“No, but you see what I mean. He didn’t do anything dodgy.”
“You’re not telling me he never would, though,” Cal points out.
Caroline goes back to her tissue paper, folding it around the sheep with deft quick fingers. Cal waits.
“There were rumors going round,” Caroline says in the end, “after Brendan went.” Her hands are moving faster, and her voice has tightened. She doesn’t enjoy talking about this. “People were saying he’d raped me, and he went on the run because I was going to the Guards.”
“And that wasn’t true?”
“No, it wasn’t. Brendan never laid a finger on me that I didn’t want. I squashed that one quick, once I heard about it. But there were plenty of others I couldn’t do anything about. That he ran because he beat up his mam. Or because he got caught peeping in women’s windows. Probably worse ones that no one told me.”
She pulls a piece of tape off the dispenser with a snap. “That’s what Ardnakelty was like to Brendan, all his life. Because he came from that family, people always believed the worst about him, whether there was any reason to or not. Even my parents—and they’re not like that—they were horrified when I started going out with him, only they said I had sense, so if I saw something in him then it was probably there. But they didn’t like it. Even when they saw he was good to me, they didn’t like it.” She glances up at Cal. The fast jerk of her head has anger in it. “So I’m just saying, don’t be believing everything people tell you about Brendan. Most of it’s a load of shite.”
“Then you tell me,” Cal says. “Would he do anything criminal, or not?”
“I’ll tell you what Brendan’s like,” Caroline says. Her hands have stopped moving; she’s forgotten all about the toy sheep. “He has a rake of little brothers and sisters, right? Most people, when they start going out with someone, they ignore everyone else. But Brendan: even when we first started going out, when we were pure mad about each other, he’d be saying, ‘I can’t meet up tonight, I’ve to go watch Trey’s football match,’ or ‘Maeve’s after having a row with her best friend, I’ll hang around home and cheer her up.’ Their parents weren’t doing any of that, so Brendan did it. Not like it was a pain in the arse. Like he wanted to.”
“He sounds like a good man,” Cal says. “But good men break the law, sometimes. You haven’t told me whether he would or not.”
Caroline goes back to folding the edges of the paper. In the end she says, “I hope not.”
Her face has tightened up. Cal waits.
She starts to say something, and then stops. Instead she says, “I’d just like to know he’s OK.”
Cal says gently, “I haven’t heard anything to say he’s not.”
“Right.” Caroline takes a quick breath. She’s not looking at Cal any more. “Yeah. I’d say he’s grand.”
“Tell you what,” Cal says. “I’ll say to Miz Reddy, if she does hear from Brendan, she should let you know.”
“Thanks,” Caroline says politely, unrolling green ribbon from a spool. The conversation is over. “That’d be great.”
She wraps up the sheep nice and pretty, and twirls the green ribbon in ringlets. When Cal thanks her for all her help, he leaves a second in case she might say something else, but she just gives him a bright impersonal smile and wishes his niece a happy birthday.
The outdoors, away from the clutter and the syrupy ballads, feels spacious and loose, peaceful. In the main square, families in their good clothes and old women in head scarves are coming out of the church; behind its spire, the wind chivvies scraps of cloud across the blue sky.
Cal was hoping Brendan might have talked to Caroline about his big moneymaking plan. Boys run their mouths, when they’re trying to impress girls. Caroline isn’t the type to be impressed by criminal activity, but Brendan could have been too young, too hasty and too desperate to notice that. Cal believes Caroline, though. Whatever was in the works, Brendan kept it to himself.
Cal hasn’t come away empty-handed, though. Suicide is off the table, or as good as. Not because Caroline thinks Brendan wasn’t the type, but because Caroline—and Cal considers her to be the best witness he’s talked to so far—Caroline says Brendan set a lot of store by keeping his promises. Brendan said he’d get Trey a bike for his birthday, and Brendan said he’d pay back Fergal’s hundred bucks—money he wouldn’t have needed if all he was aiming to do was go up the mountain and hang himself. If Brendan was planning on going anywhere, he was also planning on coming back.
And Caroline thinks there was nothing going wrong in Brendan’s mind. Cal is glad of this. If Brendan got spooked, if he ran, if he’s hiding out in the mountains, then he had a reason that existed outside his mind. That means it must have left solid tracks, somewhere along the way.
It might be that Caroline does have a guess at what Brendan was doing and it’s not something she wants to discuss, at least not with a stranger and an ex-cop. On the other hand, it might be that Cal isn’t the only person who’s had a warning.
Cal doesn’t hold out much hope of finding the police station open on a Sunday, but Garda O’Malley is sitting at his desk, reading his paper and eating a big piece of chocolate cake with his fingers. “Ah, God, it’s Officer Hooper,” he says, beaming and trying to work out whether to stand up. “I won’t shake your hand, look—” He holds up
