“—and if you’re absolutely positive, then there’s no point in you wasting any more of your time and mine by humoring me.”
“You wanted me to humor you,” I pointed out. “Just for three days, no commitment, blah blah blah.”
He nodded, thoughtfully. “And that’s all you’ve been doing here: humoring me. You’re happy in DV. You’re sure.”
The truth is that Frank had—it’s a talent—hit a nerve. Maybe it was seeing him again, his grin and the fast rhythms of his voice snapping me straight back to when this job looked so shiny and fine I just wanted to take a running leap and dive in. Maybe it was the fizz of spring in the air, tugging at me; maybe it was just that I’ve never been any good at staying miserable for any length of time. But whatever the reason, I felt like I was awake for the first time in months, and suddenly the thought of going into DV on Monday—though I had no intention of telling Frank this—made me itch all over. I was working with this Kerryman called Maher who wore golf sweaters and thought any non-Irish accent was a source of endless amusement and breathed through his mouth when he typed, and all of a sudden I wasn’t sure I could make it through another hour of his company without throwing my stapler at his head.
“What’s that got to do with this case?” I asked.
Frank shrugged, stubbed out his cigarette. “Just curious. The Cassie Maddox I knew wouldn’t have been happy on some nice safe nine-to-five she could do in her sleep. That’s all.”
Suddenly and fiercely, I wanted Frank out of my flat. He made it feel too small, crowded and dangerous. “Yeah, well,” I said, picking up the wineglasses and taking them over to the sink. “Long time no see.”
“Cassie,” Frank said behind me, in his gentlest voice. “What happened to you?”
“I found Jesus Christ as my Personal Savior,” I said, slamming the glasses into the sink, “and he doesn’t approve of fucking with people’s heads. I got a brain transplant, I got mad cow disease, I got stabbed and I got older and I got sense, you can call it whatever you like, I don’t know what happened, Frank. All I know is I want some bloody peace and quiet in my life for a change, and this fucked-up case and this fucked-up idea of yours are unlikely to give me it. OK?”
“Hey, fair enough,” Frank said, in an equable voice that made me feel like an idiot. “It’s your call. But if I promise not to go on about the case, can I get another glass of wine?”
My hands were shaking. I turned on the tap hard and didn’t answer.
“We can catch up. Like you said, long time no see. We’ll bitch about the weather, I’ll show you photos of my kid and you can tell me all about your new fella. What happened to Whatsisname who you were seeing before, the barrister? I always thought he was a little square for you.”
Undercover happened to Aidan. He dumped me when I kept breaking appointments, wouldn’t tell him why and wouldn’t tell him what I did all day. He said I cared more about the job than about him. I rinsed out the glasses and shoved them onto the draining rack.
“Unless you need time on your own, to think this over,” Frank added, solicitously. “I can understand that. It’s a big decision.”
I couldn’t help it: after a second, I laughed. Frank can be a little bollocks when he feels like it. If I threw him out now, it would be as good as saying I was considering his wacko idea. “OK,” I said. “Fine. Have all the wine you want. But if you mention this case once more, I’m going to give you a dead arm. Fair enough?”
“Beautiful,” Frank said happily. “Usually I have to pay for that kind of thing.”
“For you, I’ll do freebies any time.” I threw the glasses back to him, one by one. He dried them on his shirt and reached for the wine bottle.
“So,” he said. “What’s our Sammy like in the scratcher?”
We finished off the first bottle and got started on the second. Frank gave me the Undercover gossip, the stuff that other squads never hear. I knew exactly what he was doing, but it still felt good, hearing the names again, the jargon, the dangerous in-jokes and the fast, truncated professional rhythms. We played do-you-remember: the time I was at a party and Frank needed to get me some piece of info, so he sent another agent to play the rejected suitor and do a Stanley Kowalski under the window (“Lexiiiiiie!” ) until I came out; the time we were having an update session on a bench in Merrion Square and I saw someone from college heading our way, so I called Frank an old pervert at the top of my lungs and flounced off. I realized that, whether I wanted to or not, I was enjoying having Frank there. I used to have people over all the time—friends, my old partner, sprawled on the sofa and staying up too late, music in the background and everyone a little tipsy—but it had been a long time since anyone but Sam had been to my flat, a longer time since I had laughed like this, and it felt good.
“You know,” Frank said meditatively, a lot later, squinting into his glass, “you still haven’t said no.”
I didn’t have the energy to get annoyed. “Have I said anything that sounds remotely like a yes?” I inquired.
He snapped his fingers. “Here, I’ve got an idea. There’s a case meeting tomorrow evening. Why don’t you come along? That might help you decide whether you want in.”
And bingo, there it was: the hook in the middle of the lures, the real agenda behind all the chocolate biscuits and updates and concern for my emotional health. “Jesus, Frank,” I said. “Do you realize how obvious you are?”
Frank grinned, not the least bit shamefaced. “You can’t blame a guy for trying. Seriously, you should come. The floaters don’t start till Monday morning, so it’ll basically be just me and Sam, having a chat about what we’ve got. Aren’t you curious?”
Of course I was. All Frank’s info hadn’t told me the one thing I wanted to know: what this girl had been like. I leaned my head back on the futon and lit another smoke. “Do you seriously think we could pull this off?” I asked.
Frank considered this. He poured himself another glass of wine and waved the bottle at me; I shook my head. “Under normal circumstances,” he said at last, settling back into the sofa, “I’d say probably not. But these aren’t normal circumstances, and we’ve got a couple of things in our favor, besides the obvious. For one thing, to all intents and purposes, this girl only existed for three years. It’s not like you’d have to deal with a lifetime’s worth of history here. You don’t have to get by parents or siblings, you’re not going to run into some childhood friend, nobody’s going to ask you if you remember your first school dance. For another thing, during those three years, her life seems to have been pretty tightly circumscribed: she ran with one small crowd, studied in one small department, held down one job. You don’t need to get the hang of wide circles of family and friends and colleagues.”
“She was doing a PhD in English literature,” I pointed out. “I know zip about English literature, Frank. I got an A in my Leaving Cert, but that’s it. I don’t speak the jargon.”
Frank shrugged. “Neither did Lexie, as far as we know, and she managed to pull it off. If she can do it, so can you. Again, we’re in luck there: she could’ve been doing pharmacy, or engineering. And if you get sweet fuck-all done on her thesis, well, hey, what do they expect? Ironically enough, that stab wound’s going to come in useful: we can give you post-traumatic stress, amnesia, whatever we fancy.”
“Any boyfriend?” There is a limit to what I’m prepared to do for the job.
“No, so your virtue is safe. And the other thing working for us: you know those photos? Our girl had a video phone, and it looks like the five of them used it as the group camcorder. The image quality’s not brilliant, but she had a whacking great memory card and it’s packed with clips—her and her mates on nights out, on picnics, moving into their new gaff, doing it up, everything. So you’ve got a ready-made guide to her voice, her body language, mannerisms, the tone of the relationships—everything a girl could ask for. And you’re good, Cassie. You’re a damn fine undercover. Put it all together, and I’d say we’re in with a pretty good chance of pulling this off.”
He tipped up the glass to get the last drops and reached for his jacket. “Been fun catching up, babe. You have my mobile number. Let me know what you decide about tomorrow night.”
And he let himself out. It was only as the door shut behind him that I realized what I had slipped into asking: What about college, any boyfriend? as if I were checking the plan for holes; as if I were thinking about doing it.
Frank’s always had a knack for knowing exactly when to leave it. After he’d gone, I sat on the windowsill for a long time, staring out over the rooftops without seeing them. It was only when I got up for another glass of wine that I realized he had left something on my coffee table.
It was the photo of Lexie and her mates in front of Whitethorn House. I stood there, with the wine bottle in one hand and my glass in the other, and thought about turning it face down and leaving it there till Frank gave up and came back for it; thought, for a minute, about sticking it in an ashtray and burning it. Then I picked it up and brought it back to the windowsill with me.
She could have been any age. She had been passing for twenty-six, but I would have believed nineteen, or thirty. There wasn’t a mark on her face, not a line or a scar or a chicken-pox blemish. Whatever life had thrown at her before Lexie Madison fell into her lap, it had rolled over her and burned off like mist, left her untouched and pristine, sealed without a crack. I looked older than her: Operation Vestal gave me my first lines around my eyes, and shadows that don’t go away with a good night’s sleep. I could practically hear Frank: You lost a shitload of blood and you’ve been in a coma for days, the eye bags are perfect, don’t go using night cream.
At her shoulders the housemates watched me, poised and smiling, long dark coats billowing and Rafe’s scarf a flash of crimson. The angle of the shot was a little off-kilter; they had propped the camera on something, used a timer. There was no photographer on the other side telling them to say cheese. Those smiles were private things, just for one another, for their someday selves looking back, for me.
And behind them, almost filling the shot, Whitethorn House. It was a simple house: a wide gray Georgian, three stories, with the sash windows getting smaller as they went up, to give the illusion of even more height. The door was deep blue, paint peeling away in big patches; a flight of stone steps led up to it on either side. Three neat rows of chimney pots, thick drifts of ivy sweeping up the walls almost to the roof. The door had fluted columns and a peacock’s-tail fanlight, but apart from that there was no decoration; just the house.
This country’s passion for property is built into the blood, a current as huge and primal as desire. Centuries of being turned out on the roadside at a landlord’s whim, helpless, teach your bones that everything in life hangs on owning your home. This is why house prices are what they are: property developers know they can charge half a million for a one-bedroom dive, if they band together and make sure there’s no other choice the Irish will sell a kidney, work hundred-hour weeks and pay it. Somehow—maybe it’s the French blood—that gene missed me. The thought of a mortgage round my neck makes me edgy. I like the fact that my flat is rented, four weeks’ notice and a couple of bin liners and I could be gone any time I choose.
If I had ever wanted a house, though, it would have been a lot like this one. This had nothing in common with the characterless pseudohouses all my friends were buying, shrunken middle-of-nowhere shoeboxes that come with great spurts of sticky euphemisms (“architect-designed bijou residence in brand-new luxury community”) and sell for twenty times your income and are built to last just till the developer can get them off his hands. This was the real thing, one serious do-not-fuck-with-me house with the strength and pride and grace to outlast everyone who saw it. Tiny swirling flecks of snow blurred the ivy and hung in the dark windows, and the silence of it was so huge that I felt like I could put my hand straight through the glossy surface of the photo and down into its cool depths.
I could find out who this girl was and what had happened to her without ever going in there. Sam would tell me when they got an ID or a suspect; probably he would even let me watch the interrogation. But right at the bottom of me I knew that was all he would ever get, her name and her killer, and I would be left to wonder about everything else for the rest of my life. That house shimmered in my mind like some fairy fort that appeared for one day in a lifetime, tantalizing and charged, with those four cool figures for guardians and inside secrets too hazy to be named. My face was the one pass that would unbar the door. Whitethorn House was ready and waiting to whisk itself away to nothing, the instant I said no.
I realized the photo was about three inches from my nose; I had been sitting there long enough that it was getting dark, the owls doing their warm-up exercises above the ceiling. I finished off the wine and watched the sea turn thunder-colored, the blink of the lighthouse far off on the horizon. When I figured I was drunk enough not to care if he gloated, I texted Frank: What time is that meeting?
My phone beeped about ten seconds later: 7 sharp, see you there. He had had his mobile ready to hand, waiting for me to say yes.
That evening Sam and I had our first fight. This was probably overdue, given that we had been going out for three months without even a mild disagreement, but the timing sucked all round.
Sam and I got together a few months after I left Murder. I’m not sure exactly how that happened. I don’t remember a whole lot about that period; I appear to have bought a couple of truly depressing sweaters, the kind you only wear when all you really want is to curl up under the bed for several years, which occasionally made me wonder about the wisdom of any relationship I had acquired around the same time. Sam and I had got close on Operation Vestal, stayed that way after the walls came tumbling down—the nightmare cases do that to you, that or the opposite—and long before the case ended I had decided he was pure gold, but a relationship, with anyone, was the last thing I had in mind.
He got to my place around nine. “Hi, you,” he said, giving me a kiss and a full-on hug. His cheek was cold from the wind outside. “Something smells good.”
The flat smelled of tomatoes and garlic and herbs. I had a complicated sauce simmering and water boiling and a huge packet of ravioli at the ready, going by the same principle women have followed since the dawn of time: if you have something to tell him that he doesn’t want to hear, make sure there is food. “I’m being domesticated,” I told him. “I cleaned and everything. Hi, honey, how was your day?”