Chapter 122: The Betrayal I Chose

We were on the boat back to Galway by four in the morning and the whole of the nine were on her and the three men from the slip were tied to the rail and Cormac was sitting on the cabin roof with a blanket round him and his mother beside him.

The wind had gone round to the north and the sea was flat and the whole of the crossing was easy and I sat on the deck with the third charter in my coat and the whole of it in my head.

And then Ahern came and sat down beside me and said, "There is a thing I have to tell you and I have been putting it off since the cove."

"Say it."

"Korkut is not in a room in Galway with a wolf on the door. He was in a room on Friday and he was there on Saturday and he was there on Sunday and on Monday morning a man came with a paper that said the Council had released him into the custody of his own recognisance and he walked out of that building at nine o'clock and there has not been a wolf in Galway who has seen him since." He put his hand flat on the deck. "And there is a thing about that which is worse than a man walking out of a room. The paper that released him was signed by the Keeper of the Rolls and the Keeper of the Rolls was in a room on the floor below with a wolf on the door and he was released on Monday morning at the same time."

The boat went on through the dark.

"Then there is a thing I have to ask," I said, "and it is the thing that has been at the back of my head since the quay. Who released Kern and Korkut on Monday morning?"

"The Court of Alphas," Ahern said. "The court has the power to release a wolf into his own recognisance and it used it on Monday morning and there is not a wolf in Galway who is going to argue with nine wolves from nine territories." He looked at me. "But there is a thing about a court that releases a wolf on Monday morning and sits on Monday afternoon and does not mention it. It is a court that has been told to release him and that does not want to say who told it."

The boat went on.

"Kern and Korkut were both in that building on Monday morning and both walked out at nine o'clock and the whole of it is in a file in Galway," I said. "And there is a thing about the two of them that I have been thinking about since the cove. Korkut made a false bond on Cormac in 1994 and broke it and told him a lie and he was the enforcer of this region for eighteen years and he signed a sentence of the headland in March. And Kern kept the file for thirty six years and took money out of that pack and signed the receipts." I put my hand on the rail. "And there is a thing about the two of them that no wolf in Galway has said out loud. They are not the men who did it. They are the men who were paid to do it. The wolf who did it is in a house in Galway and she has been in a house in Galway since 1961 and she is called Eileen and she is the sister of the woman who has been sitting in that chair."

Ahern looked at me.

"Then there is a thing about the fourteenth that I have to say," he said. "The whole of the file is going to be read out loud and the whole of it is going to be in a room with nine wolves and the whole of the co-op. And there is a thing about the file that has been in a press in Galway for thirty six years. It is not a file about a village. It is a file about a Council. And there is not a wolf on the Court of Alphas who has not signed a receipt for a tithe that came out of that village and who is not going to be in that room on the fourteenth."

The boat came into Galway Bay at nine in the morning and the whole of the quay was quiet and the building was quiet and there was a wolf on the door of the court and he let us in.

The woman with black hair was in the room with the long table and she had a paper in front of her and a cup of tea and she looked up when we came in.

"There is a thing about this morning," she said, "that the court is going to say before any wolf in this room says another word. The wolf Korkut is not in this building and the Keeper of the Rolls is not in this building and there is not a wolf in Galway who has seen them since Monday morning. And there is a thing about that which the whole of this room is going to hear. The paper that released them was signed by the Keeper of the Rolls and countersigned by the enforcer of this region and it was put in front of the court on Monday morning by a clerk who said it came from the Council. And there is not a wolf on the Court of Alphas who signed it."

The room went quiet.

"Then there is a thing I have to say," Ahern said. "And I am going to say it in front of the whole of this court and then I am going to put my case on that table. The paper that released them was a forgery and it was signed by the Keeper of the Rolls and countersigned by the enforcer of this region and it was put in front of the court by a clerk. And there is a thing about a clerk who puts a forged paper in front of a court. He is a clerk who has been paid. And there is a thing about a man who has been paid to forge a paper that releases two wolves from a room on the morning the court is going to sit. He is not releasing them. He is moving them." He put his hand flat on the table. "Korkut is the only wolf in the west of Ireland who has been in a hold in a basement and who has signed a sentence of the headland. And Kern is the only man in the west of Ireland who has the key to the hold and the whole of the file in his head. And there is a thing about the two of them being out of a room on the morning of the fourteenth. They are going to be on a boat."

The woman with black hair put her pen down.

"Then there is a thing the court is going to do," she said. "The court is going to put a wolf on the ferry at Dun Laoghaire and a wolf on the mail boat at Rosslare and a wolf on every quay in Galway and a wolf on the road to the north. And there is a thing about a man who is being looked for. He does not go to a quay and he does not go to a road. He goes to a house in Galway that has a woman in it and a boat at the bottom of the garden."

The whole room turned round.

"Then there is a thing I have to say," I said, "and it is the thing that no wolf in this room has said since Monday morning. The woman in the house in Galway is called Eileen and she is the daughter of the woman who took the seat in 1961 and she has been running that village for thirty six years and she is the one thing in the whole of it that has not been caught. And there is a thing about a woman who has been running a village from a house in Galway for thirty six years and who has just lost her Keeper and her enforcer in one morning. She is not going to sit in that house and wait for a court. She is going to get on a boat." I put my hand on the table. "And there is a thing about a boat that a woman in a house in Galway has at the bottom of her garden. It is not a ferry and it is not a mail boat and it is not on a quay. It is a boat that goes out of a garden at the top of the tide and it goes north and there is not a wolf in Galway who is going to see it."

The woman with black hair looked at me.

"Then there is a thing the court is going to ask you," she said. "And I am going to ask it now and you are not going to like it. Where is the house?"

I looked at Ahern.

"There is a thing about the house," Ahern said. "It is on the road out of Galway to the north and it has a white gate and a red shed and there is a boat at the bottom of the garden. And there is a thing about the house that I have known since April and that I have not said out loud because there is a wolf in this building who is the only wolf in Galway who has been in it." He looked at me. "The cottage in Athlone. The white gate and the red shed and the woman called Margaret. It is not in Athlone. It is on the road out of Galway to the north and it has been there all along and the woman who has been posting letters and answering the telephone has been sitting in it."

The whole room was silent.

"Then there is a thing I have to say," I said, "and I am going to say it and then I am going to go out of this room. The woman in that house is the one wolf in the whole of it who has not been caught and she has been in a house on a road for thirty six years and she has been writing letters and she has been taking children and she has been paying hunters and she has been signing papers in the name of her sister. And there is a thing about the fourteenth that I have been getting wrong since the beginning. The whole of it is going to be read out loud in that room and the whole of the co-op is going to be in it and the seat is going to be set aside and the heir is going to be declared. But there is not a thing in that file that is going to put a woman in a house on a road in front of a court if she is not in the room." I put my coat on. "So I am going to go and get her."