Eye of the storm Page 0,52

before you get there you’ll see a sign to Doxley.”

“So it’s not far from here?”

“Three miles maybe, but it might as well be the end of the world.” The attendant chuckled as he took the notes Dillon gave him. “Not much there, mister.”

“Thought I’d take a look. Friend told me there might be a weekend cottage going.”

“If there is, I haven’t heard of it.”

Dillon drove away, came to the Grimethorpe sign within a few minutes, followed the narrow road and found the Doxley sign as the garage man had indicated. The road was even narrower, high banks blocking the view until he came to the brow of a small hill and looked across a desolate landscape, powdered with snow. There was the occasional small wood, a scattering of hedged fields and then flat marsh-land drifting toward a river, which had to be the Arun. Beside it, perhaps a mile away, he saw houses, twelve or fifteen, with red pantiled roofs, and there was a small church, obviously Doxley. He started down the hill to the wooded valley below and as he came to it, saw a five-barred gate standing open and a decaying wooden sign with the legend Cadge End Farm.

The track led through the wood and brought him almost at once to a farm complex. There were a few chickens running here and there, a house and two large barns linked to it so that the whole enclosed a courtyard. It looked incredibly rundown, as if nothing had been done to it for years, but then, as Dillon knew, many country people preferred to live like that. He got out of the Mini and crossed to the front door, knocked and tried to open it. It was locked. He turned and went to the first barn. Its old wooden doors stood open. There was a Morris van in there and a Ford car jacked up on bricks, no wheels, agricultural implements all over the place.

Dillon took out a cigarette. As he lit it in cupped hands, a voice behind said, “Who are you? What do you want?”

He turned and found a girl in the doorway. She wore baggy trousers tucked into a pair of rubber boots, a heavy roll-neck sweater under an old anorak and a knitted beret like a Tam o’ Shanter, the kind of thing you found in fishing villages on the West Coast of Ireland. She was holding a double-barreled shotgun threateningly. As he took a step toward her, she thumbed back the hammer.

“You stay there.” The Irish accent was very pronounced.

“You’ll be the one they call Angel Fahy?” he said.

“Angela, if it’s any of your business.”

Tania’s man had been right. She did look like a little peasant. Broad cheekbone, upturned nose and a kind of fierceness there. “Would you really shoot with that thing?”

“If I had to.”

“A pity that, and me only wanting to meet my father’s cousin, once removed, Danny Fahy.”

She frowned. “And who in the hell might you be, mister?” “Dillon’s the name. Sean Dillon.”

She laughed harshly. “That’s a damn lie. You’re not even Irish and Sean Dillon is dead, everyone knows that.”

Dillon dropped into the hard distinctive accent of Belfast. “To steal a great man’s line, girl dear, all I can say is, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

The gun went slack in her hands. “Mother Mary, are you Sean Dillon?”

“As ever was. Appearances can be deceiving.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “Uncle Danny talks about you all the time, but it was always like stories, nothing real to it at all and here you are.”

“Where is he?”

“He did a repair on a car for the landlord of the local pub, took it down there an hour ago. Said he’d walk back, but he’ll be there a while yet drinking, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“At this time? Isn’t the pub closed until evening?”

“That might be the law, Mr. Dillon, but not in Doxley. They never close.”

“Let’s go and get him, then.”

She left the shotgun on a bench and got into the Mini beside him. As they drove away, he said, “What’s your story then?”

“I was raised on a farm in Galway. My da was Danny’s nephew, Michael. He died six years ago when I was fourteen. After a year, my mother married again.”

“Let me guess,” Dillon said. “You didn’t like your stepfather and he didn’t like you?”

“Something like that. Uncle Danny came over for my father’s funeral, so I’d met him and liked him. When things got too heavy, I left home and came