56 Days

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  “Sorry,” he says, holding up a hand, stepping forward into what he hopes is the light from inside. “Sorry.”

  She stands stock-still, blinking at him.

  The deep V of her dress and the bright light above the door conspire to showcase a thin, pale, three-inch scar at the base of her throat, neat enough to suggest she got it during some long-ago surgery.

  It makes him think of his own scar and the various lies he’s told to explain it.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he says.

  The woman’s features soften and she makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and an exhale.

  “Jesus,” she says, “I think I just actually had a heart attack.” She pulls the bag from underneath her arm and begins to root in it. “Okay, I get it, Universe. Smoking is bad for my health.”

  “Sorry,” Oliver says again.

  She takes a box of cigarettes from the bag. It’s had a time of it: the lid has been ripped off and the remaining cardboard is creased and misshapen. She takes two limp cigarettes from it and holds them up, offering him one.

  “I don’t really smoke,” he says, eyeing it.

  She shrugs. “Neither do I.”

  He takes the cigarette and lights it with the matches she offers: a small black matchbook branded with the name of the hotel.

  The actual act of smoking is never anywhere near as good as the anticipation of doing it but even so, the first drag makes him feel better. So much better that he decides not to worry about Ciara smelling it on him when he goes back upstairs. He’ll make something up, say he got a phone call and went outside to take it, and some guy came and stood right next to him and smoked.

  “Having a good night?” the woman asks.

  He can’t even begin to establish the real answer to that question. He exhales, blowing the smoke away from her, into the night.

  He says, “It’s all right.”

  “Drinking or dining?”

  “Drinking.” He takes another drag. “Too much, maybe. You?”

  “Dining.”

  “How is it?”

  “The food is great,” she says, “but the company is awful.”

  “Bad date?”

  She laughs sharply, as if the idea of her being on a date is utterly preposterous.

  “Bad boss. Bad job. It’s a work thing.”

  “What do you do?”

  She takes a short, light drag. “I’m a kind of head-hunter.” Releases a thick cloud of smoke. “Recruitment. Finance. All that boring stuff.” She holds the cigarette close to her face and watches the orange glow of its tip burning through the paper. “Anyway, it’s free food and a night out. With the way things are going, we might not get to have many more of those this side of Easter, so . . .”

  She takes another pull and winces.

  “You really don’t smoke,” Oliver says, “do you?”

  “Am I that obvious? No. Not regularly. I just like the smell—and how they’re a cast-iron excuse to get away from people when the need arises and you’ve already used up a socially acceptable number of bathroom breaks. They’re my very expensive, very bad-for-you escape hatch.” She stubs her cigarette out on the wall and nods toward what remains of his. “If that tastes like the sticky strip on an envelope, it’s because they’ve probably been in my bag since Christmastime—at least.”

  “It tastes fine,” he says. “Thank you.”

  “Are you on a date?”

  The look she gives him as she asks this suggests more than an idle curiosity.

  “The truth is,” he says, “I don’t really know.”

  But he silently adds I hope so, which surprises him.

  And then worries him.

  “Well . . .” She gives him a little wave as she turns toward the doors. “Either way, enjoy the rest of your night.”

  He goes back upstairs with the aim of bringing this evening to a close at the earliest opportunity. He pays the bill while Ciara’s in the bathroom so having to pay it later won’t delay their leaving. He gets the waiter to take away what’s left of his cocktail and drinks determinedly from his water glass, trying to dilute the dominance alcohol currently has in his bloodstream. He’s resolved to remain alert for however long it is until there’s a natural moment to suggest they go, sitting rigidly, his physical discomfort a reminder that this isn’t a situation into which he should relax.

  If Ciara notices a change in him, she doesn’t let on. She’s at least a little drunk, too. Her eyes look different now, her pupils larger than before, and here and there she trips a little over words or stutters once or twice before she gets them out.

  Maybe she’s just not that observant. She didn’t question why he was gone so long or seem to detect the smell of smoke on his clothes or breath. He didn’t even have to bother coming up with a lie to explain them.

  Another one.

  She jokes about the cultlike nature of her company’s orientation program while he watches the levels in her glass. As she lifts it to her lips to drain the last mouthful, he suggests they go.

  She nods enthusiastically. “Sure. Let’s.”

  She seems a little unsteady on her feet so he gently steers her to and then down the stairs with a hand on her back. She’s carrying her coat over her arm and he can feel the heat of her skin through the thin material of her dress.

  He wonders what she can feel.

  They face their own reflections in the dark glass of the doors, and he is struck by how good they look, coupled together.

  And then, how quickly this has happened.

  Three days ago they didn’t know each other. Now she is beside him, letting him touch her, telling him things about herself. The speed of it feels dangerous, like a race car approaching a tight corner without any working brakes.

  They leave the warm glow of the hotel and push their way through the revolving doors into the night.

  “Can we get a cab?” he asks the doorman, a different one from before.

  He steals a glance at Ciara’s face but there seems to be no reaction to this at all.

  The doorman steps into the street and waves at something unseen around the corner. A beam of headlights lights up his lower half, and then a cab backs up to the door. Before the doorman can do it, Oliver steps forward and opens the back door, motioning for Ciara to get in.

  She gives him a little smile of gratitude as she does, but her face falls when he closes the door and makes no move to walk around to the other side.

  He leans down, one hand on the roof, until his face is level with hers.

  “I’m gonna walk home,” he lies.

  “Oh.” She seems to deflate with disappointment. “Sure. Right.”

  “Are you around Thursday evening?” he asks. “We could actually go see the film this time.”

  He has no intention of seeing her ever again. But the invitation will make this moment more comfortable and that’s all he can think about right now: extricating himself from this with as little friction as possible.

  She nods, smiles briefly. “Yeah.”

  “I’ll text you.”

  “Okay. Great.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  He closes the door and moves to the driver’s open window. He pulls a twenty from his pocket and drops it through, onto the seat. The driver frowns at it, then looks up at him in question. He waves a hand to signal to him that he’s not getting in. The driver shrugs and moves to release the handbrake.

  Oliver gives Ciara a wave as the car moves off.

  He thinks he’s been lucky, in a way. Her saying that thing about secrets pulled him out of . . . whatever he was in earlier in the evening. A false sense of security. Complacency. Under some kind of spell.

  He’d been enjoying himself, that was the problem. Enjoying her.

  H
e starts for Grafton Street; he’ll get his own cab. They could’ve shared one, really, but he’s not sure where she lives and he couldn’t risk revealing his address to her.

  There’s losing the run of himself for half an hour and then there’s doing something so monumentally stupid it might force him to start all over again.

  Again.

  Today

  The street outside the main entrance to the Crossings has begun to buzz with activity. Lee’s reinforcements have arrived, along with the Technical Bureau—she can see a scenes-of-crime officer unloading equipment from the back of the van, and Tom Searson, one of the deputy state pathologists, suiting up nearby. She waves at him; he waves back. Strips of blue-and-white Garda tape flap in the breeze, the ends knotted around railings and lampposts and traffic cones. Uniforms mill about in shirtsleeves, despite the fresh chill of this early morning sun. There are a couple of rubberneckers standing with their arms folded across the road, but no press yet. Although with all this out here and nothing else going on anywhere in the country except for the nightly roll call of death from the Department of Health, it’s surely just a matter of time before they arrive.

  She’s surprised to find that Garda Michael Creedon has been appointed chief clipboard-wielder of the outer cordon—a nice, clean gig with a mirage of authority—and she feels a warm ripple of pride at the idea that Karl might have done something nice and that it happened because he’d actually listened to her.

  Or, her prayer worked.

  Michael is talking to another uniform; when Lee gets close, she recognizes him. It’s Declan, mask hanging around his neck now, looking considerably less gray than the last time they met. She nods at him as she ducks under the tape and then, just as she turns her head away, catches the two of them exchanging looks. Blink and you’d miss it—literally—but its content may as well be written on their faces.

  Michael: Tell her.

  Declan: Fuck that, shut up.

  She stops a few feet away and beckons Declan with a jerk of her head. There’s another silent conversation before he obeys.

  Oh great. Thanks for landing me in it.

  Don’t make things even worse.

  “How did you get on in there?” she asks him.

  A shrug, no eye contact. “Fine.”

  “Did you touch anything?”

  “I had gloves on.”

  There it is.

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” Lee says. “Gloves leave marks too. And they can smudge prints or even destroy other forensically valuable evidence. But look, we all make mistakes. And you might be lucky here because if I had to call this right now, my guess would be that this guy drugged himself for shits and giggles and then fell through his shower door and hit his head. So maybe it won’t even matter. But you don’t get to decide what matters. That’s my job. So, tell me: What did you touch?”

  A beat passes before whatever bravado was there falls clean away.

  “I think maybe I made a mistake.” Declan clears his throat. “I know I did.”

  “Well, don’t make another one now.” Lee looks at him expectantly, waiting.

  “The showerhead was dripping,” he says. “I didn’t think, it was like a reflex action—”

  “You turned it off.”

  “Yes,” he says miserably.

  She tries to picture the shower controls: a flat, silver lever that you’d push down to stop the flow of water.

  “Show me how.”

  He makes a fist and bumps it lightly against an invisible surface. In all likelihood, it was just the side of his hand that made contact.

  “I’m sorry, Inspector.”

  “Don’t worry about it for now. I could have done the same thing myself.” She wouldn’t have, but she might have done back when she was as green as him. “If things weren’t as ripe in there, you could have had paramedics going in, turning him over and whatnot, so we’d have a lot more disturbance to deal with than that. It’s the kind of thing you won’t do twice, so next time, when it really matters, you won’t make the same mistake.” She hopes it won’t really matter this time, for both their sakes. “Just be more careful in future. And well done for not upchucking your guts. Things were pretty grim in there.”

  Over his shoulder, she sees Karl approaching. She dismisses Declan and steps away so she and Karl can talk without being overheard.

  “What was all that about?” is Karl’s opening line.

  “Nothing important. Where were you?”

  “Car park. Basement level.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “You need a fob to get in but the sensors let you out. Each space is assigned and there’s no vehicle in number one. But it’s not empty—the local Lidl is missing a trolley and that trolley is missing a wheel. Which makes me think—”

  “It’s been empty a while,” Lee finishes.

  “So either someone else took the car or there wasn’t one to begin with. We’ll have to wait for the CCTV to confirm. Any word from the management company?”

  “Not yet. And if I don’t hear from them in the next five minutes I’m going to send a bloody car to the office. Emergency number my arse.”

  “Are they”—Karl makes air quotes—“essential workers? Because if they’re not, there won’t be anyone there.”

  “You know, I don’t think apartment one is a permanent residence. There’s hardly anything in there, no personal items, place barely decorated . . . I’m thinking it’s like an Airbnb. Which would tie with there being no vehicle, right? And no one noticing that this guy has been missing for the last two weeks. Maybe he wasn’t even supposed to be here. Maybe he got caught out when the lockdown came in.”

  “Two weeks?” Karl makes a face. “Did you vom?”

  “Looks about that long. Smells it, too. And your concern is touching, but no. You definitely would have, though.”

  “This hungover, yeah. Probably. So what have we got?”

  “Body of a male,” Lee says. “I think. Lying facedown in the shower. Kneeling, really. Glass door completely shattered—safety glass, so pebbles of it are all over the show. Head wound, currently a maggot buffet breakfast. Consistent with him falling through the shower door and hitting his head on the bathroom wall.”

  “So an accident?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Was the shower on?”

  “No,” Lee says after a beat. Technically true. The drip-drip-drip of a not-quite-turned-off shower does not a shower make. “And guess what he has in his medicine cabinet? You’ll love this: Rohypnol.”

  Karl raises his eyebrows. “What the hell is he doing with that?”

  “Falling through shower doors is my guess.”

  “But why would you roofie yourself?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Lockdown boredom? Maybe he doesn’t like banana bread. What’s bothering me is that the door to the apartment was unlocked, open an inch or so.”

  “So?” Karl shrugs. “He could’ve just let the door close behind him whenever he last entered the apartment and didn’t realize it wasn’t locked.”

  “And he was dressed. In the shower.”

  “The shower he fell into, probably.”

  “Maybe.”

  “There’s always something that doesn’t fit,” Karl says.

  “Either way, we have an officially declared crime scene. I’ve already called the Super. He’s at the station. I think he’s thinking accident too, but also that it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  “Did you tell him about Tweedledum and Tweedledee?”

  Lee shakes her head, no. “It didn’t come up.”

  “It will. Shite always floats to the surface eventually.”

  “That doesn’t mean I need to reach in and pick it up with my bare hand in the meantime, does it? What about the door-to-doors?”


  “Just started,” Karl says. “Everyone’s home, so they’ll be a while.”

  “What are we asking?”

  “Do they know who occupies apartment one, when did they last see them if so, anything suspicious or out of the ordinary in the last few weeks, yada, yada, yada. Your standard fare. I think it’s five questions, total.”

  “How many have we got on it?”

  “Three pairs. One per floor.”

  “Did you remind them to stay outside? To talk to them from the corridor? To wear their masks?”

  “What am I, their mammy?” Karl’s gaze fixes on something over Lee’s shoulder. “Hold up. Who’s this Instagram account come to life?”

  Lee has no idea what that means, but when she turns she sees a man approaching Michael at the cordon. Late twenties, suit and tie. Chunky silver watch. A glimpse of novelty socks. Everything he’s wearing is fit so snugly that she fears she could be committing a sex crime just by looking at him. How does he sit down without ripping the seams? How does he get into them in the first place?

  “If that’s not an estate agent,” Karl says, “then I’m a teetotaler. Why do they always dress like they’ve a much better job?”

  “To promote feelings of wealth and trust. Property is the most expensive purchase you’ll ever make. And I just had to go into a closed space during a pandemic to look at a putrefying corpse that’s been cooking for a couple of weeks, so maybe leave the estate agents alone, eh?”

  Michael is pointing at her and Karl, sending the too-tight-suited man hurrying over to them.

  “Kevin O’Sullivan,” he says. “Viva Property Management.” He goes to extend his hand, then catches himself and aborts the move, then takes a step back again for good measure. “Sorry, I keep doing that.” He looks around. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”

  “You’ve got a decomposing body in there,” Karl says flatly.

  “Mr. O’Sullivan.” Lee takes a half-step forward, planting herself firmly between the two men before Karl can say any more. “I’m Detective Inspector Leah Riordan and this is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Karl Connolly. We received a call this morning about an odor coming from apartment number one, whose front door was also unlocked. When we arrived, I’m sorry to say that we discovered a deceased individual inside. They appear to have been there for some time.”