Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)(134)

She had kept it down at least partly because she knew I was just a few yards away, waiting, listening, just over the wall. If she had screamed for me, I could have got there in time. But Rosie: calling for help would never have occurred to her. She had been well able to sort this tosspot all by herself.

“Still see her standing there, giving out yards: mind your own business and don’t be annoying me, not our problem if you can’t get yourself a life, your brother’s worth a dozen of you any day, you dozy bollix, yak yak yak . . . I did you a favor, saving you from a lifetime of that.”

I said, “I’ll be sure and write you a thank-you card. Tell me something: what did it, in the end?”

Shay didn’t ask, Did what? We were past that kind of game. He said, and the rags of that old helpless rage were still caught in the corners of his voice, “I was trying to talk to her. That’s how desperate I was: I was trying to tell her what Da was like. What it felt like going home to that, every day. The things he did. I just wanted her to listen for a minute. You know? Just to f*cking listen.”

“And she wouldn’t. My Jaysus, the cheek of her.”

“She tried to walk out on me. I was in the doorway, she told me to get out of her way, I grabbed hold of her. Just to make her stay, like. From there . . .” He shook his head, eyes skittering across the ceiling. “I’d never fought a girl, never wanted to. But she wouldn’t bleeding shut up, wouldn’t bleeding stop—She was a vixen, so she was, gave as good as she got; I was covered in scrapes and bruises, after. The bitch nearly kneed me in the balls, and all.”

Those rhythmic bumps and whimpers that had made me grin up at the sky, thinking of Rosie. “All I wanted was for her to stay still and listen. I got hold of her, shoved her up against the wall. One second she was kicking me in the shins, trying to scratch the eyes out of me . . .”

A silence. Shay said, to the shadows collecting in the corners, “I never meant for it to end like that.”

“It just happened.”

“Yeah. It just happened. When I realized . . .”

Another fast jerky shake of his head, another silence. He said, “Then. Once I got my head together. I couldn’t leave her there.”

Then came the basement. Shay had been strong, but Rosie would have been heavy; my mind snagged hard on the sounds of getting her down the stairs, flesh and bone on cement. Torchlight, the crowbar and the slab of concrete. Shay’s wild breathing, and the rats stirring curiously in the far corners, eyes reflecting. The shape of her fingers, curled loose on the damp dirt of the floor.

I said, “The note. Did you go through her pockets?”

His hands running over her limp body: I would have ripped his throat out with my teeth. Maybe he knew that. His lip pulled up in disgust. “The f*ck do you think I am? I didn’t touch her, only to move her. The note was on the floor in the top room, where she put it—that was what she was doing, when I came in on her. I had a read of it. I figured the second half could stay put, for anyone who wondered where she’d gone. It felt like . . .” A soundless breath, almost a laugh. “Felt like fate. God. A sign.”

“Why did you hang on to the first half?”

Shrug. “What else was I going to do with it? I put it in my pocket, to get rid of later. Then, later, I figured you never know. Things come in useful.”

“And it did. My Jaysus, did it ever. Did that feel like a sign, too?”

He ignored that. “You were still at the top of the road. I figured you’d hang on for her another hour or two, before you gave up. So I went home.” That long trail of rustles, moving through the back gardens, while I waited and started to be afraid.

There were things I would have given years of my life to ask him. What had been the last thing she said; whether she had known what was happening; whether she had been frightened, been in pain, tried to call me in the end. Even if there had been a snowball’s chance in hell that he would answer, I couldn’t have made myself do it.

Instead I said, “You must have been well pissed off when I never came home. I got farther than Grafton Street, after all. Not as far as London, but far enough. Surprise: you underestimated me.”

Shay’s mouth twisted. “Overestimated, more like. I thought once you were over the * blindness, you’d cop that your family needed you.” He was leaning forward across the table, chin jutting, voice starting to wind tighter. “And you owed us. Me and Ma and Carmel between us, we’d kept you fed and clothed and safe, all your life. We got between you and Da. Me and Carmel gave up our education so you could get yours. We had a f*cking right to you. Her, Rosie Daly, she had no right getting in the way of that.”

I said, “So that gave you the right to murder her.”

Shay bit down on his lip and reached for the smokes again. He said flatly, “You call it whatever you want. I know what happened.”

“Well done. What about what happened to Kevin? What would you call that? Was that murder?”

Shay’s face closed over, with a clang like an iron gate. He said, “I never did nothing to Kevin. Never. I wouldn’t hurt my own brother.”

I laughed out loud. “Right. Then how did he go out that window?”

“Fell. It was dark, he was drunk, the place isn’t safe.”

“Bloody right, it isn’t. And Kevin knew that. So what was he doing in there?”