Chapter 35: The Border at the Headland

I went along the shore road with the wind in my face and the sea breaking white on the rocks, and I went past the boathouse and up the track to the headland because the Cormorant was beyond the point and the only way to reach her on four legs was over the high ground.

The moon came up behind the cloud and the whole headland went from black to grey and I could see the Cormorant out past the point with her light going and the small boat behind her with the lamp. I could not see the men in the small boat. I could smell them. I could smell Cormac and Padraig and the diesel and the fear.

And then, on the border of the territory where the track came down off the headland to the cove, I smelled something else.

It was a smell I did not know. It was not wolf and it was not the village and it was not the sea. It was oiled metal and cold tobacco and a soap that was not the soap of this coast, and it was coming up the track toward me, and there were two of them.

I stopped on the track and I shifted back and I stood there in the wind with my coat round me and waited, because a wolf who runs from a scent on the border has told the border that she is frightened.

Two men came up out of the cove. They were not from this village. They wore dark jackets and boots that had been oiled and they carried a long case between them and they stopped when they saw me on the track and one of them put his hand up.

"Easy," he said. "We are not here for you."

"You are on pack territory," I said.

"We know what territory we are on." The man came up the track a few more steps. He was somewhere in his forties and he had a broad face and a shaved head and a small scar on his chin and he was looking at me the way a man looks at a dog he is not sure of. "We are here on business and the business is with the co-op and it has been going on for years and it is not your business."

"What business?"

The second man had not spoken. He was younger and thinner and he had the long case on his shoulder and he was looking at me with his head tilted.

"Declan," he said.

"What?"

"Declan," the thin man said again. "The harbormaster. He is out in the Cormorant past the point and he has been out there an hour and the tide is on the turn and the wind is southwest. We were told to come up to the headland and wait for him to come in and if he did not come in by midnight we were to go out and look for him." He shifted the case on his shoulder. "We are not hunters. We are a salvage crew from Galway and we have been paid to be here tonight and we have been paid by the co-op and that is all I am going to say."

The word salvage went through me like cold water.

"Who paid you?"

"The co-op pays us every year," the broad man said. "Every year in the spring and every year in the autumn and the money comes from the hall and the woman with the silver hair signs the paper. We are not here to do anything to the man. We are here to do a job and the job is to be on the headland at midnight and if the harbormaster does not come in we go out and we bring the boat in."

"And if he does come in?"

"Then we go home." The broad man looked at the sea. "We are not hunters, missus. I want to be clear about that. There are men on this coast who hunt wolves and they are paid by other men and we do not work with them and we do not drink with them. We are a salvage crew. We bring boats in."

The thin man was still looking at me. He had put the case down on the grass and he had taken a step closer and his face had gone strange.

"You are not the woman with the silver hair," he said. "And you are not the woman with the red hair. And you are not the woman who was here in the spring."

"What woman who was here in the spring?"

"The woman who hired us in March." He looked at me properly and then he took his cap off. "You have her hair. The gold. And her eyes. You have her exact eyes." He put his cap back on. "I am sorry, missus. I did not mean to stare. But you are the living image of the woman who came to us in Galway in March and paid us to bring a boat down to this coast and to be in the cove on the Thursday night and to take a woman off the rocks and put her in a boat and take her round the point to the deep water."

The wind came off the sea. The light of the Cormorant went round the point and came back.

"Say that again," I said.

"The woman with the gold hair came to us in Galway in March," the thin man said. "She paid us in cash and she told us to be in the cove on the Thursday night and to wait for a signal from the headland. And she said, if the signal comes, there will be a woman on the rocks and she will be wet and she will be hurt and you will take her into the boat and you will take her round the point to the deep water and you will put her onto the boat that is waiting there." He looked at the sea. "And the signal came. And we went in. And there was a woman on the rocks and she was wet and she was hurt and we took her into the boat and we took her round the point."

I stood on the track with the wind and the sea and the whole of it turning over in my head.

"You took her round the point," I said. "Where is she now?"

"We put her onto the boat in the deep water like we were paid to," the thin man said. "And the boat went north. And we went home. And I have not seen her since and I do not know where she is." He looked at me. "But the woman who paid us came back to us in April and she paid us again and she said, if a woman with gold hair comes to this coast asking questions, you are to tell her what I have just told you. And she said, tell her that her sister is alive."