In the Woods

24

O'Kelly has always been something of a mystery to me. He disliked Cassie, despised her theory and basically thought she was being an irredeemable pain in the arse; but The Squad has a deep, almost totemistic significance to him, and once he has resigned himself to backing one of its members he backs him, or even her, all the way. He gave Cassie her transmitter and her backup van, even though he considered it a complete waste of time and resources. When I got in the next morning—very early; we wanted to catch Rosalind before she left for school—Cassie was in the incident room, being fitted with the wire.

"And take off the top, please," the surveillance tech said quietly. He was small and blank-faced, with deft, professional hands. Cassie pulled her sweater over her head obediently, like a child at the doctor's office. Underneath she was wearing what looked like a boy's undershirt. She had left off the defiant makeup she had been using for the past few days, and there were dark smudges under her eyes. I wondered whether she'd slept at all; I thought of her sitting on her windowsill with her T-shirt pulled around her knees, the tiny red glow of a cigarette blooming and fading as she drew on it, watching dawn lighten the gardens below. Sam was at the window, his back to us; O'Kelly was fussing with the whiteboard, erasing lines and redrawing them. "And run the wire up under the T-shirt for me, please," said the tech.

"You've phone tips waiting for you," O'Kelly told me.

"I want to go with you," I said. Sam's shoulders shifted; Cassie, head bent over the microphone, didn't look up.

"When hell freezes over and the camels come skating home," O'Kelly said.

I was so tired that I was seeing everything through a fine, seething white mist. "I want to go," I repeated. This time everyone ignored me.

The tech clipped the battery pack to Cassie's jeans, made a tiny incision in the neck hem of her undershirt and slid the mike inside. He had her put her sweater back on—Sam and O'Kelly turned around—and then told her to talk. When she looked at him blankly, O'Kelly said impatiently, "Just say whatever comes into your head, Maddox, tell us your plans for the weekend if you want," but instead she recited a poem. It was an old-fashioned little poem, the kind of thing one might learn off by heart in school. Long afterwards, flicking through pages in a dusty bookshop, I came across these lines:

About your easy heads my prayers

I said with syllables of clay.

What gift, I asked, shall I bring now

Before I weep and walk away?

Take, they replied, the oak and laurel.

Take our fortune of tears and live

Like a spendthrift lover. All we ask

Is the one gift you cannot give.

Her voice was low and even, expressionless. The speakers hollowed it out, underlaid it with a whispery echo, and in the background there was a rushing sound like some faraway high wind. I thought of those ghost stories where the voices of the dead come to their loved ones from crackly radios or down telephone lines, borne on some lost wavelength across the laws of nature and the wild spaces of the universe. The tech fiddled delicately with mysterious little dials and sliders.

"Thank you for that, Maddox, that was very moving," O'Kelly said, when the tech was satisfied. "Right: here's the estate." He slapped Sam's map with the back of his hand. "We'll be in the van, parked in Knocknaree Crescent, first left inside the front entrance. Maddox, you'll go in on that motorbike whatsit, park in front of the Devlins' and get the girl to come out for a walk. You'll go out the back gate of the estate and turn right, away from the dig, then right again along the side wall, to come out on the main road, and right again towards the front entrance. If you deviate from this route at any point, say so for the mike. Give your location as often as you can. When—Jesus, if—you've cautioned her and got enough for an arrest, arrest her. If you think she's sussed you or you're not going to get anywhere, wind it up and get out. If you need backup at any point, say so and we'll come in. If she has a weapon, identify it for the mike—'Put the knife down,' whatever. You don't have eyewitnesses, so don't pull your weapon unless you've no choice."

"I'm not taking my gun," Cassie said. She unbuckled her holster, handed it to Sam and held out her arms. "Check me."

"For what?" Sam said, puzzled, looking down at the gun in his hands.

"Weapons." Her eyes slid away, unfocused, over his shoulder. "If she says anything, she's going to claim I had her at gunpoint. Check my scooter, too, before I get on it."

To this day I'm not sure how I managed to get myself into that van. Possibly it was because, even in disgrace, I was still Cassie's partner, a relationship for which almost every detective has a reflexive, deeply ingrained respect. Possibly it was because I bombarded O'Kelly with the first technique every toddler learns: if you ask someone often enough for long enough when he is trying to do enough other things, sooner or later he will say yes just to shut you up. I was too desperate to care about the humiliation of this. Possibly he realized that, if he had refused, I would have taken the Land Rover and gone down there on my own.

The van was one of those blind, sinister-looking white things that regularly show up in police reports, with the name and logo of a fictitious tile company on the side. Inside it was even creepier: thick black cables coiling everywhere and the equipment blinking and hissing, ineffectual little overhead light, the soundproofing giving it the unsettling look of a padded cell. Sweeney drove; Sam, O'Kelly, the tech and I sat in the back compartment, swaying on uncomfortable low benches, not talking. O'Kelly had brought along a thermos of coffee and some kind of glutinous pastry, which he ate in huge methodical bites with no evidence of enjoyment. Sam scraped at an imaginary stain on the knee of his trousers. I cracked my knuckles, until I realized how irritating this was, and tried to ignore the intensity with which I wanted a cigarette. The tech did the Irish Times crossword.

We parked in Knocknaree Crescent and O'Kelly rang Cassie's mobile. She was within range of the equipment; her voice, over the speakers, was cool and steady. "Maddox."

"Where are you?" O'Kelly demanded.

"Just coming up to the estate. I didn't want to be hanging around."

"We're in position. Go ahead."

A tiny pause; then Cassie said, "Yes, sir," and hung up. I heard the buzz of the Vespa starting up again, then the weird stereo effect as, a minute later, it passed the end of the Crescent, only a few yards from us. The tech folded away his newspaper and made a minuscule adjustment to something; O'Kelly, across from me, pulled a plastic bag of sweets out of his pocket and settled back on the bench.

Footsteps jolting the mike, the faint tasteful ding-dong of the doorbell. O'Kelly waved the bag of sweets at the rest of us; when there were no takers, he shrugged and fished out an iced caramel.

The click of the door opening. "Detective Maddox," Rosalind said, not sounding pleased. "I'm afraid we're all very busy at the moment."

"I know," Cassie said. "I'm really sorry to bother you. But could I…Is there any chance I could talk to you for a minute?"

"You had your chance to talk to me the other night. Instead, you insulted me and ruined my evening. I really don't feel like wasting any more of my time on you."

"I'm sorry about that. I didn't—I shouldn't have done that. But this isn't about the case. I just…I need to ask you something."

Silence, and I pictured Rosalind holding the door open and staring at her, gauging; Cassie's face upturned and tense, her hands deep in the pockets of her suede jacket. In the background someone—Margaret—called something. Rosalind snapped, "It's for me, Mother," and the door slammed shut.

"Well?" Rosalind inquired.

"Could we…" A rustle: Cassie shifting nervously. "Could we maybe go for a walk or something? This is pretty private."

That must have piqued Rosalind's interest, but her voice didn't change. "I'm actually getting ready to go out."

"Just five minutes. We can walk round the back of the estate, or something… Please, Miss Devlin. It's important."

Finally she sighed. "All right. I suppose I can give you a few minutes."

"Thanks," Cassie said, "I really appreciate it," and we heard them going down the pathway again, the swift decisive taps of Rosalind's heels.

It was a sweet morning, a soft morning; the sun was skimming off last night's mist, but there had still been wispy layers, over the grass and hazing the high cool sky, when we got into the van. The speakers magnified the twitter of blackbirds, the creak and clank of the estate's back gate, then Cassie's and Rosalind's feet swishing through the wet grass along the edge of the wood. I thought of how beautiful they would look, to some early watcher: Cassie windblown and easy, Rosalind fluttering white and slender as something from a poem; two girls in the September morning, glossy heads under the turning leaves and rabbits scampering away from their approach.

"Can I ask you something?" Cassie said.

"Well, I did think that was why we were here," Rosalind said, with a delicate inflection implying that Cassie was wasting her valuable time.

"Yeah. Sorry." Cassie took a breath. "OK. I was wondering: how did you know about…"

"Yes?" Rosalind prompted politely.

"About me and Detective Ryan." Silence. "That we were…having an affair."

"Oh, that!" Rosalind laughed: a tinkling little sound, emotionless, barely even a speck of triumph. "Oh, Detective Maddox. How do you think?"

"I thought probably you guessed. Or something. That maybe we didn't hide it as well as we thought. But it just seemed…I couldn't stop wondering."

"Well, you were a little bit obvious, weren't you?" Mischievous, chiding. "But no. Believe it or not, Detective Maddox, I don't spend a lot of my time thinking about you and your love life."

Silence again. O'Kelly picked caramel out of his teeth. "Then how?" Cassie asked finally, with an awful note of dread.

"Detective Ryan told me, of course," Rosalind said sweetly. I felt Sam's eyes and O'Kelly's flicking to me, and bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself denying it.

This is not an easy thing to admit, but until that moment I had held out some craven speck of hope that this had all been a hideous misunderstanding. A boy who would say anything he thought you wanted to hear, a girl made vicious by trauma and grief and my rejection on top of it all; we could have misinterpreted in any one of a hundred ways. It was only in that moment, in the ease of that gratuitous lie, that I understood that Rosalind—the Rosalind I had known, the bruised, captivating, unpredictable girl with whom I had laughed in the Central and held hands on a bench—had never existed. Everything she had ever shown me had been constructed for effect, with the absorbed, calculating care that goes into an actor's costume. Underneath the myriad shimmering veils, this was something as simple and deadly as razor wire.

"That's bollocks!" Cassie's voice cracked. "He would never fucking tell—"

"Don't you dare swear at me," Rosalind snapped.

"Sorry," Cassie said, subdued, after a moment. "I was just—I just didn't expect that. I never thought he would tell anyone. Ever."

"Well, he did. You should be more careful about who you trust. Is that all you wanted to ask me?"

"No. I need to ask you a favor." Movement: Cassie running a hand through her hair, or across her face. "It's against the rules to—to fraternize with your partner. If our boss finds out, we could both get fired, or reverted back to uniform. And this job…this job means a lot to us. To both of us. We worked like crazy to get onto this squad. It would break our hearts to be thrown off it."

"You should have thought of that before, shouldn't you?"

"I know," Cassie said, "I know. But is there any chance you could—just not say anything about this? To anyone?"

"Cover up your little affair. Is that what you mean?"

"I…yeah. I suppose so."

"I'm not sure why you feel I should do you any favors," Rosalind said coolly. "You've been horribly rude to me every time we've met—until now, when you want something from me. I don't like users."

"I'm sorry if I was rude," Cassie said. Her voice sounded strained, too high and too fast. "I really am. I think I felt—I don't know, threatened by you… I shouldn't have taken it out on you. I apologize."

"You did owe me an apology, actually, but that's beside the point. I don't mind the way you insulted me, but if you could treat me that way, I'm sure you do it to other people, too, don't you? I don't know if I should protect someone who behaves so unprofessionally. I'll have to have a little think about whether it's my duty to tell your supervisors what you're really like."

"The little bitch," Sam said softly, not looking up.

"She wants a boot up the hole," O'Kelly muttered. Despite himself, he was starting to look interested. "If I'd ever given that kind of cheek to someone twice my age…"

"Look," Cassie said desperately, "it's not just about me. What about Detective Ryan? He's never been rude to you, has he? He's mad about you."

Rosalind laughed modestly. "Is he really?"

"Yeah," Cassie said. "Yeah, he is."

She pretended to think about it. "Well…I suppose if you were the one chasing him, then the affair wasn't really his fault. It might not be fair to make him suffer for it."

"I guess I was." I could hear the humiliation, stark and uncamouflaged, in Cassie's voice. "I was the…I was always the one who initiated everything."

"And how long has this been going on?"

"Five years," Cassie said, "off and on." Five years earlier Cassie and I had never met, hadn't even been posted in the same part of the country, and I realized suddenly that this was for O'Kelly's benefit, to prove herself a liar in case he had any lingering suspicions about us; realized, for the first time, quite what a fine and double-edged game she was playing.

"I would need to know it was over, of course," Rosalind said, "before I could think about covering up for you."

"It's already over. I swear, it is. He…he ended it a couple of weeks ago. For good, this time."

"Oh? Why?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Well, that's not really your choice."

Cassie took a breath. "I don't know why," she said. "That's the honest-to-God truth. I've tried my best to ask him, but he just says it's complicated, he's mixed up, he's not able for a relationship right now—I don't know if there's someone else, or… We're not speaking to each other any more. He won't even look at me. I don't know what to do." Her voice was trembling badly.

"Listen to that," O'Kelly said, not quite admiringly. "Maddox missed her calling. Should've gone on the stage."

But she wasn't acting, and Rosalind smelled it. "Well," she said, and I heard the tiny smirk in her voice, "I can't say I'm surprised. He certainly doesn't talk about you like a lover."

"What's he say about me?" Cassie asked, helplessly, after a second. She was flashing her unarmored spots to draw the blows; she was deliberately letting Rosalind hurt her, maul her, delicately peel back layers of pain to feed on them at her leisure. I felt sick to my stomach.

Rosalind held the pause, making her wait. "He says you're terribly needy," she said at last. Her voice was high and sweet and clear, unchanging. "'Desperate' was the word he used. That's why you were so obnoxious to me: because you were jealous of how much he cares about me. He did his best to be nice about it—I think he felt sorry for you—but he was getting very tired of putting up with your behavior."

"That's bollocks," I hissed furiously, unable to stop myself. "I never—"

"Shut up," Sam said, at the same moment as O'Kelly snapped, "Who gives a fuck?"

"Quiet, please," said the tech politely.

"I did warn him about you," Rosalind said, reflectively. "So he finally took my advice?"

"Yeah," Cassie said, very low and shaky. "I guess he did."

"Oh, my God." A tiny note of amusement. "You're really in love with him, aren't you?"

Nothing.

"Aren't you?"

"I don't know." Cassie's voice sounded thick and painful, but it wasn't until she blew her nose wetly that I understood that she was crying. I had never seen her cry. "I never thought about it until—I just—I've never been that close to anyone. And now I can't even think straight, I can't…"

"Oh, Detective Maddox." Rosalind sighed. "If you can't be honest with me, at least be honest with yourself."

"I can't tell." Cassie was barely getting the words out. "Maybe I…" Her throat closed up.

The van felt subterranean, nightmarish, walls tilting dizzily inwards. The disembodied quality of the voices lent them an added knife-edge of horror, as if we were eavesdropping on two lost ghosts locked in some eternal and unalterable battle of wills. The door handle was invisible in the shadows, and I caught O'Kelly's hard warning glance. "You wanted to be here, Ryan," he said.

I couldn't breathe. "I should go in."

"And do what? It's going according to plan, for whatever that's worth. Settle."

A small, terrible catch of breath, on the speakers. "No," I said. "Listen."

"She's doing her job," Sam said. His face was unreadable in the dirty yellow light. "Sit down."

The tech raised a finger. "I wish you'd control yourself," Rosalind said, with distaste. "It's awfully hard to have a sensible conversation with someone who's hysterical."

"Sorry." Cassie blew her nose again, swallowed hard. "Look—please. It's over, it wasn't Detective Ryan's fault, and he'd do anything for you. He trusted you enough to tell you. Couldn't you just—just leave it? Not tell anyone? Please?"

"Well." Rosalind considered this. "Detective Ryan and I were very close, for a while. But the last time I saw him, he was awfully rude to me, too. And he lied to me about those two friends of his. I don't like liars. No, Detective Maddox. I'm afraid I really don't feel that I owe either of you any favors at all."

"OK," Cassie said, "OK. OK. Then what if I could do something for you, in exchange?"

A little laugh. "I can't think of anything I could possibly want from you."

"No, there is. Just give me five more minutes, OK? We can cut down this side of the estate, down to the main road. There is something I can do for you. I swear."

Rosalind sighed. "You've got until we get back to my house. But you know, Detective Maddox, some of us do have morals. If I decide I have a responsibility to tell your superiors about this, you won't be able to bribe me into keeping quiet."

"Not a bribe. Just—help."

"From you?" That laugh again; the cool little trill I had found so enchanting. I realized I was digging my nails into my palms.

"Two days ago," Cassie said, "we arrested Damien Donnelly for Katy's murder."

A fraction of a pause. Sam leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Then: "Well. It's about time you took your mind off your love life and paid some attention to my sister's case. Who's Damien Donnelly?"

"He says he was your boyfriend, up until a few weeks ago."

"Well, obviously, he wasn't. If he had been my boyfriend, I think I would have heard of him, don't you?"

"There are records," Cassie said carefully, "of a lot of phone calls between your mobiles."

Rosalind's voice froze over. "If you want a favor from me, Detective, then accusing me of being a liar isn't really the best way to go about it."

"I'm not accusing you of anything," Cassie said, and for a second I thought her voice would crack again. "I'm just saying that I know this is your personal business, and you don't have any reason to trust me with it—"

"That's certainly true."

"But I'm trying to explain how I can help you. See, Damien does trust me. He talked to me."

After a moment, Rosalind sniffed. "I wouldn't be too excited about that. Damien will talk to anyone who'll listen. It doesn't make you special."

Sam nodded, one quick jerk: Step one.

"I know. I know. But the thing is, he told me why he did this. He says he did it for you. Because you asked him to."

Nothing, for a long time.

"That's why I asked you to come in," Cassie said, "the other night. I was going to question you about it."

"Oh, please, Detective Maddox." Rosalind's voice had sharpened, just a touch, and I couldn't tell whether this was a good or a bad sign. "Don't treat me as if I'm stupid. If you people had any evidence against me, I'd be under arrest, not standing here listening to you cry about Detective Ryan."

"No," Cassie said. "That's the thing. The others don't know yet, about what Damien said. If they find out, then yeah, they'll arrest you."

"Are you threatening me? Because that's a very bad idea."

"No. I'm just trying to…OK. Here's the thing." Cassie took a breath. "We don't actually need a motive, to try someone for murder. He's confessed to doing it; we've got that part on the record, on video, and that's all we really need to put him in jail. Nobody needs to know why he did it. And, like I said, he trusts me. If I tell him he should keep his motive to himself, he'll believe me. You know what he's like."

"Much better than you do, actually. God. Damien." Possibly this is a testament to my stupidity, but I still had the capacity to be taken aback by the note in Rosalind's voice, something far beyond contempt: rejection, utter and impersonal. "I'm really not worried about him. He's a murderer, for heaven's sake. Do you think anyone will believe him? Over me?"

"I believed him," said Cassie.

"Yes, well. That doesn't say much for your detective skills, does it? Damien's barely intelligent enough to tie his own shoelaces, but he came out with some story and you just took his word for it? Did you really believe that someone like him would be able to tell you how this actually happened, even if he wanted to? Damien can only handle simple things, Detective. This wasn't a simple story."

"The basic facts check out," Cassie said sharply. "I don't want to hear the details. If I'm going to be keeping this to myself, then the less I know the better."

A moment's silence, as Rosalind evaluated the possibilities of this; then the little laugh. "Really? But you're supposed to be a detective, of some sort. Shouldn't you be interested in finding out what actually happened?"

"I know as much as I need to. Anything you tell me won't do me any good anyway."

"Oh, I know that," Rosalind said brightly. "You won't be able to use it. But if hearing the truth puts you in an uncomfortable position, that's really your own fault, isn't it? You shouldn't have got yourself into this situation. I don't think I should be expected to make allowances for your dishonesty."

"I'm—like you said, I'm a detective." Cassie's voice was rising. "I can't just listen to evidence about a crime and—"

Rosalind's tone didn't change. "Well, you'll just have to, won't you? Katy used to be such a sweet little girl. But once her dancing started to get her all that attention, she got awfully above herself. That Simone woman was a terrible influence on her, really. It made me very sad. Someone had to put her in her place, didn't they? For her own good. So I—"

"If you keep talking," Cassie snapped, too loudly, "I'm going to caution you. Otherwise—"

"Don't you threaten me, Detective. I won't warn you again."

A beat. Sam was staring into space, one knuckle caught between his front teeth.

"So," Rosalind resumed, "I decided the best thing would be to show Katy that she wasn't really anything that special. She certainly wasn't very intelligent. When I gave her something to—"

"You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so," Cassie broke in, her voice shaking wildly, "but anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence."

Rosalind thought about this for a long time. I could hear their feet crunching in fallen leaves, Cassie's sweater grating faintly against the mike at each step; somewhere a wood dove cooed, cozy and contented. Sam's eyes were on me, and through the gloom of the van I thought I saw condemnation in them. I thought of his uncle and stared back.

"She's lost her," said O'Kelly. He stretched, heavy shoulders rolling back, and cracked his neck. "It's the bloody caution that does it. When I was coming up there was none of this shite: you gave them a few digs, they told you what you wanted to know, that was good enough for any judge. Well, sure, at least we can get back to work now."

"Hang on," Sam said. "She'll get her back."

"Listen," Cassie said at last, on a long breath, "about going to our boss—"

"Just a moment," Rosalind said coldly. "We're not finished."

"Yes we are," Cassie said, but her voice wavered treacherously. "As far as Katy goes, we are. I am not going to just stand here and listen to—"

"I don't like people trying to bully me, Detective. I'll say whatever I like. You're going to listen. If you interrupt me again, this conversation is over. If you repeat it to anyone else, I'll make it clear to them exactly what kind of person you are, and Detective Ryan will confirm it. Nobody will believe a word you say, and you'll lose your precious job. Do you understand?"

Silence. My stomach was still heaving, slowly and horribly; I swallowed hard. "The arrogance of her," Sam said softly. "The fucking arrogance."

"Don't knock it," O'Kelly said. "It's Maddox's best shot."

"Yes," Cassie said, very low. "I understand."

"Good." I heard the prim, satisfied little smile in Rosalind's voice. Her heels tapped on tarmac; they had turned onto the main road, heading down towards the entrance of the estate. "So, as I was saying, I decided that someone needed to stop Katy from getting too full of herself. It really should have been my mother and father's job, obviously; if they had done it, I wouldn't have had to. But they couldn't be bothered. I think that's actually a form of child abuse, don't you—that kind of neglect?"

She waited until Cassie said tightly, "I don't know."

"Oh, it is. It made me very upset. So I told Katy that she should really stop doing ballet, since it was having such a bad effect on her, but she wouldn't listen. She needed to learn that she didn't have some kind of divine right to be the center of attention. Not everything in this world was all about her. So I stopped her from dancing, now and then. Do you want to know how?"

Cassie was breathing fast. "No. I don't."

"I made her sick, Detective Maddox," Rosalind said. "God, you mean you hadn't even figured out that much?"

"We wondered. We thought maybe your mother had been doing something—"

"My mother?" That note again, that dismissal beyond contempt. "Oh, please. My mother would have got herself caught within a week, even with you people in charge. I mixed juice with detergent, or cleaning things, or whatever I felt like that day, and I told Katy it was a secret recipe to improve her dancing. She was stupid enough to believe me. I was interested to see whether anyone would work it out, but nobody did. Can you imagine?"

"Jesus," Cassie said, barely above a whisper.

"Go, Cassie," Sam muttered. "That's grievous bodily harm. Go."

"She won't," I said. My voice sounded strange, jerky. "Not till she has her on murder."

"Look," Cassie said, and I heard her swallow. "We're about to go into the estate, and you said I only had till we got back to your house… I need to know what you're going to do about—"

"You'll know when I tell you. And we'll go in when I decide to go in. Actually, I think we might go back this way, so I can finish telling you my story."

"All the way back around the estate?"

"You were the one who demanded to talk to me, Detective Maddox," Rosalind said, reprovingly. "You're going to have to learn to take the consequences of your own actions."

"Shit," Sam murmured. They were moving away from us.

"She's not going to need backup, O'Neill," O'Kelly said. "The girl's a bitch, but it's not like she has an Uzi."

"Anyway. Katy just wouldn't learn." That sharp, dangerous note was seeping into Rosalind's voice again. "She finally managed to work out why she was getting sick—God, it took her years—and she threw an absolute tantrum at me. She said she was never going to drink anything I gave her again, blah blah blah, she actually threatened to tell our parents—I mean, they would never have believed her, she always did get hysterical about nothing, but all the same… See what I mean about Katy? She was a spoiled little brat. She always, always had to have her own way. If she didn't get it, she ran to Mummy and Daddy to tell tales."

"She just wanted to be a dancer," Cassie said quietly.

"And I had told her that wasn't acceptable," Rosalind snapped. "If she had simply done as she was told, none of this would have happened. Instead, she tried to threaten me. That's exactly what I knew this ballet-school thing would do to her, all those articles and fund-raisers, it was disgusting—she thought she could do whatever she liked. She said to me—this is exactly what she said, I'm not making this up—she stood there with her hands on her hips, God what a little prima donna, and she said, 'You shouldn't have done that to me. Don't ever do it again.' Who on earth did she think she was? She was completely out of control, the way she behaved to me was absolutely outrageous, and there was no way I was going to allow it."

Sam's hands were clenched into fists and I wasn't breathing. I was covered in a sick, cold sweat. I could no longer picture Rosalind in my mind's eye; the tender vision of the girl in white had been blown to pieces as if by a nuclear bomb. This was something unimaginable, something hollow as the yellowed husks that insects leave behind in dry grass, blowing with cold alien winds and a fine corrosive dust that shredded everything it touched.

"I've run into people who tried to tell me what to do," Cassie said. Her voice sounded tight, breathless. Even though she was the only one of us who had understood what to expect, this story had knocked the wind right out of her. "I didn't get someone to kill them."

"I think you'll find, actually, that I never told Damien to do anything to Katy." I heard Rosalind's smirk. "I can't help it if men always want to do things for me, can I? Ask him, if you want: he was the one who came up with every single idea. And, my God, it took him forever, it would have been quicker to train a monkey." O'Kelly snorted. "When the idea finally hit him, he looked like he had just discovered gravity, like he was some kind of genius. And then he kept having these doubts, it just went on and on—God, a few more weeks and I think I would have had to give up on him and start all over, before I lost my mind."

"He did what you wanted in the end," Cassie said. "So why did you break up with him? The poor guy's devastated."

"The same reason Detective Ryan broke up with you. I was so bored I wanted to scream. And no, actually, he didn't do what I wanted. He made a complete mess of the whole thing." Rosalind's voice was rising, cold and furious. "Panicking and hiding her body—he could have ruined everything. He could have got me into serious trouble. Honestly, he's just unbelievable. I even went to the bother of coming up with a story for him to tell you, to put you off his trail, but he couldn't even manage to get that right."

"The guy in the tracksuit?" Cassie said, and I heard that tautening at the edges of her voice: any minute now. "No, he told us that one. He just wasn't very convincing. We thought he was making a big deal out of nothing."

"You see what I mean? He was supposed to have sex with her, hit her on the head with a rock, and leave her body somewhere on the dig or in the wood. That was what I wanted. For God's sake, you'd think that would be simple enough even for Damien, but no. He didn't get a single one of those right. My God, he's lucky I just broke up with him. After the mess he made of this, I should have put you people on to him. He deserves whatever he gets."

And there it was: all we needed. The breath went out of me with a strange, painful little sound. Sam slumped back against the side of the van and ran his hands through his hair; O'Kelly gave a long, low whistle.

"Rosalind Frances Devlin," Cassie said, "I arrest you on suspicion that, on or around the seventeenth of August of this year, at Knocknaree in County Dublin, you did murder Katharine Bridget Devlin, contrary to common law."

"Get your hands off me," Rosalind snapped. We heard scuffling, the crunch of twigs snapping underfoot; then a swift, vicious noise like the hiss of a cat, and something between a smack and a thump, and a sharp gasp from Cassie.

"What the fuck—" said O'Kelly.

"Go," Sam said, "go," but I was already scrabbling for the door handle.

We ran, skidding around the corner, down the road towards the entrance of the estate. I have the longest legs and I outpaced Sam and O'Kelly easily. Everything seemed to be streaming past me in slow motion, swaying gates and bright-painted doors, a toddler on a tricycle gazing up open-mouthed and an old man in suspenders turning from his roses; the morning sunlight trickled down leisurely as honey, achingly bright after the dimness, and the boom of someone slamming the van door echoed on forever. Rosalind could have snatched up a sharp branch, a rock, a broken bottle; so many things can kill. I couldn't feel my feet hitting the pavement. I swung round the gatepost and threw myself up the main road, and leaves brushed my face as I turned onto the little path along the top wall, long wet grass, footprints in muddy patches. I felt as if I were dissolving, autumn breeze flowing cool and sweet between my ribs and into my veins, turning me from earth into air.

They were at the corner of the estate, where the fields met that last strip of wood, and my legs went watery with relief when I saw they were both on their feet. Cassie had Rosalind by the wrists—for an instant I remembered the strength of her hands, that day in the interview room—but Rosalind was fighting, intently and viciously, not to get away but to get at her. She was kicking at her shins and trying to claw her, and I saw her head jerk as she spat in Cassie's face. I shouted something, but I don't think either of them heard.

Footsteps thumped behind me and Sweeney streaked past, running like a rugby player and already pulling out his handcuffs. He grabbed Rosalind by the shoulder, spun her around and slammed her against the wall. Cassie had caught her barefaced and with her hair pulled back in a bun, and for the first time I saw in starkly allegorical relief how ugly she was, without the layered makeup and the artfully tumbling ringlets: pouched cheeks, thin avid mouth pursed into a hateful smirk, eyes as glassy and empty as a doll's. She was wearing her school uniform, shapeless navy-blue skirt and a navy-blue blazer with a crest on the front, and for some reason this disguise seemed to me the most horrible one of all.

Cassie stumbled backwards, caught herself against a tree trunk and regained her balance. When she turned towards me all I could see at first was her eyes, huge and black and blind. Then I saw the blood, a crazy web of it streaking one side of her face. She swayed a little, under the blurred shadows of the leaves, and a bright drop fell into the grass at her feet.

I was only a few yards from her, but something stopped me from moving closer. Dazed and unstrung, her face branded with those fierce markings, she looked like some pagan priestess emerging from a rite too bright and merciless to be imagined: still half somewhere and someone else, and not to be touched until she gave the sign. The nape of my neck prickled.

"Cassie," I said, and held out my arms to her. My chest felt as if it was bursting open. "Oh, Cassie."

Her hands came up, reaching, and for an instant I swear her whole body moved towards me. Then she remembered. Her hands dropped and her head went back, her gaze skidding aimlessly across the wide blue sky.

Sam shoved me out of the way and pounded to a clumsy stop beside her. "Ah, God, Cassie…" He was out of breath. "What did she do to you? Come here."

He pulled out his shirttail and blotted gently at her cheek, his other hand cupping the back of her head to steady her. "Ow. Fuck," Sweeney said, through gritted teeth, as Rosalind stamped on his foot.

"Scratched me," Cassie said. Her voice was terrible, high and eerie. "She touched me, Sam, that thing touched me, Jesus, she spat—Get it off me. Get it off."

"Shhh," Sam said. "Shhh. It's over now. You did great. Shhh." He put his arms around her and pulled her close, and her head went down on his shoulder. For a second Sam's eyes met mine squarely; then he looked away, down at his hand stroking her tumbled curls.

"What the hell is going on?" demanded O'Kelly, behind me, in disgust.

Cassie's face, once it was cleaned up, was not as bad as it had initially looked. Rosalind's nails had left three wide dark lines scored across her cheekbone, but in spite of all the blood they weren't deep. The tech, who knew first aid, said that there was no need for stitches and that it was lucky Rosalind had missed the eye. He offered to put Band-Aids on the cuts, but Cassie said no, not until we got back to work and she had them disinfected. She was shuddering all over, off and on; the tech said she was probably in shock. O'Kelly, who still looked baffled and slightly exasperated by this whole day, offered her an iced caramel. "Sugar," he explained.

She was obviously in no state to drive, so she left her Vespa where it was parked and rode back to work in the front of the van. Sam drove. Rosalind went in the back, with the rest of us. She had settled down once Sweeney got the cuffs on her; she sat rigid and outraged, not saying a word. Every breath I took smelled of her cloying perfume and of something else, some overripe taint of rot, rich and polluting and possibly imaginary. I could tell from her eyes that her mind was working furiously, but there was no expression on her face; no fear or defiance or anger, nothing at all.

By the time we got back to work O'Kelly's mood had improved considerably, and when I followed him and Cassie into the observation room he didn't attempt to send me away. "That girl reminds me of a young fella I knew in school," he told us reflectively, as we waited for Sam to finish going through the rights sheet with Rosalind and bring her up to the interview room. "Shaft you six ways till Sunday without blinking an eye, then turn around and have everyone convinced it was all your own fault. There's mad people out there."

Cassie leaned back against the wall, spat on a bloodstained tissue and scrubbed again at her cheek. "She's not mad," she said. Her hands were still shaking.

"Figure of speech, Maddox," O'Kelly said. "You should go get the war wound seen to."

"I'm fine."

"Fair play to you, all the same. You were right about that one." He clapped her awkwardly on the shoulder. "All that about making the sister sick for her own good; would you say she actually believes that?"

"No," Cassie said. She refolded the tissue to find a clean bit. "'Believe' doesn't exist for her. Things aren't true or false; they either suit her or they don't. Nothing else means anything to her. You could give her a polygraph and she'd pass with flying colors."

"She should've gone into politics. Hang on; here we go." O'Kelly jerked his head at the glass: Sam was showing Rosalind into the interview room. "Let's see her try to get out of this one. This should be good for a laugh."

Rosalind glanced around the room and sighed. "I'd like you to ring my parents now," she told Sam. "Tell them to get me a lawyer and then come down here." She pulled a dainty little pen and diary out of her blazer pocket, wrote something on a page, then ripped it out and handed it to Sam, as if he were a concierge. "That's their number. Thank you so much."

"You can see your parents once we've finished talking," Sam said. "If you want a lawyer—"

"I think I'll see them sooner than that, actually." Rosalind smoothed her skirt over her backside and sat down, with a little moue of distaste at the plastic chair. "Don't minors have the right to have a parent or guardian present during an interview?"

There was a moment when everyone froze, except Rosalind, who crossed her knees demurely and smiled up at Sam, savoring the effect.

"Interview suspended," Sam said curtly. He whipped the file off the table and headed for the door.

"Jesus Christ on a bike," said O'Kelly. "Ryan, are you telling me—"

"She could be lying," Cassie said. She was staring intently through the glass; her hand had closed into a fist around the tissue.

My heart, which had stopped beating, resumed at double speed. "Of course she is. Look at her, there's no way she's under—"

"Aye, right. Do you know how many men have landed in jail for saying that?"

Sam banged the observation-room door open so hard it bounced off the wall. "What age is that girl?" he demanded, of me.

"Eighteen," I said. My head was spinning; I knew I was sure, but I couldn't remember how. "She told me—"

"Sweet Jesus! And you took her word for it?" I had never seen Sam lose his temper before, and it was more impressive than I would have expected. "If you asked that girl the time at half past two, she'd tell you it was three o'clock just to fuck with your head. You didn't even check?"

"Look who's talking," O'Kelly snapped. "Any one of ye could have checked, any time in the past God knows how long, but no—"

Sam didn't even hear him. His eyes were locked on mine, blazing. "We took your word because you're supposed to be a bloody detective. You sent your own partner in there to get crucified, without even bothering—"

"I did check!" I shouted. "I checked the file!" But even as the words left my mouth I knew, with a horrible sick thud. A sunny afternoon, a long time ago; I had been fumbling through the file, with the phone jammed between my jaw and my shoulder and O'Gorman yammering in my other ear, trying to talk to Rosalind and make sure she was an appropriate adult to supervise my conversation with Jessica, all at the same time (And I must have known, I thought, I must have known even then that she couldn't be trusted, or why would I have bothered to check such a small thing?). I had found the page of family stats and skimmed down to Rosalind's DOB, subtracted the years—

Sam had swung away from me and was rooting urgently through the file, and I saw the moment when his shoulders sagged. "November," he said, very quietly. "Her birthday's the second of November. She'll be eighteen."

"Congratulations," O'Kelly said heavily, after a silence. "The three of ye. Well done."

Cassie let out her breath. "Inadmissible," she said. "Every fucking word." She slid down the wall to a sitting position, as if her knees had suddenly given way, and closed her eyes.

A faint, high, insistent sound came from the speakers. In the interview room, Rosalind had got bored and started humming.