To this day I’m not sure how I managed to get myself into that van. Possibly it was because, even in disgrace, I was still Cassie’s partner, a relationship for which almost every detective has a reflexive, deeply ingrained respect. Possibly it was because I bombarded O’Kelly with the first technique every toddler learns: if you ask someone often enough for long enough when he is trying to do enough other things, sooner or later he will say yes just to shut you up. I was too desperate to care about the humiliation of this. Possibly he realized that, if he had refused, I would have taken the Land Rover and gone down there on my own.
The van was one of those blind, sinister-looking white things that regularly show up in police reports, with the name and logo of a fictitious tile company on the side. Inside it was even creepier: thick black cables coiling everywhere and the equipment blinking and hissing, ineffectual little overhead light, the soundproofing giving it the unsettling look of a padded cell. Sweeney drove; Sam, O’Kelly, the tech and I sat in the back compartment, swaying on uncomfortable low benches, not talking. O’Kelly had brought along a thermos of coffee and some kind of glutinous pastry, which he ate in huge methodical bites with no evidence of enjoyment. Sam scraped at an imaginary stain on the knee of his trousers. I cracked my knuckles, until I realized how irritating this was, and tried to ignore the intensity with which I wanted a cigarette. The tech did the Irish Times crossword. We parked in Knocknaree Crescent and O’Kelly rang Cassie’s mobile. She was within range of the equipment; her voice, over the speakers, was cool and steady. “Maddox.”
“Where are you?” O’Kelly demanded.
“Just coming up to the estate. I didn’t want to be hanging around.”
“We’re in position. Go ahead.”
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A tiny pause; then Cassie said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up. I heard the buzz of the Vespa starting up again, then the weird stereo effect as, a minute later, it passed the end of the Crescent, only a few yards from us. The tech folded away his newspaper and made a minuscule adjustment to something; O’Kelly, across from me, pulled a plastic bag of sweets out of his pocket and settled back on the bench.
Footsteps jolting the mike, the faint tasteful ding-dong of the doorbell. O’Kelly waved the bag of sweets at the rest of us; when there were no takers, he shrugged and fished out an iced caramel. The click of the door opening. “Detective Maddox,” Rosalind said, not sounding pleased. “I’m afraid we’re all very busy at the moment.”
“I know,” Cassie said. “I’m really sorry to bother you. But could I . . . Is there any chance I could talk to you for a minute?”
“You had your chance to talk to me the other night. Instead, you insulted me and ruined my evening. I really don’t feel like wasting any more of my time on you.”
“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t—I shouldn’t have done that. But this isn’t about the case. I just . . . I need to ask you something.”
Silence, and I pictured Rosalind holding the door open and staring at her, gauging; Cassie’s face upturned and tense, her hands deep in the pockets of her suede jacket. In the background someone—Margaret—called something. Rosalind snapped, “It’s for me, Mother,” and the door slammed shut.
“Well?” Rosalind inquired.
“Could we . . .” A rustle: Cassie shifting nervously. “Could we maybe go for a walk or something? This is pretty private.”
That must have piqued Rosalind’s interest, but her voice didn’t change.
“I’m actually getting ready to go out.”
“Just five minutes. We can walk round the back of the estate, or something. . . . Please, Miss Devlin. It’s important.”
Finally she sighed. “All right. I suppose I can give you a few minutes.”
“Thanks,” Cassie said, “I really appreciate it,” and we heard them going down the pathway again, the swift decisive taps of Rosalind’s heels. It was a sweet morning, a soft morning; the sun was skimming off last night’s mist, but there had still been wispy layers, over the grass and hazing the high cool sky, when we got into the van. The speakers magnified the twitter of blackbirds, the creak and clank of the estate’s back gate, then Cassie’s 392
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and Rosalind’s feet swishing through the wet grass along the edge of the wood. I thought of how beautiful they would look, to some early watcher: Cassie windblown and easy, Rosalind fluttering white and slender as something from a poem; two girls in the September morning, glossy heads under the turning leaves and rabbits scampering away from their approach.
“Can I ask you something?” Cassie said.
“Well, I did think that was why we were here,” Rosalind said, with a delicate inflection implying that Cassie was wasting her valuable time.
“Yeah. Sorry.” Cassie took a breath. “OK. I was wondering: how did you know about . . .”
“Yes?” Rosalind prompted politely.
“About me and Detective Ryan.” Silence. “That we were . . . having an affair.”
“Oh, that!” Rosalind laughed: a tinkling little sound, emotionless, barely even a speck of triumph. “Oh, Detective Maddox. How do you think?”
“I thought probably you guessed. Or something. That maybe we didn’t hide it as well as we thought. But it just seemed . . . I couldn’t stop wondering.”
“Well, you were a little bit obvious, weren’t you?” Mischievous, chiding.
“But no. Believe it or not, Detective Maddox, I don’t spend a lot of my time thinking about you and your love life.”
Silence again. O’Kelly picked caramel out of his teeth. “Then how?”
Cassie asked finally, with an awful note of dread.
“Detective Ryan told me, of course,” Rosalind said sweetly. I felt Sam’s eyes and O’Kelly’s flicking to me, and bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself denying it.
This is not an easy thing to admit, but until that moment I had held out some craven speck of hope that this had all been a hideous misunderstanding. A boy who would say anything he thought you wanted to hear, a girl made vicious by trauma and grief and my rejection on top of it all; we could have misinterpreted in any one of a hundred ways. It was only in that moment, in the ease of that gratuitous lie, that I understood that Rosalind—
the Rosalind I had known, the bruised, captivating, unpredictable girl with whom I had laughed in the Central and held hands on a bench—had never existed. Everything she had ever shown me had been constructed for effect, with the absorbed, calculating care that goes into an actor’s costume. Underneath the myriad shimmering veils, this was something as simple and deadly as razor wire.
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“That’s bollocks!” Cassie’s voice cracked. “He would never fucking tell—”
“Don’t you dare swear at me,” Rosalind snapped.
“Sorry,” Cassie said, subdued, after a moment. “I was just—I just didn’t expect that. I never thought he would tell anyone. Ever.”
“Well, he did. You should be more careful about who you trust. Is that all you wanted to ask me?”
“No. I need to ask you a favor.” Movement: Cassie running a hand through her hair, or across her face. “It’s against the rules to—to fraternize with your partner. If our boss finds out, we could both get fired, or reverted back to uniform. And this job . . . this job means a lot to us. To both of us. We worked like crazy to get onto this squad. It would break our hearts to be thrown off it.”
“You should have thought of that before, shouldn’t you?”
“I know,” Cassie said, “I know. But is there any chance you could—just not say anything about this? To anyone?”
“Cover up your little affair. Is that what you mean?”
“I . . . yeah. I suppose so.”
“I’m not sure why you feel I should do you any favors,” Rosalind said coolly. “You’ve been horribly rude to me every time we’ve met—until now, when you want something from me. I don’t like users.”
“I’m sorry if I was r
ude,” Cassie said. Her voice sounded strained, too high and too fast. “I really am. I think I felt—I don’t know, threatened by you. . . . I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I apologize.”
“You did owe me an apology, actually, but that’s beside the point. I don’t mind the way you insulted me, but if you could treat me that way, I’m sure you do it to other people, too, don’t you? I don’t know if I should protect someone who behaves so unprofessionally. I’ll have to have a little think about whether it’s my duty to tell your supervisors what you’re really like.”
“The little bitch,” Sam said softly, not looking up.
“She wants a boot up the hole,” O’Kelly muttered. Despite himself, he was starting to look interested. “If I’d ever given that kind of cheek to someone twice my age . . .”
“Look,” Cassie said desperately, “it’s not just about me. What about Detective Ryan? He’s never been rude to you, has he? He’s mad about you.”
Rosalind laughed modestly. “Is he really?”
“Yeah,” Cassie said. “Yeah, he is.”
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She pretended to think about it. “Well . . . I suppose if you were the one chasing him, then the affair wasn’t really his fault. It might not be fair to make him suffer for it.”
“I guess I was.” I could hear the humiliation, stark and uncamouflaged, in Cassie’s voice. “I was the . . . I was always the one who initiated everything.”
“And how long has this been going on?”
“Five years,” Cassie said, “off and on.” Five years earlier Cassie and I had never met, hadn’t even been posted in the same part of the country, and I realized suddenly that this was for O’Kelly’s benefit, to prove herself a liar in case he had any lingering suspicions about us; realized, for the first time, quite what a fine and double-edged game she was playing.
“I would need to know it was over, of course,” Rosalind said, “before I could think about covering up for you.”
“It’s already over. I swear, it is. He . . . he ended it a couple of weeks ago. For good, this time.”
“Oh? Why?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, that’s not really your choice.”
Cassie took a breath. “I don’t know why,” she said. “That’s the honestto-God truth. I’ve tried my best to ask him, but he just says it’s complicated, he’s mixed up, he’s not able for a relationship right now—I don’t know if there’s someone else, or. . . . We’re not speaking to each other any more. He won’t even look at me. I don’t know what to do.” Her voice was trembling badly.
“Listen to that,” O’Kelly said, not quite admiringly. “Maddox missed her calling. Should’ve gone on the stage.”
But she wasn’t acting, and Rosalind smelled it. “Well,” she said, and I heard the tiny smirk in her voice, “I can’t say I’m surprised. He certainly doesn’t talk about you like a lover.”
“What’s he say about me?” Cassie asked, helplessly, after a second. She was flashing her unarmored spots to draw the blows; she was deliberately letting Rosalind hurt her, maul her, delicately peel back layers of pain to feed on them at her leisure. I felt sick to my stomach. Rosalind held the pause, making her wait. “He says you’re terribly needy,”
she said at last. Her voice was high and sweet and clear, unchanging. “ ‘Desperate’ was the word he used. That’s why you were so obnoxious to me: In the Woods 395
because you were jealous of how much he cares about me. He did his best to be nice about it—I think he felt sorry for you—but he was getting very tired of putting up with your behavior.”
“That’s bollocks,” I hissed furiously, unable to stop myself. “I never—”
“Shut up,” Sam said, at the same moment as O’Kelly snapped, “Who gives a fuck?”
“Quiet, please,” said the tech politely.
“I did warn him about you,” Rosalind said, reflectively. “So he finally took my advice?”
“Yeah,” Cassie said, very low and shaky. “I guess he did.”
“Oh, my God.” A tiny note of amusement. “You’re really in love with him, aren’t you?”
Nothing.
“Aren’t you?”
“I don’t know.” Cassie’s voice sounded thick and painful, but it wasn’t until she blew her nose wetly that I understood that she was crying. I had never seen her cry. “I never thought about it until—I just—I’ve never been that close to anyone. And now I can’t even think straight, I can’t . . .”
“Oh, Detective Maddox.” Rosalind sighed. “If you can’t be honest with me, at least be honest with yourself.”
“I can’t tell.” Cassie was barely getting the words out. “Maybe I . . .” Her throat closed up.
The van felt subterranean, nightmarish, walls tilting dizzily inwards. The disembodied quality of the voices lent them an added knife-edge of horror, as if we were eavesdropping on two lost ghosts locked in some eternal and unalterable battle of wills. The door handle was invisible in the shadows, and I caught O’Kelly’s hard warning glance. “You wanted to be here, Ryan,”
he said.
I couldn’t breathe. “I should go in.”
“And do what? It’s going according to plan, for whatever that’s worth. Settle.”
A small, terrible catch of breath, on the speakers. “No,” I said. “Listen.”
“She’s doing her job,” Sam said. His face was unreadable in the dirty yellow light. “Sit down.”
The tech raised a finger. “I wish you’d control yourself,” Rosalind said, with distaste. “It’s awfully hard to have a sensible conversation with someone who’s hysterical.”
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“Sorry.” Cassie blew her nose again, swallowed hard. “Look—please. It’s over, it wasn’t Detective Ryan’s fault, and he’d do anything for you. He trusted you enough to tell you. Couldn’t you just—just leave it? Not tell anyone? Please?”
“Well.” Rosalind considered this. “Detective Ryan and I were very close, for a while. But the last time I saw him, he was awfully rude to me, too. And he lied to me about those two friends of his. I don’t like liars. No, Detective Maddox. I’m afraid I really don’t feel that I owe either of you any favors at all.”
“OK,” Cassie said, “OK. OK. Then what if I could do something for you, in exchange?”
A little laugh. “I can’t think of anything I could possibly want from you.”
“No, there is. Just give me five more minutes, OK? We can cut down this side of the estate, down to the main road. There is something I can do for you. I swear.”
Rosalind sighed. “You’ve got until we get back to my house. But you know, Detective Maddox, some of us do have morals. If I decide I have a responsibility to tell your superiors about this, you won’t be able to bribe me into keeping quiet.”
“Not a bribe. Just—help.”
“From you?” That laugh again; the cool little trill I had found so enchanting. I realized I was digging my nails into my palms.
“Two days ago,” Cassie said, “we arrested Damien Donnelly for Katy’s murder.”
A fraction of a pause. Sam leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Then:
“Well. It’s about time you took your mind off your love life and paid some attention to my sister’s case. Who’s Damien Donnelly?”
“He says he was your boyfriend, up until a few weeks ago.”
“Well, obviously, he wasn’t. If he had been my boyfriend, I think I would have heard of him, don’t you?”
“There are records,” Cassie said carefully, “of a lot of phone calls between your mobiles.”
Rosalind’s voice froze over. “If you want a favor from me, Detective, then accusing me of being a liar isn’t really the best way to go about it.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Cassie said, and for a second I thought her voice would crack again. “I’m just saying that I know this is your personal
business, and you don’t have any reason to trust me with it—”
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“That’s certainly true.”
“But I’m trying to explain how I can help you. See, Damien does trust me. He talked to me.”
After a moment, Rosalind sniffed. “I wouldn’t be too excited about that. Damien will talk to anyone who’ll listen. It doesn’t make you special.”
Sam nodded, one quick jerk: Step one.
“I know. I know. But the thing is, he told me why he did this. He says he did it for you. Because you asked him to.”
Nothing, for a long time.
“That’s why I asked you to come in,” Cassie said, “the other night. I was going to question you about it.”
“Oh, please, Detective Maddox.” Rosalind’s voice had sharpened, just a touch, and I couldn’t tell whether this was a good or a bad sign. “Don’t treat me as if I’m stupid. If you people had any evidence against me, I’d be under arrest, not standing here listening to you cry about Detective Ryan.”
“No,” Cassie said. “That’s the thing. The others don’t know yet, about what Damien said. If they find out, then yeah, they’ll arrest you.”
“Are you threatening me? Because that’s a very bad idea.”
“No. I’m just trying to . . . OK. Here’s the thing.” Cassie took a breath.
“We don’t actually need a motive, to try someone for murder. He’s confessed to doing it; we’ve got that part on the record, on video, and that’s all we really need to put him in jail. Nobody needs to know why he did it. And, like I said, he trusts me. If I tell him he should keep his motive to himself, he’ll believe me. You know what he’s like.”
“Much better than you do, actually. God. Damien.” Possibly this is a testament to my stupidity, but I still had the capacity to be taken aback by the note in Rosalind’s voice, something far beyond contempt: rejection, utter and impersonal. “I’m really not worried about him. He’s a murderer, for heaven’s sake. Do you think anyone will believe him? Over me?”
“I believed him,” said Cassie.
“Yes, well. That doesn’t say much for your detective skills, does it?
Damien’s barely intelligent enough to tie his own shoelaces, but he came out with some story and you just took his word for it? Did you really believe that someone like him would be able to tell you how this actually happened, even if he wanted to? Damien can only handle simple things, Detective. This wasn’t a simple story.”