In the Woods (48 page)

But she had darted off, down one of the carefully wild little pathways that ring the grass, calling back over her shoulder: “Oh, Detective Ryan—look!

Isn’t it lovely?”

Her hair danced in the sun coming through the leaves, and in spite of everything I smiled. I followed her down the pathway—we were going to need privacy anyway, for this conversation—and caught up with her at a secluded little bench overhung by branches, birds twittering in the bushes all around. “Yes,” I said, “it’s lovely. Would you like to talk here?”

She settled herself on the bench and gazed up at the trees with a happy little sigh. “Our secret garden.”

It was idyllic, and I hated the thought of wrecking it. For a moment I let myself toy with the thought of ditching the whole purpose of this meeting, having a chat about how she was doing and what a beautiful day it was and then sending her home; of being, for a few minutes, just a guy sitting in the sunshine talking to a pretty girl.

“Rosalind,” I said, “I need to ask you about something. This is going to be very difficult, and I wish I knew some way to make it easier on you, but I don’t. I wouldn’t be asking you if I had any other choice. I need you to help me. Will you try?”

Something crossed her face, a flash of some vivid emotion, but it was gone before I could pinpoint it. She clasped her hands around the rails of the bench on either side, bracing herself. “I’ll do my best.”

“Your father and mother,” I said, keeping my voice very gentle and even.

“Has either of them ever hurt you or your sisters?”

Rosalind gasped. Her hand flew to her mouth and she stared at me over it, eyes round and startled, until she realized what she had done, snatched her hand away and clasped it tightly around the rail again. “No,” she said, in a strained, compressed little voice. “Of course not.”

“I know you must be frightened. I can protect you. I promise.”

“No.” She shook her head, biting her lip, and I knew she was on the verge of tears. “No.”

I leaned closer and put my hand over hers. She smelled of some flowery, In the Woods 297

musky scent decades too old for her. “Rosalind, if something’s wrong, we need to know. You’re in danger.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“Jessica’s in danger, too. I know you take care of her, but you can’t keep doing that on your own forever. Please, let me help you.”

“You don’t understand,” she whispered. Her hand was trembling under mine. “I can’t, Detective Ryan. I just can’t.”

She almost broke my heart. This fragile, indomitable slip of a girl: in a situation that would have crippled people twice her age, she was holding it together by the skin of her teeth, walking a slim tightrope twisted out of nothing but tenacity and pride and denial. That was all she had, and I, of all people, was trying to pull it out from under her.

“I’m sorry,” I said, suddenly horribly ashamed of myself. “There may come a time when you’re ready to talk about this, and when that happens, I’ll be right here. But until then . . . I shouldn’t have tried to push you. I’m sorry.”

“You’re so kind to me,” she murmured. “I can’t believe you’ve been so kind.”

“I just wish I could help you,” I said. “I wish I knew how.”

“I . . . I don’t trust people easily, Detective Ryan. But if I trust anyone, it’ll be you.”

We sat there in silence. Rosalind’s hand was soft under mine, and she didn’t move it away.

Then she turned her hand, slowly, and interlaced her fingers in mine. She was smiling at me, an intimate little smile with a dare lurking in the corners.

I caught my breath. It went through me like an electric current, how badly I wanted to lean forward and cup my hand around the back of her head and kiss her. Images tumbled in my mind—crisp hotel sheets and her curls falling free, buttons under my fingers, Cassie’s drawn face—and I wanted this girl who was like no girl I had ever known, wanted her not in spite of her moods and her secret bruises and her sad attempts at artifice but because of them, because of them all. I could see myself reflected, tiny and dazzled and moving closer, in her eyes.

She was eighteen years old and she might still end up being my main witness; she was more vulnerable than she would ever be again in her life; and she idolized me. She did not need to find out the hard way that I had developed 298

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a tendency to wreck everything I touched. I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek and disengaged my hand from hers.

“Rosalind,” I said.

Her face had shuttered over. “I should go,” she said coldly.

“I don’t want to hurt you. That’s the last thing you need.”

“Well, you have.” She slung her bag over her shoulder, not looking at me. Her mouth was set in a tight line.

“Rosalind, please, wait—” I reached out for her hand, but she whipped it away.

“I thought you cared about me. Obviously, I was wrong. You just let me think so because you wanted to see if I knew anything about Katy. You wanted what you could get from me, just like everyone else.”

“That’s not true,” I began; but she was gone, clicking down the path with angry little steps, and I knew there was no point in going after her. The birds in the bushes scattered, with a harsh tattoo of wings, as she passed.

My head was spinning. I gave her a few minutes to calm down and then rang her mobile, but she didn’t answer. I left a babbling, apologetic message on her voicemail; then I hung up and slumped back on the bench.

“Shit,” I said aloud, to the empty bushes.

I think it’s important to reiterate that, no matter what I may have claimed at the time, for most of Operation Vestal I was not in anything resembling a normal frame of mind. This may not be an excuse, but it is a fact. When I went into that wood, for example, I went into it on very little sleep and even less food and a considerable amount of accumulated tension and vodka, and I feel I should point out that it’s entirely possible that the subsequent events were either a dream or some kind of weird hallucination. I have no way of knowing, and I can’t think of an answer, either way, that would be particularly comforting. Since that night I had, at least, started sleeping again—sleeping, actually, with a level of dedication so intense it made me nervous. By the time I staggered in from work every evening I was practically sleepwalking. I would fall into bed as if drawn by a powerful magnet and find myself in the same position, still in my clothes, when the alarm clock dragged me awake twelve or thirteen hours later. Once I forgot to set my alarm and woke at two In the Woods 299

o’clock in the afternoon, to the seventh phone call from a very snotty Bernadette.

The memories and the more bizarre side effects had stopped, too; clicked off as sharply and as definitively as a lightbulb burning out. You’d think this would be a relief, and at the time it was: as far as I was concerned, absolutely anything to do with Knocknaree was the worst possible kind of news, and I was a lot better off without it. I should have pretty much figured this out awhile back, I felt, and I could not believe that I had been stupid enough to ignore everything I knew and prance gaily back into that wood. I had never been so angry with myself in my life. It was only much later, when the case was over and the dust had settled on the debris, when I prodded cautiously at the edges of my memory and came up empty; it was only then that I began to think this might be not a deliverance but a vast missed chance, an irrevocable and devastating loss. 18

Sam and I were the first ones in the incident room on Friday morning. I had taken to coming in as early as I could, going through the phone tips to see if I could find an excuse to spend the day elsewhere. It was raining hard; Cassie, somewhere, was presumably swearing and trying to kick-start the Vespa.

“Daily bulletin,” Sam said, waving a couple of tapes at me. “He was feeling chatty last night, six calls, so please God . . .”

We had been tapping Andrews’s phones for a week now, with results pathetic enough that O’Kelly was beginning to emit ominous, volcanic grumbling noises. During the day Andrews made large numbers of snappy, testosterone-flavored calls on his mobile; in the evenings he ordered overpriced “gourmet” food—“takeaway with notions,” Sam called it, disapprovingly. Once he rang one of those sex chat lines you see advertised on late-night TV; he liked to be spanked, apparently, and “Redden my arse, Celestine” had instantly become a squad catchphrase.

I took off my coat and sat down. “Play it, Sam,” I said. My sense of humor, along with everything else, had deteriorated over the past weeks. Sam gave me a look and threw one of the tapes into our obsolete little tape recorder.

At 8:17 p.m., according to the computer printout, Andrews had ordered lasagna with smoked salmon, pesto and sun-dried tomato sauce. “Jesus Christ,” I said, appalled.

Sam laughed. “Nothing but the best for our boy.”

At 8:23 he had called his brother-in-law to arrange a round of golf for Sunday afternoon, with a few manly jokes thrown in. At 8:41 he had rung the restaurant again, to shout at the order-taker because his food hadn’t arrived. He was starting to sound tipsy. There followed a period of silence; apparently the Lasagna From Hell had, eventually, made it to its destination. At 12:08 a.m. he rang a London number: “His ex-wife,” Sam said. He was at the maudlin stage and wanted to talk about what had gone wrong. In the Woods 301

“The biggest mistake I ever made was letting you go, Dolores,” he told her, his voice thick with tears. “But, sure, maybe I did the right thing. You’re a fine woman, do you know that? You’re too good for me. A hundred times too good. Maybe even a thousand. Amn’t I right, Dolores? Don’t you think I did the right thing?”

“I wouldn’t know, Terry,” Dolores said wearily. “You tell me.” She was doing something else at the same time, clearing plates or maybe emptying a dishwasher; I could hear the chink of china in the background. Finally, when Andrews started to cry in earnest, she hung up. Two minutes later he rang her back, snarled, “You don’t hang up on me, you bitch, do you hear me? I hang up on you,” and slammed down the phone.

“A real ladies’ man,” I said.

“Bugger,” Sam said. He slumped in his chair, leaned his head back and put his hands over his face. “Ah, bugger. I’ve only a week left on this. What the hell do I do if it’s all sushi pizza and lonely hearts?”

The tape clicked again. “Hello,” said a deep male voice, furred with sleep.

“Who’s this?” I asked.

“Unregistered mobile,” Sam said, through his hands. “Quarter to two.”

“You little fucking scut,” Andrews said, on the tape. He was very drunk. Sam sat up.

There was a brief pause. Then the deep voice said, “Didn’t I tell you not to ring me again?”

“Whoa,” I said.

Sam made a small inarticulate noise. His hand shot out as if to grab the tape recorder, but he caught himself and merely pulled it closer to us on the table. We bent our heads over it, listening. Sam was holding his breath.

“I don’t give a tinker’s damn what you told me.” Andrews’s voice was rising. “You’ve told me more than enough already. You told me it would all be back on track by now, do you remember that? Instead there’s fucking . . . injunctions everywhere—”

“I told you to calm the hell down and let me sort it, and I’m telling you the same again. I’ve everything under control.”

“You do in your hole. Don’t you dare talk to me like I’m your emp—your emp—your employee. You’re my fucking employee. I paid you. Fucking . . . thousands and thousands and . . . ‘Oh, we’ll need another five grand for this, Terry, a few grand for the new councilor, Terry. . . .’ I might as well have 302

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flushed it down the bog. If you were my employee you’d be fired. Out on your arse. Like that.”

“I got you everything you paid for. This is just a minor delay. It’ll be sorted. Nothing’s going to change. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Sorted, my arse. You double-dealing little cunt, you. You took my money and ran. Now I’ve nothing but a pile of worthless land and the police crawling all over me. How do they . . . how the fuck do they even know that’s my land? I trusted you.”

There was a slight pause. Sam let his breath out in a small burst, held it again. Then the deep voice said sharply, “What phone are you calling from?”

“That’s none of your bloody business,” Andrews said sulkily.

“What were the police asking you about?”

“Some . . . just some kid.” Andrews stifled a belch. “That kid who got killed out there. Her father’s the fucker with the fucking injunction. . . . The thick bastards think I had something to do with it.”

“Get off the phone,” the deep voice said coldly. “Don’t talk to the cops without your lawyer. Don’t worry about the injunction. And don’t ever fucking ring me again.” There was a click as he hung up.

“Well,” I said, after a moment. “That certainly wasn’t sushi pizza and lonely hearts. Congratulations.” It wouldn’t be admissible in court, but it would be enough to put considerable pressure on Andrews. I was trying to be gracious, but a self-pitying part of me felt this was typical: while my investigation degenerated into an unparalleled collection of dead ends and disasters, Sam’s skipped gaily onwards and upwards, success after tidy little success. If I had been the one chasing Andrews, he would probably have made it through the two weeks without calling anyone more sinister than his aging mother. “That should get O’Kelly off your back.”

Sam didn’t answer. I turned to look at him. He was so white he was almost green.

“What?” I said, alarmed. “Are you all right?”

“I’m grand,” he said. “Yeah.” He leaned forward and switched off the tape recorder. His hand shook a little, and I saw a damp, unhealthy sheen on his face.

“Jesus,” I said. “No you’re not.” It struck me suddenly that the excitement of victory could have given him a heart attack or a stroke or something, he could have some weird undiagnosed weakness; there are stories In the Woods 303

like that in squad lore, detectives pursuing a suspect through epic obstacles only to drop dead as soon as the handcuffs click home. “Do you need a doctor or something?”

“No,” he said sharply. “No.”