by Tana French
He sounded genuinely stunned. I knew perfectly well he was working me and I could have listed every tool he was using, but it didnt matter; because he was right. Five years earlier, one year earlier, I would have been leaping for this dazzling incomparable adventure right alongside him, Id have been in there checking whether the dead girls ears were pierced and how she parted her hair. I looked out at the fields and thought, very distinctly and detachedly, What the fuck has happened to me?
OK, I said, finally. What you tell the press isnt my problem; you guys fight it out between you. Ill stay out of the way for the weekend. But, Frank, Im not promising you anything else. No matter who Sam finds or doesnt find. This does not mean Im doing it. Clear enough?
Thats my girl, Frank said. I could hear the grin in his voice. For a moment there I thought the aliens had planted a chip in your brain.
Fuck off, Frank, I said, turning around. Sam didnt look happy, but I couldnt worry about that just then. I needed to get away on my own and think about this.
I havent said yes yet, Sam said.
Its your call, obviously, Frank said. He didnt seem too worried. I knew he might have more of a fight on his hands than he expected. Sam is an easygoing guy, but every now and then he puts his foot down, and then trying to change his mind is like trying to push a house out of your way. Just call it fast. If were going with this, for now anyway, well need to get an ambulance out here ASAP.
Let me know what you decide, I told Sam. Im going home. See you tonight? Franks eyebrows shot up. Undercovers have an impressive grapevine all their own, but they mostly stay away from the general gossip, in a slightly pointed way, and Sam and I had been keeping things fairly quiet. Frank gave me an amused look, tongue rolling in his cheek. I ignored him.
I dont know when Ill finish up, Sam said.
I shrugged. Im not going anywhere.
See you soon, babe, Frank said happily, through another cigarette, and waved good-bye.
Sam walked me back down the field, close enough that his shoulder brushed mine protectively; I got the sense he didnt want me to have to pass the body on my own. Actually, I badly wanted to have another look at it, preferably by myself and for a long silent time, but I could feel Franks eyes on my back, so I didnt even turn my head as we passed the cottage.
I wanted to warn you, Sam said abruptly. Mackey said no. He was pretty insistent about it, and I wasnt thinking straight enough to . . . I shouldve. Im sorry.
Obviously Frank, like everyone else in my bloody universe, had heard the Operation Vestal rumors. He wanted to see how Id take it, I said. Checking my nerve. And hes good at getting what he wants. Its OK.
This Mackey. Is he a good cop?
I didnt know how to answer that. Good cop isnt a phrase we take lightly. It means a vast complex constellation of things, and a different one for every officer. I wasnt at all sure that Frank fit Sams definition, or even, come to think of it, mine. Hes smart as hell, I said, in the end, and he gets his man. One way or another. Are you going to give him his three days?
Sam sighed. If youre all right with staying in this weekend, then yeah, Id say I will. Itll do no harm, actually, keeping this case under the radar till weve some idea what were dealing withan ID, a suspect, something. Itll keep the confusion down. Im not mad about giving her friends false hope, but sure, I suppose it could soften the blowhaving the few days to get used to the chance that she might not make it . . .
It was shaping up to be a gorgeous day; the sun was drying the grass and it was so quiet I could hear tiny insects zigzagging in and out among the wild-flowers. There was something about the green hillsides that made me edgy, something stubborn and secretive, like a turned back. It took me a second to figure out what it was: they were empty. Out of all Glenskehy, not one person had come to see what was going on.
Out in the lane, screened from the others by trees and hedges, Sam pulled me tight against him.
I thought it was you, he said into my hair. His voice was low and shaking. I thought it was you.
2
I didnt actually spend the next three days watching crap telly, the way Id said to Frank. Im not good at sitting still to begin with, and when Im edgy I need to move. SoIm in this job for the thrills, meI cleaned. I scrubbed, hoovered and polished every inch of my flat, down to the baseboards and the inside of the cooker. I took down the curtains, washed them in the bath and pegged them to the fire escape to dry. I hung my duvet off the windowsill and whacked it with a spatula to get the dust out. I would have painted the walls, if Id had paint. I actually considered putting on my dork disguise and finding a DIY shop, but Id promised Frank, so I cleaned the back of the cistern instead.
And I thought about what Frank had said to me. You, of all people . . . After Operation Vestal I transferred out of Murder. DV might not be much of a challenge by comparison, but God its peaceful, although I know thats a strange word to choose. Either someone hit someone or he didnt; its as simple as that, and all you have to do is figure out which one it is and how to make them knock it off. DV is straightforward and its unequivocally useful, and I wanted that, badly. I was so bloody tired of high stakes and ethical dilemmas and complications.
You, of all people; have you gone desk on me? My nice work suit, ironed and hung on the wardrobe door ready for Monday, made me feel queasy. Finally I couldnt look at it any more. I threw it in the wardrobe and slammed the door on it.
And of course I thought, all the time, under everything I did, about the dead girl. I felt like there must have been some clue in her face, some secret message in a code only I could read, if I had just had the wits or the time to spot it. If Id still been in Murder I would have nicked a crime-scene shot or a copy of her ID, taken it home with me to look at in private. Sam would have brought me one if Id asked, but I didnt.
Somewhere out there, sometime in these three days, Cooper would be doing the autopsy. The idea bent my brain.
I had never seen anyone who looked anything like me before. Dublin is full of scary girls who I swear to God are actually the same person, or at least come out of the same fake-tan bottle; me, I may not be a five-star babe but I am not generic. My mothers father was French, and somehow the French and the Irish combined into something specific and pretty distinctive. I dont have brothers or sisters; what I mainly have is aunts, uncles and large cheerful gangs of second cousins, and none of them look anything like me.
My parents died when I was five. She was a cabaret singer, he was a journalist, he was driving her home from a gig in Kilkenny one wet December night and they hit a slick patch of road. Their car flipped three timeshe was probably speedingand lay upside down in a field till a farmer saw the lights and went to investigate. He died the next day; she never made it into the ambulance. I tell people this early on, to get it out of the way. Everyone always gets either tongue-tied or gooey (You must miss them so much), and the better we know each other, the longer they feel the gooey stage needs to last. I never know how to answer, given that I was five and that it was more than twenty-five years ago; I think its safe to say Im more or less over it. I wish I remembered them enough to miss them, but all I can miss is the idea, and sometimes the songs my mother used to sing me, and I dont tell people about that.
I was lucky. Thousands of other kids in that situation have slipped through the cracks, fallen into foster care or nightmare industrial schools. But on their way to the gig my parents had dropped me off to spend the night in Wicklow with my fathers sister and her husband. I remember phones ringing in the middle of the night, quick footsteps on stairs and urgent murmuring in the corridor, a car starting, people going in and out for what seemed like days, and then Aunt Louisa sitting me down in the dim living room and explaining that I was going to stay there for a while longer, because my mother a
nd father werent coming back.
She was a lot older than my father, and she and Uncle Gerard dont have kids. Hes a historian; they play bridge a lot. I dont think they ever really got used to the idea that I lived therethey gave me the spare room, complete with a high double bed and small breakable ornaments and an inappropriate print of Venus Rising, and looked faintly worried when I got old enough that I wanted to put up posters of my own. But for twelve and a half years they fed me, sent me to school and gymnastics classes and music lessons, patted me vaguely but affectionately on the head whenever I was within reach, and left me alone. In exchange, I made sure they didnt find out when I mitched off school, fell off things I shouldnt have been climbing, got detention or started to smoke.
It wasthis always seems to shock people all over againa happy childhood. For the first few months I spent a lot of time at the bottom of the garden, crying till I threw up and yelling rude words at neighborhood kids who tried to make friends. But children are pragmatic, they come alive and kicking out of a whole lot worse than orphanhood, and I could only hold out so long against the fact that nothing would bring my parents back and against the thousand vivid things around me, Emma-next-door hanging over the wall and my new bike glinting red in the sunshine and the half-wild kittens in the garden shed, all fidgeting insistently while they waited for me to wake up again and come out to play. I found out early that you can throw yourself away, missing what youve lost.
I weaned myself on the nostalgia equivalent of methadone (less addictive, less obvious, less likely to make you crazy): missing what I had never had. When my new mates and I bought Curly Wurly bars at the shop, I saved half of mine for my imaginary sister (I kept them at the bottom of my wardrobe, where they turned into sticky puddles and got in my shoes); I left room in the double bed for her, when Emma or someone wasnt sleeping over. When horrible Billy MacIntyre who sat behind me in school wiped snots on my plaits, my imaginary brother beat him up till I learned to do it myself. In my mind adults looked at us, three matching dark heads all in a row, and said, Ah, God, youd know theyre family, arent they the spit of each other?
It wasnt affection I was after, nothing like that. What I wanted was someone I belonged with, beyond any doubt or denial; someone where every glance was a guarantee, solid proof that we were stuck to each other for life. In photographs I can see a resemblance to my mother; nobody else, ever. I dont know if you can imagine this. Every one of my school friends had the family nose or her fathers hair or the same eyes as her sisters. Even this girl Jenny Bailey, who was adopted, looked like she was probably the rest of the classs cousinthis was the eighties, everyone in Ireland was related one way or another. When I was a kid looking for things to get angsty about, being without this felt like having no reflection. There was nothing to prove I had a right to be here. I could have come from anywhere, dropped by aliens, swapped by elves, built in a test tube by the CIA, and if they showed up one day to take me back there would be nothing in the world to hold me here.
If this mystery girl had walked into my classroom one morning, back then, it would have made my year. Since she didnt, I grew up, got a grip and stopped thinking about it. Now, all of a sudden, I had the best reflection on the block, and I didnt like it one bit. I had got used to being just me, no links to anyone. This girl was a link like a handcuff, slapped on my wrist out of nowhere and tightened till it bit to the bone.
And I knew how she had picked up the Lexie Madison ID. It was in my head bright and hard as broken glass, clear as if it had happened to me, and I didnt like this either. Somewhere in town, at the bar in a crowded pub or flipping through clothes in a shop, and behind her: Lexie? Lexie Madison? God, I havent seen you in ages! And after that it would have been just a matter of playing it carefully and asking the right casual questions (Its been so long, I cant even remember, what was I doing last time I saw you?), picking her way delicately to everything she needed to know. She had been no dummy, this girl.
Plenty of murder cases turn into knock-down-drag-out battles of wits, but this was different. This was the first time I had felt like my real opponent wasnt the murderer but the victim: defiant, clenching her secrets white-knuckle tight, and evenly, perfectly matched against me in every way, too close to call.
By Saturday lunchtime I had made myself nuts enough that I climbed up on the kitchen counter, took down my Official Stuff shoebox from the top of a cupboard, dumped the documents on the floor and went through them for my birth cert. Maddox, Cassandra Jeanne, female, six pounds ten ounces. Type of birth: single.
Idiot, I said, out loud, and climbed back up on the counter.
* * *
That afternoon, Frank called round. At this stage I was so stir-crazymy flat is small, Id run out of stuff to cleanthat I was actually glad to hear his voice over the intercom.
What year is it? I asked, when he reached the top of the stairs. Whos the president?
Quit bitching, he said, giving me a one-armed hug around the neck. Youve got this whole lovely flat to play in. You could be a sniper stuck in a hide, not moving a muscle for days on end and pissing into a bottle. And I brought you supplies.
He handed me a plastic bag. All the main food groups: chocolate biscuits, smokes, ground coffee and two bottles of wine. Youre a gem, Frank, I said. You know me too well. He did, too; four years on, and he had remembered I like Lucky Strike Lights. The feeling wasnt a reassuring one, but then he hadnt intended it to be.
Frank raised a noncommittal eyebrow. Got a corkscrew?
My antennae went up, but I can hold my booze fairly well, and Frank had to know I wasnt stupid enough to get drunk with him. I threw him a corkscrew and rummaged for glasses.
Nice place youve got here, he said, going to work on the first bottle. I was scared Id find you in some foul yuppie apartment with chrome surfaces.
On a cops salary? Dublin housing prices are a lot like New York ones, except that in New York, you get New York for your money. My flat is one mid-sized room, on the top floor of a tall converted Georgian house. It has the original wrought-iron fireplace, enough room for a futon and a sofa and all my books, a tipsy slant to the floor in one corner, a family of owls living in the roof space, and a view of Sandymount beach. I like it.
On two cops salaries. Arent you going out with our boy Sammy?
I sat on the futon and held out the glasses for him to pour. Only for a couple of months. Were not at the living-in-sin stage yet.
I thought it was longer. He seemed pretty protective on Thursday. Is it true love?
None of your business, I said, clinking my glass against his. Cheers. Now: what are you doing here?
Frank looked injured. I thought you could use the company. I got to feeling guilty about leaving you stuck here, all on your own . . . I gave him a dirty look; he realized it wasnt working and grinned. Youre too smart for your own good, do you know that? I didnt want you getting hungry, or bored, or desperate for a smoke, and heading out to the shop. The odds are a thousand to one against you being spotted by anyone who knows our girl, but why take chances?
This was plausible enough, but Frank has always had a habit of tossing lures in a few directions at once to distract you from the hook in the middle. Ive still got no intention of doing this, Frankie, I said.
Fair enough, Frank said, unperturbed. He took a big swig of his wine and settled himself more comfortably on the sofa. I had a chat with the brass, by the way, and this is now officially a joint investigation: Murder and Undercover. But your boyfriend probably already told you that.
He hadnt. Sam had stayed at his own place the last couple of nights (Ill be up at six, sure, no reason you should be as well. Unless you need me to come over? Will you be OK on your own?); I hadnt seen him since the murder scene. Im sure everyones delighted, I said. Joint investigations are a pain in the hole. They
always end up getting spectacularly bogged down in endless, pointless testosterone competitions.
Frank shrugged. Theyll survive. Want to hear what weve got on this girl so far?
Of course I did. I wanted it the way an alcoholic must want booze: badly enough to shove aside the hard knowledge that this was a truly lousy idea. You might as well tell me, I said. Since youre here.
Beautiful, Frank said, rummaging through the plastic bag for the cigarettes. OK: she first shows up in February 2002, when she pulls Alexandra Madisons birth cert and uses it to open a bank account. She uses the birth cert, an account statement and her face to pull your old records from UCD, and she uses those to get into Trinity, to do a PhD in English.
Organized, I said.
Oh yeah. Organized, creative and persuasive. She was a natural at this; I couldnt have done it better myself. She never tried to sign on the dole, which was smart; just got herself a job in a café in town, worked there full-time for the summer, then started at Trinity come October. Her thesis title isyoull like thisOther Voices: Identity, Concealment and Truth. Its about women who wrote under other identities.