56 Days

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  He’s squeezing her hand so tight, it’s started to hurt.

  When he speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper.

  “And what did you say?”

  “Nothing, to that. I thought she was a headcase.”

  “Did she tell you her name?”

  “Not that night,” Ciara lies. “But today she did. It’s Laura.” She pauses, looks down at her hand in his. “You’re, ah, kind of hurting me. A little.”

  He pulls away as if her hand is on fire.

  “Sorry,” he says. “So . . . You met her again today, this Laura woman?”

  Ciara nods. “I was in Stephen’s Green”—let him assume it was the square—“and she just walked right up to me. Said she knew it was you—Oliver—that I was staying with, and that she knew there was a good reason why I might not want to confirm it, and something about my wanting to protect you. She said she knows your last name isn’t Kennedy. And that she’s a journalist.”

  His face is as pale as she’s ever seen it.

  “Who is she, Oliver?” She swallows hard. “And who are you?”

  Today

  “She’s lying,” Lee says.

  She and Karl have stepped into the corridor, leaving Laura Mannix alone inside her apartment, still insisting that everything she’d told them was the truth—and furiously and fruitlessly deleting pictures of their crime scene from her phone, if Lee’s instincts are correct.

  “At least by omission,” she continues. “Because why would she assume it’s a suicide? We don’t know what he did yet, but for all she knows he’s lying downstairs in a pool of blood with a knife in his heart.”

  “Or suspended from the ceiling in a gimp suit,” Karl offers.

  “You know, I think I’ve had more than enough of your sex games for today—”

  “—is a sentence I’ve never heard before,” he finishes, grinning.

  “Karl,” she says warningly.

  “All right, all right.” He folds his arms. “So, what? You think she’s been inside?”

  “I know she has. I mean, does she really expect us to believe that she does this super-sleuthing, reconnaissance crap, tracks this guy like a bloodhound back to his apartment, and then can’t be arsed going from one side of the building to the other when there isn’t sight nor sound of him for two weeks? And ignores the smell in the lobby that’s coming from his side?” Lee scoffs. “There’s something she’s not telling us. This puzzle is missing a big piece. She says she’s doing this for the radio show, and that, yeah okay, she might get something out of it in the future, but who’s funding this fishing expedition in the meantime? Who’s paying to put her in a place like this, indefinitely, when she lives half an hour away? And why is she still here, when she hasn’t seen him for two weeks?”

  Karl frowns. “Why is she still here?”

  “For a front-row seat to this would be my guess. Which is why she talked to us. I bet we just secured ourselves two starring roles in her ‘definitive account,’ available soon from a bargain bin near you.”

  “Suits me,” Karl says. “One step closer to Crimecall.”

  “They’re never going to let you on there, Karly. Let it go.”

  “But I’ve a face for it.”

  “For narration, is it? Because that’s all they let our lowly ranks do on there: talk the public through the CCTV images.”

  “Well, a boy can dream, can’t he?”

  “The problem is—”

  “I’m too good-looking so I’d just distract from it? Beauty is a curse.”

  “—if she did go in there and take photos, what can we even do about it? You can’t interfere with a crime scene before it’s designated a crime scene, so we don’t have her on that. It’s not trespassing without intent, so we don’t have her on burglary unless she took something of his when she left, which maybe she did, but . . .” Lee sighs. “Maybe obstruction. She didn’t tell anybody about the body and she just lied to us.”

  “What about impeding the apprehension of an offender?” Karl suggests. “No warrant required. My favorite.”

  “They’re definitely never going to let you on Crimecall if you go around saying shit like that, Karl. And who’s the offender? We don’t have a crime yet, remember?”

  “What if we do?”

  “Then we haul her in. But until then . . . Maybe I could convince the Super to get this place designated a secondary crime scene. Then we could search it, at least.”

  “And annoy her.”

  “Two good reasons.”

  “In the meantime,” Karl says, “I have some good news for you.”

  “And you waited until now to bring it up?”

  “I spoke with the managing director of KB Studios, Kenneth Balfe. You can see what he did there. But get this: his son, also Kenneth but goes by Ken, is BFFs with Richard St Ledger, Oliver’s older brother. They’ve been friends since school; the families would’ve known each other. Richard lives in Australia now and Ken is in Toronto. Kenneth—stay with me here—knows the whole story, or thinks he does, because he was going on about what a good guy Oliver is and how he just made a mistake and he was only a child, yada, yada, yada. Said it was just ‘kids being kids.’ What kind of fucked-up kids does he know? Anyway—”

  “So it is him, then?” Lee interrupts. “The Oliver St Ledger?”

  “The guy who was living in that apartment was, yeah.”

  “Did you get a—”

  “Yes, I got a number for the brother.”

  “And to think you started off the day butt-naked in handcuffs.”

  “So you’ve been thinking about that, have you?”

  “Is the elder Balfe here in Dublin? Could he identify the body for us?”

  “Dalkey. And he’s going to call the brother.” Lee’s face must immediately convey her concern because Karl adds quickly, “I made it clear we don’t know who’s in there yet, don’t worry. Said I’d call him back when I knew.”

  “I don’t want the brother getting a call from anyone else first.”

  “I don’t think Balfe will be spreading the news. He seemed very concerned that his wife would find out about him not only employing a convicted child killer, but giving him a place to stay as well.”

  “Did you ask Balfe why no one missed him?”

  “He took unpaid leave a couple of weeks back. The firm was encouraging it to help with overheads while construction is stopped. He’d have been due back Tuesday.”

  “He wouldn’t have been in contact with him otherwise? Socially?”

  “Apparently not. The guy was doing his son’s friend a favor. Beyond that . . . I don’t think they were exactly bosom buddies.”

  The door leading to the stairwell opens then, directly opposite, and Garda Declan Casey steps out.

  “The pathologist has finished his initial survey of the scene,” he says to Lee. “Asked if you wanted a walk-through before they start on removing the body?”

  “I do,” she says. Then, to Karl, “Get Lois Lane’s prints, would you? And whatever else you can get out of her. You never know, she might just admit she went in and took photos. Give them to you, even. Stranger things have happened.”

  “Got it from the context,” he says, “but am I supposed to know who Lois Lane is?”

  “Really, Karl?” Lee pauses. “She used to be the host of Crimecall.”

  Declan frowns at this, and Lee indicates with a jerk of her head that he should set off back down the stairs before he corrects her and ruins it.

  He turns and goes, and she follows him.

  Tom Searson, deputy pathologist, is waiting for her in the lobby along with her old friend, the stench.

  He’s in a full forensics suit—white disposable coveralls, gloves, mask—and holding out another one to her, still folded and wrapped in plastic.

  She ta
kes it with one hand while pulling her face mask off with the other.

  “Lee,” Tom says with a smile in his voice. “Long time no see.”

  He’s a short man with a bit of a beer belly, so the suit is stretched across his middle but baggy and loose everywhere else.

  “I know. How are things?”

  “Oh, you know.” He rests his hands on his belly and rocks on his heels a little. “Can’t complain.”

  Lee rips open the plastic pack and starts pulling out the contents.

  “You got here in record time,” she says. “Are you near?”

  “Donnybrook. Could’ve cycled over.” Tom nods in the direction of apartment one. “Have you been in?”

  “Yes, unfortunately.”

  “It’s particularly unpleasant in there, I must say.”

  “Definitely in my Top Ten. Maybe even Top Five, with the maggots.”

  Tom turns to collect a little jar of Vicks VapoRub off the top of the letterboxes.

  “There’s no shame in it,” he says, holding up the jar. “I prefer to stick it out myself but I’m used to it. I’d rather you be able to concentrate. Consider it a study aid.”

  “Hey, if it was good enough for Clarice . . .” Lee bends so she can step into the coverall. “What have we got in there, do you think?”

  “Do you like riddles, Lee?”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Riddles?”

  “There’s one that goes like this,” Tom says. “A man takes to his bed in his chateau in the French Alps in the dead of winter, leaving the window open. The next morning he’s discovered dead of a stab wound to the heart, with a glass of bloody water on the bedside table next to him. How did he die?”

  While he’s speaking, Lee zips the coveralls all the way up to her neck, takes the Vicks from Tom and smears a generous glob across her upper lip. Then she dabs a dot just inside each of her nostrils for good measure.

  It immediately starts to sting, making her eyes water. But even on a shallow breath, the menthol feels as if it’s shooting its way straight into her brain.

  She hopes it still feels that way when they get inside the apartment.

  “I presume,” she says, “that if there was a shotgun under his bed or a serial killer waiting outside . . . ?”

  “Trust that you’ve been furnished with all the pertinent details.”

  Lee pulls on the pair of gloves and puts on a bigger, more rigid face mask.

  “An icicle,” she says. “Grabbed it through the window, stuck himself with it, stuck it in the glass afterwards. It melted, the end.”

  Tom’s eyes crinkle above his mask; he’s smiling.

  “Very well done!”

  “Why the hell are you asking me about riddles, Tom?”

  “Because,” he says, pointing down the corridor, “we’ve got a good one waiting for us in there.”

  23 Days Ago

  He doesn’t want to scare her, or upset her, although both are surely unavoidable.

  What’s important now is that she lets him tell her the truth, that she stays long enough to hear it. He needs her to know that he’s not a physical threat, that the things he’ll speak about are so far in the past, so separate from the man he is now, that they may as well be on another planet. To increase the chances of her believing this, he gets up and moves toward the kitchen, standing near the breakfast bar, leaving a generous space between his body and where she is still sitting, on the couch.

  “I am who you think I am, Ciara,” he says. “I promise you that. But a long, long time ago, when I was very young, when I was just a child, I was involved in something that . . . that I deeply, deeply regret. That I should never have done. That I wish I hadn’t every single moment since.”

  He risks a look at her face. She’s sitting perfectly still, blinking rapidly.

  “The most important thing,” he continues, “is that you know I would never hurt you.” Her eyebrows rise slightly, in surprise he thinks. “I couldn’t. That’s not who I am. It’s not who I was either, but getting people to understand that . . .” He takes a deep breath. “The other thing I need you to know is that this was real, you and me. It is real.” His hands are shaking worse than ever; he sticks them in his pockets to try to hide this fact. “Look, I’m just going to come out with it, okay? There’s no easy way to say this . . .”

  But he doesn’t know where to start.

  With what happened, or what people say did? With his role in it, or the outcome?

  “Have you . . . ?” He has to stop here and lick his lips; his mouth is suddenly devoid of even a hint of moisture. “Have you ever heard of the Mill River case?”

  Total silence, as if they’ve both been transported to the airless vacuum of space.

  Then she says, very softly and slowly, drawing out the vowel sound, “No . . . ?”

  Good, he thinks. That’s good. Blank slate.

  He can control the sequence in which he shares the pertinent information, build up to the big shock.

  “It happened in 2003,” he says. Ciara would have been eight years old, already living in the Isle of Man. “In Kildare. Mill River was this new housing estate—hundreds and hundreds of homes—that had been built just outside Ballymore. On the banks of the river. There was a . . .”

  Oliver stops. He has never had to say this out loud, never had to explain what happened to him to anyone else in his whole life. They always knew already. Either because that’s why they were meeting, as in the case of Dan, or because they were demanding answers from him after someone else had already told them, as in the case of Lucy, in London, just a few months ago.

  And now he finds that he’s not sure he can.

  “There was a murder,” he says. “Of a boy. Aged ten.”

  Ten.

  The older he gets himself, the worse that fact becomes.

  The more it drips with horror, the heavier the droplets become.

  “And—” He takes another deep breath, feeling like his heart is about to break out of his chest cavity, wondering if this is what a heart attack feels like, if he is on the verge of having one. “And two other boys, aged twelve, were convicted of it.”

  He can’t look at her.

  He looks at the floor.

  Tears he didn’t know he was crying blur his vision, start to drip onto his cheeks.

  When he finally says the words that matter, his voice is barely a whisper.

  “And I . . . I was one of them.”

  78 Days Ago

  They’d met on the street outside, Ciara having arrived first, hugging each other before pushing through the restaurant’s revolving doors and joining the line for the host’s attention. He’d led them to a four-top just inside the window, offering both an uninterrupted view of Emmet Place and a close-up of the man talking animatedly on his phone while also picking his nose at one of the outside tables.

  “Look at him,” Siobhán said, rapping a knuckle on the window to get his attention. “Having a right old dig for himself. Just what you want to see with your lunch.” When she threw him a disgusted look he threw one back, but also—mercifully—stopped picking.

  As they shuffled out of their winter coats and sat into their chairs, Ciara waited, literally biting her tongue until the first possible moment to ask about the only thing that’s on either of their minds presented itself.

  “So? What did the doctor say?”

  When she sees her sister’s eyes glisten, she wishes she’d waited a little bit longer.

  “They’re going to move her into hospice care.”

  Even though that’s what Ciara was expecting—what they’ve both been expecting, for months now—it still comes as a body-blow.

  Ciara absorbs the impact in silence.

  Then she says, “What was Mam’s reaction?”

  “She wasn’t there. It was just me and Dr.
Corrigan. He says they’ll tell her she’s going in for respite—and that’s what we’ll be telling her, too, even though we know she won’t be coming back out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s how it’s done. You’ve got to give people hope, even when there isn’t any.”

  They slip into a silence.

  Ciara’s heart hurts for Siobhán. She has always been much closer to their mother—being older, she could remember her from before, when by all accounts she was an entirely different person, loving and funny and full of beans—and even now, after she’s gone, Ciara will still have her older sister, but Siobhán will have no one further up the generational chain. No older, wiser family member to turn to, to rely on, to ask for help. She’ll be the full stop at the end of their family’s sentence.

  She’ll also be the capital letter at the start of her own—her husband, Pat, who Ciara secretly thinks is incredibly boring but who adores Siobhán, and their kids, Lily and David—but that won’t do much to lessen the loss.

  Ciara reaches across the table and takes her sister’s hand. “I’m sorry, Shiv.”

  She sniffs, smiles a little, sadly. “This is happening to you, too, you know.”

  “I know, but . . . I never knew the same woman you did. Or at least, I can’t remember her if I did.”

  “That woman died seventeen years ago.” Siobhán wipes away a tear, keeping her eye makeup intact. “This will be her second death. Or maybe even her third, after . . .”

  She trails off.

  She won’t say his name. They never do.

  “At least this time,” Siobhán says, “we’ll get to grieve.”