56 Days

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  He doesn’t care about the food or the coffee. He just wants to make sure that he won’t have to regret this any more than he already does.

  He picks up the menu and pretends to read.

  “I am starving,” she says, picking up hers.

  Thursday night was supposed to be the end of this. He was going to meet her for a drink and then disappear. That’s what he’d needed to do and he was going to do it.

  And it would’ve been easy to, what with everything that’s going on now. She probably wouldn’t even have thought twice about it, and she certainly wouldn’t have suspected him of anything.

  Instead, they’d ended up back at his place. Undressing each other. Somehow. Now she not only knows where he’s living but she’s slept in his bed and seen his scar.

  Caught out unexpectedly, he’d told her the same story he’d told Lucy back in London. He hopes this isn’t a sign of things to come.

  Part of him can’t believe that it’s happened, but a larger part knows it did because he’d wanted it to.

  Because he likes her.

  He likes her and it’s going to ruin everything.

  Again.

  “What are you having?” she asks. “I think I might get the baked eggs.”

  He knows he’s standing with his hand in the fire. He can see the flames tickling his skin. And past experience tells him that any moment now, the heat will burn through the outer layer to his nerve endings and drop him into a world of screaming pain.

  There’s no other possible outcome, he knows this.

  But he just can’t pull his hand away.

  He likes the heat.

  “Sounds good,” he says. “I think I’ll have that too.”

  They set their menus down. He can’t see any waiter in this section of the café, but presumably one will appear.

  “Don’t look,” Ciara whispers. “But in the corner, to your right.”

  Then she lifts her chin to indicate that he should look.

  One of their fellow patrons is standing, balanced precariously, on her chair, pointing a camera the size of a small dog at the tableful of artfully arranged food and drink below her. After she inspects the results of the latest shot on the camera’s screen, the photographer bends down to slide a coffee cup a couple of inches to the left, wobbling a bit as the wooden chair rocks unsteadily beneath her feet.

  Behaving in public in a way that attracts so much attention without seemingly caring who sees is such an alien behavior to Oliver that he classes it as a kind of psychopathy.

  “Anything for the ’Gram,” Ciara mutters.

  They’d woken up in the same bed this morning but they hadn’t stayed together since; after he suggested they walk into town for breakfast, she’d told him she’d meet him there instead, that she needed to “get ready” at her place. Change clothes, put on makeup, whatever else women do. It gave him an hour at home alone, which he used to search for her on social media, more thoroughly this time, using all the information he’d gleaned—but, again, to no avail.

  He hasn’t been able to find anything even resembling a corresponding profile on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, despite forensically searching for every possibility he could think of. Her full name. Her first name plus “Dublin.” Her first name plus “Cork.”

  All those with her last name and first initial.

  All recent posts tagged with things like #thesidecarbar, #cocktails, and #French75 in case her username was a string of random numbers or some other name altogether.

  Nothing.

  Not even an account set to private that might be her. No old posts belonging to other accounts in which she’d been tagged.

  She just wasn’t there.

  And not just on social media, but online in general.

  Apart from the LinkedIn profile he’d found for her on the day they’d met, there wasn’t a single Google search result about her. She was so not there, it was suspicious.

  A person would have to work at keeping the internet so clean of their name.

  Or would they?

  Maybe if you were a normal person, it wasn’t that hard.

  And Ciara might just not use social media. It wasn’t unheard of. After all, weren’t digital detoxes all the rage? And in the hours they’ve spent together, he’s never seen her take a single picture with her phone. Any time he’s caught a glimpse of her screen, she seems to be checking her email or scrolling through news headlines.

  And now that she’s brought up the subject, it’s an opportunity he can’t waste.

  “You’re not on the ’Gram, then?” he asks.

  She shakes her head. “Nope.”

  “Not now or you never were?”

  “I think I had an account for about five minutes a few years back, but I never posted anything to it. Why? Are you?”

  “Oh, so you’re going with pretending you haven’t already had a look for me on there, are you?” He grins.

  “I haven’t! I swear . . . Honestly, it wouldn’t even have occurred to me.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “So you’re not down with all the cool kids, then?”

  “I think,” Ciara says, “that using the phrase ‘down with all the cool kids’ might preclude you from being that . . . ?”

  “Fair. And I’m not, to answer your question. On the ’Gram.”

  “What a shame. You’d be such a hit on there.”

  “Would I?”

  “With that face?” she says. “Of course you would. And you’re an architect, for God’s sake.”

  “Not quite.”

  “You would be on there. Social media is no place for nuance. You need to milk all that building buildings shit.”

  “That’s actually what my degree course was called: Bachelor of Building Buildings Shit.”

  She laughs. Then says, “So why aren’t you on there?”

  “Honestly . . . ?” He exhales, buying time. He needs to do a better job of this than he did with the scar. Keep it simple. “I just don’t, you know, get it. I’m not against it or anything, I just wouldn’t know what to do with it.” He pauses. “Why aren’t you on there?”

  “Because I’ve seen behind the curtain.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “I meant for it to.” She leans forward, elbows on the table. “Look, nothing is free, right? We pay for these apps with our data. That’s what all those user agreements that no one ever reads actually say. But the fact that all these tech giants are collecting information about us is not what everyone should be worried about—it’s what they’re doing with it that’s terrifying. I can make a list of documentaries for you to watch—horror movies, really—but the too-long-didn’t-read is that they’re feeding the data to AIs that are working to erode the very idea of free will. I can’t stop it—I don’t think anyone can, it’s too late—but I don’t need to actively help either. So I’m down to just LinkedIn because in our industry if you’re not on there it’s like you don’t exist at all, but that’s it. Our robot overlords are coming regardless, but I’m not going to hold the door open for them.”

  He allows himself a moment of believing all this, of contemplating what it would mean for him if this were actually true, if Ciara really didn’t use social media. He tries to imagine it. What if there were no danger that, through her, his name and face would make their way online, sending some vigilante Twitter mob into the street bearing torches and pitchforks, catching the attention of the tabloid media?

  He could keep seeing her. For a little while longer, anyway.

  So long as she keeps believing him.

  Today

  The smell in the lobby is worse than before.

  Through the glass doors opposite her, Lee can see that the occupants of the apartments in the corridor between here and the scene have w
isely taken to their terraces. For the time being, they can’t leave unless they have what counts as an emergency reason, and a global pandemic has put an end to most of those. Normally they might relocate them to a hotel, but in the current circumstances that’s not the easy option it might have previously been. Once the forensics guys have done their business and the pathologist has been and gone, the body can be removed and the apartment can be cleaned. Until then, she hopes the weather stays fine for them.

  Masked up and trying to breathe through her mouth, Lee opens the box assigned to apartment one with a key that one of the uniforms has borrowed from the woman in apartment four. Apparently all the letterbox keys are the same here; she wonders if the residents know and, if so, how they feel about that. She retrieves the contents with a gloved hand. While the uniform hurries off to return the key, Lee takes her bounty back outside—and herself away from the smell.

  Karl is waiting by their car, looking inordinately pleased with himself for somehow managing to rustle up two coffees.

  They sit in the front seats, leaving the doors open so they can keep one ear on the scene and respond if anyone needs them.

  He sets the cups on the dash and pulls a clear evidence bag from the glove compartment, holding it open so Lee can drop the envelope inside.

  It’s slim and cream, smooth and stiff. Premium paper. Like something a wedding invite might come in.

  There’s nothing on the front except a name handwritten in blue ink.

  Oliver St Ledger.

  The name tugs on something at the back of Lee’s mind, but she doesn’t know why it should. It doesn’t mean anything to her. She can’t think where she might have heard it before, or in what context.

  “What’s that?” Karl asks, pointing.

  Lee flips the bag around and sees more handwritten words on the back of the envelope, just above the flap.

  This isn’t what you’re worried it is.

  “I bet it is what he’s worried it is,” Karl says.

  They can’t open it; scenes-of-crime officers will have to do that, just in case. For now, Lee sets it on the dash, name-side up.

  They both sit back and stare at it while they sip their coffees.

  Lee frowns. “Did you put sugar in this?”

  “Three,” Karl says. “And don’t you dare tell me you can’t taste it.” He shakes his head. “You’d really want to get your bloods checked.”

  “I’m not the one having a can of Red Bull and two Marlboros for breakfast.”

  “What did you have then? An egg-white omelet and a wheatgrass shot?”

  “I didn’t have anything,” she says. “I’m fasting.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “Does that name mean anything to you?” Lee jerks her chin toward the envelope on the dash. “Oliver St Ledger?”

  “Should it?”

  “Don’t know. It sounds familiar to me, and St Ledger is a fairly uncommon name here. I don’t think I’ve ever actually met anyone called that, though.”

  “Maybe you’re thinking of an actor or something.”

  Lee pulls her phone from a pocket and, one-handed and somewhat awkwardly, opens up the browser on it and enters Oliver St Ledger into the Google search bar. The results are your typical internet soup: social media profiles, obituaries, a staff listing on a university website.

  But there are very few exact-name matches, hardly anything for Dublin and nothing at all that would explain why that name would mean something to her.

  “No stamp,” Karl says. “Hand delivered.”

  “I’m impressed you noticed.”

  “The caffeine is kicking in, what can I say?”

  Lee reaches for the plastic bag and flips it over, so they’re now looking at the message on the back.

  “‘This isn’t what you’re worried it is,’” Karl reads aloud. “What does that mean?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “My guess is bad breakup,” he says. “Or custody battle. Or a bunny-boiling psycho-stalker bitch.”

  “I take it back. Remind me to sign you up for sensitivity training, will you, Karl?”

  “Is that the role-playing thing? I did that already.”

  “I’m not sure it took.”

  “What do you think it means, then?”

  “Well . . .” Lee sighs. “I think we’ve probably been biased by the fact that we found it in the letterbox for an apartment where someone’s been decomposing for a fortnight. It could be something innocuous. Positive. Nice, even. Like . . . an invitation.”

  “All right, Pollyanna.”

  “Did that architect crowd ring you back yet?”

  “Nah. I’ll try them again.” Karl takes out his phone and unlocks it with a thumb, spilling a few drops of coffee on the leg of his jeans in the process. “Let’s ask them if they’re missing an Ollie.”

  Ollie.

  Ollie St Ledger.

  The name and everything it means comes speeding from the back of Lee’s brain to its front and center.

  Suddenly she knows exactly where she knows it from and this knowledge lodges a cold stone of dread right in the center of her chest.

  “Back in a sec,” she says to Karl, who already has his phone to his ear.

  Lee climbs out of the car, setting her coffee on the roof. She walks a few steps away, dials the reception at Sundrive Road, and asks if anyone there has a mobile number for Detective Inspector Bill O’Leary, retired. Someone has a number of someone who might, and she waits while they make a call.

  Ollie St Ledger.

  Christ, if it’s him in there . . .

  She’ll be lucky to get that curry next Friday night.

  Still on hold, Lee returns to collect her coffee and sips it while pacing back and forth just outside the outer cordon of Garda tape.

  Through the rear window of the car, she can see that Karl has finished his call and is now looking at her questioningly in the rear-view mirror’s reflection.

  She turns her back to him.

  She won’t say anything to him until she’s sure.

  Ollie St Ledger. He’d hardly be using that name. He wouldn’t be, surely? He’d have changed it. To his mother maiden’s name, usually, in cases like this. That’s what tends to happen.

  Not that there’s a lot of cases like this one.

  A voice comes on the end of the line and says they’ve got Bill’s number, that they’ll text it to her.

  Lee stops pacing and looks down at the phone, waiting for the message to come in, willing the sender to type faster.

  If he’s not using that name—and he almost certainly isn’t—that means that whoever put that envelope in his letterbox knows who he really is.

  Or thinks they do, which, if that envelope is related to the fact that he’s lying dead on the floor of his bathroom now and they’re wrong about it, is much, much worse.

  Ding.

  Lee taps the number in the text, initiating a call.

  It rings an excruciating number of times before the voice of an older man answers with a gruff, “Yeah?”

  “Bill, it’s Lee Riordan. How are you?”

  A beat passes before he says, “Concerned that this isn’t a social call.”

  Straight to business—just how he was back when they worked together, fifteen years ago. She was still in uniform then, fresh out of Templemore, and Bill was already the wizened elder statesman, famous even outside the force for his involvement in several high-profile cases.

  “It’s not,” Lee says. “Unfortunately.” She takes another step away from the car, the cordon, everyone else, and lowers her voice. “Bill, I’m at a scene in Harold’s Cross and I’ve got something sensitive to ask you. I have a name. I just want to know if it means anything to you. That’s all I’m asking, at this point, for both our sakes. A yes or
no is all I’m looking for. Okay?”

  “Okay . . .”

  Lee takes a deep breath. “Ollie St Ledger.”

  The pause that follows is so long, she pulls the phone from her ear to check the call is still connected.

  Bill says, “It means something to me, yes.”

  “Thank you. I thought it would, but I wanted to make sure.”

  “If you need me—”

  “I might. Is this the best number for you?”

  “So long as I hear the phone ringing. Hearing isn’t what it used to be. But the wife will if I don’t.”

  Lee hesitates. She should leave it there, but . . .

  She feels obligated to give him something in exchange for this.

  She says, “I think maybe he’s dead.”

  Another long pause. Then:

  “Good.”

  Click.

  Lee goes back to the car, sits down inside.

  “KB Studios do have an Oliver,” Karl says, “but his last name is Kennedy. Guy I spoke to says the firm has an apartment here, yeah, and he thinks Kennedy could’ve been staying in it, but he’s not sure. Seems to be the company motto.” He mimics a television-commercial voice-over. “KB Studios: Where We’re Never Sure. Remind me never to hire them to, you know, design a building, would you? And no pictures on the website or any social that I can find, but the guy described Kennedy as late twenties, six foot, light-brown hair, good-looking. But also said he had big ears and an angular jaw so . . . I know he was pretty ripe and facedown, but could that be what’s in there?”

  “What’s in there,” Lee says, “is a complete and utter shit storm. Potentially.”

  “Oh?” Karl frowns. “Who were you talking to?”

  “We’ll need to keep this very close to our chests, for now.”

  “Loving the suspense, Lee, but—”

  “At least until we’re sure.” She sighs. “I really was looking forward to that curry, you know.”

  “For fuck’s sake, what’s—”

  She turns to look at him. “Do you remember the Mill River case?”

  32 Days Ago

  After the warm glow of Sunday night, Monday feels like the cold, sharp shock of the real start.