by Tana French
I stuck him on speakerphone, put the phone on the floor beside me and stuffed my gloves and notebook back into the bag. OK, I guess. I dont think any of them suspect anythings up.
Why would they? Nobody in their right mind would think of something this unlikely. Got anything good for me?
Theyre all at college, so I had a quick look around the house. No bloody knife, no bloody clothes, no Renoirs, no signed confessions. Not even a stash of spliff or a porn mag. Theyre awfully pure, for students. My bandages were in carefully numbered packets, so that the stains would get lighter as the wound supposedly healed, just in case someone with a very weird mind was checking the binin this job, you leave room for a fair amount of weirdness. I found the bandage marked 2 and peeled off the wrapper. Whoever had done the staining lived life with enthusiasm.
Any sign of that diary? Frank asked. The famous diary that Daniel saw fit to mention to you, but not to us.
I leaned back against the bookshelf, hiked up my top and pulled off the old bandage. If its in the house, I said, someones done a good job of hiding it.
A noncommittal noise from Frank. Or else you were right and the killer took it off her body. Either way, though, its interesting that Daniel and company felt the need to lie about it. Anyone acting dodgy?
No. They were a little awkward around me to start with, but they would be. Basically, the main thing Im getting is theyre glad to have Lexie back.
Thats what I got from the mike feed. Which, Frank said, reminds me. What happened last night, after you went up to your room? I heard you talking, but somehow I had trouble catching the exact words.
There was a different note in his voice, and not a good one. I stopped smoothing down the edges of the new bandage. Nothing. Everyone said good night.
How sweet, Frank said. Very Waltons. Im sorry I missed it. Where was your mike?
In my bag. The battery pack sticks into me when I sleep.
So sleep on your back. Your door doesnt lock.
I put a chair in front of it.
Oh, well, then. Thats all the backup you need. Jesus, Cassie! I could practically see him raking his free hand furiously through his hair, pacing.
Whats the big deal, Frank? Last time I never even used the mike unless I was actually doing something interesting. Whether I talk in my sleep isnt going to make or break this case.
Last time you werent living with suspects. These four may not be top of our list, but we havent eliminated them yet. Unless youre in the shower, that mike stays on your body. You want to talk about last time? If your mike had been in your bag where we couldnt hear you, youd be dead. Youd have bled out before we could get to you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said. Point taken.
Got it? On your body at all times. No fucking about.
Got it.
OK, then, Frank said, settling down. Ive got a little pressie for you. There was the edge of a grin in there: hed saved up something good for after the lecture. "Ive been tracking down all your KAs from our first Lexie Madison Extravaganza. Remember a girl called Victoria Harding?
I bit off a piece of surgical tape. Should I?
"Tallish, slim, long blond hair? Talks a hundred an hour? Doesnt blink?
Oh God, I said, taping the bandage down. Sticky Vicky. Theres a blast from the past. Sticky Vicky was in UCD with me, studying something nonspecific. She had glassy blue eyes, a lot of matching accessories and a frantic, limitless ability to octopus herself onto anyone who might be useful, mainly rich boys and party girls. For some reason she had decided I was cool enough to be worth it, or maybe she was just hoping for free drugs.
The very one. When did you last talk to her?
I locked my bag and shoved it under the bed, trying to think back; Vicky wasnt the type that leaves a lasting impression. Maybe a few days before I got pulled out? Ive seen her around town once or twice since, but I always dodged.
Thats funny, Frank said, with that wolfish grin spreading through his voice, because shes talked to you a lot more recently than that. In fact, you and she had a nice long chat in early January of 2002she knows the date because shed just been to the winter sales and bought some kind of fancy designer coat, which she showed to you. Apparently it involved, and I quote, the absolute ultimate taupe suede, whatever class of animal a taupe may be. Ringing any bells?
No, I said. My heart was going slow and hard; I could feel it right down to the soles of my feet. That wasnt me.
I figured it might not be. Vicky remembers the conversation vividly, though, almost word for wordthe girls got a memory like a steel trap, shell make a dream witness if it ever comes to that. Want to hear what you talked about?
Vicky always did have that kind of mind: since there was basically no activity going on inside her head, conversations went in there and came back out virtually untouched. It was one of the main reasons Id spent any time with her. Refresh my memory, I said.
You ran into each other on Grafton Street. According to her, you were totally spacey, didnt remember her at first, werent sure when youd last seen each other. You claimed to have a foul hangover, but she put it down to that awful nervous breakdown shed heard about. Frank was enjoying this: his voice had a fast, focused, predator-on-the-move rhythm. I was having a lot less fun than he was. I had known all this already, only the specifics had been missing, and being right wasnt as satisfying as you might think. Once you managed to place her, though, you were very friendly. You even suggested going for a coffee, to catch up. Whoever our girl was, she had some nerve.
Yeah, I said. I realized I was crouched like a sprinter, ready to leap. Lexies bedroom felt mocking and tricky around me, humming with secret drawers and fake floorboards and spring traps. She had that, all right.
You went to the café in Brown Thomas, she showed you her fashion finds and you both played Do You Remember for a while. You, amazingly enough, were pretty quiet. But get this: at one point Vicky asked you whether you were in Trinity these days. Apparently, not long before you had your nervous breakdown, youd told her you were sick of UCD. You were thinking of transferring somewhere else, maybe Trinity, maybe abroad. Sound familiar?
Yeah, I said. I sat down, carefully, on Lexies bed. Yeah, it does.
It had been getting towards the end of term, and Frank hadnt told me whether the operation was going to continue after the summer; I was setting up an exit, in case I needed one. The other point of Vicky: you could always rely on her to get gossip all round college in no time flat.
My head was spinning, strange-shaped things rearranging themselves and falling into new places with soft little clicks. The coincidence of Trinitythis girl heading straight for my old college, picking up where I had left offhad given me the creeps all along, but this was almost worse. The only coincidence was two girls running into each other, in a small city, and Sticky Vicky spends most of her time hanging around town looking for useful people to run into anyway. Lexie hadnt ended up in Trinity by chance, or by some dark magnetic pull that had her shadowing me, elbowing her way into my corners. I had suggested it to her. We had worked together seamlessly, she and I. I had drawn her to this house, this life, every bit as neatly and surely as she had drawn me.
Frank was still going. Our girl said no, she wasnt in college at the moment, shed been traveling. She was vague about whereVicky assumed shed been in the funny farm. But heres the good part: Vicky figured it was a funny farm in America, or maybe Canada. Partly thats because she remembers your imaginary family was living in Canada, but mostly its because, somewhere between your time in UCD and that day on Grafton Street, youd picked up a fairly serious tinge of American accent. So not only do we know how this girl got hold of the Lexie Madison ID, and when, but weve got a pretty good id
ea of where to start looking for her. I think we may owe Sticky Vicky a cocktail or two.
Sooner you than me, I said. I knew my voice sounded weird, but Frank was too hyped-up to notice.
Ive put in a call to the FBI boys, and Im about to e-mail them over prints and photos. Theres a good chance our girl was on the run in one way or another, so they might turn up something.
Lexies face watched me warily, in triplicate, from the dressing-table mirror. Keep me updated, OK? I said. Anything you get.
Will do. Want to talk to your fella? Hes here.
Sam and Frank sharing an incident room. Jesus. Ill call him later, I said.
The deep murmur of Sams voice in the background, and for a split second out of nowhere I wanted to talk to him so badly it almost doubled me over. He says hes got through your last six months in Murder, Frank told me, and all the people you mightve pissed off are out, one way or another. Hell keep working backwards and keep you up to speed.
In other words, this had nothing to do with Operation Vestal. God; Sam. Secondhand and at a distance, he was trying to reassure me: he was quietly, doggedly going after the only threat that he understood. I wondered how much hed slept, the night before. Thanks, I said. Tell him thanks, Frank. Tell him Ill talk to him soon.
* * *
I needed to get outdoorspartly because of eyeball overload, all those strange dusty objects, and partly because the house was starting to do things to the back of my neck; it made the air around me feel too intimate and too knowing, like an eyebrow flick from someone you never could fool. I hit the fridge, made myself a turkey sandwichthis gang believed in good mustardand a jam sandwich and a thermos of coffee, and took them on a long walk. Sometime very soon, I was going to be navigating Glenskehy in the dark, quite possibly with input from a killer who knew the area like the back of his hand. I figured it might be a good idea to get my bearings.
The place was a maze, dozens of single-file lanes twisting their way among hedges and fields and woods from nowhere much to nowhere much else, but it turned out I knew my way around better than Id expected; I only got lost twice. I was starting to appreciate Frank on a whole new level. When I got hungry I sat on a wall and had my coffee and sandwiches, looking out over the mountainsides and giving the mental finger to the DV squad room and Maher and his halitosis problem. It was a sunny, snappy day, hazy clouds high in a cool blue sky, but I hadnt seen a single human being, anywhere along the way. Somewhere far off a dog was barking and someone was whistling to him, but that was it. I was developing a theory that Glenskehy had been wiped out by a millennium death ray and no one had noticed.
On my way back I spent a while checking out the Whitethorn House grounds. The Marches might have lost most of their estate, but what was left was still pretty impressive. Stone walls higher than my head, lined with treesmostly the hawthorns that had given the house its name, but I spotted oak, ash, an apple just going into bloom. A broken-down stable, discreetly out of smelling range of the house, where Daniel and Justin kept their cars. It would have held six horses, way back when; now it was all piles of dusty tools and tarps, but they didnt look like theyd been touched in a very long time, so I didnt poke around.
To the back of the house was that great sweep of grass, maybe a hundred yards long, bordered by a thick rim of trees and stone wall and ivy. At the bottom was a rusty iron gatethe gate Lexie had gone through, that night, when she walked out onto the last edge of her lifeand, tucked away in a corner, a wide, semi-organized patch of shrubs. I recognized rosemary and bay: the herb garden Abby had mentioned, the evening before. That already seemed like months ago.
From that distance the house looked delicate and remote, something out of an old watercolor. Then a fast little wind rippled down the grass, lifting the long trails of ivy, and the lawn tilted under my feet. By one of the side walls, only twenty or thirty yards from me, there was someone behind the ivy; someone slight and dark as a shadow, sitting on a throne. The hair on the back of my neck rose, a slow wave.
My gun was still taped to the back of Lexies bedside table. I bit down hard on my lip and grabbed a heavy fallen branch out of the herb garden without taking my eyes off the ivy, which had dropped innocently back into placethe breeze was gone, the garden was still and sunny as a dream. I walked along the wall, casually but fast, flattened myself against it, got a good grip on my branch and whipped back the ivy in one sharp move.
There was no one there. The tree trunks and overgrown branches and ivy made an alcove against the wall, a little sun-splashed bubble. In it were two stone benches and, between them, a thread of water trickling through a hole in the wall and down shallow steps to a tiny, murky pond; nothing else. Shadows tangled together and for a second I caught the illusion again, the benches turning high-backed and sweeping, that slim figure sitting upright. Then I let the ivy fall and it was gone.
Apparently it wasnt just the house that had a personality all its own. I got my breath back and checked out the alcove. The seats had traces of moss in the cracks, but most of it had been scrubbed away: someone knew about this place. I considered its potential as a rendezvous point, one way or another, but it was awfully close to the house to be inviting outsiders around, and the mat of leaves and twigs around the pond looked like it hadnt been disturbed in a while. I brushed at it with the side of my shoe and got wide smooth flagstones. Metal glinted in the dirt and my heart bouncedknifebut it was too small. A button: lion and unicorn, battered and dented. Someone, long ago, had been in the British army.
The hole letting the water in through the garden wall was choked with muck. I stuck the button in my pocket, knelt down on the flagstones and used the branch and my hands to clear it out. It took a long time; the wall was thick. When I was finished there was a miniwaterfall, murmuring happily to itself, and my hands smelled of earth and decaying leaves.
I rinsed them off and sat on one of the benches for a while, having a smoke and listening to the water. It was nice in there; warm and still and secret, like an animals den or a kids hideout. The pond filled up, tiny insects hovering above the surface. The extra water drained away through a tiny gutter into the ground, I picked out floating leaves, and after a while the pond was clear enough that I could see my reflection, rippling.
Lexies watch said half-past four. I had made it through twenty-four hours, and probably knocked a good handful of people out of the incident-room sweepstakes. I put my cigarette butt back in the pack, ducked out through the ivy, and went inside to catch up on thesis notes. The front door opened smoothly to my key, the air inside stirred as I came in and it didnt feel over-intimate any more; it felt like a slight smile and a cool brief touch on the cheek, like a welcome.
7
That night I went for my walk. I needed to phone Sam, and anyway, Frank and I had decided that I was better off getting Lexie back into her normal routine as fast as possible, not playing the trauma card too hard, at least not yet. There were bound to be little differences anyway, and with any luck people would use the stabbing to explain those away; the more I pushed it, the more likely it was that someone would think, Gee, Lexies a completely different person now.
We were in the sitting room, after dinner. Daniel and Justin and I were reading; Rafe was playing piano, a lazy Mozart fantasia, breaking off now and then to repeat a phrase he liked or had messed up the first time; Abby was making her doll a new petticoat out of old broderie anglaise, head bent over stitches so tiny they were almost invisible. I didnt think the doll was creepy, exactlyshe wasnt one of the ones that look like puffy, deformed adults; she had a long dark plait and a wistful, dreamy face, with a tip-tilted nose and tranquil brown eyesbut I could see the guys point, all the same. Those big sad eyes, staring at me from an undignified position on Abbys lap, made me feel guilty in a nonspecific way, and there was something disturbing about the fresh, springy curl of her hair.
Around ele
ven I went out to the coat closet for my runnersI had wriggled into my supersexy girdle and tucked my phone in there before dinner, so I wouldnt have to break routine by going up to my room; Frank would be proud of me. I did a wince and a little under-my-breath Ow as I sat down on the hearth rug, and Justins head snapped up. Are you all right? Do you need your painkillers?
Nah, I said, disentangling my shoelace. I just sat down funny.
Walk? Abby asked, glancing up from the doll.
Yep, I said, pulling on one of the runners. It had the shape of Lexies foot, a fraction narrower than mine, printed on the insole.
That tiny suspension all through the room again, like a caught breath. Rafes hands left a chord hanging in the air. Is that wise? Daniel inquired, putting a finger in his book to mark his page.
I feel fine, I said. The stitches dont hurt unless I twist sideways; walking isnt going to burst them or anything.
Thats hardly what I had in mind, Daniel said. Youre not concerned?