The Witch Elm

by Tana French

  It wasn’t just Hugo. Around him, Melissa was her usual happy self (and even now he never turned on her, with her his voice was always gentle, to the point where I actually found myself getting absurdly jealous); but when my family came over she went quiet, smiling in a corner with watchful eyes. Even when it was just the two of us, there was a subtle penumbra of withdrawal to her. I knew something was bothering her, and I did try to draw it out of her, a couple of times, maybe not as hard as I might have: I wasn’t really in the right form for complex emotional negotiations myself. I was still hitting the Xanax every night and now occasionally during the day, which at this point made it hard to be sure whether my array of resurfacing fuckups—brain fog, smelling disinfectant and blood at improbable moments, a bunch of other predictable stuff way too tedious to go into—was cause or effect, although obviously I had a hard time going for the optimistic view. Hugo and Melissa pretended not to notice. The three of us maneuvered carefully around one another, as though there was something hidden somewhere in the house (landmine, suicide vest) that at the wrong footfall might blow us all to smithereens.

  Even though I knew it made no sense, I blamed the detectives. They had ripped through the place like a tornado, questioned us as if we were criminals, thrown us out into the street, all that stress had clearly fucked with my head and it had to have given Hugo a hard shove towards that downslide; they had wandered off and left us with a variety of pretty disturbing questions that they clearly had no intention of bothering their arses to answer; when you came down to it, we had been doing fine before they came, and now we weren’t. They had done something, as yet unclear, to the foundations, and now the whole structure was creaking and twisting around us and all we could do was brace and wait.

  * * *

  A week, ten days, and nothing. And then one evening—a cold, gusty evening, Halloween weather, torn leaves tumbling against the windowpanes and thin clouds scudding across a thin moon—there was a knock at the door. I was in the living room, in front of the fire, reading an old Gerald Durrell book that I’d found on a shelf and discovered I could actually follow, since there wasn’t much in the way of plot arc. Melissa was at some trade fair; Hugo had gone to bed straight after dinner. I put down my book and went to the door before whoever it was woke him up.

  A torrent of wind hurled itself in and down the hall, knocking something off the kitchen table with a clatter. Detective Martin was on the doorstep, bundled and blowing, shoulders hunched.

  “Jaysus,” he said, his face brightening at the sight of me. “The man himself. You’re a hard man to find, Toby, d’you know that?”

  “Oh,” I said. It had taken me a moment to recognize him. “Sorry. It’s my uncle’s house—he’s sick, I’m staying here to—”

  “Ah, yeah, I know that bit. I’m talking about the road. I’m after spending half the evening going in circles looking for it—and my car’s in the shop. I’ve frozen the knackers off meself.”

  “Do you want to come in?”

  “Ah, beautiful,” said Martin, heartfelt, heading past me, cold striking off him. “I was hoping you’d say that. Just for a few minutes, thaw out a bit before I head back out into that. In here, yeah?”

  He was already halfway into the living room. “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked.

  I was about to offer tea or coffee, but he said cheerfully—shouldering off his coat, nodding at my glass of whiskey on the coffee table—“I’ll join you, yeah, if you’ve got any to spare. Might as well get a silver lining out of the car being down.”

  I went to the kitchen and found another glass. My mind was spinning—I know that bit? how had he known that bit? and what was he doing here, anyway? “Lovely gaff,” Martin said, when I got back; he had settled into the armchair nearest the fire and was looking around appreciatively. “My missus likes everything shiny, know what I mean? Lots of chrome, lots of bright colors, everything put away all nice. It’s great, don’t get me wrong, but me, if I was a single man”—he patted the arm of the ratty old damask chair—“I’d be living like this. Or as near as I could get, on my salary.”

  I laughed automatically, handing him the glass. He lifted it. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” I said, sitting down on the edge of the sofa and reaching for my own glass.

  Martin threw back a big gulp and blew out air. “Ahhh. That’s a gorgeous whiskey, that is. Your uncle’s a man of taste.” He had put on a little weight since spring, and cut his hair closer. Ruddy from the cold, legs stretched out to the fire, he looked right at home, some prosperous burgher relaxing after a hard day’s work. I hoped fervently that Hugo wouldn’t pick this moment to wake up and wander downstairs. “How’ve you been keeping?”

  “OK. I’ve been taking some time out to look after my uncle.”

  “Nice of your boss, giving you the time off. He’s a sound man. Fond of you.”

  “It’s not for long,” I said, idiotically.

  He nodded. “Sorry to hear that. How’s the uncle doing?”

  “As good as he can be, I guess. He’s . . .” The unstrung hands, the void before something behind his eyes came back and found me. The word I was looking for was diminishing, but I couldn’t find it and wouldn’t have used it anyway. “He’s tired.”

  Martin nodded sympathetically. “My granddad went the same way. It’s tough, the watching and waiting. It’s a bastard. The only thing I can tell you is, he never had any pain. Just got weaker and weaker, till one morning he collapsed and”—one soft snap of his fingers—“just like that. I know that’s not a lot of comfort, man. But compared to what we were afraid of . . . It could’ve been a lot worse.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “We’re just taking it day by day.”

  “That’s all you can do. Come here, before I forget”—groping inside his coat, slung casually over the arm of the chair—“here’s what I came for.” He pulled out a twisted plastic bag and leaned across, with a grunt, to hand it to me.

  Inside was Melissa’s cast-iron candlestick. It felt heavier than I remembered, colder and less easy in my hand, as if it were made of some different and unfamiliar substance. I almost asked him if he was sure he had the right one.

  “Sorry for the delay,” Martin said, rearranging himself in the armchair and taking another swig of whiskey. “The Tech Bureau’s always backlogged, and something like this—no one died, no suspects on the radar—it’s not going to get priority.”

  “Right,” I said. “Did they . . . ? I mean, am I allowed to ask? Did they find anything on it?”

  “Ask away; sure, if it’s not your business, whose is it? No prints; you were right about the gloves. Plenty of blood and a few bits of skin and hair, but it was all yours—don’t worry, I had the Bureau give that a good wash.” A small fierce pulse twitched through my scar. I caught myself before I put my hand up to it.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I want to reassure you here, man. This doesn’t mean we’re giving up. Nothing like that. Me, doesn’t matter how long it takes, I clear my cases. New leads come in all the time. And it’s not like these fellas were criminal masterminds.” He grinned, a big hard confident grin. “Don’t you worry: we’ll get them.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s good.”

  “You all right there? Didn’t mean to open up a can of worms.”

  He was watching me over the glass, apparently casually, but I caught the glint of alertness. “Fine,” I said. I wrapped the candlestick back up in the bag and put it on the floor beside me. “Thanks again.”

  “I wasn’t sure whether to bring it back now, or leave it for a while. You’ve had a rough enough couple of weeks as it is.” And when I glanced up sharply: “What with the . . .” He tilted his head towards the back of the house, the garden.

  “Oh,” I said. “Yeah.” I supposed it made sense, that he would know about Dominic; it fit with my vague ideas about detective
s, shouting salty accounts of their day at each other across desks heaped with coffee mugs and illegible paperwork.

  “Last thing you needed, I’d say. A shock like that.”

  “It’s been weird, all right.”

  Martin pointed a finger at me like I’d said something insightful. “No shit, Toby. Weird is the word. Inside, what, five months? you’re burglarized, you’re nearly killed, and a skeleton turns up in your back garden? What are the odds?”

  “The burglary and nearly getting killed were part of the same thing,” I said, more sharply than I meant to. “Not two separate things. And the skeleton wasn’t in my garden.”

  To my surprise, Martin leaned back in the chair and laughed. “You’re in a lot better nick than you were,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

  For some reason I felt like I shouldn’t admit it. Bloody Susanna, with her dark hints about The Man being against us; I’d rolled my eyes, but some of it must have seeped in. “I’m doing OK,” I said.

  “Good good”—heartily, slapping the arm of the chair—“I’m only delighted. Still, but: you see where I’m coming from, right, Toby? If you were some skobe from down the flats, this’d be all in a day’s work to you: burglary, assault, dead body, that’d be just your average year. A decent young fella like yourself, but, never been near the cops before except for those speeding tickets”—why would he have bothered finding out about my speeding tickets? years back, but I still felt a rush of guilt, snared!—“that’s a different story. It could be a massive coincidence, all right. But I’ve got to ask myself: what if it’s not?”

  After a moment where I stared at him, with no idea what to say to this: “You’re the one who said it, Toby. You hit the nail on the head there. It’s weird.”

  “Wait,” I said. There was a strange sensation going on inside my head, like the vertiginous zoom of going through a tunnel too fast, too close to the walls— “You think— Wait. You think someone, someone killed Dominic—”

  “That’s the way the lads’re thinking at the moment. Nothing definite, yet, so that could change, but that’s what they’re looking at for now.”

  “—and then the, the, the person, they came after me?”

  Martin swirled his whiskey and watched me.

  “But. I mean, why? Ten years later? And why would they anyway, to begin with, why would they want to—”

  “We don’t know why Dominic was killed yet,” Martin pointed out reasonably. “If he was killed. Once we figure that out, we might have a better idea what they would and wouldn’t want to do. Any ideas there?”

  “No. The other guys, the other detectives, they already asked me about him. I told them everything I can remember.” That rushing feeling was building. I took a big swig of my whiskey, hoping it would clear my head. It didn’t.

  “Anything you were both involved in that might’ve upset someone?”

  “Like what?”

  Shrug. “Giving the class loser a bit of hassle, maybe. We’ve all done it, sure: only messing, no real harm in it. But that type tends to hold a grudge, get obsessive . . .”

  “I wasn’t like that. I didn’t bully people.”

  “Dominic did?”

  “A bit. Sometimes. No worse than a lot of other guys.”

  “Mm.” Martin considered that, rearranging his legs at a better angle to the fire. “How about drugs?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a deal that went bad, say. Or someone got into the hard stuff, or had a bad trip or an OD, and blamed the two of ye for it.”

  “No,” I said. “I never sold anything. And there was never—” This didn’t feel like a conversation I wanted to have with a detective. “Nothing like that.”

  “Right enough.” Martin lifted his glass to his eye and squinted at the fire through it. “The other possibility,” he said, “is revenge.”

  “Revenge?” I said, after a second of utter bafflement. “For what?”

  “Rafferty heard you had a few problems with Dominic Ganly.”

  “What? No I didn’t.” And when he lifted a skeptical eyebrow: “Who said I did?”

  “The lads’ve been hearing it around,” Martin said, with a vague wave of his hand. “It’s been coming up in the interviews, here and there. One of those things where everyone heard it from someone else, no one’s sure where it started.”

  “I never had problems with Dominic. We weren’t best buddies or anything, but we got on fine.”

  “Fair enough,” Martin said equably. “Fact is, though, if the Murder lads heard that—true or not—someone else might have heard it too. And believed it.”

  “And . . .” I wasn’t keeping up here, car-crash pileup of new information jamming my brain— “And what? Someone thought it was my fault Dominic killed himself? So they came after me?”

  “Could’ve done. Or else they didn’t think he killed himself.”

  “They thought I killed him?”

  Martin shrugged, eyes on me.

  “That’s crazy.” And, after a long moment when he said nothing and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say: “No. Their accents, the guys who hit me. They were skangers. Dominic didn’t know anyone like that. Definitely no one who would have been close enough to him to want revenge. No way.”

  “He knew people who could’ve hired someone.”

  “But that’s crazy,” I said again. “Ten years later? Why would they, all of a sudden, how would they even know how to—”

  Martin sighed. “Maybe I’ve just been in this game too long,” he said. “I’ve seen it happen to other fellas: too many years always looking for the link, they start seeing links everywhere. This one guy, yeah? Totally convinced that his murder case in Sallynoggin was connected to a bar fight in Carlow. Would’ve bet his house on it, like. Hundreds of hours interviewing the shite out of the poor Carlow fuckers, checking alibis, prints, getting warrants for DNA, the lot. All because both cases had a Budweiser baseball cap found nearby. His nickname’s still ‘Bud.’”

  I couldn’t grin back. “Am I a,” I said. The word felt both too ludicrous and too explosive even to say, a big red cartoon button that at one touch might detonate the whole house. “Do they think I did this? The other detectives?”

  Glancing up from the fire, perplexed: “You mean are you a suspect?”

  “I guess. Yeah. Am I?”

  “Course you are. If someone killed Ganly, it was someone who had access to this garden. Only a handful of people had access within the time frame. They’re all going to be suspects.”

  “But,” I said. My heart was pounding horribly, shaking me right through; I was sure he would hear it in my voice. I’d known all that, somewhere in the back of my mind, obviously I’d known, but to hear it said straight out like that— “But I didn’t do anything.”

  He nodded.

  “Do they think I did?”

  “Haven’t a clue. To be honest with you, I don’t think they’re that far along. They’re just throwing theories around and seeing what sticks; they haven’t settled on one yet.”

  “Do you think I did?”

  “Haven’t thought about it,” Martin said cheerfully. “It’s not my case; I don’t get paid enough to have theories on other people’s. I only care if it’s got something to do with my burglary-assault.” And when I couldn’t stop staring at him: “Come on, man. If I thought you were a murderer, would I be sitting here drinking your whiskey and having the chats?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He stared back at me. Aggrieved, on a rising note of belligerence: “Hang on. I’m out in the rain, on my night off, doing you a favor”—he was pointing at the candlestick bag, which I had completely forgotten—“and you’re accusing me of bullshitting you?”

  “No,” I said. “Honestly. Sorry.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure what I was apologizing for, but after ano
ther moment of the stare, Martin relented. More gently: “Two favors, actually. That there”—the candlestick—“I could’ve posted that out to you. But I think you’re a decent young fella, and you’ve had a bad enough time the last while. So I figured you deserved a heads-up—off the record, like. If you didn’t have any beef with Ganly, then you need to have a good think about why someone would be going around saying you do.”

  “I don’t know why. I don’t even know who would—”

  But he was shooting his cuff to look at his watch, levering himself out of the chair: “Jesus, it’s later than I thought. I’d better be heading, before the missus decides I’ve run off with some young one—ah, no, only messing, she knows me better than that. She’ll think I’ve run off to the sunshine, Lanzarote or somewhere. I can’t be doing with this weather, it wrecks my head—” Glancing across at me, swinging his coat on: “What was that?”

  “I don’t get it. All of it. What’s going on.”

  Martin stopped patting his pockets and looked at me. “If you had nothing to do with this,” he said (if?), “then at least one of your family or your mates did. And they’re trying to drop you in the shit. And if I was you, I’d be putting all my time into finding out who and why. Like, starting right now.”