Cal gives up on the rook, and the desk. He wants, suddenly and powerfully, to be out of the house. The only thing he can think of that seems like it might settle his mind is catching his own dinner, but he doesn’t feel like sitting on a riverbank all day getting his ass damp on the off chance of catching a perch or two, and his damn firearm license still hasn’t come through. In general, taking into account some of the people he’s known to own guns and the fact that Donie McGrath didn’t have the option of whipping out a Glock in the pub, he can see the reasoning behind the restrictions in these parts, but today they piss him off. He could have got married or bought a house quicker, both, in Cal’s opinion, undertakings considerably more hazardous than owning a hunting rifle.

He decides to head into town and see if the guy at the station can give him an update on that license. He can hit the laundromat while he’s at it, and buy himself a new toothbrush, as well as a heater so Mart’s sneaky cold doesn’t get him. On his way out of the house with his trash bag of clothes, he locks the door.

The rain has picked up again, long curtains of it sweeping the windshield. Cal catches himself keeping an eye out for Trey. A few miles up into the hills, Lena said, which would be a long walk in this weather. But the road is deserted, just the odd cluster of cows sheltering against low stone walls and sheep dotted around the fields grazing, unperturbed. Branches droop low and swish along the sides of the Pajero. The mountains are dim and ghostly under a heavy veil of rain.

Kilcarrow town is old and comfortable, with rows of creamy-colored houses fanning out around a market square, and a hilltop view over fields and the twisting river. It has a couple of thousand people, which, factoring in the satellite villages, adds up to enough traffic for stuff like a hardware store and a laundromat. Cal hands in his clothes and makes for the police station with his head tucked down against the rain.

The station is in what looks like an oversized shed, sandwiched between two houses and painted white with a neat blue trim. It’s open a few hours here and a few hours there. In the back room, several people on the radio are talking over each other about potholes. At the desk out front, a uniform is reading the undersized local paper and scratching his armpit with real dedication.

“Afternoon,” Cal says, wiping rain off his beard. “Some weather out there.”

“Ah, sure, it’s a grand soft day,” the uniform says comfortably, putting his paper away and leaning back in his chair. He’s a few years younger than Cal, with a round face, a belly under construction and an air of having been scrubbed shiny-clean all over. Someone has mended a rip in his shirt pocket with tiny, careful stitches. “What can I do for you?”

“I applied for a firearm license, couple of months back. Seeing as I’m in town, figured I’d check if there was any update on that.”

“You should receive a letter within three months of the application date, one way or the other,” the uniform tells him. “If you don’t, that means you’ve been refused, officially. But sure, sometimes they do get a bit behind. Even if you don’t hear anything, you could be grand. I’d give it an extra month before you start worrying. Two, maybe.”

Cal has met this guy before, in various forms. He’s out in the boondocks not because he’s a dud or a troublemaker, or a wannabe detective chafing with frustrated ambition, but because he’s happy here. He likes his days unhurried and unsurprising, his faces familiar, and his mind unclouded when he goes home to his wife and kids. He’s the cop who Cal, in some or possibly most ways, wishes he had decided to be.

“Well, I don’t guess I have much right to complain,” Cal says. “When I was on the job, paperwork went straight to the bottom of the pile and stayed there. You’re not gonna mess around with some guy’s dog license when you’ve got actual police work to do.”

This has the uniform’s attention. “You were on the job?” he asks, making sure he has things straight. “On the force, like?”

“Twenty-five years. Chicago PD.” Cal grins and holds out his hand. “Cal Hooper. Pleased to meet you.”

“Garda Dennis O’Malley,” the uniform says, shaking his hand. Cal was betting on him not being the type who would see this as a dick-measuring contest, and he bet right: O’Malley looks genuinely delighted. “Chicago, hah? I’d say you saw some action there.”

“Some action and a lotta paperwork,” Cal says. “Same as everywhere. This seems like a good post.”

“I wouldn’t swap it,” O’Malley says. Cal can tell from his accent that he’s not from round here, but he’s from somewhere not too different: that rich, leisured rhythm didn’t come out of any city. “It wouldn’t suit everyone, now, but it suits me.”

“What kind of stuff do you get?”

“A lot of it’d be motor vehicles,” O’Malley explains. “They do be hoors for the speeding, round here. And for the drink-driving. Three young fellas went into a ditch coming home from the pub, Saturday night, up beyond Gorteen. None of them made it to hospital.”

“I heard about that,” Cal says. Noreen’s cousin’s friend’s husband was the poor bastard who came across the aftermath. “That’s a damn shame.”

“That’d be about the worst we get, now. There’s not much other crime. Oil does get robbed, now and again.” At Cal’s uncomprehending look: “Heating oil, out of the tanks. And farm equipment. And we’d get a bitta drugs—sure, they’re everywhere, nowadays. Nothing like what you got in Chicago, I’d say.” He gives Cal a shy grin.

“We got plenty of MVAs,” Cal says, “and drugs. Not a whole lot of farm-equipment theft, though.” And then, before he knows he’s going to say it: “Mostly I worked Missing Persons. I don’t guess you’ve got much call for that around here.”

O’Malley laughs. “Ah, Jaysus, no. I’m here twelve years, and we’ve had two people go missing. One fella came up in the river a few days later. The other was a young one that had a row with her mammy and flounced off to stay with her cousin in Dublin.”

“Well, I can see why you wouldn’t swap this place,” Cal says. “Thought I heard a guy did go missing on you this spring, though. Did I hear wrong?”

This startles O’Malley into sitting upright. “Who’s that, then?”

“Brendan something. Reddy?”

“Reddys from up by Ardnakelty?”

“Yeah.”

“Ach, them,” O’Malley says, relaxing back into his chair. “What one’s Brendan?”

“Nineteen.”

“Sure, no surprise there, then. And, being honest with you, no loss.”