In the Woods

O'Kelly has always been something of a mystery to me. He disliked Cassie, despised her theory and basically thought she was being an irredeemable pain in the arse; but The Squad has a deep, almost totemistic significance to him, and once he has resigned himself to backing one of its members he backs him, or even her, all the way. He gave Cassie her transmitter and her backup van, even though he considered it a complete waste of time and resources. When I got in the next morning-very early; we wanted to catch Rosalind before she left for school-Cassie was in the incident room, being fitted with the wire.

"And take off the top, please," the surveillance tech said quietly. He was small and blank-faced, with deft, professional hands. Cassie pulled her sweater over her head obediently, like a child at the doctor's office. Underneath she was wearing what looked like a boy's undershirt. She had left off the defiant makeup she had been using for the past few days, and there were dark smudges under her eyes. I wondered whether she'd slept at all; I thought of her sitting on her windowsill with her T-shirt pulled around her knees, the tiny red glow of a cigarette blooming and fading as she drew on it, watching dawn lighten the gardens below. Sam was at the window, his back to us; O'Kelly was fussing with the whiteboard, erasing lines and redrawing them. "And run the wire up under the T-shirt for me, please," said the tech.

"You've phone tips waiting for you," O'Kelly told me.

"I want to go with you," I said. Sam's shoulders shifted; Cassie, head bent over the microphone, didn't look up.

"When hell freezes over and the camels come skating home," O'Kelly said.

I was so tired that I was seeing everything through a fine, seething white mist. "I want to go," I repeated. This time everyone ignored me.

The tech clipped the battery pack to Cassie's jeans, made a tiny incision in the neck hem of her undershirt and slid the mike inside. He had her put her sweater back on-Sam and O'Kelly turned around-and then told her to talk. When she looked at him blankly, O'Kelly said impatiently, "Just say whatever comes into your head, Maddox, tell us your plans for the weekend if you want," but instead she recited a poem. It was an old-fashioned little poem, the kind of thing one might learn off by heart in school. Long afterwards, flicking through pages in a dusty bookshop, I came across these lines:

About your easy heads my prayers

I said with syllables of clay.

What gift, I asked, shall I bring now

Before I weep and walk away?

Take, they replied, the oak and laurel.

Take our fortune of tears and live

Like a spendthrift lover. All we ask

Is the one gift you cannot give.

Her voice was low and even, expressionless. The speakers hollowed it out, underlaid it with a whispery echo, and in the background there was a rushing sound like some faraway high wind. I thought of those ghost stories where the voices of the dead come to their loved ones from crackly radios or down telephone lines, borne on some lost wavelength across the laws of nature and the wild spaces of the universe. The tech fiddled delicately with mysterious little dials and sliders.

"Thank you for that, Maddox, that was very moving," O'Kelly said, when the tech was satisfied. "Right: here's the estate." He slapped Sam's map with the back of his hand. "We'll be in the van, parked in Knocknaree Crescent, first left inside the front entrance. Maddox, you'll go in on that motorbike whatsit, park in front of the Devlins' and get the girl to come out for a walk. You'll go out the back gate of the estate and turn right, away from the dig, then right again along the side wall, to come out on the main road, and right again towards the front entrance. If you deviate from this route at any point, say so for the mike. Give your location as often as you can. When-Jesus, if-you've cautioned her and got enough for an arrest, arrest her. If you think she's sussed you or you're not going to get anywhere, wind it up and get out. If you need backup at any point, say so and we'll come in. If she has a weapon, identify it for the mike-'Put the knife down,' whatever. You don't have eyewitnesses, so don't pull your weapon unless you've no choice."

"I'm not taking my gun," Cassie said. She unbuckled her holster, handed it to Sam and held out her arms. "Check me."

"For what?" Sam said, puzzled, looking down at the gun in his hands.

"Weapons." Her eyes slid away, unfocused, over his shoulder. "If she says anything, she's going to claim I had her at gunpoint. Check my scooter, too, before I get on it."

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