Salvation in Death (In Death #27)(76)

“Couldn’t work there often, no more than a couple hits a month, lest the locals caught wind to it. But when we did, we’d pull in hundreds in the day. If I was careful enough with my share, even with what the old man kicked out of me, I’d eat well for a month—with some to spare for my investment fund.”

“Investment fund? Even then?”

“Oh aye, I didn’t intend to live a street rat the whole of my life.” His eyes kindled, but unlike the mellow fire in the hearth, dark and danger flashed there. “He suspected, of course, but he never found my cache. I’d sooner he beat me to death than give it over.”

“You dreamed about him? Your father?”

“No. It wasn’t him at all. A bright summer day, so clear I could hear the voices, the music, smell the fat frying for the chips we always treated ourselves to. A day on Grafton Street

was prime, you see. Full pockets and full bellies. But in dreaming it, it went wrong.”

“How?”

“Jenny’d wear her best dress on Grafton day, and her hair would be shining with a ribbon in it. Who’d look at a pretty young girl like that and see a thief, was the thought behind it. I passed to her, clean and smooth, and moved on. You have to keep moving. I set my next mark, and the fiddler was playing ‘Finnegan’s Wake.’ I heard it clear, each note, lively, quick. I had the wallet—and the mark never flinched. But Jenny . . . she wasn’t there for the pass. Couldn’t take the pass because she was hanging by her hair ribbon. Hanging and dead, as she’d been the last I saw her. When I was too late to save her.

“I was too late.”

Roarke shook his head. “She died because she was mine, part of my past. And I ran to try to get her down, across Grafton, with the buskers playing, still lively and quick, while she hung there. But there was Mick. Blood spreading over his shirt. The kill blood. He was mine, too. He took the knife for me. The fiddler kept playing, all the while. I could see Brian, far off. Too far to reach, so I was there with dead friends. Still children in the dream, you know? Still so young. Even in the dream I thought, wondered, if they were, in some way, dead even that long ago. And me and Bri, all that’s left of us.

“Then I walked away. I walked away from Grafton Street

, and from the friends who were same as family to me. And I stood on the bridge over the River Liffey, a grown man now. I saw my mother’s face under the water. And that was all.”

“I could tell you that what happened to them wasn’t your fault. Part of you knows that. But another part will always feel responsible. Because you loved them.”

“I did. Aye, I did.” He picked up his neglected coffee, drank. “They’re part of me. Pieces that make me. But just now, standing with you, I realized I can stand all that, stand the loss of all those parts of me. Because I have you.”

She took his hand, pressed it to her cheek. “What can I do?”

“You just did it.” He leaned over, kissed her again.

“I can reschedule some stuff, if you want me to—”

He looked at her, just looked, and the heaviest of the grief that had woken with him eased. “Thanks for that, but I’m better just for having it out.” He skimmed a finger down her chin. “Go to work, Lieutenant.”

She wrapped her arms around him first, hugged hard. And holding her, he drew in her scent—hair and skin—knowing it would come with him through the day.

She drew back, stood. “See you tonight.”

“Eve? You asked me before if I thought your victim, your Lino, would tell someone who he really was. I think, if they stood as family for him, if he considered them part of him—any of the pieces that made him—he had to. He didn’t go to his mother, but there had to be someone. A man can’t stand on a bridge alone, not at home, not for five years. Even the hardest needs someone to know him.”

She managed to cut Peabody off, but barely. Eve jogged down the steps just as Summerset opened the door to her partner. Eve kept going. “Peabody, with me.”

“But I was just . . .”

“We’re moving,” Eve said and pointed toward their vehicle. “Get in. One minute.” Eve turned to Summerset while Peabody sulked her Danish-deprived way to the passenger side. “Roarke could use a call from his aunt.”

“He wants me to contact his aunt in Ireland?”

“I said he could use a call from her. He’s fine,” Eve said, anticipating him. “He could just use the connection.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Knowing he would, Eve climbed behind the wheel, and put her mind back on the job.

“Are we running hot or something?” Peabody demanded. “So a person can’t take a minute to have a cup of coffee and maybe a small bite to eat, especially when the person got off a full subway stop early to work off the anticipated bite to eat.”

“If you’re finished whining about it, I’ll fill you in.”

“A real partner would have brought me a coffee to go so I could drink it while being filled in.”

“How many coffee shops did you pass on your endless and arduous hike from the subway?”

“It’s not the same,” Peabody muttered. “And it’s not my fault I’m coffee spoiled. You’re the one who brought the real stuff made from real beans into my life. You addicted me.” She pointed an accusing finger at Eve. “And now you’re withholding the juice.”