In the Woods

22

The land line rang at about quarter to midnight. I dived for it; Heather has Rules about phone calls after her bedtime.

"Hello?"

"Sorry to ring so late, but I've been trying to reach you all evening," Cassie said.

I had switched my mobile to silent, but I had seen the missed calls. "I really can't talk now," I said.

"Rob, for fuck's sake, this is important—"

"I'm sorry, I have to go," I said. "I'll be in work at some point tomorrow, or you can leave me a note." I heard the quick, painful catch of breath, but I put the phone down anyway.

"Who was that?" demanded Heather, appearing in the door of her room wearing a nightie with a collar and looking sleepy and cross.

"For me," I said.

"Cassie?"

I went into the kitchen, found an ice tray and started popping cubes into a glass. "Ohhh," said Heather knowingly, behind me. "You finally slept with her, didn't you?"

I threw the ice tray back into the freezer. Heather does leave me alone if I ask her to, but it's never worth it: the resultant sulks and flounces and lectures about her unique sensitivity last much longer than the original irritation would have.

"She doesn't deserve that," she said. This startled me. Heather and Cassie dislike each other—once, very early on, I brought Cassie home for dinner, and Heather was borderline rude all evening and then spent hours after Cassie left plumping up sofa cushions and straightening rugs and sighing noisily, while Cassie never mentioned Heather again—and I wasn't sure where this sudden access of sisterhood was coming from.

"Any more than I did," she added, and went back into her bedroom and banged the door. I took my ice to my room and made myself a strong vodka and tonic.

Not unnaturally, I couldn't sleep. When light started to filter through the curtains, I gave up: I would go in to work early, I decided, see if I could find anything that would tell me what Cassie had said to Rosalind, start preparing the file on Damien to send to the prosecutor's office. But it was still raining hard, traffic was already bumper to bumper, and of course the Land Rover threw a flat tire halfway down Merrion Road and I had to pull over and fumble about changing it, with rain pouring down my collar and all the drivers behind me leaning irately on their horns as if they would actually have been getting somewhere if it hadn't been for me. I finally slapped my flasher on the roof, which shut most of them up.

It was almost eight o'clock when I made it into work. The phone, inevitably, rang just as I took off my coat. "Incident room, Ryan," I said irritably. I was wet and cold and fed up and I wanted to go home and have a long bath and a hot whiskey; I did not want to deal with whoever this was.

"Get the fuck in here," said O'Kelly. "Now." And he hung up.

My body understood first: I went cold all over, my breastbone tightened and it was hard to breathe. I don't know how I knew. It was obvious that I was in trouble: if O'Kelly just wants your basic chat, he sticks his head in the door, barks, "Ryan, Maddox, my office," and disappears again, to be in place behind his desk by the time you can follow. Phone summonses are reserved for when you are in for a bollocking. It could have been anything, of course—a great tip I had missed, Jonathan Devlin complaining about my bedside manner, Sam pissing off the wrong politician; but I knew it wasn't.

O'Kelly was standing up, his back to the window and his fists jammed into his pockets. "Adam fucking Ryan," he said. "And it didn't occur to you that this was something I should know?"

I was engulfed by a wave of terrible, searing shame. My face burned. I hadn't felt it since school, this utter, crushing humiliation, the hollow clutch of your stomach when you know beyond any doubt you've been caught, snared, and there is absolutely nothing you can say to deny it or get out of it or make it any better. I stared at the side of O'Kelly's desk and tried to find pictures in the grain of the fake wood, like a doomed schoolboy waiting for the cane to come out. I had thought of my silence as some gesture of proud, lonely independence, something some weatherbeaten Clint Eastwood character would have done, and for the first time I saw it for what it essentially was: shortsighted and juvenile and traitorous and stupid, stupid, stupid.

"Do you have any idea of the extent to which you may have fucked up this investigation?" O'Kelly asked coldly. He always becomes more eloquent when he's angry, another reason I think he's brighter than he pretends to be. "Have a quick think about what a good defense attorney could do with this, just on the off-chance that it ever gets as far as a courtroom. A lead detective who was the only eyewitness and the only surviving victim in an unsolved related case—Jesus Christ. While the rest of us dream about pussy, defense attorneys dream about detectives like you. They can accuse you of anything from being incapable of running an unbiased investigation through being a potential suspect in one or both cases yourself. The media and the conspiracy shower and the anti-Garda mob will go wild. Within a week, not one person in the country will remember who's supposed to be on trial here."

I stared at him. The sucker punch, coming out of nowhere while I was still reeling from being found out, left me stunned and speechless. This will seem incredible, but I swear it had never occurred to me, not once in twenty years, that I could be a suspect in Peter and Jamie's disappearance. There was nothing like that in the file, nothing. Ireland's 1984 belonged more to Rousseau than to Orwell; children were innocents, fresh from God's hand, it would have been an outrage against nature to suggest that they could be murderers as well. Nowadays, we all know there is no such thing as too young to kill. I was big for twelve, I had someone else's blood in my shoes, puberty is a strange slippery unbalanced time. Suddenly and clearly I saw Cassie's face, the day she came back from talking to Kiernan: that tiny twist to the corners of her mouth that said she was keeping something back. I needed to sit down.

"Every guy you've put away will demand a retrial on the basis that you have a record of withholding material evidence. Congratulations, Ryan: you just fucked up every case you've ever touched."

"I'm off the case, then," I said finally and stupidly. My lips felt numb. I had a sudden hallucinatory image of dozens of journalists yapping and screeching at the door of my apartment building, shoving microphones in my face and calling me Adam and demanding gory details. Heather would love it: enough melodrama and martyrdom to keep her going for months. Jesus.

"No, you're not off the fucking case," O'Kelly snapped. "You're not off the fucking case purely because I don't want any smart-arse reporter getting curious about why I gave you the boot. The word from now on is damage control. You don't interview a single witness, you don't touch a single piece of evidence, you sit at your desk and try not to make anything any worse than it already is. We do everything we can to stop this getting out. And the day Donnelly's trial is over, if there ever is a trial, you're suspended from the squad pending investigation."

All I could think was that "damage control" was two words. "Sir, I'm so sorry," I said, which seemed like a better thing to say. I had no idea what suspension involved. I had a fleeting image of some TV cop slapping his badge and his gun on his boss's desk, close-up fading to credits as his career went up in smoke.

"That and two quid will get you a cup of coffee," O'Kelly said flatly. "Sort the tips from the hotline and put them on file. Any of them mention the old case, you don't even finish reading them, you pass them straight to Maddox or O'Neill." He sat down at his desk, picked up the phone and started dialing. I stood there staring at him for a few seconds before I realized I was supposed to leave.

I went slowly back to the incident room—I'm not sure why, I had no intention of doing anything with the hotline tips; I suppose I must have been on autopilot. Cassie was sitting in front of the VCR, her elbows on her knees, watching the tape of me interrogating Damien. There was an exhausted slump to her shoulders; the remote control dangled limply from one hand.

Something deep inside me gave a horrible, sick lurch. It hadn't even occurred to me, until that moment, to wonder how O'Kelly knew. It only hit me then, as I stood in the doorway of the incident room looking at her: there was only one way he could possibly have found out.

I was perfectly aware that I had been pretty shitty to Cassie lately—although I would argue that the situation was a complex one, and that I had my reasons. But nothing I had done to her, nothing I could do in the world, warranted this. I had never imagined this kind of betrayal. Hell hath no fury. I thought my legs were going to give way.

Maybe I made some involuntary sound or movement, I don't know, but Cassie turned sharply in her chair and stared at me. After a second she hit Stop and put down the remote. "What did O'Kelly say?"

She knew; she already knew, and my final spark of doubt sank into something jagged and impossibly heavy dragging at my solar plexus. "As soon as the case is over, I'm suspended," I said flatly. My voice sounded like someone else's.

Cassie's eyes widened, horrified. "Oh, shit," she said. "Oh, shit, Rob…But you're not out? He didn't—he didn't fire you or anything?"

"No, I'm not out," I said. "No thanks to you." The first shock was starting to wear off, and a cold, vicious anger was surging through me like electricity. I felt my whole body trembling with it.

"That's not fair," Cassie said, and I heard a tiny shake in her voice. "I tried to warn you. I rang you last night, I don't know how many times—"

"It was a little late to be concerned about me by then, wasn't it? You should have thought of that before."

Cassie was white to the lips, her eyes huge. I wanted to smash the stunned, uncomprehending look off her face. "Before what?" she demanded.

"Before you poured out my private life to O'Kelly. Do you feel better now, Maddox? Has wrecking my career made up for the fact that I haven't treated you like a little princess this week? Or have you got something else up your sleeve?"

After a moment she said, very quietly, "You think I told him?"

I almost laughed. "Yes, actually, I do. There were only five people in the world who knew about this, and I somehow doubt that my parents or a friend from fifteen years ago picked this moment to ring my boss and say, 'Oh, by the way, did you know that Ryan's name used to be Adam?' How stupid do you think I am? I know you told him, Cassie."

She hadn't taken her eyes off mine, but something in them had changed, and I realized she was every bit as furious as I was. In one fast movement she grabbed a videotape from the table and threw it at me, a hard overhand snap with her whole body behind it. I ducked reflexively; it crashed against the wall where my head had been, spun away and tumbled into a corner.

"Watch that tape," Cassie said.

"I'm not interested."

"Watch that tape right now or, I swear to God, by tomorrow morning I'll have your face plastered across every newspaper in the country."

It wasn't the threat itself that got me; it was more the fact that she had made it, had played what had to be her trump card. It sparked something in me: a harsh curiosity, mixed—or perhaps this is only hindsight, I don't know—with some faint, dreadful premonition. I retrieved the tape from the corner, switched it into the VCR and hit Play. Cassie, her arms clasped tightly at her waist, watched me without moving. I swung a chair around and sat down in front of the screen, my back to her.

It was the fuzzy black-and-white tape of Cassie's session with Rosalind the night before. The time stamp showed 8:27; in the next room, I had been just about to give up on Damien. Rosalind was on her own in the main interview room, redoing her lipstick in a little compact mirror. There were sounds in the background, and it took me a moment to recognize that they were familiar: hoarse, helpless sobs, and my own voice saying over them, without much hope, "Damien, I need you to explain to me why you did this." Cassie had switched on the intercom and set it to pick up my interview room. Rosalind's head went up; she stared at the one-way glass, her face utterly expressionless.

The door opened and Cassie came in, and Rosalind recapped her lipstick and tucked it into her purse. Damien was still sobbing. "Shit," Cassie said, glancing up at the intercom. "Sorry about that." She switched it off; Rosalind gave a tight, displeased little smile.

"Detective Maddox interviewing Rosalind Frances Devlin," Cassie said to the camera. "Have a seat."

Rosalind didn't move. "I'm afraid I'd prefer not to talk to you," she said, in an icy, dismissive voice I had never heard her use before. "I'd like to speak with Detective Ryan."

"Sorry, can't be done," Cassie said cheerfully, pulling out a chair for herself. "He's in an interview—as I'm sure you heard," she added, with a rueful little grin.

"Then I'll come back when he's free." Rosalind tucked her bag under her arm and headed for the door.

"Just a moment, Miss Devlin," Cassie said, and there was a new, hard edge in her voice. Rosalind sighed and turned, eyebrows raised contemptuously. "Is there any particular reason why you're suddenly so reluctant to answer questions about your sister's murder?"

I saw Rosalind's eyes flick up at the camera, just for a flash, but that tiny cold smile didn't change. "I think you know, Detective, if you're honest with yourself," she said, "that I'm more than willing to help the investigation in any way I can. I simply don't want to talk to you, and I'm sure you know why."

"Let's pretend I don't."

"Oh, Detective, it's been obvious from the start that you don't care about my sister at all. You're only interested in flirting with Detective Ryan. Isn't it against the rules to sleep with your partner?"

A fresh spurt of fury shot through me, so violent it took my breath away. "Jesus Christ! Is that what all this was about? Just because you thought I told her—" Rosalind had been shooting in the dark, I had never said a word about that to her or to anyone else; and for Cassie to think I would, to take this kind of revenge without even bothering to ask me—

"Shut up," she said coldly, behind me. I clenched my hands together and stared at the TV. I was almost too angry to see.

On the screen, Cassie hadn't even flinched; she was tilting her chair back on two legs and shaking her head, amused. "Sorry, Miss Devlin, but I don't get distracted that easily. Detective Ryan and I feel exactly the same way about your sister's death: we want to find her killer. So why is it, again, that you suddenly don't want to talk about it?"

Rosalind laughed. "Exactly the same way? Oh, I don't think so, Detective. He has a very special connection to this case, doesn't he?"

Even in the blurry picture I could see Cassie's fast blink, and the savage flash of triumph on Rosalind's face as she realized she had got past her guard this time. "Oh," she said, sweetly. "You mean you don't know?"

She only paused for a fraction of a second, just enough to heighten the effect, but to me it seemed to last forever; because I knew, with a hideous vortexing sense of inevitability, I knew what she was going to say. I suppose this must be what stuntmen feel when a fall goes horribly wrong, or jockeys coming off at full gallop: that oddly calm splinter of time, just before your body shatters against the ground, when your mind is wiped clean of everything except the one simple certainty: This is it, then. Here it comes.

"He's that boy whose friends disappeared in Knocknaree, ages ago," Rosalind told Cassie. Her voice was high and musical and almost uninterested; except for a tiny, smug trace of pleasure, there was nothing in it, nothing at all. "Adam Ryan. It looks like he doesn't tell you everything, after all, doesn't it?" I had thought, only a few minutes before, that there was no way I could feel any worse and still survive.

Cassie, on the screen, thumped the chair legs down and rubbed at one ear. She was biting her lip to hold back a smile, but I had nothing left in me with which to wonder what she was doing. "Did he tell you that?"

"Yes. We've got very close, really."

"Did he also tell you he had a brother who died when he was sixteen? That he grew up in a children's home? That his father was an alcoholic?"

Rosalind stared. The smile was gone from her face and her eyes were narrow, electric. "Why?" she asked.

"Just checking. Sometimes he does those, too—it depends. Rosalind," she said, somewhere between amused and embarrassed, "I don't know how to tell you this, but sometimes, when detectives are trying to build up a relationship with a witness, they say things that aren't exactly true. Things that they think will help the witness feel comfortable enough to share information. Do you understand?"

Rosalind kept staring, unmoving.

"Listen," Cassie said gently, "I know for a fact that Detective Ryan has never had a brother, that his father is a very nice guy with no alcoholic tendencies, and that he grew up in Wiltshire—hence the accent—nowhere near Knocknaree. And not in a children's home, either. But, whatever he told you, I know he only wanted to make it easier for you to help us find Katy's killer. Don't hold it against him. OK?"

The door slammed open—Cassie jumped about a mile; Rosalind didn't move, didn't even take her eyes off Cassie's face—and O'Kelly, foreshortened to a blob by the camera angle but instantly recognizable by his spidery comb-over, leaned into the room. "Maddox," he said curtly. "A word."

O'Kelly, as I walked Damien out: in the observation room, rocking back and forth on his heels, staring impatiently through the glass. I couldn't watch any more. I fumbled with the remote, hit Stop and stared blindly at the vibrating blue square.

"Cassie," I said, after a very long time.

"He asked me if it was true," she said, as evenly as if she were reading out a report. "I said that it wasn't, and that if it were you would hardly have told her."

"I didn't," I said. It seemed important that she should know this. "I didn't. I told her that two of my friends disappeared when we were little—so she'd realize I understood what she was going through. I never thought she'd know about Peter and Jamie and put two and two together. It never occurred to me."

Cassie waited for me to finish. "He accused me of covering for you," she said, when I stopped talking, "and added that he should have split us up a long time ago. He said he was going to check your prints against the ones from the old case—even if he had to drag a print tech out of bed to do it, even if it took all night. If the prints matched, he said, we would both be lucky to keep our jobs. He told me to send Rosalind home. I handed her over to Sweeney and started ringing you."

Somewhere at the back of my head I heard a click, tiny and irrevocable. Memory magnifies it to a wrenching, echoing crack, but the truth is that it was the very smallness that made it so terrible. We sat there like that, not speaking, for a long time. The wind whipped spatters of rain against the window. Once I heard Cassie take a deep breath, and I thought she might be crying, but when I looked up there were no tears on her face; it was pale and quiet and very, very sad.