‘Where’s the well?’
‘Up there, beyond the bat house.’
‘Would you mind if we filmed you checking the well?’ she asks.
He gives her that same grunt that she recognises as signalling he’ll do whatever she wants, he doesn’t care, no matter how odd he regards her.
While Rachel and Joe talk bats – Rachel can hold a conversation about just about anything – Bo takes a little wander, around the back of the bat house. There’s a cottage behind it, run-down, the outside in the same condition as the bat house, the white paint almost completely gone and the grey concrete dreary amidst all the green. Mossie wanders around in front of the cottage sniffing the ground.
‘Who lived here?’ Bo calls.
‘Ha?’ he shouts, unable to hear her.
She studies the cottage. This building has windows. Clean windows.
Joe and Rachel follow her and turn the corner into the path of the cottage.
‘Who lived here?’ Bo repeats.
‘My da’s aunt. Long time ago. She moved out, the bats moved in.’ He chuckles again. He closes his eyes while he tries to think of her name. ‘Kitty. We tormented the woman. She used to hit us with a wooden spoon.’
Bo moves away slightly, closer to the cottage, she studies the area. This house has a vegetable patch beside it, some fruit growing too. There are wildflowers sitting in a tall glass in one of the windows.
‘Joe,’ Bo says. ‘Who lives here now?’
‘Nobody. Bats maybe,’ he jokes.
‘But look.’
He looks. He takes in all that she has already absorbed. The fruit and vegetable garden, the cottage, the windows that are gleaming, the door painted green, fresher paint than anything else in the vicinity. He’s genuinely confused. She walks around the back. She finds a goat, two chickens wandering around.
Heart pounding, she calls out. ‘Somebody is living in there, Joe.’
‘Intruders? On my land?’ he says angrily, an emotion she has never seen from Joe Toolin or his brother in all her time with them.
Hands in thick fists by his side, he charges towards the cottage, as fast as he can, and she tries to stop him. Mossie follows him.
‘Wait, Joe, wait! Let me get Solomon! Solomon!’ she yells, not wanting to alert the person inside the cottage, but having no choice. ‘Rachel, film this.’ Rachel is already on the case.
But Joe doesn’t care about her documentary and places his hand on the door knob. He’s about to push open the door but stops himself – he’s a gentleman, after all. He knocks instead.
Bo looks in the direction of the forest where Solomon disappeared, then back to the cottage. She could kill Solomon right now, she shouldn’t have let him wander off, it was unprofessional of him. She let him leave because she knew he was famished, because as his girlfriend she knows how he becomes. Grumpy, unfocused, ratty. Again, one of the frustrating parts of being romantically linked with a colleague is actually caring when your decisions mean they go hungry. The sound will have to be compromised. At least they’ll have a visual, they can add sound in after.
‘Careful, Joe,’ Rachel says. ‘We don’t know who’s in there.’
There’s no answer at the cottage and so Joe pushes open the door and steps inside. Rachel is behind him, and Bo hurries after.
‘What the …’ Joe stands in the centre of the room, looking around, scratching his head.
Bo quickly points out singular items she wants Rachel to capture.
It’s a one-roomed cottage. There’s a single bed by one wall, with a view through one of the small windows beside the vegetable patch. On the other side there’s a natural fire, a cooker, not too dissimilar to the one in Joe’s farmhouse, and an armchair beside shelves of books. The four shelves have been filled to the brim and stacks of books are piled neatly on the floor beside it.
‘Books,’ Bo says aloud, wonderingly.
There are a half-dozen sheepskin rugs on the floor, no doubt to warm the cold stone floor during the desperate winters in a house with no obvious heating other than the fire. There’s sheepskin across the bed, sheepskin on the armchair. A small radio sits alone on a side table.
It has a distinctly feminine feel. Bo’s not exactly sure why she feels this. She knows it’s biased to base this on the glass of flowers; there’s no scent but it feels feminine, not the dirty rustic feel of Tom and Joe’s farmhouse. This feels different. Cared for, lived in, and there’s a pink cardigan folded over the top rail of a chair. She nudges Rachel.
‘Got it already,’ she says, the sweat pumping from her forehead.