The Likeness

by Tana French

  His broken mouth twisted sideways. “So he arranged to meet the girl one night, before the baby was born. She went along, not a worry on her: he was her lover, wasn’t he? She thought he wanted to arrange to provide for her and the child. And instead he took a rope and he hanged her from a tree. That’s the true story. Everyone in Glenskehy knows. She didn’t kill herself, and no one from the village killed her. The baby’s father killed her, because he was afraid of his own child.”

  “Bloody boggers,” Frank said. “I swear to God, you get outside Dublin and it’s a whole different universe. Jerry Springer, eat your heart out.”

  “God rest,” Sam said quietly.

  “Yeah,” Naylor said. “God rest. Your lot called it a suicide, sooner than arrest one of the gentry from the Big House. She went into unconsecrated ground, her and the child.”

  It could have been true. Any of the versions we’d heard could have been the true one, any or none; there was no way to tell, across a hundred years. What mattered was that Naylor believed what he was saying, every word. He wasn’t acting like a guilty man, but this means less than you might think. He was consumed enough—that bitter intensity in his voice—that he might well believe he had nothing to feel guilty about. My heart was going fast and heavy. I thought of the others, heads bent in the library, expecting me to come back.

  “Why would no one in the village tell me this?” Sam asked.

  “Because it’s none of your business. We don’t want to be known for that: the mad village where the lunatic killed his bastard for being a fairy. We’re decent people, in Glenskehy. We’re plain people, but we’re not savages and we’re not eejits, and we’re no one’s freak show, d’you get me? We just want to be left alone.”

  “Someone’s not leaving this alone, though,” Sam pointed out. “Someone painted BABY KILLERS on Whitethorn House, twice. Someone put a rock through their window, two nights ago, and fought them like hell when they went after him. Someone doesn’t want to leave that child to rest in peace.”

  A long silence. Naylor shifted in his chair, touched his split lip with a finger and checked for blood. Sam waited.

  “It was never just the baby,” he said, in the end. “That was bad enough, sure; but it only showed the way they are, that family. The cut of them. I didn’t know what other way to say it.”

  He was halfway to putting his hand up for the graffiti, but Sam let that slide: he was after bigger game. “What way are they?” he asked. He was leaning back with his mug balanced on his knee, easy and interested, like a man settled in for a good long night at his local.

  Naylor dabbed at his lip again, absently. He was thinking hard, searching for words. “All your detective work about Glenskehy. Did you find out where it came from?”

  Sam grinned. “My Irish is after getting awful rusty. Glen of the hawthorn, is it?”

  Naylor gave a fast, impatient head-shake. “Ah, no, no, not the name. The place. The village. Glenskehy. Where d’you think it came from?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “The Marches. They made it, to suit themselves. When they were given the land and they built that house, they brought people in to work for them—maids, gardeners, stable hands, gamekeepers . . . They wanted their servants on their land, under their thumb, so they could keep them in line, but not too nearby; they didn’t want to be smelling the stink of the peasants.” There was a vicious, disgusted twist to the corner of his mouth. “So they built a village for the servants to live in. Like someone having a swimming pool put in, or a conservatory, or a stable full of ponies: just a little luxury, to make life more comfortable.”

  “That’s no way to look at human beings,” Sam agreed. “It’s a long time ago, though.”

  “A long time ago, yeah. Back when the Marches had a use for Glenskehy. And now that it’s not serving their pleasure any more, they’re standing by and watching it die.” There was something building in Naylor’s voice, something volatile and dangerous, and for the first time they came together in my mind, this man talking local history with Sam and the wild creature that had tried to gouge my eyes out in a dark lane. “It’s falling to bits, that village. Another few years and there’ll be nothing left of it. The only ones who stay are the ones trapped there, like myself, while the place dies and takes them along with it. Do you know why I never went to college?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “I’m no fool. I had the points for it. But I had to stay in Glenskehy, to look after my parents, and there’s no work there that needs an education. There’s nothing but farming. What did I need a degree for, to dig muck on another man’s farm? I started doing that the day after I left school. I’d no other choice. And there’s dozens more like me.”

  “That’s not the Marches’ fault, sure,” Sam said reasonably. “What could they do about it?”

  That hard bark of a laugh again. “There’s plenty they could do. Plenty. Four or five years back there was a fella came looking around the village, a Galway man, same as yourself. A property developer. He wanted to buy Whitethorn House, turn it into a fancy hotel. He was going to build it up—add new wings, new buildings round the grounds, a golf course, all the rest; he’d big plans, this fella. Do you know what that would have done for Glenskehy?”

  Sam nodded. “A load of new jobs.”

  “More than that. Tourists coming through, new businesses coming in to look after them, people moving in to work for the new businesses. Young people staying on, instead of clearing out to Dublin as soon as they’re able. New houses being built, and decent roads. A school of our own again, instead of sending the children up to Rathowen. Work for teachers, for a doctor, for estate agents maybe—educated people. Not all at once, like, it would’ve taken years, but once the ball starts rolling . . . That was all we needed: just that one push. That one chance. We’d have had Glenskehy coming back to life.”

  Four or five years back: just before the attacks on Whitethorn House began. He was matching my profile immaculately, piece by piece. The thought of Whitethorn House turned into a hotel made me feel a lot better about the state of Naylor’s face, but still: you couldn’t help being pulled in by the passion in his voice, seeing the vibrant vision he was in love with, the village turned bustling and hopeful again, alive.

  “But Simon March wouldn’t sell?” Sam asked.

  Naylor shook his head, a slow angry roll; winced, touched his swollen jaw. “One man, on his own in a house that could fit dozens. What good was it to him? But he wouldn’t sell. It’s been nothing but bad news since the day it was built, that house, and he held onto it for dear life sooner than let it do anyone a scrap of good. And the same when he died: the young fella hadn’t been near Glenskehy since he was a child, he has no family, he had no need for the place, but he held on. That’s what they are, the Marches. That’s what they’ve been all along. What they want, they keep, and the rest of the world be damned.”

  “It’s the family home,” Sam pointed out. “Maybe they love it.”

  Naylor’s head came up and he stared at Sam, pale blazing eyes amid the swelling and the dark bruises. “If a man makes something,” he said, “he has a duty to look after it. That’s what a decent man does. If you make a child, it’s yours to care for, as long as it lives; you’ve no right to kill it to suit yourself. If you make a village, it’s yours to look after; you do what it takes to keep that place going. You don’t have the right to stand by and watch it die, just so you can keep hold of a house.”

  “I’m actually with him on this one,” Frank said, beside me. “Maybe we’ve got more in common than we thought.”

  I barely heard him. I had got one thing wrong in my profile, after all: this man would never have stabbed Lexie for being pregnant with his baby, or even for living in Whitethorn House. I had thought he was an avenger, obsessed with the past, but he was a lot more complicated and more ferocious than that. It was the future he was obsessed with, his home’s future, seeping away like water. The past was the dark conjoined twin wrapped round that future, steering it, shaping it.

  “Is that all you wanted from the Marches?” Sam asked quietly. “Fo
r them to do the decent thing—sell up, give Glenskehy a chance?”

  After a long moment Naylor nodded, a stiff, reluctant jerk.

  “And you thought the only way to make them do it was to put the frighteners on them.”

  Another nod. Frank whistled, softly, through his teeth. I was holding my breath.

  “No better way to frighten them off,” Sam said, thoughtful and matter-of-fact, “than to give one of them a little cut, one night. Nothing serious, not even meant to hurt her. Just to let them know: you’re not welcome here.”

  Naylor’s mug went down hard on the table and he shoved his chair back, arms folding tight across his chest. “I never hurt anyone. Never.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows. “Someone handed out a fair old beating to three of the Whitethorn House people, the same night you got those bruises.”

  “That was a fight. An honest fight—and they were three to one against me. Do you not see the difference? I could have killed Simon March a dozen times over, if I’d wanted to. I never touched him.”

  “Simon March was old, sure. You knew he was bound to die within a few years, and you knew there was a decent chance his heirs would sell up, sooner than move out to Glenskehy. You could afford to wait.”

  Naylor started to say something, but Sam kept talking, level and heavy, cutting across him. “But once young Daniel and his mates arrived, it was a whole different story. They’re going nowhere, and a bit of spray paint wasn’t scaring them. So you had to up the stakes, didn’t you?”

  “No. I never—”

  “You had to tell them, loud and clear: get out, if you know what’s good for you. You’d seen Lexie Madison out walking, late at night—maybe you’d followed her before, had you?”

  “I don’t—”

  “You were coming out of the pub. You were drunk. You had a knife on you. You thought about the Marches letting Glenskehy die, and you went up there to end it once and for all. Maybe you were just going to threaten her, is that it?”

  “No—”

  “Then how did it happen, John? You tell me. How?”

  Naylor shot forwards, his fists coming up and his lip pulling into a furious snarl; he was on the edge of going for Sam. “You give me the sick. They whistled for you, them up at the house, and you came running like a good dog. They go whining to you about the nasty peasant who doesn’t know his place, and you bring me in here and accuse me of stabbing one of them—That’s shite. I want them out of Glenskehy—and believe you me, they’ll be out—but I never thought about hurting any of them. Never. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. When they pack up their things and go, I want to be there to wave them good-bye.”

  It should have been a letdown, but it went like speed through my blood, pounded high up in my throat, took my breath away. It felt—and I shifted against the glass, kept my face angled away from Frank so he wouldn’t see this—it felt like a reprieve.

  Naylor was still going. “Those dirty bastards used you to put me in my place, just like they’ve been using the police and everyone else for three hundred years. I’ll tell you this much for nothing, Detective, the same as I’d tell whoever gave you that load of old shite about a lynch mob. You can look in Glenskehy all you like, but you’ll find nothing. It was no one from that village stabbed that young one. I know it comes hard to go after the rich instead of the poor, but if it’s a criminal you’re after and not a scapegoat, you look up at Whitethorn House. We don’t breed them round my way.”

  He folded his arms, tilted his chair onto its back legs and started singing “The Wind That Shakes the Barley.” Frank eased back away from the glass and laughed, quietly, to himself.

  * * *

  Sam tried for more than an hour. He went through every incident of vandalism, one by one, going back four and a half years; listed the evidence linking Naylor to the rock and the fight, some of it solid—the bruises, my description—and some invented, fingerprints, handwriting analysis; came into the observation room, grabbed the evidence bags without looking at me or at Frank, and tossed them on the table in front of Naylor; threatened to arrest him for burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, everything short of murder. In exchange he got “The Croppy Boy,” “Four Green Fields” and, for a change of pace, “She Moved through the Fair.”

  In the end he had to give up. There was a long time between the moment when he left Naylor in the interview room and the moment when he came into the observation room, evidence bags dangling from one hand and the exhaustion back on his face, deeper than ever.

  “I thought that went well,” Frank said brightly. “You could even have got a confession on the vandalism, if you hadn’t gone for the big prize.”

  Sam ignored him. “What do you think?” he asked me.

  There was one off chance left, as far as I could see, one way Naylor could have snapped badly enough to stab Lexie: if he had been the baby’s father, and she had told him she was going to have an abortion. “I don’t know,” I said. “I genuinely don’t.”

  “I don’t think he’s our boy,” Sam said. He dropped the evidence bags on the table and leaned heavily against it, head going back.

  Frank did amazed. “You’re giving up on him because he held out for one morning? From where I’m standing, he looks good enough to eat: motive, opportunity, mind-set . . . Just because he tells a great story, you’re going to arrest him on some pissant vandalism charge and throw away your chance to have him on murder?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”

  “Now,” Frank said, “we try it my way. Fair’s fair; your way got us nowhere. Cut Naylor loose, let Cassie see what she can get out of him on the antiques deal, and see if that takes us any closer to the stabbing.”

  “This man doesn’t give a damn about money,” Sam said, without looking at Frank. “What he cares about is his town, and the damage that’s been done to it by Whitethorn House.”

  “So he’s got a cause. There’s nothing in this world more dangerous than a true believer. How far do you think he’d go for that cause?”

  This is one of the things about fighting with Frank: he moves the goalposts faster than you can catch up, you keep losing track of what you were originally arguing about. I couldn’t tell whether he actually believed in this antiques caper, or whether it was just that he was ready to try anything, at this stage, to beat Sam.

  Sam was starting to look dazed, like a boxer after taking too many punches. “I don’t think he’s a killer,” he said doggedly. “And I don’t see why you think he’s a fence. There’s nothing pointing to that.”

  “Let’s ask Cassie,” Frank suggested. He was watching me carefully. Frank’s always been a gambler, but I wished I knew what was making him bet on this one. “What do you think, babe? Any chance I’m right about the antiques scam?”

  In that second a million things went through my mind. The observation room I knew by heart, down to the stain on the carpet where I’d dropped a coffee cup two years back, and where I had become a visitor. My Detective Barbie clothes hanging in my wardrobe, Maher’s juicy morning throat-clearing routine. The others, waiting for me in the library. The cool lily-of-the-valley smell of my room in Whitethorn House, wrapping around me soft as gauze.

  “You could be,” I said, “yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Sam, who in fairness had had a long day already, finally lost it. “Jesus, Cassie! What the hell? You can’t seriously believe in that mad crap. What side are you on?”

  “Let’s try not to think in those terms,” Frank put in, virtuously. He had arranged himself comfortably against a wall, hands in his pockets, to watch the action. “We’re all on the same side here.”

  “Back off, Frank,” I said sharply, before Sam could punch his lights out. “And Sam, I’m on Lexie’s side. Not Frank’s, not yours, just hers. OK?”

  “That right there is exactly what I was afraid of.” Sam caught the startled look on my face. “What, you thought it was just this tosspot”—Frank, who pointed to his chest and tried to look wounded—“that had me worried? He’s bad enough, God knows,
but at least I can keep an eye on him. But this girl—On her side is a bad, bad place to be. Her housemates were on her side all the way, and if Mackey’s right, she was selling the lot of them down the river, not a bother on her. Her fella over in America was on her side, he loved her, and look what she did to him. The poor bastard’s a wreck. Have you seen that letter?”

  “Letter?” I said, to Frank. “What letter?”

  He shrugged. “Chad sent her a letter, care of my FBI friend. Very moving and all, but I’ve been through it with a fine-tooth comb and there’s nothing useful there. You don’t need distractions.”

  “Jesus, Frank! If you’ve got something that tells me anything about her, anything at all—”

  “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Read it,” Sam said. His voice sounded raw at the edges and his face was white, white as it had been that first day at the crime scene. “You read that letter—I’ll give you a copy, if Mackey won’t. That fella Chad is bloody devastated. Four and a half years, it’s been, and he hasn’t gone out with another girl. He’ll probably never trust a woman again. How could he? He woke up one morning with his whole life in bits around him. Everything he dreamed about, gone up in smoke.”