Page 52 of The Likeness

  “I knew we shouldn’t have rung them about that rock,” Justin said wretchedly. “I knew it. They were leaving us alone.”

  “So let’s not go,” I said. Probably Frank would class this as doing something stupid, breaking one of his conditions, but I was too annoyed to care. “They can’t make us.”

  A startled pause. “Is that true?” Abby asked Daniel.

  “I think so, actually,” Daniel said. He was examining me speculatively; I could almost hear the wheels spinning. “We’re not under arrest. This was a request, not a command, although that’s not how Mackey made it sound. All the same, I think we need to go.”

  “Oh, do you?” Rafe inquired, not nicely. “Do you really? And what if I think we should let Mackey go fuck himself?”

  Daniel turned to look at him. “I plan to continue cooperating fully with the investigation,” he said calmly. “Partly because I think it’s wise, but mainly because I’d like to know who did this terrible thing. If any of you would prefer to stand in the way and raise Mackey’s suspicions by refusing to cooperate, I can’t stop you; but remember, the person who stabbed Lexie is still out there, and I for one think we should do our best to help catch him.” The smart-arsed bastard: he was using my mike to feed Frank exactly what he wanted him to hear, which apparently was a heap of pious clichés. The two of them were perfect for each other.

  Daniel glanced inquiringly around the kitchen. No one answered. Rafe started to say something, checked himself and shook his head in disgust.

  “Good,” said Daniel. “In that case, let’s finish up here and get to bed. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.” And he picked up the dishcloth.

  I was in the sitting room with Abby, pretending to read and thinking up creative new words for Frank and listening to the tense silence coming from the kitchen, when I realized something. Given the choice, Daniel had decided he’d prefer to spend one of my last few days with Frank, rather than with me. I figured, in its own dangerous way, that was probably a compliment.

  * * *

  What I remember most about Sunday morning is that we did the whole breakfast routine, every step of it. Abby’s quick tap on my door; the two of us making breakfast side by side, her face flushed from the heat of the stove. We moved easily around each other, passing things back and forth without having to ask. I remembered that first evening, the pang as I’d seen how closely woven together they were: somehow, along the way, I had become part of that. Justin frowning at his toast as he sliced it into triangles, Rafe’s autopilot maneuver with the coffee, Daniel with the edge of a book caught under the corner of his plate. I didn’t let myself think, even for a splinter of a second, about the fact that in thirty-six hours I would be gone; the fact that, even if I were to see them again, someday, it would never be like this.

  We took our time. Even Rafe resurfaced once he’d finished his coffee, nudging me sideways with his hip so he could share my chair and nick bites of my toast. Dew ran down the windowpanes, and the rabbits—they were getting cheekier and closer every day—were nibbling the grass outside.

  Something had changed, during the night. The jagged cutting edges between the four of them had melted away; they were gentle with one another, careful, almost tender. Sometimes I wonder if they took such care with that breakfast because, at some level deeper and surer than logic, they knew.

  “We should go,” Daniel said, finally. He closed his book, reached to put it on the counter. I felt a breath, something between a catch and a sigh, ripple around the table. Rafe’s chest rose, quickly, against my shoulder.

  “Right,” Abby said softly, almost to herself. “Let’s do this.”

  “There’s something I’d like to discuss with you, Lexie,” Daniel said. “Why don’t you and I ride into town together?”

  “Discuss what?” Rafe asked sharply. His fingers dug into my arm.

  “If it were any of your business,” Daniel said, taking his plate to the sink, “I would have invited you to join us.” The jagged edges crystallized again, out of nowhere, fine and slicing the air.

  * * *

  “So,” Daniel said, when he had pulled up his car in front of the house and I got in beside him, “here we are.”

  Something smoky curled through me: a warning. It was the way he was looking not at me but out the car window, at the house in cool morning mist, at Justin rubbing his windscreen fussily with a folded rag and Rafe slumping down the stairs with his chin tucked deep into his scarf; it was the expression on his face, intent and thoughtful and just a touch sad.

  I had no way of knowing what this guy’s limits were, or if he had any. My gun was behind Lexie’s bedside table—Murder has a metal detector. The only time you’ll be out of coverage, Frank had said, is on the drive to and from town.

  Daniel smiled, a small private smile up at the hazy blue sky. “It’s going to be a beautiful day,” he said.

  I was about to slam out of the car, stamp over to Justin and tell him Daniel was being horrible and demand to ride with him and the others—it seemed to be the week for complicated vicious spats, nobody would be suspicious of one more—when the door behind me flew open and Abby slid into the back seat, flushed and tangle-haired, in a tumble of gloves and hat and coat. “Hey,” she said, slamming the door. “Can I come with you guys?”

  “Sure,” I said. I’d seldom been that glad to see anyone.

  Daniel turned to look at her over his shoulder. “I thought we said you were going with Justin and Rafe.”

  “You must be joking. The mood they’re in? It’d be like riding with Stalin and Pol Pot, only less cheerful.”

  Unexpectedly, Daniel smiled at her, a real smile, warm and amused. “They are being ridiculous. Yes, let’s leave them to it; an hour or two stuck in a car together might be exactly what they need.”

  “Maybe,” Abby said, sounding unconvinced. “That or they’ll just kill each other.” She pulled a folding hairbrush out of her bag and attacked her hair. In front of us, Justin got his car off to a jerky, irritable start and peeled off down the drive, way too fast.

  Daniel put his hand back over his shoulder, palm up, towards Abby. He wasn’t looking at her, or at me; he was gazing out the windscreen, unseeing, at the cherry trees. Abby lowered her brush and laid her hand in his, squeezed his fingers. She didn’t let go until Daniel sighed and detached his hand from hers, gently, and started the car.

  22

  Frank, the utter fuckbucket, dumped me in an interview room (“We’ll have someone with you in a minute, Miss Madison”) and left me there for two hours. It wasn’t even one of the good interview rooms, with a watercooler and comfy chairs; it was the crap little one that’s two steps up from a holding cell, the one we use to make people nervous. It worked: I got edgier every minute. Frank could be doing anything out there, blowing my cover, telling the others about the baby, that we knew about Ned, anything. I knew I was reacting exactly the way he wanted me to, exactly like a suspect, but instead of snapping me out of it this just made me madder. I couldn’t even tell the camera what I thought about this situation, since for all I knew he had one of the others watching and was banking on me doing exactly that.

  I swapped the chairs around—Frank had of course given me the one with the cap taken off the end of one leg, the one meant to make suspects uncomfortable. I felt like yelling at the camera, I used to work here, dickhead, this is my turf, don’t try that shit on me. Instead I found a pen in my jacket pocket and kept myself amused by writing LEXIE WAS HERE on the wall, in fancy letters. This didn’t get anyone’s attention, but then I hadn’t expected it to: the walls were already scattered with years’ worth of tags and drawings and anatomically difficult suggestions. I recognized a couple of the names.

  I hated this. I had been in this room so many times, me and Rob working suspects with the flawless, telepathic coordination of two hunters circling their moment; being there without him made me feel like someone had scooped out all my organs and I was about to cave in on myself, too hollow to stand. Eventually I dug my pen into the wall so hard that the point snapped off. I threw the rest of it across the
room at the camera and got it with a crack, but even that didn’t make me feel any better.

  By the time Frank decided to make his big entrance, I was seething in about seven different ways. “Well well well,” he said, reaching up and switching off the camera. “Fancy meeting you here. Have a seat.”

  I stayed standing. “What the fuck are you playing at?”

  His eyebrows went up. “I’m interviewing suspects. What, I need your permission now?”

  “You need to bloody well talk to me before you throw a curveball straight at my head. I’m not just having a laugh out there, Frank, I’m working, and this could wreck everything I’m trying to do.”

  “Working? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

  “That’s what you called it. I’m doing exactly what you sent me in there to do, I’m finally getting somewhere, why the hell are you shoving a spoke in my wheels?”

  Frank leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. “If you want to play dirty, Cass, I can play too. Not as much fun when you’re on the receiving end, is it?”

  The thing was that I knew he wasn’t playing dirty, not really. Making me sit in the naughty corner and think about what I’d done was one thing: he was furious enough—and with good reason—that he probably wanted to punch me in the eye, and I knew well that unless I pulled off a spectacular last-minute save I was going to be in big trouble when I came in the next day. But he would never, no matter how angry he was, do anything that might jeopardize the case. And I knew, cool as snow under all the spitting mad, that I could use that.

  “OK,” I said, taking a breath and running my hands over my hair, “OK. Fair enough. I deserved that.”

  He laughed, a short, tight bark. “You don’t want to get me started on what you deserve, babe. Trust me on that one.”

  “I know, Frank,” I said. “And when we’ve got the time, I’ll let you give me hell for as long as you want, but not now. How’re you doing with the others?”

  He shrugged. “As well as could be expected.”

  “In other words, you’ve got nowhere.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah, I do. I know those four. You can keep going at them till you have to retire, and you’ll still get nowhere.”

  “It’s possible,” Frank said blandly. “We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we? I’ve got a few years left in me.”

  “Come on, Frank. You’re the one who’s said that, right from the beginning: those four stick together like glue, there’s no point in going at them from the outside. Wasn’t that why you wanted me on the inside to start with?”

  A noncommittal little tilt of his chin, like a shrug.

  “You know well you’re not going to get anything good out of them. You just want to rattle them, right? So let’s rattle them together. I know you’re pissed off with me, but that’ll keep till tomorrow. For now, we’re still on the same side.”

  One of Frank’s eyebrows flickered. “We are?”

  “Yeah, Frank, we are. And the two of us together can do a lot more damage than you can on your own.”

  “Sounds fun,” Frank said. He was lounging against the wall with his hands in his pockets, eyes hooded lazily to hide the sharp, assessing glint. “What kind of damage did you have in mind?”

  I moved round the table and sat on the edge, leaning in towards him, as close as I could get. “Interview me and let the others eavesdrop. Not Daniel—he doesn’t rattle, all that’ll happen if we push him is he’ll walk out—but the other three. Switch on their intercoms to pick up this room, put them near monitors, whatever—if you can make it look accidental, great, but if you can’t it doesn’t matter. If you want to keep an eye on their reactions, then let Sam do the interview.”

  “While you say what, exactly?”

  “I’ll let it slip that my memory’s starting to come back. I’ll keep it vague, stick to stuff I can’t get wrong—running for the cottage, blood, that kind of thing. If that doesn’t rattle them, nothing will.”

  “Ah,” Frank said, with a wry tip of a grin. “So that’s what you were setting up, with the sulks and the temper tantrums and the whole prima-donna bit. I should have guessed. Silly me.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, sure, I was going to do it anyway. But this way’s even better. Like I said, we can do a lot more damage together. I can get edgy, make it obvious that there’s more I’m not telling you . . . If you want to script it for me, then fine, do it, I’ll say whatever you want. Come on, Frankie, what do you say? You and me?”

  Frank thought this over. “And what do you want in exchange?” he inquired. “Just so I know.”

  I gave him my best wicked grin. “Relax, Frank. Nothing that’ll jeopardize your professional soul. I just need to know how much you’ve told them, so I don’t shove my foot in my mouth. And you were planning to share that with me anyway, right? Since we’re on the same side and all.”

  “Yeah,” Frank said dryly, on a sigh. “Naturally. I’ve told them sweet fuck-all, Cass. Your arsenal is still intact. That being the case, it would make me a very happy camper if you were to actually use some of it, sooner or later.”

  “I’m going to, believe me. Which reminds me,” I added, as an afterthought. “The other thing I need: can you keep Daniel out of my hair for a while? Whenever you’ve finished with us, send the rest of us home—don’t tell him we’re gone, though, or he’ll be out of here faster than a speeding bullet. Then give me an hour, two if you can, before you cut him loose. Don’t spook him, just keep it routine and keep him talking. OK?”

  “Interesting,” Frank said. “Why?”

  “I want to have a chat with the others without him around.”

  “That much I got. Why?”

  “Because I think it’ll work, is why. He’s the one in charge there, you know that; he decides what they say and don’t say. If the others are shaken up and they don’t have him around to keep a lid on them, who knows what they’ll come out with?”

  Frank picked at something between his front teeth, examined his thumbnail. “What exactly are you aiming for?” he asked.

  “I won’t know till I hear it. But we’ve always said they were hiding something, right? I don’t want to walk off this case without doing my best to get it out of them. I’m going to hit them with everything I’ve got—guilt trips, tears, tantrums, threats, the kid, Slow Eddie, you name it. Maybe I’ll get a confession—”

  “Which I’ve said from the beginning,” Frank pointed out, “is not what we need from you. What with that annoying little admissibility rule, and all.”

  “You’re telling me you’d turn down a confession if I brought you one on a silver platter? Even if it’s not admissible, that doesn’t mean it’s not useful. You pull them in, play them the tape, go at them hard—Justin’s cracking already, one good tap and he’ll fall apart.” It took me a second to realize where the déjŕ vu was coming from. The fact that I was having the exact same argument with Frank that I had had with Daniel gave me a strange cold twist in my stomach. “A confession may not be exactly what you asked Santy to bring you, but at this stage, Frankie, we can’t afford to pick and choose.”

  “I’ll admit it would be better than what we’ve got now. Which is a big heaping plate of fuck-all.”

  “There you go. And I could end up with something a lot better than that. Maybe they’ll give us the weapon, the crime scene, who knows?”

  “The old ketchup technique,” Frank said, still inspecting his thumbnail with interest. “Turn ’em upside down, give ’em a good shake and hope something comes out.”

  “Frank,” I said, and waited till he glanced up at me. “This is my last shot. Tomorrow I come in. Let me have it.”

  Frank sighed, leaned his head back against the wall and had a leisurely look around the room; I saw him take in the new graffiti, the bits of exploded pen in the corner. “What I’m curious about,” he said eventually, “is how you’re so sure that one of them did it.”

  My blood stopped moving for a second. All Frank had ever wanted from me was one solid lead. If he found out I had that already, I was toast: off the case and into big trouble, faster than you can say Up Shit Creek. I would never even mak
e it back to Glenskehy. “Well, I’m not sure,” I said easily. “But, like you said, they’ve got motive.”

  “Yeah, they’ve got motive. Of a kind. But then, so do Naylor and Eddie and a whole bunch of other people, some of whom we presumably haven’t even identified yet. This girl put herself in harm’s way on a regular basis, Cass. She may not have ripped people off financially—although that’s debatable: you could argue that she got her share of Whitethorn House under false pretenses—but she ripped them off emotionally. That’s a dangerous thing to do. She lived at risk. And yet you’re very, very sure which risk caught up with her.”