“No. No one ever did: it was dark, it was rickety, it had rats and damp and it stank like hell, we left it alone. I had no reason to think Rosie would be there.”
Scorcher bounced his pen off his teeth and examined his notes. I sank a third of my pint and thought, as briefly as I could, about the possibility that Rosie had in fact been in that basement while I was busy being lovelorn upstairs, a few yards away.
“So instead,” Scorcher said, “in spite of the fact that you’d taken Rose’s note as a Dear John, you went back to the end of the road and kept waiting. Why?”
His voice was mild, casual, but I caught the power rush in his eye. The little shitehawk was loving this. “Hope springs eternal,” I said, shrugging. “And women change their minds. I figured I’d give her a chance to change hers back.”
Scorch gave a manly little snort. “Women, eh? So you gave her three or four hours, and then cut your losses. Where did you go?”
I gave him the rundown on the squat and the smelly rockers and the generous sister, forgetting surnames, just in case he decided to give anyone hassle. Scorcher took notes. When I had finished he asked, “Why didn’t you just go home?”
“Momentum, and pride. I wanted to move out anyway; what Rosie decided didn’t change that. England didn’t sound like as much fun all by myself, but neither did slinking back home like a gobshite with my tail between my legs. I was all geared up to leave, so I kept walking.”
“Mmm,” Scorcher said. “Let’s go back to the approximately six hours—now that’s love, specially in December—the six hours you spent waiting at the top of the road. Do you remember anyone passing by, entering or exiting any of the houses, anything like that?”
I said, “One or two things stick out. Somewhere around midnight, I can’t give you an exact time, I heard what I thought was a couple doing the business nearby. Looking back, though, the noises could have gone either way: a shag or a struggle. And later, maybe between quarter past one and half past, someone went down the back gardens on the even-numbered side of the road. I don’t know how much good it’ll do you, after all this time, but take it for what it’s worth.”
“Anything could come in useful,” Scorcher said neutrally, scribbling. “You know how it goes. And that was it for human contact? All night long, in a neighborhood like this one? Let’s face it, it’s not exactly the leafy suburbs.”
He was starting to piss me off, which presumably was just what he was aiming for, so I kept my shoulders easy and took my time with my pint. “It was a Sunday night. By the time I got out there, everything was closed and just about everyone was in bed, or I’d have held off till later. There was no activity on Faithful Place; some people were still awake and talking, but no one went up or down the road, or in or out of any of the houses. I heard people passing around the corner, up towards New Street, and a couple of times someone got close enough that I moved out of the light so they wouldn’t spot me, but I didn’t recognize anyone.”
Scorch twiddled his pen meditatively, watching the light move on the surface. “So no one would spot you,” he repeated. “Because no one knew the two of you were an item. Isn’t that what you said?”
“That’s right.”
“All this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Any particular reason for it?”
“Rosie’s father didn’t like me. He hit the roof when he first found out we were going out—that’s why we’d been keeping the relationship under wraps ever since. If we’d told him I wanted to take his little girl off to London, there would’ve been holy war. I figured it’d be easier to get forgiveness than permission.”
“Some things never change,” Scorch said, a little sourly. “Why didn’t he like you?”
“Because he’s got no taste,” I said, grinning. “How could anyone not love this face?”
He didn’t grin back. “Seriously.”
“You’d have to ask him. He didn’t share his thought process with me.”
“I will. Anyone else know what the two of you were planning?”
“I didn’t tell anyone. As far as I know, Rosie didn’t either.” Mandy was all mine. Scorcher could talk to her himself, and good luck to him; I would have enjoyed watching that one.
Scorcher looked over his notes, taking his time and sipping his pint. “Right,” he said eventually, clicking his fancy pen shut. “That should just about do it, for now.”
“See what your super thinks,” I said. There wasn’t a chance in hell he would talk to his super, but if I backed off too easily he would start wondering what kind of Plan B I had up my sleeve. “That lot might give him the warm fuzzies about a bit of collaboration.”
Scorch met my eyes, and for just half a second too long he didn’t blink. He was thinking what I had realized the instant I heard about that suitcase. The obvious suspect was the guy on the spot with motive and opportunity and not a sliver of an alibi, the guy waiting to meet Rosie Daly, the guy she had quite possibly been going to dump that night; the guy claiming, swear to God, Officer, that she never showed up.
Neither of us was about to be the first to put that on the table. “I’ll do my best,” Scorcher said. He tucked his notebook into his suit pocket. He wasn’t looking at me. “Thanks for that, Frank. I might need you to go over it with me again, at some stage.”
“No problem,” I said. “You know where to find me.”
He finished his pint in a long swallow. “And remember what I said to you. Think positive. Turn it around.”
“Scorch,” I said. “That mess your mates just hauled off used to be my girl. I thought she was across the water, living it up, happy as Larry. Forgive me if I’m having a hard time seeing the upside here.”
Scorcher sighed. “OK,” he said. “Fair enough. You want me to paint you a picture?”
“I can’t think of anything I’d love more.”
“You’ve got a good rep on the job, Frank, a great rep, except for one little thing: the word on the street is that you’ve got a tendency to fly solo. To—how will I put this?—to prioritize the rule book a tiny bit less than you should. That suitcase is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. And the brass like team players a whole lot better than flying aces. Mavericks are only cute when they’re Mel Gibson. If you handle yourself right during an investigation like this one, where you’re obviously under a lot of strain, if you show everyone that you can take a seat on the bench for the good of the team, then your stock could go up big-time. Think long term. Do you follow me?”
I gave him a big wide smile, so I wouldn’t punch him. “That’s one serious plate of mixed cliché salad, Scorcher. You’ll have to give me a while to digest it all.”
He eyed me for a moment; when he couldn’t read anything off my face, he shrugged. “Whatever. Just a word to the wise.” He stood up and settled the lapels of his jacket. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, making it sound just the subtlest shade like a warning, and then he picked up his poncified briefcase and strode out.
I had no intention of moving anytime soon. I already knew I was taking the rest of the weekend off. One reason was Scorcher. He and his Murder mates were going to spend the next couple of days bouncing around Faithful Place like a pack of Jack Russells on speed, snuffling in corners and poking their noses into people’s delicate zones and generally pissing everyone off. I needed to make it clear to the Place that I was nothing to do with them.
The second reason was Scorch again, just from a different angle. He appeared to be a teensy bit wary where I was concerned, and keeping out of his hair for twenty-four hours would go a long way towards keeping him out of mine. When you look at someone you knew when you were young, you always see the person you first met, and Scorch was still seeing a hair-trigger kid who did things fast or not at all. It wouldn’t occur to him that, while he was getting better at wrangling his ego, I might have been getting better at patience. If you want to hunt like a good little panting puppy dog, shooting off on the trail the second you’re let off the leash, you work Murder. If you w
ant Undercover, and I always did, you learn to hunt the way big cats do: set up your ambush, stay low to the ground and move closer by hidden inches, for as long as it takes.
The third reason was presumably fuming in Dalkey, in a full-on strop with me. Sometime very soon I needed to deal with both her and, God help us all, Olivia, but a man has his limits. I don’t get drunk, but after the day I’d had, I felt I had every right to spend the evening discovering just how paralytic I could get before I fell over. I caught the barman’s eye and said, “I’ll have another.”
The pub had emptied out, probably in response to Scorcher. The barman wiped glasses and examined me across the counter, taking his time. After a while he nodded towards the door. “Friend of yours?”
I said, “That’s not the word I’d use.”
“Haven’t seen you in before.”
“Probably not.”
“You anything to the Mackeys up on Faithful Place?”
The eyes. “Long story,” I said.
“Ah,” the barman said, like he understood everything there was to know about me, “we’ve all got one of those,” and he slid a glass under the tap with a neat flourish.
The last time Rosie Daly and I touched was on a Friday, nine days before Zero Hour. Town was crisp and cold and packed that evening, all the Christmas lights on and the shoppers hurrying and the street hawkers selling wrapping paper five for a pound. I wasn’t a huge fan of Christmas in general—my ma’s crazy always hit its impressive annual peak at Christmas dinner, so did my da’s drinking, something always wound up broken and at least one person always wound up in tears—but that year it all felt unreal and glassy, right on the edge between enchanting and sinister: the shiny-haired private-school girls singing “Joy to the World” for charity were just a little too clean and blank-faced, the kids pressing their noses up against Switzer’s windows to stare at the fairy-tale scenes looked just a little too drugged on all that color and rhythm. I kept a hand in the pocket of my army parka as I headed through the crowds; that day of all days, the last thing I wanted was to get robbed.
Rosie and I always met in O’Neill’s on Pearse Street—it was a Trinity student pub, which meant the wanker count was a little high, but we didn’t stick out and there was no chance of running into anyone we knew. The Dalys thought Rosie was out with the girls; my family didn’t give a damn where I was. O’Neill’s is big, it was filling up fast and billowing with warmth and smoke and laughter, but I picked out Rosie right away by that burst of copper hair: leaning on the bar, saying something to make the barman grin. By the time she paid for our pints I had found us a table in a nice private corner.
“Little tosser,” she said, putting the pints on the table and nodding backwards at a clump of snickering students up at the bar. “Tried to look down my top when I leaned over.”
“Which one?”
I was already getting up, but Rosie threw me a look and pushed my pint towards me. “Sit down there, you, and drink that. I’ll sort him myself.” She slid onto the bench next to me, close enough that our thighs touched. “That fella there, lookit.”
Rugby jersey, no neck, turning away from the bar with his precarious double handful of pints. Rosie gave him a wave to get his attention back; then she batted her lashes, leaned forward and swirled the tip of her tongue in little circles in the head of her pint. Rugby Boy’s eyes popped, his mouth fell open, he got his ankles tangled in a stool and half his pints went down someone’s back. “Now,” Rosie said, giving him the finger and forgetting about him. “Did you get them?”
I put a hand into my coat, slung over the arm of the seat where I could keep an eye on it, and found the envelope. “There,” I said, “all ours,” and I fanned out two tickets and laid them on the banged-up wooden table between us. DUN LAOGHAIRE-HOLYHEAD, DEPARTING 06:30AM, MONDAY 16 DECEMBER. PLEASE ARRIVE AT LEAST 30 MINUTES BEFORE DEPARTURE.
The sight of them made my adrenaline spike all over again. The breath went out of Rosie in an amazed little laugh.
I said, “I thought the early boat was better. We could’ve had the overnight one, but it’d be harder to get our stuff and get away in the evening. This way we can head out to the harbor on Sunday night, whenever we get a chance, and then wait there till it’s time. Yeah?”
“God,” Rosie said after a moment, still breathless. “My God. I feel like we should be—” Her arm curved round the tickets, shielding them from the people at the next tables. “You know?”
I wove my fingers through hers. “We’re all right here. We’ve never seen anyone we know, have we?”
“It’s still Dublin. I won’t feel safe till that ferry’s out of Dun Laoghaire. Put them away, will you?”
“Will you look after them? My ma goes through our stuff.”
Rosie grinned. “Not surprised. I wouldn’t be surprised if my da goes through mine, as well, but he won’t touch the knicker drawer. Give us those.” She picked up the tickets like they were made of fine lace, slid them carefully into the envelope and tucked it into the top pocket of her jeans jacket. Her fingers stayed there for a moment, over her breast. “Wow. Nine days, and then . . .”
“And then,” I said, lifting my pint, “here’s to you and me and our new life.”
We clinked glasses and took a drink, and I kissed her. The pint was top-notch, the warmth of the pub was starting to thaw out my feet after the walk through town, there was tinsel draped over the picture frames on the walls, and the bunch of students at the next table burst into loud tipsy laughter. I should have been the happiest camper in the whole pub, but the evening still had that precarious feel to it, like a brilliant sparkly dream that could turn nasty in a blink. I let Rosie go because I was afraid I was going to kiss her hard enough to hurt.
“We’ll have to meet late,” she said, hooking one knee over mine. “Midnight, or after. My da doesn’t go to bed till eleven, and I’ll have to give him a while to go asleep.”
“My lot are conked out by half past ten, on a Sunday. Sometimes Shay stays out late, but as long as I don’t run into him on his way in, no problem. Even if I do, he won’t stop us; he’ll be delighted to see the back of me.” Rosie flicked an eyebrow and took another swig of her pint. I said, “I’ll head out by midnight. If it takes you a little longer, no bother.”
She nodded. “Shouldn’t be much later. The last bus’ll be gone, though. Are you up for walking to Dun Laoghaire?”
“Not carrying all our stuff. By the time we got to the boat, we’d be dead on our feet. It’ll have to be a taxi.”
She gave me an impressed look that was only half put on. “La-di-da!”
I grinned and wound one of her curls around my finger. “I’ve a couple more nixers coming up this week; I’ll have the cash. Nothing but the best for my girl. I’d get you a limo if I could, but that’ll have to wait. Maybe for your birthday, yeah?”
She smiled back, but it was an absent smile; she wasn’t in the mood for messing. “Meet in Number Sixteen?”
I shook my head. “The Shaughnessys have been hanging out there a lot, the last while. I don’t fancy running into them.” The Shaughnessy brothers were harmless, but they were also loud and thick and mostly stoned, and it would take way too long to get it through their heads why they needed to shut up and pretend they hadn’t seen us. “Top of the road?”
“We’ll get seen.”
“Not after midnight on a Sunday. Who’ll be out, except us and the Shaughnessy eejits?”
“All it’d take is one person. And anyway, what if it’s raining?”
This wasn’t like Rosie, this kind of edginess; mostly she didn’t know what nerves were. I said, “We don’t have to settle it now. We’ll see how the weather’s shaping up next week, decide then.”
Rosie shook her head. “We shouldn’t meet up again, not till we go. I don’t want my da getting suspicious.”
“If he hasn’t by now . . .”
“I know. I know. I just—God, Francis, those tickets . . .” Her hand went back to her
pocket. “It’s this close to real. I don’t want us relaxing, even for a second, in case something goes wrong.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Someone stopping us.”
“No one’s going to stop us.”
“Yeah,” Rosie said. She bit down on her fingernail, and for a second her eyes slipped away from mine. “I know. We’ll be grand.”
I said, “What’s up?”
“Nothing. Let’s meet up at the top of the road, like you said, unless it’s lashing rain. Then we’ll go for Number Sixteen; the lads won’t be out if the weather’s awful. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Rosie. Look at me. Are you feeling guilty about this?”
One corner of her mouth twisted wryly. “I am in my arse. It’s not like we’re doing it just for the laugh; if my da hadn’t acted like such a bleeding muppet about the whole thing, we’d never have thought of this. Why? Are you?”
“Not a chance. Kevin and Jackie are the only ones who’ll miss me, I’ll send them something nice out of my first wages, they’ll be delighted. Are you going to miss your family, is that it? Or the girls?”
She thought about that for a moment. “The girls, yeah, I am. And my family, a bit. But, sure . . . I’ve known for ages that I’d be moving out soon enough. Before we even left school me and Imelda were talking about maybe heading to London ourselves, up until . . .” A fleeting, sideways grin to me. “Up until you and me came up with a better plan. Whatever happened, I’d say sooner or later I’d have been gone. Wouldn’t you?”
She knew better than to ask whether I’d miss my family. “Yeah,” I said—I wasn’t sure whether it was true or not, but it was what both of us needed to hear. “I’d have been out of here, one way or another. I like this way a lot, though.”
That flicker of smile again, still not a whole one. “Same here.”
I asked, “Then what’s up? Ever since you sat down, you’ve been acting like that seat’s itching the arse off you.”
That got Rosie’s full attention. “Look who’s talking. You’re a laugh a minute tonight, so you are, it’s like going out with Oscar the bleedin’ Grouch—”