In the Woods (42 page)

“You knew she was no threat,” Cassie said. “She was mad about Cathal, she wouldn’t say anything to get him into trouble—and if she did, it would be her word against all of yours. Juries have a tendency to doubt rape victims, especially rape victims who’ve had consensual sex with two of their assailants. You could call her a slut and be home free. But those kids . . . one word from them could land you in jail at any minute. You could never feel safe, as long as they were around.”

She left the wall, pulled a chair close beside him and sat down. “You didn’t go into Stillorgan at all that day,” she said softly, “did you?”

Jonathan shifted, a tiny squaring of the shoulders. “Yeah,” he said, heavily. “I did. Myself and Cathal and Shane. To the pictures.”

“What’d you see?”

“Whatever I told the cops at the time. It’s been twenty years.”

Cassie shook her head. “No,” she said, a slight, cool syllable that dropped like a depth charge. “Maybe one of you—I’d bet on Shane; he’s the one I’d leave out, myself—went to the pictures, so he could tell the other two the In the Woods 257

plot of the film, in case anyone asked. Maybe, if you were smart, you all three went into the cinema and then slipped out the fire exit as soon as the lights went down, so you’d have an alibi. But before six o’clock, two of you, at least, were back in Knocknaree, in the wood.”

“What,” said Jonathan. His face was pulled into a disgusted grimace.

“The kids always went home for tea at half past six, and you knew it could take you awhile to find them; the wood was pretty big, back then. But you found them, all right. They were playing, not hiding; probably they were making plenty of noise. You sneaked up on them, just like they’d snuck up on you, and you grabbed them.”

We had talked all this over beforehand, of course we had: gone through it again and again, found a theory that fit with everything we had, tested every detail. But some tiny slippery unease was stirring in me, twitching and elbowing—Not like that, it wasn’t like that—and it was too late: there was no way left to stop.

“We never even went into the bloody wood that day. We—”

“You pulled the kids’ shoes off, to make it harder for them to run away. Then you killed Jamie. We won’t be sure how till we find the bodies, but I’m betting on a blade. You either stabbed her or cut her throat. Somehow or other, her blood went into Adam’s shoes; maybe you deliberately used them to catch the blood, trying not to leave too much evidence. Maybe you were planning to throw the shoes into the river, along with the bodies. But then, Jonathan, while you were dealing with Peter, you took your eye off Adam. He grabbed his shoes and he ran like fuck. There were slash marks in his T-shirt: I think one of you was stabbing at him as he ran, just missed him. . . . But you lost him. He knew that wood even better than you did, and he hid till the searchers found him. How did that make you feel, Jonathan? Knowing that you’d done all that for nothing, and there was still a witness out there?”

Jonathan stared into space, his jaw set. My hands were shaking; I slid them under the edge of the table.

“See, Jonathan,” Cassie said, “this is why I think there were only two of you there. Three big guys against three little kids, it would’ve been no contest: you wouldn’t have needed to take their shoes off to stop them running, you could have just held down one kid each, and Adam would never have made it home. But if there were only two of you, trying to subdue the three of them . . .”

“Mr. Devlin,” I said. My voice sounded strange, echoing. “If you’re the 258

Tana French

one who wasn’t actually there—if you’re the one who went to the cinema to provide an alibi—then you need to tell us. There’s a big, big difference between being a murderer and being an accessory.”

Jonathan shot me a vicious et-tu-Brute look. “You’re out of your bloody minds,” he said. He was breathing hard through his nose. “You—fuck this. We never touched those kids.”

“I know you weren’t the ringleader, Mr. Devlin,” I said. “That was Cathal Mills. He’s told us so. He said, and I quote, ‘Jonner would never in a million years have had the balls to think of it.’ If you were only an accessory, or only a witness, do yourself a favor and tell us now.”

“That’s a load of shite. Cathal didn’t confess to any murders, because we didn’t commit any murders. I haven’t a clue what happened to those kids and I don’t give a damn. I’ve nothing to say about them. I just want to know who did this to Katy.”

“Katy,” Cassie said, her eyebrows lifting. “OK, fair enough: we’ll come back to Peter and Jamie. Let’s talk about Katy.” She shoved her chair back with a screech—Jonathan’s shoulders leaped—and crossed, fast, to the wall.

“These are Katy’s medical records. Four years of unexplained gastric illness, ending this spring when she told her ballet teacher it was going to stop and, hey presto, it stopped. Our medical examiner says there was no sign of anything wrong with her. Do you know what that says to us? It says someone was poisoning Katy. It’s easily done: a little toilet bleach here, a dose of oven cleaner there, even salt water’ll do it. It happens all the time.”

I was watching Jonathan. The angry flush had drained out of his cheeks; he was white, bone-white. That tiny convulsive unease inside me evaporated like mist and it hit me, all over again: he knew.

“And that wasn’t some stranger, Jonathan, that wasn’t someone with a stake in the motorway and a grudge against you. That was someone who had daily access to Katy, someone she trusted. But by this spring, when she got a second chance at ballet school, that trust was starting to wear a little thin. She refused to keep taking the stuff. Probably she threatened to tell. And just a few months later”—a sharp slap to one of the piteous postmortem shots—“Katy’s dead.”

“Were you covering for your wife, Mr. Devlin?” I asked gently. I could hardly breathe. “When a child’s poisoned, it’s usually the mother. If you were just trying to keep your family together, we can help you with that. We can get Mrs. Devlin the help she needs.”

In the Woods 259

“Margaret loves our girls,” Jonathan said. His voice was taut, overtightened. “She would never—”

“Never what?” inquired Cassie. “She’d never make Katy sick, or she’d never kill her?”

“Never do anything to hurt her. Ever.”

“Then who does that leave?” Cassie asked. She was leaning against the wall, fingering the post-mortem photo and watching him, cool as a girl in a painting. “Rosalind and Jessica both have a rock-solid alibi for the night Katy died. Who’s left?”

“Don’t you dare even suggest I hurt my daughter,” he said, a low, warning rumble. “Don’t you dare.”

“We’ve got three murdered children, Mr. Devlin, all murdered in the same place, all very probably murdered to cover up other crimes. And we’ve got one guy smack bang in the middle of each case: you. If you’ve got a good explanation for that, we need to hear it now.”

“This is unbefuckinglievable,” Jonathan said. His voice was rising dangerously. “Katy’s—someone’s after killing my daughter and you want me to give you an explanation? That’s your bloody job. You’re the ones should be giving me explanations, not accusing me of—”

I was on my feet almost before I knew it. I threw down my notebook with a flat smack and pitched myself forward on my hands, leaning across the table into his face. “A local guy, Jonathan, thirty-five or over, been living in Knocknaree more than twenty years. A guy with no solid alibi. A guy who knew Peter and Jamie, had daily access to Katy, and had a strong motive to kill all of them. Who the fuck does that sound like to you? You name me one other man who fits that description, and I swear to God you can walk out that door and we’ll never hassle you again. Come on, Jonathan. Name one. Just one.”

“Then arrest me!” he roared. He slammed out his fists at me, palms up, wrists pressed together. “Come on, if you’re so bloody sure, all your evidence— Arrest me! Come on!”

I cannot tell you, I wonder if you can imagine, how badly I wanted to do it. My whole life was shooting through my mind as a drowning man’s is said to—tear-sodden nights in a chilly dorm and bikes zigzagging look-Ma-nohands, pocket-warm butter-and-sugar sandwiches, the detectives’ voices yammering endlessly at my ears—and I knew we didn’t have enough, it would never stick, in twelve hours he would walk out that door free as a bird 260

Tana French

and guilty as sin. I had never been so sure of anything in my life. “Fuck this,” I said, shoving up my shirt cuffs. “No, Devlin. No. You’ve been sitting here bullshitting us all evening, and I’ve had enough.”

“Arrest me or—”

I lunged at him. He leaped backwards, sending the chair clattering, finding a corner and throwing up his fists in the same reflexive movement. Cassie was on me already, grabbing my raised arm with both hands. “Jesus, Ryan! Stop!”

We had done it so many times. It’s our last resort, when we know a suspect is guilty but we need a confession and he won’t talk. After the lunge and grab I slowly relax, shake off Cassie’s loosening hands, still glaring at the suspect; finally roll my shoulders and stretch out my neck and sprawl in my chair, drumming my fingers restlessly, while she goes back to questioning him with a watchful eye on me for any sign of renewed ferocity. A few minutes later she starts, checks her mobile, says, “Dammit, I have to take this. Ryan . . . just stay cool, OK? Remember what happened last time,” and leaves us alone together. It works; mostly I don’t even have to stand up again. Ten times we’d done it, twelve? We had it as smoothly choreographed as any screen stunt.

But this wasn’t the same, this was the real thing for which all the other times and all the other cases had been nothing but practice, and it infuriated me even more that Cassie didn’t realize this. I tried to jerk my arm away; she was stronger than I expected, wrists like steel, and I heard a seam rip somewhere in my sleeve. We swayed in a thick, clumsy struggle. “Get off me—”

“Rob, no—”

Her voice came to me thin and meaningless through the huge red roaring in my head. All I could see was Jonathan, brows down and chin braced like a boxer, cornered and waiting only a few feet away. I reefed my arm forward with all my strength and felt her stumble back as her grip slipped away, but the chair got under my feet and before I could kick it aside and reach him she had recovered, caught my other arm and twisted it up behind my back, one fast, clinical move. I gasped.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” she said straight into my ear, low and furious. “He doesn’t know anything.”

The words hit me like a slap of cold water in the face. I knew that even if she was wrong there was nothing in the world I could do about it, and it left me breathless, helpless. I felt as if I had been filleted. In the Woods 261

Cassie felt the fight drain out of me. She shoved me away and stepped back swiftly, her hands still tense and ready. We stared at each other across the room like enemies, both of us breathing hard.

There was something dark and spreading on her lower lip, and after a moment I realized it was blood. For a hideous, free-falling second I thought I had hit her. (Later I found out that I hadn’t, in fact: when I pulled away, the recoil flung one of her wrists back to smack her in the mouth, cutting her lip on her front teeth; not that this makes much of a difference.) It brought me back to myself, a little. “Cassie—” I said. She ignored me. “Mr. Devlin,” she said coolly, as if nothing at all had happened; there was only the faintest hint of a tremor in her voice. Jonathan—I had forgotten he was there—moved slowly out of the corner, his eyes still on me. “We’ll be releasing you without charge for now. But I would strongly advise you to stay where we can find you and not to attempt to contact your rape victim in any way. Understood?”

“Yeah,” Devlin said, after a moment. “Fine.” He yanked the chair upright, pulled his tangled coat off the back and threw it on in quick, angry jabs. At the door he turned and gave me a hard look, and I thought for a moment he was going to say something, but he changed his mind and left, shaking his head disgustedly. Cassie followed him out and whipped the door shut behind her; it was too heavy for a proper slam, it closed with an unsatisfying thump. I sank into a chair and put my face in my hands. I had never done anything like this before, ever. I abhor physical violence, I always have; the very thought makes me flinch. Even when I was a prefect, with arguably more power and less accountability than any adult outside of small South American countries, I never once caned anyone. But a minute ago I had been tussling with Cassie like some drunk in a bar brawl, ready to dogfight Jonathan Devlin on the interview-room floor, swept away by the overwhelming desire to knee him in the guts and beat his face to bloody pulp. And I had hurt Cassie. I wondered, with detached, lucid interest, whether I was losing my mind. After a few minutes Cassie came back in, shut the door and leaned against it, hands shoved into her jeans pockets. Her lip had stopped bleeding.

“Cassie,” I said, rubbing my hands over my face. “I’m really sorry. Are you OK?”

“What the hell was that?” She had a hot, bright spot of color on each cheekbone.

262

Tana French

“I thought he knew something. I was sure.” My hands were shaking so hard it looked phony, like an inept actor simulating shock. I clasped them together to stop it.

Eventually she said, very quietly, “Rob, you can’t keep this up.” I didn’t answer. After a long time, I heard the door close behind her. 15

Igot drunk that night, banjoed drunk, drunker than I’d been in about fifteen years. I spent half the night sitting on the bathroom floor, staring glassily at the toilet and wishing I could just throw up and get it over with. The edges of my vision pulsed sickeningly with every heartbeat, and the shadows in the corners flicked and throbbed and contorted themselves into spiky, nasty little crawling things that were gone in the next blink. Finally I realized that, while the nausea showed no signs of getting better, it probably wasn’t going to get any worse. I staggered into my room and fell asleep on top of the covers without taking off my clothes. My dreams were uneasy ones, with a clogged, tainted quality to them. Something thrashing and yowling in a burlap bag, laughter and a lighter moving closer. Shattered glass on the kitchen floor, and someone’s mother was sobbing. I was a trainee again in some lonely border county, and Jonathan Devlin and Cathal Mills were hiding out in the hills with guns and a hunting dog, living wild and we had to catch them, me and two Murder detectives tall and cold as waxworks, our boots mired deep in treacly mud. I half woke fighting the bedclothes, sheets pulled away from the mattress into sweaty tangles, and was dragged down into sleep again even as I realized I had been dreaming.