Tana French - The Searcher - A Novel

“No casualties,” Cal says. “Far as I know.”

Lena takes his chin in her hand and turns his face from side to side. Her hand is warm, rough-skinned and matter-of-fact, like she’s examining a hurt animal. “Are you going to the doctor?”

“Nope,” Cal says. “No real harm done. It’ll heal.”

“I’ve heard that somewhere before,” Lena says, giving his face one more look and releasing it. “The pair of ye are a match made in heaven, d’you know that?”

Trey has emerged from the bedroom and squatted down to make friends with Nellie, who is joyously wriggling and licking. “How’s the war wounds?” Lena asks her.

“Grand,” Trey says. “What’s her name?”

“That’s Nellie. If you give her a bitta food, you’ll have a friend for life.” Trey heads for the fridge and starts rummaging.

“You oughta go home,” Cal says. “They might come back.”

Lena starts unloading the various pockets of her big wax jacket. “You never know your luck. If they do, I might do a better job of dealing with them than ye two have.” The jacket contains an impressive quantity of stuff: a small carton of milk, a hairbrush, a paperback book, two cans of dog food, a clip-on book light, and a toothbrush, which she waves at Cal. “Now. I came prepared this time.”

Cal feels that Lena isn’t taking in the full weight of the situation, but if his face and Trey’s haven’t brought it home to her, he can’t come up with anything that would. “I bought a couple of air mattresses,” he says. “They’re in the car. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep an eye out while I go fetch them.”

One of Lena’s eyebrows arches upwards. “You want me to cover you, is it? With that yoke?” She nods at the rifle.

“You know how to use it?”

“For Jaysus’ sake, man,” Lena says, amused, “I’m not going to crouch under the window playing snipers while you go twenty meters to your car. You’re going nowhere, anyway: with that arm, you can’t carry anything. I’ll go. Where’s your keys?”

Cal doesn’t like that idea one bit, but he can’t get round the fact that she has a point. He works his good arm around to fish his keys out of his pants pocket. “Lock it up once you’re done,” he says, although he’s not sure what this will achieve.

“And you can’t cover me, either,” Lena points out, catching the keys. “That yoke needs two good arms.”

“I’ll do it,” Trey says, from where she’s sitting on the floor feeding ham slices to Nellie.

“No you won’t,” Cal says. He finds himself getting irritated with Lena. He was starting to feel that he had a grip on the situation, until she showed up, and now the whole thing seems to have slipped out of his hands and got itself stranded somewhere between dangerous and ridiculous. “You’ll quit distracting that dog, is what you’ll do, so it can go along with Miss Lena. Put that ham away.”

“Now there’s a stroke of genius,” Lena says approvingly. “Nothing like a beagle to fight off a gang of desperate criminals. She hasn’t had her supper; I’d say she could eat at least three of ’em, depending how much meat they have on them. Were they big ones?”

“If you’re getting those mattresses,” Cal says, “now would be a good time. There’s some groceries in there, while you’re at it.”

“Sure, anyone’d be a narky fucker, after the day you’ve had,” Lena tells him consolingly, and she heads out to the car. Cal follows her to the door to watch after her, regardless of what she thinks about that and of whether he could actually be any help if she needed it. Trey, after a brief pause to assess matters, goes right back to feeding Nellie.

By the time they—Lena and Trey, mainly—have unloaded the groceries, fed the dog, inflated the mattresses, set out one on each side of the fireplace and made up the beds, Trey is yawning and Cal is fighting it. All his good intentions with steak and green beans have gone out the window. Trey’s cheese sandwich will have to get her through the night.

“Bedtime,” he tells her. He throws her the clothes he got in town. “Here. Pajamas, and stuff for tomorrow.”

Trey holds up the clothes like they have cooties, her chin goes out and she starts to say something that Cal knows is going to be about charity. “Don’t give me any shit,” he says. “Your clothes stink of blood. By tomorrow they’re gonna be attracting flies. Throw ’em out here once you’ve changed, and I’ll wash ’em.”

After a moment Trey rolls her eyes to heaven, heads into the bedroom and bangs the door behind her. “You’ve got yourself a teenager,” Lena says, amused.

“She’s had a long couple of days,” Cal says. “She’s not at her best.”

“Neither are you. You look about ready for bed yourself.”

“I could sleep,” Cal says. “If it’s not too early for you.”

“I’ll read for a while.” Lena finds her book and her clip light amid the stuff on the table, kicks off her shoes and makes herself comfortable on one of the mattresses—she has, sensibly, come wearing a soft-looking gray sweatshirt and sweatpants, meaning she has no need to change. Nellie is checking out the new space, snuffling into corners and under the sofa; Lena snaps her fingers, and Nellie lollops over and curls up at her feet. Lena props herself up on her pillow and gets to reading. Cal isn’t in the mood for sleepover chitchat either, but he’s irritated that she made the point before he did.

Trey opens the bedroom door, wearing the pajamas, and skids her dirty sweatshirt and jeans across the floor. Cal realizes that the pajamas are boy-type stuff with some kind of race car on the front. He still has trouble thinking of Trey as an actual girl.

“You want me to sit with you awhile?” he asks.

For a second she looks like she might, but then she shrugs. “Nah. I’m grand. Night.” As she heads back into the bedroom she throws him a lopsided grin over her shoulder. “Call me if you need your arse saving,” she tells him.

“Smartass,” Cal says to the closing door. “Get outa here.”

“Looks like she oughta be the one telling you a bedtime story, tonight,” Lena says, glancing up over her book.

“This isn’t a joke,” Cal says. Lena’s comfy sweat suit is annoying him all over again. He has no intention of asking for her help getting changed, which means he’s going to have to sleep in his blood-covered clothes.

“Seems to me you’re the one that hasn’t been taking it seriously enough,” Lena points out. “Are you done doing stupid things yet?”

“I’d love to be,” Cal says. He’s been trying to work out the least painful way to bend over for Trey’s clothes. He gives up on the whole damn thing and heads for his mattress. “I just can’t see any way around them.” Lena flicks one eyebrow and goes back to her book.

Cal is almost dizzy with fatigue. He turns his back to Lena and keeps his eyes open by poking his sore knee till Lena’s light clicks off, leaving the house dark, and till he hears her breathing slow down. Then, as quietly as he can, he disentangles himself from the bedding, gets up and inches the armchair over to the window. Nellie opens one eye at him, but he whispers, “Good dog,” and she thumps her tail once and goes back to sleep. He lays the Henry along the windowsill and sits in front of it, looking out at the night.

There’s a three-quarter moon, a rustler’s moon, high over the tree line. Under its light the fields are blurred and unearthly, like a mist you could lose yourself in, an endless sweep of it crisscrossed by the sharp black tangles of hedges and walls. Only small things move, flickers among the grass and across the stars, intent on their own business.

Cal thinks of the boys who have left their lives out there on that land: the three drunk boys whose car soared off the road and spun among the stars up beyond Gorteen, the boy across the river with the noose in his hands; maybe, or probably, Brendan Reddy. He wonders, without necessarily believing in ghosts, whether their ghosts wander. It comes to him that even if they do, even if he were to take up his coat now and go walking the back roads and the mountainsides, he wouldn’t meet them. Their lives and their deaths grew out of a land that Cal isn’t made from and hasn’t sown or harvested, and they’ve soaked back into that land. He could walk right through those ghosts and never feel their urgent prickle. He wonders if Trey ever meets them, on her long walks homewards under the dimming sky.