by Tana French
“Not a dicky bird,” I said, just as easily. “You?”
“Nothing. I thought . . .” That glance again. “I thought you might have, that’s all.”
I asked, “Did you know?”
Her eyes were down on the socks she was rolling, but her lashes flickered. “What d’you mean?”
“You and Rosie were close. I thought she might have told you.”
“That yous were eloping, like? Or that she . . . ?”
“Either one.”
She shrugged. “Ah, Jaysus, Mandy,” I said, putting a humorous twist on it. “It’s been twenty-odd years. I can promise you, I’m not going to throw a wobbler because girls talk to each other. I only wondered.”
“I hadn’t a notion she was thinking of breaking it off. Honest to God, not a clue. I have to tell you, Francis, when I heard yous two weren’t together, I was only gobsmacked. I thought for definite you’d have been married, with half a dozen kids to put a stop to your gallop.”
“So you did know we were planning on heading off together.”
“Yous went off the same night, sure. Everyone figured.”
I grinned at her and shook my head. “‘Breaking it off,’ you said. You knew we were still seeing each other. We’d been keeping that under wraps for almost two years, or at least I thought we had been.”
After a moment Mandy made a wry little face at me and tossed the socks into the washing basket. “Smart-arse. It’s not that she was spilling her guts to us, or nothing—she never said a word, right up until . . . Did you and Rosie meet up for a few drinks, about a week before yous left? Somewhere in town, I think it was?”
O’Neill’s on Pearse Street, and all the college boys’ heads turning as Rosie made her way back to our table with a pint in each hand. She was the only girl I knew who drank pints, and she always stood her round. “Yeah,” I said. “We did.”
“That was what did it. See, she told her da she was going out with me and Imelda, but she never said it to us so we could cover for her, know what I mean? Like I said, she’d been keeping you very quiet; we hadn’t a notion. But that night the pair of us got home early enough, and Mr. Daly was watching out the window and he saw us come in, without Rosie. She didn’t get in till late.” Mandy dimpled up at me. “Yous must have had loads to talk about, did you?”
“Yeah,” I said. Good-night kiss pressed up against the wall of Trinity, my hands on her hips, pulling her close.
“Mr. Daly waited up for her, anyway. Rosie called round to me the next day—the Saturday, it was—and she said he went ballistic.”
And we were right back to big bad Mr. Daly again. “I bet he did,” I said.
“Me and Imelda asked her where she’d been, but she wouldn’t say. All she would say was that her da was livid. So we guessed she must’ve been meeting you.”
“I always wondered,” I said. “What the hell did Matt Daly have against me?”
Mandy blinked. “God, I wouldn’t have a clue. Himself and your old fella don’t get on; I’d say it might be that. Does it matter, sure? You’re not round here any more, you never see him . . .”
I said, “Rosie dumped me, Mandy. She dumped me flat on my arse, out of the clear blue sky, and I’ve never known why. If there’s an explanation, somewhere out there, I’d love to know what it is. I’d like to know if there was something, anything, I could’ve done to make things turn out different.”
I gave it plenty of the strong-but-suffering, and Mandy’s mouth went soft with sympathy. “Ah, Francis . . . Rosie never gave a tinker’s damn what her da thought of you. You know that.”
“Maybe not. But if she was worried about anything, or hiding something from me, or if she was scared of someone . . . How livid did he use to get with her, exactly?”
Mandy looked baffled or wary, I couldn’t tell which. “How d’you mean, like?”
“Mr. Daly had a temper,” I said. “When he first found out Rosie was seeing me, the whole Place heard him roaring. I always wondered if it stopped there, or if . . . well. If he used to hit her.”
Her hand went to her mouth. “Jaysus, Francis! Did she say something?”
“Not to me, but she wouldn’t have, not unless she wanted me punching her da’s lights out. I thought she might have talked to you and Imelda, though.”
“Ah, no. God, no. She never said a word about anything like that. I think she would’ve, but . . . you never know for definite, sure you don’t?” Mandy thought, smoothing a blue school-uniform tunic in her lap. “I’d say he never laid a finger on her,” she said, in the end. “And I’m not just saying that because you want to hear it, now. Half Mr. Daly’s problem was that he never copped that Rosie had grown up, d’you know what I mean? That Saturday when she called round to me, after he’d caught her coming home late—the three of us were meant to be going to the Apartments that night, and Rosie couldn’t go because, I’m not joking you, her da had taken her keys away. Like she was a kid, instead of a grown woman putting her wages on the table every week. He said he was locking the door at eleven sharp, and if she wasn’t in by then, she could sleep on the street—and you know yourself, by eleven the Apartments were only getting started. See what I mean? When he got annoyed with her, he didn’t give her the slaps; he sent her to sit in the corner, the way I’d do with one of my little young ones if she was bold.”
And just like that, Mr. Daly no longer had the spotlight all to himself, getting a search warrant for his garden was no longer top priority, and snuggling up in Mandy’s cozy little corner of domestic bliss wasn’t as much fun any more. If Rosie hadn’t come out the front door of her house, it didn’t have to be because she was dodging me, or because Daddy had caught her in the act and had a melodrama moment involving a blunt object. It could have been just because he had left her no choice. Front doors were locked at night; back doors had a bolt on the inside, so you could go to the jacks shed without needing a key or locking yourself out. Without her keys, it didn’t matter whether Rosie was running away from me or into my arms: she had had to go out the back door, over walls and down the gardens. The odds were spreading out, away from Number 3.
And the chances of pulling prints off that case were going down. If Rosie had known she was going to be monkeying around with garden walls, she would have hidden the case in advance, ready to pick up on her way out of town. If someone had got his hands on her, along the way, he might never even have known the suitcase existed.
Mandy was watching me, a little worried, trying to work out if I got what she meant. “Makes sense,” I said. “I can’t see Rosie taking well to being sent to the corner, though. Was she planning on trying something? Nicking her keys back from her da, maybe?”
“Not a thing. That’s what tipped us off something was up, sure. Me and Imelda said to her, ‘Fuck him, come out with us anyway, if he locks you out you can sleep here.’ But she said no, she wanted to keep him sweet. We said, ‘Why would you be arsed?’—like you said, it wasn’t her style. And Rosie said, ‘Sure, it’s not for much longer.’ That got our attention, all right. The pair of us dropped everything and jumped on her, wanting to know what she was on about, but she wouldn’t say. She acted like she just meant her da would give the keys back soon enough, but both of us knew it was more than that. We didn’t know what, exactly; just that something big was happening.”
“You didn’t try for more details? What she had planned, when, whether it was with me?”
“God, yeah. We went on at her for ages—I was poking her in the arm and all, and Imelda smacked her with a pillow, trying to make her talk— but she just ignored us till we gave up and went back to getting ready. She was . . . Jaysus.” Mandy laughed, a soft, startled little catch, under her breath; her brisk hands on the washing had slowed to a stop. “We were just through there, in that dining room—that used to be my room. I was the only one of us had my own room; we always met up there. Me and Imelda were doing our hair, backcombing away—God, the state of us, and the turquoise eye shadow, d’you reme
mber? We thought we were the Bangles and Cyndi Lauper and Bananarama all rolled into one.”
“You were beautiful,” I said, and meant it. “All three of you. I’ve never seen prettier.”
She wrinkled her nose at me—“Flattery’ll get you nowhere”—but her eyes were still somewhere else. “We were slagging Rosie, asking her was she joining the nuns, telling her she’d look lovely in a habit and was it because she fancied Father McGrath . . . Rosie was lying on my bed, looking up at the ceiling and biting her nail—you know the way she used to do? Just the one fingernail?”
Right index fingernail; she bit at it when she was thinking hard. Those last couple of months, while we made our plans, she’d drawn blood a few times. “I remember,” I said.
“I was watching her, in the mirror on my dressing table. It was Rosie, I knew her since the lot of us were babas together, and all of a sudden she looked like a new person. Like she was older than us; like she was already halfway gone, somewhere else. I felt like we should give her something—a good-bye card, or a St. Christopher medal, maybe. Something for a safe journey.”
I asked, “Did you mention this to anyone?”
“No way,” Mandy said, fast, with a snap in her voice. “No way would I have squelt on her. You know better than that.”
She was sitting up straighter, starting to bristle. “I do, babe,” I said, smiling across at her. “I’m only double-checking, out of habit. Don’t mind me.”
“I talked to Imelda, all right. We both figured yous were eloping. We thought it was dead romantic—teenagers, you know yourself . . . But I never said a word to anyone else, not even after. We were on your side, Francis. We wanted yous to be happy.”
For one split second I felt like if I turned around I would see them, in the next room: three girls, restless on that edge where everything was just about to happen, sparking with turquoise and electricity and possibilities. “Thanks, honey,” I said. “I appreciate that.”
“I haven’t a clue why she changed her mind. I’d tell you if I did. The two of yous were perfect for each other; I thought for sure . . .”
Her voice trailed off. “Yeah,” I said. “So did I.”
Mandy said softly, “God, Francis . . .” Her hands were still holding the same little uniform tunic, not moving, and there was a long invincible current of sadness under her voice. “God, it’s an awful long time ago, isn’t it?”
The road was quiet, only the singsong murmur of one of the little girls explaining something to the other, upstairs, and the rush of wind sweeping a gust of fine rain past the windows. “It is,” I said. “I don’t know how it got to be so long.”
I didn’t tell her. Let my ma do it; she would enjoy every second. We hugged good-bye at the door and I kissed Mandy’s cheek and promised to call round again soon. She smelled of sweet safe things I hadn’t smelt in years, Pears soap and custard creams and cheap perfume.
5
Kevin was slumped against our railings, looking the way he used to when we were kids and he got left behind for being too little, except that now he had a mobile and he was texting away at top speed. “Girlfriend?” I said, nodding at the phone.
He shrugged. “Sort of, I guess. Not really. I’m not into settling down yet.”
“That means you’ve got a few of them on the go. Kev, you dirty dog.”
He grinned. “So? They all know the story. They’re not into settling down either; we’re just having a laugh. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Nothing at all,” I agreed, “except I thought you were wrangling Ma for me, not playing Fingers of Love with today’s laugh. What happened to that?”
“I’m wrangling her from here. She was doing my head in. If she’d tried to go across to the Dalys, I’d’ve caught her.”
“I don’t want her ringing the world and his wife.”
“She won’t ring anyone, not till she’s called round to Mrs. Daly and got all the sca. She’s doing the washing up and giving out. I tried to give her a hand and she threw a freaker because I put a fork in the drainer wrong way up and someone was gonna fall on it and lose an eye, so I split. Where were you? Were you in with Mandy Brophy?”
I said, “Let’s say you wanted to get from Number Three to the top of the Place, but you couldn’t go out the front door. What would you do?”
“Back door,” Kevin said promptly, going back to texting. “Over the garden walls. Did it a million times.”
“Me too.” I aimed a finger along the line of houses, from Number 3 up to Number 15 at the top. “Six gardens.” Seven, counting the Dalys’. Rosie could be still waiting for me in any one of them.
“Hang on.” Kevin looked up from his phone. “Do you mean now, or way back when?”
“What’s the difference?”
“The Halleys’ bloody dog, that’s the difference. Rambo, remember him? The little bastard bit the arse out of my trousers that time?”
“Jesus,” I said. “I’d forgotten that little fucker. I drop-kicked him once.” Rambo was, naturally, some kind of terrier-based mutt that weighed about five pounds soaking wet. The name had given him a Napoleon complex, complete with territorial issues.
“Now that Number Five’s those eejits and their Teletubby paint, I’d go the way you said”—Kevin pointed along the same line I’d drawn—“but back then, with Rambo waiting to rip me a new one, not a chance. I’d go that way.” He turned, and I followed his finger: down past Number 1, along the high wall at the bottom of the Place, up the even-numbered gardens, over the wall of Number 16 to that lamppost.
I asked, “Why not just come back over the bottom wall and straight up the road? Why would you be arsed with the gardens on our side?”
Kevin grinned. “I can’t believe you don’t know this shit. Did you never go throwing rocks up at Rosie’s window?”
“Not with Mr. Daly in the next room. I like having testicles.”
“I was buzzing off Linda Dwyer for a while, when we were like sixteen—remember the Dwyers, in Number One? We used to meet in her back garden at night, so she could stop me putting my hand up her top. That wall”—he pointed to the bottom of the road—“on the other side, it’s smooth. No footholds. You can only get over it at the corners, where you can use the other wall to pull yourself up. That takes you into the back gardens.”
“You’re a fountain of knowledge,” I said. “Did you ever get into Linda Dwyer’s bra?”
Kevin rolled his eyes and started explaining Linda’s complex relationship with the Legion of Mary, but I was thinking. I had a hard time picturing a random psycho killer or sex attacker hanging around back gardens on a Sunday night, hoping forlornly that a victim would stroll by. If someone had nabbed Rosie, he had known her, he had known she was coming, and he had had at least the basics of a plan.
Over the back wall was Copper Lane: a lot like Faithful Place, only bigger and busier. If I had wanted to arrange any kind of clandestine meeting or ambush or what-have-you along the route Kevin had pointed out, especially a clandestine meeting that might involve a struggle or a body dump, I would have used Number 16.
Those noises I had heard, while I waited under the lamppost shifting from foot to foot to keep from freezing. A man grunting, stifled squeaks from a girl, bumping sounds. A teenage guy in love is a walking pair of nads wearing rose-colored glasses: I’d taken it for granted that love was everywhere. I think I believed Rosie and I were so wild about each other that it got in the air like a shimmering drug, that night when everything was coming together, and swirled through the Liberties sending everyone who breathed it into a frenzy: wrecked factory workers reaching for each other in their sleep, teenagers on corners suddenly kissing like their lives depended on it, old couples spitting out their falsies and ripping off each other’s flannel nighties. I took it for granted that what I was hearing was a couple doing the do. I could have been wrong.
It took a mind-bending effort to assume, just for a second, that she had been coming to me after all. If she had, then the note
said she had very probably made it along Kevin’s route as far as Number 16. The suitcase said she had never made it out.
“Come on,” I said, cutting off Kev, who was still going (“ . . . wouldn’t have bothered, only she had the biggest rack in the . . .”). “Let’s go play where Mammy said we shouldn’t.”
Number 16 was in even worse shape than I’d thought. There were big gouges all the way down the front steps where the builders had dragged the fireplaces away, and someone had nicked the wrought-iron railings on either side, or maybe the Property King had sold them too. The whacking great sign announcing “PJ Lavery Builders” had fallen down the well by the basement windows; nobody had bothered to retrieve it.
Kevin asked, “What are we doing?”
“We’re not sure yet,” I said, which was true enough. All I knew was that we were following Rosie, feeling our way step by step and seeing where she led us. “We’ll find out as we go, yeah?”
Kevin poked the door open and leaned forward, gingerly, to peer in. “If we don’t end up in hospital first.”
The hallway was a tangle of crisscrossing shadows, layered half a dozen deep where faint light seeped in from every angle: from the empty rooms with their doors pulled half off, through the filthy glass of the landing window, down the high stairwell along with the cold breeze. I found my torch. I may be out of the field, officially, but I still like being ready for the unexpected. I picked my leather jacket because it’s comfortable enough that it almost never comes off, and it has enough pockets to hold all the basics: Fingerprint Fifi, three small plastic evidence bags, notebook and pen, Swiss Army knife, cuffs, gloves, and a slim, high-powered Maglite. My Colt Detective Special goes in a specially made harness that keeps it snug at the small of my back, under my jeans waistband and out of sight.
“I’m not joking,” Kevin said, squinting up the dark stairs. “I don’t like this. One sneeze and the whole place’ll come down on top of us.”
