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 fucking 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.”
Olivia smoothed a long lock of ash-gold hair and watched it tighten. She said, “I suppose, much of the time, the straightforward explanation is the right one.”
“Yeah. Right. Great. I’m sure it is. But this time, Liv, this time it’s all wrong. This time, the straightforward explanation is a fucking travesty.”
For a second Olivia said nothing, and I wondered if she had twigged who the straightforward explanation must have been, right up until Kev took his swan dive. Then she said, very carefully, “It’s been a long time since you last saw Kevin. Can you be absolutely sure . . . ?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes. I’m positive. I spent the last few days with him. He was the same guy I knew when we were kids. Better hair, a few more inches each way, but he was the same guy. You can’t mistake that. I know everything important there was to know about him, and he wasn’t a killer and he wasn’t a suicide.”
“Have you tried saying this to Scorcher?”
“Of course I have. I might as well have been talking to the wall. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear, so he didn’t hear it.”
“What about talking to his superintendent? Would he listen?”
“No. Jesus, no. That’s the worst thing I could do. Scorcher already warned me off his patch, and he’s going to be keeping an eye on me to make sure I stay off. If I go over his head and try to shove my oar in, specially in ways that could banjax his precious solve rate, he’ll just dig his heels in harder. So what do I do, Liv? What? What do I do?”
Olivia watched me, thoughtful gray eyes full of hidden corners. She said gently, “Maybe the best thing you can do is leave it, Frank. Just for a little while. Whatever they say, it can’t hurt Kevin now. Once the dust settles—”
“No. Not a chance in hell. I’m not going to stand by and watch them make him into their fall guy just because he’s dead. He may not be able to fight back, but I can bloody well do it for him.”
A small voice said, “Daddy?”
We both jumped about six feet. Holly was in the doorway, wearing a too-big Hannah Montana nightie, one hand on the door handle and her toes curled up on the cold tiles. Olivia said swiftly, “Go to bed, love. Mummy and Daddy are just having a chat.”
“You said somebody died. Who died?”
Oh, Jesus. “It’s all right, love,” I said. “Just someone I know.”
Olivia went to her. “It’s the middle of the night. Go to sleep. We’ll all talk about it in the morning.”
She tried to turn Holly back towards the stairs, but Holly clung on to the door handle and dug her feet in. “No! Daddy, who died?”
“Bed. Now. Tomorrow we can—”
“No! I want to know!”
Sooner or later I would have to explain. Thank God she already knew about death: goldfish, a hamster, Sarah’s granddad. I couldn’t have handled that conversation, on top of everything else. “Your auntie Jackie and I have a brother,” I said—one long-lost relative at a time. “Had. He died this morning.”
Holly stared at me. “Your brother?” she said, with a high little shake in her voice. “Like my uncle?”
“Yes, baby. Your uncle.”
“Which one?”
“Not one of the ones you know. Those are your mammy’s brothers. This was your uncle Kevin. You never met him, but I think you two would have liked each other.”
For a second those butane eyes went huge; then Holly’s face crumpled, her head went back and she let out a wild shriek of pure anguish. “Nooooo! No, Mummy, no, Mummy, no . . .”
The scream dissolved into big gut-wrenching sobs, and she buried her face in Olivia’s stomach. Olivia knelt down on the floor and wrapped her arms around Holly, murmuring soothing wordless things.
I asked, “Why is she crying?”
I was genuinely perplexed. After the last few days, my mind had slowed down to a crawl. It wasn’t until I saw Olivia’s quick up-glance, furtive and guilty, that I realized something was going on.
“Liv,” I said. “Why is she crying?”
“Not now. Shh, darling, shh, it’s all right—”
“Nooo! It’s not all right!”
The kid had a point. “Yes, now. Why the fuck is she crying?”
Holly lifted her wet red face from Olivia’s shoulder. “Uncle Kevin!” she screamed. “He showed me Super Mario Brothers and he was going to bring me and Auntie Jackie to the panto!”
She tried to keep talking, but it got swamped by another tsunami of crying. I sat down hard on a bar stool. Olivia kept her eyes away from mine and rocked Holly back and forth, stroking her head. I could have done with someone to give me the same treatment, preferably someone with very large bosoms and a massive cloud of enveloping hair.
Eventually Holly wore herself out and moved into the shuddery-gasp stage, and Liv steered her gently upstairs to bed. Her eyes were already closing. While they were up there I found a nice bottle of Chianti in the wine rack—Olivia doesn’t stock beer, now that I’m gone—and cracked it open. Then I sat on the bar stool with my eyes shut, leaning my head back against the kitchen wall and listening to Olivia making soothing noises above me, and tried to work out whether I had ever been this angry before.
“So,” I said pleasantly, when Olivia came back downstairs. She had taken the opportunity to put on her yummy-mummy armor, crisp jeans and caramel cashmere and a self-righteous expression. “I think I’m owed an explanation, don’t you?”