Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)(24)

“So you did know we were planning on heading off together.”

“Yous went off the same night, sure. Everyone figured.”

I grinned at her and shook my head. “‘Breaking it off,’ you said. You knew we were still seeing each other. We’d been keeping that under wraps for almost two years, or at least I thought we had been.”

After a moment Mandy made a wry little face at me and tossed the socks into the washing basket. “Smart-arse. It’s not that she was spilling her guts to us, or nothing—she never said a word, right up until . . . Did you and Rosie meet up for a few drinks, about a week before yous left? Somewhere in town, I think it was?”

O’Neill’s on Pearse Street, and all the college boys’ heads turning as Rosie made her way back to our table with a pint in each hand. She was the only girl I knew who drank pints, and she always stood her round. “Yeah,” I said. “We did.”

“That was what did it. See, she told her da she was going out with me and Imelda, but she never said it to us so we could cover for her, know what I mean? Like I said, she’d been keeping you very quiet; we hadn’t a notion. But that night the pair of us got home early enough, and Mr. Daly was watching out the window and he saw us come in, without Rosie. She didn’t get in till late.” Mandy dimpled up at me. “Yous must have had loads to talk about, did you?”

“Yeah,” I said. Good-night kiss pressed up against the wall of Trinity, my hands on her hips, pulling her close.

“Mr. Daly waited up for her, anyway. Rosie called round to me the next day—the Saturday, it was—and she said he went ballistic.”

And we were right back to big bad Mr. Daly again. “I bet he did,” I said.

“Me and Imelda asked her where she’d been, but she wouldn’t say. All she would say was that her da was livid. So we guessed she must’ve been meeting you.”

“I always wondered,” I said. “What the hell did Matt Daly have against me?”

Mandy blinked. “God, I wouldn’t have a clue. Himself and your old fella don’t get on; I’d say it might be that. Does it matter, sure? You’re not round here any more, you never see him . . .”

I said, “Rosie dumped me, Mandy. She dumped me flat on my arse, out of the clear blue sky, and I’ve never known why. If there’s an explanation, somewhere out there, I’d love to know what it is. I’d like to know if there was something, anything, I could’ve done to make things turn out different.”

I gave it plenty of the strong-but-suffering, and Mandy’s mouth went soft with sympathy. “Ah, Francis . . . Rosie never gave a tinker’s damn what her da thought of you. You know that.”

“Maybe not. But if she was worried about anything, or hiding something from me, or if she was scared of someone . . . How livid did he use to get with her, exactly?”

Mandy looked baffled or wary, I couldn’t tell which. “How d’you mean, like?”

“Mr. Daly had a temper,” I said. “When he first found out Rosie was seeing me, the whole Place heard him roaring. I always wondered if it stopped there, or if . . . well. If he used to hit her.”

Her hand went to her mouth. “Jaysus, Francis! Did she say something?”

“Not to me, but she wouldn’t have, not unless she wanted me punching her da’s lights out. I thought she might have talked to you and Imelda, though.”

“Ah, no. God, no. She never said a word about anything like that. I think she would’ve, but . . . you never know for definite, sure you don’t?” Mandy thought, smoothing a blue school-uniform tunic in her lap. “I’d say he never laid a finger on her,” she said, in the end. “And I’m not just saying that because you want to hear it, now. Half Mr. Daly’s problem was that he never copped that Rosie had grown up, d’you know what I mean? That Saturday when she called round to me, after he’d caught her coming home late—the three of us were meant to be going to the Apartments that night, and Rosie couldn’t go because, I’m not joking you, her da had taken her keys away. Like she was a kid, instead of a grown woman putting her wages on the table every week. He said he was locking the door at eleven sharp, and if she wasn’t in by then, she could sleep on the street—and you know yourself, by eleven the Apartments were only getting started. See what I mean? When he got annoyed with her, he didn’t give her the slaps; he sent her to sit in the corner, the way I’d do with one of my little young ones if she was bold.”

And just like that, Mr. Daly no longer had the spotlight all to himself, getting a search warrant for his garden was no longer top priority, and snuggling up in Mandy’s cozy little corner of domestic bliss wasn’t as much fun any more. If Rosie hadn’t come out the front door of her house, it didn’t have to be because she was dodging me, or because Daddy had caught her in the act and had a melodrama moment involving a blunt object. It could have been just because he had left her no choice. Front doors were locked at night; back doors had a bolt on the inside, so you could go to the jacks shed without needing a key or locking yourself out. Without her keys, it didn’t matter whether Rosie was running away from me or into my arms: she had had to go out the back door, over walls and down the gardens. The odds were spreading out, away from Number 3.

And the chances of pulling prints off that case were going down. If Rosie had known she was going to be monkeying around with garden walls, she would have hidden the case in advance, ready to pick up on her way out of town. If someone had got his hands on her, along the way, he might never even have known the suitcase existed.