Chapter 36: The Hunters' Phone Call

I stood on the track with the wind coming off the sea and the two men in front of me and the light of the Cormorant going round the point.

“Say it again,” I said. “Slowly.”

“The woman with the gold hair came to us in Galway in March,” the thin man said. “She paid us in cash. She told us to be in the cove on the Thursday night and to take a woman off the rocks and put her on a boat in the deep water and take her north. The signal came. We went in. We took her round the point. And in April the same woman came back and paid us again and told us to say all of it to a woman with gold hair if she ever came asking.” He looked at me. “I am saying it. I have said it. I do not know what else you want from me.”

“I want the name of the boat.”

“The boat was called the Star of the Sea. Not the one from this harbor. A different one. She was out of Donegal and she was old and she was not much to look at and she had a man on her who did not speak and did not take his hood down.” The thin man looked at the sea. “We put the woman aboard at the deep water and the boat went north and we went home.”

“And the woman with the gold hair. Where did she go?”

“She went back up the track to the headland.” He looked at me. “She walked up the track in the dark with her boots in her hand and she was crying and she was laughing and she said, tell no one. Tell no one and I will pay you again in April.” He put his cap back on. “We did not tell no one. We are not men who talk. But we are men who take money and a woman who pays twice is a woman who wants a thing said and a woman who wants a thing said is a woman who is not coming back. I have been expecting you since April.”

The broad man had taken a telephone out of his pocket. It was a big grey mobile phone with an aerial and he held it up and said, “Do you want to hear the rest of it? Because there is a rest of it and it is not on the headland and it is not in the cove. It is in this phone.”

“What is in that phone?”

“The woman with the gold hair gave us a number in March and she said, if anything happens to me, telephone this number and say one word and the man on the other end will know what it means.” He turned the phone over in his hand. “In April she came back and she paid us to say all of it to you and she said, and give her the phone. And I said, why would I give a stranger my phone, and she said, because you will have a new one by then and because I am paying you enough for two.” He held the phone out to me. “It is yours. The number is in it.”

I took the phone. It was heavy and cold and the aerial was bent.

“When did she give you this?”

“The twelfth of April. She came down to Galway on the bus and she met us in the pub by the docks and she gave me the phone and the money and she said, the woman who is coming is my sister and she will be angry and she will not believe you and she will want to arrest you and you are to let her.” The broad man looked at me. “She said, my sister is a guard and she has been a guard for fifteen years and she will not believe a thing unless it is written down and signed. So she wrote it down and signed it and she gave it to me to keep and it is in the case.”

The thin man opened the long case on the grass. There was a coil of rope in it and a lantern and a first aid kit and a flat metal box, and he opened the metal box and took out a folded sheet of paper and gave it to me.

I unfolded it on the track in the wind.

It was my sister's handwriting. It was a statement, dated the twelfth of April, and it said that the woman who signed it had been taken off the rocks at the cove on the Thursday night of the claim by a salvage crew from Galway and put onto the Star of the Sea and taken north, and that she was alive and well and in a place she would not name. It said that the Alpha of Dún Aonghasa had ordered her held and put into the water and that the Beta had been compelled by the pack voice and was not to be blamed. It said that the woman who signed it had gone into hiding because the Alpha would not stop looking for her and because a living claimant was more dangerous to the Alpha than a dead one. And at the bottom, in my sister's hand, it said: “If my sister finds this, tell her I am sorry I did not write and tell her to look for the woman from Galway and tell her I am coming home when I can.”

I read it three times on the track with the wind and the sea. Then I folded it and put it in my coat and I stood there and the whole of the last month came apart in my hands and put itself back together a different way.

My sister was alive. My sister had been alive since April and she had been hiding and she had paid two men from Galway to tell me so. And she had done it because she knew I would come and she knew I would not believe a living witness and she knew that a statement in her own hand would be the only thing that would make me stop looking at the sea.

And the phone in my hand had a number in it and the number was the one she had given them in March, and the word they were to say was one word.

“What is the word?” I said.

“The word is Dún,” the thin man said. “She said, telephone the number and say Dún and the man will know.”

I turned the phone over in my hands. It was an old phone and the battery was nearly dead and there was one name in the memory and the name was a number and nothing else.

“And the hunters?” I said. “The men on this coast who hunt wolves and are paid by other men. You said you do not work with them.”

The broad man looked at the sea and then at me.

“The woman with the silver hair has used them,” he said. “Not this year. Last year and the year before. There was a pack up in the north that was going to make trouble for her over the shore and she paid the hunters to put a scare into them, and the scare went wrong and there was a wolf died and the Council never found out.” He looked at me. “I am telling you because the woman with the gold hair told me to tell you everything and because I am done taking that woman's money. The hunters are called the Kelleher men and they are out of Sligo and there are four of them and they have a van with a false floor in it and they come down this coast when they are paid.”

The light of the Cormorant went round the point and came back. Out in the dark there was the sound of an engine and a shout and then the small boat's lamp swung and Padraig's voice came across the water calling my name.

I put the phone in my coat and I turned to go down the track.

“Missus,” the thin man said. “The Cormorant. The man in her is the Beta and he has been out there an hour and he is not answering the light.” He looked at the sea. “We can go out in the case boat and bring him in. We are paid for tonight and we are not paid for Saturday and Saturday is not our business. But tonight we can bring him in.”

“Then bring him in,” I said, and I went down the track at a run.

Padraig's boat came in to the slip with Cormac at the oar and Padraig in the bow with the lamp and the two of them soaked to the skin. I got in and we went out past the point with the wind on our quarter and the sea breaking over the bow, and the salvage boat came behind us with the broad man at the engine and the thin man in the bow with a rope.

We found the Cormorant a mile past the point with her engine dead and her light still going and Declan in the water at the stern holding on to the life ring with his head against the wood. He had gone in after the anchor line and the line had fouled the propeller and the engine had died and he had been in the water for an hour and his lips were blue and his hands would not let go of the ring.

We got him into the salvage boat. He lay on the boards with his eyes closed and his chest going and Cormac put his coat over him and Padraig put the lamp down beside him and the broad man turned the boat for the harbor.

“The anchor,” Declan said. His voice was a wreck. “She told the boy to drop the anchor in the deep water. The chain was cut. There is no anchor on this boat. She meant me to go over the side after it and she meant the sea to take me.” He opened his eyes and looked at me. “Did you find the safe?”

“I found something better,” I said. “I found my sister.”

The wind came off the sea and the boat went in toward the harbor with the lamp swinging and the whole village on the pier with lights and the two men from Galway behind us in their boat with the case on the boards and the rope coiled and ready.