Susanna came back with what looked to me like the same orange plastic pouch. “Here,” she said. “I got you one with no snabbits.” Sallie grabbed the packet, retreated to a corner of the sofa and started sucking feverishly on the spout.
“The garden’s swarming,” Susanna said to the rest of us, low, glancing over at Zach and Sallie to make sure they weren’t listening. “Guys in white coveralls and hoods and face masks, like in some sci-fi movie where the virus just got out of the lab. Taking photos. They’re putting up a thing, a canvas gazebo thing. With plastic sheets on the ground. Down by the strawberry bed.”
“Jesus Christ,” Leon said. He tossed down his cards, swung himself out of the armchair and started circling the room. “This is fucked up. What the fuck are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to set up camp here until they finish whatever the fuck it is they’re doing out there?”
Tom was making frantic warning grimaces and jerking his head sideways towards Zach and Sallie. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” Leon said.
“Knock it off,” Susanna said. “And relax. This is not the end of the world.”
“Don’t tell me to relax. Of all the stupid bloody things to say—”
“Go have a smoke.”
“I can’t go have a smoke. There are cops all over the—”
“Yuck,” Zach said, shoving his orange pouch into Susanna’s hand.
“Don’t tell me yours has snabbits too.”
“There’s no such thing as snabbits. It’s just disgusting.”
“I asked you if you were going to eat it. You said—”
“If I eat it I’ll puke.”
“Oh, for God’s sake—”
There was a tap at the door, and a man stuck his head in. “Afternoon,” he said. “I’m Mike Rafferty; Detective Mike Rafferty. Sorry about all this hassle.”
We all came up with some shapeless polite nonsense. Leon had stopped pacing; Melissa’s hand was suspended in mid-air, cards fanned.
“I appreciate that,” Rafferty said. “I’m sure this isn’t how you were planning on spending your Saturday afternoon. We’ll be out of your way as soon as possible.”
He was maybe in his early forties; tall, a bit over six foot, with a thin, rangy build that managed to look strong and agile all the same, as if he was a black belt in some obscure martial art that we weren’t cool enough to have heard of. He had rough dark hair and a long, lean, bony face carved deeply with smile lines, and a discreetly excellent gray suit.
“I just have to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right. Everyone OK with that? Anyone feeling a bit too shaken up right now, prefer to wait till later?”
Now was apparently fine with everyone. Leon leaned against the window frame, hands stuffed deep in his pockets; Susanna took up her place on the sofa again, an arm around Sallie, murmuring something in her ear. Melissa swept the cards into a pile.
“Great,” Rafferty said. “That’ll help us out a lot. OK if I sit here?” He turned Leon’s armchair to give a good view of us all, and sat down.
His presence was doing bad things to me. On the surface he was nothing at all like Martin or Flashy Suit, but still there was something, something about the economy of movement and the easy friendly tone leaving no option of refusal and giving away absolutely nothing, that brought it all back: polluting hospital air burrowing into every pore, my head clogged with pain and with a thick haze like demolition dust, the pleasant blank faces watching me and waiting. My hands were shaking. I clasped them between my knees.
“As you’ve probably gathered from all the action,” Rafferty said, “that’s a human skull out there in your garden. So far we don’t know a lot more than that. These two were the ones who found it?”
“My son,” Susanna said, “and my daughter.” Sallie was pressed against her, the pouch thing still firmly stuck in her mouth. Zach was hanging over the back of the sofa, staring.
Rafferty nodded, examining them. “Which of them’s more likely to be able to tell me how it happened? Kids this age, some of them make great witnesses, better than adults: good observers, good clear account of events, no messing about. Other kids, they’re so busy playing cute or shy or stubborn, they can barely make a sentence, and when they do it’s mostly rubbish. Which of your two—”
“Me,” Zach said loudly, scrambling over the back of the sofa and nearly kicking Susanna in the face. “I’m the one who found it.”
Rafferty gave him a long look. “This isn’t like explaining to your teacher why Jimmy hit Johnny in the playground. This is serious business. You think you can manage to give me a clear account?”
“Course I can. I’m not stupid.”
“Right,” Rafferty said, pulling out a notebook and a pen. His hands seemed wrong for a detective, long and muscular, with scars and heavy calluses like he spent a lot of time sailing in hard weather. “Let’s hear it.”
Zach arranged himself cross-legged on the sofa and took a breath. “OK,” he said. “So Uncle Hugo told us to go out in the garden and look for treasure. So Sallie went and looked in the strawberry patch, which, duhhh, we go in there all the time so if there was treasure there we would have found it already? And I went to look in the hole in the tree.”
Rafferty was nodding along, grave and intent. “That’s the big elm tree? The one right next to where you left the skull?”
“Yeah.”
“Had you been up that tree before?”
“We’re not allowed.”
“So why today?”
“All the grownups were having some big serious talk. So . . .” Zach grinned, at Susanna, who made a wry face at him.
Rafferty let the edge of a matching grin slip out. “So you knew you wouldn’t get caught.”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“And I stuck my arm down the hole—”
“Hang on,” Rafferty said, lifting his pen. “If you’d never been up that tree before, how did you know it had a hole in it? You can’t see the hole from the ground.”
Zach shrugged. “I tried climbing that tree a load of times before, only my mum or Uncle Hugo always yelled at me to get down. A couple of times I got high enough up that I saw the hole. And one time I saw a squirrel come out of it.”
“Ever notice anything in there? Apart from the squirrel?”
“Nah.”
“Ever put your hand in there before? Or a stick, or anything?”
“Nah.”
“Why today?”
“Because I was looking for treasure.”
“Fair enough,” Rafferty said. “So you stuck your arm down the hole . . .”
“Yeah. And first there was just all leaves and muck and wet stuff, like hairy stuff—” Zach’s eyes snapped wide as he realized.
“Moss, probably,” Rafferty said easily. “What next?”
“And then there was something big, like smooth. It felt weird. And there was a hole in it so I stuck my fingers in the hole and pulled it out, and at first I thought it was like a big eggshell, like from an ostrich egg? And it smelled like dirt. And I was going to throw it at the wall so it would smash. Only then I turned it around and there were teeth.” Zach shuddered from head to feet, an irresistible spasm. Susanna’s hand went out towards his shoulder and stopped. “Actual teeth.”
“Yeah,” Rafferty said. “There are. What’d you do next?”
“I threw it. Onto the grass. Not trying to smash it; I just wanted to get rid of it. And I yelled and I got down out of the tree, I fell the last part but I didn’t get hurt. And Sallie started screaming and then Mum and everyone came.”
He was hunched over, hands tucked tight into the crooks of his knees, eyes flicking away from the memory. For a second I actually felt sorry for the little bastard.
“Well done,” Rafferty said, giving Zach a nod. “You were right: you’re a good witness. At some point I’ll get this typed up and I’ll need you to sign it, but for now, that’s exactly what I need. Thanks.”
Zach took a deep breath and relaxed a notch or two. Rafferty had a good voice, rich and warm with a windswept tinge of Galway, like some rugged islandman in an old movie who would probably end up with Maureen O’Hara. I was willing to bet that this guy got more hoop than he could handle. To Sallie: “Now let’s see you give it a try. Can you remember what happened?”
Sallie was snuggled in tight against Susanna, watching the whole thing with solemn unreadable eyes over her orange pouch. She took it out of her mouth and nodded.