A Turn for the Bad (24 page)

Once they were behind closed doors again, she said, “Anything I need to know? Any changes to the plan since Mick called you?”

“Not that I've heard. It's all but stopped rainin' and it should clear by dawn—they won't try fer shore in the dark. The game's on, I've been told.”

“Okay. Mick gave you the details about what we're planning?”

“He did.” Conor didn't look happy.

“You have a problem with it?” Maura challenged him.

“I've nothing better to offer,” he said, shrugging.

“Will it work, Conor?”

“God willin'. I don't know the boats well meself, but I'm guessin' Gerard does, so he should call the shots. Maura,
yeh've got to know, I've heard nothin' about John since the first day. This may be a fool's errand.”

“We know that, Conor. But apart from losing sleep and getting up at dawn, and maybe getting cold and wet, we don't see a lot of downside here, if we've got the right boat. They're not going to turn us in, are they?”

“Hardly.” Conor almost smiled.

“One question, though: do you think they're armed, and how likely are they to use guns?”

“If they were Irish, I'd say ‘no' straightaway. But they're not, so I'm less sure. The men who came ashore, who took John, weren't carryin' any weapons that I could see. They know the laws around here would be hard on them. But they've a lot at stake in this, as you can guess, and they've kept their buyers waitin' fer a week now. That delivery has to happen
now
.”

“And what're you supposed to do?” Maura asked.

“I've arranged fer the truck to take the delivery from the cove to . . . wherever it's goin'—they haven't told me that, more than it's the other side of the country, nor do I want to know. I might've done the drivin' meself, but if I disappeared now it might look odd, me leavin' so soon after John's disappearance.”

“How's his wife doing?”

“As well as she might. There's the cows to milk and the children to see to, and that keeps her busy.” He paused before adding, “Each time I see Eoin, my heart near breaks. If we don't find his father . . .”

“We will,” Maura said firmly, ignoring her own doubt. “So, from our side there's one thing you have to do: call and tell us when the smaller boat makes it to shore, so we know
it's clear to board the big one. Take as long as you can to get the stuff off the boat. And let us know when they start back.”

“And then?”

“We'll be bringing your brother home, most likely here. Now, go and do whatever you're supposed to do.”

“Thanks, Maura Donovan. It's not your fight, yet you've stepped up. We won't forget.” He turned and left, as if embarrassed at showing anything like emotion.

Not her fight? She lived here now. She worked with these people and served them. They'd helped her to find a place for herself and to keep the pub going, and she owed them to return that. So finding John Tully was her fight, whether she knew him personally or not.

By midnight the crowd had thinned, and those who remained were talking in subdued voices. The underlying excitement Maura had sensed earlier in the evening had settled to a muted buzz. There was nothing else to do but wait, although the patrons didn't know what they were waiting for.

No one protested the regular closing hour of twelve thirty. Rose had left earlier in the evening. Jimmy had stuck it out, but when Maura and Mick promised to lock up, he left, with one last bewildered glance back at them, sensing he had been left out of something. Maura shooed the last lingerer out the door and locked it behind him, leaving her with Brendan, Mick, Gerard, Harry, and Gillian. Harry and Gillian had been careful to keep plenty of space between each
other over the evening, and Maura was having trouble reading how they felt. But this was not the time to discuss that: they all should get some sleep, because morning would come extra early.

“Everybody going home?” Maura asked.

Nods all around. “I'm at the hotel,” Brendan said. “Where will you and Gillian be?”

Maura hadn't really thought. “Home, I guess. If that's all right, Gillian?”

Gillian looked exhausted and was slow to answer. “I'd go mad waiting alone, Maura. If you're there, I'll be there. Though I doubt I'll sleep anyways.”

“Gillian,” Harry started to speak, but Gillian stopped him.

“No, Harry, not now. We can talk tomorrow. The lot of you, be careful. Call us if anything changes—Maura and I will both have our mobiles on. If we don't hear from you . . .” She turned to Maura. “What do we do?”

Maura addressed the group. “If you don't find John, come back here. If you get picked up by the gardaí or the Irish navy, let us know or tell Sean Murphy to call me. If you're grabbed by the smugglers . . . I haven't a clue. If the boat blows up with all of you on it, we'll see it on the news. Does that about cover it?”

Solemn faces looked at her blankly, and Maura hurried to explain. “Sorry, I get sarcastic when I'm stressed out, and I certainly am now. Worst case, the gardaí haul you in and stick you in a cell until they have time to talk to you while they're sorting out the smuggling thing. Tell them the truth. If you try to make up stories, you'll just make things worse. Conor and I didn't talk about what to say, but don't lie about his part
in this either. Let him dig himself out if he has to. Like I said earlier, if you come back with John, I think you'll be forgiven for a lot. And that's all I've got.”

Brendan, who had been silent, said quietly,

May the good saints protect you,

And bless you today.

And may troubles ignore you,

Each step of the way.

“Amen to that,” Harry said. “We're meeting at my place at four, right?” The other men nodded. “We'll talk tomorrow,” he said to Maura and Gillian.

At the last minute, Gillian cried out, “Harry?
Fainic thú fé
in!
”

He gave her an odd look and then turned to join the others as they filed out and were gone, swallowed up by the dark night outside. Maura heard one, then another car engine start up and recede.

“What was that about?” Maura asked.

“The Irish? Just ‘be careful.' We've unfinished business, you know.”

Obviously.
“You ready to go?” Maura asked.

“If I had my way, I'd sit here until dawn. What a day.”

“And tomorrow, or now today, will be worse. We need to get some rest, if not sleep.”

“You should have a bed or two here for nights like this.”

“I hope to hell I won't have any other nights like this!” Maura blurted out, then shut her mouth until she got her emotions under control. “Seriously, there are some bedrooms upstairs, but Old Mick never did anything with 'em
and it'd take a lot of work to make them usable. That's something for the future. Tonight we go home and lie down and stare at the ceiling in the dark, worrying, and then after a few hours we get up and shower and eat and drive back here and sit here worrying. Sounds great, doesn't it?”

“Don't pretty it up on my account, Maura,” Gillian said wryly. She slid off the bar stool and gathered up her coat and bag. “Let's go back to the cottage.”

Outside, Maura locked the door behind them. When she turned and looked up, she could tell the clouds were thinning, and there was a paler part of the sky where the moon was trying to break through. Just like the weather report said, the morning would be fair. No one in the village was stirring, and their footsteps sounded loud as they went to Maura's car. Once they'd set off for the cottage, Maura asked, “What did you and Harry argue about? I mean, if you want to talk about it. You don't have to.”

“I'd better be getting used to talking about it. Do you know, when I first told him, over dinner, the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘It's mine, of course.'”

“So it wasn't a question? That's good. And you said yes, it is.”

“No, I said I'd slept with the entire Manchester United team the last time they came through Dublin.” She shook her head. “Sorry, Maura—I'm tired and hungry and scared and mad, and I don't know what all. I said yes, full stop.”

“And?” Maura navigated the narrow unlit lanes to the cottage, keeping her eyes on the road.

“Then he asked, ‘Are you keeping it?' And I said yes. We didn't get into details.”

“How did he seem after that?”

“Kind of shell-shocked, I'd say. Not what he expected to hear.”

“So what went on today, when the yelling came in?”

“You heard that?” Gillian asked, surprised.

“Gillian, the entire pub heard that, although nobody said anything.”

Gillian snorted. “Didn't want to miss a word, I'd wager.”

“No, it wasn't like that. Why were you yelling? By the way, you can tell me to shut up if this is too personal.”

“Everything and nothing is too personal around here. You'll hear it from someone else if not from me. After a day of thinking about it, he said, ‘Do you want me to marry you?' and I said, ‘Not if you put it that way,' and he took it wrong.”

“Which was?”

“He argued. He said we'd been mates for years and lovers for half of that, and he'd stand by me. And I told him I wasn't about to marry him if he didn't care about me, which he hadn't mentioned. If marriage was just something he thought he was supposed to do, like all those bloody Townsends. No mention of love or caring or looking out for the little one. I mean, I never expected roses and champagne, but it might be nice to hear it at least once. So I took off on him and said a lot of things. And then he went quiet. And stayed quiet. So I figured I'd let him stew for a bit and shifted to the boat business and saving John Tully and all. He seemed quite happy with the change of subject. And that was that.”

“Do you want to marry him, Gillian?”

“Only if he loves me,” Gillian said in a very quiet voice. “I've seen too many marriages that were empty—two strangers sharing a space or even a bed, with little to say to each other. I'd rather raise this child alone than live like that,
just walking through life. Or give my child that picture of how two people should be with each other.”

“Do you love him?”

“God help me, I think I do.” She stared out the window, although there was nothing to see. “Maura, I'm scared. I've just sent him off on a mad chase, one I know is dangerous, and I'm worried sick. And he doesn't even know it. He thinks he's playing at something. I hope to hell he's not doing this to impress me. So I must love him. I'm a fool.”

Maura wasn't sure what to say to that, so she kept quiet. She knew she'd never been in love. All the guys she'd known in high school seemed too young and dumb, and most had only wanted to get into her pants. She hadn't fooled herself into believing that could lead anywhere. The guys she'd met tending bar hadn't been much better, plus they'd usually been drunk. In a way it didn't bother her: she was managing just fine on her own, and she didn't need a man in her life. When she looked at Gillian, who was smart and talented and independent, but who had been yearning after a guy who was only half-interested for years, she didn't regret her situation.

It struck her as almost funny that both of the guys who had been sniffing around her over the past few months, Sean and Mick, were now putting themselves in danger with this drug thing, whatever it was. They might even find themselves on opposite sides, if it came to a showdown. How did she feel about that? If they were hurt or killed? If Sean got promoted because of his role and moved to some other station, or if Mick got arrested for interfering with this case? If one or both were gone from her life?

“Maura, you're quiet. And driving slow, I might add.”

“Oh, sorry. Just thinking. We're almost there. I'm still
careful driving at night—all the lanes kind of look alike in the dark.”

Two minutes later her car climbed the hill to Knockskagh, and she turned right and parked in front of her cottage. Home. Even opening the car doors sounded loud in the still night, and she closed hers carefully, not wanting to disturb any neighbors. So did Gillian.

Maura unlocked the cottage's front door and led Gillian into the big room, cold and dark. “Let me use the loo first, and then I'm for bed. When do you think . . .” Gillian seemed unable to finish the sentence.

“Go ahead. I'm usually awake at first light, but that's not until eight or eight thirty these days. I don't think I'll sleep that long. The guys are meeting at four, right?”

Gillian nodded. “When do you think we'll know?” she finally managed to say.

“I can't guess. Go get some sleep, and I'll see you in the morning.” Or in about three hours, in this case.

Upstairs in her bedroom, Maura lay in the dark, staring at nothing, as she had expected. The room was no larger than the one she had occupied most of her life, back in that triple-decker in South Boston. But there the similarity ended. In the old apartment there had always been light, from streetlamps and passing cars. And noise—planes flying over, cars gunning it down the crowded streets, voices calling out, even the occasional gunshot. Here in her cottage it was dark: whatever moon there was had come and gone, and she knew from experience that when the moon wasn't out she couldn't even see her hand in front of her face. It was silent too: she was still trying to identify the different calls of night birds, but even they were silent now. An occasional cow mooed if disturbed by
something passing. Now and then a car would pass by on what most people called the Bog Road, down the hill, but in general people settled in early at night and stayed in.

She had no idea what she was doing. Running an Irish pub? Okay, she'd gotten her head around that, and had even begun to feel comfortable with it. People seemed to like her, and she was making enough money to stay afloat. She'd even taken a couple of baby steps toward changing things, like bringing the music back. She was settling in, making friends.

Now this. Now she was suddenly in the middle of a smuggling operation, and she wasn't even sure what side she was on or how many sides there were. It was illegal and dangerous. Cocaine was nasty stuff and could do a lot of damage to people. Of course she wanted that stopped from coming into the country, particularly in her backyard, even if it didn't stay long in Ireland. But it was a big business, and innocent people had gotten caught up in it. Like Conor, who was desperate for enough money to keep his farm and help out the rest of the family. So he'd taken an odd job, arranging for a truck to carry something. He could have pretended to himself, or to her, that he didn't know what it was and hadn't asked, but at least he was honest enough to admit it.

And then his brother John, who truly was innocent, had stumbled into it. Maybe even died. Conor was trying to help him—fine. Conor's friends or allies—who seemed to include Old Billy—had asked Maura to help, so here she was, trading information between the gardaí, or at least Sean, and one of the smugglers, Conor. Worse, lying to Sean, using him. Her intention was good: to rescue John. But was what she was doing legal? Probably not. If she was found out, she could be in a
lot
of trouble. The best case, as far as she could see, was
to bring John home, alive and well. Next best, find his body—an awful thought, but at least it might help justify what she'd done. Worst case? If they found no trace of John Tully and managed to totally screw up an international operation involving millions of dollars. They'd either throw her in jail or throw her out of the country, if she was lucky.

The hours passed. She might have dozed, but she wasn't sure. The sky wasn't any lighter when her clock read 4:00 and she decided she might as well get up and dress. Before she could drag herself out of bed, she heard Gillian moving around in the other bedroom. Gillian had even more at stake than she did, Maura thought. Now both she and Harry were involved in sorting out this mess, through no fault of their own. More like her own fault. Who was she to be messing up other people's lives? And how was it possible that she was in worse trouble now than she had ever been back in Boston?