The Searcher(104)

“You could do with the exercise,” Trey tells him. Her lopsided shadow of a grin pretty near takes Cal to pieces.

“Ungrateful little so-and-so,” he says. “Watch your manners or I’ll make you sleep in the bathtub. Now move it.”

Her sore places are stiffening. He has to half scoop her out of the armchair, set her on her feet and steer her into the bedroom. The movement makes her grimace, but she doesn’t complain. Lena picks up the duvet and the sleeping bag and follows them.

“Here you go,” Cal says, switching the light on. “The lap of luxury. I’m gonna let Miss Lena get you settled. You need anything in the night, or anything bothers you, you just call us.”

Trey crumples onto the mattress in an ungainly pile of elbows and feet. Lena tosses the bedclothes beside her and moves to undo Trey’s shoelaces. To Cal the scene looks lawless and incomprehensible, stained mattress on scuffed floorboards, harsh glare from the bare bulb, tangle of cheap bedclothes, the woman kneeling at the feet of the bruised and bloody child. He feels like he should at least be able to offer the kid something gentle, a feather bed with a ruffle, a soft-shaded bedside lamp and a picture of kittens on the wall.

He switches on the oil heater. “Well,” he says. He thinks, fleetingly and ridiculously, of putting the toy sheep on Trey’s pillow. “Good night. Sleep tight.” She watches him over Lena’s shoulder, with her one open eye beyond any expression, as he shuts the door.

The bloodied dish towels are scattered around the armchair. Cal collects them and throws them in his new washing machine. He doesn’t turn it on, in case its whirring disturbs the kid. He switches on the electric kettle and sets out two mugs—what he needs is a shot of whiskey, but he might yet have to drive tonight, and he’s learned enough to know that around here tea is an appropriate response to any situation at any time of day or night. Blood has dried in the lines of his knuckles; he washes his hands at the kitchen sink.

Lena comes out of the bedroom and closes the door quietly behind her. “How’s she doing?” Cal asks.

“Asleep before I got the duvet on her.”

“Well, that’s good,” Cal says. “You want some tea?”

“Go on.”

Lena settles herself in the armchair, testing it out, and kicks off her shoes. The kettle boils, and Cal pours and brings a mug over to her. “I don’t have milk. This OK?”

“You savage.” She takes the mug and blows on it. She looks at ease in the armchair, as if it were her own. It’s an ample, lopsided creation in a peculiar purplish green that might have been fashionable for a minute a long time ago, or might just have started out a different shade; it’s surprisingly comfortable, but Cal never envisioned inviting anyone to sleep in it. He has that sense of being weightless again, off his feet and borne along with nothing to grab hold of.

The fire has burned low; he puts more wood on it. “She say anything to you that I oughta know?” he asks.

“She said nothing about anything, except what I told you. But I didn’t ask.”

“Thanks.”

“No point. You’re the one she trusts.” Lena sips her tea. “She’s been coming here a lot.”

“Yeah,” Cal says, taking his mug to the table. He can’t imagine that Lena is aiming to lecture him on the unseemliness of letting Trey Reddy hang around, and sure enough, she only nods. “Are you gonna get any hassle for helping me out?”

She shrugs. “I doubt it. You might, but, depending what you do next. Are you going to bring her home in the morning?”

“You know anywhere else she can go?”

He feels Lena take in the implication. She considers and shakes her head.

“Aunt? Uncle? Grandparents?”

“Most of her relations are emigrated or dead or useless, depending on which side you mean. Sheila’s got cousins over the other side of town, but they wouldn’t want to get mixed up in this.”

“I can see their point,” Cal says.

“Sheila does the best she can,” Lena says. “You and I might not think it’s great, but we haven’t spent twenty-five years on the wrong side of Johnny Reddy and Ardnakelty. Sheila’s had all the fancy notions worn right out of her. All she wants is to keep the children she’s got left alive and out of jail.”

Cal has no idea what to say to this. He can’t tell whether he’s angry at Lena, or whether his anger at Sheila and whoever got to her is so high that it’s spilling over onto her.

Lena says, “She’s got used to doing whatever needs to be done. Right or wrong. She hasn’t had much choice.”

“Maybe,” Cal says. He doesn’t find that reassuring. If Sheila felt her best or only option tonight was to beat the living shit out of Trey, she might feel that way again sometime. “I might see if I can get a few things done before I send the kid back there.”

Lena glances up from her tea. “Like what?”

“The stuff I shoulda been doing tonight.”

“Man business,” Lena says, mock-awed. “Too serious for a lady’s delicate ears.”

“Just business.”

The firewood pops and shoots a spray of sparks upwards. Lena stretches out a toe to nudge the screen more snugly into place.

“I can’t stop you doing something stupid,” she says. “But I’m hoping if you have to leave it till morning, you might think better of it.”