‘Where is Dympna now?’ Hector said.
‘He wasn’t looking too healthy at all last I saw. Not at all last I saw. He took the brunt of that gun from less than a foot away.’
Hector swallowed a groan. He sat back and looked longingly at the fire blazing in the hearth, his wide face roseate.
‘But this one has money, yeah?’ Arm asked again.
Hector ran his hand down his leg and began absently rubbing the shin Arm had dinted.
‘There’s a nice lump blooming there already,’ he said eventually. ‘I need to talk to my fucking brother.’
‘He’s halfway to Timbuktu by now,’ Arm said, ‘or else he’s fed himself a bullet. Either way he’s leaving you up the Swanee.’
The widow returned, three steaming drinks on a silver tray and a couple of thick triangles of brack. She handed Arm a drink, a small plate, and placed a slice of the brack on the plate. Hector got the same treatment before she resumed her position, sentinel by the fireplace.
‘Just the toddy for myself,’ she announced.
‘What’s that smell?’ Arm asked, holding the cup below his nose.
‘Cloves,’ she said. ‘Have a taste.’
Arm nipped at it. ‘Whiskey.’
‘That’s what a toddy is,’ she said. ‘Yours is not so strong as it only occurred to me in the kitchen that you must have driven across the county and will be soon enough driving back again, so I made it mild.’
She looked from Arm to Hector and smiled thinly.
‘So this lad is not your relative? Maybe I’m biased but I think I see a bit of a resemblance.’
‘No, no, my dear,’ Hector said, summoning up a smile for his biddy. ‘He merely works with my nephew. Our resemblances only extend as far as the fact we are both handsome men.’
‘Well now, Hector, maybe that’s it,’ the widow Mirkin chortled, and Arm saw that she was in fact a little tipsy. She eyed Arm over her drink as she took a sup.
‘Can I ask what the emergency was?’
Arm felt no particular urge to say anything. Hector looked at him and fumbled for words.
‘There, well, it’s only that it seems there may have been some kind of accident at the farm.’
‘An accident?’ the widow said gravely, her hand fluttering to her brooch. She looked from Hector to Arm.
‘We may have to go, now, my dear,’ Hector continued. ‘Myself and Douglas, I mean. I don’t want you concerned.’
‘What on earth happened?’ she asked.
‘The nature of the incident is not, fully, ah, apparent yet,’ Hector blustered, ‘we’re not sure how serious it is.’ He balanced the plate of brack on his chair’s armrest and stood up. Arm left down the victuals and shot to his feet too, a bolt of pain crackling through his middle.
‘Hector, what is the matter?’ the widow demanded. Hector girded himself and stepped forward. ‘Let’s just fucking go, Douglas,’ he growled, bustling crabwise past Arm, chest out but a cringe distorting his face, like Arm might go for him. Hector stepped out into the frame of the door.
‘Take another step yonder and I’ll break both your fucking ankles, Heck,’ Arm said.
Arm thought the widow might shriek or otherwise take fright at this articulation, but she was gazing in a spellbound way at the chair he had stepped out of. Her face was white, her expression shrunken.
‘What has happened to you?’ she said in a frail voice.
Arm looked back at the chair. A purplish stain had soaked down into the seat.
‘Oh, God in heaven, you do not look well. You are not well,’ the widow said.
‘Maire Mirkin,’ Arm said, ‘I am sorry. I am on your premises under false pretences. But if I am, then so too is this sidling cunt in the jumper.’ Out came the hammer and Arm pointed it towards Hector. Hector’s face had gone tight, clotted.
‘Hector,’ the widow said.
‘Maire Mirkin,’ Arm continued, ‘What does this fraud do? Show up with flowers, smile and charm. Throw a few quid your way to keep the house in trim, buy a nice thing or two in town. Well he has been playing you for a fool. His kind is poisonous. You’ve been letting a snake in through your door.’
The widow was staring at Hector, but she was listening to Arm.
‘He wants your money,’ Arm said.
‘Money,’ the widow said.
‘Yes. The money. The money. Now go and get it,’ Arm said.
‘Money,’ she said again.
‘Yes. Money,’ Arm said. ‘Whatever’s on the premises. In the attic, under the mattress, sewn into the bed linen, I couldn’t give a fuck where it’s hid, Maire, whether it’s cash or coppers or gold or silver, but go and get it for me.’
Hector took a step towards Arm. ‘You thick fucking daft cunt. You fucking loaf. Money! You think she has money!’
Arm dashed forward and grabbed Hector’s arm, pulling downwards. Hector went unbalanced to his knees and Arm stepped around behind him. With a push he sent Hector sprawling chest forward onto the carpet and planted the knee of his good leg between Hector’s shoulder blades, pinning him. Hector began shouting indecipherably into the carpet’s thick weave. Arm grabbed a wrist, dragged Hector’s arm clear of his body and brought the hammer whistling square down onto the back of his hand.
Hector screamed, a long guttural rent right into the carpet’s fur. He thrashed about, but Arm kept his knee wedged steadily, even as the hamstring of his placed leg tautened and burned. Hector’s convulsions jittered into sputtering stillness. He lifted his face up from the floor and twisted it sideways. His cheek was imprinted with pinpricks from the carpet fibres.
‘Maire,’ he sobbed.
Arm smacked him twice under the ear with the butt of the hammer’s handle and pressed his elbow down onto Hector’s neck. Arm still held Hector’s hand. A purple squash-ball-sized bruise was bloating up off the skin with incredible rapidity and the rest of it was trembling limply, a misshapen nest of crazed nerves and pulverised bone.
‘Now,’ Arm said. There was a space between the end of the couch and the wall, and the widow
