“He never did, but. Come here till we give this another go: if Tara has a hundred and eighty-five goldfish, and she can put seven in a bowl, how many bowls does she need?”
“He never did because Rosie died. She wrote her mum and dad a note saying she was going to England with my dad, and then somebody killed her.”
“Long time ago. Don’t be changing the subject, now. These fish won’t put themselves in bowls.”
A giggle, and then a long pause as Holly concentrated on her division, with the odd encouraging murmur from Shay. I leaned against the wall by the door, got my breath back and wrenched my head under control.
Every muscle in my body wanted to burst in there and grab my kid, but the fact was that Shay wasn’t completely insane—yet, anyway—and Holly was in no danger. More than that: she was trying to get him to talk about Rosie. I’ve learned the hard way that Holly can outstubborn just about anyone on this planet. Anything she got out of Shay went straight into my arsenal.
Holly said, triumphantly, “Twenty-seven! And the last one only gets three fish.”
“It does indeed. Well done you.”
“Did someone kill Rosie to stop her from marrying my dad?”
A second of silence. “Is that what he says?”
The stinking little shitebucket. I had a hand clenched around the banister hard enough to hurt. Holly said, with a shrug in her voice, “I didn’t ask him.”
“No one knows why Rosie Daly got killed. And it’s too late to find out now. What’s done is done.”
Holly said, with the instant, heartbreaking, absolute confidence that nine-year-olds still have, “My dad’s going to find out.”
Shay said, “Is he, yeah?”
“Yeah. He said so.”
“Well,” Shay said, and to his credit he managed to keep almost all of the vitriol out of his voice. “Your da’s a Guard, sure. It’s his job to think like that. Come here and look at this, now: if Desmond has three hundred and forty-two sweets, and he’s sharing them between himself and eight friends, how many will they get each?”
“When the book says ‘sweets’ we’re supposed to write down ‘pieces of fruit.’ Because sweets are bad for you. I think that’s stupid. They’re only imaginary sweets anyway.”
“It’s stupid all right, but the sum’s the same either way. How many pieces of fruit each, then?”
The rhythmic scrape of a pencil—at that stage I could hear the tiniest sound coming from inside that flat, I could probably have heard the two of them blinking. Holly said, “What about Uncle Kevin?”
There was another fraction of a pause before Shay said, “What about him?”
“Did somebody kill him?”
Shay said, “Kevin,” and his voice was twisted into an extraordinary knot of things that I had never heard anywhere before. “No. No one killed Kevin.”
“For definite?”
“What’s your da say?”
That shrug again. “I told you. I didn’t ask him. He doesn’t like talking about Uncle Kevin. So I wanted to ask you.”
“Kevin. God.” Shay laughed, a harsh lost sound. “Maybe you’re old enough to understand this, I don’t know. Otherwise you’ll have to remember it till you are. Kevin was a child. He never grew up. Thirty-seven years old and he still figured everything in the world was going to go the way he thought it should; it never hit him that the world might work its own way, whether that suited him or not. So he went wandering around a derelict house in the dark, because he took it for granted he’d be grand, and instead he went out a window. End of story.”
I felt the wood of the banister crack and twist under my grip. The finality in his voice told me that was going to be his story for the rest of his life. Maybe he even believed it, although I doubted that. Maybe, left to his own devices, he would have believed it someday.
“What’s derelict?”
“Ruined. Falling to bits. Dangerous.”
Holly thought that over. She said, “He still shouldn’t have died.”
“No,” Shay said, but the heat had gone out of his voice; all of a sudden he just sounded exhausted. “He shouldn’t have. No one wanted him to.”
“But someone wanted Rosie to. Right?”
“Not even her. Sometimes things just happen.”
Holly said defiantly, “If my dad had married her, he wouldn’t have married my mum, and I wouldn’t have existed. I’m glad she died.”
The timer button on the hall light popped out with a noise like a shot—I didn’t even remember hitting it on my way up—and left me standing in empty blackness with my heart going ninety. In that moment, I realized that I had never told Holly who Rosie’s note had been addressed to. She had seen that note herself.
About a second later, I realized why, after all that adorable heartstringtugging stuff about hanging out with her cousins, she had brought along her maths homework today. She had needed a way to get Shay alone.
Holly had planned every step of this. She had walked into this house, gone straight to her birthright of steel-trap secrets and cunning lethal devices, laid her hand on it and claimed it for her own.
Blood tells, my father’s voice said flatly against my ear; and then, with a razor edge of amusement, So you think you’re a better da. Here I had been milking every self-righteous drop out of how Olivia and Jackie had screwed up; nothing either of them could have done differently, not at any lost moment along the way, would have saved us from this. This was all mine. I could have howled at the moon like a werewolf and bitten out my own wrists to get this out of my veins.
Shay said, “Don’t be saying that. She’s gone; forget her. Leave her rest in peace, and go on with your maths.”
The soft whisper of the pencil on paper. “Forty-two?”
“No. Go back to the start; you’re not concentrating.”
Holly said, “Uncle Shay?”
“Mmm?”
“This one time? When I was here and your phone rang and you went in the bedroom?”
I could hear her gearing up towards something big. So could Shay: the first beginnings of a wary edge were growing in his voice. “Yeah?”
“I broke my pencil and I couldn’t find my sharpener because Chloe took it in Art. I waited for ages, but you were on the phone.”
Shay said, very gently, “So what did you do?”
“I went and looked for another pencil. In that chest of drawers.”
A long silence, just a woman gabbling hysterically from the telly downstairs, muffled under all those thick walls and heavy carpets and high ceilings. Shay said, “And you found something.”
Holly said, almost inaudibly, “I’m sorry.”
I almost went straight through that door without bothering to open it. Two things kept me outside. The first one was that Holly was nine years old. She believed in fairies, she wasn’t sure about Santa; a few months back, she had told me that when she was little a flying horse used to take her for rides out her bedroom window. If her evidence was ever going to be a solid weapon—if, someday, I wanted someone else to believe her—I had to be able to back it up. I needed to hear it come out of Shay’s mouth.
The second thing was that there was no point, not now, in bursting in there with all guns blazing to save my little girl from the big bad man. I stared at the bright crack of light around the door and listened, like I was a million miles away or a million years too late. I knew exactly what Olivia would think, what any sane human being would think, and I stood still and left Holly to do my dirtiest work for me. I’ve done plenty of dodgy things in my time and none of them kept me awake at night, but that one is special. If there’s a hell, that moment in the dark hallway is what will take me there.
Shay said, like he was having a hard time breathing, “Did you say that to anyone?”
“No. I didn’t even know what it was, till just a couple of days ago I figured it out.”
“Holly. Love. Listen to me. Can you keep a secret?”
Holly said, with something that soun
ded horrifically like pride, “I saw it ages ago. Like months and months and months, and I never said anything.”
“That’s right, you didn’t. Good girl yourself.”
“See?”
“Yeah, I see. Now can you go on doing the same, can you? Keeping it to yourself?”
Silence.
Shay said, “Holly. If you tell anyone, what do you think will happen?”
“You’ll get in trouble.”
“Maybe. I’ve done nothing bad—d’you hear me?—but there’s plenty of people won’t believe that. I could go to jail. Do you want that?”
Holly’s voice was sinking, a subdued undertone aimed at the floor. “No.”
“I didn’t think so. Even if I don’t, what’ll happen? What do you think your da’s going to say?”
Uncertain flutter of a breath, little girl lost. “He’ll be mad?”
“He’ll be livid. At you and me both, for not telling him about it before. He’ll never let you back here; he’ll never let you see any of us again. Not your nana, not me, not Donna. And he’ll make dead sure your mammy and your auntie Jackie don’t find a way around him this time.” A few seconds, for that to sink in. “What else?”
“Nana. She’ll be upset.”
“Nana, and your aunties, and all your cousins. They’ll be in bits. No one will know what to think. Some of them won’t even believe you. There’ll be holy war.” Another impressive pause. “Holly, pet. Is that what you want?”
“No . . .”
“Course you don’t. You want to come back here every Sunday and have lovely afternoons with the rest of us, am I right? You want your nana making you a sponge cake for your birthday, just like she did for Louise, and Darren teaching you the guitar once your hands get big enough.” The words moved over her, soft and seductive, wrapping around her and pulling her in close. “You want all of us here together. Going for walks. Making the dinner. Having laughs. Don’t you?”
“Yeah. Like a proper family.”
“That’s right. And proper families look after each other. That’s what they’re for.”
Holly, like a good little Mackey, did what came naturally. She said, and it was still just a flicker of sound but with a new kind of certainty starting somewhere underneath, “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Not even your da?”
“Yeah. Not even.”
“Good girl,” Shay said, so gently and soothingly that the dark in front of me went seething red. “Good girl. You’re my best little niece, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“It’ll be our special secret. Do you promise me, now?”
I thought about various ways to kill someone without leaving marks. Then, before Holly could promise, I took a breath and pushed open the door.
They made a pretty picture. Shay’s flat was clean and bare, almost barracks-tidy: worn floorboards, faded olive-green curtains, random bits of characterless furniture, nothing on the white walls. I knew from Jackie that he had been living there for sixteen years, ever since crazy old Mrs. Field died and left the place empty, but it still looked temporary. He could have packed up and gone on a couple of hours’ notice, without leaving a trace behind.
He and Holly were sitting at a little wooden table. With her books spread out in front of them, they looked like an old painting: a father and daughter in their garret, in any century you picked, absorbed together in some mysterious story. The pool of light from a tall lamp made them glow like jewels in that drab room, Holly’s gold head and her ruby-red cardigan, the deep green of Shay’s jumper and the blue-black gloss on his hair. He had put a footstool under the table, so Holly’s feet wouldn’t dangle. It looked like the newest thing in the room.
That lovely picture only lasted a split second. Then they leaped like a pair of guilty teenagers caught sharing a spliff; they were the image of each other, all panicked flash of matching blue eyes. Holly said, “We’re doing maths! Uncle Shay’s helping me.”
She was bright red and wildly obvious, which was a relief: I had been starting to think she was turning into some ice-cold superspy. I said, “Yep, you mentioned that. How’s it going?”
“OK.” She glanced quickly at Shay, but he was watching me intently, with no expression at all.
“That’s nice.” I wandered over behind them and had a leisurely look over their shoulders. “Looks like good stuff, all right. Have you said thank you to your uncle?”
“Yeah. Loads of times.”
I cocked an eyebrow at Shay, who said, “She has. Yeah.”
“Well, isn’t that rewarding to hear. I’m a big believer in good manners, me.”
Holly was almost hopping off her chair with unease. “Daddy . . .”
I said, “Holly, sweetheart, you go downstairs and finish your maths at Nana’s. If she wants to know where your uncle Shay and I are, tell her we’re having a chat and we’ll be down in a bit. OK?”
“OK.” She started putting her stuff into her schoolbag, slowly. “I won’t say anything else to her. Right?”
She could have been talking to either of us. I said, “Right. I know you won’t, love. You and me, we’ll talk later. Now go on. Scoot.”
Holly finished packing up her stuff and looked back and forth between us one more time—the tangle of shredded expressions on her face, while she tried to get her head around more than any grown adult could have handled, made me want to kneecap Shay all by itself. Then she left. She pressed her shoulder up against my side for a second, on her way past; I wanted to crush her in a bear hug, but instead I ran a hand over her soft head and gave the back of her neck a quick squeeze. We listened to her running down the stairs, light as a fairy on the thick carpet, and the rise of voices welcoming her into Ma’s.
I shut the door behind her and said, “And here I was wondering how her long division had improved so much. Isn’t that funny?”
Shay said, “She’s no eejit. She only needed a hand.”
“Oh, I know that. But you’re the man who stepped up. I think it’s important for you to hear how much I appreciate that.” I swung Holly’s chair out of the bright pool of lamplight, and out of Shay’s reach, and had a seat. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
“Thanks.”
“The way I remember it, Mrs. Field had it wallpapered with pictures of Padre Pio and stinking of clove drops. Let’s face it, anything would’ve been an improvement.”
Shay slowly eased back in his chair, in what looked like a casual sprawl, but the muscles in his shoulders were coiled like a big cat’s ready to leap. “Where’s my manners? You’ll have a drink. Whiskey, yeah?”
“And why not. Work up an appetite for the dinner.”
He tilted his chair so he could reach over to the sideboard and pull out a bottle and two tumblers. “Rocks?”
“Go for it. Let’s do this right.”
Leaving me on my own put a wary flash in his eye, but he didn’t have a choice. He took the glasses out to the kitchen: freezer door opening, ice cubes popping. The whiskey was serious stuff, Tyrconnell single malt. “You’ve got taste,” I said.
“What, you’re surprised?” Shay came back shaking ice cubes around the glasses, to chill them. “And don’t be asking me for a mixer.”
“Don’t insult me.”
“Good. Anyone who’d mix this doesn’t deserve it.” He poured us each three fingers and pushed a glass across the table to me. “Sláinte,” he said, lifting the other one.
I said, “Here’s to us.” The glasses clinked together. The whiskey burned gold going down, barley and honey. All that rage had evaporated right out of me; I was as cool and gathered and ready as I had ever been on any job. In all the world there was no one left except the two of us, watching each other across that rickety table, with the stark lamplight throwing shadows like war paint across Shay’s face and piling up great heaps of them in every corner. It felt utterly familiar, almost soothing, like we had been practicing for this moment all our lives.
“So,” Shay said.
“How does it feel, being home?”
“It’s been a hoot. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
“Tell us: were you serious about coming around from now on? Or were you only humoring Carmel?”
I grinned at him. “Would I ever? No, I meant it, all right. Are you delighted and excited?”
A corner of Shay’s lip twisted upwards. “Carmel and Jackie think it’s because you missed your family. They’re in for a shock, somewhere down the line.”
“I’m wounded. Are you saying I don’t care about my family? Not you, maybe. But the rest of them.”
Shay laughed, into his glass. “Right. You’ve got no agenda here.”
“I’ve got news for you: everyone always has an agenda. Don’t worry your pretty little head, though. Agenda or no, I’ll be here often enough to keep Carmel and Jackie happy.”
“Good. Remind me to show you how to get Da on and off the jacks.”
I said, “Since you won’t be around as much, next year. What with the bike shop and all.”
Something flickered, deep down in Shay’s eyes. “Yeah. That’s right.”
I raised my glass to him. “Fair play to you. I’d say you’re looking forward to that.”
“I’ve earned it.”
“You have, of course. Here’s the thing, though: I’ll be in and out, but it’s not like I’m going to be moving in here.” I shot an amused look around the flat. “Some of us have lives, you know what I mean?”
That flicker again, but he kept his voice even. “I didn’t ask you to move anywhere.”
I shrugged. “Well, someone’s got to be around. Maybe you didn’t know this, but Da . . . He’s not really on for going into a home.”
“And I didn’t ask for your opinion on that, either.”
“Course not. Just a word to the wise: he told me he’s got contingency plans. I’d be counting his tablets, if I were you.”
The spark caught, flared. “Hang on a second. Are you trying to tell me my duty to Da? You?”
“Christ, no. I’m only passing on the info. I wouldn’t want you having to live with the guilt if it all went wrong.”
“What bloody guilt? Count his tablets yourself, if you want them counted. I’ve looked after the whole lot of yous, all my life. It’s not my turn any more.”