hair was braided in a long pigtail.
“I’m glad I wore my slicker,” she observed. “No offense, O’Leary, but I’ve got one word for you—SOAP. And your breath! Tell me true—how many eels have you et today?” And yet the diminutive girl, who was ten, had an arm around the friendly beast that was panting in the warm truck.
“I’ll put the lad outside, if he’s bothering you,” Gannon said.
“Ah, no—O’Leary’s fine right here,” Maddie replied, patting the dog’s wide glossy chest. As though to thank her, the dog turned its head and tried to lick her ear.
“Oooof! You’re a basilisk, you are, O’Leary. And you like it that way, I can tell.”
Basilisk was obviously a term Maddie had picked up from her mother, who had an intellectual bent, and McGarr tried to recall just exactly what a basilisk was besides, obviously, having bad breath. But without yet another cup of strong coffee he was locked in the kind of half-cognizant stupor that one of his older friendscalled, “Senior stasis—don’t expect it to get any better. It won’t.”
Thus, McGarr was paying only half a mind to Gannon’s narrative of how difficult it was to police the Shannon eel fishery.
“The eels, you see, migrate during the fall, and they move mainly on windy, moonless fall nights when the current is favorable. That’s when the fishing is best and most poaching takes place. In the dark off roads, like this. Which makes the poachers very difficult to catch.”
“Using fyke nets?” McGarr asked, if only to prove to himself that he was conscious.
“Sometimes, if they’re well-organized poachers. And many of them are. They wear masks and have lookouts with walkie-talkies. No numbers on their boats and no license plates or tax stamps on their cars. And operating down here along hundreds of miles of riverbank in the dead of night…” Gannon shook his head. “They’re harder and slippery-er than the very eels to catch. That’s why Ellen’s nabbing the Frakes, like she did in her kayak, was brilliant, God rest her soul.”
“Weren’t they jailed?” McGarr asked.
“Sure—for a night. Irony is, in morning their woman, the blond—”
“Gertrude McGurk.”
“Came down with a fistful of readies—doubtless got from poaching—and bailed them out. It was their third time in court for poaching, so the judge threw the book at them—a two-thousand-pound fine apiece, and the promise of doubling that if they were ever hauled in again.”
“And they paid it?”
“Without a word, like they were buying a round at a bar. Eel wholesalers buying for Japanese and Chinesebrokers are currently paying two hundred pounds a kilo for eel elvers. In one pass, a fine-mesh fyke net with a motorized winch can pull in nine to fifteen hundred kilos. Deployed several times a night with a lorry nearby to carry them out.” Again Gannon shook his head. “You don’t need many nights like that for a packet of money, tax-free.”
“What are fyke nets?” With a sleeve Maddie wiped the condensation off a window so O’Leary could look out, but it was as though the Land Rover were passing slowly through a dense but brilliant cloud. Overhead the sun had to be shining.
“Nets that form big bags and can stretch across the entire river,” Gannon explained. “Because fyke nets catch all the elvers migrating inland, pretty soon there would be no eels left to procreate. That’s why fyke nets are illegal.”
“So anybody using them has to be a poacher,” McGarr put in.
Gannon nodded. “We only issue about three dozen licenses a year by lottery. And applications require the kind of personal and business information that thugs don’t like giving. Instead, they horn in on the fishing sites of legitimate eel fishers, who’ve paid hundreds of pounds for the exclusive right to fish there.
“Beatings, cars and boats shot up. One had his fishing shack bombed.”
“By the Frakes, you think?”
“Ach, who knows—the Frakes are not
“I’m glad I wore my slicker,” she observed. “No offense, O’Leary, but I’ve got one word for you—SOAP. And your breath! Tell me true—how many eels have you et today?” And yet the diminutive girl, who was ten, had an arm around the friendly beast that was panting in the warm truck.
“I’ll put the lad outside, if he’s bothering you,” Gannon said.
“Ah, no—O’Leary’s fine right here,” Maddie replied, patting the dog’s wide glossy chest. As though to thank her, the dog turned its head and tried to lick her ear.
“Oooof! You’re a basilisk, you are, O’Leary. And you like it that way, I can tell.”
Basilisk was obviously a term Maddie had picked up from her mother, who had an intellectual bent, and McGarr tried to recall just exactly what a basilisk was besides, obviously, having bad breath. But without yet another cup of strong coffee he was locked in the kind of half-cognizant stupor that one of his older friendscalled, “Senior stasis—don’t expect it to get any better. It won’t.”
Thus, McGarr was paying only half a mind to Gannon’s narrative of how difficult it was to police the Shannon eel fishery.
“The eels, you see, migrate during the fall, and they move mainly on windy, moonless fall nights when the current is favorable. That’s when the fishing is best and most poaching takes place. In the dark off roads, like this. Which makes the poachers very difficult to catch.”
“Using fyke nets?” McGarr asked, if only to prove to himself that he was conscious.
“Sometimes, if they’re well-organized poachers. And many of them are. They wear masks and have lookouts with walkie-talkies. No numbers on their boats and no license plates or tax stamps on their cars. And operating down here along hundreds of miles of riverbank in the dead of night…” Gannon shook his head. “They’re harder and slippery-er than the very eels to catch. That’s why Ellen’s nabbing the Frakes, like she did in her kayak, was brilliant, God rest her soul.”
“Weren’t they jailed?” McGarr asked.
“Sure—for a night. Irony is, in morning their woman, the blond—”
“Gertrude McGurk.”
“Came down with a fistful of readies—doubtless got from poaching—and bailed them out. It was their third time in court for poaching, so the judge threw the book at them—a two-thousand-pound fine apiece, and the promise of doubling that if they were ever hauled in again.”
“And they paid it?”
“Without a word, like they were buying a round at a bar. Eel wholesalers buying for Japanese and Chinesebrokers are currently paying two hundred pounds a kilo for eel elvers. In one pass, a fine-mesh fyke net with a motorized winch can pull in nine to fifteen hundred kilos. Deployed several times a night with a lorry nearby to carry them out.” Again Gannon shook his head. “You don’t need many nights like that for a packet of money, tax-free.”
“What are fyke nets?” With a sleeve Maddie wiped the condensation off a window so O’Leary could look out, but it was as though the Land Rover were passing slowly through a dense but brilliant cloud. Overhead the sun had to be shining.
“Nets that form big bags and can stretch across the entire river,” Gannon explained. “Because fyke nets catch all the elvers migrating inland, pretty soon there would be no eels left to procreate. That’s why fyke nets are illegal.”
“So anybody using them has to be a poacher,” McGarr put in.
Gannon nodded. “We only issue about three dozen licenses a year by lottery. And applications require the kind of personal and business information that thugs don’t like giving. Instead, they horn in on the fishing sites of legitimate eel fishers, who’ve paid hundreds of pounds for the exclusive right to fish there.
“Beatings, cars and boats shot up. One had his fishing shack bombed.”
“By the Frakes, you think?”
“Ach, who knows—the Frakes are not
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