Page 36 of The Likeness

  “I just want to go back to normal.” Justin’s voice was almost a wail.

  “Yes, well, so do we all,” Daniel said, a little testily. He winced, kneaded at his thigh muscle, winced again. “And the sooner all this is over and someone’s charged, the sooner we can do exactly that. I’m sure Lexie, for example, would feel a lot better if this man were in custody. Wouldn’t you, Lex?”

  “Fuck custody, I’d feel a lot better if the little bastard hadn’t got away so fast,” I said. “I was having fun.” Rafe grinned and leaned over to high-five my free hand.

  “Regardless of the Lexie thing,” Abby said, “this is a threat. I don’t know about you, Justin, but I don’t particularly want to be burned out.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, he won’t do it,” Rafe said. “Arson takes a certain level of organizational ability. He’d blow himself up long before he got anywhere near us.”

  “You want to bet the house on that?”

  The mood in the room had turned. The tight-knit, giddy exhilaration was gone, evaporated with a vicious sizzle like water hitting a hot stove; no one was having fun any more.

  “I’d rather bet on this guy’s stupidity than on the cops’ brainpower. We need them like we need a hole in the head. If the moron comes back—and he won’t, not after tonight—we sort him out ourselves.”

  “Because so far,” Abby said tautly, “we’ve been doing such a brilliant job of dealing with our own problems by ourselves.” She whipped the popcorn bowl off the floor with a tight, angry movement and squatted down to collect the glass.

  “No, leave it; the police will want to see it all in situ,” Daniel said, dropping heavily into an armchair. “Ouch.” He grimaced, fished Uncle Simon’s revolver out of his back pocket and put it on the coffee table.

  Justin’s hand froze in midair. Abby, straightening up fast, almost fell backwards.

  If it had been anyone else I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. But Daniel: something cold as seawater surged over my whole body, whipped the breath out of me. It was like seeing your father drunk or your mother in hysterics: that freefall in your stomach, cables snapping as the elevator gets ready to plummet hundreds of sheer stories, unstoppable, already gone.

  “You cannot be serious,” Rafe said. He was on the edge of another fit of laughter.

  “What the hell,” Abby inquired, very quietly, “did you think you were going to do with that?”

  “Really,” Daniel said, giving the gun a faintly puzzled glance, “I’m not sure. I picked it up purely by instinct. Once we were out there, of course, it was much too dark and too chaotic to do anything sensible with it at all. It would have been dangerous.”

  “Heaven forbid,” said Rafe.

  “Would you have used it?” Abby demanded. She was staring at Daniel, her eyes huge, and holding the bowl like she was going to throw it.

  “I’m not sure,” Daniel said. “I had some vague idea of threatening him with it to prevent him from escaping, but I suppose one never really knows what one is capable of until the situation presents itself.”

  That click, in the dark lane.

  “Oh God,” Justin whispered, a tremulous breath. “What a mess.”

  “Not nearly as much of a mess as it could’ve been,” Rafe pointed out cheerfully. “Blood-and-guts-wise, that is.” He pulled off one of his shoes and shook a trickle of dirt and pebbles onto the floor. Not even Justin looked.

  “Shut up,” Abby snapped. “You shut up. This isn’t a fucking joke. This is getting way out of hand. Daniel—”

  “It’s all right, Abby,” Daniel said. “Really. Everything’s under control.”

  Rafe collapsed back on the sofa and started to laugh again. There was a spiky, brittle edge to it, too near hysteria. “And you say this isn’t a fucking joke?” he asked Abby. “Under control. Is that really the phrase you want, Daniel? Would you really, really say that this situation is under control?”

  “I already have,” Daniel said. His eyes on Rafe were watchful and very cold.

  Abby slammed the bowl down on the table, popcorn scattering. “That’s bollocks. Rafe’s being a prick but he’s right, Daniel. This is not under control any more. Someone could have got killed. The three of you running around in the dark chasing some psycho arsonist—”

  “And when we got back,” Daniel pointed out, “you were holding the poker.”

  “That’s not the same thing at all. That was in case he came back; I didn’t go looking for trouble. And what if he had managed to get that thing off you? Then what?”

  Any second now someone was going to say the word “gun.” As soon as Frank or Sam found out that Uncle Simon’s revolver had evolved from a quaint little heirloom into Daniel’s weapon of choice, we were into a whole new zone, one involving an Emergency Response Unit team on standby with bulletproof vests and rifles. The thought made my stomach twist. “Doesn’t anyone want to hear what I think?” I demanded, thumping the arm of my chair.

  Abby whipped around and stared at me as if she had forgotten I was there. “Why not,” she said heavily, after a moment. “God.” She dropped down on the floor, among the shards of glass, and clasped her hands around the back of her neck.

  “I think we definitely tell the cops,” I said. “This time they might actually get the guy. Before, they never had anything to go on, but now all they’ll have to do is find the one who looks like he’s been through a meat grinder.”

  “In this place,” Rafe said, “that might not narrow it down very much.”

  “Excellent point,” Daniel told me. “I hadn’t thought of that. It would also be useful in a preemptive capacity, in case this man decides to accuse us of assault—which I think is unlikely, but you never know. So we’re agreed? There’s not really much point in dragging the detectives out here at this hour, but we call them in the morning?”

  Justin had gone back to cleaning my hand, but his face was drawn and closed. “Anything to get this over with,” he said tightly.

  “I think you’re bloody insane,” Rafe said, “but then, I’ve thought that for a while now. And anyway, it doesn’t really matter what I think, does it? You’re going to do exactly what you want to, either way.”

  Daniel ignored that. “Mackey or O’Neill?”

  “Mackey,” Abby said, without looking up from the floor.

  “Interesting,” Daniel said, finding his cigarettes. “My first instinct would have been O’Neill, especially as he’s the one who seems to have been exploring our relationship with Glenskehy, but you may be right. Does anyone have a light?”

  “Can I make a suggestion?” Rafe asked sweetly. “When we’re having our little chats with your cop friends, it might be an idea to leave that out.” He nodded at the gun.

  “Well, of course,” said Daniel absently. He was still looking around for a lighter; I found Abby’s, on the table beside me, and threw it to him. “It doesn’t actually come into the story at all, anyway; there’s no reason to mention it. I’ll put it away.”

  “You do that,” Abby said tonelessly, to the floor. “And then we can all just pretend it never happened.”

  Nobody answered. Justin finished cleaning my hands and wrapped Band-Aids around the split knuckles, carefully aligning the edges. Rafe swung his legs off the sofa, went into the kitchen and came back with a handful of wet paper towels, gave his nose a perfunctory scrub and tossed the towels into the fireplace. Abby didn’t move. Daniel smoked meditatively, blood drying on his cheek and his eyes focused on something in the middle distance.

  The wind picked up, swirled in the eaves and sent a high wail down the chimney, banked around and came rushing through the sitting room like a long cold ghost train. Daniel put out his cigarette, went upstairs—footsteps overhead, a long scraping noise, a thump—and came back with a scarred, jagged-edged piece of wood, maybe part of an old headboard. Abby held it for him while he hammered it into place over the broken window, the hammer blows echoing harshly through the house and outwards into the night.

  14

  Frank got there fast, the next morning; I got the feeling he’d been waiting by the phone with his car keys in his hand since dawn, ready to leap into a
ction the second we made the call. He brought Doherty with him, to sit in the kitchen and make sure no one eavesdropped while Frank took our statements, one by one, in the sitting room. Doherty looked fascinated; he couldn’t stop gawping, at the high ceilings, the patches of half-stripped wallpaper, the four of them in their spotless old-fashioned clothes, me. He shouldn’t even have been there. This was Sam’s line of investigation, plus Sam would have been out to the house like a shot if he’d had any idea that I’d been in a fight. Frank hadn’t told him. I was very glad I wasn’t going to be in the incident room when this one came out.

  The others did beautifully. Their polished façade had gone up as soon as we heard tires on the drive, but it was a subtly different version from the one they used in college: less chilly, more engaging, a perfect balance between shocked victims and courteous hosts. Abby poured the tea and set out a carefully arranged plate of biscuits, Daniel brought an extra chair into the kitchen for Doherty; Rafe made self-deprecating jokes about his black eye. I was starting to get a taste of what the interviews must have been like, after Lexie died, and why they had driven Frank quite so far up the wall.

  He started with me. “So,” he said, when the sitting-room door shut behind us and the voices in the kitchen faded to a pleasant, muffled blur. “You got to see some action at last.”

  “And about time,” I said. I was pulling up straight chairs to the card table, but Frank shook his head and dropped onto the sofa, waved me to an armchair.

  “Nah, let’s keep this cozy. You in one piece?”

  “The nasty man’s face ruined my manicure, but I’ll survive.” I fished in the pocket of my combats and pulled out a crumpled handful of notebook pages. “I wrote it up last night, in bed. Before anything could go fuzzy.”

  Frank sipped his tea and read, taking his time. “Good,” he said finally, pocketing the pages. “That’s nice and clear, or as clear as we’re going to get with that kind of chaos.” He put down his tea, found his own notebook and clicked his pen ready. “Could you ID the guy?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t see his face. Too dark.”

  “It might’ve been an idea to bring a torch.”

  “There wasn’t time. If I’d messed about looking for torches, he’d have been well gone. You don’t need an ID, anyway. Just look for the guy with two black eyes.”

  “Ah,” Frank said thoughtfully, nodding, “the fight. Of course. We’ll get back to that in a minute. Just in case our boy claims he got his bruises falling downstairs, though, it would be useful to have some kind of corroborating description.”

  “I can only go on the feel of him,” I said. “Assuming this was one of Sam’s boys, Bannon’s definitely out: he’s way too chunky. This guy was wiry. Not very tall, but strong. I don’t think it was McArdle, either; my hand came down straight on this guy’s face at one stage, and I didn’t feel any facial hair, just stubble. McArdle’s beardy.”

  “That he is,” Frank said, making a leisurely note. “That he is. So your vote goes to Naylor?”

  “He’d fit. Right height, right build, right hair.”

  “That’ll have to do. We take what we can get.” He examined the page of his notebook thoughtfully, tapping his pen against his teeth. “Speaking of which,” he said. “When you three went galloping off to fight for the cause, what did Danny Boy bring along?”

  I was ready for this one. “Screwdriver,” I said. “I didn’t see him pick it up, but I left the room before he did. He had the tool kit out on the table.”

  “Because he and Rafe were cleaning Uncle Simon’s gun. What kind of gun, by the way?”

  “A Webley, early World War One issue. It’s pretty beaten-up and rusty and all, but it’s still a beauty. You’d love it.”

  “No doubt I would,” Frank said amiably, making a little note. “With any luck I’ll get a look at it, sometime. So Daniel’s grabbing for a weapon in a big hurry, and there’s a gun in front of him, but instead he goes for a screwdriver?”

  “An unloaded, broken-open gun with the grips off. And I don’t get the sense he knows his way around guns. Even if he didn’t bother with the grips, it would’ve taken him a minute to sort it out.” The sound of someone loading a revolver is unmistakable but small, and I had been across the room from Rafe when he did it; what with the music, there was a decent chance the mike hadn’t picked it up.

  “So he goes for the screwdriver instead,” Frank said, nodding. “Makes sense. But for some reason, once he’s got his man, it doesn’t even occur to him to use it.”

  “He never got the chance. It was a mess out there, Frank: four of us rolling around on the ground, arms and legs everywhere, you couldn’t tell what belonged to who—I’m pretty sure I gave Rafe that black eye. If Daniel had whipped out a screwdriver and started jabbing away, odds are he’d have got one of us.” Frank was still nodding agreeably, writing all this down, but there was a bland, amused look on his face that I didn’t like. “What? You’d rather he’d stabbed this guy?”

  “It would certainly have made my life simpler,” Frank said, cheerfully and cryptically. “So where was the famous—what was it again?—the famous screwdriver, during all the drama?”

  “In Daniel’s back pocket. At least, that’s where he took it out of, when we got home.”

  Frank raised one eyebrow, all concern. “He’s lucky he didn’t stab himself with it. All that rolling around, I’d have expected at least a minor puncture wound or two.”

  He was right. I should have made it a wrench. “Maybe he did,” I said, shrugging. “You can ask him to show you his arse, if you want.”

  “I think I’ll pass, for now.” Frank clicked his pen shut, tucked it away in his pocket and leaned back on the sofa, at ease. “What,” he inquired pleasantly, “were you thinking?”

  For a second I actually took it for a straight question about my thought process, instead of the opener for a major bollocking. I expected Sam to be pissed off at me, but Frank: he treats personal safety like a tetherball, he had begun this investigation by breaking every rule he could get his hands on, and I know for a fact that he once head-butted a dealer so hard that the guy had to be taken to the emergency room. It had never occurred to me that he might be in a snot about this. “This guy’s escalated,” I said. “He used to stay well away from people: he never did any damage to Simon March, last time he went out rock-throwing he picked a room that he could see was empty . . . This time, though, that rock missed me and Abby by inches—for all we know, he could actually have been aiming for one of us. These days he’s more than willing to hurt people, not just property. He’s looking more and more like a suspect.”

  “Of course,” Frank said, crossing one ankle leisurely onto the other knee. “A suspect. The very thing we’ve been looking for. So let’s think this through for a moment, will we? Let’s say Sammy and I head down to Glenskehy today and pick up his three bright boys, and let’s say, just for the hell of it, that we manage to get something useful out of one of them—enough for an arrest, maybe even a charge. What do you suggest I say when his solicitor and the Director of Public Prosecutions and the media ask me, and I think they will, why his face looks like hamburger? In the circumstances, I’ve got absolutely fuck-all choice except to explain that the damage was inflicted by two other suspects and one of my very own undercover officers. And what do you suppose happens next?”

  I had never for a moment thought that far ahead. “You’ll find a way round it.”

  “I may well,” Frank said, in that same bland, pleasant voice, “but that’s not really the point, is it? I guess what I’m asking is what exactly you went out there to do. It seems to me that, as a detective, your goal would have been to locate the suspect, identify him, and if possible either hold him or keep him under observation until you found a good way to get backup in there. Am I missing something?”

  “Yeah, actually. You’re missing the fact that it wasn’t as simple as—”

  “Because your actions suggest,” Frank went on, as if I hadn’t spoken, “that your main goal was to beat the living shite out of this guy. Which would have been just a tad unprofessional of you.”

  Out in t
he kitchen, Doherty said something shaped like a punchline and everyone laughed; the laughter was perfect, unforced and friendly, and it made me edgy as hell. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Frank,” I said. “My goals were to keep hold of my suspect and not to blow my cover. How would you have liked me to do that? By dragging Daniel and Rafe off this guy and lecturing them on the correct treatment of suspects while I got on the phone to you?”

  “You didn’t have to throw punches of your own.”

  I shrugged. “Sam told me that last time Lexie went after this guy, she wanted to kick his nads into his esophagus. That’s the kind of person she was. If I’d hung back and let the big brave boys protect me from the bad man, it would’ve looked dodgy as all hell. I didn’t have time to consider the deeper implications here; I had to call it fast, and I called it in character. Are you seriously trying to claim you never got into a punch-up, when you were in the field?”