Chapter 112: The Fire on the Water

I was at the window with my hands on the sill before I had shifted back.

The Star of the Sea was burning from the wheelhouse aft and the smoke was going up in a column and the fire engines were on the quay with their hoses out and there were men on the wall shouting. The boat was still tied at the wall and the tide was on the turn and the wind was coming off the bay and the whole of her was going.

The nine wolves of the Court were at the windows beside me.

“There is a thing about that boat,” the woman with black hair said. “The court has read the file this morning and the file is in a press in this building and the press has a key and the key is on a ring on the belt of a man who is in a room on the floor below with a wolf on the door. So the file is safe. But there is a thing about a boat that is not the file.” She turned round. “What was on that boat?”

“Everything,” I said. “The papers from the church. The second charter. The book out of the boathouse. My mother's journal. The black book of the woman who took children out of the village. The red ledger. The letters of Ahern the elder. All of it was in a case in the cabin because we were going to bring it here this morning and we brought it on the boat because a car on the shore road in the dark is a thing that can be stopped.” I put my hand on the sill. “It was in the cabin and the cabin is burning.”

The whole room went up.

I went down the stairs at a run with Declan behind me and Cormac behind him and my sister behind him and the nine wolves of the Court came out of the room and down the stairs after us and the whole building emptied onto the quay.

The Star of the Sea was burning from the wheelhouse to the stern and the smoke was black and thick and the firemen were pouring water on her and there was a man on the wall with a hose who was shouting a thing about the fuel tank. The case was not on the deck. The cabin door was open and there was a shape in the smoke and the shape was a man and he was coming out of the cabin with a case in his hands and his coat on fire.

It was the man in the hood.

He came over the rail and down onto the quay and put the case on the stones and rolled on the ground with his coat on fire and two of the firemen put him out with a blanket. Then he sat up on the stones with his face black and his hands burnt and said, “I got it. I got the whole of it. It was under the bunk and the fire was in the wheelhouse and the cabin was not burning yet and I went in and I got it.”

The case was scorched at the corner and the lock was melted and there was a smell of paraffin off it. I knelt down on the stones and opened it and the papers inside were warm and the edges of two of them were brown and the rest was whole.

“The whole of it,” I said. “It is here. The whole of it is here.”

The whole quay went up.

And then the woman with black hair came through the crowd and stood over the case and looked at the papers and said, “There is a thing about this fire that the court is going to say before any wolf on this quay says another word. That boat was set alight. The case was under a bunk in a cabin and the fire was in the wheelhouse and a fire that starts in a wheelhouse and does not start in a cabin is a fire that was set by a hand and not by a fault.” She turned round. “There is a wolf in this city this morning who set a fire on that boat to burn a case of papers and who did not know that there was a man in the cabin who would go in after them.”

The quay was silent.

And then a man came through the crowd. He was a big man with a red face and a coat that had been rained on and he had a length of hose in his hands and a badge on his chest and he said, “There is a thing about this fire that the fire brigade is going to say and then we are going to take a statement from every wolf on this quay. The fire was set with paraffin and there was a can on the deck and the can has a name on it in paint and the name is a company in Sligo.” He held the can up. “Kelleher and Sons.”

The whole quay turned round and looked at Owen.

Owen was standing at the back of the crowd with his cap in his hand and his face grey.

“That is not my can,” he said. “I have not been on that boat since the night we came in and there is not a wolf on this quay who is going to say that I have.”

“There is a thing about the can,” the fireman said. “It has a number on it and the number is a fleet number and the fleet number belongs to a boat that is at the wall at the other end of this quay and the boat is called the Star of the Sea and she is out of Donegal.” He turned the can round. “This can came off that boat and there is not a man in Galway who is going to say otherwise.”

The whole quay was silent.

“Then there is a thing I have to say,” Owen said. “And I am going to say it in front of the whole of this quay and the court and the guards and the fire brigade. The can is off my boat and it was taken off my boat by a man in a good coat who came down the quay at four in the morning and who told me he was from the Council and who paid me twenty pounds for the loan of a can of paraffin.” He put his cap on. “I did not know what it was for. I have been a hunter all my life and I have done a great many things for money and I have never once set a fire on a boat with a case of papers on it and there is not a man in Galway who is going to say that I did.”

“Who was the man in the good coat?” the woman with black hair said.

Owen looked at the crowd and then at the top of the quay.

“He is standing at the top of the steps,” he said.

The whole quay turned round.

There was a man at the top of the steps in a good town coat with his grey hair combed and his hands in his pockets and his face was the face of a retired schoolmaster and it was Korkut.

The whole quay went silent.

“There is a thing about this morning,” Korkut said, “that I have been trying to say since the quay and that no wolf has let me say. I am not the man who took the can. I have been in a room on the floor below the court since eight o'clock this morning with a wolf on the door and the wolf on the door is a wolf of the Court of Alphas and he is standing at the top of these steps behind me and he is going to say whether I have left that room.” He put his hand out. “But there is a thing about the man in the good coat that I can tell you and that I have known since April. He is not a wolf and he is not a hunter and he is not from the Council. He is a man from Galway and he has been doing the errands for a woman in a house in Galway since 1961 and he was on the boat in the fog with the ring and he was on the street outside the hotel at four in the morning. His name is Sean and he is standing at the back of this crowd with a can of paraffin in his hand and a burnt coat.”

The whole quay went up.

And then a man at the back of the crowd broke and ran.

He went up the quay and along the wall and the whole of the crowd went after him and the firemen and the guards and the nine wolves of the Court and Declan and Cormac and me. He got as far as the corner of the quay and there was a wall and there was a drop and there was a boat at the wall with a man on her deck.

He went over the wall and down onto the deck and the man on the boat had a rope in his hands and he did not use it. He stood back and let the man in the burnt coat get past him and then he put his foot out and the man in the burnt coat went down on the deck and the rope came round his arms and the whole of it took four seconds.

The man on the boat was Padraig. He had come down from the west coast on the morning tide and he had a rope in his hands and he had a notebook in his coat and he had the look of a guard who has been waiting for a thing to happen for a week.

“There is a thing about this morning,” he said, “that I have been waiting for since Athlone. I am a guard of the guards of Dublin and I have been on leave for a week and I have been in a village on the west coast and in a post office in Athlone and on a boat in Galway Bay. And there is a thing about a man in a burnt coat who has been doing the errands for a woman in a house in Galway since 1961.” He pulled the rope tight. “He is going to stand in front of a court this afternoon and he is going to say the whole of it and there is not a wolf in Galway who is going to be able to stop him.”

The whole quay was silent.

And then, from the deck of the boat, the man in the burnt coat lifted his head and looked at me and said, “There is a thing about that case. The papers in it are not the whole of it. There is a thing in the hold in the basement of that building and it has been there since 1961 and the woman in Galway has been trying to get it out since Friday and she cannot because the door has a lock and the key is in the pocket of a man who is on the floor below the court with a wolf on the door.” He put his head down on the deck. “And there is a thing about the hold that I have to say before the guards take me. It is not empty.”