He makes himself a ham sandwich for lunch. While he eats it, he manages to get the internet to show him bus timetables. On Tuesday evenings, a bus headed for Sligo goes by on the main road sometime around five, and one headed for Dublin goes past a little after seven. Both of these are possible, although neither one leaps out at Cal as the obvious answer. The main road is about a three-mile walk from the Reddy place, and Trey says Brendan left the house around five, just as Sheila was serving tea, which around here means dinner. Trey’s sense of time has a haphazard quality that means his guess might well be off, and Cal doubts that Sheila serves meals on a strict schedule, but even four-fifteen would be cutting it close for the Sligo bus. On the other hand, five or even five-thirty would be too early to leave for the Dublin bus, specially if it meant skipping dinner unnecessarily. Overall, if Brendan was going any distance, Cal inclines towards him getting a ride from someone.

He calls Brendan’s number, just for the hell of it. Like Trey said, it goes straight to voicemail: Hi, this is Brendan, leave a message. His voice is young, rough-edged, quick and casual, like he dashed this off in between two more important things. Cal takes a few shots at the voicemail password, in case Brendan left it on the default, but none of them get him anywhere.

He finishes his sandwich, washes up and heads for Daniel Boone’s Guns & Ammunition. Daniel Boone’s is concealed down multiple back roads, and Kevin—Daniel’s real name—is a loose-limbed, scraggly-haired guy who looks like he would be more at home running a mildewy basement record store, but he knows his wares inside out and he has Cal’s Henry .22 oiled, ready and waiting.

It’s been a long time since Cal held one of these, and he’d forgotten the pure physical satisfaction of it. The warm solidity of the walnut stock is a sheer pleasure to his palm; the action is so smooth he could rack the lever back and forth all day. “Well,” he says. “This was worth waiting for.”

“Don’t get a lot of demand for those,” Kevin says, leaning his hip against the counter and eyeing the rifle sourly. “Or I wouldn’t’ve had to order it in.” Kevin took that personally. He clearly felt he had let himself down, and possibly let down his country while he was at it, by allowing some Yank to find him unprepared.

“My granddaddy had one,” Cal says. “When I was a kid. Don’t know what happened to it.” He lifts the rifle to his shoulder and sights, enjoying the elegantly balanced weight of it. Cal could never muster up much fondness for his duty Glock, with its thuggish lines, the insolent swagger with which it wore the fact that it existed to be pointed at human beings. It carried nothing but aggression; it had no dignity. The Henry is, to him, what a gun should be.

“They haven’t changed much,” Kevin says. “You’ll have your eye back in before you know it. Down to the range now, is it?”

“Nah,” Cal says. He’s a little nettled by the idea that he looks like someone who needs a range to shoot. “Gonna go get myself some dinner.”

“I do love a rabbit,” Kevin says. “Specially now, with them good and fat for winter. Bring me one in and I’ll give you a few bob off bullets.”

Cal heads home planning on doing exactly that, to earn Kevin’s forgiveness for the Henry. His plans change because Trey is sitting against his front door, knees up, eating a doughnut.

“Quit swiping shit from Noreen,” Cal says.

The kid gets out of the way so Cal can unlock the door. He digs around in his coat pocket and hands Cal a paper bag containing another, slightly mashed doughnut.

“Thanks,” Cal says.

“You got a gun,” Trey points out, impressed.

“Yep,” Cal says. “Your family doesn’t have any?”

“Nah.”

“How come? If I lived all the way up there, no one for miles around, I’d want some protection.”

“My dad had one. He sold it before he left. You find out anything yet?”

“I told you. It’s gonna take time.” Cal heads inside and leans the rifle in a corner. He doesn’t feel like showing Trey where he keeps his gun safe.

Trey follows him. “I know, yeah. What’d you find out today, but?”

“You keep bugging me about it, I’m gonna make you get lost and not come back for a week.”

Trey stuffs the rest of his doughnut in his mouth and thinks this over while he chews. Apparently he concludes that Cal means it. “You said you’d teach me how to use that,” he says, nodding at the gun.

“I said maybe.”

“I’m old enough. My dad showed Bren when he was twelve.”

Which isn’t relevant, seeing as that gun was gone before Brendan was, but Cal files it away in his mind anyway. “You got a job to do,” he reminds the kid. He opens his toolbox and tosses Trey the old toothbrush. “Warm water and dish soap.”

Trey catches the toothbrush, dumps his parka on a chair, gets himself a mug of soap and water, and tips the desk carefully onto its back so he can kneel beside it. Cal, spreading his drop sheet and levering the lid off his paint can, watches him sideways. The kid sets to work at a pace that he’s not going to be able to keep up: proving himself all over again, after his outburst the other day. Cal pours paint into the roller tray and leaves him to it.

“I checked Bren’s things,” Trey says, without looking up.

“And?”

“His phone charger’s there. And his razor and his shaving foam, and his deodorant. And his bag from school, that’s the only one he’s got.”

“Clothes?”

“Nothing missing that I can tell. Only what he was wearing. He doesn’t have a lot.”

“He got anything he wouldn’t leave behind? Anything that’s precious to him?”

“His watch, that was my granddad’s. My mam gave him that on his eighteenth. It’s not there. He always wears it anyway, but.”

“Huh,” Cal says, dipping the roller. “Good job.”

Trey says, louder, with a flash of triumph and fear, “See?”

“That doesn’t mean much, kid,” Cal says gently. “He mighta figured someone would notice if he snuck things out. He had cash; he could replace all that stuff.”

Trey bites the inside of his cheek and bends his head back over the desk, but Cal can tell he’s working towards saying something. He starts putting a second coat of paint on his wall, and waits.

It takes a while. In the meantime, Cal finds that he likes his work rhythm better with the kid there. On his own the last few days, he got ragged, speeding up and slowing down; not enough to make any difference to the job, just enough to get on his nerves. With the kid needing to be shown how to do it right, he stays nice and even. Gradually Trey’s ferocious pace slows to something steadier.