Faithful Place

by Tana French

  “Chloe and her family,” I said, hitting the end of my patience, “are vulgar enough to make your average blinged-up skanger blush.”

  “What’s vulgar?”

  Holly had stopped messing with the piano and was looking up at me in pure bewilderment, eyebrows pulled together, waiting for me to illuminate everything and make perfect sense of it all. For maybe the first time in her life, I had no idea what to say to her. I had no clue how to explain the difference between working poor and scumbag poor to a kid who thought everyone had a computer, or how to explain vulgar to a kid who was growing up on Britney Spears, or how to explain to anyone at all how this situation had turned into such a terminal mess. I wanted to grab hold of Olivia and get her to show me the right way to do this, except that that wasn’t Liv’s job any more; my relationship with Holly was all my own problem now. In the end I took the miniature piano out of her hand, put it back in the dollhouse and pulled her onto my lap.

  Holly said, leaning back to watch my face, “Chloe’s stupid, isn’t she?”

  “My God, yes,” I said. “If there was a worldwide shortage of stupid, Chloe and her family between them could fix it in a heartbeat.”

  She nodded and curled in against my chest, and I tucked her head under my chin. After a while she said, “Someday will you take me and show me where Uncle Kevin fell out of the window?”

  “If you feel like you need to have a look,” I said, “then sure. I’ll show you.”

  “Not today, though.”

  “No,” I said. “Let’s all just get through today in one piece.” We sat there on the floor in silence, me rocking Holly back and forth and her sucking pensively on the end of a plait, until Olivia came in to tell us it was time for school.

  I picked up an extralarge coffee and an undefined organic-looking muffin in Dalkey—I get the sense Olivia thinks that feeding me might be taken as an invitation to move back in—and had breakfast sitting on a wall, watching overweight suits in tanks get outraged when the traffic waves didn’t part specially for them. Then I dialed my voice mail.

  “Yeah, um, Frank . . . Hi. It’s Kev. Listen, I know you said this wasn’t a good time, but . . . I mean, not now, like, but whenever you’re free, can you give us a ring? Like tonight or whatever, even if it’s late, that’s OK. Um. Thanks. Bye.”

  The second time, he hung up, no message. Same thing the third time, while Holly and Jackie and I were stuffing our faces with pizza. The fourth call had come in just before seven, presumably when Kevin was on his way into Ma and Da’s. “Frank, it’s me again. Listen . . . I kind of need to talk to you. I know you probably don’t want to think about any of this crap, right, but honest to God, I’m not trying to mess with your head, I just . . . Could you ring me? OK, um, I guess . . . bye.”

  Something had changed, between Saturday night when I sent him back to the pub and Sunday afternoon when the phone campaign kicked in. It could have been something that had happened along the way, maybe in the pub—for several of the Blackbird’s regulars, the fact that they haven’t killed anyone yet is down to pure chance—but I doubted it. Kevin had started getting edgy well before we ever hit that pub. Everything I knew about him—and I still thought that was worth something—told me he was a laid-back guy, but he had been acting squirrelly since right around the time we headed into Number 16. I had put it down to the fact that your average civilian does tend to get a little thrown by the idea of dead people—my mind had been on other things. It had been a lot more than that.

  Whatever had been bothering Kevin, it wasn’t something that had just happened this weekend. It had already been stashed at the bottom of his mind, maybe for twenty-two years, until something on Saturday jarred it loose. Slowly, over the rest of the day—our Kev was never the fastest little sprinter on the track—it had bobbed to the surface and started nudging at him, harder and harder. He had spent twenty-four hours trying to ignore it or figure it out or deal with the implications all by himself, and then he had gone to big brother Francis for help. When I told him to get lost, he had turned to the worst possible person.

  He had a nice voice, on the phone. Even confused and worried, he was easy to listen to. He sounded like a good guy; someone you would want to get to know.

  As far as next moves went, my options were limited. The thought of chummy chats with the neighbors had lost a lot of its sparkle now that I knew half of them thought I was a cold-blooded ninja brother-killer, and anyway I needed to stay well out of Scorcher’s line of vision, if only for the sake of George’s bowels. On the other hand, the idea of hanging around kicking my heels and watching my mobile for Stephen’s number to come up, like a teenage girl after a snog, didn’t particularly appeal to me either. When I do nothing, I like it to have a purpose.

  Something was pinching at the back of my neck, like someone tugging out little hairs one by one. I pay attention to that tug; there have been plenty of times when ignoring it would have got me killed. There was something I was missing, something I had seen or heard and let slip by.

  Undercovers don’t get to video all the best parts, the way the Murder boys do, so we have very, very good memories. I got more comfortable on the wall, lit a smoke and went back over every bit of information I had picked up in the last few days.

  One thing stuck out: I still wasn’t clear on just how that suitcase had got up that chimney. According to Nora, it had been put there sometime between Thursday afternoon, when she bummed Rosie’s Walkman, and Saturday night. But according to Mandy, Rosie hadn’t had her keys for those two days, which more or less ruled out the possibility of sneaking the case out at night—there had been an awful lot of inconvenient garden walls between her and Number 16—and Matt Daly had been keeping an eagle eye on her, which would have made it pretty tough to smuggle out something sizable during the day. Also according to Nora, on Thursdays and Fridays Rosie walked to and from work with Imelda Tierney.

  Friday evening, Nora had been out at the pictures with her little mates; Rosie and Imelda could have had the bedroom to themselves, to pack and plan. Nobody had been paying attention to Imelda’s comings and goings. She could have waltzed out of that flat carrying just about anything she liked.

  These days Imelda lived on Hallows Lane, just far enough from Faithful Place to be outside Scorch’s perimeter. And going by the look in Mandy’s eye, there was a decent chance that Imelda was at home in the middle of a workday, and that her relationship with the neighborhood was mixed enough to give her a soft spot for a prodigal son who was walking the fine line between in and out. I tossed back the last of my cold coffee and headed for my car.

  My mate in the electric company pulled up an electricity bill for an Imelda Tierney at 10 Hallows Lane, Flat 3. The house was a kip: slates missing from the roof, paint flaking off the door, net curtains sagging behind grimy windows. You could tell the neighbors were praying the landlord would sell up to a nice respectable yuppie or two, or at least burn the place down for the insurance money.

  I had been right: Imelda was home. “Francis,” she said, somewhere between shocked and delighted and horrified, when she opened the flat door. “Jaysus.”

  Not one of those twenty-two years had been nice to Imelda. She had never been a stunner, but she had had height and good legs and a good walk, and those three can take you a long way. These days she was what the boys on the squad call a BOBFOC: body off Baywatch, face off Crimewatch. She had kept her figure, but there were pouches under her eyes and her face was covered in wrinkles like knife scars. She was wearing a white tracksuit with a coffee stain down the front, and her bleach job had about three inches of exhausted roots. The sight of me made her whip up a hand to fluff it into shape, like that was all it would take to snap us straight back to those glossy teenagers fizzing with Saturday night. That little gesture was the part that went straight to my heart.

  I said, “Howya, ’Melda,” and gave her my best grin, to remind her that we had been good pals, way back when. I always liked Imelda. She was a smart ki
d, restless, with a moody streak and sharp edges that she had earned the hard way: instead of one permanent father she had way too many temporary ones, several of them married to people who weren’t her mother, and in those days that mattered. Imelda took a lot of flak about her ma, when we were all kids. Most of us lived in glass houses, one way or another, but an unemployed alco father was nowhere near as bad as a ma who had sex.

  Imelda said, “I heard about Kevin, God rest him. I’m awful sorry for your trouble.”

  “God rest,” I agreed. “While I’m back in the area, I thought I’d call in on a few old mates.”

  I stayed there, in the doorway, waiting. Imelda shot a fast glance over her shoulder, but I wasn’t moving and she didn’t have a choice. After a second she said, “The place is in bits—”

  “You think I care about that? You should see my gaff. It’s just good to see you again.”

  By the time I finished talking, I was past her and through the door. The place wasn’t quite a shit hole, but I saw her point. One look at Mandy at home had said this woman was contented; not permanently ecstatic, maybe, but her life had turned out to be something she liked. Imelda, not so much. The sitting room felt even smaller than it was because there was stuff everywhere: used mugs and Chinese takeaway cartons on the floor around the sofa, women’s clothes—various sizes—drying on the radiators, dusty piles of bootleg DVD cases toppling over in corners. The heat was up too high and the windows hadn’t been opened in a long time; the place had a thick smell of ashtrays, food and women. Everything except the telly-on-steroids needed replacing.

  “This is a great little place,” I said.

  Imelda said shortly, “It’s shite.”

  “I grew up in a lot worse.”

  She shrugged. “So? Doesn’t stop this being shite. Will you have tea?”

  “Love some. How’ve you been?”

  She headed into the kitchen. “You can see for yourself. Sit down there.”

  I found a noncrusty patch of sofa and settled in. “I hear you’ve got daughters these days, yeah?”

  Through the half-open kitchen door I saw Imelda pause, with her hand on the kettle. She said, “And I heard you’re a Guard now.”

  I was getting used to the illogical shot of anger when someone informed me I had turned into The Man’s bum-boy; it was even starting to come in useful. “Imelda,” I said, outraged and wounded to the bone, after a second of shocked silence. “Are you serious? You think I’m here to give you hassle about your kids?”

  Shrug. “How do I know? They’ve done nothing, anyway.”

  “I don’t even know their names. I was only asking, for fuck’s sake. I don’t give a rat’s arse if you’ve raised the bleeding Sopranos; I only wanted to say howya, for old times’ sake. If you’re just going to throw freakers about what I do for a living, then tell me and I’ll get out of your hair. Believe me.”

  After a moment I saw the corner of Imelda’s mouth twitch reluctantly, and she flicked on the kettle. “Same old Francis; the bleeding temper on you. Yeah, I’ve three. Isabelle, Shania and Genevieve. Holy fucking terrors, the three of them; teenagers. What about you?”

  No mention of a father, or fathers. “One,” I said. “She’s nine.”

  “It’s all ahead of you. God help you. They say boys wreck your house and girls wreck your head, and it’s the truth.” She tossed tea bags into mugs. Just watching the way she moved made me feel old.

  “Are you still doing the sewing?”

  A sniff that could have been a laugh. “God, that’s going back a while. I quit the factory twenty years back. I do bits and bobs, now. Cleaning, mostly.” Her eyes flicked sideways to me, belligerent, checking whether I wanted to make something of that. “The Eastern Europeans’ll do it cheaper, but there’s still a few places want someone that speaks English. I do all right, so I do.”

  The kettle boiled. I said, “You heard about Rosie, yeah?”

  “I did, yeah. That’s only shocking. All this time . . .” Imelda poured the tea and gave her head a quick shake, like she was trying to get something out of it. “All this time I thought she was off in England. When I heard, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t. I swear, the rest of the day I was walking around like a zombie.”

  I said, “Same here. It hasn’t been a great week all round.”

  Imelda brought out a carton of milk and a packet of sugar, made room for them on the coffee table. She said, “Kevin was always a lovely young fella. I was sorry to hear about him; really sorry, now. I would’ve called round to yours, the night it happened, only . . .”

  She shrugged, let it trail off. Chloe and Chloe’s mummy would never in a million years have understood the subtle, definite class gap that made Imelda think, probably correctly, that she might not be welcome in my mother’s house. I said, “I was hoping I’d see you there. But hey, this way we get to have a proper chat, am I right?”

  Another half grin, a little less reluctant this time. “And same old Francis again. You always were a smooth talker.”

  “I’ve got better hair now, though.”

  “Jaysus, yeah. The spikes, d’you remember?”

  “It could’ve been worse. I could’ve had a mullet, like Zippy.”

  “Yeuch; stop. The head on him.”

  She headed back to the kitchen for the mugs. Even if I’d had all the time in the world, sitting around shooting the breeze wouldn’t do me any good here: Imelda was a lot harder than Mandy, she already knew I had an agenda even if she couldn’t put her finger on it. When she came out I said, “Can I ask you something? I’m being a nosy bollix, but I swear I’ve got a good reason for asking.”

  Imelda put a stained mug in my hand and sat down in an armchair, but she didn’t lean back and her eyes were still wary. “Go on.”

  “When you put Rosie’s suitcase in Number Sixteen for her, where’d you leave it exactly?”

  The instant blank look, half mule and half moron, brought it home to me all over again just where I stood now. Nothing in the world quite canceled out the fact that Imelda was, against every instinct in her body, talking to a cop. She said, inevitably, “What suitcase?”

  “Ah, c’mon, Imelda,” I said, easy and grinning—one wrong note and this whole trip would sink into a waste of time. “Me and Rosie, we’d been planning this for months. You think she didn’t tell me how she was getting stuff done?”

  Slowly some of the blank look dissolved off Imelda’s face; not all of it, but enough. She said, “I’m not getting in any hassle about this. If anyone else asks me, I never saw no suitcase.”

  “Not a problem, babe. I’m not about to drop you in the shite; you were doing us a favor, and I appreciate that. All I want to know is whether anyone messed with the case after you dropped it off. Do you remember where you left it? And when?”

  She watched me sharply, under her thin lashes, figuring out what this meant. Finally she reached into a pocket for her smoke packet and said, “Rosie said it to me three days before yous were heading off. She never said nothing before that; me and Mandy guessed something was up, like, but we didn’t know anything for definite. Have you seen Mandy, yeah?”

  “Yep. She’s looking in great form.”

  “Snobby cow,” Imelda said, through the click of the lighter. “Smoke?”

  “Yeah, thanks. I thought you and Mandy were mates.”

  A hard snort of laughter, as she held the lighter for me. “Not any more. She’s too good for the likes of me. I don’t know were we ever really mates to begin with; we just both used to hang out with Rosie, and after she left . . .”

  I said, “You were always the one she was closest to.”

  Imelda gave me a look that said better men had tried to soft-soap her and failed. “If we’d been that close, she’d have told me from the start what yous had planned, wouldn’t she? She only said anything because her da had his eye on her, so she couldn’t get her gear out on her own. The two of us used to walk back and forth from the factory together some days, talk
about whatever girls talk about, I don’t remember. This one day she said to me she needed a favor.”

  I said, “How’d you get the suitcase out of their flat?”

  “Easy. After work the next day—the Friday—I went over to the Dalys’, we told her ma and da we were going to Rosie’s room to listen to her new Eurythmics album, all they said was for us to keep it down. We had it just loud enough that they wouldn’t hear Rosie packing.” There was a tiny slip of a smile nudging at one corner of Imelda’s mouth. Just for a second, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, smiling to herself through cigarette smoke, she looked like the quick-moving smart-mouthed girl I used to know. “Should’ve seen her, Francis. She was dancing round that room, she was singing in her hairbrush, she had these new knickers she was after buying so you wouldn’t see her manky old ones and she was waving them round her head . . . She had me dancing along and all; we must’ve looked like a right pair of eejits, laughing our arses off and trying to do it quiet enough that her ma wouldn’t come in and see what we were at. I think it was being able to say it to someone, after keeping it under wraps all that time. She was over the moon with herself.”

  I slammed the door on that picture fast; it would keep for later. “Good,” I said. “That’s good to hear. So when she finished packing . . . ?”

  The grin spread to both sides of Imelda’s mouth. “I just picked up the case and walked out. Swear to God. I had my jacket over it, but that wouldn’t have fooled anyone for a second, not if they’d been looking proper. I went out of the bedroom and Rosie said good-bye to me, nice and loud, and I shouted good-bye to Mr. Daly and Mrs. Daly—they were in the sitting room, watching the telly. He looked round when I went past the door, but he was only checking to make sure Rosie wasn’t going with me; he never even noticed the case. I just let meself out.”

  “Fair play to the pair of yous,” I said, grinning back. “And you took it straight across to Number Sixteen?”