I went back to the courthouse parking lot and sat in the car, eating Mentos and watching people hurry by with their heads down and their coats pulled tight. It was dark as evening, rain slanting through dipped headlights, streetlamps already on. Finally my phone beeped. Cassie: Whatsastory? Where are you? I texted back, In car, and reached over to flip on the taillights so she could find me. When she saw me in the passenger seat, she did a little double take and ran round to the other side.
“Sheesh,” she said, wriggling behind the wheel and shaking rain out of her hair. A drop had got caught in her eyelashes and a black mascara tear trickled to her cheekbone, making her look like a modish little Pierrette. “I’d forgotten what a pair of wankstains they are. They started snickering when I talked about them pissing on her bed; their lawyer was making faces at them to try and shut them up. What happened to you? Why am I driving?”
“I have a migraine,” I said. Cassie was flipping down the sun visor to check her makeup, but her hand stopped short and her eyes, round and apprehensive, met mine in the mirror. “I think I fucked up, Cass.”
She would have heard anyway. MacSharry would be on the phone to O’Kelly as soon as he got a chance, and by the end of the day it would be all round the squad. I was so tired I was almost dreaming; for a moment I allowed myself to wonder, wistfully, whether this might actually be some vodka-induced nightmare from which I would wake to my alarm and my appointment in court.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
“I’m pretty sure I made an utter balls of it. I couldn’t even see straight, never mind think straight.” This was, after all, true.
She slowly angled the mirror into place, licked her finger and rubbed away the Pierrette teardrop. “I meant the migraine. Do you need to go home?”
I thought longingly of my bed, hours of undisturbed sleep before Heather came home and wanted to know where her toilet bleach was, but the thought soured quickly: I would only end up lying there rigidly, hands clenched on the sheets, going over and over the courtroom in my head. “No. I took my tablets once I got out. It’s not one of the bad ones.”
“Should I find a pharmacy or have you got enough to last you?”
“I have plenty, but it’s better already. Let’s go.” I was tempted to go into more detail about the horrors of my imaginary migraine, but the whole art of lying is knowing when to stop, and I’ve always had sort of a flair for this. I had no idea, and still don’t, whether Cassie believed me. She reversed out of the parking space in a swift, dramatic curve, rain skidding off the windshield wipers, and nudged her way into the traffic.
“How did you get on?” I asked suddenly, as we inched down the quays.
“OK. I get the feeling their lawyer’s trying to claim the confessions were coerced, but the jury’ll never buy it.”
“Good,” I said. “That’s good.”