Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)(111)

I could already hear her spitting it at me like great slimy gobs of poison, Your alco da, your filthy dirty whoremaster da, and I was all ready and braced for it to hit me when her mouth opened wide and red and she almost howled into my face, “I told your brother!”

“Bullshit, you lying bitch. That’s the crap you fed Scorcher Kennedy and he lapped it up, but do I look as stupid as him? Do I?”

“Not Kevin, you thick bastard, what would I be doing with Kevin? Shay. I told Shay.”

The room went soundless, a huge perfect silence like snowfall, as if there had never been a noise in all the world. After what might have been a long time I noticed that I was sitting in the armchair again and that I was numb all over, like my blood had stopped moving. After a while longer I noticed that someone upstairs had a washing machine on. Imelda had shrunk into the sofa cushions. The terror on her face told me what mine must look like.

I said, “What did you tell him?”

“Francis . . . I’m sorry, right. I didn’t think—”

“What did you tell him, Imelda.”

“Just . . . you and Rosie. That yous were heading off.”

“When did you say it to him?”

“The Saturday night, in the pub. The night before yous were leaving. I thought, sure, what harm at that stage, it was too late for anyone to stop yous—”

Three girls leaning on the railings and tossing their hair, glossy and restless as wild fillies, fidgeting on the edge of their anything-can-happen evening. Apparently just about anything had. I said, “If you give me one more shitty excuse, I’m going to put my foot through that robbed telly.”

Imelda shut up. I said, “Did you tell him when we were going?”

A quick jerk of a nod.

“And where you’d left the suitcase?”

“Yeah. Not what room, like; just . . . in Number Sixteen.”

The dirty-white winter light through the lace curtains was vicious on her. Slumped in the corner of the sofa, in this overheated room that stank of grease and cigarettes and waste, she looked like an underfilled bag of bones wrapped in gray skin. I couldn’t think of one thing this woman could have wanted that would have been worth what she had thrown away. I said, “Why, Imelda? Why the hell?”

She shrugged. It dawned on me in a slow wave, with the faint red stain mottling her cheeks. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “You were into Shay?”

Another shrug, this one sharper and pricklier. Those bright-colored girls shrieking and play-fighting, Mandy said to ask if your brother fancies going to the pictures . . . I said, “I thought Mandy was the one who had a thing for him.”

“Her too. We all did—not Rosie, but loads of us. He had his pick.”

“And so you sold Rosie out to get his attention. Is that what you had in mind when you told me you loved her?”

“That’s not bleeding fair. I never meant to—”

I fired the ashtray at the telly. It was heavy and I put my whole body behind it; it smashed through the screen with an impressive crashing noise and an explosion of ash and butts and splinters of glass. Imelda let out something between a gasp and a yelp and cringed away from me, one forearm thrown up to protect her face. Specks of ash filled up the air, whirled and settled on the carpet, the coffee table, her tracksuit bottoms.

“Now,” I said. “What did I warn you?”

She shook her head, wild-eyed. She had a hand pressed over her mouth: someone had trained her not to scream.

I flicked away glittering speckles of glass and found Imelda’s smokes on the coffee table, under a ball of green ribbon. “You’re going to tell me what you said to him, word for word, as close as you can remember. Don’t leave anything out. If you can’t remember something for definite, say so; don’t make shit up. Is that clear?”

Imelda nodded, hard, into her palm. I lit a smoke and leaned back in the armchair. “Good,” I said. “So talk.”

I could have told the story myself. The pub was some place off Wexford Street, Imelda didn’t remember the name: “We were going dancing, me and Mandy and Julie, but Rosie had to be home early—her da was on the warpath—so she didn’t want to pay in to the disco. So we said we’d go for a few pints first . . .” Imelda had been up at the bar, getting her round in, when she spotted Shay. She had got chatting to him—I could see her, tossing her hair, jutting one hip, slagging him off. Shay had flirted back automatically, but he liked them prettier and softer and a lot less mouthy, and when his pints arrived he had gathered them up and turned to head back to his mates in their corner.

She had just been trying to keep his attention. What’s wrong, Shay? Is Francis right, yeah, are you more into the fellas?

Look who’s talking, he’d said. When was the last time that little prick had a girlfriend? And he had started to move off.

Imelda had said, That’s all you know.

That had stopped him. Yeah?

The lads are waiting on their pints. Go on, off you go.

I’ll be back in a sec. You just hang on there.

I might. Or I might not.

Of course she had waited for him. Rosie laughed at her when she dropped the drinks down to them in a rush, and Mandy faked an outraged sniff (Robbing my fella), but Imelda gave them the finger and hurried back up to the bar in time to be lounging there, all casual and sipping her glass of lager and one button undone, when Shay got back. Her heart was going ninety. He had never looked twice at her before.