“We had nothing—” Jonathan started, but she cut him off again, her voice rising, bearing down on his.
“And Adam Ryan.” The photo of my scraped knees. “His parents moved away, because of the publicity and because they were afraid that whoever did this would come back for him. They’ve dropped off the radar. But wherever he is, he’s been living with the fallout every day of his life. You love Knocknaree, right, Jonathan? You love being part of a community where you’ve lived since you were a tiny kid? Adam might have felt the same way, if he’d got the chance. But now he’s out there somewhere, could be anywhere in the world, and he can’t ever come home.”
The words tolled through me like the lost bells of some underwater city. She was good, Cassie: just for a split second, I was filled with such a wild and utter desolation that I could have thrown back my head and howled like a dog.
“Do you know how the Savages and Alicia Rowan feel about you, Jonathan?” Cassie demanded. “They envy you. You had to bury your daughter, but the only thing worse than that is never having the chance to do it. Remember how you felt the day Katy was missing? They’ve felt that way for twenty years.”
“All these people deserve to know what happened, Mr. Devlin,” I said quietly. “And it’s not just for their sakes, either. We’ve been working on the assumption that the two cases are connected. If we’re wrong, then we need to know that, or Katy’s killer could slip straight through our fingers.”
Something shot across Jonathan’s eyes—something, I thought, like a strange, sick mixture of horror and hope, but it was gone too quickly for me to be sure.
“What happened that day?” Cassie asked. “The fourteenth of August, 1984. The day Peter and Jamie vanished.”
Jonathan settled deeper into the chair and shook his head. “I’ve told you all I know.”
“Mr. Devlin,” I said, leaning forward to him, “it’s easy to understand how this happened. You were utterly terrified about the whole thing with Sandra.”
“You knew she was no threat,” Cassie said. “She was mad about Cathal, she wouldn’t say anything to get him into trouble—and if she did, it would be her word against all of yours. Juries have a tendency to doubt rape victims, especially rape victims who’ve had consensual sex with two of their assailants. You could call her a slut and be home free. But those kids…one word from them could land you in jail at any minute. You could never feel safe, as long as they were around.”
She left the wall, pulled a chair close beside him and sat down. “You didn’t go into Stillorgan at all that day,” she said softly, “did you?”
Jonathan shifted, a tiny squaring of the shoulders. “Yeah,” he said, heavily. “I did. Myself and Cathal and Shane. To the pictures.”
“What’d you see?”
“Whatever I told the cops at the time. It’s been twenty years.”
Cassie shook her head. “No,” she said, a slight, cool syllable that dropped like a depth charge. “Maybe one of you—I’d bet on Shane; he’s the one I’d leave out, myself—went to the pictures, so he could tell the other two the plot of the film, in case anyone asked. Maybe, if you were smart, you all three went into the cinema and then slipped out the fire exit as soon as the lights went down, so you’d have an alibi. But before six o’clock, two of you, at least, were back in Knocknaree, in the wood.”
“What,” said Jonathan. His face was pulled into a disgusted grimace.
“The kids always went home for tea at half past six, and you knew it could take you awhile to find them; the wood was pretty big, back then. But you found them, all right. They were playing, not hiding; probably they were making plenty of noise. You sneaked up on them, just like they’d snuck up on you, and you grabbed them.”
We had talked all this over beforehand, of course we had: gone through it again and again, found a theory that fit with everything we had, tested every detail. But some tiny slippery unease was stirring in me, twitching and elbowing—Not like that, it wasn’t like that—and it was too late: there was no way left to stop.
“We never even went into the bloody wood that day. We—”
“You pulled the kids’ shoes off, to make it harder for them to run away. Then you killed Jamie. We won’t be sure how till we find the bodies, but I’m betting on a blade. You either stabbed her or cut her throat. Somehow or other, her blood went into Adam’s shoes; maybe you deliberately used them to catch the blood, trying not to leave too much evidence. Maybe you were planning to throw the shoes into the river, along with the bodies. But then, Jonathan, while you were dealing with Peter, you took your eye off Adam. He grabbed his shoes and he ran like fuck. There were slash marks in his T-shirt: I think one of you was stabbing at him as he ran, just missed him…. But you lost him. He knew that wood even better than you did, and he hid till the searchers found him. How did that make you feel, Jonathan? Knowing that you’d done all that for nothing, and there was still a witness out there?”
Jonathan stared into space, his jaw set. My hands were shaking; I slid them under the edge of the table.
“See, Jonathan,” Cassie said, “this is why I think there were only two of you there. Three big guys against three little kids, it would’ve been no contest: you wouldn’t have needed to take their shoes off to stop them running, you could have just held down one kid each, and Adam would never have made it home. But if there were only two of you, trying to subdue the three of them…”
“Mr. Devlin,” I said. My voice sounded strange, echoing. “If you’re the one who wasn’t actually there—if you’re the one who went to the cinema to provide an alibi—then you need to tell us. There’s a big, big difference between being a murderer and being an accessory.”
Jonathan shot me a vicious et-tu-Brute look. “You’re out of your bloody minds,” he said. He was breathing hard through his nose. “You—fuck this. We never touched those kids.”
“I know you weren’t the ringleader, Mr. Devlin,” I said. “That was Cathal Mills. He’s told us so. He said, and I quote, ‘Jonner would never in a million years have had the balls to think of it.’ If you were only an accessory, or only a witness, do yourself a favor and tell us now.”
“That’s a load of shite. Cathal didn’t confess to any murders, because we didn’t commit any murders. I haven’t a clue what happened to those kids and I don’t give a damn. I’ve nothing to say about them. I just want to know who did this to Katy.”
“Katy,” Cassie said, her eyebrows lifting. “OK, fair enough: we’ll come back to Peter and Jamie. Let’s talk about Katy.” She shoved her chair back with a screech—Jonathan’s shoulders leaped—and crossed, fast, to the wall. “These are Katy’s medical records. Four years of unexplained gastric illness, ending this spring when she told her ballet teacher it was going to stop and, hey presto, it stopped. Our medical examiner says there was no sign of anything wrong with her. Do you know what that says to us? It says someone was poisoning Katy. It’s easily done: a little toilet bleach here, a dose of oven cleaner there, even salt water’ll do it. It happens all the time.”
I was watching Jonathan. The angry flush had drained out of his cheeks; he was white, bone-white. That tiny convulsive unease inside me evaporated like mist and it hit me, all over again: he knew.
“And that wasn’t some stranger, Jonathan, that wasn’t someone with a stake in the motorway and a grudge against you. That was someone who had daily access to Katy, someone she trusted. But by this spring, when she got a second chance at ballet school, that trust was starting to wear a little thin. She refused to keep taking the stuff. Probably she threatened to tell. And just a few months later”—a sharp slap to one of the piteous post-mortem shots—“Katy’s dead.”
“Were you covering for your wife, Mr. Devlin?” I asked gently. I could hardly breathe. “When a child’s poisoned, it’s usually the mother. If you were just trying to keep your family together, we can help you with that. We can get Mrs. Devlin the help she needs.”
“Margaret loves our girls,” Jonathan said. His voice was taut, over-tightened. “She would never—”
“Never what?” inquired Cassie. “She’d never make Katy sick, or she’d never kill her?”
“Never do anything to hurt her. Ever.”
“Then who does that leave?” Cassie asked. She was leaning against the wall, fingering the post-mortem photo and watching him, cool as a girl in a painting. “Rosalind and Jessica both have a rock-solid alibi for the night Katy died. Who’s left?”
“Don’t you dare even suggest I hurt my daughter,” he said, a low, warning rumble. “Don’t you dare.”
“We’ve got three murdered children, Mr. Devlin, all murdered in the same place, all very probably murdered to cover up other crimes. And we’ve got one guy smack bang in the middle of each case: you. If you’ve got a good explanation for that, we need to hear it now.”
“This is unbefuckinglievable,” Jonathan said. His voice was rising dangerously. “Katy’s—someone’s after killing my daughter and you want me to give you an explanation? That’s your bloody job. You’re the ones should be giving me explanations, not accusing me of—”
I was on my feet almost before I knew it. I threw down my notebook with a flat smack and pitched myself forward on my hands, leaning across the table into his face. “A local guy, Jonathan, thirty-five or over, been living in Knocknaree more than twenty years. A guy with no solid alibi. A guy who knew Peter and Jamie, had daily access to Katy, and had a strong motive to kill all of them. Who the fuck does that sound like to you? You name me one other man who fits that description, and I swear to God you can walk out that door and we’ll never hassle you again. Come on, Jonathan. Name one. Just one.”
“Then arrest me!” he roared. He slammed out his fists at me, palms up, wrists pressed together. “Come on, if you’re so bloody sure, all your evidence—Arrest me! Come on!”