“They tracked the phone there,” Susanna said. “That was where the text was sent from, or where the phone last pinged a tower, or something. So everyone just assumed.”
“Which means,” Leon said, “now the cops think he was murdered because if he just killed himself in our tree, God knows why he would do that but if, then how did his phone end up on Howth Head?”
His voice was starting to rise again. “Chill out,” Susanna said. “Plenty of ways. He was going to jump off Howth Head, but then he couldn’t go through with it, so he threw the phone away and came back here and did whatever in the tree—”
“Why here?”
She shrugged. “Because here has more privacy than his place did, maybe. How would I know? Or else he never went to Howth at all, he just killed himself here—or OD’d or whatever—and then someone freaked out and did the phone thing so it wouldn’t be connected to them—”
“Oh, great. Even if they do think that—which they won’t, because they’re cops, it’s not their job to think up innocent explanations—but if. They’re going to think it had to be one of us. What with it being our garden.”
“No they’re not. If Dominic could get into the garden, then he could bring along someone else. Who could have watched him OD, or fall into the tree, or whatever, and then freaked out. Or who could’ve killed him, if you want to go that way.”
Leon dragged his hands over his face. “Fucking hell,” he said.
“How did he get into the garden?” I wanted to know. “Because the wall, I mean, remember the time Jason O’Halloran and that guy from Blackrock got into a fight, at the Halloween party? And Sean and I threw them out? Jason tried to climb over the wall and get back in, but he couldn’t do it. And he was a big guy. Even bigger than Dominic.”
“Well, I suppose Dominic could have found a crate or something to stand on, or brought something along. But . . .” Susanna drew on her cigarette. Her profile, upturned to the gray sky, was clean and calm as a plaster saint’s. “I’m betting he didn’t. Remember how the cops were looking for extra keys to the garden door? And Hugo said there used to be one hanging beside the door, but it went missing? It disappeared sometime that summer. Like, a month or two before Dominic died.”
“How come you didn’t say that to the cops when they asked?” I said. “Or to us?”
“I didn’t remember then. Afterwards I went away and thought about it. What you said about Faye? My ‘weird blond cutter friend’?” Sidelong eyebrow-lift at me. “That reminded me. At the beginning of that summer, I used to sneak her in through the garden—I figured the less Hugo knew the better, he didn’t need her horrible parents giving him shit, plus I was eighteen so the less adults knew the better in general. By the end of the summer, though, I had to let her in the front, because the key was gone and I didn’t want to ask Hugo where he kept the spare.”
“Did you say that to the cops today?” Leon asked.
“Course.” Susanna put out her cigarette on the step and tucked the butt back into the packet. “I couldn’t give them an exact date, obviously, but still, they were very interested. Who knows; maybe Dominic was making plans.”
“Oh, God,” Leon said, doubling over like his stomach hurt. “I really, really want that spliff. Have either of you got any?”
“No,” Susanna said. “And neither will you, if you’re smart. Rafferty and his pals are going to be asking around about us. Possibly keeping an eye on us.”
“So what?” I wanted to know. “You’ve been going on about how they don’t have any reason to think we did anything—”
“They don’t. So don’t give them one. You especially.”
“What? Why me?”
“Because you’re the one who knew Dominic. If they get it into their heads that he came here to meet someone, who do you think they’re going to be looking into?” And when I rolled my eyes to the sky: “I know you’re all ‘Oh, the Guards are our friends, if you haven’t done anything wrong then you’ve got nothing to worry about.’ But just for now, it might be a good idea to pretend that’s not necessarily true. Just be boring for a while.”
“That’s all right for you,” Leon said bitchily. “Some of us have more to our lives than kiddies and nightmares and—”
“And that’s the other thing,” Susanna said. “Don’t say anything over the phone that you don’t want the cops hearing. Our phones could be tapped.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” I said.
“Hang on,” Leon said, head snapping around. “That’s why you wouldn’t talk to me last night? And you’re telling me to stop being paranoid?”
“They probably aren’t. But better safe than sorry.” I realized, with a small shock, that on some level Susanna was enjoying herself. Back in school, she had always been the smart one, the one who aced every exam effortlessly while I cruised happily along with my string of B’s and Leon didn’t seem to care one way or another, the one for whom teachers kept predicting great things. I had never thought much about it, except to cheerfully congratulate her when she did something impressive and to raise a mental eyebrow when she ditched the big PhD plans for a life of nappies and snot; but it occurred to me all of a sudden that that ferocious intelligence of hers had probably been craving a challenge for years.
“Shit,” Leon said, suddenly whispering and wide-eyed. “What about the house? They could’ve planted anything, while they were searching—”
I snorted. Susanna shook her head. “Nah. Apparently it’s a lot easier to get a warrant to tap someone’s phone than to bug someone’s house. They’d need something solid on us, which of course they don’t have.”
“How do you know this stuff?” I asked.
“The miracle of the internet.”
“Remember last month?” Leon said, pressing his fingers into his eyes like they hurt. “I’d just got into town, and the whole mob was over for lunch, and we were sitting out here freaking out about Hugo? Here we thought we had problems then.”
“We don’t have problems,” Susanna said. “Not any more than we had then, anyway.”
Leon buried his face in his hands and started to laugh. There was a hysterical note to it.
“Oh, get a grip. So detectives talked to you. The world didn’t collapse. And then they went away.”
“They’ll come back.”
“Maybe. And unless you say something incredibly thick, they’ll go away again.”
Leon wiped his hands over his face. He had stopped laughing. “I want to go home,” he said. “Give me a lift.”
“In a bit, yeah.” Susanna stood up and brushed off the seat of her jeans. “Come on. Let’s go replant that stuff.”
* * *
?“They’ll come back,” Leon had said; except they didn’t, and I didn’t know what to think about that. I was constantly waiting for them, braced and listening for the knock at the door, and it made it impossible to sink back into our gentle green underwater world. There was something off about the sounds in the house: too loud, naked and raw, as if the windows had thinned and every bird-chirp or gust of wind or clatter of the neighbors’ bin was right inside with us, making me jump—I had gone back to shying like a wild horse at unexpected sounds. For a bad couple of days I was sure my hearing was going weird, before I realized: the acoustics of the garden had changed, wind and sounds barreling unchecked through the space where the wych elm had been, across the flat expanse of mud.