Holly was biting down hard on the inside of her lip. I said, “I’m not giving out to you; you did a pretty impressive job of the whole thing. I’m just getting the facts straight.”
Shrug. “So what?”
“So here’s my question. If you didn’t think your uncle Shay had done anything wrong, then why did you go to all that hassle? Why not just tell me what you’d found, and let me talk to him about it?”
Down to her lap, almost too low to be intelligible: “Wasn’t any of your business.”
“But it was, honeybunch. And you knew it was. You knew Rosie was someone I cared about, you know I’m a detective, and you knew I was trying to find out what had happened to her. That makes that note very much my business. And it’s not like anyone had asked you to keep it a secret to begin with. So why didn’t you tell me, unless you knew there was something dodgy about it?”
Holly carefully unraveled a thread of red wool from her cardigan sleeve, stretched it between her fingers and examined it. For a second I thought she was going to answer, but instead she asked, “What was Rosie like?”
I said, “She was brave. She was stubborn. She was a laugh.” I wasn’t sure where we were going with this, but Holly was watching me sideways, intently, like it mattered. The dull yellow light from the street lamps turned her eyes darker and more complicated, harder to read. “She liked music, and adventures, and jewelry, and her friends. She had bigger plans than anyone else I knew. When she cared about something, she didn’t give up on it, no matter what. You would have liked her.”
“No I wouldn’t.”
“Believe it or not, chickadee, you would’ve. And she would have liked you.”
“Did you love her more than Mum?”
Ah. “No,” I said, and it came out so cleanly and simply that I was nowhere near sure it was a lie. “I loved her a different way. Not more. Just differently.”
Holly stared out the window, winding the bit of wool around her fingers and thinking her own intent thoughts. I didn’t interrupt. Up at the corner, a troop of kids barely older than her were pushing each other off a wall, snarling and chattering like monkeys. I caught the glow of a cigarette and the glint of cans.
Finally Holly said, in a tight, level little voice, “Did Uncle Shay kill Rosie?”
I said, “I don’t know. It’s not up to me to decide that, or to you. It’s up to a judge and a jury.”
I was trying to make her feel better, but her fists clenched and she hammered them down on her knees. “Daddy, no, that’s not what I mean, I don’t care what anyone decides! I mean really. Did he?”
I said, “Yeah. I’m pretty sure he did.”
Another silence, longer this time. The monkeys on the wall had switched to mashing crisps in each other’s faces and hooting encouragement. In the end Holly said, still in that tight small voice, “If I tell Stephen what me and Uncle Shay talked about.”
“Yeah?”
“Then what happens?”
I said, “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and find out.”
“Will he go to jail?”
“He might. It depends.”
“On me?”
“Partly. Partly on a lot of other people, too.”
Her voice wavered, just a touch. “But he never did anything bad to me. He helps me with homework, and he showed me and Donna how to make shadows with our hands. He lets me have sips out of his coffee.”
“I know, sweetie. He’s been a good uncle to you, and that’s important. But he’s done other stuff, too.”
“I don’t want to make him go to jail.”
I tried to catch her eye. “Sweetheart, listen to me. No matter what happens, it won’t be your fault. Whatever Shay did, he did it himself. Not you.”
“He’ll still be mad. And Nana, and Donna, and Auntie Jackie. They’ll all hate me for telling.”
That wobble in her voice was getting wilder. I said, “They’ll be upset, yeah. And there’s a chance they might take that out on you for a bit, just at first. But even if they do, it’ll wear off. They’ll all know none of this is your fault, just like I do.”
“You don’t know for definite. They could hate me forever and ever. You can’t promise.”
Her eyes were white-ringed, hunted. I wished I had hit Shay a lot harder while I had the chance. “No,” I said. “I can’t.”
Holly slammed both feet into the back of the passenger seat. “I don’t want this! I want everyone to go away and leave me alone. I wish I never even saw that stupid note!”
Another slam that rocked the seat forward. She could have kicked my car to pieces for all I cared, if it made her feel any better, but she was going at it hard enough to hurt herself. I leaned around, fast, and got an arm between her feet and the seat back. She made a wild helpless noise and twisted furiously, trying to get a clear kick without hitting me, but I caught her ankles and held on. “I know, love. I know. I don’t want any of this either, but here it is. And I wish to God I could say that everything’ll be all right once you tell the truth, but I can’t. I can’t even promise that you’ll feel better; you might, but you could just as easily end up feeling even worse. All I can tell you is that you need to do it, either way. Some things in life aren’t optional.”
Holly had slumped back in her booster seat. She took a deep breath and tried to say something, but instead she clamped a hand over her mouth and started to cry.
I was about to get out and climb into the back to hug her tight. It hit me just in time: this wasn’t a little kid howling, waiting for Daddy to sweep her up in his arms and make everything all better. We had left that behind, somewhere in Faithful Place.
Instead I stretched out my hand and took Holly’s free one. She held on like she was falling. We sat there like that, with her leaning her head against the window and shaking all over with huge silent sobs, for a long time. Behind us I heard men’s voices swapping a few brusque comments, and then car doors slamming, and then Stephen driving away.
Neither of us was hungry. I made Holly eat anyway, some radioactive-looking cheese croissant thing that we picked up at a Centra on the way, more for my sake than for hers. Then I took her back to Olivia’s.
I parked in front of the house and turned around to look at Holly. She was sucking a strand of hair and gazing out the window with wide, still, dreamy eyes, like fatigue and overload had put her into a trance. Somewhere along the way she had fished Clara out of her bag.
I said, “You didn’t finish your maths. Is Mrs. O’Donnell going to get in a snot about that?”
For a second Holly looked like she had forgotten who Mrs. O’Donnell was. “Oh. I don’t care. She’s stupid.”
“I bet she is. There’s no reason you should have to listen to her being stupid about this, on top of everything else. Where’s your notebook?”
She dug it out, in slow motion, and handed it over. I flipped to the first blank page and wrote, Dear Mrs. O’Donnell, please excuse Holly for not finishing her maths homework. She hasn’t been well this weekend. If this is a problem, feel free to give me a call. Many thanks. Frank Mackey. On the opposite page I saw Holly’s round, painstaking handwriting: If Desmond has 342 pieces of fruit . . .
“There,” I said, passing the notebook back to her. “If she gives you any hassle, you give her my phone number and tell her to back off. OK?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Daddy.”
I said, “Your mother’s going to need to know about this. Let me do the explaining there.”
Holly nodded. She put the notebook away, but she stayed put, clicking her seat belt open and shut. I said, “What’s bugging you, chickadee?”
“You and Nana were mean to each other.”
“Yeah. We were.”
“How come?”
“We shouldn’t have been. Every now and then, though, we just get on each other’s nerves. Nobody in the world can make you crazy like your family can.”
Holly stuffed Clara into her bag and gazed down at her, stroking the threadbare nose with one finger. “If I did something bad,” she said. “Would you tell lies to the police to keep me from getting in trouble?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I would. I would lie to the police and the Pope and the president of the world till I was blue in the face, if that was what you needed. It would be the wrong thing to do, but I’d do it just the same.”
Holly startled the hell out of me by leaning forward between the seats, wrapping her arms around my neck and pressing her cheek against mine. I hugged her tight enough that I could feel her heartbeat against my chest, quick and light as a little wild animal’s. There were a million things I needed to say to her, every one of them crucial, but none of them would come out of my mouth.
Finally Holly sighed, an enormous shaky sigh, and disentangled herself. She climbed out of the car and hoisted her schoolbag onto her back. “If I have to talk to that Stephen guy,” she said. “Could it be not on Wednesday? Because I want to go play at Emily’s.”
“That’s absolutely fine, sweetie. Whatever day suits you. Go on ahead, now. I’ll be in to you in a bit; I’ve just got to make a phone call.”
Holly nodded. There was an exhausted sag to her shoulders, but as she went up the path she gave her head a little shake and braced herself. By the time Liv answered the door with her arms open, that narrow back was straight and strong as steel.
I stayed where I was, lit a smoke and sucked down about half of it in one drag. When I was sure I could keep my voice steady, I phoned Stephen.
He was somewhere with crappy reception, presumably deep in the warren of Murder rooms in Dublin Castle. I said, “It’s me. How’s it going?”
“Not too bad. Like you said, he’s denying everything, and that’s when he bothers answering me at all; mostly he won’t talk, except to ask me what your hole tastes like.”
“He’s a charmer. It runs in the family. Don’t let him get to you.”
Stephen laughed. “Ah, God, I’m not bothered. He can say whatever he likes; at the end of the day, I’m the one going home when we finish up. Tell us, though: what’ve you got? Anything that might get him feeling a bit chattier?”
He was all charged up and ready to keep going for as long as it took, and his voice was bursting with brand-new confidence. He was trying to sound tactfully subdued, but deep down, the kid was having the time of his life.
I gave him everything I had and how I had got it, down to the last rancid stinking detail: info is ammo, and Stephen didn’t need any blanks in his stockpile. At the end I said, “He’s fond of our sisters, especially Carmel, and of my daughter, Holly. As far as I know, that’s it. He hates my guts, he hated Kevin’s but he doesn’t like admitting that, and he hates his life. He’s viciously jealous of anyone who doesn’t, almost definitely including you. And, as you’ve probably figured out what with one thing and another, he’s got a temper.”
“OK,” Stephen said, almost to himself; his mind was going flat out. “OK, yeah. I can use that.”
The kid was turning into a man after my own heart. “Yeah, you can. One more thing, Stephen: up until this evening, he thought he was inches away from getting out. He thought he was about to buy the bike shop where he works, dump our da in a home, move out, and finally get his shot at a life worth having. A few hours ago, the world was this guy’s oyster.”
Silence, and for a second there I wondered if Stephen had taken that as an invitation to get his compassion on. Then he said, “If I can’t get him talking with that, I don’t deserve to get him talking at all.”
“That’d be my general feeling. Go for it, kid. Keep me posted.”
Stephen said, “Do you remember,” and then the reception went nuts and he turned into a bunch of disjointed scraping noises. I heard, “. . . all they’ve got . . .” before the line cut out and there was nothing left but pointless beeping.
I rolled down my window and had another smoke. The Christmas decorations were coming out here too—wreaths on doors, a “SANTA PLEASE STOP HERE” sign stuck lopsided in a garden—and the night air had turned cold and glassy enough that it finally felt like winter. I threw my cigarette butt away and took a deep breath. Then I went up to Olivia’s door and rang the bell.
Liv answered in her slippers, with her face washed ready for bed. I said, “I told Holly I’d come in and say good night.”
“Holly’s asleep, Frank. She’s been in bed for ages.”
“Ah. OK.” I shook my head, trying to clear it. “How long was I out there?”
“Long enough that I’m amazed Mrs. Fitzhugh didn’t ring the Guards. These days she’s seeing stalkers everywhere.”
She was smiling, though, and the fact that she wasn’t annoyed at me for being there gave me a ridiculous little flash of warmth. “That woman always was a fruitcake. Remember the time we—” I saw the retreat in Liv’s eyes and caught myself before it was too late. “Listen, is it OK if I come in for a few minutes anyway? Grab a cup of coffee, clear my head before I drive home, maybe have a quick chat about how Holly’s doing? I promise not to overstay my welcome.”
Clearly I looked like I felt, or at least enough like I felt to push Liv’s pity buttons. After a moment she nodded and held the door wide.