“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t remember.”
Rafferty blew out air, exasperated and amused. “Ah, Toby. Come on. Not that again.”
“I don’t.”
“What, you sent so many fake emails there’s no way you’d remember a few more? To a guy who died not long after?”
“No. I don’t—”
“OK. Let’s try it this way. Did you ever send anyone a fake email, back when you were a teenager?”
“Not that I remember,” I said. Actually I had a feeling that might not be true, me and Dec snickering at a school computer, Nah we have to tone it down he’ll never go for—
“Huh,” Rafferty said. “Remember a guy called Lorcan Mullan? He was in your class?”
“Yeah. What does he have to do with—”
“He says in spring of sixth year he got a few emails from a girl who fancied him. She wouldn’t tell him her name, just that she’d seen him around and thought he was hot. Lorcan wasn’t a big hit with the ladies—skinny and spotty, from what he says—so he was only delighted. She dropped hints that she was on the hockey team, stuff like that, so he’d know she was fit, right? And after a couple of emails back and forth she said she wanted to meet up. They set up a time and a place, Lorcan put on his getting-laid shirt and half a can of body spray; but when he got there, it was just you and your mate Declan, pissing yourselves laughing.”
It had been Dec’s idea. Dec bored in computer class, buzzing for trouble, getting that dangerous glitter to him: C’mere, let’s see who we can catch . . . It hadn’t been just Lorcan; it had been three or four guys, carefully chosen for gullibility and desperation and general loserhood, but apparently only Lorcan had been thick enough to go the whole way. “We were little shits back then,” I said. “All of us were. I bet someone tried to pull the same thing on me, at some stage.”
“Ah, you could’ve been a lot worse,” Rafferty said, fairly. “Even Lorcan admits that. He was expecting the two of ye to tell the world, and he’d be slagged out of it till he had to change school or maybe leave the country. But as far as he could tell, you never said a word to anyone. You weren’t in it to destroy him, like some people would’ve been. You were just having a laugh.”
Only we had said a word to someone, actually. Sean, not laughing along like we’d expected; instead (at his locker, stuffing books into his bag) giving us a look of mild disgust over his shoulder: Fuck’s sake. Lorcan? You want to fuck with someone, pick someone your own size. Give yourselves an actual challenge.
“So,” Rafferty said. “Seems like you might’ve had the same kind of laugh at Dominic. He had been fucking with your cousins; he deserved it, right?”
Surely we would have lost interest after Lorcan, moved on to some other dumb way to get our kicks. That had been Dec’s style; once would have been enough for him. And I would never have come up with the idea to start with if it hadn’t been for him, surely I wouldn’t have kept going on my own— But I had always cared about Sean’s opinion. That look of disgust had stung. Pick someone your own size.
“The emails,” I said. I was so cold I couldn’t imagine ever being warm again. “The ones to Lorcan. Were they from, was it the same address as the ones to Dominic?”
Rafferty gave me a long curious look. “You genuinely don’t remember?”
“No.”
After a moment, relenting: “We don’t know. Lorcan deleted the emails as soon as he found out he’d been had, and the server doesn’t keep data this long. Any chance you remember anything about the address you used? Even part of it?”
“No.” Dec had been the one who set it up, huddled over the keyboard, giggling manically, kicking me to shut me up when I opened my mouth.
“Pity,” Rafferty said, after a pause that felt endless. “Declan says he doesn’t either. He remembers the emails to Lorcan, all right—and a couple of others, by the way—but he says he never emailed Dominic. And I believe him, for whatever that’s worth.”
I would have told Sean about it, surely I would have, if the whole point had been to show him I wasn’t just picking on rejects? Unless: unless Dominic had vanished before I could say anything, and I had thought it might be—even a little bit, even just maybe—because of my emails. Dominic, already half off the rails because of his exam results, realizing he’d been suckered like some idiot loser; not a big thing, but one thing too many . . . If I had thought there was even half a chance of that, I would have kept my mouth shut. Why upset people by coming clean? Not like it could do any good, not like we’d ever know for sure, not like there was any point in beating myself up thinking about it . . . Oh, you. Anything you feel bad about falls straight out of your head.
Rafferty sighed. “Looks like we’ll never know. And I’d only love to. Because, if those emails encouraged Dominic to keep chasing Susanna? And he got killed for it? Then no matter who did the actual killing, whoever wrote the emails helped to sucker Dominic into getting himself killed.”
I couldn’t even come up with a flash of horror. Honestly it wasn’t Susanna I was tired of, not really; it was me, wronged innocent, white knight, cunning investigator, killer, selfish oblivious dick, petty provocateur, take your pick, what does it matter? it’ll all change again tomorrow, it’s all up for grabs. This formless thing, boneless, grotesque, squashed like Play-Doh into whatever shape the boss of the day wanted to see: I was sick of it.
The garden was black and blue-white, trees swollen with ivy and still as monuments. The cat had slipped away somewhere. Birch seeds whirling weightless in the air, filling it like tiny flakes of snow or ash.
Rafferty’s voice rang over and over, in my head. Still, it took me a minute to hear it: no matter who did the actual killing.
I said, “You don’t think Hugo did it.”
He didn’t turn to look at me. “I told you already. Everything points to him. And now I’ve got motive and a witness. If this went to a jury, I’d put decent money on a conviction.”
“But you don’t think he did it.” I understood, in some distant lucid fragment of my mind, that I should be terrified. Even a year earlier I would have been no match for Rafferty; now, if he decided I was what he was after, he could take me apart methodically, piece by piece, until I confessed to killing Dominic and probably believed every word. All I could dredge up was a faint reflexive kick of animal fear.
The air was so still that I could hear Rafferty’s small sigh. “A lot of the time, in this job,” he said, “you can tell what kind of mind you’re up against. You can feel them, out there.” A nod to the garden. “I could feel it strong, this time. Mostly it’s just some clown, you know? Some halfwit scumbag taking out a rival dealer, some arsehole who got drunk again and hit her too hard this time. This was different, from the start. Someone cool as ice, thinking twenty moves ahead. Someone who was never going to get spooked, or confused, or strong-armed. It never felt like Hugo.”
I said, “Then why the hell did you arrest him?”
A lift of one shoulder. “Intuition’s nice, and all, but I’ve got to go with the evidence. The evidence says it was him. If you know different, though . . .” He turned his head to me then. He was nothing but eyes and shadows. “If you’ve got anything that says it was someone else, and you don’t want Hugo going down as a murderer, you need to tell me.”
I said, “I didn’t kill Dominic.”
He nodded, unsurprised. “But you wrote those emails—shush, man, we both know it. You’re no holy innocent, in all this. Your uncle, unless I’m way off base, he was a good man. You owe him this much.”