‘That’s whit he said.’
She fell silent again and Mulholland resisted the temptation to follow that line of questioning which could be revisited later. The absent watchman could wait. Gently does it, and always remember she was a Catholic. Faith is the key, even a ruptured disreputable faith like hers.
‘The Lord loves a penitent, Mary,’ he murmured.
‘So, he does,’ the old woman conceded.
She looked at the box he held as if it contained, like Pandora’s, all of the inflictive evils.
‘Daniel was molassed wi’ drink. He ripped open a case, threw that thing at me. I didnae even know I had it till I got hame. I ran terrified. Whit I could see in my mind. My poor wee lamb.’
‘So you hid the box away?’
‘Aye. It was all I had left of him. The wee lamb.’
She bowed her head once more and though Mulholland knew the man’s reputation as an unmitigated thug, he nodded as if he had personally witnessed Daniel gambolling in the fields, covered in a woolly fleece, bleating like a soul possessed.
‘What happened to him? Your wee boy?’
Mary’s eyes creased with pain. She was a wily old bird, a born survivor, and no doubt, in time, would try to wriggle off the hook, but at that moment her face held such a depth of suffering that Mulholland almost found it difficult to meet her gaze.
Almost.
‘What transpired that night, Mary?’ he repeated.
‘Daniel, he – bent over tae light the shavings. Fell on his face. The oil must have splashed all over him. He went up like Bonfire Night.’
For a moment her lips twisted in grim humour and Mulholland judged it time to make his move. On to what really mattered, never mind the burnt lambkin.
‘He was to fire the place, you said?’
‘Aye.’
Deep breath now.
‘Who put him up to it, Mary?’
‘A fine gentleman.’
If Mulholland had breathed in any more, he would have bloated up like a bullfrog.
‘Did you perhaps glimpse this gentleman?’
‘No’ really. I don’t get out much.’
The constable deflated somewhat. Mary carried on regardless.
‘Daniel met up with him. In private, room back o’ Devlin’s tavern.’ A note of pride entered her voice. ‘My son had been recommended.’
‘This gentleman. Did he have a name?’
Mary gave him a sceptical look and Mulholland realised that in his eagerness to pursue and pounce, he had asked a profoundly stupid question. As if a man who was planning arson would leave his calling card.
‘Did Daniel say what the man looked like, maybe?’
‘A’ he said was … fine and fleshy.’
‘Fleshy? Like a butcher’s boy?’
‘I wouldnae know, I wasnae there.’
Mary’s eyes had narrowed and Mulholland realised that she suspected he was trying to tie her into the event more tightly than she wished to be. Either she was as innocent as she pretended, or she was a willing accomplice to arson, but that could wait.
He pitched his voice to a more even, soothing note.
‘Anything else? Did your wee boy notice anything else about this fine fleshy gentleman?’
Mary thought for a moment then nodded vigorously.
‘Aye. Right enough. A hankie.’
‘A hankie?’
‘In his sleeve. Daniel thought it awfy class. “I’ll dae that Mammy,” he said. “I’ll wear my hankie up my sleeve.” But he never did.’
She choked back a sob, however Mulholland’s mind retraced a moment in the warehouse when Garvie mopped at his brow and stuffed his handkerchief back so that it flounced out from just above the wrist.
Another nail in the coffin of proof.
‘What about payment?’
‘After the job was done.’
‘Where?’
‘Whit difference does it make?’
She was correct, the question superfluous even as he spoke it. Garvie now knew the man was dead and he wouldn’t be hanging about the back room of Devlin’s waving money at the passing trade.
Besides, Mulholland had something a deal more powerful up his own sleeve.
‘Ach,’ said Mary, out of the blue. ‘When I saw his poor body, it knocked the stuffing out of me.’
She had shrunk back into herself, face crumpled, eyes bewildered and lost.
Mulholland smiled; he could afford compassion now or rather he could let his natural compassion emerge. For when the other farmyard boys wanted to hang a cat up by the tail and shoot arrows at it, was it not himself that persuaded them to give the animal at least ten yards of a start?
‘Otherwise you’d have told me nothing. Eh, Mary?’
‘Probably not,’ she replied with a weary humour.
Their eyes met. Mulholland glanced down at the find from the coalbunker, which now lay wedged between his bony knees. He lifted it up and offered it forth like a holy relic. A wafer on the Catholic tongue.
‘So you could attest, on the Holy Book, this box of cigars here … it comes from the warehouse?’
‘That I can swear,’ said Mary piously.
The constable opened the box and sniffed again. The bitter acrid smell from within brought such joy that he felt another leap coming on.
But he resisted the temptation and continued to crouch on the stool like a praying mantis.
He sniffed once more then glanced up expectantly.
Mary nodded. ‘Perks o’ the job, Daniel said. He ca’d them Stinko D’Oros.’
‘Indeed they are.’ Mulholland closed the box with a snap. ‘The cheapest, nastiest cigar on the market. Foul as a dead badger. Stinko D’Oros. My Aunt Katie used to smoke them before she turned to the pipe.’
‘God help her now,’ offered Mary.
Mulholland stood suddenly. He had what he wanted and he knew exactly what to do with it. This was his moment. All the lines of his life had converged like a railway terminus. Bound for glory.
No time to waste.
‘Mary,’ he said urgently, ‘I have to get somewhere and I’m trusting you’re not going to run out on me. Am I mistaken in that trust?’
‘Where have I got tae go?’ she replied with a bleak smile. ‘And anyhow, I want tae bury my son. Whit’s left o’ him.’
