Himself(72)

He walks back to Desmond, who looks up, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his forefinger.

‘If we cut across the next field there’s a path that should take us to the river. Thomas has his main residence due north from there, and then there are a couple of probable boltholes I know of. We should cover them all in a few hours.’

‘Right so,’ says Mahony, and puts his hand in his back pocket to check for the haft of his knife.

In the fields around Rathmore House the swallows have started flying into the ground. They lie with their wings snapped, dying in the furrows, with their feet curling and their eyes turning filmy.

Inside the house every fireplace, from the shell-shaped affairs in the bedrooms to the grand marble job in the library, is expectorating extravagantly.

From soft terminal gasps to the heartiest of coughs, every fireplace joins in and together they raise great marauding packs of soot clouds.

Mrs Cauley roars muffled commands from her wheelchair, where she sits with her head wrapped in a bed sheet like a geriatric Lawrence of Arabia. Shauna makes do with a pair of knickers; she has the leg holes hooked over each ear. With streaming eyes she raises her broom and curses each outpouring that rushes through her legs.

Neither of them is surprised that in a moment of crisis a man is nowhere to be found.

Soon the soot is everywhere.

It bounds over beds and under doors and licks at the windows. It rolls down the stairs fighting and tangles itself up in the curtains. It wags itself apart over occasional tables and lies doggo beneath sideboards or under rocking chairs.

‘Go and find Bridget Doosey,’ Mrs Cauley says to Shauna, her voice made distant by the bed sheet. ‘There’s something fishy about all of this.’

They speak little. Desmond frets with the map from time to time, wondering which field to cross, or if they are too far down to catch the right path. Mahony drops behind to watch him. Surely the man’s harmless?

But he could be a giant if he pulled back his shoulders and sometimes there’s a desperate kind of look in the eyes that squint out from behind the glasses.

Mahony searches in his pocket for a fag and sets to light one, hardly hearing the car draw up alongside.

‘You all right there, fella?’ Jack Brophy leans an elbow out of his squad car.

Mahony realises that he’s walking alone. Where Desmond has vanished to is a mystery but Mahony doesn’t miss a beat. ‘I’m grand, Jack, yourself?’

‘Grand. Enjoying this bit of weather?’

Mahony nods and looks up at the sky, a rain-washed blue without a hint of cloud.

Jack smiles. ‘Where are you heading?’

‘Nowhere. A bit of a stroll just.’

‘A stroll, is it?’ Jack slaps the side of the door with the flat of his hand and nudges the car into gear. ‘Well, give my regards to Desmond behind the wall there.’

The squad car bounces over the tracks up towards Annie Farelly’s.

Desmond stands up behind the wall.

‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ says Mahony.

Desmond gives Mahony a cock-eyed look.

‘Jesus wept, will you give me that map, Desmond? Come on.’

All over town the strangest things are happening.

In Mulderrig Post Office and General Stores spiders are swarming. From big square russetty house spiders to dotbodied spindle shanks spiders, from flying spiders to money spiders, it is clear to Marie Gaughan that every last arachnid in Mulderrig has arrived at her shop.

Now Marie is not a woman of a nervous disposition, but the sight of great regiments of spiders marching over the tinned peas and the packets of semolina is enough to send anyone on the turn. She throws down her mop and locks herself in the back room, pressing newspapers into the crack under the door and chain-smoking menthol cigarettes with a shaking hand.

An army of rats is marching across the basement of Kerrigan’s Bar. Tadhg has never seen the like of it before. He puts on an oven glove and reaches down to pick one up. Its legs keep moving like a wind-up toy. The rat snarls like a bad Elvis impersonator; Tadhg shudders and puts it down.

In the parochial house Róisín Munnelly hides under the table as a colony of bats swirl around the kitchen. They land on the floor and drag themselves towards her on leathery knuckles; she swipes at them with a dishcloth.

A clan of badgers knock Michael Hopper down on the Carrigfine road.

Mrs Moran is nearly drowned by a labour of moles. They surge across the lawn in velvet waves as she stands weeping on a garden chair.

Mulderrig proclaims that nature has turned insane.

Mrs Cauley, unaware of these aberrations of nature, has been singing lullabies to the fireplaces. The fireplaces, becalmed by her golden voice, have stopped expectorating and started listening. So that by the time Shauna appears in the hallway with Bridget Doosey, the outpouring of soot is no more than the odd dyspeptic burp and the occasional smutty cackle.

Bridget Doosey sucks air through her teeth. Shauna begins to cry.

Mrs Cauley rolls her eyes. ‘It’s only a bit of soot. Dry your arse and wheel me into the kitchen. You might as well cut us a few sandwiches while you’re standing about wailing. Doosey, you get the medicinal brandy out and pour us all a large one.’

Shauna sits down at the kitchen table and takes a deep breath. She fans her hands over the oilcloth, lowering each finger in turn. She is surprised at how dirty it is; she makes handprints in the fine dusting of black.