Chapter 85: The Enforcer's Second Face

I came up out of the cellar with the black book and the brown book and the bundle of papers and the whole co-op stood back from me on the floor of the burned boathouse.

Ahern was at the front. He had come down from the hall with his case and his lamp and his face was grey.

“Say it again,” he said. “The heir. Say the name again.”

“Mary Flannery of Killybegs. She is forty one years old and she was taken out of this village in 1979 and given to the Flannerys and she is the heir of Maeve and she is the next of the blood after my sister.” I put the books on a stone. “And there is a thing about the deed that my mother wrote down and that you are going to hear because you are the son of the man who signed it. The deed of gift does not say the shore returns to the co-op if the pack is taken. It says the shore is his for ever. It is not a lease. It is a gift in perpetuity to Ahern and his heirs and his successors in the office of enforcer.”

Ahern stood in the burned boathouse with the lamp in his hand and did not say anything.

“Then the shore is mine,” he said at last. “My father gave it to himself and his heirs and I am his heir and the office is mine and the shore is mine.”

“The shore is not yours,” I said. “The deed is a gift that was made by a woman who had taken the seat by force and who had burned the Alpha in her own house and who had no right to give away a thing that belonged to the co-op. And there is a thing in my mother’s book that you have not heard and that I am going to read out loud. She wrote, the deed was never voted on by the co-op and the co-op never knew and the deed is a thing that a court would set aside in an hour if there was a court that would hear it. But there is no court. There is the Council and the Council is the thing that signed it.”

Ahern put the lamp down on the stones.

“There is a thing I have not told you,” he said. “And I have been carrying it since the pier. The letter from the Keeper of the Rolls. The man from Galway who is coming down in the morning to put this pack under trusteeship. I told you the Keeper did not say who the man was. That was a lie. The Keeper did say who the man was and I have known since the evening bus and I have been sitting on it.” He put his hand in his coat and took out the letter and put it on the stones. “The man from Galway is called Kern. And there is a thing about Kern that I have not told you either. He is not a wolf of the Council. He is the man who owns the shore. He has been buying shores on this coast for thirty six years and he has been buying them through enforcers and through Alphas and through men like my father and men like me. And he is coming down here in the morning to put this pack under trusteeship and to take the shore and the boats and the hall and to put a wolf of his own in that chair.”

The boathouse was very quiet.

“Then there is a thing about the letter that I have to ask,” I said. “The letter came on the evening bus. The claim was made in the morning. And a man from Galway cannot be on the road by the evening for a claim that was made in the morning. So the letter was written before the claim was made. And a letter that is written before a claim is made is a letter that was ordered by a man who knew a claim was going to be made.” I looked at him. “Who told Kern that a claim was going to be made in this village?”

Ahern looked at the letter for a long moment.

“My father,” he said. “In 1961. He wrote the note in the file that said the title was defective and that the Council was to be notified if a claim was ever made by the line of Maeve. And he sent a copy of that note to Kern. And Kern has been waiting thirty six years for a claim to be made so that he could come down here with a letter and put the pack under trusteeship and take the shore.” He put his hand over his face and took it away. “My father tried to leave a trap and the trap was a door and Kern has been standing behind it for thirty six years waiting for someone to open it.”

“And there is a thing about the claim that opened it,” I said. “The claim was made by my sister in March and it was answered and she was put in the water. And there was a notification sent to Galway in March and the notification was signed by Mairéad and countersigned by Korkut. And Kern read it and he did not come down in March. He waited. He waited until a woman from Dublin came into this village and pulled a safe out of a well and made a claim of her own in a hall in front of the enforcer and the co-op. And then he wrote the letter.” I picked up the letter. “The letter is not for the claim in March. It is for the claim I made this morning. Kern has been waiting for a claim that would make a noise and my claim made a noise and he has written a letter and put a man on the road and he is going to be in this village in the morning with a piece of paper that says the pack is under trusteeship.”

Ahern was looking at me.

“Then we have until the morning,” he said. “And there is a thing I can do that will make the letter worth nothing. I can write a judgment tonight. A judgment that sets aside the seat and confirms the heir and puts the whole of it in the file with the deed and the false charter and the rent and the letters of my father. And if there is a judgment in the file before Kern arrives, then the pack is not under trusteeship. It is a pack that has been judged and settled and there is not a thing he can do about it.”

“Then write it,” I said.

“I cannot write it until the heir is in front of me,” Ahern said. “A judgment that confirms an heir who is not in the room is a judgment that Kern will tear up in an hour. The heir has to be in this village and she has to stand in front of me and she has to say that she claims the seat.”

The whole co-op was quiet.

And then Daniel Flannery came through the crowd with his coat open and his fair hair and his broad face and he said, “I have a boat. She is at the pier and she is fuelled and she is fast and I know the coast from here to Killybegs in the dark. I can have you there by four in the morning and I can have you back here by eight.”

Ahern looked at him.

“And who are you?”

“I am Daniel Flannery of Killybegs and I am the man who was taken out of the house on the hill in 1978 by a woman called Mary and I am the brother of the heir and I have been in the north all my life and I know the road.” He put his hand on the stones. “And there is a thing about Mary that you should know before you go. She is a fisherman's wife and she has two children and she has never shifted in her life and she does not know that she is a wolf. And if you go up that hill at four in the morning and tell her she is the heir of a pack on the west coast she is going to think you are mad.” He looked at me. “But she will come. Because she has been asking about the house on the hill since she was a girl and she has never once been told the truth about it.”