Chapter 52: The Enforcer on the Pier

The new man arrived at nine in the morning on the Galway bus.

The whole village was on the pier because the whole village had been told to be on the pier, and the Mary Rose was at the end of it with her sails up and the box with the Council's seal on the deck under a tarpaulin. Mairéad stood at the head of the pier in her black coat with her silver hair pinned up and Korkut beside her in his town coat, and there was a small grey car at the top of the slip with a driver in it who did not get out.

The man who came down the pier was not Korkut. He was younger, somewhere in his forties, and he had the broad face and the small scar on the chin that I had seen before on a man in a dark jacket on the headland, and he was wearing a good coat and he was carrying a leather case.

He stopped in front of Mairéad and put the case down and said, "Alpha. I am Ahern. I have come from Galway to judge this pack."

"You are welcome," Mairéad said. "You have come at a difficult time."

"I have come at the time I was sent for." Ahern looked along the pier at the village and at the boats and at the box under the tarpaulin and then at me. "And you are the woman from Dublin."

"I am."

"You are the woman who has been digging in a burned boathouse and pulling a safe out of a well and asking questions about a fire in 1961." He picked up his case. "I am going to be in this village for one day and I am going to hear every wolf in it and then I am going to make a judgment and go back to Galway. I am going to begin with you, because you are the one who has made the complaint. Come up to the hall. It is unlocked this morning."

The hall was unlocked and the lock had been taken off the green door and the frame was on the wall with the copy of the charter in it and the long table was at the top of the room with four chairs behind it. Ahern sat down in the middle chair and put his case on the table and opened it and took out a notebook and a pen.

"Sit down," he said.

I sat down across from him. Mairéad sat down on his right and Korkut stood by the door and Declan stood by the wall with his hands at his sides and Cormac was not in the room.

"Tell me the complaint," Ahern said.

I told him. I told him the whole of it from the first night. The weight on the table and the note and the wolf on the headland and the line across the ledgers and the burned boathouse and the safe in the well and the ledger of the rent and the page that was in the locker and the green charter and the seal and the print on the lid of the box and the old woman in the coastguard cottage and the margin note in the healer's notebook and the false bond that had been made and broken and the boy who had been kept in the Alpha's hand since he was fourteen.

It took two hours. Ahern wrote in his notebook and did not interrupt and did not look at Mairéad once.

When I had finished he put his pen down.

"You have brought a great deal of it to this village," he said. "You have brought a safe out of a well and a ledger out of a safe and a print off a lid. What you have not brought is a single wolf who will stand in front of me and say what you have said."

"The healer will say it. The cooper will say it. The old woman in the room above this hall will say it. The Beta will say it. The Beta's son will say it."

"The Beta's son is a boy who has been in the Alpha's hand since he was fourteen and who has a memory of a night in this hall that he has told three different ways." Ahern looked at his notebook. "The healer is eighty years old and has been the healer of this pack for fifty years and has signed every paper the Alpha has put in front of him. The cooper is ninety one and has been the cooper for sixty years and has signed every paper the Alpha has put in front of him. The old woman in the room above this hall is a woman who has been kept in a cottage for thirty six years and who has not spoken to a living soul in that time, and a woman who has not spoken for thirty six years is not a witness. She is a story."

"She is my mother's sister."

"She is a story." Ahern closed his notebook. "I am going to tell you a thing that no one in this village has told you and that I have known since I was a boy, because my father was the enforcer of this region before Korkut and I have his papers. There was a woman called Maeve who was Alpha of this pack and there was a woman called Eileen who was Beta and there was a fire in 1961 and my father signed the deed of gift the morning after it. And there was a vote in 1975 and the vote was thirty one to twenty nine and the Alpha kept the seat. And there was a claim in March of this year and the claim was answered and the woman went into the water. None of that is a mystery to me. It is a file in Galway with my father's name on the cover."

"Then why have you come?"

"Because of the title." Ahern took a paper out of his case and put it on the table. "When a claim is answered in a pack, the enforcer of the region is notified and the notification goes into the file. In March a notification came to Galway that a claim had been answered in Dún Aonghasa. It was signed by the Alpha and countersigned by the Beta and it was in order. And when I looked at it I found a thing in it that my father wrote in 1961 and that no one has looked at since."

He turned the paper round and pushed it across the table. It was a form with a stamp at the top and lines of writing in a clerk's hand and at the bottom, in the thin elegant sloping hand of Ahern the elder, there was a note.

"Read the note," Ahern said.

I read it.

"This pack was taken by force in 1961. The seat is not confirmed. The title is defective. The Council is to be notified if a claim is ever made by the line of Maeve, and the Council is to hear the claim itself and not the enforcer of the region."

I read it twice.

"Your father knew," I said. "He knew the pack was taken by force and he signed the deed anyway and he wrote in the file that the title was defective."

"My father was a man who took money and wrote the truth in the margin." Ahern sat back. "I have been the enforcer of this region for three years and I have been waiting three years for a claim from the line of Maeve so that I could do the thing my father told me to do in 1961 and did not have the courage to do. And a claim came in March and it was answered and the woman went into the water and the claim closed." He looked at me. "And then a woman from Dublin came to this village and pulled a safe out of a well and brought me a ledger with my father's name on every page and a print off a lid and a page out of a charter and a ring with a name inside the band. And that is why I am here. Not to judge the claim. To judge whether the claim was answered at all."

The hall was very quiet. Mairéad had not moved.

"There is one thing I do not have," Ahern said. "The ring. The true ring of Maeve. You have a copy in the frame and you have a page that says the ring is the seal of the seat and you have a print off a lid. But the ring itself is in a package in Athlone with a woman called Margaret and it will not be in this village before Saturday morning." He looked at me. "Can you get it here?"

"The bus comes at nine," I said. "It will be here."

"Then I am going to adjourn this hearing until nine tomorrow morning and I am going to spend the day in this village with my notebook." Ahern stood up. "And I am going to say one thing to you before I go, and it is not a thing I should say. There is a man on the pier who says he is a salvage crew from Galway and he says he has been paid by this co-op every year for eighteen years and he says he has a telephone in his pocket with a number in it that belongs to a woman in the north who is running a pack of banished wolves and who is coming to this coast on Saturday." He looked at me. "If that woman is your sister, then I want to meet her. Because a pack of banished wolves that has been built in the north in six months is a pack that has been built by a wolf who knows the law, and a wolf who knows the law is the one thing in this village I have not been able to find."