“Don’t wanta know. All I know is they told me to put the frighteners on those aul’ fellas. Make sure they knew to keep their mouths shut, stay out of our business from now on.”

“The sheep,” Cal says.

Donie grins again, an involuntary grin like a spasm.

“Well, that musta been rewarding,” Cal says. “Finally, something that made the most of your God-given talents.”

“Just getting the job done, man.”

Cal looks at Donie, sitting on the edge of his bed with his pudgy bare knees wide apart, poking at his broken finger, sneaking the odd speculative glance at Cal. Donie is keeping something back.

He didn’t like Brendan one bit, which is understandable. Donie had been doing the donkey work for this gang for God knows how long, and all of a sudden Brendan came riding in, just an uppity kid talking big, and Donie was stuck being his errand boy. He wanted the little smartass gone, and Cal gets the distinct feeling that he took steps to make that happen. Maybe he told Brendan that that meeting would involve a lot more than a few slaps, scared the shit out of him, nudged him into skipping town. Or maybe he just accompanied Brendan along the way, and picked a lonely stretch of mountainside.

Cal considers getting the full story out of Donie, who is now removing fluff from his belly button. He decides against it, on the grounds that right at this moment he doesn’t actually give a shit what happened to Brendan Reddy. He needs as much of this story as it takes to find out who made Sheila beat Trey, and why. The rest of it can wait.

“And once you got the job done,” he says, “everything went back to normal.”

“Yeah. Until you came sticking your nose in. I want a fucking smoke, man.”

“Speaking of people sticking their noses in,” Cal says. “Trey Reddy.”

Donie’s lip lifts. “What about her?”

“She came to see you the other day, asking about Brendan. And then someone beat her up pretty bad.”

That makes Donie snigger. “No harm done there. The bitch was ugly to begin with.”

Cal punches him in the stomach so fast Donie never sees it coming. He doubles up and collapses sideways onto the bed, wheezing and then retching.

Cal waits. He doesn’t want to have to hit Donie again; every time he touches the guy, he’s not sure he’ll be able to stop. “Start over,” he says, when Donie eventually drags himself back up to sitting, wiping a trickle of spit off his chin. “Get it right this time. Trey Reddy.”

“Never touched her.”

“I know you didn’t, moron. You told someone she’d been here. Your Dublin buddies?”

“Nah, man. Never said a word to anyone.”

Cal pulls back his fist again. Donie scoots his ass backwards on the bed, yelping as he forgets and puts weight on his hand. “Nah nah nah, hang on. I said fucking nothing. Truth, man. Why would I? I don’t give a shite about her. I told her to fuck off, forgot the whole thing. End of. Swear to God.”

Cal recognizes the specific sense of injury that pours from a chronic liar who, for once, is being accused of something he genuinely didn’t do. “OK,” he says. “Anyone see her here?”

“I dunno, man. I wasn’t looking.”

“The Dublin boys got anyone else working for them round here?”

“Not in Ardnakelty. Couple up in town, one over in Lisnacarragh, one in Knockfarraney.”

Except Donie might not know, specially not if the Dublin boys suspect him of causing trouble around Brendan. If they have someone keeping an eye on him, he definitely wouldn’t know. Cal wishes he had waited till nighttime and found a way to catch Donie outside, instead of going off half-cocked, but it’s too late now.

There are two phones on Donie’s bedside table, in among the ashtrays and the weed baggie and the souring mugs and the snack wrappers: a great big shiny dickswing of an iPhone, and a shitty little My First Dumbphone. Cal picks up the burner and goes into the contacts list, which has half a dozen names. He holds up the screen to Donie. “Who’s the boss?”

Donie eyes him. Cal says, “Or I can just phone all of them, and tell them where I got their numbers.”

“Austin’s the boss. Of the lads who come down here, anyway.”

Cal copies Austin’s number, and the rest, into his own phone, keeping one eye on Donie in case he decides to get smart. “Yeah? Austin due in town any time soon?”

“There’s not, like, a schedule, man. They ring me when they need me.”

“What’s Austin like?”

“You don’t wanta fuck with him,” Donie says. “I’m telling you now.”

“I don’t want to fuck with anyone, son,” Cal says, tossing the phone back onto the bedside table, where it lands in an ashtray with a dispirited puff of gray powder. “But sometimes life just turns out that way.” He gets up and dusts the residue of Donie’s chair off his pants. He feels like he needs a decontamination shower. “You can go back to sleep now.”

“I’m gonna kill you,” Donie informs him.

The flat eyes say he’ll do it, if he doesn’t fuck it up. “No you’re not, you moron,” Cal says. “You do that, you’ll have a dozen detectives crawling all over this townland, interviewing the shit out of everyone about every piece of mopery that goes on in these parts. What do you think your Dublin buddies’ll do to you if you bring that shitstorm down on their heads?”

Donie may be dumb as a bag of hair in most ways, but he has an expert’s grasp of the intricate ways of trouble. He gives Cal a stare of pure vicious hatred, the kind that only comes from someone who’s no threat.

“See you round,” Cal says. He heads for the door, kicking a ketchup-crusted plate out of his way. “And clean this place up, for Christ’s sake. You make your mama live with this? Change your fucking sheets.”

On his way out Cal has himself a nice long wander around the lane behind Francie Gannon’s fields, taking a deep interest in the verges and checking to see if anyone is watching Donie’s place. He has a story about his lost sunglasses ready to go if anyone comes along asking, but the only person he sees is Francie Gannon, who waves cheerfully to him and calls something unintelligible, on his way somewhere with a bucket that looks heavy. Cal waves back and keeps looking, not urgently enough to make Francie come help him out.

When he reaches the conclusion that the place is clear, right now anyway, he walks home in a state of mounting irritation, more with himself than with anyone else. He reckoned all along, after all, that there was more going on underneath Mart’s quirky-yokel shtick; he just never put things together, which for someone in his line of work is an unpardonable level of dumb. Cal supposes he should be grateful for Mart’s protective herding, even if Mart was mainly motivated by the desire to prevent Cal from bringing down more trouble on the townland, but he’s not fond of being made to feel like a fool.