“I know it’s not the same as losing a sister—”
“It isn’t.”
“—but I do know how hard it is to be the one left behind. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure you get some answers. OK?”
Rosalind kept staring for another long moment. Then she dropped her purse and laughed, a breathless burst of relief. “Oh—oh, Detective Ryan!” Before she thought, she had reached across the table and caught my hand. “I knew there was a reason why you’re the perfect person for this case!”
I hadn’t looked at it this way before, and the thought was warming. “I hope you’re right,” I said.
I gave her hand a squeeze; it was intended to be reassuring, but she suddenly realized what she had done and pulled away, in an embarrassed flutter. “Oh, I didn’t mean to—”
“Tell you what,” I said, “you and I can talk for a while, until Jessica feels ready to explain what she saw. How’s that?”
“Jessica? Pet?” Rosalind touched Jessica’s arm; she jumped, eyes wide. “Do you want to stay here for a bit?”
Jessica thought about this, gazing up into Rosalind’s face. Rosalind smiled down at her. Finally she nodded.
I bought coffee for Rosalind and me and a 7-Up for Jessica. Jessica held her glass in both hands and stared, as if hypnotized, at the bubbles floating upwards, while Rosalind and I talked.
Frankly, I hadn’t expected to take much pleasure in a teenager’s conversation, but Rosalind was an unusual kid. The initial shock of Katy’s death had worn off and for the first time I got a chance to see what she was really like: outgoing, bubbly, all sparkle and dash, ridiculously bright and articulate. I wondered where the girls like this had been when I was eighteen. She was na?ve, but she knew it; she told jokes on herself with such zest and mischief that—in spite of the context, and my creeping worry that this level of innocence would get her into trouble one day, and Jessica sitting there watching invisible booglies like a cat—my laughter was real.
“What are you going to do when you leave school?” I asked. I was genuinely curious. I couldn’t picture this girl in some nine-to-five office.
Rosalind smiled, but a sad little shadow passed across her face. “I’d love to study music. I’ve been playing the violin since I was nine, and I do a little bit of composing; my teacher says I’m…well, he says I shouldn’t have any trouble getting into a good course. But…” She sighed. “It’s expensive, and my—my parents don’t really approve. They want me to do a secretarial course.”
But they had been behind Katy’s Royal Ballet School ambitions, all the way. In Domestic Violence I had seen cases like this, where parents choose a favorite or a scapegoat (I made a bit of a pet of her, Jonathan had said, that first day) and siblings grow up in utterly different families. Few of them end well.
“You’ll find a way,” I said. The idea of her as a secretary was ludicrous; what the hell was Devlin thinking? “A scholarship or something. It sounds like you’re good.”
She ducked her head modestly. “Well. Last year the National Youth Orchestra performed a sonata I wrote.”
I didn’t believe her, of course. The lie was transparent—something that size, someone would have mentioned it during the door-to-door—and it went straight to my heart as no sonata ever could have; because I recognized it. That’s my twin brother, his name’s Peter, he’s seven minutes older than me…. Children—and Rosalind was little more—don’t tell pointless lies unless the reality is too much to bear.
For a moment I almost said as much. Rosalind, I know something’s wrong at home; tell me, let me help…. But it was too soon; she would just have thrown all her defenses up again, it would have undone everything I had managed to do. “Well done,” I said. “That’s pretty impressive.”
She laughed a little, embarrassed; glanced up at me under her lashes.
“Your friends,” she said timidly. “The ones who disappeared. What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. I had painted myself into this one, and I had no idea how to get out of it. Rosalind’s eyes were starting to turn suspicious, and, while there was not a chance in hell that I was going to go into the whole Knocknaree thing, the last thing I wanted was to lose her trust after all this.
Jessica, of all people, saved me: she shifted a little in the armchair, stretched out a finger to Rosalind’s arm.
Rosalind didn’t seem to notice. “Jessica?” I said.
“Oh—what is it, sweetheart?” Rosalind bent towards her. “Are you ready to tell Detective Ryan about the man?”
Jessica nodded stiffly. “I saw a man,” she said, her eyes not on me but on Rosalind. “He talked to Katy.”
My heart rate started to pick up. If I had been religious, I would have been lighting candles to every saint in the calendar for this: just one solid lead. “That’s great, Jessica. Where was this?”
“On the road. When we were coming back from the shop.”
“Just you and Katy?”
“Yes. We’re allowed.”
“I’m sure you are. What did he say?”
“He said”—Jessica took a deep breath—“he said, ‘You’re a very good dancer,’ and Katy said, ‘Thank you.’ She likes when people say she’s a good dancer.”
She looked anxiously up at Rosalind. “You’re doing wonderfully, pet,” Rosalind said, stroking her hair. “Keep going.”
Jessica nodded. Rosalind touched her glass, and Jessica took an obedient sip of her 7-Up. “Then,” she said, “then he said, ‘And you’re a very pretty girl,’ and Katy said, ‘Thank you.’ She likes that, too. And then he said…he said…‘My little girl likes dancing, too, but she broke her leg. Do you want to come see her? It would make her very happy.’ And Katy said, ‘Not now. We have to go home.’ So then we went home.”
You’re a pretty girl…. These days, there are very few men who would say something like that to a twelve-year-old. “Do you know who the man was?” I asked. “Had you ever seen him before?”
She shook her head.
“What did he look like?”
Silence; a breath. “Big.”
“Big like me? Tall?”
“Yeah…um…yeah. But big like this, too.” She stretched out her arms; the glass wobbled precariously.
“A fat man?”
Jessica giggled, a sharp, nervous sound. “Yeah.”
“What was he wearing?”
“A, a tracksuit. A dark-blue one.” She glanced at Rosalind, who nodded encouragingly.
Shit, I thought. My heart was speeding. “What was his hair like?”
“No. He didn’t have hair.”
I made a quick, fervent mental apology to Damien: apparently he hadn’t, after all, just been telling us what we wanted to hear. “Was he old? Young?”
“Like you.”
“When did this happen?”
Jessica’s lips parted, moved soundlessly. “Huh?”
“When did you and Katy meet the man? Was it just a few days before Katy went away? Or a few weeks? Or a long time ago?”
I was trying to be sensitive, but she flinched. “Katy didn’t go away,” she said. “Katy got killed.” Her eyes were starting to lose focus. Rosalind shot me a reproachful look.
“Yes,” I said, as gently as I could, “she did. So it’s very important for you to try and remember when you saw this man, so we can find out if he’s the one who killed her. Can you do that?”
Jessica’s mouth fell a little open. Her eyes were unreachable, gone.
“She told me,” Rosalind said softly, over her head, “that this happened a week or two before…” She swallowed. “She’s not sure of the exact date.”
I nodded. “Thank you so much, Jessica,” I said. “You’ve been very brave. Do you think you would know this man if you saw him again?”
Nothing; not a flicker. The sugar packet hung loosely in her curled fingers. “I think we should go,” Rosalind said, looking worriedly from Jessica to her watch.
I watched from the window as they walked away down the street: Rosalind’s decisive little steps and the delicate sway of her hips, Jessica dragging along behind her by the hand. I looked at the back of Jessica’s silky bent head and thought of those old stories where one twin is hurt and the other, miles away, feels the pain. I wondered if there had been a moment, during that giggly girls’ night at Auntie Vera’s, when she had made some small, unnoticed sound; if all the answers we wanted were locked away behind the strange dark gateways of her mind.
You’re the perfect person for this case, Rosalind had said to me, and the words were still ringing in my head as I watched her go. Even now, I wonder whether subsequent events proved her completely right or utterly and horribly wrong, and what criteria one could possibly use to tell the difference.