That evening I went out to Mountjoy to see Shane Waters. I’m sure Cassie would have come with me if I’d told her I was going, but I wanted to do this, as much as possible, on my own. Shane was rat-faced and nervy, with a repulsive little mustache, and he still had acne. He reminded me of Wayne the junkie. I tried every tactic I knew and promised him everything I could think of—immunity, early release on the armed robbery—banking on the fact that he wasn’t smart enough to know what I could and couldn’t deliver, but (always one of my blind spots) I’d underestimated the power of stupidity: with the infuriating mulishness of someone who has long ago given up trying to analyze possibilities and ramifications, Shane stuck to the one option he understood. “I don’t know nothing,” he told me, over and over, with a kind of anemic self-satisfaction that made me want to scream. “And you can’t prove I do.” Sandra, the rape, Peter and Jamie, even Jonathan Devlin: “Don’t know what you’re talking about, man.” I finally gave up when I realized I was in serious danger of throwing something.
On my way home I swallowed my pride and phoned Cassie, who didn’t even try to pretend she hadn’t guessed where I’d gone. She had spent her evening eliminating Sandra Scully from the inquiry. On the night in question, Sandra had been working in a call center in town. Her supervisor and everyone else on the shift confirmed that she had been there until just before two in the morning, when she had clocked out and caught a night bus home. This was good news—it tidied things up, and I hadn’t liked thinking of Sandra as a possible murderess—but it gave me a complicated little pang, the thought of her in an airless fluorescent cubicle, surrounded by part-timing students and actors waiting for the next gig.
I won’t go into details, but we put a considerable amount of effort and ingenuity, most of it more or less legal, into identifying the worst possible time to go talk to Cathal Mills. He had some high position with a gibberish title, in a company that provided something called “corporate e-learning software localization solutions” (I was impressed: I hadn’t thought it was possible for me to dislike him any more than I already did), so we walked in on him halfway through a crucial meeting with a big potential client. Even the building was creepy: long windowless corridors and flights of stairs that stripped your sense of direction to nothing, tepid canned air with too little oxygen, a low witless hum of computers and suppressed voices, huge tracts of cubicles like a mad scientist’s rat mazes. Cassie shot me a wide-eyed, horrified look as we followed some droid through the fifth set of swipe-card swing doors.
Cathal was in the boardroom, and he was easy to identify: he was the one with the PowerPoint presentation. He was still a handsome guy—tall and broad-shouldered, with bright blue eyes and hard, dangerous bones—but fat was starting to blur his waist and hang under his jaw; in a few more years he would have coarsened into piggishness. The new client was four identical, humorless Americans in inscrutable dark suits.
“Sorry, fellas,” Cathal said, giving us an easy, warning smile, “the boardroom’s being used.”
“It is indeed,” Cassie told him. She had dressed for the occasion, in ripped jeans and an old turquoise camisole that said YUPPIES TASTE LIKE CHICKEN in red across the front. “I’m Detective Maddox—”
“And I’m Detective Ryan,” I said, flipping out my ID. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
The smile didn’t budge, but a savage flash shot across his eyes. “This isn’t a good time.”
“No?” Cassie inquired sociably, lounging against the table so that the PowerPoint image vanished into a blob on her camisole.
“No.” He cut his eyes sideways at the new client, who stared disapprovingly into space and shuffled papers.
“This looks like a good place to talk,” she said, surveying the boardroom appreciatively, “but we could go back to headquarters if you’d prefer.”
“What’s this about?” Cathal demanded. It was a mistake, and he knew it as soon as the words were out. If we had said anything off our own bat, in front of the clones, it would have been an invitation to a harassment claim, and he looked like the type who would sue; but hey, he had asked.
“We’re investigating a child-murder,” Cassie said sweetly. “There’s a possibility it’s linked to the alleged rape of a young girl, and we have reason to believe you might be able to help us with our inquiries.”
It only took him a fraction of a second to recover. “I can’t imagine how,” he said, gravely. “But if it’s a question of a murdered child, then of course, anything I can do…. Fellas”—this to the client—“I apologize for this interruption, but I’m afraid duty calls. Let me get Fiona to show you around the building. We’ll pick up here in just a few minutes.”
“Optimism,” Cassie said approvingly. “I like that.”
Cathal shot her a filthy look and hit a button on an object that turned out to be an intercom. “Fiona, could you come down to the boardroom and give these gentlemen a tour of the building?”
I held the door open for the clones, who filed out with prim poker faces unchanged. “It’s been a pleasure,” I told them.
“Were they CIA?” Cassie whispered, not quite quietly enough.
Cathal already had his mobile out. He phoned his lawyer—kind of ostentatiously; I think we were supposed to be intimidated—and then flipped his phone shut and tilted his chair back, legs spread wide, checking Cassie out with slow, deliberate enjoyment. For a giddy second I was tempted to say something to him—You gave me my first cigarette, do you remember?—just to see his brows draw sharply downwards, the greasy smirk fall away from his face. Cassie batted her lashes and gave him a mock-flirtatious smile, which pissed him off: he banged down the chair and shot his wrist out of his sleeve to check his Rolex.
“In a hurry?” Cassie inquired.
“My lawyer should be here within twenty minutes,” Cathal said. “Let me save us all some time and hassle, though: I’ll have nothing to say to you then either.”
“Awww,” Cassie said, perching on the desk with her backside on a pile of paperwork; Cathal eyeballed her, but decided not to rise to the bait. “We’re wasting a whole twenty minutes of Cathal’s valuable time, and all he ever did was gang-rape a teenage girl. Life is so unfair.”
“Maddox,” I said.
“I’ve never raped a girl in my life,” Cathal said, with a nasty little smile. “Never needed to.”
“See, that’s what’s interesting, Cathal,” Cassie said confidentially. “You look to me like you used to be a pretty good-looking guy. So I can’t help wondering—do you have some problems with your sexuality? A lot of rapists do, you know. That’s why you need to rape women: you’re desperately trying to prove to yourselves that you’re actually real men, in spite of the little problem.”
“Maddox—”
“If you know what’s good for you,” Cathal said, “you’ll shut your mouth right now.”
“What is it, Cathal? Can’t get it up? In the closet? Underendowed?”
“Show me your ID,” Cathal snapped. “I’m going to file a complaint about this. You’ll be out on your arse before you know what hit you.”
“Maddox,” I said sharply, doing O’Kelly. “A word with you. Now.”
“You know, Cathal,” Cassie told him sympathetically, on her way out, “medical science can help with most of that stuff, these days.” I grabbed her arm and shoved her through the door.
In the corridor I chewed her out, keeping my voice low but carrying: stupid bitch, have some respect, he’s not even a suspect, yada yada yada. (The “not a suspect” part was actually true: along the way we had learned, to our disappointment, that Cathal had spent the first three weeks of August drumming up business in the United States and had some fairly impressive credit-card bills to prove it.) Cassie gave me a grin and an A-OK sign.
“I’m really sorry about that, Mr. Mills,” I said, going back into the boardroom.
“I don’t envy you your job, mate,” Cathal said. He was furious, red spots high on his cheekbones, and I wondered if Cassie had actually hit the mark, somewhere in there; if Sandra had told her some little detail she hadn’t shared.
“Tell me about it,” I said, sitting down opposite him and running a weary hand over my face. “She’s a token, obviously. I wouldn’t even bother filing a complaint; the brass are scared to reprimand her in case she runs to the Equality Commission. The lads and I will sort her out, though, believe me. Just give us time.”
“You know what that bitch needs, don’t you?” Cathal said.
“Hey, we all know what she needs,” I said, “but would you want to get close enough to give it to her?”
We shared a manly little snigger. “Listen,” I said, “I should tell you there’s not a chance of us arresting anyone for this alleged rape. Even if the story’s true, the statute of limitations ran out years ago. I’m working a murder case; I don’t give a fuck about this other thing.”
Cathal pulled a packet of tooth-whitening gum out of his pocket, tossed a piece into his mouth and jerked the pack at me. I hate gum, but I took a piece anyway. He was calming down, the high color fading. “You looking into what happened to the Devlin kid?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You know her father, right? Did you ever meet Katy?”
“Nah. I knew Jonathan when we were kids, but we don’t stay in touch. His wife’s a nightmare. It’s like trying to make conversation with wallpaper.”
“I’ve met her,” I said, with a wry grin.
“So what’s all this about a rape?” Cathal asked. He was cracking easily at his gum, but his eyes were wary, animal.
“Basically,” I said, “we’re checking out anything in the Devlins’ lives that smells funny. And we hear you and Jonathan Devlin and Shane Waters did something dodgy to a girl in the summer of ’84. What’s the real story?” I would have liked to spend a few more minutes on the male bonding, but we didn’t have time. Once his lawyer got there, my chance would be over.
“Shane Waters,” Cathal said. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”
“You don’t have to say anything till your lawyer gets here,” I said, “but you’re not a suspect in this murder. I know you weren’t in the country that week. I just want all the information I can get about the Devlins.”
“You think Jonathan knocked off his own kid?” Cathal looked amused.
“You tell me,” I said. “You know him better than I do.”
Cathal leaned his head back and laughed. It eased his shoulders and took twenty years off him, and for the first time he looked familiar to me: the cruel, handsome cut of his lips, the tricky glitter in his eyes. “Listen, mate,” he said, “let me tell you something about Devlin. The man’s a fucking *. He probably still acts the hard man, but don’t let that fool you: he’s never taken a risk in his life without me there to give him a shove. That’s why he’s where he is today, and I’m”—he tilted his chin at the boardroom—“I’m here.”
“So this rape wasn’t his idea.”
He shook his head and wagged a finger at me, grinning: Nice try. “Who told you there was a rape?”
“Come on, man,” I said, grinning back, “you know I can’t tell you that. Witnesses.”
Cathal cracked his gum slowly and stared at me. “OK,” he said finally. The traces of the smile were still hanging at the corners of his mouth. “Let’s put it this way. There was no rape, but if—let’s just say—there had been, Jonner would never in a million years have had the balls to think of it. And, if it had ever happened, he would’ve spent the next few weeks so scared he was practically shitting his pants, convinced that someone had seen it and was going to go to the cops, babbling on about how we were all going to jail, wanting to turn himself in…. The guy doesn’t have the nerve to kill a kitten, never mind a kid.”
“And you?” I said. “You wouldn’t have been worried that these witnesses would rat you out?”
“Me?” The grin broadened again. “Not a chance, mate. If, hypothetically, any of this had ever happened, I would’ve been fucking delighted with myself, because I would have known I was going to get away with it.”