“It’ll grow back,” Sean said. “A load of grass seed, bunch of wildflower seeds . . .”
We hadn’t mentioned Dominic all evening. Sean and Dec had stayed far from it: asked Hugo about how he was feeling and how his treatment was going, told funny stories about work, Sean had pulled up phone snaps of his and Audrey’s engagement party (“Oh my goodness, look at her, all grown up, I’m still picturing a little slip of a thing with braces . . .”). I had been biting my tongue hard, twitching with impatience for the right moment, and I couldn’t afford to wait any longer: for all I knew Sean and Dec were planning on leaving right after the Armagnac. “That hole there,” I said. “That was the tree where . . . That big elm, remember?”
Dec paused, with a handful of plates, to look out. “Sort of. The detectives asked me that. Someone told them I’d been up there, at a party? Singing ‘Wonderwall’?”
“Probably Susanna,” I said.
“Tell her thanks a bunch from me. I remember being up a tree singing, all right—Jesus, I must’ve been fluthered—but I’m not an arborist, know what I mean? It could’ve been an elm or an oak or a bleeding Christmas tree for all I know.”
“I think that must’ve been Leon’s birthday,” I said—I had no idea whether that was true or not. “The detectives went on about it a lot. They wanted to know who was there.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had Armagnac,” Melissa said, leaning towards Hugo to examine the bottle. “What’s it like?”
“I’ll tell you what it’s like,” Sean said, over his shoulder from the sink. “It’s like a gorgeous woman, right? absolute stunner? who has a black belt in karate. If you treat her right, she’ll make you feel like you’re the king of the world. But if you don’t give her proper respect, she’ll kick seven shades of shite out of you. I can still feel the hangover.”
Hugo was laughing. “If you’ve had cognac,” he said to Melissa, “it’s a bit like that, only richer; earthier. It’s powerful stuff, all right, if you’re fifteen and swigging right out of the bottle, but this is a wonderful one; bound to be smooth as butter. These boys don’t do things by halves.”
They didn’t want to talk about Dominic. “I was shag-all use to the detectives,” I said. “I got the feeling they thought I was messing them around, but actually the problem is I haven’t got a clue about the party, due to my memory being pretty thoroughly fucked.” In the sudden stillness I gave a small wry shrug, keeping my eyes on the glasses I was putting in front of Hugo, so I wouldn’t have to see anyone’s face. It made my stomach lurch even to touch on this, it was humiliating and disgusting and unsafe, but now that I had finally found an upside to my fuckedupness I had every intention of milking it for all it was worth. “Yeah. Probably I should’ve just told them that, but . . .”
And sure enough, after the smallest flicker of silence: “That was the one where Audrey’s mate Nessa spent half the night crying in the jacks,” Sean said easily. He was rinsing plates, ready for the dishwasher. “Because she’d snogged Jason O’Halloran a couple of days earlier, and he was blanking her. It wasn’t one of the big ones, not a lot of people there—it was like a few days after the Leaving Cert results and the college offers, so everyone was partied out. There was the three of us and your cousins, and Audrey brought Nessa and Lara—”
“Leon had those three emo mates of his,” Dec said, grinning. “Sitting in a corner playing Dungeons and Dragons or whatever they were at. And a few of Susanna’s shower turned up—the little blond one, and the mouthy one with the mad hair?”
“And a few of the lads,” Sean said. “Dominic was there, all right. And Jason, obviously. And I remember Bren was giving out because Nessa was taking up the jacks, and if Bren was there then I’d say Rocky and Mal were too—”
Melissa had gone quiet, one foot curled under her, eyes dark in the dim light and moving back and forth among us. “That rings bells, all right,” I said. “Nessa locking herself in the jacks. And didn’t we make Leon a hash cake?”
“Yeah,” Sean said, face lighting up with pleasure—look, we’re helping, Toby’s getting better before our very eyes! “It turned out crap, it didn’t even look like a cake, but it did the job. One of the emo mates ate like four slices and couldn’t stop giggling about the floor tiles.”
Hugo was still fumbling with the bottle, trying to uncork it but his grip kept slipping. Melissa reached out a hand and he passed it to her, with a small tight grimace.
“Hang on, but,” Dec said. “Why are the cops even asking about that party? That was ages before Dominic went missing.”
“Something about the key to the door in the garden wall, I think,” I said. “It went missing at the party; they want to know who could’ve taken it.”
“They asked me about the key, yeah. If I knew where it was kept—they knew I was staying here off and on, the summer before that. Did you tell them?”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t hidden or anything, though, the key; it was just on a hook by the door. Anyone who went down there would’ve seen it.”
“I remember it, all right,” Sean said. “On a big keyring with a black dog on it. Metal.”
“That’s the one. I’ve been going mental trying to remember if I saw anyone with it, at that party, but . . .” I shrugged. “Yeah. Well.”
Dec and Sean looked at each other. “I didn’t,” Sean said. “If I’d seen anyone messing with it, I’d’ve stopped them.”
“Me neither,” Dec said. “Wasn’t that the party where we couldn’t even go down that end of the garden? It was all dug up and mucky? Hugo, you were putting something in, rocks—”
Hugo glanced up as if Dec had startled him, but he said readily enough, “The rock garden, it must have been. I’m sure that was that summer—you three helped me, do you remember?” I did remember that, vaguely, hauling rocks in happy summer sun, chart music bopping from the open windows, Hugo cocking his head, Maybe a little more to the right, what do you think— “It turned out pretty well, in the end.”
“That’ll be it,” Dec said. “Bren tried to go down there, and he tripped over into a hole and got his lovely expensive jeans all mucky, so after that we all stayed up this end. That’s why Bren was pissed off about Nessa hogging the jacks: he wanted to take off his jeans and give them a rinse.”
“In the end he did it in here, remember?” Sean said, grinning. “Waving the jeans like”—stripper whirl, hip-swing—“and the girls all screaming, and then Rocky and Mal grabbed the jeans off him and threw them up a tree.”
“My goodness,” Hugo said, smiling. “I missed all the excitement. I had a large stockpile of industrial-strength earplugs, back then. Thank you, my dear—” to Melissa, who had poured the Armagnac and was passing glasses.
“So the cops think, what?” Dec asked. “Dominic robbed the key and then came back here to do himself in? Or someone else robbed it and brought him here?”
“I don’t have a clue what they’re thinking,” I said. “I don’t think they even know.”
“At least,” Sean pointed out—taking his seat, brushing water off his hands—“if they’re asking about the key, they think it was someone from outside. They’re not thinking one of you guys let him in and killed him. Which is nice.”
That hadn’t occurred to me, and while I liked the thought, I had a hard time believing it was quite so simple. “I don’t think anyone killed him,” I said. “Dominic Ganly, for God’s sake. Why would anyone want to?”
That was for Dec: he always loved having something to contradict. He went right for it. “Seriously? I mean”—pulling his chair up to the table, energized by the prospect of an argument—“I mean, OK, it’s unbelievable to think we know someone who might’ve possibly been murdered. But seeing as we do, right? seeing as, let’s face it, apparently we do, are you really that surprised that it was Dom?”