The Witch Elm: A Novel

by Tana French

  I thought a lot about what my father had said, that week. Back in the hospital I had been convinced that I needed a plan, either to protect myself or to turn myself in and make some kind of deal, but now I couldn’t remember why. The thing about not pursuing other lines of inquiry: that might have been thrown out there to lull me into a false sense of security, but either way, it didn’t seem like there was a lot Rafferty could do to me. Even if he found some hard evidence, surely a confession from someone else would count as reasonable doubt? And it didn’t seem like handing myself in would make the world a better place in any way. On the contrary: the situation was hard enough on my family as it was, I couldn’t even imagine what it would do to my parents if I went to prison for murder. The reason I had been considering it to begin with had never been out of some noble urge to sacrifice myself on the altar of justice, anyway. Partly it had been because of Hugo—only a total shit would have let him spend his last couple of months in jail; but letting a bunch of internet douchebags spin bullshit that he would never see was a completely different thing. And, like my dad had said, Hugo had chosen this. His mind had been eroding, but not to the point where he didn’t know what he was doing. He had done this deliberately, and he had done it to protect me. Throwing that away would have felt like a really impressive level of ingratitude.

  The other reason I had been considering turning myself in had been because why not? What was left to protect? Even when most other stuff had gone by the wayside, I had hung on to the idea that at least I was a decent guy, one of the good guys, but the overwhelming likelihood that I was a murderer put a fairly big damper on that. But it was surprising how fast I had got used to the idea. Not that I liked it. I had never had fantasies of being a badass dangerous outlaw; basically, all I had ever wanted to be was normal and happy. But with that off the table, and once the initial shock had worn off, badass outlaw at least felt better than contemptible useless fucked-up victim. In a weird way, it actually went a step or two towards canceling out the victim thing; it made the fact that I had let two scumbag skangers kick my ass a little more palatable. At least somewhere along the way I had, apparently, done some ass-kicking of my own.

  All of which was to say that I wasn’t going to be handing myself in to the cops. Rafferty could go fuck himself. I didn’t need a plan; all I needed to do, if by any chance he showed up, was keep my mouth shut.

  The big question, the one I hadn’t really thought about up until then, was what I was going to do instead. I couldn’t just drift around the Ivy House for the rest of my life, appealing though that sounded; in fact, there was no reason I should still be there at all. There was my apartment to deal with—I was still paying the mortgage, and my savings weren’t going to last forever—there was work, there were all the things that Hugo had given me an excellent excuse for ignoring. Now Hugo was gone, and there they all were, lined up to jab at me more insistently by the day.

  It seemed to me that it came down, in the end, to why I had killed Dominic (if I had, if, sometimes that slipped away from me). I didn’t buy the implausible out that Rafferty had dangled in front of me, the scare gone wrong—if that was all I had had in mind, why not just jump Dominic and throw a few punches, or wave a knife around? Why the baroque hassle of learning how to make a garrote, never mind how to use one? No: that had to have been because I wanted to kill him. And the reason mattered.

  I went through it in my head step by step, methodically, pacing back and forth between rooms and talking out loud to myself to make sure I had things straight. If I had done this because Dominic was giving me grief that summer (plausible, given how shitty he had been acting in general) or because of some dumb hormone-fueled bullshit over a girl (who had I even been into, that summer? Jasmine Something but not like I had been madly in love, same for Lara Mulvaney and basically every other remotely attractive girl I knew—I couldn’t believe I would have garroted anyone over any of them, although clearly what I believed meant less than nothing)—if it had been that kind of petty tantrum, then that didn’t seem like something I could just gloss over. Not that I felt the need to do penance by dedicating my life to serving the poor, or anything, but aiming for a pretty white picket fence didn’t seem like an option either. It was the wrong kind of dangerousness—volcanic, unpredictable, horrifying; something that didn’t belong around, say, babies, or Melissa.

  If Rafferty was right, on the other hand, and this had happened because I was somehow protecting Leon, then that seemed like an entirely different thing. That felt like someone who would deserve what Hugo had done for him; someone who had the right, or maybe even the responsibility, to reclaim whatever he could of life.

  I don’t know how much hope I held out. I had never seen myself as some white knight, either, charging recklessly into battle to save the oppressed, but I did still want to believe that at some level, at least, I had been a decent guy. Leon talked like I was some tremendous douche who had never lifted a finger for anyone except myself, but I had got rid of other bullies for him, after all, I had chased off the wanker who was hassling Melissa, I had stayed here at the Ivy House with Hugo right to the end; surely it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think that, if I had somehow found out the full extent of what Dominic was doing to Leon, I might have been protective?

  By this point I didn’t trust my own mind enough even to bother trying to remember. Anything I dredged up would more than likely be bollocks, thrown up by the same batch of scrambled synapses as my grandparents’ cremation. While Leon and Susanna clearly didn’t know for sure that I had killed Dominic, they seemed like the most likely people to know—even if they hadn’t made the connection—about whatever tangled set of circumstances might have brought me to that point. And so, one more time, I put on my Toby the Boy Detective disguise and I texted the two of them and asked them to come over some afternoon.

  Probably it would have made more sense to leave Susanna out of it. With Leon I could cajole, guilt-trip, needle till I got something out of him. But even before my mind had been hit by a wrecking ball, Susanna could have run circles around me; if she wanted something kept from me, I would never get within a mile of it. I never even thought about leaving her out. The two of them were, after all, wound around the roots of my old, my own life. Somewhere deeper than thought, I believed that if anyone could open up a route back to that life, it had to be them. I suppose I could say, and in spite of everything it wouldn’t be a lie, that I needed them both there because I loved them.

  I thought I was being cunningly casual about the invitation, but in hindsight it’s obvious that they knew. They showed up anyway. I’m still not sure, even after all this time, whether I should be grateful for that; whether they at least thought, one or both of them, that they were there to do me a favor.

  * * *

  After all that time on my own sinking into the silent house, the energy of them came as a shock. Susanna had brought a bunch of sausage rolls, which she threw into the oven with a slam and a clatter of baking sheets, Leon had a big bag of mini Mars bars—Halloween was coming up; I had forgotten, till I saw the cartoon ghosts and vampires leering from the packet—and I had all the wine left over from the funeral do. “Classy combo,” Leon said, kneeling on the living-room floor and shoving aside drifts of paper and jumpers and plates so he could shake out the Mars bars onto the coffee table—it was cold, I had lit a fire, the living room was the only room that was warm. “You can say what you want about us, but we’ve got style.”

  “Next time we can be terribly civilized and do tea and cucumber sandwiches and scones, if you want,” Susanna said, nudging him over to put down the plate of sausage rolls. “But we’ve all been in emergency mode for so long, what we need right now is comfort food. Tom and the kids and I have been living on pizza and Chinese takeaway. I’ll go back to being Organic Superfoods Mummy at some stage, but for now, fuck it.”

  “What’s the problem?” I said, pulling the cork out of a bottle of red. �
��I like sausage rolls, I like Mars bars, I like wine, it’s all good. Red goes with pork, right?” I had prepared for this by drinking an awful lot of coffee and I was kind of on a high, a precarious brittle one that felt like speed cut with something dodgy.

  “You look like shite,” Leon said to me, anxiously, leaning forwards to examine my face. “Are you OK?”

  “Thanks, dude.”

  “No, seriously. Are you eating?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You’ve got every right to be pretty ragged,” Susanna said. “You got the worst of this. And you’ve been a trouper, all through.”

  “And here you guys were giving me shite about not being able to handle it,” I said. “Remember that?”

  “I know. I take it back. I’m sorry.” She thumped down on the sofa and reached for a bobbled woolen throw. “If I’d known how things were going to go, I’m not sure I’d have asked you to move in here.”

  “I wouldn’t have come. Believe me.”

  “We owe you.”

  “Yeah. You do.”

  “Have some of these,” Leon said worriedly, pushing the sausage rolls towards me. “While they’re hot.”

  “No thanks,” I said. The smell of them was turning my stomach. What I actually craved, weirdly, was the Mars bars; I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth, but I wanted to cram them into my mouth three at a time. “Here.” I passed around wineglasses.

  “To Hugo,” Susanna said, raising her glass.

  “To Hugo,” Leon and I said.

  We clinked glasses. “Ahhh,” Leon said. He settled on the hearthrug, leaning back against the armchair opposite mine, and kicked off his trainers and socks. “Excuse my feet, but I stood in a massive puddle and I’m squelching wet. I need to dry these.” He draped his socks over the hearth rail.

  “Those had better be clean,” Susanna said.

  “Don’t be giving me shite. You’re there in your socks—”

  “Which don’t stink—”

  “Neither do mine. Clean as a baby’s bum. Want to smell?” He waved a sock at Susanna, who mimed puking.

  “You look good,” I said to Leon. He did. The pinched look had gone out of his face, his hair was gelled up and his stupid edgy wardrobe was back, which I didn’t personally consider a plus but it seemed to be an indicator that he was feeling better. “A lot less stressed.”

  “I know,” he said, stretching out his feet to the fire and wiggling his toes happily. “I feel so much better. Is that awful? I can’t handle waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now that it’s actually dropped, I can deal with it.”

  “What are you going to do now?” I asked, through a Mars bar. “When are you heading back to Berlin? Or are you heading back to Berlin?”

  He shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “What about your job?” Susanna asked, taking a sausage roll. “And Carsten?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t decided. Leave me alone.” To me: “What about you? When are you going back to work?”

  “I don’t know either,” I said. The creamy rush of the chocolate was hitting me as overwhelmingly and rapturously as coke. I took another one. “Give me a break. It’s only been like a week.”

  “You should go back,” Leon said. “It’s not good for your head, being stuck here on your own all day.”

  “Speaking of which,” Susanna said. “How’s Melissa?”

  “Fine.”

  “Where did she go, after the church? Did she have to be somewhere?”

  “Melissa’s moved back to her place,” I said.

  After a fractional pause: “Is it her mum?” Leon asked, hopefully.

  “Nope,” I said. “I’m pretty sure she’s dumped me. I haven’t heard from her since the funeral.”

  “But,” Leon said. He had sat bolt upright. “She was here the last time we were over. That awful night, two days before Hugo had the—”

  “Yeah, I know. And when I went up to bed that night, she wasn’t here any more.”

  Susanna was picking crumbs off her jumper; I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “Was it . . . ?” Leon asked. He had a sausage roll suspended in mid-air, halfway to his mouth. “The stuff we were talking about, that night. Was that what did it?”

  “No shit, Sherlock. It’s kind of hard to blame her.”

  Susanna said, “Does she think you killed Dominic?”

  “I’m pretty sure she does,” I said. “Yeah.”

  “Told you,” Susanna said, to Leon.

  “Oh, no,” Leon said. He looked stricken. “I like Melissa.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So do I. A lot.”

  “She was good for you. I thought you were going to marry her. I was hoping you would.”

  “Right. Again, me too.”

  Susanna asked, “Did Melissa ever actually say that she thinks you did it?”

  “She didn’t need to.”

  “So maybe she doesn’t,” Leon said. “Maybe that’s not why she left at all. I mean, all the stress, with Hugo, that can’t have been—”

  “The thing is,” I said, and cleared my throat. This was all, not harder than I had expected exactly but so much stranger; I was about to ask them why I was a murderer, and it seemed impossible that my life had landed me here. “The thing is, it sounds weird but I think you’re kind of right, that’s not why she dumped me. I think she could actually handle me having done it—I mean, I know that sounds crazy but like you said, Melissa is pretty special, she’s—I think she might maybe be able to deal with that, depending on why it was. Only she doesn’t know. That’s got to be really scary for her. It could have been because I’m a, a total psycho, and I just hide it really well most of the time. And the thing is, is that I can’t tell her. Because I don’t remember. Any of it. So I’m pretty much fucked.”

  There was a silence. I took a big swig of my wine—I only realized when I lifted the glass that my hand was shaking. Susanna and Leon were having some complicated exchange of eye signals.

  “If you remember anything,” I said, “anything that could, could make sense of why I might have— That’s all you owe me. To help me straighten this out. Melissa only ever got into this because you wanted me to come here. If I hadn’t—”

  “OK,” Susanna said. “We’re going to tell you a story.”

  “Su,” Leon said. “I still think this isn’t a good idea.”

  “Relax. It’ll be fine.”

  “Su. Seriously.”

  Susanna regarded him across the coffee table. She had her jumper sleeves pulled down to her fingertips and her wineglass cupped in both hands, like it was a cup of tea. In the firelight the whole scene looked almost impossibly cozy and idyllic, the worn red damask of the armchairs glowing, warm flickers catching in the dinged copper kindling bucket and making the old etchings stir and ripple. She said, “It’s only fair.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “It’s as close as we’re going to get.” To me: “If you ever tell this to anyone—and that includes Melissa—we’ll say it’s complete bollocks, you must’ve hallucinated the whole conversation, we just came over tonight and had a nice sentimental chat about Hugo and went home. And they’ll believe us. Are you OK with that?”

  “Do I have a choice?” And when Susanna shrugged: “OK. I get it.”

  “I’m having a smoke,” Leon said, pulling himself up off the rug. “I don’t care. Where’s that ashtray?”

  “He’s still kind of wired, isn’t he?” Susanna said, when he had gone out to the kitchen. “It’s because he’s trying to decide what to do about Carsten. I hope he sticks with him. They’re good together.”

  “Su,” I said. My heart was going hard. I hadn’t expected it to be this easy. I couldn’t tell whether I should worry about the fact that she had come here already planning to tell me this story.

  �
��I know.” She leaned over the arm of the sofa to dig in her bag for her cigarettes. “Want one of these?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Have you got a light?”

  “Su.”

  “OK, OK. I’m figuring out where to start.” She stretched out her legs on the sofa and rearranged the throw, getting comfortable. “So. Sixth year, I guess was the beginning. Sometime in March; the Easter holidays. Our parents had gone somewhere, we were staying here, we were studying for the Leaving Cert orals. Remember that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Our mates used to call round and study with us? Including Dominic?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was horrible,” Leon said, coming back in with the cracked bowl Susanna had dug out after the funeral. “Here, for God’s sake, where it was supposed to be safe, and all of a sudden there’s that arsehole, swaggering in and swiping all my books onto the floor and laughing like a hyena.”

  “At first I wondered what he was doing here,” Susanna said. “It’s not like you two were that close. But then he started sliming up to me, all smiley, asking me for a hand with French. I wasn’t impressed—he’d always acted like I didn’t exist, and suddenly when he needs help he’s all over me? But I was big into giving people a hand, back then. Community responsibility and all that shite. Jesus, I was a self-righteous little snot, wasn’t I?”