Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(28)

‘I can,’ he says, nodding, completely agreeable. ‘But there is no connection because I haven’t see her, and God knows I’d have been easy enough to find if she’d wanted to. She might have reinvented herself, but I’m still plain old Aiden Doyle. Same bloody haircut since time began. Same great big scar on me cheek where she slammed me with the hurley. Same cringy picture on the company website for years with the same bloody email address and contact number. If she’d wanted to find me she could have. She obviously didn’t.’

He glances at his watch, almost certainly trying to give the impression that if she’d hadn’t the time to care, then neither does he.

‘Can you confirm where you were on Monday evening/Tuesday morning between the hours of say, eleven p.m. and five a.m.’

I get the expected ‘are you having a laugh?’ look but that’s all. No gaping mouth flapping about in outraged protestation. No demand to see ‘who’s in charge of this investigation’, right before Steele makes them wish that they’d kept their mouth shut and stuck with little ol’ me.

‘I was at home, in bed.’

‘Can anyone verify that?’

‘Sadly not.’ He swipes his hand across his mouth, suppressing a tiny smirk. ‘I’ve been working like a dog since I got here and I haven’t had time for much verification in the bedroom department.’ A little laugh. ‘And that’s going to go against me, is it? Here was me thinking I was being a good lad, not stringing some young one along for an easy ride when I haven’t time to wipe my arse most days.’

‘With regards to your alibi.’ He laughs again – most innocent people do when an evening’s ironing suddenly becomes sworn testimony. ‘Did you speak to anyone on Monday night, between the hours I mentioned? Even a text could help rule you out. That’s all I’m trying to do here, Aiden, rule you out, so we can get on with finding whoever did this.’

He thinks about this. ‘I texted a mate in Oz at some point during the night, will that do? Bloody text from him woke me up and I gave him shite for it. Guess I owe him a pint now, eh?’ He scratches at his head again. ‘I suppose it must have been about oneish, I’d been in bed a while, anyways. I usually turn my phone off before bed but me old fella’s not been well so I’ve been leaving it on.’

A flash of Jonjo Doyle. A ratty little man who hated kids in pubs, ‘filthy’ foreign lager and all things English.

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Not sure I am. He’s not got long left, I reckon another clean shirt would do him, as we say back home.’ He stares into his mug for a few seconds and then looks up suddenly. ‘He was a cruel, useless man, Cat, the cruellest of the cruel, but he’s still me dad, you know? I’d have preferred he’d gone to his grave not knowing this .?.?. Ah sure, maybe I won’t tell him .?.?.’

I nod my understanding, enjoying the sound of my name from his mouth. The familiarity.

‘There were rumours he’d killed her,’ he says, almost amused. ‘Well, not exactly rumours, just pub talk. Gobshites making up stories ’cos they’ve got nothing better to talk about.’

‘That must have been very hurtful. For you and your dad.’

He doesn’t milk the sympathy. ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, he was handy with his fists, all right. He’d clumped her once – in public, too – so don’t go feeling too sorry for the bastard. But murder? No. No way. It hit him hard enough when Mam died. He’d never have harmed Maryanne, no way. Well, I mean, proper harmed, you know.’

The west coast lilt, the cheekbones and now a dead mammy. If I could marry him here and now, I would.

‘What do you think happened, Aiden? Why do you think your sister disappeared?’

Answer me the most significant question of my life.

He puffs out his cheeks. ‘Sure, you wouldn’t know what to believe. Some folk were saying – when they weren’t saying that me old fella had killed her and set fire to the body – that she had a bit of a thing for older blokes. There was talk of some married one in Galway, a doctor, but I never went for that.’ A tiny laugh. ‘Not that I wouldn’t believe it – Christ knows she’d make eyes at the pope himself – but it didn’t explain why she never got back in touch. With me, anyway. I mean, we weren’t dead, dead close, but still .?.?. you’d think .?.?. well .?.?.’ He stops talking, wipes a thumb at an imaginary mark on his face. ‘Ah, d’you know what, fuck it.’

Hurt swathed in layers of front. Boy-hurt.

‘What about her friends? Teenage girls talk. Did they have any theories?’

‘Friends,’ he says, sourly. ‘She was joined at the hip with these two bitches, Manda Moran and Hazel Joyce. God forgive me, but they were a right pair of wagons.’

Manda Moran draws a blank but Hazel Joyce steps forward. Red hair clamped back in a tight ponytail. Imitating Jacqui’s accent, making her sound like Eliza Doolittle.

‘I did think to meself that if anyone knew anything, it’d be them, so I pounced on them one night coming out of Grogan’s. Thought I’d put the frighteners on them. Play the big man, you know.’ He almost smiles at the memory. ‘Ended up making a proper tool of meself, I did. Hazel Joyce had these two big brothers coming up the rear and they knocked seven shades of shite out of me. And do you know all they said, well the Joyce one said, as I was lying on the ground coughing up a lung – “If you hear from Maryanne, tell her she still owes me twenty quid.” Can you believe that? She was always mad jealous of Maryanne, though. Maryanne was good-looking, you know, and Joyce had a face a dog wouldn’t lick .?.?.’