56 Days

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  “If you finish that sentence, I swear to God, I’m locking you back up.”

  When the second set is removed, Karl lurches forward, wincing as he tries to bring his arms closer to his body, increasing both the vehemence and the range of his muttered swears with every inch.

  “Christ. My arms feel like they’re on fire.”

  “Well, let that be a lesson to you.” Lee steps back from the bed. “And she lives less than two kilometers away, I suppose, this mysterious, angry woman?”

  “Don’t know.” He shrugs. “Didn’t ask.”

  “Karl, for feck’s sake. You will end up on Snapchat at the rate you’re going and even I won’t be able to save your arse then.”

  A relatively new phenomenon: members of the Gardaí ending up named and shamed on social media. The last one that got the attention of the higher-ups was a video clip from a house party hosted by a known drug dealer, at which a Garda currently stationed in the district was a seemingly enthusiastic and friendly guest.

  “I didn’t tell her I was a guard,” Karl says, as if such a thing was preposterous even though he’d managed to get locked in two sets of handcuffs during a sex game with a stranger whose visit to his house also constituted a breach of the country’s current COVID-19 restrictions.

  “Where did you tell her you got the handcuffs from, then?”

  “I didn’t. We weren’t doing much talking, Lee, if you know what I—”

  “Do even less of it now.”

  Lee looks down at the second set of cuffs, which she’s still holding, and sees a mark in blue paint near the lock and two initials scratched into the metal by the hinge: E.M.

  She shakes her head. “Seriously, Karl?”

  “What?”

  He looks up at her, at the cuffs in her hand, back at her face. He’s managed to bring his arms into his lap but is rigid in that position, like his entire upper body is encased in an invisible plaster cast.

  “Don’t you ‘What?’ me. You know what. These are Eddie’s. Blue paint, initials. That’s what it said on the report the poor guy had to file because he thought he’d lost them.”

  “He did lose them. He forgot to take them off that coked-up eejit we hauled out of the house party in Trinity Hall a few weeks back.”

  “You know he’s already on thin ice,” Lee says.

  “And you know why: he’s shit.”

  “It wouldn’t occur to you to help the guy out a little bit?”

  “I am helping him out,” Karl says. “Out of the force, because he doesn’t belong in it.”

  Lee’s phone starts to ring.

  The number on the screen belongs to the station on Sundrive Road, which instantly piques her interest.

  Why would someone at the station be calling, when her and Karl aren’t due on shift for another half an hour?

  And why not just hail them on the radio?

  “Lee,” a male voice says when she answers. “We’ve got a problem.” She recognizes it as belonging to Stephen, one of the lads on the unit. “Can you talk?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Go on.”

  “A call came in at the crack of dawn from our friend over at the Crossings, the one-woman residents’ association. We assumed it was just going to be another waste of everyone’s time, so we, ah . . .” He clears his throat. “Well, we sent Ant and Dec.”

  “You did what?”

  Since the unit’s two newest members look like Confirmation boys and one of them is called Declan, they’d instantly earned a nickname inspired by the eternally youthful duo of TV presenters.

  “We didn’t think it was going to be anything,” Stephen says. “Same one has been calling every other day to tell us her neighbors have friends over.”

  “And what was it this time?”

  “There’s a body in one of the ground-floor apartments. And not a pajamas-in-their-own-bed kind.”

  “Fuck,” Lee says.

  “Lucky for us, she called an ambulance too and Paul Philips was driving it. As soon as he arrived on-scene, he realized what it was and told Ant and Dec that they’d better call Mummy and Daddy.”

  Two green bananas, alone together at a crime scene, with no senior officer to tell them which is their ass and which is their elbow. The first members on-scene in a potential murder investigation. Lee knows nothing more than this, but she can already see any hope of a successful prosecution getting further away with each passing, inexperienced second.

  She pinches the bridge of her nose, closes her eyes.

  When she opens them again, she sees Karl looking at her questioningly.

  “I know this is bad,” Stephen says in her ear, “but we didn’t think—”

  “We’ll talk about the not-thinking later. I’m with Karl, we’ll go straight there now. Text me the full address. Send me a few cars. Tech Bureau and pathologist, too. If anyone else gets there before us, tell them to set up the cordon. No one leaves. Then call Ant and Dec back and tell them one of them needs to stand outside the apartment door and the other one needs to meet me outside the building and they are not to so much as breathe until I get there. Keep this off the air until you hear from me again. And start praying that this gets un-fucked-up before our Super gets wind of it. Got all that?”

  “Got it.”

  After she ends the call, Lee throws Eddie’s cuffs onto the bed in a high arc, hitting Karl square between the legs with their full weight and then some, sending him into a spasm of new pain.

  She doesn’t wait for him to recover.

  “Get dressed,” she says. “We need to go. Now.”

  53 Days Ago

  Him not being there, not waiting for her outside his office building as arranged, is not the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is him not being there but somewhere else that offers a view of that spot, from where he can watch her waiting for him like a fool. To avoid this, Ciara arrives twenty minutes early and buys a coffee in the Starbucks just around the corner, which she sips at one of their outdoor tables with her eye on the time. When it gets to the half-hour, she waits a minute more before leaving, crunching on a chalky mint to ward off coffee breath.

  He is the first thing she sees when she turns on to the main street. There, where he said he’d be, waiting for her.

  Relief floods her veins.

  He turns and waves. She waves back, doing her best to look like she’s dashed here straight from the office.

  He is dressed as he was on Friday; men’s suits are indistinguishable to her, for the most part, but it could be a different one. The tie is a different color, anyway. The thick strap of a beat-up leather messenger bag rests across his body. He has no coat or jacket, even though she is glad of hers already and there’s a whole night to get through yet. She has gone for standard work clothes, but on a day when she is making an effort: a black shirt dress over black boots and tights, her trusty green winter coat, black handbag.

  It’s odd to see him now, smiling and coming toward her, when they have so recently been strangers and he looks the way he does. She has managed to forget, in the seventy-odd hours since she last saw him, how striking he is.

  What it feels like to look into those eyes.

  To have them be looking back at you.

  He is stretching out an arm to greet her with a hug before she has a chance to worry about how they will greet each other and what acute awkwardness might ensue if it turns out they have different expectations. The hug is loose and polite, one-armed on either side, not at all intimate. But she gets a whiff of whatever scent he’s sprayed on himself—in the last five minutes, going by its potency—and to be so close to him, to touch him and be touched by him, even momentarily, is heady and disorienting. Her body’s reaction takes her aback and she doesn’t hear what he says immediately after they break away and turn to walk side by side in the direction of town, so distracted is s
he by the fading heat of the contact.

  “Hmm?” she says.

  “I said maybe we shouldn’t have done that. You know, hugged.” He sticks his hands in his pockets. “You heard they canceled the parade? Although it’s probably for the best. It’s all tourists at that thing anyway. The only time I’ve ever done anything for it was when I was abroad.”

  They’ve canceled the St. Patrick’s Day parade. That’s what he’s talking about.

  As they walk up the street, she sees women walking in the opposite direction steal glances at him as they pass. This makes her feel both completely invisible and superior to them at the same time.

  These women haven’t even noticed she’s there too, but she’s the one walking with him. It’s a weird brand of pride.

  “Same here,” she says.

  He tells her that when he was in London, Patrick’s Day was one of the biggest nights of the year. A ticketed event at an Irish pub packed to the rafters, leprechaun outfits, drinking green beer—all things they wouldn’t be caught dead doing at home. One of his top-ten hangovers ever. His brother had been visiting, which didn’t help.

  He asks her if she has siblings.

  “No, I’m that rare specimen,” she says, “the Irish only child.”

  “In the same realm as a unicorn sighting.”

  “Leprechaun, surely?” She smiles. “But yeah. Is it just you and your brother or . . . ?”

  “Just us.”

  “Is he here?”

  “He lives in Perth now. Has done for a while. Got the whole setup out there: mortgage, kids, pensionable job.” A pause. “I can’t see him ever coming back. He loves the weather.”

  They cross the road to Baggot Street Bridge.

  “Favorite movie?” she asks.

  “I think his is the second Godfather.”

  She laughs. “And yours?”

  “Jurassic Park.”

  “I don’t have one,” she says, “before you ask. I just don’t know how people can narrow it down.”

  “I feel that way about food.”

  “Well, there, I can do categories. Favorite cocktail, favorite pizza, favorite sandwich—but that’s as far as I go.”

  “Go on then.”

  “Sandwich is toasted cheese,” she says. “Toasted with mayonnaise on the outside. Has to be mayonnaise. Not butter. That’s the best way to get it golden. Pizza is roast chicken strips and red onion. Can’t beat it if the ratio is right. Cocktail . . . Well, I’m not a big drinker, really, but I do like a French 75.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Gin and lemon juice, little bit of sugar syrup, topped with prosecco. Or champagne, depending on how much it costs. It’s basically adult lemonade.”

  “Where does a good one?”

  “Oh,” she says, “I’m nowhere near discerning enough to know that. If it comes in a flute and tastes a bit fizzy, it’ll do me. And to be honest, the flute isn’t a deal breaker.”

  “And you’ve only been here a week . . .”

  “And I’ve only been here a week.”

  “Well,” he says, stopping to bow slightly and roll his hand toward her like the maître d’ of a posh restaurant, “I’ve been here six weeks, so I’m practically a Dubliner now—”

  “Certifiable, surely.”

  “—and so I know where we can get a nice cocktail. It’s even near the cinema.” He holds out an elbow so she can curl her arm around his. “Shall we?”

  They talk about work and TV shows and whether or not more things will be canceled because of this faraway flu and stroll through a city that feels quiet even for a Monday night. He tells her that a lot of the multinationals have their people working from home already. She says she knows and then he rolls his eyes at his forgetting that she works for one of them. She says she’ll be shocked if she’s still in the office at the end of the week, that they’re all just waiting for an official announcement. A few departments have already made the move. She thinks she can do her job just as well at home. She explains that the problem is they have thousands of workers sitting within feet of one another in a confined space, breathing recirculated air and using the same bathrooms, teaspoons, etc., and every day of the week dozens of them are coming into work fresh from trips to other facilities and offices abroad, having traveled through airports and squeezed themselves into crowded airplanes. It’s the potential threat they’re acting on, not the reality. At least for now. Someone got the measles last year and it was the same sort of thing—not because the overlords are humanitarians, but because workers being home sick affects the bottom line. Better to have them home working for a while, even if it ends up being a total overreaction.

  “Here we are,” he announces.

  While she was nattering on, he’s steered her off Grafton Street and now they are standing in front of a fancy hotel. The smooth, dark gloss of its first-floor bay windows promise low, warm light inside. Lush green foliage drips from the portico. Through gold-edged double glass doors, she can see an imposing staircase covered in plush carpeting. A uniformed doorman in gloves and a hat stands sentry just outside. International flags blow gently in the breeze above polished gold lettering that spells out the hotel’s name: The Westbury.

  She’s heard of it but didn’t know it was here, didn’t know it was down this street, in this building that’s only ever been in her peripheral vision as she walked past.

  “The bar does amazing cocktails,” he says.

  “Great.”

  She tries to sound like she means it, like this is great, but her eyes are on the doorman. He’s just a bouncer in better shoes. She is hyperaware of the scuffed toes of her fake leather boots, the thin fabric of her dress and the bobbles of wool on the sleeves of her winter coat. The coat that was sold at a price that suggested you should be happy to get a month of wear out of it, the same one she’s wearing for the third winter in a row. If she had known this was where they’d be going, she would’ve worn something else. She might have even tried to stretch to buying something new.

  She should have known. Of course Oliver is a man who goes to places like this, who assumes he is welcome in them—because he is. The face, the suit, the cool confidence. He strides right up to the door as if the doorman isn’t even there and this is, apparently, the way to do it. The doorman not only opens the door for them but greets them both with a wide smile.

  Having disentangled their linked arms to walk inside, Oliver puts a hand against the small of her back as they ascend the stairs. He’s not steering her or claiming her, but reassuring her. She wonders if he can sense how uncomfortable she is.

  Another staff member, a glossy brunette, greets them at a hostess stand and directs them into the bar. When she says, “Right this way,” she says it to him from beneath a fluttering of long, dark eyelashes.

  The bar is a feast of mirrored things and shiny edges, of crystal chandeliers and glasses, of plush leather upholstery and marbled surfaces. Hundreds of different-colored bottles line the wall behind the counter. The lighting, like the rest of the hotel, is low and warm. A real fire burns at one end. More uniformed staff stand waiting to tend to them.

  It’s like a movie set and, for a moment, Ciara feels a little mesmerized.

  The place is practically empty, with only a handful of patrons, who all sit around one table at one end, by the roaring fire. They are directed away from them to a cozy, circular booth at the other end.

  When prompted, she hands over her coat to be disappeared to some plush coatroom and tries not to think about the hostess seeing the “Primark” printed on its tag. Then she chastises herself for thinking about that at all. Oliver gives the hostess his suit jacket without even looking at her.

  They sit down.

  He unbuttons his cuffs and starts to roll up his sleeves. His forearms are pale and covered in coarse, dark hair. He wears a silver watch that loo
ks heavy.

  “So what do you think?” he asks. He waves a hand to indicate that he’s asking about her thoughts on the bar.

  “Bit grubby, if I’m honest. They could really do with sprucing the place up a bit, couldn’t they?”

  He grins. “You should see the bathrooms, they’re absolutely disgusting.”

  “Better or worse than those holes in the ground they have in France?”

  “You’ll wish you were in one of them.”

  Their banter feels like rapid gunfire and after each successful exchange, she feels a bit dizzy with relief, like she’s gone over the top in the trenches and made it to cover without taking a hit.

  A waiter approaches them with two cocktail menus.

  “Ah, we’ll have two”—Oliver looks to her—“What are they called?”

  “French 75s. Please.”

  “Excellent choice,” the waiter says. “Will I leave the menus?”

  “Please do.” She reaches to take one from him. “Thank you.” And then, to Oliver, “Let’s see what else they’ve got in here . . .”

  But what she’s really looking for is the price of the drinks they’ve just ordered. She flicks through, pretending to muse with deep interest over the other cocktail options. She tries not to react when she turns a page and sees it: the cocktails are twenty-four euros. Each.

  “Speaking of bathrooms,” Oliver says, sliding to move out of the booth. “I’ve drunk about a liter of coffee today, so . . .”

  “Don’t fall in the hole.”

  “If I’m not back in five minutes—”

  “Wait longer, I know.”

  She watches his back disappear through the bar’s doors. Then she pulls her handbag onto her lap and starts fishing around in it for her wallet. She does a rough calculation of the creased notes inside: enough to cover the cost of two rounds of these drinks plus a cab home, just about.

  He’ll probably pay. He’ll likely pay.

  But still.

  She slides two fingers into the little pocket attached to the bag’s lining and relaxes slightly when she feels the thin hardness of her debit card, the raised text on it against her fingers.