10

Conor was on his own at the desk in Lissbeg when Tim Slattery, who was the county librarian, strolled into the library. Miss Casey was at a Health and Safety refresher session in Carrick, which is where you might think Tim Slattery would be too, thought Conor, since that’s where his office was. But he seemed to spend a lot more time having meetings up and down the peninsula than sitting in the County Library. He was short and kind of thickset, with a big brush of iron-gray hair and a pompous way of talking. He dressed kind of weird as well, like an old fellow that wanted to be trendy. Today he was in a three-piece suit with a colored handkerchief stuffed in his breast pocket and a huge watch on his wrist, like a deep-sea diver’s. But whenever Conor saw him he seemed to be wearing a new watch, sometimes chunky and waterproof, occasionally slim and Day-Glo and usually equipped with the latest functions for checking his heart rate, or monitoring how far he was above sea level. Dan Cafferky, who was a great one for the put-downs, called him The Time Lord. But Miss Casey would hit the roof if she heard that, so even in his own head, Conor tried to stick to Mr. Slattery.

As soon as the door opened he shoved his phone under the desk. He hadn’t been using it or anything, but you wouldn’t want to give the boss man a bad impression.

Mr. Slattery flicked his hankie round the corner of the desk and then, hitching his tweedy thigh onto it, knocked over Miss Casey’s pencils. Conor, who had stood up to greet him, saw that he wasn’t going to get a handshake. So he sat down again.

“Miss Casey’s not in, then?”

Conor didn’t know what to say to that. Surely Mr. Slattery knew where Miss Casey was since the memo about the Health and Safety session had been sent from his email address? But it might be rude to remind him. And his memos might actually get sent by some lowly staff guy in Carrick. Anyway, an answer didn’t seem to be required. Swinging his foot, which was shod in some class of a crocodile, Mr. Slattery announced that he’d dropped in to Lissbeg on the way back from a meeting in Ballyfin and that he’d wanted a swift word with Miss Casey. There was no hurry, though, he’d send her a text or talk to her next time he’d see her. Conor opened his mouth to offer to take a message. Then he closed it again. According to gossip, the boss man ran his department as if he was M out of a James Bond film, so he’d no mind to risk being told to remember his own lowly status. Instead he smiled and said no problem. Upon which, the phone that he’d shoved under the desk rang loudly.

Conor grabbed it, saw it was a text from home, and hit the power button. Then, feeling that he had to explain himself, he said he’d had a bull.

“I mean, the farm has a bull. A new one. A cow just calved.”

And it was brilliant, he said. Because he’d been worried about not being there. Because his brother was clumsy at the calving.

Mr. Slattery blinked, presumably having forgotten Conor’s part-time status. Then he stood up and gave a laugh out of him.

“Talk about multitasking! Next time I’m here I must remember to ask for an anthrax shot!”

Conor smiled politely. Then, as the tweedy back disappeared through the door, he shook his head in amazement. Wouldn’t you think if a man was going to crack a joke that he’d try to put a bit of sense in it? Carefully sliding Miss Casey’s pencils back into their pot, he told himself The Time Lord was an eejit. Sure, there hadn’t been a case of anthrax in Finfarran since God himself was a boy.

Miss Casey arrived an hour or so later with the latest Health and Safety booklet and a newly designed MIND YOUR STEP sticker for the library door. She also had a pot of flowering lavender. Conor watched her moving the pot from the desk to a windowsill.

“So what does that do, protect the readers from vampires?”

Miss Casey repositioned the flowerpot on her desk. “I saw it in Carrick and thought it would look nice.”

The scent of the lavender actually did go well with the smell of books and leather.

“You want something under it, though, if you’re going to water it.”

As he went to get a saucer from the kitchen Conor told himself that Miss Casey seemed a lot more cheerful than was usual after a meeting. Generally she arrived back muttering about time-serving eejits who wouldn’t know Ulysses from a tabloid, but now she was all smiles. Maybe it was because her daughter was home on a break. Conor didn’t really know Jazz, though she’d been in the year behind him when they were at school. People said she used to be kind of prickly, like Miss Casey, but if you saw her round Lissbeg these days she seemed in great form. You could see why, too. As soon as she’d left school she’d gone off with a couple of friends to train as cabin crew and whenever she came back to Finfarran she always had a great tan. According to Conor’s brother, Joe, she’d been in town last night, hanging out with a couple of mates. So maybe that was why Miss Casey was smiling now as she looked round for the mail.

“Anything that needs answering?”

Conor put the saucer under the pot of lavender on the desk. “Nope. There was an email from some fellow looking for a title. He’s looking for a book that has a black dog on the cover, but the bookshops in Carrick can’t find it for him.”

“Any other clues?”

“Just that it has a black dog on the cover and the name written up over it.”

“Well that eliminates The Complete Works of Shakespeare.”

Conor leaned over to the computer and opened the email for her. “I emailed back saying he can come and have a look to see if we’ve got it.”

“Ah, Conor! Well, you can deal with him when he does.”

But she was grinning when, another time, she might have been snappy. And when he told her about Mr. Slattery’s visit, she seemed really glad about the bull calf.

Earlier that morning, before going to the Health and Safety session, Hanna had visited Carrick Credit Union, written her signature on the last page of the loan application, and drawn a firm line beneath it with a blue biro. It felt wonderful. When Dennis Flood clasped her hand and wished her good luck, she left his office repressing an urge to break into Jazz’s happy dance. Then, seeing the pot of lavender in a display outside a florist’s, she had bounced in and bought it simply because it looked cheerful. The line under her signature had felt like a line drawn under all the guilt and apprehension of the last five years. The ex–Mrs. Malcolm Turner was history. So Hanna Casey, beholden to no one, could get on with life.

Now, with the lavender on her desk, she spoke casually to Conor. “You don’t happen to know any local builders?”

He was standing on a chair trying to remove the old fire exit sign from above the door and squinted over his shoulder at her.

“What kind of job would it be?”

“Oh, just bits and pieces. Restoration . . . maybe a bit of roofing.”

Conor abandoned the sign and considered the question. Seeing that what she’d intended as a casual inquiry was about to become a discussion, Hanna hastily told him to get on with his work. “If someone comes in you’ll be knocked off that chair.”

“Right so. It’d make a great headline for the Inquirer, though. ‘Man Felled While Putting up Safety Notice.’”

Here was another issue that Hanna hadn’t thought of. Given that it was practically impossible to do anything in Crossarra or Lissbeg without everyone in the area discussing it, the news that she was planning to restore Maggie’s house was sure to give the gossips a field day. Frowning at her computer screen, she wondered if she should avoid local contractors altogether. Possibly it would cost more but, then again, it might be worth it. Her contemplation of ways and means was interrupted by a dramatic groan from Conor.

“Oh, leave it to the pen pushers to make life difficult!”

He had climbed down from the chair and was looking up at his handiwork. There was a sticky mark on the wall over the door where the old sign had been, and, holding the new one up for size, he had realized that a tatty frame of redundant adhesive was going to be visible around it.

Hanna considered the mark. “Would hot water do it?”

“No chance. We want a drop of white spirit. I’ll stick the old one back up for the time being and deal with the new one tomorrow.”

Hanna nodded, glad that he seemed to have forgotten what she’d asked him. By the time he’d put the old sign back in its place she’d immersed herself in paperwork. So the question of local builders didn’t come up again.