Tana French - The Searcher - A Novel

“How?”

Donie shrugs. “How would I know? Took too much, maybe. Anyhow P.J. Fallon spotted it and called the Guards. Little prick musta talked him into sending them home again, but—”

“How’d he do that?”

“P.J.’s soft in the head. Anything’d do it.” Donie puts on an unpleasant whine: “‘My poor aul’ mammy, if I get sent down she’ll be all alone . . . ’ Only the little prick musta let slip to P.J. where he’d put the anhydrous.”

“Which was where? His lab?”

“‘Lab,’” Donie says, and sniggers. “Aul’ tip of a house up the mountains. Little prick swore no one else knew about it. P.J. and a few of his mates went in and cleared it out. Not just the anhydrous. Generator, batteries, anything worth anything. Five, six hundred quid’s worth, easy.”

Cal doesn’t need to ask who P.J.’s mates included. Mart, that know-it-all fuck: he really did know it all, or most of it anyway. All the time Cal was babbling on about big cats, and all the time he was wandering around asking innocent questions about wiring, Mart knew exactly who each of them was looking for, and why.

“The Dublin guys find out?” he asks.

Donie grins. “Ah, yeah.”

“How?”

“I dunno, man. Maybe they had a lookout on the place, check for themselves was it really as safe as the little prick said.” Donie’s grin widens. He seems surprisingly at ease with this conversation, now that he’s got accustomed to the idea of it. Cal has met people like Donie before: people who barely registered even pain or fear, let alone anything else, like their emotions never grew in right. None of them improved anyone’s life in any way. “Little prick was shitting himself. I’d say he’d been hoping to keep it on the QT that he’d been snared. Try and get hold of the cash to replace all the gear before they found out.”

“What’d they do?”

“Had me set up a meeting. Them and him.”

“Where?”

“That aul’ house.”

“To do what?”

“Give him a few slaps, probably. For being a thick cunt and drawing attention. Only the little prick didn’t show. He done a runner.”

Donie’s eye is wandering to the pack of cigarettes on the bedside table again. Cal snaps his fingers in his face. “Focus, Donie. That all they woulda done to him? A few slaps?”

“Long as he paid it back, yeah. They wanted him to do the work for them.”

“He know that?”

Donie shrugs. “Fuckin’ eejit didn’t know his arse from his elbow. He was in over his head, know what I mean? You wanta work with these lads, you haveta be smart. Not fuckin’ chemistry shite. Street smart.”

“Were you at the meeting?”

“Nah. Other stuff to do.”

Meaning he wasn’t invited, and meaning he doesn’t know whether or not the Dublin boys were telling him the truth about Brendan not showing up. Brendan was an optimistic guy; he could have gone bouncing out the door figuring he was about to put everything happily back on track, and only found out different when it was too late. Cal says, “Did the Dublin boys ask you where he could’ve gone?”

“How would I know? I wasn’t his fuckin’ babysitter.”

“They go after him? Catch him?”

Donie shakes his head. “I’m not thick, man. I didn’t ask.”

“Come on, Donie. How pissed off were they?”

“What d’you fuckin’ think?”

“Right. You figure they’d just let Brendan ride off into the sunset?”

“Don’t wanta know. All I know is they told me to put the frighteners on those aul’ fellas. Make sure they knew to keep their mouths shut, stay out of our business from now on.”

“The sheep,” Cal says.

Donie grins again, an involuntary grin like a spasm.

“Well, that musta been rewarding,” Cal says. “Finally, something that made the most of your God-given talents.”

“Just getting the job done, man.”

Cal looks at Donie, sitting on the edge of his bed with his pudgy bare knees wide apart, poking at his broken finger, sneaking the odd speculative glance at Cal. Donie is keeping something back.

He didn’t like Brendan one bit, which is understandable. Donie had been doing the donkey work for this gang for God knows how long, and all of a sudden Brendan came riding in, just an uppity kid talking big, and Donie was stuck being his errand boy. He wanted the little smartass gone, and Cal gets the distinct feeling that he took steps to make that happen. Maybe he told Brendan that that meeting would involve a lot more than a few slaps, scared the shit out of him, nudged him into skipping town. Or maybe he just accompanied Brendan along the way, and picked a lonely stretch of mountainside.

Cal considers getting the full story out of Donie, who is now removing fluff from his belly button. He decides against it, on the grounds that right at this moment he doesn’t actually give a shit what happened to Brendan Reddy. He needs as much of this story as it takes to find out who made Sheila beat Trey, and why. The rest of it can wait.

“And once you got the job done,” he says, “everything went back to normal.”

“Yeah. Until you came sticking your nose in. I want a fucking smoke, man.”

“Speaking of people sticking their noses in,” Cal says. “Trey Reddy.”

Donie’s lip lifts. “What about her?”

“She came to see you the other day, asking about Brendan. And then someone beat her up pretty bad.”

That makes Donie snigger. “No harm done there. The bitch was ugly to begin with.”

Cal punches him in the stomach so fast Donie never sees it coming. He doubles up and collapses sideways onto the bed, wheezing and then retching.

Cal waits. He doesn’t want to have to hit Donie again; every time he touches the guy, he’s not sure he’ll be able to stop. “Start over,” he says, when Donie eventually drags himself back up to sitting, wiping a trickle of spit off his chin. “Get it right this time. Trey Reddy.”

“Never touched her.”

“I know you didn’t, moron. You told someone she’d been here. Your Dublin buddies?”

“Nah, man. Never said a word to anyone.”

Cal pulls back his fist again. Donie scoots his ass backwards on the bed, yelping as he forgets and puts weight on his hand. “Nah nah nah, hang on. I said fucking nothing . Truth, man. Why would I? I don’t give a shite about her. I told her to fuck off, forgot the whole thing. End of. Swear to God.”

Cal recognizes the specific sense of injury that pours from a chronic liar who, for once, is being accused of something he genuinely didn’t do. “OK,” he says. “Anyone see her here?”

“I dunno, man. I wasn’t looking.”

“The Dublin boys got anyone else working for them round here?”

“Not in Ardnakelty. Couple up in town, one over in Lisnacarragh, one in Knockfarraney.”

Except Donie might not know, specially not if the Dublin boys suspect him of causing trouble around Brendan. If they have someone keeping an eye on him, he definitely wouldn’t know. Cal wishes he had waited till nighttime and found a way to catch Donie outside, instead of going off half-cocked, but it’s too late now.

There are two phones on Donie’s bedside table, in among the ashtrays and the weed baggie and the souring mugs and the snack wrappers: a great big shiny dickswing of an iPhone, and a shitty little My First Dumbphone. Cal picks up the burner and goes into the contacts list, which has half a dozen names. He holds up the screen to Donie. “Who’s the boss?”

Donie eyes him. Cal says, “Or I can just phone all of them, and tell them where I got their numbers.”

“Austin’s the boss. Of the lads who come down here, anyway.”

Cal copies Austin’s number, and the rest, into his own phone, keeping one eye on Donie in case he decides to get smart. “Yeah? Austin due in town any time soon?”