“You should have thought of that before, shouldn’t you?”
“I know,” Cassie said, “I know. But is there any chance you could—just not say anything about this? To anyone?”
“Cover up your little affair. Is that what you mean?”
“I…yeah. I suppose so.”
“I’m not sure why you feel I should do you any favors,” Rosalind said coolly. “You’ve been horribly rude to me every time we’ve met—until now, when you want something from me. I don’t like users.”
“I’m sorry if I was rude,” Cassie said. Her voice sounded strained, too high and too fast. “I really am. I think I felt—I don’t know, threatened by you…. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I apologize.”
“You did owe me an apology, actually, but that’s beside the point. I don’t mind the way you insulted me, but if you could treat me that way, I’m sure you do it to other people, too, don’t you? I don’t know if I should protect someone who behaves so unprofessionally. I’ll have to have a little think about whether it’s my duty to tell your supervisors what you’re really like.”
“The little bitch,” Sam said softly, not looking up.
“She wants a boot up the hole,” O’Kelly muttered. Despite himself, he was starting to look interested. “If I’d ever given that kind of cheek to someone twice my age…”
“Look,” Cassie said desperately, “it’s not just about me. What about Detective Ryan? He’s never been rude to you, has he? He’s mad about you.”
Rosalind laughed modestly. “Is he really?”
“Yeah,” Cassie said. “Yeah, he is.”
She pretended to think about it. “Well…I suppose if you were the one chasing him, then the affair wasn’t really his fault. It might not be fair to make him suffer for it.”
“I guess I was.” I could hear the humiliation, stark and uncamouflaged, in Cassie’s voice. “I was the…I was always the one who initiated everything.”
“And how long has this been going on?”
“Five years,” Cassie said, “off and on.” Five years earlier Cassie and I had never met, hadn’t even been posted in the same part of the country, and I realized suddenly that this was for O’Kelly’s benefit, to prove herself a liar in case he had any lingering suspicions about us; realized, for the first time, quite what a fine and double-edged game she was playing.
“I would need to know it was over, of course,” Rosalind said, “before I could think about covering up for you.”
“It’s already over. I swear, it is. He…he ended it a couple of weeks ago. For good, this time.”
“Oh? Why?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, that’s not really your choice.”
Cassie took a breath. “I don’t know why,” she said. “That’s the honest-to-God truth. I’ve tried my best to ask him, but he just says it’s complicated, he’s mixed up, he’s not able for a relationship right now—I don’t know if there’s someone else, or…. We’re not speaking to each other any more. He won’t even look at me. I don’t know what to do.” Her voice was trembling badly.
“Listen to that,” O’Kelly said, not quite admiringly. “Maddox missed her calling. Should’ve gone on the stage.”
But she wasn’t acting, and Rosalind smelled it. “Well,” she said, and I heard the tiny smirk in her voice, “I can’t say I’m surprised. He certainly doesn’t talk about you like a lover.”
“What’s he say about me?” Cassie asked, helplessly, after a second. She was flashing her unarmored spots to draw the blows; she was deliberately letting Rosalind hurt her, maul her, delicately peel back layers of pain to feed on them at her leisure. I felt sick to my stomach.
Rosalind held the pause, making her wait. “He says you’re terribly needy,” she said at last. Her voice was high and sweet and clear, unchanging. “‘Desperate’ was the word he used. That’s why you were so obnoxious to me: because you were jealous of how much he cares about me. He did his best to be nice about it—I think he felt sorry for you—but he was getting very tired of putting up with your behavior.”
“That’s bollocks,” I hissed furiously, unable to stop myself. “I never—”
“Shut up,” Sam said, at the same moment as O’Kelly snapped, “Who gives a fuck?”
“Quiet, please,” said the tech politely.
“I did warn him about you,” Rosalind said, reflectively. “So he finally took my advice?”
“Yeah,” Cassie said, very low and shaky. “I guess he did.”
“Oh, my God.” A tiny note of amusement. “You’re really in love with him, aren’t you?”
Nothing.
“Aren’t you?”
“I don’t know.” Cassie’s voice sounded thick and painful, but it wasn’t until she blew her nose wetly that I understood that she was crying. I had never seen her cry. “I never thought about it until—I just—I’ve never been that close to anyone. And now I can’t even think straight, I can’t…”
“Oh, Detective Maddox.” Rosalind sighed. “If you can’t be honest with me, at least be honest with yourself.”
“I can’t tell.” Cassie was barely getting the words out. “Maybe I…” Her throat closed up.
The van felt subterranean, nightmarish, walls tilting dizzily inwards. The disembodied quality of the voices lent them an added knife-edge of horror, as if we were eavesdropping on two lost ghosts locked in some eternal and unalterable battle of wills. The door handle was invisible in the shadows, and I caught O’Kelly’s hard warning glance. “You wanted to be here, Ryan,” he said.
I couldn’t breathe. “I should go in.”
“And do what? It’s going according to plan, for whatever that’s worth. Settle.”
A small, terrible catch of breath, on the speakers. “No,” I said. “Listen.”
“She’s doing her job,” Sam said. His face was unreadable in the dirty yellow light. “Sit down.”
The tech raised a finger. “I wish you’d control yourself,” Rosalind said, with distaste. “It’s awfully hard to have a sensible conversation with someone who’s hysterical.”
“Sorry.” Cassie blew her nose again, swallowed hard. “Look—please. It’s over, it wasn’t Detective Ryan’s fault, and he’d do anything for you. He trusted you enough to tell you. Couldn’t you just—just leave it? Not tell anyone? Please?”
“Well.” Rosalind considered this. “Detective Ryan and I were very close, for a while. But the last time I saw him, he was awfully rude to me, too. And he lied to me about those two friends of his. I don’t like liars. No, Detective Maddox. I’m afraid I really don’t feel that I owe either of you any favors at all.”
“OK,” Cassie said, “OK. OK. Then what if I could do something for you, in exchange?”
A little laugh. “I can’t think of anything I could possibly want from you.”
“No, there is. Just give me five more minutes, OK? We can cut down this side of the estate, down to the main road. There is something I can do for you. I swear.”
Rosalind sighed. “You’ve got until we get back to my house. But you know, Detective Maddox, some of us do have morals. If I decide I have a responsibility to tell your superiors about this, you won’t be able to bribe me into keeping quiet.”
“Not a bribe. Just—help.”
“From you?” That laugh again; the cool little trill I had found so enchanting. I realized I was digging my nails into my palms.
“Two days ago,” Cassie said, “we arrested Damien Donnelly for Katy’s murder.”
A fraction of a pause. Sam leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Then: “Well. It’s about time you took your mind off your love life and paid some attention to my sister’s case. Who’s Damien Donnelly?”
“He says he was your boyfriend, up until a few weeks ago.”
“Well, obviously, he wasn’t. If he had been my boyfriend, I think I would have heard of him, don’t you?”
“There are records,” Cassie said carefully, “of a lot of phone calls between your mobiles.”
Rosalind’s voice froze over. “If you want a favor from me, Detective, then accusing me of being a liar isn’t really the best way to go about it.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Cassie said, and for a second I thought her voice would crack again. “I’m just saying that I know this is your personal business, and you don’t have any reason to trust me with it—”
“That’s certainly true.”
“But I’m trying to explain how I can help you. See, Damien does trust me. He talked to me.”
After a moment, Rosalind sniffed. “I wouldn’t be too excited about that. Damien will talk to anyone who’ll listen. It doesn’t make you special.”
Sam nodded, one quick jerk: Step one.
“I know. I know. But the thing is, he told me why he did this. He says he did it for you. Because you asked him to.”