In the Woods

by Tana French

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about, man.” I finally gave up when I realized I was in serious danger of throwing something. On my way home I swallowed my pride and phoned Cassie, who didn’t even try to pretend she hadn’t guessed where I’d gone. She had spent her evening eliminating Sandra Scully from the inquiry. On the night in question, Sandra had been working in a call center in town. Her supervisor and everyone else on the shift confirmed that she had been there until just before two in the morning, when she had clocked out and caught a night bus In the Woods 237

  home. This was good news—it tidied things up, and I hadn’t liked thinking of Sandra as a possible murderess—but it gave me a complicated little pang, the thought of her in an airless fluorescent cubicle, surrounded by parttiming students and actors waiting for the next gig. I won’t go into details, but we put a considerable amount of effort and ingenuity, most of it more or less legal, into identifying the worst possible time to go talk to Cathal Mills. He had some high position with a gibberish title, in a company that provided something called “corporate e-learning software localization solutions” (I was impressed: I hadn’t thought it was possible for me to dislike him any more than I already did), so we walked in on him halfway through a crucial meeting with a big potential client. Even the building was creepy: long windowless corridors and flights of stairs that stripped your sense of direction to nothing, tepid canned air with too little oxygen, a low witless hum of computers and suppressed voices, huge tracts of cubicles like a mad scientist’s rat mazes. Cassie shot me a wide-eyed, horrified look as we followed some droid through the fifth set of swipe-card swing doors. Cathal was in the boardroom, and he was easy to identify: he was the one with the PowerPoint presentation. He was still a handsome guy—tall and broad-shouldered, with bright blue eyes and hard, dangerous bones—

  but fat was starting to blur his waist and hang under his jaw; in a few more years he would have coarsened into piggishness. The new client was four identical, humorless Americans in inscrutable dark suits.

  “Sorry, fellas,” Cathal said, giving us an easy, warning smile, “the boardroom’s being used.”

  “It is indeed,” Cassie told him. She had dressed for the occasion, in ripped jeans and an old turquoise camisole that said yuppies taste like chicken in red across the front. “I’m Detective Maddox—”

  “And I’m Detective Ryan,” I said, flipping out my ID. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  The smile didn’t budge, but a savage flash shot across his eyes. “This isn’t a good time.”

  “No?” Cassie inquired sociably, lounging against the table so that the PowerPoint image vanished into a blob on her camisole.

  “No.” He cut his eyes sideways at the new client, who stared disapprovingly into space and shuffled papers.

  “This looks like a good place to talk,” she said, surveying the boardroom appreciatively, “but we could go back to headquarters if you’d prefer.”

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  Tana French

  “What’s this about?” Cathal demanded. It was a mistake, and he knew it as soon as the words were out. If we had said anything off our own bat, in front of the clones, it would have been an invitation to a harassment claim, and he looked like the type who would sue; but hey, he had asked.

  “We’re investigating a child-murder,” Cassie said sweetly. “There’s a possibility it’s linked to the alleged rape of a young girl, and we have reason to believe you might be able to help us with our inquiries.”

  It only took him a fraction of a second to recover. “I can’t imagine how,”

  he said, gravely. “But if it’s a question of a murdered child, then of course, anything I can do. . . . Fellas”—this to the client—“I apologize for this interruption, but I’m afraid duty calls. Let me get Fiona to show you around the building. We’ll pick up here in just a few minutes.”

  “Optimism,” Cassie said approvingly. “I like that.”

  Cathal shot her a filthy look and hit a button on an object that turned out to be an intercom. “Fiona, could you come down to the boardroom and give these gentlemen a tour of the building?”

  I held the door open for the clones, who filed out with prim poker faces unchanged. “It’s been a pleasure,” I told them.

  “Were they CIA?” Cassie whispered, not quite quietly enough. Cathal already had his mobile out. He phoned his lawyer—kind of ostentatiously; I think we were supposed to be intimidated—and then flipped his phone shut and tilted his chair back, legs spread wide, checking Cassie out with slow, deliberate enjoyment. For a giddy second I was tempted to say something to him—You gave me my first cigarette, do you remember?—just to see his brows draw sharply downwards, the greasy smirk fall away from his face. Cassie batted her lashes and gave him a mock-flirtatious smile, which pissed him off: he banged down the chair and shot his wrist out of his sleeve to check his Rolex.

  “In a hurry?” Cassie inquired.

  “My lawyer should be here within twenty minutes,” Cathal said. “Let me save us all some time and hassle, though: I’ll have nothing to say to you then either.”

  “Awww,” Cassie said, perching on the desk with her backside on a pile of paperwork; Cathal eyeballed her, but decided not to rise to the bait.

  “We’re wasting a whole twenty minutes of Cathal’s valuable time, and all he ever did was gang-rape a teenage girl. Life is so unfair.”

  “Maddox,” I said.

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  “I’ve never raped a girl in my life,” Cathal said, with a nasty little smile.

  “Never needed to.”

  “See, that’s what’s interesting, Cathal,” Cassie said confidentially. “You look to me like you used to be a pretty good-looking guy. So I can’t help wondering—do you have some problems with your sexuality? A lot of rapists do, you know. That’s why you need to rape women: you’re desperately trying to prove to yourselves that you’re actually real men, in spite of the little problem.”

  “Maddox—”

  “If you know what’s good for you,” Cathal said, “you’ll shut your mouth right now.”

  “What is it, Cathal? Can’t get it up? In the closet? Underendowed?”

  “Show me your ID,” Cathal snapped. “I’m going to file a complaint about this. You’ll be out on your arse before you know what hit you.”

  “Maddox,” I said sharply, doing O’Kelly. “A word with you. Now.”

  “You know, Cathal,” Cassie told him sympathetically, on her way out,

  “medical science can help with most of that stuff, these days.” I grabbed her arm and shoved her through the door.

  In the corridor I chewed her out, keeping my voice low but carrying: stupid bitch, have some respect, he’s not even a suspect, yada yada yada. (The

  “not a suspect” part was actually true: along the way we had learned, to our disappointment, that Cathal had spent the first three weeks of August drumming up business in the United States and had some fairly impressive credit-card bills to prove it.) Cassie gave me a grin and an A-OK sign.

  “I’m really sorry about that, Mr. Mills,” I said, going back into the boardroom.

  “I don’t envy you your job, mate,” Cathal said. He was furious, red spots high on his cheekbones, and I wondered if Cassie had actually hit the mark, somewhere in there; if Sandra had told her some little detail she hadn’t shared.

  “Tell me about it,” I said, sitting down opposite him and running a weary hand over my face. “She’s a token, obviously. I wouldn’t even bother filing a complaint; the brass are scared to reprimand her in case she runs to the Equality Commission. The lads and I will sort her out, though, believe me. Just give us time.”

  “You know what that bitch needs, don’t you?” Cathal said.

  “Hey, we all know what she needs,” I said, “but would you want to get close enough to give it to her?”

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  We shared a manly little snigger. “Listen,” I
said, “I should tell you there’s not a chance of us arresting anyone for this alleged rape. Even if the story’s true, the statute of limitations ran out years ago. I’m working a murder case; I don’t give a fuck about this other thing.”

  Cathal pulled a packet of tooth-whitening gum out of his pocket, tossed a piece into his mouth and jerked the pack at me. I hate gum, but I took a piece anyway. He was calming down, the high color fading. “You looking into what happened to the Devlin kid?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You know her father, right? Did you ever meet Katy?”

  “Nah. I knew Jonathan when we were kids, but we don’t stay in touch. His wife’s a nightmare. It’s like trying to make conversation with wallpaper.”

  “I’ve met her,” I said, with a wry grin.

  “So what’s all this about a rape?” Cathal asked. He was cracking easily at his gum, but his eyes were wary, animal.

  “Basically,” I said, “we’re checking out anything in the Devlins’ lives that smells funny. And we hear you and Jonathan Devlin and Shane Waters did something dodgy to a girl in the summer of ’84. What’s the real story?” I would have liked to spend a few more minutes on the male bonding, but we didn’t have time. Once his lawyer got there, my chance would be over.

  “Shane Waters,” Cathal said. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”

  “You don’t have to say anything till your lawyer gets here,” I said, “but you’re not a suspect in this murder. I know you weren’t in the country that week. I just want all the information I can get about the Devlins.”

  “You think Jonathan knocked off his own kid?” Cathal looked amused.

  “You tell me,” I said. “You know him better than I do.”

  Cathal leaned his head back and laughed. It eased his shoulders and took twenty years off him, and for the first time he looked familiar to me: the cruel, handsome cut of his lips, the tricky glitter in his eyes. “Listen, mate,”

  he said, “let me tell you something about Devlin. The man’s a fucking pussy. He probably still acts the hard man, but don’t let that fool you: he’s never taken a risk in his life without me there to give him a shove. That’s why he’s where he is today, and I’m”—he tilted his chin at the boardroom—“I’m here.”

  “So this rape wasn’t his idea.”

  He shook his head and wagged a finger at me, grinning: Nice try. “Who told you there was a rape?”

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  “Come on, man,” I said, grinning back, “you know I can’t tell you that. Witnesses.”

  Cathal cracked his gum slowly and stared at me. “OK,” he said finally. The traces of the smile were still hanging at the corners of his mouth. “Let’s put it this way. There was no rape, but if—let’s just say—there had been, Jonner would never in a million years have had the balls to think of it. And, if it had ever happened, he would’ve spent the next few weeks so scared he was practically shitting his pants, convinced that someone had seen it and was going to go to the cops, babbling on about how we were all going to jail, wanting to turn himself in. . . . The guy doesn’t have the nerve to kill a kitten, never mind a kid.”

  “And you?” I said. “You wouldn’t have been worried that these witnesses would rat you out?”

  “Me?” The grin broadened again. “Not a chance, mate. If, hypothetically, any of this had ever happened, I would’ve been fucking delighted with myself, because I would have known I was going to get away with it.”

  “I vote we arrest him,” I said, that evening in Cassie’s. Sam was in Ballsbridge, at a champagne-reception-cum-dance for his cousin’s twenty-first, so it was just the two of us, sitting on the sofa drinking wine and deciding how to go after Jonathan Devlin.

  “For what?” Cassie demanded, reasonably. “We can’t get him on the rape. We might just possibly maybe have enough to pull him in for questioning on Peter and Jamie, except we don’t have a witness who can put them at the rape scene, so we can’t show a motive. Sandra didn’t see you guys, and if you come forward, it’ll compromise your involvement in this whole case, besides which O’Kelly will cut off your bollocks and use them for Christmas decorations. And we don’t have a single thing linking Jonathan to Katy’s death—just some stomach trouble that might or might not have been abuse and might or might not have been him. All we can do is ask him to come in and talk to us.”

  “I’d just like to get him out of that house,” I said slowly. “I’m worried about Rosalind.” It was the first time I had put this unease into words. It had been building in me, gradually and only half-acknowledged, ever since that first hurried phone call she had made, but over the past two days it had risen to a pitch I couldn’t ignore.

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  “Rosalind? Why?”

  “You said our guy won’t kill unless he feels threatened. That fits with everything we’ve heard. According to Cathal, Jonathan was petrified that we’d tell someone about the rape; so he goes after us. Katy decided to stop getting sick, maybe threatened to tell, so he kills her. If he finds out Rosalind’s been talking to me . . .”

  “I don’t think you need to be too worried about her,” Cassie said. She finished her wine. “We could be completely wrong about Katy; it’s all guesswork. And I wouldn’t put too much weight on anything Cathal Mills says. He strikes me as a psychopath, and they lie easier than they tell the truth.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You only met him for about five minutes. What, you’re diagnosing the guy? He just struck me as a prick.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not saying I’m sure about Cathal. But they’re surprisingly easy to spot, if you know how.”

  “Is this what they taught you at Trinity?”

  Cassie held out her hand for my glass, got up to refill them. “Not exactly,” she said, at the fridge. “I knew a psychopath once.”

  Her back was to me, and if there was an odd undertone in her voice I didn’t catch it. “I did see this thing on the Discovery Channel where they said up to five percent of the population are psychopaths,” I said, “but most of them don’t break the law so they never get diagnosed. How much would you bet that half the government—”

  “Rob,” Cassie said. “Shut up. Please. I’m trying to tell you something here.”

  This time I did hear the strain. She came over and gave me my glass, took hers to the window and leaned back on the sill. “You wanted to know why I dropped out of college,” she said, very evenly. “In second year I made friends with this guy in my class. He was popular, quite good-looking and very charming and intelligent and interesting—I didn’t fancy him or anything like that, but I guess I was flattered that he was paying all this attention to me. We used to skip all our classes and spend hours over coffee. He brought me presents—cheap ones, and some of them looked used, but we were broke students, and hey, it’s the thought that counts, right? Everyone thought it was sweet, how close we were.”

  She took a sip of her drink, swallowed hard. “I worked out pretty fast that he told a lot of lies, mostly for no real reason, but I knew—well, he’d told me—that he’d had a terrible childhood and that he’d been bullied in In the Woods 243

  school, so I figured he’d got into the habit of lying to protect himself. I thought—Jesus Christ—I thought I could help: if he knew he had a friend who’d stick by him no matter what, he’d get more secure and wouldn’t need to lie any more. I was only eighteen, nineteen.”

  I was afraid to move, even to put down my glass; I was terrified that any tiny movement would be the one that would send her pushing herself up off the windowsill and spinning the subject away with some flippant comment. There was an odd, taut set to her mouth that made her look much older, and I knew she had never told this story to anyone, ever before.

  “I didn’t even notice I was drifting away from all the other friends I’d made, because he went into this cold sulk if I spent time with them. He went into the cold sulk a lot, actually, for any reason or none, and I would have t
o spend ages trying to figure out what I’d done and apologizing and making up for it. When I went to meet him I never knew whether he’d be all hugs and compliments or all cold shoulder and disapproving looks; there was no logic to it. Sometimes the things he pulled—just little things: borrowing my lecture notes just before exams, then forgetting to bring them back in for days, then claiming he’d lost them, then getting outraged when I saw them sticking out of his bag, that kind of thing—it made me so furious I wanted to kill him with my bare hands, but he was lovely just often enough that I didn’t want to stop hanging around with him.” A tiny, crooked twist of a smile. “I didn’t want to hurt him.”

  It took her three tries to light a cigarette; Cassie, who had told me about getting stabbed without so much as tensing up. “Anyway,” she said, “this went on for almost two years. In January of fourth year he made a pass at me, in my flat. I turned him down—I have no idea why, by that time I was so confused I barely knew what I was doing, but thank God I had a few of my instincts left. I said I just wanted to be friends, he seemed fine with it, we talked for a while, he left. The next day I went into class and everyone was staring at me and nobody would talk to me. It took me two weeks to find out what was going on. I finally cornered this girl Sarah-Jane—we’d been pretty good friends, back in first year—and she said that they all knew what I’d done to him.”