He meant with Rob. Rob was probably the closest friend I’ve ever had, but then we had this huge complicated vicious fight and that was the end of that. I twisted round and propped myself on Sam’s chest so I could see him, but he was looking up at the ceiling. “I hadn’t seen you like that in a while,” he said. “That much bounce to you.”
“I’ve probably been pretty crap company, these last few months,” I said.
He smiled, just a little. “I’m not complaining.”
I tried to remember ever hearing Sam complain about anything. “No,” I said. “I know.”
“Then Saturday,” he said. “I know we were fighting and all”—he gave me a quick squeeze, dropped a kiss on my forehead—“but still. I realized afterwards: that was because we were both really into it, this case. Because you cared. It felt . . .” He shook his head, looking for the words. “DV’s not the same,” he said, “is it?”
I had mostly kept my mouth shut about DV. It hadn’t occurred to me, till then, that all that silence could have been plenty revealing, in its own way. “It needs doing,” I said. “Nothing’s the same as Murder, but DV’s fine.”
Sam nodded, and for a second his arms tightened around me. “And that meeting,” he said. “Right up until then, I’d been wondering should I pull rank and tell Mackey to bugger off for himself. This started off as a murder case, I’m down as lead detective, if I said no . . . But the way you were talking, all interested, thinking it out . . . I just thought, why would I wreck that?”
I had not seen this coming. Sam has one of those faces that fool you even when you know better: a countryman’s face, all ruddy cheeks and clear gray eyes and crow’s-feet starting, so simple and open that there couldn’t possibly be anything hidden behind it. “Thanks, Sam,” I said. “Thank you.”
I felt his chest lift and fall as he sighed. “It might turn out to be a good thing, this case. You never know.”
“But you still wish this girl had picked just about anywhere else to get herself killed,” I said.
Sam thought about that for a minute, twisting a finger delicately through one of my curls. “Yeah,” he said, “I do, of course. But there’s no point in wishing. Once you’re stuck with something, all you can do is make the best of it.”
He looked down at me. He was still smiling, but there was something else, something almost sad, around his eyes. “You’ve looked happy, this week,” he said simply. “It’s nice to see you looking happy again.”
I wondered how the hell this man put up with me. “Plus you knew I would kick your arse if you started making decisions for me,” I said.
Sam grinned and flicked the end of my nose with his finger. “That too,” he said, “my little vixen,” but there was still that shadow behind his eyes.
* * *
Sunday moved fast, after those long ten days, fast as a tidal wave built to bursting point and finally crashing down. Frank was coming over at three, to wire me up and get me to Whitethorn House by half past four. All the time Sam and I were going through our Sunday-morning routine—the newspapers and leisurely cups of tea in bed, the shower, the toast and eggs and bacon—that was hanging over our heads, a huge alarm clock ticking, waiting for its moment to explode into life. Somewhere out there, the housemates were getting ready to welcome Lexie home.
After brunch, I put on the clothes. I got dressed in the bathroom; Sam was still there, and I wanted to do this in private. The clothes felt like something more: fine chain-mail armor handmade to fit me, or robes laid out ready for some fiercely secret ceremony. They made my palms tingle when I touched them.
Plain white cotton underwear with the Penney’s tags still on; faded jeans, worn soft and fraying at the hems; brown socks, brown ankle boots; a long-sleeved white T-shirt; a pale-blue suede jacket, scuffed but clean. The collar of it smelled of lilies of the valley and something else, a warm note almost too faint to catch: Lexie’s skin. In one of the pockets there was a Dunne’s Stores receipt from a few weeks back, for chicken fillets, shampoo, butter and a bottle of ginger ale.
When I was dressed I checked myself out, in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. For a second I didn’t know what I was seeing. Then, ridiculously, all I wanted was to laugh. It was the irony of it: I had spent months dressing up as Executive Barbie, and now that I was being someone else, I finally got to go to work dressed a lot like me. “You look nice,” Sam said, with a faint smile, when I came out. “Comfortable.”
My stuff was packed and waiting by the door, as if I were off on some voyage; I felt like I should be checking my passport and tickets. Frank had bought me a nice new traveling case, the hard kind, with discreet reinforcement and a solid combination lock; it would take a safecracker to get in there. Inside were Lexie’s things—wallet, keys, phone, all dead ringers for the real things; the stuff from the housemates; a plastic tub of vitamin C tablets with a pharmacist’s label that said AMOXICILLIN TABS TAKE ONE THREE TIMES DAILY, to go somewhere prominent. My gear was in a separate compartment: latex gloves, my mobile, spare battery packs for the mike, a supply of artistically stained bandages to go in the bathroom bin every morning and evening, my notebook, my ID and my new gun—Frank had got me a .38 snub-nose that felt good in my hand and was a lot easier to hide than my regulation Smith & Wesson. There was also—seriously—a girdle, the industrial-strength elastic kind that’s supposed to give you a smooth silhouette in your Little Black Dress. It’s a lot of undercovers’ version of a holster. It’s not comfortable—after an hour or two you feel like there’s a gun-shaped dent in your liver—but it does a good job of hiding the outline. Just the thought of Frank going into the Marks & Sparks lingerie department and picking it out made this whole thing worthwhile.
“You look like shite,” he said, examining me approvingly, when he arrived at the door of my flat. He was carrying a double armful of Bond-looking black electronics, cables and speakers and God knows what: the setup for the wire. “The eye bags are to die for.”
“She’s had three hours’ sleep a night,” Sam said tightly, behind me. “Same as yourself and myself. And we’re not exactly looking the best either.”
“Hey, I’m not giving her hassle,” Frank told him, heading past us and dumping the armful on the coffee table. “I’m delighted with her. She looks like she’s been in intensive care for ten days. Hi, babe.”
The mike was tiny, the size of a shirt button. It clipped onto the front of my bra, between my breasts: “Lucky our girl didn’t go in for low-cut tops,” Frank said, glancing at his watch. “Go lean over in front of the mirror, check the view.” The battery pack went where the knife wound should have been, surgical-taped to my side under a thick pad of white gauze, just an inch or two below the scar Dealer Boy had left on Lexie Madison the First. The sound quality, once Frank had done small complicated things to the equipment, was crystal clear: “Only the best for you, babe. Transmission radius is seven miles, depending on conditions. We’ve got receivers set up at Rathowen station and at the Murder squad, so you’ll be covered at home and in Trinity. The only time you’ll go out of coverage is on the drive to and from town, and I don’t anticipate anyone shoving you out of a moving car. You won’t have visual surveillance, so any visuals that we should know about, tell us. If the shit hits the fan and you need a subtle way to yell for help, say ‘My throat hurts’ and you’ll have big-time backup on the scene inside a few minutes—don’t go getting a sore throat for real, or if you do, don’t complain about it. You need to check in with me as often as possible, ideally every day.”
“And with me,” Sam said, not turning around from the sink. Frank, squatting on the floor and squinting at some dial on his receiver, didn’t even bother to throw me a mocking look.
Sam finished the washing up and started drying things too thoroughly. I sorted the Lexie material into some kind of order—that high-wire final-exam feeling, taking your hands off your notes at last, If I don’t know it now—stacked it in bundles and packed it into plastic bags, to
leave in Frank’s car. “And that,” Frank said, unplugging the speakers with a flourish, “should do it. Are we good to go?”
“Ready when you are,” I said, picking up the plastic bags. Frank swept up his equipment one-armed, grabbed my case and headed for the door.
“I’ll take that,” Sam said brusquely. “You’ve enough to carry,” and he took the case from Frank’s hand and headed down the stairs, the wheels hitting each step with a hard dull thump.
On the landing Frank turned and looked back over his shoulder, waiting for me. My hand was on the door handle when for a split second out of nowhere I was terrified, blue-blazing terrified, fear dropping straight through me like a jagged black stone falling fast. I’d felt this before, in the limbo instants before I moved out of my aunt’s house, lost my virginity, took my oath as a police officer: those instants when the irrevocable thing you wanted so much suddenly turns real and solid, inches away and speeding at you, a bottomless river rising and no way back once it’s crossed. I had to catch myself back from crying out like a little kid drowning in terror, I don’t want to do this any more.
All you can do with that moment is bite down and wait for it to be over. The thought of what Frank would have to say, if I actually pulled out now, helped a lot. I took one more look around my flat—lights off, water heater off, bins emptied, window locked; the room was already closing in on itself, silence seeping into the spaces where we had been, drifting up like dust in the corners. Then I shut the door.
5
The drive down to Glenskehy took almost an hour, even with no traffic and Frank driving, and it should have been excruciating. Sam slumped miserably in the back seat, next to the gadgetry; Frank helped the atmosphere by turning up 98FM nice and loud and bopping along, whistling and nodding his head and beating time on the steering wheel. I barely even noticed either of them. It was a gorgeous afternoon, sunny and crisp, I was out of my flat for the first time in a full week, and I had the window rolled all the way down and wind streaking through my hair. That hard black stone of fear had dissolved the second Frank started the car, turned into something sweet and lemon-colored and wildly intoxicating.
“Right,” Frank said, when we hit Glenskehy, “let’s see how well you’ve learned your geography. Give me directions.”
“Straight on through the village, fourth lane to your right, way too narrow, no wonder Daniel and Justin’s cars look like they’ve been drag racing, give me good old dirty Dublin any day,” I told him, doing his accent. “Home, James.” I was on a giddy one. The jacket had been freaking me out all afternoon—it was that lily-of-the-valley smell, right up close, I kept whipping round to see who had come up beside me—and the fact that I was being given the heebiejeebies by a jacket, like something out of Dr. Seuss, was making me want to giggle. Even passing the turnoff to the cottage, where I had met Frank and Sam that first day, didn’t sober me up.
The lane was unpaved and potholey. Trees gone shapeless with years of ivy, hedge branches rattling along the sides of the car and flicking in at my window; and then huge wrought-iron gates, flaking with rust and hanging drunkenly off their hinges. The stone pillars were half drowned in hawthorn grown wild. “Here,” I said.
Frank nodded and turned, and we were looking down an endless, graceful sweep of avenue, between cherry trees crowded with exploded balls of flowers. “Fuck me,” I said. “Why did I have doubts about this, again? Can I sneak Sam in with me in my suitcase, and we can just live here forever?”
“Get it out of your system,” Frank said. “By the time we reach that door, you need to be blasé about all this. Anyway, the house is still shitty, so you can calm down.”
“You told me they’d redone it. I expect cashmere curtains and white roses in my dressing room, or I’m calling my agent.”
“I said they were doing it up. I didn’t say they were magic.”
Then the drive gave a little twist and opened up into a great semicircular carriage sweep, white pebbles speckled through with weeds and daisies, and I saw Whitethorn House for the first time. The photos hadn’t done it justice. You see Georgian houses all over Dublin, mostly turned into offices and undermined by the depressing fluorescents you can see through the windows, but this one was special. Every proportion was balanced so perfectly that the house looked like it had grown there, nested in with its back to the mountains and all Wicklow dropping away rich and gentle in front of it, poised between the pale arc of the carriage sweep and the blurred dark-and-green curves of the hills like a treasure held out in a cupped palm.
I heard Sam take a fast hard breath. “Home sweet home,” said Frank, turning the radio off.
They were waiting for me outside the door, ranged at the top of the steps. In my mind I still see them like that, lacquered gold by the evening sun and glowing vivid as a vision, every fold of their clothes and curve of their faces pristine and achingly clear. Rafe leaning against the railing with his hands in his jeans pockets; Abby in the middle, swayed forwards on her toes, one arm crooked to shade her eyes; Justin, his feet precisely together and his hands clasped behind his back. And behind them, Daniel, framed between the columns of the door, his head up and the light splintering off his glasses.
None of them moved as Frank pulled up and braked, pebbles scattering. They were like figures on a medieval frieze, self-contained, mysterious, spelling out a message in some lost and arcane code. Only Abby’s skirt fluttered, fitfully, in the breeze.
Frank glanced at me over his shoulder. “Ready?”
“Yeah.”
“Good girl,” he said. “Good luck. And we’re go.” He got out of the car and went round to the boot to get my case.
“Mind yourself,” Sam said. He didn’t look at me. “I love you.”
“I’ll be home soon,” I said. There was no way even to touch his arm, under all those unblinking eyes. “I’ll try to ring you tomorrow.”
He nodded. Frank slammed the boot—the sound was wild, enormous, bouncing off the house front and setting crows scattering from the trees—and opened the car door for me.
I got out, putting my hand to my side for a second as I straightened up. “Thanks, Detective,” I said to Frank. “Thanks for everything.”
We shook hands. “My pleasure,” Frank said. “And don’t worry, Miss Madison: we’ll get this guy.”
He pulled out the handle of the case with a neat snap and passed it to me, and I dragged it across the carriage sweep towards the steps and the others.
Still none of them moved. As I got closer I realized, with a shift of focus like a shock. Those straight backs, the lifted heads: there was some tension stretched between the four of them, so tight it hummed high in the silence. The wheels of my case, grating across the pebbles, sounded loud as machine-gun fire.
“Hi,” I said at the bottom of the steps, looking up at them.
For a second I thought they weren’t going to answer, they had made me already, and I wondered wildly what the hell I was supposed to do now. Then Daniel took a step forwards, and the picture wavered and broke. A smile started across Justin’s face, Rafe straightened up and raised one arm in a wave, and Abby came running down the steps and hugged me hard.
“Hey, you,” she said, laughing, “welcome home.” Her hair smelled like camomile. I dropped the case and hugged her back; it was a strange feeling, as if I were touching someone out of an old painting, amazed to find her shoulder blades warm and solid as my own. Daniel nodded gravely at me over her head and ruffled my hair, Rafe grabbed my case and started bumping it up the steps to the door, Justin patted my back over and over and I was laughing too, and I didn’t even hear Frank start the car and drive away.
* * *
This is the first thing I thought when I stepped into Whitethorn House: I’ve been here before. It zinged straight through me, straightened my spine like a crash of cymbals. The place bloody well should have looked familiar, all the hours I’d spent staring at photos and video, but it was more than that. It was the smell, old wood an
d tea leaves and a faint whiff of dried lavender; it was the way the light lay along the scarred floorboards; it was the little taps our footsteps sent flying up the stairwell, echoing softly along the upstairs corridors. It felt—and you’d think I would like this but I didn’t, it flashed danger-sign red right across my mind—it felt like coming home.