by Lisa Alber
“You’re only about half wrong there.”
“Malcolm,” his solicitor warned.
“I suppose you used your persuasive tactics—quite the skill you have there—” Danny said.
“Thank you. I come by it naturally—”
“—to have Seamus believing it was in his best interest for Brendan’s future to get Toby out of the way. Poor Seamus. You used him to keep you immaculate hands clean. But then, if Seamus wanted in so badly with you, then he had to deal with McIlvoy’s baggage too, right?”
“There’s a cost to doing business, I always say,” Malcolm said.
Finn looked about ready to pop a vessel. Malcolm waved down his protests before he spoke them.
“Yes, hapless Seamus,” Danny continued, “who found himself doing your bidding to kill Toby.”
“Ah, so you do understand that I didn’t kill the poor boy. Perhaps you are smarter than you look, good Danny.”
“Not so fast.” Danny paused. “No one, least of all me, denies your alibi. Yet, Seamus insists that Toby was already dead when he arrived, and that you did the killing. I lean toward believing him rather than you. How did you manage it, Malcolm?”
“Note this, Finn. He’s bending the facts to suit his needs.”
By now Finn was stooped over a pad of paper, taking copious notes.
“There’s no question,” Danny said, “that the cross that struck Toby’s head came from your shop. I’ve seen them there myself. Solid Connemara marble, am I right?”
“Bah. Point against Seamus again. Brendan gave him one as a gift not long ago. How it landed at the crime scene, I don’t know. I can’t imagine why a godless child like Toby Grealy would want such a thing.” He sniffed. “And Brendan. Worse than useless.”
“Yes, Brendan. He had to die too. Without Brendan around, Seamus would no longer have reason to pry into your shop affairs, and he wouldn’t accuse you to the guards because as he put it, you’d find a way to take him down too.”
“Malcolm,” Finn warned. “Don’t say a word.”
“A son for a son,” Danny said. “Is that what Seamus meant by a Devil’s Pact? And somehow, you still persuaded him that it was in his best interests to kill Gemma for what she might remember about McIlvoy the murderer. Too bad for you he didn’t have the heart for it.” He tapped his fingers on the table. “Or perhaps it didn’t matter whether he succeeded or not. Now he’s arrested and will be on suicide watch. You’d like him to kill himself, wouldn’t you?”
“Danny, Danny, Danny.”
“And we can’t forget Ellen,” Danny said.
Finn stood. “Time to leave. I will be reporting this harassment to your superiors.”
“I agree,” Malcolm said. “You are quite obsessed with me, aren’t you?” He smiled, looking pleased with the idea.
“Fine.” Danny stood. “By the way, Gemma is awake and talking and remembering and arriving at the station any time now.”
Malcolm blinked slow as a lizard with stone cold gaze.
SIXTY
GEMMA PAUSED IN FRONT of the Garda station to gather up her will. She had all kinds of coping mechanisms that her counselor had taught her. Unfortunately, they’d fled except for a breathing exercise. So she breathed. She could do this. She could walk into the station and she could talk. She had something to say. Many things to say.
Up ahead Alan said, “Ay, she’s here. Gemma, you still back there? Come see Merrit.”
Merrit appeared out of the fog and grabbed her in a hug. She smelled like stoked peat fires and facial cream. Gemma leaned into her, liking her more than ever.
Merrit pulled away but with her arms still around Gemma’s shoulders. Her gaze penetrated Gemma, and Gemma’s body responded with the breakable feeling like it always did. “You’re fine, I can see that, but—are you ready to, you know, engage?”
No. But I have to now. It’s time. She caught herself and dropped her hand. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. I get it.” Merrit thought a second. “Your signing is like my inhaler. A crutch. I still fall back on it sometimes for my anxiety. Do you need me to go in with you?”
“No, thank you. I have Alan.”
Merrit’s cheeks balled up when she grinned. A squirmy sensation, uncomfortable and thrilling at the same time, filled Gemma. Merrit let her go, glancing back in the direction of the station’s front doors. A troubled frown dampened her smile. “I should go. Danny’s expecting you.”
With one fortifying breath, Gemma waved bye to Merrit and stepped through the door that Alan held open for her. After the insulation of the fog, the bright, noisy interior of the station almost sent Gemma fleeing after Merrit again. Her skin prickled with the beginnings of the sweats. But her bones weren’t glass and her skin wasn’t parchment. She wasn’t going to fall apart. She never had before. Even so, the trembles were so bad she thought she was going to throw up.
She waved a hand in front of her face, trying to catch her breath. “I can’t do this.”
Care wrinkles deepened the lines around Alan’s eyes. “I’ll be beside you. If you want that.”
An inner door opened and Danny greeted them. His hair stood in all directions and blood spattered his shirtsleeves. Tension radiated from him, and Gemma, ever sensitive to male energy, shied back behind Alan.
“You remember now?” Danny said.
“Go easy,” Alan said. “Give her a chance.”
Gemma handed over the wedding photo of McIlvoy with her mam. A niggling something caught at her and eased away before she could capture the thought. Her nerves were so tight she didn’t think she could hold on to anything right now, anyhow. Thank goodness she hadn’t eaten in a while.
Danny stared at the photo. A crease ran down the center of it where it had been folded. “Where did this come from?”
“Dermot brought it,” Alan said. “Gemma found it in his knapsack. He’s off fetching their Aunt Tara from Dublin. That’s why he’s not here.”
“I hope he returns soon,” Gemma said.
Danny started at the sound of her voice. No doubt because of its unused scratchiness, its humiliating girlishness. But he surprised her.
“You are the best thing I’ve heard all day,” he said.
He held out his hand for her. Her body quaked so hard she felt like it was going to crack open wide as a seismic fissure. She waved her hand in front of her face, trying to catch her breath as she placed her other hand on top of Danny’s and let him escort her into a loud room full of men. She froze with hand still in front of her face.
“Let’s get her to the loo,” Alan said. “Give her a few minutes.”
Danny led the way between desks. The men’s curious glances might as well have been laser beams penetrating Gemma’s skin. She pulled up her hoodie to create blinders. Alan placed a gentle hand on her back. Just for a moment, but it helped.
“This suffices for our public loo. Unisex. Take as long as you need.”
Gemma rushed forward, turning and pushing the doorknob, and pushing harder until the resistance gave way and she almost fell on top of the uniformed officer who was exiting.
“Excuse me, Miss,” he said. “We’re through here.”
A second man standing at the sink turned around. But he didn’t need to turn around for her to know who he was. She remembered everything now.
Gemma grabbed the wall in response to what felt like every bone in her body shattering at once. Behind her, Alan and Danny entered the room behind the uniformed officer.
“I’ve got him,” the officer said. “Back we go then, Mr. Lynch.”
With every ounce of her being, Gemma tried to talk, tried to say two words. Only two. But just as in the forestry lands, she couldn’t. She opened her mouth and nothing but pathetic croaks emerged.
Malcolm shrugged as if to say, What do you expect? His squint slit razor sharp against her skin, penetrating deep into her heart, cutting it open. Use your words, her mam had said.
But she couldn’t manage both words
and emotions. It was too much. The edges of her vision blurred. Malcolm’s smug chuckle rasped into her, reminding her, doubling itself inside her head until she thought she would scream.
“The little grub seems quite incompetent to me,” Malcolm said. “Now if you please?”
Something snapped. Grub. His favorite word for her back then, in Dublin. He’d said it in the forestry too.
One second Gemma was stumbling away from him and the next she was on him in one leap, wrapping her legs around his waist, forcing him backwards against the sink. She clawed at his smooth skin, skin he cared for, yes, of course. He would.
“Get her off me!” Malcolm yelled.
Gemma tightened her grip. She swiped at his right eye, then clawed, until Malcolm’s eye teared up. His grunt of pain buoyed her, kept her going despite hands that sought to pull her off him. She focused all her attention on steadying her hand while she pinched.
Malcolm roared, a sound she remembered well from her childhood, and in one ferocious movement flung her away from him, propelling both her and Alan backwards into the wall. Malcolm swung toward her, his hands already raised, but Danny grabbed him around the neck in a chokehold.
Gemma struggled to catch her breath, dimly aware of Alan propping her up and Malcolm tussling with Danny. Several other men entered too, but Gemma didn’t care anymore. She’d gotten what she wanted. Her proof even if nobody else had noticed anything amiss yet.
Malcolm hurled curses at her, his face mottling red. Yes, that too she remembered.
He held a hand over one eye. “Where’s Finn?” he yelled. “That little hoor almost took out an eye. I need a hospital.”
“Give us a look then,” one of the men said.
Malcolm’s voice had turned into a snarl. “Get your paws off me. I need a doctor.”
Gemma raised her hand and uncurled her fingers.
“Danny,” Alan said. “You need to see this.”
One look at the brown contact lens on Gemma’s palm and Danny was out of the room calling for a cell in which to lock Malcolm.
Gemma let her arm drop. Exhaustion settled over her. Alan sat down next to her. She leaned against him and closed her eyes.
“He’s John McIlvoy?” he said.
She nodded because for now it wasn’t that she couldn’t talk. She didn’t want to.
Friday
I watch, and am as a sparrow
alone upon the house top.
Psalm 102:7
SIXTY-ONE
DANNY SAT IN THE hospital with a copy of Rebecca cracked open on his lap. Ellen lay as before, insensate and peaceful. The machinery still monitored her brain, still drained her urine, still fed and hydrated her body.
In his pocket, he fingered his wedding band. He’d thought to string it around her neck so that when—not if—she woke up, she’d feel it and know—what? He wasn’t sure.
He cleared his throat. “You’ll be glad to know that we arrested Malcolm—or rather the Talented Mr. McIlvoy. One and the same man. No wonder McIlvoy seemed more figment than reality.” He touched her hand, still so warm. “I saw Malcolm’s contact lens case, but no specs. Too bad I didn’t clock that like I should have. Point of fact, he doesn’t need specs. He wears brown lenses to hide his eye color. Blue eyes, but one of them with a stripe of brown through the iris. Odd-looking. You can’t miss it. Rare it may be, but Malcolm passed his strange eye color to his son, Toby.”
After hours spent with Malcolm, who refused to respond as John, they now knew that his hair loss had occurred after he’d fled Ireland for Europe. Alopecia universalis it was called, and it could happen fast. From normal to reptilian in less than a year. Malcolm being Malcolm, he’d fallen in love with himself all over again and made himself into a sleeker, more urbane version of himself. The Malcolm of today with his impeccable wardrobe, thin frame, and pristine hairlessness bore no resemblance to McIlvoy of old. He was a regular Elijah Doolittle.
No, not Elijah Doolittle. Grey Man. Sucking hapless people like Ellen and Seamus and Sean Tate and even he, Danny, into his fogs.
“And then there’s Nathan. Malcolm killed Sean Tate, his father. We know that too. That, at least, was like I thought. Malcolm wanted Firebird Designs for himself. He wanted to retire John McIlvoy out of existence. That’s how much he detests his prior self, as if John is a separate person, even down to the P.O. box he used to send himself checks. It all made sense to him. The man’s completely around the bend.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you.”
A knock interrupted him. Merrit stepped into the room.
“What are you doing here?” His tone was too sharp. “Sorry.”
“I visited Seamus. Seems to be mending well. His body, at least.” Merrit walked around the edges of the room farthest from Danny’s chair. “May I sit for a bit?”
She pulled up a chair so that she faced Danny across the bed.
Danny pulled his wedding band out of his pocket. It still gleamed despite his tarnished marriage. “Ellen used to like it when I told her about my cases. In the old days, I would have told her about Toby Grealy, the way he looked when he died, as if he saw angels in the sparrows above our heads. She would have wanted to know everything after that. Like how, with the help of Seamus and Brendan, he’d known that Malcolm was his lead to finding McIlvoy. And that he was the walking dead as soon as Malcolm got a good look at him.”
“Ellen would have helped you cope.”
“Hah.”
But it wasn’t funny; it was true. He didn’t have the energy to roll his eyes at Merrit’s hocus-pocus observations.
With a thoughtful crease between her eyebrows, she gazed at his hand clenching the wedding band, then at Ellen. “You can talk. I’ll be your listener.”
Just like that, thought fled. Instead he asked about Seamus.
“I told him that Malcolm had been arrested for Siobhan McNamara’s murder, and he seemed relieved.” She adjusted the edge of the blanket that covered Ellen. “Do you think you’ll arrest Seamus for attacking Gemma?”
“Doubtful. Gemma doesn’t want to press charges anyhow. And Nathan Tate will be fine too. Malcolm has been on such a roll that the DPP will have plenty of newsworthy cases to pursue.”
“For Siobhan,” Merrit said. “And for Brendan too?”
“Looks like it. He knew Brendan’s dog walking schedule for Alan and watched out for him from his flat.”
“Poor Seamus. To be the lucky one.”
Danny looked up. He’d been fidgeting with Ellen’s fingers, curling them up, straightening them out. “The man’s unluckier than a bull at snipping time.”
“Malcolm would have killed him eventually, don’t you think? Because Seamus knew about his true identity. Seamus told me that Malcolm had told him the truth after Seamus confronted him with Toby’s story.”
“Ah, no wonder Seamus was so terrified of Malcolm. He hadn’t known he was trying to manipulate a murderer. Then it was too late to wiggle his way out again.”
And that’s when the Devil’s Pact truly began, whether Seamus knew it at the time or not. Malcolm’s whispering Grey Man voice always in Seamus’s ear. And in the end, both their sons dead.
“And Malcolm will be charged for Ellen’s attack too?” Merrit said.
“He’d better be.”
“About Ellen—”
“He never cared for her. She was useful for some egotistical reason and then she wasn’t. Then he used her to give himself an alibi for the night of Toby’s death. I found a passage in her journal. She didn’t just show up at his place unannounced. He called her over. Ellen expected reconciliation but got the damned earrings instead.”
Merrit fiddled with the zipper on her purse. “I’m the one who brought Gemma into the shop. He was right there, all over her—taunting her.” She set the purse aside. “Of course he knew who she was because Dermot and she had been in the pub. He was practically daring her to recognize him.”
“Of course. He would.”
; “That’s how Malcolm saw the earrings.” She shifted, looking pained. “That’s how he knew Gemma had them, not Ellen after all, and he’d have heard through the pub that she and Dermot were staying at your house. It wasn’t a secret. If he hadn’t seen Gemma with the earrings—”
“Stop.”
Danny closed his eyes for a moment. Merrit’s meddling probably had worsened the situation. But now wasn’t the time for recriminations, not here in front of Ellen.
“We’ll never know,” he said. “I had just been around asking Malcolm for McIlvoy’s address. So maybe that put him over the edge to violence. Either way, he was compelled to get rid of the earrings and Gemma. Ellen was in his way.”
Merrit didn’t look convinced, but she went along with his train of thought. “He is still McIlvoy at his core. Full of rage when things don’t go his way. He must have been fuming when Gemma got away.”
“He went along to the forestry the next day in hopes of getting to her again.”
“And what about Toby?” Merrit said.
The last loose end of the case. Seamus pointed at Malcolm, and Malcolm pointed right back at Seamus, and Danny still felt like he was missing something.
“I’m still pondering that one,” he said. “Pointless, all of it. All for a bloody shop.”
“Mmm.” Merrit shifted the purse on her lap. “More than that. For posterity. Malcolm through his designs and reputation, and Seamus through his son’s bright future as a local businessman. He was so hopeful.”
“Only to get caught up in a false promise. Can you imagine Malcolm teaching Brendan the art of business ownership or leaving him the shop? It never would have happened. Malcolm was playing Seamus and playing with him like a cat with a mouse.”
The novel that still sat on Danny’s lap fell to the ground. As he bent to retrieve it, the wedding band dropped out of his hand. He’d been clenching it so hard it had warmed to the same temperature as his skin, so that he couldn’t feel it anymore. He glanced at Ellen, at peace, her skin so smooth that Danny saw the woman he’d married. Perhaps over time they’d reached the same tepid temperature, so that they hadn’t felt each other anymore.
