t go off.”

“Any reason you’re so sure?”

“I know . He didn’t.”

“If you’re worried about him,” Cal says, “you oughta go to the police. I know your mama doesn’t want to, but you can do it yourself. They can take a report from a minor. They can’t make him come home till he’s ready, but they’ll look into it, put your mind at ease.”

Trey is looking at him like he can’t believe anyone this dumb is still breathing. “What?” Cal says.

“Guards won’t do anything.”

“Sure they will. It’s their job.”

“They’re fucking useless. You do it. You investigate. You’ll see: he didn’t go off.”

“I can’t investigate, kid,” Cal says, even more gently. “I’m not a cop any more.”

“Do it anyway.” Trey’s voice is rising. “Do the stuff you said, for finding people. Talk to his mates. Watch their houses.”

“I could do that stuff because I had a badge. Now that I don’t, no one’s gotta answer my questions. I stake out someone’s house, I’m the one who’s gonna get arrested.”

Trey isn’t even hearing him. He’s holding the roller high in a clenched fist, like a weapon. “Tap their phones . Check his bank card.”

“ Kid. Even when I was a cop, it wasn’t around here. I don’t have buddies where I can call in favors.”

“Then you do it.”

“Does this place look like I have the technology to—”

“Then do something else. Do something. ”

“I’m retired, kid,” Cal says, still gently, but with finality. He’s not going to leave the kid hoping. “There’s nothing I could do, even if I wanted to.”

Trey throws his roller across the room. He rips off Cal’s old shirt, buttons popping, and stuffs it deep in the can of primer. Then he whips round and smashes the dripping shirt into the cubbyholes of the desk, with all his weight behind it. The desk goes over backwards. Trey runs.

The desk is a mess. Cal straightens it up and uses the shirt—which is a write-off anyway; no laundromat is going to deal with that—to wipe away the bigger globs of primer. Then he wets a cloth and cleans off the rest. Luckily it’s water-based, but it’s got right into half the joints, where no cloth can reach it. Cal goes at it with his toothbrush, calling Trey a little bastard under his breath.

In fact, he’s finding it hard to actually get mad. First the kid’s daddy, then his big brother; no wonder he wants an answer that would bring one of them home and wouldn’t involve him deliberately walking out without a backwards glance. Cal just wishes he had come out with this earlier, instead of building his hopes in secret all this time.

What he is, he realizes, more than mad, is unsettled. He doesn’t like the feeling, or the fact that he recognizes it and understands it perfectly; it’s as familiar to him as hunger or thirst. Cal never could stand to leave a case unresolved. Mainly this was a good thing, making him into a dogged, patient worker who got solves long after most guys would have given up, but on occasion it was also a failing: hammering on and on at something that’s never going to break gets a man nothing but tired and sore. Cal scrubs harder at the desk and tries to recapture the light-headed freedom of not caring if Trey plays hooky. He reminds himself that this isn’t his case, and in fact is almost certainly not a case at all. The unsettled feeling doesn’t budge.

In his head Donna says, Jesus, Cal, not again. Her face isn’t laughing this time; it’s weary, dragged into downward lines that don’t fit there.

A scrawny young rook has flapped down onto the windowsill and is eyeing the room speculatively, considering both the cookie packet and the toolbox. Cal has finally been making progress with the rooks: he’s got them as far as settling on the stump to eat his scraps while he watches from the back step, although they eyefuck him and make dirty jokes about his mama while they do it. Right now, though, he’s not in the mood. “Keep moving,” he tells this one. The rook makes a noise that sounds like a raspberry, and stays put.

Cal gives up on the rook, and the desk. He wants, suddenly and powerfully, to be out of the house. The only thing he can think of that seems like it might settle his mind is catching his own dinner, but he doesn’t feel like sitting on a riverbank all day getting his ass damp on the off chance of catching a perch or two, and his damn firearm license still hasn’t come through. In general, taking into account some of the people he’s known to own guns and the fact that Donie McGrath didn’t have the option of whipping out a Glock in the pub, he can see the reasoning behind the restrictions in these parts, but today they piss him off. He could have got married or bought a house quicker, both, in Cal’s opinion, undertakings considerably more hazardous than owning a hunting rifle.

He decides to head into town and see if the guy at the station can give him an update on that license. He can hit the laundromat while he’s at it, and buy himself a new toothbrush, as well as a heater so Mart’s sneaky cold doesn’t get him. On his way out of the house with his trash bag of clothes, he locks the door.

The rain has picked up again, long curtains of it sweeping the windshield. Cal catches himself keeping an eye out for Trey. A few miles up into the hills, Lena said, which would be a long walk in this weather. But the road is deserted, just the odd cluster of cows sheltering against low stone walls and sheep dotted around the fields grazing, unperturbed. Branches droop low and swish along the sides of the Pajero. The mountains are dim and ghostly under a heavy veil of rain.

Kilcarrow town is old and comfortable, with rows of creamy-colored houses fanning out around a market square, and a hilltop view over fields and the twisting river. It has a couple of thousand people, which, factoring in the satellite villages, adds up to enough traffic for stuff like a hardware store and a laundromat. Cal hands in his clothes and makes for the police station with his head tucked down against the rain.

The station is in what looks like an oversized shed, sandwiched between two houses and painted white with a neat blue trim. It’s open a few hours here and a few hours there. In the back room, several people on the radio are talking over each other about potholes. At the desk out front, a uniform is reading the undersized local paper and scratching his armpit with real dedication.