Chapter 44: The Son Who Came Back

They put Bridget in the old net store because there was nowhere else dry and the priest would not have her in the church until the sergeant had seen her. Ronan came down with his bag and knelt beside her on the stones and put his hand on her throat and then on her wrist and then sat back on his heels and said, "She has been in the water an hour and a half and there is no water in her lungs. She did not drown. She was dead before she went in."

The whole slip went quiet.

"How?" Tom said.

Ronan turned her head gently to one side. There was a mark on the side of her throat, small and dark, and it was not a mark that a rope makes and it was not a mark that a rock makes. It was the mark of a hand.

"Someone held her," Ronan said. "And someone put her in the water after."

I stood on the slip with the key in my pocket and the tag in my hand and the whole village around me and I looked at the faces. Tom and Hannah and Nora and Eileen and Arthur and the man who had been at the boathouse with the petrol can. Forty faces and every one of them was frightened and every one of them was looking at me.

"The tag says she has my mother," I said. "Bridget is dead because she was going to tell me where my mother's sister is. And the woman who killed her is the woman who has been keeping my mother's sister in this village for thirty six years, and she is not going to stop at a schoolteacher from Dublin."

The village went quiet and then Mairéad was there.

She came down the shore road with her silver hair down and six wolves behind her and she came onto the slip and looked at the body and put her hand over her mouth and said, "Oh, the poor woman," and the whole village saw her do it. And then she looked up at me and said, "Who found her?"

"Tom found her," I said.

"Tom found her and you were already on the slip with a key in your hand and a tag in your pocket and a story about a woman who has been kept in this village for thirty six years." Mairéad turned to the village. "I am going to say a thing now that I have been keeping back for a week because I did not want to believe it. This woman came to us in the spring and she has been asking questions about the dead and digging in the burned boathouse and going up to the high ground at night, and last night she swore an oath in a garden with the healer and the Beta and a guard from Dublin and half the co-op standing in the rain. And tonight a woman is dead in the harbor and the woman from Dublin is standing over her with a key." She looked at me. "Where were you at one o'clock this morning, Niamh?"

"At one o'clock I was in the burned boathouse with the Beta," I said. "We were pulling a safe out of the well under the floor. It has the ledger of the rent in it and the green charter and the page that was in the locker and the seal of Maeve. And it proves that you have been paying rent to a man who owns the shore on a lease that ended in 1979 and that the deed of gift you are putting on that boat on Saturday is a deed to a thing you do not own."

The village did not move. Mairéad did not move either, but I saw her hands.

"The safe," she said.

"The safe. The one your mother put in the harbor in 1979 and the one you did not know about and the one that has been sitting under the boathouse for eighteen years with a record of every payment you have made out of the co-op's money to Ahern and to Korkut." I took the ledger out of my coat and held it up. "It is in the church now. Father Byrne has it. And tomorrow morning it goes on the table in the hall in front of the whole co-op and the enforcer and you."

Mairéad looked at the ledger. Then she looked at me and her pale green eyes were very bright and she said, in a voice that carried to every wolf on the slip, "That ledger is a forgery. It was made by my mother's enemies in 1979 to blacken her name and it has been in the water for eighteen years and I will have the enforcer examine it and I will have the co-op vote on it before it is read." She turned to the village. "And there is a thing I have not told you. The woman who was found in the harbor tonight was not a schoolteacher from Dublin. She was a wolf who was banished from this territory in 1988 for breaking the charter and she came back in March and she has been in this village in defiance of the ban. And the woman from Dublin has been hiding her and using her and the both of them have been going up to the high ground to dig for a thing that does not exist." She pointed at the body. "This is what happens when a rogue is welcomed into a village. A woman is dead and the rogue is standing over her with a key."

The village stirred. Tom looked at me and then at Mairéad and then at the body, and Hannah took a step back and put her hand on the baby's head.

"The hall is locked," Mairéad said. "The hall stays locked until Saturday. The co-op will meet on the pier at nine o'clock and the enforcer will hear the evidence of the body in the harbor and he will decide what is to be done. And until then there is a watch on the church and a watch on the shore road and no wolf goes in or out of the cottage on the shore road." She looked at me. "You will stay in your sister's cottage until Saturday morning and you will not speak to a wolf in this village and you will not go into the church."

"You cannot put a watch on the church," Father Byrne said. "The church is not the pack's."

"The church is in my territory," Mairéad said, "and a wolf who is being held for a death is held in a place of my choosing, and I am choosing her sister's cottage."

I stood on the slip with the ledger in my hand and forty wolves around me and the woman I had come to bring down looking at me with her pale green eyes and a small polite smile.

"All right," I said.

Mairéad's smile did not change.

"All right," I said again. "I will go to the cottage and I will stay in it and I will not speak to a wolf in this village until Saturday morning." I put the ledger back in my coat. "But there is a thing you have forgotten. The church is not the only place in this village that keeps records and Father Byrne is not the only man who has been keeping a thing for twenty two years. And there is a wolf in this village who was in the hall in 1961 and who has been afraid of you for thirty six years and who is not afraid any more." I looked at her. "You have until Saturday morning to find him. And you will not find him, because he is not a wolf and you cannot hear what is in his head."

I turned and walked up the shore road to the cottage. Tom and one of the other men came behind me with a lamp and stood at the gate, and I went in and shut the door and bolted it and stood in the kitchen in the dark.

I got the phone out of my coat. It was in my hand and the number was in the memory and the word was Dún.

And then there was a knock at the back door and I went to it with my heart in my throat and opened it and Cormac was standing there in the rain with no coat on and his hair flat to his head and his face white.

He came in and sat down in the chair by the fire and did not speak. I put a blanket on him and put the kettle on and he sat there with the blanket round him and his hands in his lap and did not say a word for ten minutes.

"Cormac," I said. "What is it?"

He looked at me and opened his mouth and nothing came out. And then he put his hand in his pocket and took out a thing and put it on the table between us. It was a ring, silver, with a crescent moon on the face, and inside the band there were letters and a date: M. 1921.

"That is the ring from the frame," I said.

"It is the ring from the frame and it is a copy and the true ring is in the hall in a box under the floor and I have been in the hall tonight and I have seen it." Cormac's voice was a wreck. "She called me to the hall at eleven and she gave me a thing to do and I did it and then I came here. And I am not going to say what she gave me to do because I cannot say it and I do not want you to know it."

"Cormac."

"Please." He looked at me and his grey eyes were wet. "Do not ask me. I have told you everything else and I will tell you everything else but I cannot tell you this and if you make me tell you I will do a thing I cannot take back."

The fire ticked. The rain came on the window.

And then Declan was at the door with the watch behind him and his face grey and he came in and looked at his son and said, "What has she done?"

"She has not done anything," Cormac said. "She has ordered a thing and I have not done it yet."

Declan crouched down in front of him and put his hands on his son's knees.

"Tell me," he said.

Cormac looked at his father for a long time. Then he said, "She told me to go to the church tonight and take the ledger out of the vestry and bring it to her. And I went to the church and Father Byrne was awake and I could not do it and I came here." He put his face in his hands. "And she told me a thing I have not told you. She told me that the woman in the black boots who is dead in the harbor was my mother."