“But you noticed that she wasn’t at any subsequent protests. Why were you looking for her?”
I could see him, in the glass, staring suspiciously at the back of my head. Finally he shoved the photo away and settled back in his chair, chin jutting. “I wasn’t.”
“Did you make any attempt to get in contact with her again?”
“No.”
“How did you know she was Devlin’s daughter?”
“I don’t remember.”
I was starting to get a bad feeling about this. Mark was impatient and pissed off, and the shower of disconnected questions was making him wary, but he didn’t seem remotely nervous or scared or anything like that; his main feeling about the whole thing appeared to be irritation. Basically, he wasn’t acting like a guilty man.
“Listen,” Cassie said, tucking one foot up under her, “what’s the real story on the dig and the motorway?”
Mark laughed, a mirthless little snort. “It’s a lovely bedtime story. The government announced the plans in 2000. Everyone knew there was plenty of archaeology around Knocknaree, so they brought in a team to do a survey. The team came back, said the site was way more important than anyone had thought and only an idiot would build on it, the motorway would have to be moved. The government said that was very interesting, thanks very much, and they weren’t moving it an inch. It took massive rows before they’d even allow an excavation. Finally they were gracious enough to say OK, we could do a two-year dig—it’d take at least five years to do that site justice. Since then there’s been thousands of people fighting this every way we can—petitions, demonstrations, lawsuits. The government doesn’t give a fuck.”
“But why?” Cassie asked. “Why don’t they just move the thing?”
He shrugged, his mouth twisting savagely. “Don’t ask me. We’ll find out all about it in some tribunal, when it’s ten or fifteen years too late.”
“What about Tuesday night?” I said. “Where were you?”
“The team house. Can I go now?”
“In a while,” I told him. “When was the last time you spent the night on the site?”
His shoulders stiffened, almost imperceptibly. “I’ve never spent the night on the site,” he said, after a moment.
“Don’t split hairs. The wood beside the site.”
“Who said I’ve ever slept there?”
“Look, Mark,” Cassie told him, suddenly and bluntly, “you were in the wood either Monday night or Tuesday night. We can prove it with forensic evidence if we have to, but that’s going to waste a lot of our time, and believe me, we’ll make sure it wastes plenty of yours. I don’t think you killed that girl, but we need to know when you were in the wood, what you were doing there and whether you saw or heard anything useful. So we can spend the rest of the day trying to drag it out of you, or you can just get it over with and go back to work. Your call.”
“What forensic evidence?” Mark demanded skeptically.
Cassie gave him a little mischievous smile and pulled the rollie, neatly encased in a Ziploc bag, out of her pocket. She waved it at him. “DNA. You left your butts at your campsite.”
“Jesus,” Mark said, staring at it. He looked like he was deciding whether or not to be furious.
“Just doing my job,” she said cheerfully, pocketing the bag.
“Jesus,” he said again. He bit his lip, but he couldn’t hide the grudging smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “And I walked straight into it. You’re some woman, all the same.”
“So they tell me. About sleeping in the wood…”
Silence. Finally Mark stirred, glanced up at the clock on the wall, sighed. “Yeah. I’ve spent the odd night there.”
I moved back around the table, sat down and opened my notebook. “Monday or Tuesday? Or both?”
“Monday, only.”
“What time did you get there?”
“About half past ten. I lit a fire and went to sleep when it burned down, around two o’clock.”
“Do you do that on every site?” Cassie asked. “Or just Knocknaree?”
“Just Knocknaree.”
“Why?”
Mark watched his fingers, drumming slowly on the table again. Cassie and I waited.
“You know what it means, Knocknaree?” he said eventually. “Hill of the king. We’re not sure when the name originated, but we’re pretty sure it’s a pre-Christian religious reference, not a political one. There’s no evidence of any royal burials or dwelling places on the site, but we found Bronze Age religious artifacts all over the place—the altar stone, votive figurines, a gold offering cup, remains of animal sacrifices and some possible human ones. That used to be a major religious site, that hill.”
“Who were they worshipping?”
He shrugged, drumming harder. I wanted to slam a hand down over his fingers.
“So you were keeping vigil,” Cassie said quietly. She was leaning back casually in her chair, but every line of her face was alert and intent, focused on him.
Mark moved his head uncomfortably. “Something like that.”
“The wine you spilled,” Cassie said. He glanced up sharply, then cut his eyes away again. “A libation?”
“I suppose.”
“Let me see if I have this right,” I said. “You decide to sleep a few yards from where a little girl gets murdered, and you feel we should believe you were there for religious reasons.”
Suddenly he caught fire, throwing himself forward and jabbing a finger at me, fast and feral. I flinched before I could stop myself. “Come here, Detective, you listen to me. I don’t believe in the Church, do you get me? Any church. Religion exists to keep people in their place and paying into the collection plate. I had my name taken off the church register the day I turned eighteen. And I don’t believe in any government. They’re the same as the Church, every one of them. Different words, same goal: keep the poor under your thumb and supporting the rich. The only things I believe in are out on that there dig.” His eyes were narrow, incandescent, eyes for behind a rifle atop a doomed barricade. “There’s more to worship on that site than in any fucking church in the world. It’s sacrilege that they’re about to run a motorway over it. If they were about to tear down Westminster Abbey to build a car park, would you blame people for keeping vigil there? Then don’t fucking patronize me for doing the same thing.” He stared me out of it until I blinked, then flung himself back in the chair and folded his arms.
“I take it that was a denial that you had anything to do with the murder,” I said coolly, when I was sure my voice was under control. For some reason, that little rant had got to me more than I liked to admit. Mark raised his eyes to the ceiling.
“Mark,” Cassie said. “I know exactly what you mean. I feel the same way about what I do.” He gave her a long, hard green stare, without moving, but finally he nodded. “But you’ve got to see Detective Ryan’s point: a lot of people won’t have a clue what you’re on about. To them, it’s going to look suspicious as hell. We need to eliminate you from the investigation.”
“You want me to take a lie-detector test, I will. But I wasn’t even there on Tuesday night. I was there on Monday. What does that have to do with anything?” I got that sinking feeling again. Unless he was a lot better at this than I thought, he was taking it for granted that Katy had died on Tuesday night, the night before her body had appeared on the site.