Chapter 68: The Alpha and the Murder

Tom did not come out from behind the wolves.

He stood where he was at the back of the hall with his red face and his grey moustache and his hands at his sides, and he looked at Mairéad and then at the co-op and then at the door.

“I have been in this hall the whole time,” he said. “The whole co-op has been in this hall and I have been standing at the back with my wife and my boy and I have not been in the back room.”

“You were not in the back room tonight,” Mairéad said. “You were in the back room this morning. At eight o’clock, before the hall was opened, when I came down and found the lock off the green door and the frame moved and the press open and the tin box on the floor. And you were the one who told me the woman from Dublin had been in the hall in the night and that the true ring was in the press and that the whole village was going to hear about it.” She put her hand flat on the table. “You have been my hand in this village for fourteen years, Tom. You were the one who put the match to the boathouse when the boy could not do it. You were the one who went up to the coastguard cottage on the night of the claim and sat with the old woman while the woman with the red hair did what she was told. And you are the one who set the fire in that back room tonight to burn the parish record because you knew that the record of 1975 had your grandmother’s name in it.”

The hall went up. Tom’s wife Hannah turned round and looked at her husband with the baby in her arms, and Tom took a step back against the wall.

“That is a lie,” Tom said. “That is a lie and she is a woman who has been lying to this village for thirty six years and she is going to lie until the last wolf in it has turned against her.”

“It is not a lie,” Arthur said. He had got up off his chair and he had his stick in his hand and his old voice carried. “My father’s minutes for 1975 name three wolves who did not come to the vote and one of them was Maire and one was Fionn and one was Deirdre. And there is a fourth name in the margin that I have never read out loud and that I am going to read out loud now. It says, the wolf who brought word to the Alpha that the vote was to be called was the cooper’s apprentice, Tom’s father. And it says, the apprentice was paid for the word with a boat and a mooring and he has been paid ever since.” He put his stick down. “Your father sold the vote in 1975 and your family has been in the Alpha’s hand ever since and you have been in it since the day you could walk.”

Tom’s wife put her hand over her mouth.

And then the green door of the hall opened and Eileen came in with her grey hair down and her shoulder bandaged and six wolves behind her, and she walked up the floor and stopped at the table and looked at Ahern.

“I have been outside that door for an hour,” she said. “And I have heard the whole of it. And I am going to say a thing now that no wolf in this village is going to want to hear and that I have been carrying since 1981.” She looked at Declan. “Your mother did not step off that cliff and I did not push her. She was pushed by a wolf who has been standing in this hall for the last hour with a red face and a grey moustache. And the wolf who pushed her is Tom’s father, and Tom was there, and Tom was seventeen years old, and he has been carrying it ever since.” She put her hand on the table. “I was banished for it in 1988 and I did not do it and no one asked me and the co-op voted and I went north. And I have been in the north for twenty years telling wolves that I was the heir of Maeve and that my mother was the Alpha and I have been lying to them and to myself. I am not the heir of Maeve. I am the daughter of Deirdre and Fionn and I was taken out of this village in 1975 and given to a woman who was going to Galway and who named me after herself. And there is a thing about the woman who took me that I have never told a living soul. She was not a wolf. She was a woman from Galway who took money to take a child and she brought me up in a house in Galway and she called me her daughter and she told me every day of my life that I was the heir of a great pack and that I had been robbed and that one day I would go back and take what was mine.” Eileen’s grey eyes were steady. “She made me into a claimant. She made me into a thing that would go back to that village and take it. And I have been that thing for twenty years and I am tired.”

The hall was very quiet.

Mairéad stood at the end of the table and looked at Eileen and then at me and then at the whole co-op.

“Then there is a thing I am going to say and then I am going to go and sit in a cell in Galway and let the Council do what it likes with me,” she said. “The fire in the back room and the death of Deirdre and the boathouse and the sentence of the headland and the rent and the false charter and the false bond. All of it is mine and none of it is mine. I did not push Deirdre and I did not set that fire and I did not make the false bonds. Eileen made the false bonds and Tom’s father pushed Deirdre and Tom set the fire. But I am the Alpha and the Alpha answers for the pack and I have been answering for thirty six years of things I did not do and I am not going to stop answering now.” She put her hand in her coat and took out the copy of the ring and put it on the table. “The seat is vacant. The co-op votes in the morning. And before it votes I am going to say the thing I have never said in this hall. The woman Siobhan was not murdered. She was executed under a sentence of the headland that I signed and that the Council countersigned and that was lawful in the file and unlawful in the doing. And I signed it because she claimed my birthright. And my birthright was a lie my mother told me and I have been sitting in that chair for fourteen years on a lie and I have killed a woman for it.”