56 Days

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  He tries to clear a patch in the fog, to catch the words, to hear them.

  “I’m Shane’s sister! Ciara Hogan. And I know. I knew it all, from the start. And it’s okay, Oliver. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay . . .”

  He thinks he says, “What?” but he doesn’t hear it; it may have only been inside his head.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I just wanted to know what had happened that day. And what Shane might be now. What he might be like. And if the answer is like you, then that’s a good thing. Because you’re good. You’re a good man. I believe that. I’ve seen it.”

  Oliver starts to cry.

  If he really was a good man, he’d tell her the truth.

  All of it.

  “No,” he says. “I’m not.”

  And those words do come out.

  Ciara says something about calling an ambulance.

  Everything he has left, everything the rolling tide of dark hasn’t yet reached, he uses to roar out, “No!”

  “But you’ve hurt your head—”

  The water stops. Ciara must have turned it off.

  Oliver tries to turn and look up at her face, but everything feels so heavy. How did he ever carry his head on his shoulders when it feels like this? It’s pulling him down, toward the ground.

  And he realizes he’s on his knees, inside the shower, with little pebbles of . . .

  Is that glass?

  “You need help, Oliver. Here, let me—”

  But when she reaches for him, he grabs her legs.

  “No,” he says through clenched teeth. “No.”

  “Oliver, for God—”

  “I don’t . . . deserve . . .”

  “Oliver—”

  “It was me. It was me. All . . . me. Not Shane.”

  Her hands release him and he falls away, drops his head back to the ground.

  For what feels like forever, there is no noise at all except the drip-drip-drip of the tap above his head. Oliver is dimly aware of the corresponding droplets hitting the back of his neck.

  “Not Shane,” he says again.

  Then Ciara says, very quietly, “What are you talking about?”

  He turns his head until his cheek is on the cold, wet tile and his mouth isn’t obstructed. “When I told you . . .” His lips feel loose, his tongue thick. He needs to sleep. He can’t outrun it anymore. Everything is too warm, too heavy . . . “What I told you . . . happened. What was me . . . was Shane.” One last push, with all the force he can manage, clearer words, louder voice. “Swap us over. Swap me with Shane. That’s . . . that’s the truth.”

  He starts drifting off, feels the dark tide lapping at his feet, swirling around his ankles.

  “You’re saying . . .” Ciara sounds so far away. “You’re saying that you started it? That you beat up Paul? That it was your idea to drown him?”

  He opens his eyes.

  All he can see are Ciara’s sneakers, inches from his face, but they’re red.

  No, wait—everything is red. Like a filter.

  Something is bleeding. He is.

  “Yes,” he says. “Yes. That’s why . . . he attacked me . . . I wouldn’t tell the truth . . . He couldn’t go on . . . No one believing him.”

  He hears Ciara crying, but he can’t console her.

  He can’t do anything.

  He tries to lift his head, but only manages to move it slightly, so that now he’s looking at tile.

  And then he hears something else.

  Feels something else.

  Water.

  Not just in his mind but here, in reality. And not a drip-drip-drip like before. This is a thundering downpour, splashing all around him, filling his head with its gushing sound.

  And Ciara crying, still.

  And then no more.

  The tide is in.

  Tonight

  “We’re meeting the Super in twenty minutes,” Lee says. “So for the love of God, find me the crime.”

  Karl shrugs. “I’m not sure we have one.”

  They’re at the station, sitting opposite each other at one of the desks in the back. Lee is slumped in a swivel chair, absently swinging it a couple of inches from left to right and then back again, her eyes red from rubbing them in frustration a few moments ago. Karl is on a hard plastic chair that he’s pulled up to the end of the desk. He’s leaning an elbow on it and leaning his chin on his hand. The grease-stained, brown-bag remnants of a McDonald’s dinner lay strewn between them. Lee is still picking half-heartedly at a box of cold, limp McNuggets.

  It’s approaching nine o’clock and almost completely dark outside, and they’re both absolutely exhausted. But at nine o’clock, they have to meet with their Superintendent to bring him up to speed, brief him on their investigation and give some indication of where they plan on taking things next.

  And despite everything, they still don’t have a crime.

  To Kenneth Balfe’s credit, after they’d suggested to him that the tenant in one of his apartments might have had a role to play in the death of the one in the other, he’d got both Laura Mannix and his wife Alison to come down to the station for voluntary chats.

  Alison Balfe had quickly admitted that her husband wasn’t as discreet as he liked to think he was, and that she’d known full well who it was in apartment one and working in her husband’s office. She hated Oliver St Ledger, didn’t want anything to do with him, and thought he shouldn’t be anywhere near the family’s business, and she saw an opportunity to make the problem go away by whispering about it to her old college friend, Laura, who these days happened to be working for a radio shock-jock. But since the court order protecting Oliver’s identity only covered the reporting of it, there was nothing Lee or Karl could do to Alison Balfe. She hadn’t broken any laws.

  Laura’s tales of Wayback Machines and ears not aging and fortuitously convenient corporate lets made a great story, but that’s all it was. She’d been trying to keep Alison out of it, she told them. Karl had told her she should write a crime novel.

  But she had admitted entering apartment one, taking photos of Oliver’s body, and leaving again without alerting anyone to his death. She hadn’t even told Alison, which might have contributed to the current state of affairs: the two women were refusing to talk to each other. Laura insisted that she hadn’t touched anything while she was inside, and so had no reason to wipe anything down before she left again, but she did admit to deliberately setting off the fire alarm at the complex at least twice. These were attempts to flush the residents outside, including Oliver St Ledger and his mysterious girlfriend, to create opportunities for her to see and maybe even approach them.

  The postmortem had concluded a couple of hours ago: Oliver St Ledger had officially died by drowning. Toxicology would take longer to come back, but the working theory was he’d taken a Rohypnol, which he had a prescription for, and fallen in the shower. Right about now, Kenneth Balfe was formally identifying the body.

  Whoever had wiped down the surfaces in apartment one had done a bloody good job. Of the prints they did find, only two sets were not a match to the deceased, and they were in low-traffic areas: the back of the TV unit, the bottom of a wardrobe door. They could plausibly belong to previous occupants. They didn’t match anything on file.

  The only item of interest recovered was Oliver’s phone, which showed text messages exchanged with a user he’d entered as “Ciara,” the last of which was from nearly three weeks before.

  Twenty days ago, Oliver had sent a text to this woman saying:

  I know it’s over but I don’t want it to end this way. Can we talk? We can meet somewhere public if you prefer.

  Eighteen days ago, he’d received a response from her.

  Maybe we can have a drink after lockdown ends. Stay safe x

  The content of their historical m
essages suggested that Oliver and this Ciara woman had been seeing each other, but had evidently broken up before his death. No one was answering at the other number now; ringing it got you an automated message saying the user could not be reached at this time. The text messages contained no useful detail that might help identify the sender. They were awaiting registration information from the service provider, but in the meantime, they’d been informed that it was a pay-as-you-go number. The user could have potentially registered any name and address they liked because none of it was subject to verification.

  Also on Oliver’s phone were a string of text messages and missed calls from his brother, Richard, wondering why he wasn’t answering. One of them apologized for an earlier conversation in which Richard had apparently told Oliver that he shouldn’t be staying in that apartment, that he knew Alison Balfe “hated his guts” and couldn’t be trusted, and that Oliver needed to get out of there for his own safety. The last one, sent last night Irish time, had said if Oliver didn’t check in within the next twenty-four hours, Richard was going to send Kenneth to his door.

  When Lee spoke to Richard this afternoon, just before he boarded the first of three flights that would eventually land him back in Dublin—and facing a two-week self-isolation—he’d explained that he was the only member of the family still in contact with Oliver. After a threat of exposure in London a couple of months earlier, Oliver had cut all contact with the friends and colleagues he’d had there. He’d had a therapist, Dan, but they were only speaking once a month at the moment.

  Richard had asked that the court order continue to be observed and no information about his brother’s true identity be released to the press. Lee assured him that would be the case. The Garda Press Office, as a rule, released as little detail as possible, and the story that appeared on ThePaper.ie this afternoon had contained about as much information as the press were ever going to get.

  Gardaí investigating after body of man (29)

  discovered in Dublin 6

  Gardaí in Dublin are investigating the death of a 29-year-old man whose body was found at an apartment block in Harold’s Cross, Dublin 6, early this morning. The grim discovery was made following reports by neighbors of an odor. Gardaí are now probing the circumstances surrounding the man’s death, although sources say foul play is not suspected. The body has been removed to St. James’s Hospital, where a postmortem will be carried out. Anyone with information can contact the Garda Confidential Line at 1-800-666-111.

  Thankfully today was Reopening Plan Day, and all available column inches and airtime were saturated with the government’s five-phase plan to slowly reopen the country beginning on May eighteenth, as well as the heady news that as of Tuesday, everyone could venture as far as five kilometers from their home after five weeks of being confined to just two.

  No one cared about a nameless body being found in an apartment, especially when it wasn’t even because of a crime.

  “Something’s not right about this,” Lee says, absently wiping drops of condensation off the side of her McDonald’s Coke with a forefinger.

  “Unless I missed the news about the pathologist finding a seven-inch blade in the dude’s back,” Karl says, “it’s an accidental death. The end.”

  “Let’s talk it through.”

  “What have we been doing?”

  “Okay. So.” Lee sits up. She takes a few sips of the Coke, even though she knows the sheer amount of ice in there will have diluted any caffeine benefit. “Okay. So. Okay.”

  “Off to a great start there,” Karl mutters.

  “How do you still have energy for sarcasm? You didn’t even sleep last night.”

  “It’s because I am a—how do you say?—young person.”

  “There’s seven years between us, Karl.”

  “You tick a different box on the form, that’s what matters.”

  “Who turned off the water?”

  “He did,” Karl says. “Tom Searson said that was a possibility. St Ledger had enough left in him to reach up and slap the lever down, but not enough to not sink to the floor and drown in whatever water had already collected there.”

  “What about the text messages? His says he doesn’t want it to end this way and offers to meet somewhere public if she prefers. That sounds like there was some big blow-up, that she might feel unsafe meeting him behind closed doors.”

  “But it could also refer to lockdown,” Karl says. “They’re two households, they’re not supposed to be meeting behind closed doors. And her response doesn’t suggest anything is wrong. Lee, can I ask you a question? Do you not have enough work to do? Are you bored? Is that it?”

  “Why isn’t she answering that number now?”

  “She changed it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because people do. Sometimes, people change their phone numbers.”

  “How long have you had yours? I think I’ve mine going on twenty years.”

  “Lee, come on. We both know there’s always something that refuses to fit the jigsaw. That doesn’t mean we can’t still see what the picture is. And you have to admit, the only reason you’re still even looking at this jigsaw at all is because of who he is. Take away Mill River, take away Laura Mannix—what have you got? A guy who drugged himself and fell in the shower. The end.”

  “You do know that you saying ‘the end’ doesn’t constitute a legal judgment?”

  “It should,” Karl says. “It’s much more efficient.”

  “We’ll have to look for this Ciara girl.”

  “How do you suggest we do that? Unless something comes back on that phone registration—and I’m not holding my breath there—all we have to go on is a first name.”

  “And a Cork accent. And Laura’s physical description.”

  Karl rolls his eyes. “You’re right. I’m sure we’ll find her in no time.”

  Lee drums her fingers on the desktop, thinking.

  “Why are you so determined to find a crime here?” Karl asks. “We’re not going to get any blowback. There’s one relative who lives on the other side of the world and he wants all this kept hush-hush. Laura Mannix knows she’s dodged a bullet and will be on her best behavior from here on out with this—she’s not going to be a problem either. So let’s just tell the Super our thinking is that it was an accident but we’ll have a look for this Ciara woman, sure, and we’re waiting for toxicology to confirm, but beyond that . . .” He turns up his palms. “What else is there to do?”

  “I just feel like we’re getting swindled somehow,” Lee says. “Like someone is offering us a brand-new car for a bargain price and assuring us everything is aboveboard. We know it can’t be true, but the car seems fine, so we can’t quite put our finger on where the lie is.” She sighs. “Let’s say he did turn off the water by himself. Fine. But why was his girlfriend using a pay-as-you-go phone? When did you last meet a twentysomething who wasn’t on bill-pay? They need unlimited data for all their, I don’t know, tick-tocking and stuff.”

  Karl snorts at this.

  “And isn’t it a bit convenient,” she continues, “that not only is the phone disconnected now, but that their communications stopped, what? At most three or four days before he died? And then you have the fact that the entire apartment was wiped clean, the door was unlocked and . . . What was that other thing? Oh yes, he was a convicted child killer whose identity was protected, with a journalist on his tail.”

  “But he wasn’t murdered,” Karl says.

  They both sit in silence for a moment.

  Then Karl says, “Can I throw something crazy out there?”

  “You’ve never asked my permission before.”

  “What if there is no Keyser Söze?”

  Lee looks at him blankly. “What’s that?”

  “Seriously? Lee, your pop-culture references are all over the show. You give out to me for not knowing th
at Louise Lane woman—”

  “Lois.”

  “—but you don’t know Keyser Söze?”

  “I know we’re meeting the Super in fifteen minutes, Karl. That’s what I know.”

  “What if there is no Ciara?”

  “But there was. He was texting her. And Laura met her.”

  “He was texting someone and Laura says she met her. Look, I’m not saying there wasn’t a girlfriend. I’m not saying Oliver didn’t think her name was Ciara. But what if that was—drumroll please—actually our friend Ms. Laura Mannix?”

  Lee tries to push aside her brain-melting exhaustion to consider this.

  “It fits,” Karl continues. “And it would explain the convenient timing of the end of their relationship and why she’s not answering the phone now. Laura poses as Ciara to get close to St Ledger. St Ledger roofies himself and drowns in a puddle of shower water. Laura goes to the apartment, discovers this, freaks out because she thinks he did it on purpose because he found out who she really was or whatever, and she’ll get the blame, so instead of reporting it, she cleans the place down and leaves. Sends that text message to make the”—Karl makes air quotes—“girlfriend go away. Waits for him to get whiffy enough for someone else to call it in and then worms her way into our investigation because getting some juice on that is the next best thing. Tells us she didn’t speak to him—again, convenient—but that she did talk to his girlfriend. I mean, come on. You have to admit it all fits.”

  “Maybe you should write a crime novel,” Lee says. She chews on her lip, thinking. “It’s not a completely crazy idea, but . . . she must be ten years older than him.”

  “So? Guys in their twenties love that shit. And she’s hot.”

  “Oh, she is, is she? Good to know your mind was on the case, Karly boy.”

  Karl grins. “My mind was.”

  “Why do I always feel like I need a shower after I talk to you? Can you stop sexualizing our witnesses, please?”

  “I mean, she definitely has that I-might-wake-up-tomorrow-morning-to-find-her-standing-over-me-with-a-knife energy, but yeah. And, hey.” He holds up his hands. “Ciara. Laura. They both end in a.”