without seeing his son’s face. Everyone knew how rarely anyone came home, even when somewhere else was only hours across the Irish Sea. There was only the sound of milk spurting into buckets again.
‘There’s a way to go yet, Pa.’
‘You think so?’ David was surprised by his son’s quiet self-control. ‘If Mr Brady’s not convinced, I don’t know who else can help us.’
‘Sometimes it’s not who you know, it’s what you know,’ said Stefan. It felt like the shrug was still there.
‘Should I know what that means?’ There was a note of irritation in David’s voice. Riddles weren’t answers. These were difficult things to say.
‘No,’ Stefan snapped in return, ‘and you wouldn’t want to.’
At almost the same instant father and son got up from the milking stools and walked to the battered churn behind them. They poured the milk from the buckets in silence. Stefan knew what it had cost his father to speak those words, and what it had cost his mother to tell him to speak them. But it wasn’t time for answers. They said no more till the milking was done and the cows were back in the fields.
When the two men walked into the kitchen the only recognition that the conversation in the milking parlour had happened was the look Helena gave David, and the slightly puzzled shrug he gave her in return. Explanations would have to wait, but she knew the questions no one wanted to ask still had no answers. Stefan and David stood next to each other at the sink, washing their hands. Tom sat at the kitchen table, unaware of anything except for the radio and a woman’s voice reading a story that had taken him somewhere else altogether. Stefan listened too: ‘A faint glimmer floated down from the hills. That was Seamus, holding a candle and riding Long-Ears. The storm lantern the turf-cutter used danced across the bog like a will-o’-the wisp, and the big steady glow of the kitchen lamp advanced on the road and Eileen knew her mother carried it. All the lights came together at the crossroads. “Hee-haw,” sang out Long-Ears, and Eileen knew she was found.’ As David Gillespie opened a bottle of beer and poured out two glasses, Stefan sat down at the table beside Tom, watching him happily absorbed in the story, and wishing he could just be where his son was now, far away from everything.
The following morning Stefan Gillespie set off early on the bicycle it had taken him the best part of the previous evening to repair, after its years in the loft of forgotten things behind the pigsty. His father was milking the cows. It would be a long ride into the mountains. The air was still cold but it was a clear, almost cloudless day; it would be hot as he climbed up to Glenmalure. The last time he had made this journey on a bicycle he was probably sixteen or seventeen, with Terry Lynch and Richard Kavanagh and Billy Harrison and Niall Quinn. None of them really kept in touch now. Terry was in America, somewhere in New York. Richard was still farming in Englishtown, just down the road, but there was never much to talk about other than the way the grass was growing and the price of cattle. Billy was in Yorkshire, a travelling salesman the last he’d heard, with an English wife and three children. Niall was in Baltinglass now, back from Dublin and trying to make something of the auctioneer’s firm his father had drunk into the ground.
There was time to remember a lot as he cycled past the track up to the cemetery under Kilranelagh Hill where Maeve was buried, then through Balinroan and on past Tom’s school at Kilranelagh Cross; by the long, crumbling wall of the crumbling Humewood Estate and on to Rathdangan and Rathcoyle; up on to the Military Road where it rose more steeply now, towards Aghavannah, and then suddenly, as the road turned sharply, he was riding down the steep slope into the valley of the Avonbeg River, beside the ruins of the English army barracks at Drumgoff. For a moment the reasons that had brought him into the mountains didn’t matter as he looked down. He knew this place. It was in his blood. He needed it to be in his son’s blood as well.
Hannah was in Dublin with her father. He hadn’t seen her since the train took them into Dublin from Dun Laoghaire. The journey from Sweden to Ireland had taken four days; by train to Gothenberg, by boat to Hull, then train and boat again. They were four days the two of them would not have again. It was hard to accept that. But it didn’t quite drive out the sense of exhilaration he felt as he sped down the wooded hillside into Glenmalure. He was doing a job no one wanted him to do — except for Hannah Rosen. It wasn’t only about her though. It wasn’t duty or some great sense of right and wrong, or a responsibility to the law or the Gardai or some higher purpose he hadn’t found a word for. He wasn’t there to speak for the dead. They didn’t care. He was carrying no fine motives up into Glenmalure. He wanted someone to pay for something. But it was more than that. There was an unspoken hope in this journey into the mountains. There were no scruples in that hope. He wasn’t looking for the truth; he was looking for a weapon.
He stopped at the Glenmalure Inn for a glass of lemonade. They told him they knew Mrs Donahue well. She lived in the cottage by the ford below Ballinagoneer and they kept her letters for her. She’d a few chickens up there and she’d had new slates on the roof last month. It was Joe Crosbie from Greenan who done it so she’d have to have a bit put away with the prices he’d charge, not that it was anybody’s business but her own. She’d never said she was a widow, but there was a feller from Dublin bought the house two years ago and she had it from him. She didn’t have much to do with anyone, but then if you were up at the top of the glen there wasn’t anyone to have much to do with anyway. Once a week she came down to the crossroads and took the bus into Rathdrum. On the way back she’d have a Guinness or two and wait for a lift from Eddie McMurrough. She wasn’t a bad looker, taking all things into account. It wasn’t only out of the kindness of his heart Eddie took her on past the farm at Ballinaskea and all the way home.
The road into Glenmalure stopped below Ballinagoneer, not long after the ford over the Avonbeg. There were only the mountains beyond. It was a long, narrow valley, with the hills climbing up more and more steeply. Even in summer it could be dark. The fields that were strung out along the valley were small, hard-won, stony things; they didn’t stretch far before the valley walls rose up at angles only the sheep could walk. Glenmalure had always been a bleak place. Down the centuries it had been a place of refuge too, as rebellion after rebellion against the English failed. It was a place of refuge for Mrs Donahue now. Stefan knew from the letter he had found at Hugo Keller’s house in Langfuhr that she was waiting in Glenmalure. Now he would have to tell her that the man she was waiting for was dead.
He crossed the ford and cycled through the woods until the track was too rough to pedal any further. He pushed the bike for another quarter of a mile. On one side of the track, among the trees, there were broken walls, overgrown with moss. It was a long time since anyone had lived here, but as the trees thinned out and the sunlight broke through on to the road there was a small cottage. It was neat and whitewashed. There was washing on the line and half a dozen speckled hens were picking about for food in front of the house. As he leant the bicycle against the wall, a woman came out, smiling. He recognised the nurse, Sheila Hogan, immediately. She recognised him.
‘How’s it going, Sheila?’
‘You’ll want some tea.’ There was no smile now.
‘I wouldn’t mind.’
She walked back in without another word. He sat down on a bench by the door. The wood was warm from the sun. It would be better said outside.
When she came out with the tea he took her letter to Hugo Keller from his pocket and gave it to her. She sat down on the bench, holding it tightly.
‘Where did you get it?’ she asked.
‘I was in Danzig.’
‘You saw him.’
He nodded.
‘I haven’t heard from him in a while.’
She stared down at the letter. She knew what he was going to say.
‘I’m sorry, but he’s dead, Sheila.’
She looked around her, at the garden and the mountains.
‘What happened?’
‘You know what he did. His luck ran out. It was bound to one day.’
‘Someone killed him?’
‘Yes.’
She stared across at the hens.
‘He didn’t like what he was doing there.’
‘I’d say it was a bit late for him to start being choosey. How many years was he at it, blackmailing people and
