Himself(79)

Mahony walks over to the bed and sits down by her side. ‘I don’t want you involved in this any more. What if I’d lost you today?’

‘To the Black Widow? Come on, Mahony.’ She smiles and taps his arms. ‘I’ll have a cigarette.’

‘You shouldn’t smoke.’

‘I think I deserve one.’

Mahony lights a cigarette and threads it between her fingers. On impulse he bends down and kisses her forehead.

‘Soft boy.’

Johnnie smiles up at Mahony from the end of the bed; Father Jim is sitting next to him, smoking his pipe with a shaking hand. The dead men look even more ashen than usual.

Mrs Cauley draws herself up in the bed. ‘Don’t even think of cutting me out of this investigation, Mahony. You need me.’

‘I don’t know. This is getting nasty.’

‘Then we’ll call in the guards.’

Mahony snorts.

She purses her lips. ‘Don’t bloody start. We’ll go over Brophy’s head. Inspector Kelly in Westport is credited with having a brain. Only we’ll need something concrete first, given that Jack’s one of them.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Grand. We’ll get Bridget to bring Kelly in as soon as we’ve got evidence. She hasn’t got form.’

Mahony glances up at her.

Mrs Cauley smiles lopsidedly through her bandages. ‘Drunk and disorderly.’

Mahony laughs.

‘In the meantime,’ she says, ‘it’s business as usual. We’ve a play to stage tomorrow, Christy.’

‘You want me to take the part?’

‘Of course.’

‘And have Quinn call time on me? That was no idle threat.’

‘It wasn’t.’ Mrs Cauley drains her glass. ‘And of course you being arrested right now would complicate things, if we didn’t have a plan.’

‘Now what are you up to, you devious old biddy?’

‘It’s not me, it’s Doosey; she has it all under control.’

‘How?’

‘Let’s just say she has been busy cultivating a few undesirable contacts,’ says Mrs Cauley coyly.

‘Oh Jesus, what are you going to do to the priest?’

‘Never you mind, you’ve enough to worry about.’

Mahony gets up off the bed. ‘Then the less I know the better. I’ll go and find a blanket; I’m sleeping here tonight.’

‘Don’t be thick.’

‘I’m not leaving you.’

Johnnie nudges Father Jim, who gets up, clamps his pipe in his mouth and shuffles off towards the door of the library, where he will spend the night leaning against the doorframe, puffing distractedly. Johnnie puts his cane under his arm and fades with a sober salute. Later, Mahony will glimpse him passing and re-passing the French doors as he patrols the veranda.

Mahony clears a space on the floor next to the bed. Mrs Cauley watches him, tapping her cigarette into a teacup. ‘They won’t be back you know. Not straight away. They’ll know we’ll be on the lookout.’

‘You can’t know that. I don’t want you left alone. Get Bridget Doosey up here to stay until this is over.’

‘Shauna’s here.’

‘All the more reason,’ says Mahony. ‘I want you both safe.’

Mrs Cauley smiles. ‘She found you then, Shauna, when you were out wandering through the wilderness? Tempest tossed.’

‘She did.’

‘She said she would. She said that she would haul your arse home with her whatever your condition. I bet you haven’t heard that before from a woman?’

Mahony laughs.

They sit in silence, Mrs Cauley smoking her cigarette and Mahony watching night fall over the forest.

‘She loves you, Mahony.’

Mahony nods. He looks up at her with a half-smile playing on his lips and his eyes full of black fire.

Mrs Cauley’s ancient heart leaps. She grins widely. ‘Bridget Doosey it is then. She’ll guard your chicks in their nest. She’s got a gun, so if Bonnie and Clyde try any more funny business we can just shoot the f*ckers.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘This is war, Mahony.’

‘Get some sleep.’

‘You make a handsome couple, very well suited.’

‘Go to sleep.’

Mahony watches the sky until the stars come out. Then he gets up out of his blanket and shuts the windows.

‘I wasn’t scared you know,’ says a well-loved voice from the bed, rich and ribald, honeyed and vicious, with a new nasal quality from her injury.

‘Were you not?’ he says. ‘I would have been.’

‘I can’t die like that, Mahony.’

Mahony lies down again, so near that he can hold the old paw that comes knocking at the side of the bed, searching for his hand.

‘You can’t die? What are you, invincible?’

‘I mean, I won’t die on my back. I’m going out like Cúchulainn. I want a noble variety of death.’

Mahony looks up at the ceiling with her fragile hand in his.

‘Picture it,’ she speaks softly. ‘There he was, Cúchulainn, mortally wounded, tying himself to a standing stone with his own entrails. Do you know, it was only when a raven landed on his shoulder and wiped its beak on his beard that his enemies realised he was dead?’