Chapter 137: The Last Telephone Call

The shop at the corner of the street was shut and the man who ran it was a wolf called Sean who had been in Galway all his life and who opened the door in his nightshirt when Padraig knocked four times.

"There is a thing about a telephone," Padraig said. "I need one and I need it tonight and I need it in a room with a door that shuts and I need you to go back to your bed and forget that we were here."

Sean looked at the whole of us on the step and did not ask a question. He let us in and put the light on over the counter and went back up the stairs.

The telephone was on the wall by the till and it was black and it had a dial and a cord that had gone stiff.

"Who are you calling?" Declan said.

"The harbor at Killybegs," I said. "There is a man there who is the harbor master and he is a wolf and he has been in that town all his life and there is a thing about a harbor master in a town in the north. He knows every boat that comes in and every boat that goes out and he has a log and the log has a date on it." I picked up the receiver. "And there is a thing about the fourteenth of July. It is three days away and there is not a wolf in Galway who is going to be in Killybegs before the fourteenth unless he is on a boat tonight."

The telephone rang for a long time.

And then a man's voice said, "Killybegs harbor. It is one in the morning and this had better be a boat."

"My name is Niamh and I am in Galway and I am calling about the Star of the Sea."

The line was quiet for a moment.

"There is a thing about the Star of the Sea," the man said. "She was seen off the Aran Islands at eleven o'clock and she is going north and she has a light on her and there is a woman on her deck in a good coat." He paused. "And there is a thing about a woman in a good coat on a boat out of Galway. She has been on this coast before. She was here in 1979 and she was here in 1981 and she was here in 1994 and there is not a wolf in this town who has not seen her at the top of the hill with a bag in her hand."

"Then there is a thing I have to ask you," I said. "And it is the thing that matters. The house on the hill. The one the children were taken out of. Is it still there?"

"It is still there. It has been shut since 1994 and there is a lock on the gate and there is not a wolf in this town who goes up that hill." He paused. "But there is a thing about the house on the hill that the whole of this coast knows and that no one says out loud. It has a cellar under it and the cellar has a door on the seaward side and the door was bricked up in 1981 and there is not a wolf in Killybegs who has opened it since."

The shop was quiet.

"Then there is a thing I have to ask you," I said. "And it is the last thing. The Star of the Sea. Is she going to be in Killybegs before the fourteenth?"

"She is going to be in Killybegs by the morning," the harbor master said. "She is a slow boat and she has a long way to go and there is a wind coming up from the southwest. She will be at the wall by six o'clock."

I put the receiver down.

"The house on the hill," I said. "The cellar with the door that was bricked up in 1981. That is where the whole of it is."

Declan was beside me with his hand on the counter.

"There is a thing about the woman in the good coat," he said. "She has been on this coast in 1979 and 1981 and 1994 and she is going to be in Killybegs by the morning. And there is a thing about a woman who is going to be in Killybegs by the morning and who has a boat and a house on a hill and a cellar with a door that was bricked up in 1981. She is not going to Killybegs to hide. She is going to Killybegs to get a thing out of that cellar before the fourteenth."

The whole of the shop was silent.

"Then there is a thing we have to do," I said. "And we have to do it tonight. Not in the morning and not on the fourteenth. Tonight. There is a boat at the wall and she is called the Kathleen and she is fuelled and she is fast and the coast from here to Killybegs is a coast that Tom's brother knows in the dark." I picked up my coat. "And there is a thing about the whole of it that the pack has to hear before we go. We are not going to Killybegs to fight. We are going to Killybegs to get a thing out of a cellar before a woman in a good coat gets it out and puts it in a fire. And if she gets it out first, then the whole of the file in Galway is a file about a village and not a file about a house on a hill, and the fourteenth is a day in a room with nine wolves and no proof that the children were ever taken."

And then Cormac said, "There is a thing about the whole of it that I have to say and I have been trying to say it since the shop."

The whole of us turned round.

"I have been in Killybegs," he said. "Not in 1994. In 1996. I went up the coast on a boat with my father in the summer and I was in that town for a week and I walked up the hill and I stood at the gate of that house." He put his hand on the counter. "And there is a thing about a boy of twenty who walks up a hill to a house he has been told is a thing that took children out of a village. He looks at the gate and he looks at the lock and he does not go in. But there is a thing about the whole of it that I have never told a living soul. The gate was not locked. There was a chain on it and the chain was loose and there was a path and there was a door at the end of it and the door was open."

The shop was silent.

"Then there is a thing you have to tell the whole of this room," I said. "What was in that house?"

Cormac looked at me.

"There was a room," he said. "It was the first room and it had a table and a chair and a bed and there was a fire in the grate that had been lit and there was a cup on the table that had been used. And there was a thing on the wall that I have been trying to forget for a year. It was a map of the coast and it had a mark on it at Dún Aonghasa and there was a pin in it and there was a string going from the pin to another pin and the other pin was at a cove on the north side of the headland." He put his hand down. "And there was a second thing. There was a book on the table and it was open and it had a page with a list of names on it and the names were the names of the children. And there was a name at the bottom of the list that I have never been able to forget. It was my own."

The whole of the shop was silent.

"Then there is a thing I have to say," I said, "and I am going to say it and then we are going to go down to that boat. The whole of it has been in a file and a court and a shop at one in the morning and the whole of it has come down to a house on a hill in Killybegs with a cellar and a door that was bricked up in 1981 and a book with a list of names in it and a name at the bottom that is the name of a boy who has been told his whole life that he was a thing that was broken in 1994." I put my hand on the counter. "He was not broken in 1994. He was taken out of a village in 1979 and given to a family in the north and brought back in 1981 and given to Deirdre and she gave him to Declan. And there is a thing about a boy who has been in the hand of the Alpha since he was fourteen and who walked up a hill in 1996 and stood at a gate. He is not a boy who is going to be in a court in Galway on the fourteenth and say the whole of it. He is a boy who is going to be in Killybegs by the morning and he is going to open that door."

The whole of the shop was silent.

And then the telephone rang.

It was a thing that had not rung in the shop since Sean had gone up to his bed and the whole of us looked at it and the whole of it rang four times and then Padraig picked it up.

He listened for a long moment and his face changed and he put his hand over the mouthpiece.

"It is the harbor master at Killybegs," he said. "He says the Star of the Sea has come in and there is a woman on her in a good coat and she has gone up the hill with a lamp and there are two men with her and one of them has a can."