“We were talking. Is all. It got late. I’ve got one of those, what do you call them, for guests, the air mattresses—”
Mart is giggling so hard he has to hold himself up on the door frame. “Talking, is it? I did a bit of talking to women myself, back in the day. I’ll tell you this much, I never made them sleep on an air mattress all on their ownio.” He heads into the kitchen, waving Cal after him with the cookie packet. “Come in outa that and have a cup of tea, and you can give me all the details.”
“She makes a mean bacon-and-egg breakfast. That’s all the details I got.”
“Doesn’t sound like ye did that much talking,” Mart says, switching on the kettle and rooting around for mugs and the Dalek teapot. Kojak flops down on his rug in front of the fireplace, keeping one wary eye on Cal. “Was it her brothers done that on you?”
“Uh-oh,” Cal says. “She’s got brothers?”
“Oh, begod, she does. Three big apes that’d rip your head off as soon as look at you.”
“Well, shit,” Cal says, “I might have to skip town after all. Sorry ’bout your twenty bucks.”
Mart snickers and relents. “Don’t worry your head about those lads. They know better than to get between Lena and anything she wants.” He throws a generous handful of tea bags into the Dalek. “Tell me this and tell me no more: is she a wild one?”
“You’d have to ask her,” Cal says primly.
“Come here,” Mart says, his tangle of eyebrows shooting up as a new idea strikes him, “is that what happened to you? Did Lena give you a few skelps? I’d say she’d have a fine aul’ right hook on her. Does she have one of them fetishes?”
“No! Jesus, Mart. I just fell off the roof.”
“Give us a proper look,” Mart says. He leans in and peers at Cal’s nose from various angles. “I’d say that’s broken.”
“Yeah, me too. It’s straight, though, or as straight as it ever was. It’ll heal.”
“It’d better. You don’t wanta lose your good looks, specially not now. What’s the story on the arm? Didja break that too?”
“Nah. I think I cracked my collarbone. Gave my knee a pretty good whack, too.”
“Sure, it could’ve been worse,” Mart says philosophically. “I know a fella up near Ballymote that fell off his roof, the exact same as yourself, and didn’t he break his neck. He’s in a wheelchair to this day. His missus has to wipe his arse for him. You were lucky. Didja go to the doctor?”
“Nah,” Cal says. “Nothing they could do except tell me to take it easy for a while, and I can do that myself for free.”
“Or Lena can do it for you,” Mart says, the grin creeping back onto his face. “She won’t be happy if you’re out of commission. Better rest up and mind yourself, so you can get back in the saddle.”
“Jeez, Mart,” Cal says, biting back a grin and getting very interested in his toe poking at a chair leg. “Come on.” Under the chair is a towel stiff with dried blood.
When he looks up, he looks into Mart’s eyes. He sees Mart think about saying he had a nosebleed, and then think about saying a nameless stranger staggered in with a mysterious wound. In the end he says nothing at all.
“Well,” Cal says, after a long while. “Don’t I feel like the idiot.”
“Ah, no,” Mart reassures him charitably. He stoops to pick up the towel, bracing himself on the chair-back and grunting, and stumps unhurriedly across the kitchen to put it in the washing machine. “No need for that. Sure, how would you know the lie of the land, and you a stranger?” He closes the washing machine door and looks up at Cal. “But you know now.”
Cal says, “You gonna tell me what happened?”
“Leave it be,” Mart says, gently and firmly, in a voice Cal has used a hundred times to tell suspects that they’ve come to the end, to the place where there’s no choice left, no journey and no struggle. “Go home to the child and tell her to leave it be. That’s all you need to do.”
Cal says, “She wants to know where her brother is.”
“Then tell her he’s dead and buried. Or tell her he done a runner, if you’d rather. Whatever’ll make her leave it.”
“I tried that. She wants to know for sure. That’s her