Bleed a River Deep by Brian McGilloway Read Free Book Online

chasing cases out of your jurisdiction.’
    ‘He died over here,’ I said.
    ‘Past tense: died,’ Patterson repeated. ‘Dead and buried. Case closed. Drop it.’
    I knew there was no further point in discussing it with him as he glared at me across his desk.
    ‘They’re moving that body from the mine today. Now why don’t you get out to Orcas and kiss Weston’s golden arse until it shines.’
    I sat in the car near the border for ten minutes, staring across the river towards Strabane as if somehow it would reveal an answer. Finally, I phoned Hendry on my mobile. His line rang out. I had another smoke and redialled. Again, no answer. I got the impression someone was trying to tell me something.
    *
    I headed back to Orcas as directed. The traffic was heavier than I had expected and I realized that quite a bit of it was headed out to the camp that had been set up along the stream where Ted Coyle had found his nugget. Riled by Patterson’s concluding comments, and always happy to spend half an hour outdoors in weather like this, I pulled in to the camp rather than going directly to Orcas.
    The number of cars parked in the area had significantly increased. The scent of fir trees had been thickened with the smells of burning wood and cooking food. The atmosphere under the canopy was carnivalesque. A few kids who should have been in school were playing soccer in a clearing, using the nearest trees as goalposts. A young girl was picking flowers from the woodland floor, in spots where the sun had managed to pierce the canopy.
    Rock music played from one of the camper vans and a number of its occupants were sitting in the sunlight outside the open back doors, rolling cigarettes or drinking from beer cans. I noticed a few of those rolling smokes hastily hide them when they saw me getting out of my car. A man who was playing with a mongrel looked up, peered at me for a second as if in recognition, then turned his back and continued to fight with the dog for possession of the stick it had clamped in its mouth. None of them, as far as I could see, was panning for gold.
    I nodded over to them, then walked on down to the river, where the atmosphere was very different. I counted twenty-three straining rumps down by the water, each owner sifting through the grit they had gathered in the sieves and colanders they were using.
    I recognized Patsy McCann, standing close to the far bank. The spell of dry weather had exposed part of this section of the riverbed, though a good night’s rain would soon change things. I was able to cross to him with some care and minimal soaking, stepping from stone to stone.
    Patsy threw his sieve down in disgust on the near bank and flopped down beside it. Reclining on the grass, he shielded his eyes with his hand and looked up at me.
    ‘Any luck?’ I asked.
    ‘Bugger-all,’ he spat. ‘I’d be better off back pulling pints.’
    ‘Anyone found anything?’ I asked, a little surprised that McCann had given up his job to sift through river dirt.
    ‘Nobody, apart from yer man Coyle.’ He nodded upriver to where a stocky middle-aged man stood, trouser legs rolled up to his knees, pan in hand.
    I noticed that a number of the other people spotted around the river were likewise watching him and, as he moved around, they followed him, at a distance, as if he possessed some unshared knowledge of the riverbed and its secrets. If he was aware of their gazes, he didn’t show it.
    Suddenly, a child’s shout echoed along the river. A number of prospectors looked up quickly towards the source of the cry, their faces lit with expectation and envy in equal measure when they saw something glistening in his wet hands. Equally quickly they turned away, with palpable relief, when they realized that it was not gold he carried in his hands but a dead fish. He held its curled body on his upturned palms, as if in offering. Coyle alone went over to inspect it, like some tribal elder, prodding it with his finger then