Chapter 77: The Enforcer's Offer

Ahern was in the room above the hall with the old woman asleep in the bed in the corner and a lamp on the table and his case open in front of him. He had his coat off and his sleeves rolled up and there was a map of the coast on the table with pencil marks on it.

“Sit down,” he said.

I sat down.

“The moon is up at nine,” he said. “The tide is at the turn at half past nine. The headland will be dry and the whole co-op will be on it and there will be a fight and one of you will not walk off it.” He put his hand flat on the map. “I have been in this village for two days and I have read the charter and the second charter and the cooper’s book and my father’s letters and the parish records and I have heard forty wolves tell me what they saw and what they did not see. And I am going to tell you what I think and then I am going to make you an offer and you are going to refuse it and then we are going to talk about why.”

“Say it.”

“I think you can win tonight. Not because you are stronger. Because she is sixty nine and she has not fought in fourteen years and because the whole co-op has smelled a true bond this morning and seen a golden wolf on the shore at noon and because there is not a wolf in this village who is going to stand on that headland and cheer for a woman who has been lying to them for thirty six years.” He looked at me. “And I think if you win, this village is finished. Not because of you. Because of the file in Galway. Because if a claimant from Dublin takes a seat on a headland in front of the Council’s enforcer, the Council is going to send a man to look at this village and the man is going to find thirty six years of theft and a false charter and a forged deed and a sentence of the headland that was never lawful and a rent paid to a man who owns the shore. And the Council does not like a pack that has been making a fool of it for thirty six years. It will put the pack under trusteeship. It will take the boats and the moorings and the hall and it will put a wolf from Galway in that chair and it will keep him there for twenty years.”

“And if she wins?”

“If she wins there is a dead woman on the headland and a pack that has watched its Alpha kill a claimant in a fight that was lawful in the file and unlawful in the doing. And the file will close and the Council will be satisfied and the village will go back to its boats.” He sat back. “And there is a third thing. If neither of you fights. If the claim is withdrawn and the conspiracy clause is put in front of me and the co-op tries her for conspiracy and banishes her, then the seat passes to the next of the blood and the Council is satisfied because a traitor has been tried and banished under the charter and the pack has done the thing the Council wants it to do. And the file closes and the village keeps its boats and its moorings and its hall and there is no wolf from Galway in that chair.”

I looked at him.

“That is not an offer,” I said. “That is a plan.”

“That is the first part of it.” Ahern put his hand in his case and took out a paper and put it on the table. “This is the second part. It is a letter from the Keeper of the Rolls in Galway. It came down on the evening bus and it is addressed to me and it says that the Council has been informed of a claim in Dún Aonghasa and that the Council has appointed a man to hear it and that the man is coming down from Galway in the morning to take charge of the whole matter and to put the pack under trusteeship until the claim is settled.”

“Who is the man?”

“The Keeper of the Rolls does not say. The letter says a man of the Council and a date and an hour.” Ahern put the letter down. “But I know the Keeper and I know the way he writes and there is a thing about this letter that I do not like. It came too fast. A claim made this morning and a man appointed and on the road by the evening is a thing that does not happen in Galway. A thing like that takes a week. Unless a wolf in Galway was waiting for a claim to be made and had the letter written before it was made.”

“Kern,” I said. “Mairéad said the name in the back room. The man who countersigned the sentence of the headland. The man who has been buying shores for thirty six years.”

“Kern.” Ahern looked at me. “And there is the offer and it is the last thing I am going to say and then I am going to go down to the hall. If you withdraw the claim tonight and put the conspiracy clause in front of the co-op and let the pack try her and banish her, then there is a trial in this hall with a file and a judgment and a banished Alpha and a new Alpha of the blood, and there is not a wolf in Galway who can say this pack did not do the thing the Council wanted it to do. And Kern will read the file and he will close it and he will go on buying shores in other villages. And the village keeps its boats.” He looked at me. “And if you fight her tonight and you win, then there is a man from Galway in that chair in twenty years and the village is a thing that a Council wolf signs papers about.”

“And what is the thing you want in return for the village keeping its boats?”

“The thing I want in return is the thing you are not going to give me.” Ahern put his hand flat on the paper. “I want the file to say that the theft in 1961 was the work of one woman and one enforcer and that the Council’s man in Galway in 1961 was a coward who tried to leave a trap and that the trap was sprung by his son. I want the file to say that the false charter and the false bond and the rent and the sentence of the headland were the work of Eileen and Mairéad and my father and that the pack of Dún Aonghasa was a victim and not a conspiracy. And I want the name of Kern left out of it.”

The lamp flickered. The old woman in the corner turned over in her sleep.

“You want me to leave Kern out of the file,” I said.

“I want you to leave Kern out of the file and give me the two women and my father and the rent and the false charter and let the co-op do the thing the Council wants it to do.” Ahern sat back. “And in return I will write a judgment that puts Mairéad out of this territory and sets aside the seat and confirms a new Alpha of the blood and closes the file. And Kern will read it and he will be satisfied and he will not send a man from Galway to put this village under trusteeship.”

I sat in the chair and looked at him.

“There is a thing about you that I have been trying to work out since the pier,” I said. “You are not a thief and you are not a coward and you are not your father. You are a man who has been waiting three years for a reason to clean this village and who has just found one and who is frightened of the man above him.” I put my hand on the table. “And there is a thing I have to tell you before I answer. My sister had a child in 1976 and the child was taken to the north and the child is the next of the blood after me. So if the seat passes to the next of the blood it does not pass to me. It passes to a wolf who has been in the north for forty one years and who may be dead and who may be a thing the north has made.” I looked at him. “And if the co-op does not know that, then the trial you are offering me is a trial that ends with the seat going to a claimant who is not in this village and not in this file and not in your plan.”

Ahern looked at me for a long moment.

“Then there is a thing we both have to find out before nine o’clock,” he said. “Where is the child?”

And then the door opened and my sister was standing in it with her face white.

“I heard,” she said. “I have been on the stairs for the last ten minutes and I have heard the whole of it.” She came into the room and sat down in the chair beside me. “And there is a thing I have never told you and I am going to tell you now because there is no time. The child was a boy. He was born in the winter of 1976 and the woman took him to the north and I have not seen him since.” She put her hand over her mouth and took it away. “And there is a thing about the woman who took him. She was not a wolf and she was not from the north. She was from this village and she was the woman who took the girl in 1975 and she was a woman who had been taking children out of this village since 1961.” She looked at me. “Her name was Deirdre.”