The Witch Elm

by Tana French

  Martin, of all people, came to see me too. I had been playing table tennis—there was a complicated, ferociously fought tournament that had been going on for something like six years—and when they told me I had a visitor I took for granted it was one of my parents. The sight of him—his back to the window of the visiting room, scanning the place like he was checking for contraband—stopped me in my tracks.

  “Surprise,” he said. “Long time no see.”

  I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. My first thought was that he had come to beat me up. The visiting room had CCTV, but I wasn’t sure what to do if he suggested a walk in the grounds.

  “You’re looking in fine fettle.” He eyed me up and down, taking his time. He had got older, lines deepening, jowls starting to sag. “Got your tooth fixed,” he said. “My taxes at work, hah?”

  “I guess,” I said. He hadn’t moved from the window. Behind him, faraway birds looped across a gray sky; the lawn had the rich green glow of coming rain.

  “Wouldn’t want you having any trouble getting the ladies, when you get out.”

  I stayed silent. After a minute Martin let out a small hard laugh and pulled something out of a manila folder. “Got something for you to look at.”

  He didn’t sit down, or hand it to me; instead he tossed it onto the coffee table and let me go after it. It was a sheet of card with two neat columns of photos, numbered 1 through 8.

  “Any of those fellas ring a bell?”

  They were all chubby guys somewhere in their mid-twenties, most of them with greasy little skanger fringes. “Who are they?” I asked.

  “You tell me.”

  I did my best: went through them carefully, one by one, but none of them looked even vaguely familiar. “I don’t recognize any of them,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “But then you might not. What with that awful brain injury and all.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I couldn’t tell whether he was being sarcastic.

  “Life’s a bitch,” Martin said. He threw me another sheet. “Have a go of that one.”

  These guys were younger and skinnier and halfway down the page he hit me like a jolt from a live wire. Rush of sweat and sour-milk stench, I would’ve sworn it was there in the room with me, clamped over my face like a chloroform rag.

  Martin was watching me, expressionless. “Yeah,” I said, after a moment. My voice was shaking, I couldn’t make it stop. “This guy.”

  “Where do you know him from?”

  “He was, he, he, he—” I took a deep breath; Martin waited. “He’s one of the men who broke into my apartment. This is the one who attacked me. Attacked me first. The one I fought with.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Yeah.”

  “There you go. Told you I close my cases.” Martin tossed me a pen—too suddenly, I flinched and sent it flying, had to fumble on the floor for it. “Write down what number you recognize, how you know him, sign it, date it, initial by his photo.”

  “Who,” I said. I sat down in one of the armchairs—I was glad of the excuse. “Who is he?”

  “Name’s Dean Colvin. Twenty. Unemployed.”

  Which wasn’t what I meant, what I wanted to know, but I couldn’t work out how to ask— “How did you find him?”

  Another sheet, just one photo this time. Gold watch and chain, the worn luster of the gold holding its calm old silence intact even against the harsh light and the glaring white background. Ornately curled initials, CRH.

  “Recognize that?” Martin asked.

  I said, “That’s my grandfather’s watch. That he left me.”

  “The one that was robbed from your apartment.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Write that on the sheet. Sign it and date it.”

  I started with that one; I didn’t want to look at the guy’s face again. This is a watch that my grandfather left to me. The pen wouldn’t stop skittering; my writing looked like a drunk’s.

  “Deano says,” Martin said, “he won that off some guy in a game of cards, a year or two back. Doesn’t remember the guy’s name, of course. With your ID, we might be able to shoot that story down. Although”—shrug—“an ID from you isn’t worth all that much. What with everything.”

  “How,” I said, again. “How did you get him?”

  “Deano liked that watch. Made him feel posh, he says.” A glance at my worn T-shirt and faded jeans: Not that posh now. “So he never tried to pawn it or sell it—or we’d’ve had him years ago; just hung on to it. Only a couple of months back his flat got raided because his brother was dealing, and the lads spotted that yoke there on Deano’s bedside table. They thought it looked a bit out of place. Brought it in, ran it through the system, your file popped up.” With a tilt of his chin at the paper: “Having some trouble there?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “You’ll get the watch back. When we’re done with it. The rest of your stuff is well gone; they sold it straightaway.”

  “So he was a, a criminal, in the end.” When Martin said nothing: “You said, back when it happened, I thought you said if he was one of the, the regulars, you’d know who—”

  “I did, yeah. We would’ve. Deano’s got a few priors for fighting, minor stuff. Nothing for burglary.”

  “Then,” I said. “Why me?”

  “He’s the artistic one of the family,” Martin said. “Oil pastels all over his bedroom walls. Not half bad, some of them.”

  He waited. When I clearly had no idea what was going on: “The exhibition you were working on, when you got bashed? Young Skanger Artists or whatever it was? Deano was one of the artists.”

  I said, after what felt like a very long pause, “What?”

  “We’re thinking maybe he spotted that watch on you one day, when your man Tiernan had him in to the gallery. Or spotted your car. Took a fancy to it. Got his brother or a mate in on the act, and they followed you home one night.”

  All I could think was, flat and absolute and unbudging, No. Just bad luck, sheer dumb bad luck, pick the wrong day to wear my watch and end up here— “No,” I said.

  Martin watched me, blank-faced. “What, then?”

  Flicker of something, something I had known a long time ago and somehow forgotten, but I couldn’t— “I don’t know,” I said, after what felt like a long time.

  Martin leaned his arse on the windowsill and put his hands in his pockets. “We had a couple of chats with Tiernan,” he said, “back when you got hit. Just nosing around, looking for any problems, any grudges. He told us the Gouger thing wasn’t your— Ah, fuck’s sake, Toby”—with a glance of pure disgust—“of course we knew. Took us about ten minutes to get the whole story. Tiernan told us it wasn’t your fault, the whole thing had been his idea, you had practically nothing to do with it; he was delighted you still had your gig, because this way you’d be in a position to give him a hand somewhere down the line. He was convincing. So were Deano and the rest of the skanger kids: no clue about Gouger, no clue about you, no clue what we were talking about. And you kept on insisting no one had any grudge against you. So . . .” He shrugged. “Looked like a dead end. But if Tiernan was bullshitting us; if he wasn’t happy that your boss threw him out on his ear, while you just got a few days on the naughty step . . .”

  I said, “Tiernan set it up.” I should have been blown away, but it barely felt like a surprise.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “He did.” Tiernan. When I tried to picture him, the only image I could come up with was some show opening, Tiernan buttonholing me to be outraged about how one of the artists had turned him down even though he had never been anything but nice to her, bitching on and on with canapé crumbs in his beard while I went “Mm-hm” and tried to edge towards the people I was actually supposed to be talking to. I had never thought of Tiernan as anything but insignificant and mildly pathet
ic; on the rare occasions, that is, when I had thought about him at all.

  “Got any proof? He threaten you, blame you, anything?”

  “I don’t remember. Maybe.” Actually I was pretty sure I hadn’t had so much as a text from Tiernan after Gouger blew up—I remembered those three days of boredom in my flat, trying to get through to him and ask whether he had ratted me out, nothing but voicemail—but I didn’t want Martin to let go of this. “Can’t you talk to him again? Ask him, question him—”

  Martin’s face had gone even blanker. “Yeah, we managed to think of that. Tiernan’s sticking to his original story. Deano’s sticking to his card game.”

  “But they’re lying. Tiernan’s, he’s a, a wimp, if you just question him harder—”

  It was all clear as day in my head. From Tiernan’s point of view, the whole Gouger fiasco would automatically have been someone else’s fault, and I was the obvious choice. He had been slipping Gouger into the show as just another talented sob story; I was the one who had hyped him up into the star, got Tiernan to do a big new series of paintings, told him to give Richard daily updates on his phone calls with Gouger. Except Tiernan had slipped up, hadn’t kept his story straight—my ear pressed to the office door, Richard yelling, something about a phone call . . . If I hadn’t stuck my nose in, Richard wouldn’t have been paying any special attention to Gouger, and everything would have been fine. Instead Tiernan had got fired, and I had got off scot-free.

  So Tiernan had picked the craziest skanger in his bunch and filled him up with stories about the bad guy trying to scupper the show and wreck all their chances at being the next Damien Hirst: the rich bastard with a flash car, a big TV, a new Xbox; the smug prick who was asking for a few slaps. And sent him off.

  “Deano’s lying, anyway,” Martin said. “Tiernan, I’m not so sure. If he is, we’ve got no way of proving it, not unless someone talks. Which they won’t. They’re not stupid.” With a small bland smile: “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  There was something dizzying about it, about the fact that Tiernan could never have dreamed where that would lead. It must have seemed like such a small thing, just a tasty little lollipop of glee to suck on when the world refused to feed him what he deserved; nothing more, just like my prank emails to Dominic had been nothing more.

  “You’ll have to testify at the trial,” Martin said. “If it goes that far. We’ll be in touch.”

  “But,” I said. I had just figured out why all this sounded vaguely familiar. “I thought of that. That it could have been Tiernan.” Way back, all the way back in the hospital, as soon as the worst of the confusion started to wear off, the first person I had thought of had been Tiernan.

  “Congratulations. If you’d bothered mentioning it, maybe we would’ve got somewhere.”

  Crazy stuff, I had thought, just more evidence of my broken brain, and shoved it away. I had been right all along. “I thought it was stupid,” I said.

  Martin watched me. Behind him the green of the lawn had intensified, radiant and unsettling. “You’re not going to get any ideas in your head about going after Tiernan,” he said. “Are you.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Because that wouldn’t be smart. You can get away with it once—apparently. Second time, you wouldn’t be so lucky.”

  “I don’t want to go after him.”

  “Right. I forgot. You wouldn’t hurt a fly.” And when I stared at him: “Sign and date. I don’t have all day.”

  I wrote down something, trying to breathe slowly and keep my eyes off that photo. “If you think about it,” Martin said, “whoever gave you that bang on the head did you a favor. Without it, you’d be doing life in Mountjoy.”

  This seemed not just false but outrageous, but when my head snapped up I met his eyes, cold and speculative and cynical as a seagull’s. “OK,” I said. “Here.” I passed him the sheets of paper.

  “These two”—lifting the sheets—“if they go down, they’re not going to get off with a couple of years telling therapists their problems in a cushy joint with lavender beds and a gazebo.”

  “Right.”

  “So you’re in no position to get your knickers in a knot about Tiernan not getting what he deserves. Are you.”

  That cold seagull eye again. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “See you around,” Martin said, flipping the folder shut. He made it sound like a threat. “Behave yourself.”

  “I am.”

  “Good,” he said. “You keep doing that,” and he stuck the folder back under his arm and left the room without looking at me again.

  * * *

  I did behave myself. I followed my individualized care plan, did my cognitive behavioral therapy to cure my post-traumatic stress disorder, went to occupational therapy to teach me to live an independent and productive life, did my physiotherapy for my hand and my leg, my speech therapy to get rid of the slurring. The doctors liked me; I think I made a nice change from the vast majority of the guys whose problems were inborn, to be managed like hemophilia or cystic fibrosis, with no expectation of any underlying improvement. With me, they felt like they could get places. Maybe they did; anyway they seemed pleased with my progress. When, on only my third try, I got my conditional discharge, all of them seemed genuinely delighted. I was one of their success stories.

  By that time the Ivy House was long gone. My parents had hired me the best solicitor and the best defense barrister that money could buy (another reason, I’m sure Susanna wanted to point out, why I wasn’t serving life as some roided-up smack dealer’s bitch), and the sum of money in question was, unsurprisingly, eye-popping. The expert psychologists, who had spent countless hours asking me confusing and exhausting questions and running batteries of incomprehensible tests, hadn’t come cheap either. The decision to sell the Ivy House to pay for it all had apparently been unanimous. It was, everyone agreed, what Hugo would have wanted.

  My job was gone too, of course. Richard apologized for that, from the heart, as if I might have expected him to hold it open indefinitely on the off chance that I might be back someday. Even if he had, I don’t know if I would have been able for it. The various forms of therapy had helped a lot—apparently nothing except surgery would fix my eyelid, but the slur in my speech was barely noticeable except when I was tired, same for my limp, my hand grip still wasn’t great but I had learned lots of inventive ways of working around it. But my mind still had ravaged places in it, gaping holes full of drifting things; I had a hard time holding on to complicated sets of instructions, I needed a planner full of lists so I didn’t lose track of what I needed to do and what I’d already done, and even with those I occasionally lost hold of big chunks of time or couldn’t work out what day it was. Just thinking about my old job—no routine, no one telling me what to do, deftly juggling a dozen balls at once—made my head spin.

  I had to hold down a job to keep my conditional discharge, and for a while there I had visions of twelve-hour shifts loading pallets in a warehouse full of immigrants who would hate my guts and spit in my lunch, but by the time I got out my family had come to the rescue again. Oliver had pulled strings with a friend at a big PR firm and got me a nice simple job that could have been done, and probably had been up until then, by a fifteen-year-old on work experience. I went in there under my middle name (Charles, after my grandfather; I went by Charlie). I’m not sure it fooled my co-workers for any length of time—there had been a few tabloid snippets when I got out, “‘INSANE’ COP KILLER FREE ON OUR STREETS” and a blurry God-knows-where shot of me being sinister by wearing sunglasses—but at least it stopped clients from having me thrown off their accounts in case I stalked them home and ax-murdered them in their beds. The work went fine. My co-workers were shiny twentysomethings with hectic social lives, and overstretched thirtysomethings with complicated childcare hassles; they were chummy, in a preprogrammed way, but none of them had the roo
m to put much thought into me, which was fine with me. They invited me along to the Friday drinks sessions; sometimes I went, although the pub they used was loud and I mostly got a headache after an hour or so. There was one girl, a sparky, energetic redhead called Caoimhe, who I was pretty sure would have gone on a date with me if I had asked, but I didn’t. Not that I was afraid I would pollute her innocence, or anything, I didn’t get that far; just that I couldn’t come up with enough emotional engagement to bother.

  I had trouble feeling anything much about anyone, actually, not just Caoimhe. Small things could bring me to tears of what felt confusingly like loss—frost on a dark windowpane, frail shoots of green sprouting from a pavement crack—but when it came to people: nothing. I knew it had something to do with that night in the garden, of course, but I wasn’t sure exactly how: whether that flashover of fury had ignited everything inside me with a ferocity that had vaporized the lot and scorched the earth; or whether, while my suicide attempt hadn’t managed to go the distance, it had taken me just far enough over the line that I couldn’t find my way back.