People routinely underestimate me and it’s one of my favorite things, but all the same I was a little surprised at Imelda; she didn’t seem like the type to overlook the less fluffy side of human nature. In her place I would at least have had a large ugly friend with some form of weapon spend a few days with me, but on Thursday morning the Tierney household appeared to be back to business as usual. Genevieve schlepped off to school sucking on a Kit Kat, Imelda headed for New Street and came back carrying two plastic bags, Isabelle stalked off somewhere that called for pulled-back hair and a sharp white shirt; there was no sign of any bodyguard, armed or otherwise. This time no one saw me watching.
Around noon, a couple of teenage girls with a couple of babies rang the buzzer, Shania came downstairs and they all wandered off to window-shop or shoplift or whatever. Once I was sure she wasn’t going to come back for her smokes, I cracked the front-door lock and went up to Imelda’s flat.
She had some talk show turned up loud, people howling at each other and the audience baying for blood. The door was crusted with locks, but when I put my eye to the crack, only one of them was actually on. It took me about ten seconds to pick. The telly covered the sound of the door creaking open.
Imelda was sitting on her sofa wrapping Christmas presents, which would have been more adorable if it hadn’t been for the TV show and the fact that most of them were fake Burberry. I had the door closed and I was coming up behind her when something—my shadow, a floorboard—made her whip around. She caught her breath to scream, but before she could get started I had a hand over her mouth and the other forearm leaning across her wrists, pinning them down on her lap. I got comfortable on the arm of the sofa and said, close to her ear, “Imelda, Imelda, Imelda. And here you swore to me you weren’t a squealer. I’m disappointed in you.”
She aimed an elbow at my stomach; when I tightened my hold, she tried to bite my hand. I pressed it down harder, pulling her head back, till her neck arched and I could feel her teeth crushing against her lip. I said, “When I take my hand away, I want you to think about two things. The first one is that I’m a whole lot closer than anyone else. The second one is what Deco upstairs would think if he knew there was an informer living here, because it would be very, very easy for him to find out. Do you think he’d take it out on you, personally, or would he decide Isabelle’s juicier? Or maybe Genevieve? You tell me, Imelda. I don’t know what kind of taste he’s got.”
Her eyes were lit up with pure fury, like a trapped animal’s. If she could have bitten my throat out, she would have done it. I said, “So what’s the plan? Are you going to scream?”
After a moment, her muscles slowly loosened and she shook her head. I let go, tossed a bunch of Burberry off an armchair onto the floor and settled in. “There,” I said. “Isn’t this cozy?”
Imelda rubbed tenderly at her jaw. “Prick,” she said.
“This wasn’t my choice, babe, now was it? I gave you two separate chances to talk to me like a civilized person, but no: you wanted it this way.”
“My fella’ll be home any minute now. He does the security. You don’t want to be messing with him.”
“That’s funny, because he wasn’t home last night and there’s nothing in this room that says he’s ever existed.” I kicked the Burberry out of the way so I could stretch out my legs. “Why would you lie about something like that, Imelda? Don’t tell me you’re afraid of me.”
She was sulking in the corner of the sofa, arms and legs crossed tight, but that got a rise out of her. “You wish, Francis Mackey. I’ve bet the shite out of a lot tougher than you.”
“Oh, I’m sure you have. And if you can’t beat the shite out of them, you run and tell someone who might. You squelt on me to Scorcher Kennedy—no, shut your bloody great gob and don’t be trying to lie your way out—and I’m not one bit happy about it. But it’s easily fixed. All you have to do is tell me who you ran to about me and Rosie, and hey presto, all will be forgiven.”
Imelda shrugged. In the background, the TV baboons were still belting each other with studio chairs; I leaned over, keeping a sharp eye on Imelda just in case, and yanked the plug out of the wall. Then I said, “I didn’t hear you.”
Another shrug. I said, “I think I’ve been more than patient. But this right here, what you’re looking at? This is the last of my patience, sweetheart. Take a good long look. It’s a whole lot prettier than what comes next.”
“So?”
“So I thought you’d been warned about me.”
I caught the flash of fear across her face. I said, “I know what they’re saying around here. Which one do you think I killed, Imelda? Rosie or Kevin? Or is it both?”
“I never said—”
“See, I’m betting on Kevin. Am I right? I thought he killed Rosie, so I booted him out that window. Is that what you’ve figured out?”
Imelda had better sense than to answer. My voice was rising fast, but I didn’t care if Deco and his drug buddies heard every word. I had been waiting all week for a chance to lose my temper like this. “Tell me this: how thick do you have to be, how incredibly stupid, to play games with someone who would do that to his own brother? I’m in no mood to be fucked with, Imelda, and you spent yesterday afternoon fucking with me. Do you think that was a good idea?”
“I just wanted—”
“And now here you are, doing it again. Are you deliberately trying to push me that extra inch? Do you want me to snap, is that it?”
“No—”
I was up out of the armchair, gripping the sofa back on either side of her head, shoving my face so close to hers I could smell cheese-and-onion crisps on her breath. “Let me explain something, Imelda. I’ll use small words, so it’ll get through your thick skull. Inside the next ten minutes, I swear to Christ, you’re going to answer my question. I know you’d rather stick to the story you told Kennedy, but you don’t have that option. Your only choice is whether you want to answer with a few slaps or without.”
She tried to duck her head away from me, but I got one hand cupped around her jaw and forced her face up to mine. “And before you decide, think about this: how hard would it be for me to get carried away and wring your neck like a chicken’s? Everyone around here already thinks I’m Hannibal Lecter. What the hell have I got to lose?” Maybe she was ready to talk by then, but I didn’t give her the chance. “Your friend Detective Kennedy may not be my biggest fan, but he’s a cop, just like me. If you turn up beaten to pulp, or God forbid dead as a doornail, don’t you think he’s going to look after his own? Or do you seriously think he’ll care more about some bone-stupid skanger tramp whose life wasn’t worth a fiver to anyone in this world? He’ll throw you away in a heartbeat, Imelda. Like the piece of shite you are.”
I knew the look on her face, the slack jaw, the blind black eyes stretched too wide to blink. I had seen it on my ma a hundred times, in the second when she knew she was about to get hit. I didn’t care. The thought of the back of my hand cracking across Imelda’s mouth almost choked me with how badly I wanted it. “You didn’t mind opening your ugly yap for anyone else who asked. Now, by Jesus, you’re going to open it for me. Who’d you tell about me and Rosie? Who, Imelda? Who was it? Was it your slut ma? Who the fuck did you—”
I could already hear her spitting it at me like great slimy gobs of poison, Your alco da, your filthy dirty whoremaster da, and I was all ready and braced for it to hit me when her mouth opened wide and red and she almost howled into my face, “I told your brother!”
“Bullshit, you lying bitch. That’s the crap you fed Scorcher Kennedy and he lapped it up, but do I look as stupid as him? Do I?”
“Not Kevin, you thick bastard, what would I be doing with Kevin? Shay. I told Shay.”
The room went soundless, a huge perfect silence like snowfall, as if there had never been a noise in all the world. After what might have been a long time I noticed that I was sitting in the armchair again and that I was numb all over, like my blood had stopped moving. After a while longer I noticed that someone upstairs had a washing machine on. Imelda had shrunk into the sofa cushions. The terror on her face told me what mine must look like.
I said, “What did you tell him?”
“Francis . . . I’m sorry, right. I didn’t think—”
“What did you tell him, Imelda.”
“Just . . . you and Rosie. That yous were heading off.”
“When did you say it to him?”
“The Saturday night, in the pub. The night before yous were leaving. I thought, sure, what harm at that stage, it was too late for anyone to stop yous—”
Three girls leaning on the railings and tossing their hair, glossy and restless as wild fillies, fidgeting on the edge of their anything-can-happen evening. Apparently just about anything had. I said, “If you give me one more shitty excuse, I’m going to put my foot through that robbed telly.”
Imelda shut up. I said, “Did you tell him when we were going?”
A quick jerk of a nod.
“And where you’d left the suitcase?”
“Yeah. Not what room, like; just . . . in Number Sixteen.”
The dirty-white winter light through the lace curtains was vicious on her. Slumped in the corner of the sofa, in this overheated room that stank of grease and cigarettes and waste, she looked like an underfilled bag of bones wrapped in gray skin. I couldn’t think of one thing this woman could have wanted that would have been worth what she had thrown away. I said, “Why, Imelda? Why the hell?”
She shrugged. It dawned on me in a slow wave, with the faint red stain mottling her cheeks. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “You were into Shay?”
Another shrug, this one sharper and pricklier. Those bright-colored girls shrieking and play-fighting, Mandy said to ask if your brother fancies going to the pictures . . . I said, “I thought Mandy was the one who had a thing for him.”
“Her too. We all did—not Rosie, but loads of us. He had his pick.”
“And so you sold Rosie out to get his attention. Is that what you had in mind when you told me you loved her?”
“That’s not bleeding fair. I never meant to—”
I fired the ashtray at the telly. It was heavy and I put my whole body behind it; it smashed through the screen with an impressive crashing noise and an explosion of ash and butts and splinters of glass. Imelda let out something between a gasp and a yelp and cringed away from me, one forearm thrown up to protect her face. Specks of ash filled up the air, whirled and settled on the carpet, the coffee table, her tracksuit bottoms.
“Now,” I said. “What did I warn you?”
She shook her head, wild-eyed. She had a hand pressed over her mouth: someone had trained her not to scream.
I flicked away glittering speckles of glass and found Imelda’s smokes on the coffee table, under a ball of green ribbon. “You’re going to tell me what you said to him, word for word, as close as you can remember. Don’t leave anything out. If you can’t remember something for definite, say so; don’t make shit up. Is that clear?”
Imelda nodded, hard, into her palm. I lit a smoke and leaned back in the armchair. “Good,” I said. “So talk.”
I could have told the story myself. The pub was some place off Wexford Street, Imelda didn’t remember the name: “We were going dancing, me and Mandy and Julie, but Rosie had to be home early—her da was on the warpath—so she didn’t want to pay in to the disco. So we said we’d go for a few pints first . . .” Imelda had been up at the bar, getting her round in, when she spotted Shay. She had got chatting to him—I could see her, tossing her hair, jutting one hip, slagging him off. Shay had flirted back automatically, but he liked them prettier and softer and a lot less mouthy, and when his pints arrived he had gathered them up and turned to head back to his mates in their corner.
She had just been trying to keep his attention. What’s wrong, Shay? Is Francis right, yeah, are you more into the fellas?