Tana French - The Searcher - A Novel

The path gradually levels off. The heather and moor grass give way to tangles of weeds pushing in from the verges. Birds begin to chirp and rattle.

“There you go,” Mart says, stopping where the path leads between hedges into a paved road. “D’you know where you are?”

“Not a clue,” Cal says.

Mart laughs. “Head down that way about half a mile,” he says, pointing with his crook, “and you’ll come to the boreen that goes round the back of Francie Gannon’s land. Don’t worry if you see Francie; he won’t go telling tales on you this time. Just blow him a kiss and he’ll be happy.”

“You’re not heading home?”

“Ah, God, no. I’m off to Seán Óg’s for a pint or two or three. I’ve earned it.”

Cal nods. He could use a drink himself, but neither of them has any desire for the other’s company right now. “You did the right thing, taking me up there,” he says.

“We’ll find out, sure,” Mart says. “Give Lena an extra squeeze for me.” He lifts his crook in a salute and hobbles off, with the low winter sunlight laying his shadow a long way down the road behind him.

The house is cold. In spite of all his layers and all the exercise, Cal is chilled to the marrow; the mountain has burrowed deep inside him. He showers till his hot water runs out, but he can still feel the cold spreading outwards from his bones, and it seems to him that he’s still soaked inside and out with the rich smell of peat tainted with death.

That evening he stays indoors and leaves the lights off. He doesn’t want Trey to come calling. His mind hasn’t come all the way back inside his body yet; he doesn’t want her to see him until today has had time to wear off him a little. He puts everything he was wearing in the washing machine and sits in his armchair, looking out the window as the fields dim towards a frosty blue twilight and the mountains lose their detail to become one dark sweep at rest. He thinks about Brendan and Trey somewhere within that unchanging outline, Brendan with the bog slowly working its will on him, Trey with the sweet air healing her wounds. He thinks about how things will grow where his own blood soaked into the soil outside, and about his hands in the earth today, what he harvested and what he sowed.

Trey comes the next day. Cal is doing his ironing on the table when she knocks. Just from that tight tap, he can feel what it’s taken for her to stay away this long. Mostly she thumps that door like the whole point is to enjoy the noise.

“Come in,” he calls, unplugging the iron.

Trey closes the door carefully behind her and holds out a loaf of fruitcake. She looks a whole lot better. There’s still a big scab running down from her lip, but the black eye has cleared to a faint yellowish shadow, and she’s not moving like the rib catches her. She looks like she might have grown another half inch.

“Thanks,” Cal says. “How’re you doing?”

“Grand. Your nose looks better.”

“Getting there.” Cal puts the cake on the counter and takes the watch from a drawer. “I got you what you need.”

He holds the watch out to Trey. It’s clean; he put it in boiling water for a while and then left it to dry out on the heater overnight. He knows that probably fucked it up beyond repair, even if the bog hadn’t managed that already, but it needed doing.

Trey turns the watch over and looks at the inscription on the back. There are little marks on her hands, pink and shiny, where the scabs have fallen away.

“That’s your brother’s watch,” Cal says. “Right?”

Trey nods. She’s breathing like it takes an effort. Her skinny chest rises and falls.

Cal waits, in case there’s something she wants to say or ask, but she just stands there, looking at the watch. “I cleaned it,” he says. “It’s not working, but I’ll find a good watch-repair store somewhere and see if they can get it running for you. If you want to wear it, though, you gotta make sure to tell people Brendan left it behind.”

Trey nods. Cal isn’t sure how much of that she heard.

“You can tell your mama the real story,” he says. No matter what Sheila’s done, she deserves that much. “No one else.”

She nods again. She rubs the back of the watch with her thumb, like if she rubs hard enough the inscription might have mercy and disappear.

“Whoever gave you this,” she says. “They could still have been bullshitting you. About what happened.”

“I saw his body, kid,” Cal says gently. “The injuries were consistent with the statement I was given.”

He hears the hiss of Trey catching a breath. “You sound like a Guard,” she says.

“I know.”

“Is that where you got this? Off his body?”

“Yeah,” Cal says. He has no idea what he ought to do if she asks about the body.

She doesn’t. Instead she says, “Where is he?”

“He’s buried up in the mountains,” Cal says. “I couldn’t find the place again if I tried all year. But it’s a good place. Peaceful. I never saw a graveyard that was more peaceful.”

Trey stands there looking down at the watch in her hands. Then she turns around and walks out the door.

Cal watches her through the windows as she goes around behind the house and down the garden. She climbs over the gate into his back field and keeps walking. He watches till he sees her sit down at the edge of his woods, with her back against a tree. Her parka blends in with the underbrush; the only way he can pick her out is by the red flash of her hoodie.

He finds his phone and texts Lena. Any chance you still have a pup looking for a home? The kid could do with a dog. She’d take good care of it.

There’s a pause of a few minutes before Lena gets back to him. Two of them are sorted. Trey can take her pick of the rest.

Cal texts her, Could me and her come over sometime and see them? If that runt is still free I should get to know him better before I take him home.

This time his phone buzzes straightaway. He’s no runt now. He’s eating me out of house and home. I hope you’re a rich man. Come tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be home by 3.

Cal gives Trey half an hour out by the woods. Then he starts bringing his desk equipment out to the back garden, piece by piece: the drop sheet, the desk, his tool kit, wood filler, scrap wood and brushes and three little cans of wood stain that he picked up in town. He brings out the cake, too: when he was a kid, shouldering the weight of heavy emotions always left him hungry. It’s another beautiful wintry day, with wispy brushstrokes of cloud in a thin blue sky. The afternoon sun lies lightly on the fields.

He upends the desk and takes a good look at the broken side. It’s not in as bad shape as he thought. He figured he was looking at disassembling the whole thing and replacing the side panel, but while a few pieces of the splintered wood are beyond repair, plenty of it can be slotted back into place and glued. The gaps should be small enough for wood filler. Carefully, kneeling on the drop sheet, he starts picking away the unsalvageable shards. He cleans the dust off the others with a paintbrush and then starts painting glue onto them, one by one, and delicately easing them back where they belong. He keeps his shoulder turned to the woods.

He’s clamping a long shard into place when he hears the swish of feet in the grass. “Check this out,” he says, without looking up. “Seems to me it’s working OK.”

“Thought we were going to take it apart and put in a new side,” Trey says. Her voice comes out rough around the edges.

“Doesn’t look like we’ll need to,” Cal says. “We can find something else to take apart, if you want. I could use another chair.”

Trey squats to take a closer look at the desk. She’s stashed the watch away in some pocket. Or maybe she’s thrown it away somewhere in the woods, or buried it, but Cal doesn’t think so. “Looks good,” she says.