In the Woods

"As far as we know." I knew what she meant, or thought I did, but I wasn't going to bring up the hired-gun theory, not in front of either O'Kelly or Sam. "And I can't see him doing it."

"I'm aware of that. I can."

Cassie rolled her eyes, which I actually found slightly comforting: a small savage part of me had expected her to flinch.

"O'Neill?" O'Kelly asked.

"Damien," Sam said. "I brought them all a cup of tea. He's the only one picked his up with his left hand."

After a startled second, Cassie and I started to laugh. The joke was on us-I, at any rate, had forgotten all about the left-handed thing-but we were both wound tight and giddy, and we couldn't stop. Sam grinned and shrugged, pleased at the reaction. "I don't know what ye two are laughing about," O'Kelly said gruffly, but his mouth was twitching, too. "You should've spotted that yourselves. All this jibber-jabber about MOs…" I was laughing too hard, my face going red and my eyes watering. I bit down on my lip to stop myself.

"Oh, God," said Cassie, taking a deep breath. "Sam, what would we do without you?"

"That's enough fun and games," O'Kelly said. "You two take Damien Donnelly. O'Neill, get Sweeney and have another go at Hanly, and I'll find a few of the lads to talk to Hunt and the alibi witnesses. And, Ryan, Maddox, O'Neill-we need a confession. Don't fuck this up. Ándele." He scraped back his chair with an ear-splitting screech and left.

"Ándele?"

said Cassie. She looked perilously near to another bout of the giggles.

"Well done, lads," Sam said. He held out a hand to each of us; his grip was strong and warm and solid. "Good luck."

"If Andrews hired one of them," I said, when Sam had gone to find Sweeney, and Cassie and I were alone in the incident room, "this is going to be the mess of the century."

Cassie raised one eyebrow noncommittally. She finished her coffee: it was going to be a very long day, we had all been spiking ourselves up on caffeine.

"How do you want to do this?" I asked.

"You head it up. He thinks of women as the source of sympathy and approval; I'll pat him on the head now and then. He's intimidated by men, so go easy: if you push him too hard, he'll freeze up and want to leave. Just take your time, and guilt-trip him. I still think he was in two minds about the whole thing from the start, and I bet he feels terrible about it. If we play to his conscience, it's only a matter of time before he goes to pieces."

"Let's do it," I said, and we shook our clothes straight and smoothed down our hair and walked, shoulder to shoulder, down the corridor towards the interview room.

It was our last partnership. I wish I could show you how an interrogation can have its own beauty, shining and cruel as that of a bullfight; how in defiance of the crudest topic or the most moronic suspect it keeps inviolate its own taut, honed grace, its own irresistible and blood-stirring rhythms; how the great pairs of detectives know each other's every thought as surely as lifelong ballet partners in a pas de deux. I never knew and never will whether either Cassie or I was a great detective, though I suspect not, but I know this: we made a team worthy of bard-songs and history books. This was our last and greatest dance together, danced in a tiny interview room with darkness outside and rain falling soft and relentless on the roof, for no audience but the doomed and the dead.

* * *

Damien was huddled in his chair, shoulders rigid, his cup of tea steaming away ignored on the table. When I cautioned him, he stared at me as if I were speaking Urdu.

The month since Katy's death hadn't been kind to him. He was wearing khaki combats and a baggy gray sweatshirt, but I could see that he had lost weight, and it made him seem gangly and somehow shorter than he actually was. The boy-band prettiness was looking a little ragged around the edges-purplish bags under his eyes, a vertical crease starting to form between his eyebrows; the youthful bloom that should have lasted him another few years was fading fast. The change was subtle enough that I hadn't noticed it back on the dig, but now it gave me pause.

We started with easy questions, things he could answer with no need to worry. He was from Rathfarnham, right? Studying at Trinity? Just finished second year? How had the exams gone? Damien answered in monosyllables and twisted the hem of his sweatshirt around his thumb, clearly dying to know why we were asking but afraid to find out. Cassie steered him onto archaeology and gradually he relaxed; he disentangled himself from the sweatshirt and started drinking his tea and speaking in full sentences, and they had a long, happy conversation about the various finds that had turned up on the dig. I left them to it for at least twenty minutes before intervening (tolerant smile: "Hate to say this, guys, but we should probably get back to business before we all three get in trouble").