Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)(77)

13

I got in my car and drove to Dalkey. It was late enough that the street was dark and creepily silent, everyone neatly tucked up in their high thread counts. I parked under a decorous tree and sat there for a while, looking up at Holly’s bedroom window and thinking about nights when I had come home late from work to that house, parked in the drive like I belonged and turned my key in the lock without making a sound. Olivia used to leave me stuff on the breakfast bar: imaginative sandwiches and little notes, and whatever Holly had drawn that day. I would eat the sandwiches sitting at the bar, looking at the drawings by the light through the kitchen window and listening for the sounds of the house under the thick layer of silence: the hum of the refrigerator, the wind in the eaves, the soft tides of my girls’ breathing. Then I would write Holly a note to help her with her reading (“HELLO HOLLY, THAT IS A VERY VERY GOOD TIGER! WILL YOU DRAW ME A BEAR TODAY? LOTS OF LOVE, DADDY”) and kiss her good night on my way to bed. Holly sleeps sprawled on her back, taking up the maximum possible surface area. Back then, at least, Liv slept curled up, leaving my place ready. When I got into bed she would murmur something and press back against me, fumbling for my hand to wrap my arm around her.

I started by phoning Olivia’s mobile, so as not to wake Holly. When she let it ring out to voice mail three times running, I switched to the landline.

Olivia snatched it up on the first ring. “What, Frank.”

I said, “My brother died.”

Silence.

“My brother Kevin. He was found dead this morning.”

After a moment, her bedside lamp went on. “My God, Frank. I’m so sorry. What on earth . . . ? How did he . . . ?”

“I’m outside,” I said. “Could you let me in?”

More silence.

“I didn’t know where else to go, Liv.”

A breath, not quite a sigh. “Give me a moment.” She hung up. Her shadow moved behind her bedroom curtains, arms going into sleeves, hands running through her hair.

She came to the door in a worn white dressing gown with a blue jersey nightdress peeking out from underneath, which presumably meant that at least I hadn’t dragged her away from hot Dermo love. She put a finger to her lips and managed to draw me into the kitchen without touching me.

“What happened?”

“There’s a derelict house, at the end of our road. Same house where we found Rosie.” Olivia was pulling up a stool and folding her hands on the bar, ready to listen, but I couldn’t sit down. I kept moving fast, up and down the kitchen; I didn’t know how to stop. “They found Kevin there this morning, in the back garden. He went out a top-floor window. His neck was broken.”

I saw Olivia’s throat move as she swallowed. It had been four years since I’d seen her hair loose—it only comes down for bed—and it gave my grip on reality another swift, painful kick in the knuckles. “Thirty-seven years old, Liv. He had half a dozen girls on the go because he wasn’t ready to settle down yet. He wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef.”

“Sweet Lord, Frank. Was it . . . how . . . ?”

“He fell, he jumped, someone pushed him, take your pick. I don’t know what the hell he was doing in that house to start with, never mind how he fell out of it. I don’t know what to do, Liv. I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you need to do anything? Is there not an investigation?”

I laughed. “Oh, yeah. Is there ever. The Murder Squad got it—not that there’s anything to say it’s a murder, but because of the link to Rosie: same location, the time frame. It’s Scorcher Kennedy’s baby now.”

Olivia’s face closed over another notch. She knows Scorcher and doesn’t particularly like him, or else doesn’t particularly like me when I’m around him. She inquired politely, “Are you pleased?”

“No. I don’t know. At first I thought, yeah, fine, we could do a whole lot worse. I know Scorch is a royal pain in the hole, Liv, but he doesn’t give up, and we needed that here. This whole Rosie thing was cold as a witch’s tit; nine Murder guys out of ten would have turfed it down to the basement so fast it would make your head spin, so they could move on to something where they had a hope in hell. Scorch wasn’t about to do that. I thought that was a good thing.”

“But now . . . ?”

“Now . . . The guy’s a bloody pit bull, Liv. He’s nowhere near as bright as he thinks he is, and once he gets hold of something he won’t let go, even if what he’s got is the wrong end of the stick. And now . . .”

I had stopped moving. I leaned back against the sink and ran my hands over my face, took a deep open-mouthed breath through my fingers. The eco-righteous bulbs were kicking in, turning the kitchen white-edged and humming and dangerous. “They’re going to say Kevin killed Rosie, Liv. I saw the face on Scorcher. He didn’t say it, but that’s the way he’s thinking. They’re going to say Kev killed Rosie and then took himself out when he thought we were getting close.”

Olivia had her fingertips to her mouth. “My God. Why? Do they . . . What makes them think . . . Why?”

“Rosie left a note—half a note. The other half turned up on Kevin’s body. Anyone who shoved him out that window could have put it there, but that’s not the way Scorcher thinks. He’s thinking he’s got an obvious explanation and a nice neat double solve, case closed, no need for interrogations or warrants or a trial or any of that fancy stuff. Why make life complicated?” I shoved myself off the sink and started pacing again. “He’s Murder. Murder are a shower of f*cking cretins. All they can see is what’s laid out in a straight line in front of their noses; ask them to look just an inch off that line, just for once in their bloody lives, and they’re lost. Half a day in Undercover and they’d all be dead.”