Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)(135)

Shrug, blank blue stare, click of the lighter. “How would I know? I heard there’s people who think he had a guilty conscience. And there’s plenty of people think he was meeting you. Me, though, I figure maybe he’d found something that was bothering him, and he was trying to make sense of it.”

He was too smart ever to bring up the fact that that note had shown up in Kevin’s pocket, and smart enough to steer things that way just the same. The urge to punch his teeth in was rising, inch by inch. I said, “That’s your story, and you’re sticking to it.”

Shay said, final as a slamming door, “He fell. That’s what happened.”

I said, “Let me tell you my story.” I took one of Shay’s smokes, poured myself another slug of his whiskey and leaned back into the shadows. “Once upon a time, long ago, there were three brothers, just like in a fairy tale. And late one night, the youngest one woke up and something was different: he had the bedroom to himself. Both his brothers were gone. It wasn’t a big deal, not at the time, but it was unusual enough that he remembered it the next morning, when only one brother had come home. The other one was gone for good—or anyway for twenty-two years.”

Shay’s face hadn’t changed; not a muscle moved. I said, “When the lost brother finally came home, he came looking for a dead girl, and he found her. That’s when the youngest one thought back and realized that he remembered the night she had died. It was the night both his brothers were missing. One of them had gone out to love her, that night. The other one had gone out to kill her.”

Shay said, “I already told you: I never meant to hurt her. And you think Kev was smart enough to put all that together? You must be joking me.”

The bitter snap in his voice said I wasn’t the only one biting down on my temper, which was good to know. I said, “It didn’t take a genius. And it wrecked the poor little bastard’s head, figuring it out. He didn’t want to believe it, did he? He just couldn’t stand to believe that his own brother had killed a girl. I’d say he spent his last day on this earth driving himself mental, trying to find some other explanation. He phoned me a dozen times, hoping I’d find one for him, or at least take the whole mess off his hands.”

“Is that what this is about? You feel guilty for not taking baby brother’s calls, so you’re looking for a way to put the blame on me?”

“I listened to your story. Now you let me finish mine. By Sunday evening, Kev’s head was melted. And, like you said, he wasn’t the brightest little pixie in the forest to start with. All he could think of to do was the straightforward thing, God help him, the honest thing: talk to you, man to man, and see what you had to say. And when you told him to meet you in Number Sixteen, the poor thick bastard walked right in. Tell me something, do you think he was adopted? Or just some kind of mutation?”

Shay said, “He was protected. That’s what he was. All his life.”

“Not last Sunday, he wasn’t. Last Sunday he was vulnerable as hell and he thought he was safe as houses. You gave him all that self-righteous bullshit about—what was it again?—family responsibility and a bedsit of your own, same as you gave me. But none of that meant anything to Kevin. All he knew was the facts, pure and simple: you killed Rosie Daly. And that was too much for him to handle. What did he say that got up your nose that badly? Was he planning on telling me, once he could get hold of me? Or did you even bother to find out, before you went ahead and killed him too?”

Shay shifted in his chair, a wild trapped move, cut off fast. He said, “You haven’t a notion, have you? Neither of yous ever did.”

“Then you go right ahead and clue me in. Educate me. For starters, how did you get him to stick his head out that window? That was a cute little trick; I’d love to hear how you worked it.”

“Who says I did?”

“Talk to me, Shay. I’m just dying of curiosity. Once you heard his skull smash open, did you hang about upstairs, or did you go straight out the back to shove that note in his pocket? Was he still moving when you got there? Moaning? Did he recognize you? Did he beg for help? Did you stand in that garden and watch him die?”

Shay was hunched over the table, shoulders braced and head down, like a man fighting a high wind. He said, low, “After you walked out, it took me twenty-two years to get my chance back. Twenty-two f*cking years. Can you imagine what they’ve been like? All four of yous off living your lives, getting married, having kids, like normal people, happy as pigs in shite. And me here, here, f*cking here—” His jaw clenched and his finger stabbed down on the table, over and over. “I could’ve had all that too. I could’ve—”

He got some of his control back, caught his breath in a great rasp and pulled hard on his smoke. His hands were shaking.

“Now I’ve got my chance back. It’s not too late. I’m still young enough; I can make that bike shop take off, buy a gaff, have a family of my own—I still get the women. No one’s going to throw that chance away. No one. Not this time. Not again.”

I said, “And Kevin was about to.”

Another breath like an animal hissing. “Every bloody time I get close to getting out, so close I can taste it, there’s one of my own brothers holding me down. I tried to tell him. He didn’t understand. Thick bloody fool, spoilt kid used to everything falling in his lap, didn’t have a clue—” He bit off the sentence, shook his head and jammed out his smoke viciously.