Chapter 87: The Knife in the Rope

The boat came alongside the pier and the men on it were the Kelleher men out of Sligo and there were four of them and one of them had a long case on his shoulder and one of them had a lamp and one of them had a knife in his belt.

The co-op came down the shore road to the pier and stood in a line along it and the whole of it was in front of them. The Kelleher men looked at forty wolves in a line with lamps and did not get off the boat.

“We are not here to make trouble,” the man with the case said. “We are here to be paid. We have been paid for a job tonight and the job is not a thing we are going to do in front of forty wolves. We were told to come in at nine and wait at the pier and go up to the hall when the moon was high and there would be a wolf at the door with a paper and a purse.”

“Who told you?” I said.

“The Alpha. The woman with the silver hair. She sent a man down the coast in a boat last week with a paper and a purse and the paper said the fourth of July and the pier at nine and the moon high.” He looked at the hall on the hill. “And there is a thing about the paper that I am going to say because I am a man who does not like to be paid for a thing and then not do it. The paper was countersigned by a man in Galway and the man in Galway is the one who has been paying us since 1995 and the money came out of Galway and not out of the co-op. So if there is a wolf in this village who wants to know who has been paying the Kelleher men it is not the Alpha. It is the man in Galway.”

The co-op stirred.

“And what is the job tonight?” I said.

“The job is the woman from Dublin,” the man said. “The paper says the woman from Dublin is a rogue and a claimant and the Alpha has the right to put her out of the territory. And it says the Kelleher men are to be at the hall at the moon high and the woman is to be taken out of the village and put on a boat and taken out to the deep water and there is a weight in the purse for her feet.” He looked at me. “I am not going to do it. I have done a great many things in my life and I have never put a weight on a woman’s feet and I am not going to start at my age. But I am telling you because the paper is in my pocket and the paper has the signature of the Alpha and the countersignature of the man in Galway on it and it is a paper that a wolf could take to a Council and hang a man with.”

He took the paper out of his coat and held it up.

And then the whole of the pier went dark.

It was not the lamps. The lamps were still on. It was the fog and the moon going behind a cloud and a thing that came over the water and over the pier and over the co-op that was not the fog and was not the moon. It was a smell and it came off the boat and off the men and it was the smell of wolfsbane and it was strong enough to make my eyes stream and my throat close.

“Get back,” Declan said. “Get back from the water.”

The co-op went back. The Kelleher men went down on the deck of their boat with their hands over their faces and the man with the case dropped the case and it came open on the boards and there were things in it that I did not look at closely.

And in the middle of the pier, where the whole co-op had been standing, there was a rope.

It was a length of old tarred rope and it was coiled on the planks and it had been cut through in the middle and there was a knife in it. The knife was a fisherman's knife and it had a wooden handle and it was stuck in the planks through the middle of the rope and there was a piece of paper under the blade.

I went down onto the pier and pulled the knife out and picked up the paper.

It said: "The co-op has until dawn. The woman from Dublin leaves and the claim is withdrawn and the Alpha keeps the seat. If the woman is in this village at dawn the Kelleher men will not be the only men on this coast and the hunters will come with dogs and there will not be a wolf in this village left to bury."

The whole pier was quiet.

“That is not from the Alpha,” Declan said. “The Alpha is on that headland waiting for a fight. She did not send a knife and a paper to a pier.”

“No,” I said. “She did not. There is a wolf in this village tonight who is not on that headland and who is not in that hall and who has been sitting in the dark with a knife and a piece of paper while the whole co-op was in the boathouse.” I turned the paper over. The back of it was blank. And then I held it up to the lamp and there was a mark in the corner, a small mark in pencil, and the mark was a crescent moon.

“That is the mark of the Council,” Ahern said. “That is the mark on the seal of the Council and it is on the paper that comes out of Galway and it is on the deed of gift and it is on the letters of my father.” He took the paper and looked at it. “This paper was not written in this village. It was written in Galway and it came down this coast in a boat and it was given to a wolf in this village to put on this pier.”

“Then there is a wolf in this village who is working for Kern,” I said. “And there is a wolf in this village who knew the whole co-op was in the boathouse tonight and who put a knife in a rope on the pier while we were reading a book in a cellar.” I looked at the hall on the hill. “And there is a wolf in this village who has a key to the hall and who has been in it tonight and who has been waiting for the moon.”

I went up the shore road at a run. The whole co-op came with me and the Kelleher men stayed on their boat with their hands over their faces and the smell of wolfsbane came off the water behind us.

The cottage on the shore road was dark. The back door was open. The kitchen was a wreck. The table was on its side and the chairs were broken and the dresser was on the floor and the plates were in pieces on the flagstones and the hearth was open and the flagstone was up and the hollow under it was empty.

There was a knife on the table. It was the same as the knife on the pier. And there was a rope on the floor and the rope had been cut through in the middle and there was a note under the knife.

I picked it up.

It said: “The ring is not the only thing of hers that came back. Ask the woman in the north what she did with the child.”