Fury O’Shea drove down Broad Street, spotted a parking space, and pulled into it. A backpacker seated by the flower-filled horse trough flinched as the hood of the red Toyota van came to a halt inches from his knees and a small dog launched himself onto the dashboard, barking madly. Folding his map, the young man got up from his bench, hunched himself into his huge rucksack, and moved crossly away. In the cab of the van, Fury removed his keys from the ignition and reached into the glove compartment. Then, pushing a scuffed-looking plastic bottle into the torn pocket of his waxed jacket, he swung his long legs out of the van. The morning traffic rumbled past on either side of Broad Street. Fury dodged between a car and a truck, steering a course for the library. Seeing that his presence wasn’t required, the dog, known as The Divil, subsided onto the passenger seat of the van and tucked his nose under his tail. Fury walked along the pavement by the old school wall, turned down the side of the convent building, and entered the courtyard.
Conor, who was at the desk, looked up as the tall, lugubrious figure appeared at the library door.
“How’s it going, Mr. O’Shea?”
“Never better.”
Elaborately casual, Fury produced the old plastic bottle from his pocket and slid it across the desk.
“You’re grand there now, boy. Say nothing.”
“Ah, that’s great, Fury, thanks a million.”
Fury squinted up at the sign above the door. “Did you offer up the new one?”
“I did of course, it’s half the size. That’s why I needed this stuff.”
Conor pulled a chair over to the door and began the process of removing the tatty frame of redundant adhesive with white spirit from Fury’s bottle.
“Stay where you are there, Fury, and I’ll put the kettle on when I’m done.”
“No need, boy, not at all, I’ve a job to go to.” Fury glanced around the library. “Herself isn’t here today, then?”
Conor shook his head. He knew that Fury knew perfectly well where Miss Casey was. But this was a matter of having to take things slowly. Judging by what she’d said this morning before she set out with the library van, it would take a hell of a lot of diplomacy to get the pair of them on an even keel. But having come up with the idea of bringing them together in the first place, he was determined to make it work.
According to Conor’s dad, there wasn’t a tradesman on the peninsula that was a match for Fury. It was the old houses he liked, too. Not those modern things that got thrown up in scores in the boom years of the Celtic Tiger, when speculators had gone mad. Fury understood stone and lumber, proper masonry, and decent joinery. And he hated waste. Where another man would charge you a fortune to cut corners, Fury went at it handy and did it right. Conor had been delighted to think that by introducing him to Miss Casey he’d be setting up a match made in heaven. Instead of which, he seemed to have started a war. You’d never know, though, the pair of them might come round yet. Conor reckoned they were like the cows. If you let them take their own pace, they’d be far faster getting to where you wanted them.
The second stop on Hanna’s southern route was in Knockmore village, where St. Mary’s Day Care Centre was housed in the church hall. As she parked the van the parish priest, Father McGlynn, was walking towards his car. The seniors who came from miles around to attend the day-care center were always telling her about the battles Father McGlynn fought on their behalf. If it weren’t for him, they said, they’d all be traipsing off to that glass monstrosity of a care center on the far side of Carrick whenever they needed a pedicure or fancied a bit of a break from cooking their meals. Hearing the edge of anxiety in their voices, Hanna occasionally wondered if it would be kinder of Father McGlynn to avoid the temptation of presenting himself as a hero. But perhaps a parish as remote as St. Mary’s was lucky to have such an energetic incumbent. As Nell Reily had murmured to Hanna one day over the choice of a large-print library book, half the priests in rural parishes around the county were well past retirement age. “Honestly, Miss Casey,” she’d said, flicking to the back page of a Mills & Boon to see if she’d read it before, “most of them wouldn’t know which side of the bed to get out of in the mornings, and more of them couldn’t tell you what they’d got up for in the first place.”
Now Hanna made her way into the hall and sat down at an empty coffee table. The seniors, who were having lunch in the room next door, would shortly come through to have their teas and coffees, but for the next ten minutes she could be sure of comparative peace in which to eat her own sandwich. The regulars at the center treated the weekly arrival of the library van as an occasion: someone would always bake a cake or bring something from their garden as a present for Hanna, and often she had offers of a kitten or a puppy in need of a home. Knowing that Mary Casey would be outraged if she arrived home with a pet, she had always said no. But now, as she unwrapped her sandwich, she wondered if a cat on the hearth might be a good companion when she made the move from her mother’s bungalow to Maggie’s house.
There was a clatter of chairs in the next room as the seniors stood up from the table. At the same moment, a text from Tim Slattery appeared on Hanna’s phone. She glanced at it quickly. He had missed her that morning when she’d collected the van, but he wanted to ask her a favor, so could she give him a call when she’d time? Hastily typing No problem, Hanna hit SEND and turned off her phone as the chattering crowd from the lunch tables surged into the room.
Ten minutes later her warm, fuzzy vision of an open fire, a purring cat, and a place to call her own seemed more remote. As soon as the seniors had settled down, Hanna mentioned Fury O’Shea, thinking that the cheerful chat that always accompanied their coffee would be a useful cover for inquiry. The result was depressing. Everyone agreed that you wouldn’t want to cross Fury. He wasn’t violent or anything like that, but he was stubborn as a mule and greatly respected. Hanna’s heart sank. Clearly Conor was right. She had made a mess of her first encounter with the very man she needed for her project. Not that Fury O’Shea sounded like a man that she’d want to work with. Apparently he didn’t do estimates, let alone quotes, nor did he stick to a schedule. And you’d never know where to find him either, she was told, the way he’d always shut off his mobile phone and ignore his messages. In fact, it was generally agreed that he was a worse class of a divil than his noisy little terrier. All the same, he wasn’t called Fury for nothing. When he got his teeth into a job there was no holding him and he wouldn’t stop till it was done.
The man beside Hanna, who was a retired baker, offered her a fairy cake. He had made them himself that morning, he said, because it was library day. They were delicious and Hanna had already eaten two of them, but now, seeing his wife’s anxious face, she smiled and took another. The little woman beamed with pleasure and poked her husband in the ribs. Then, as he heaved himself to his feet to offer the cakes at another table, she leaned over to Hanna and lowered her voice.
“It takes a lot to keep his spirits up these days, Miss Casey. So it’s great to have a reason for him to be baking.”
As she spoke, there was a burst of laughter from the far side of the room and when the man came back he was chuckling. “Look at that, now, I’d forgotten that one. Sure it was the talk of the pubs at the time. Do you know what he did years ago, the same Fury? Whipped the slates off the roof of some poor woman’s house and sold them on to a contractor. ‘Leave it to me to get you a fine price for them,’ says he. And half of it stuffed straight into his own pocket. Begod, you couldn’t beat him for the neck!”