In the Woods

Jessica made a small, wordless noise. Rosalind stared at him for a moment; then her eyelids fluttered and she swayed, one hand going out to the door frame. Cassie got an arm around her waist and supported her to the sofa.

Rosalind leaned her head back against the cushions and gave Cassie a weak, grateful smile; Cassie smiled back. "Could I have some water?" she whispered.

"I'll get it," I said. In the kitchen-scrubbed linoleum, varnished faux-rustic table and chairs-I turned on the tap and had a quick look around. Nothing noteworthy, except that one high cupboard held an array of vitamin tubs and, at the back, an industrial-size bottle of Valium with a label made out to Margaret Devlin.

Rosalind sipped the water and took deep breaths, one slim hand to her breastbone. "Take Jess and go upstairs," Devlin told her.

"Please, let me stay," Rosalind said, lifting her chin. "Katy was my sister-whatever happened to her, I can…I can listen to it. I'm all right now. I'm sorry for being so…I'll be fine, really."

"We'd like Rosalind and Jessica to stay, Mr. Devlin," I said. "It's possible they might know something that could help us."

"Katy and I were very close," Rosalind said, looking up at me. Her eyes were her mother's, big and blue, with that touch of a droop at the outer corners. They shifted, over my shoulder: "Oh, Jessica," she said, holding out her arms. "Jessica, darling, come here." Jessica edged past me, with a flash of bright eyes like a wild animal's, and pressed up against Rosalind on the sofa.

"I'm very sorry to intrude at a time like this," I said, "but there are some questions we need to ask you as soon as possible, to help us find whoever did this. Do you feel able to talk now, or shall we come back in a few hours?"

Jonathan Devlin pulled over a chair from the dining table, slammed it down and sat, swallowing hard. "Do it now," he said. "Ask away."

Slowly we took them through it. They had last seen Katy on Monday evening. She had had a ballet class in Stillorgan, a few miles in towards the center of Dublin, from five o'clock till seven. Rosalind had met her at the bus stop at about 7:45 p.m. and walked her home. ("She said she'd had a lovely time," Rosalind said, her head bent over her clasped hands; a curtain of hair fell across her face. "She was such a wonderful dancer… She had a place in the Royal Ballet School, you know. She would have been leaving in just a few weeks…" Margaret sobbed, and Jonathan's hands gripped the arms of his chair convulsively.) Rosalind and Jessica had then gone to their Aunt Vera's house, across the estate, to spend the night with their cousins.

Katy had had her tea-baked beans on toast and orange juice-and then walked a neighbor's dog: her summer job, to earn money towards ballet school. She had got back at approximately ten to nine, taken a bath and then watched television with her parents. She had gone to bed at ten o'clock, as usual during the summer, and read for a few minutes before Margaret told her to turn out the light. Jonathan and Margaret watched more television and went to bed a little before midnight. On his way to bed Jonathan, as a matter of routine, checked that the house was secure: doors locked, windows locked, chain on the front door.

At 7:30 the next morning, he got up and left for work-he was a senior teller in a bank-without seeing Katy. He noticed that the chain was off the front door, but he assumed that Katy, who was an early riser, had gone to her aunt's house to have breakfast with her sisters and cousins. ("She does that sometimes," Rosalind said. "She likes fry-ups, and Mum…Well, in the mornings Mum's too tired to cook." A terrible, rending sound from Margaret.) All the girls had keys to the front door, Jonathan said, just in case. At 9:20, when Margaret got up and went to wake Katy, she was gone. Margaret waited for a while, assuming, like Jonathan, that Katy had woken early and gone to her aunt's; then she rang Vera, just to be sure; then she rang all Katy's friends, and finally she rang the police.

Cassie and I perched awkwardly on the edges of armchairs. Margaret cried, quietly but continuously; after awhile Jonathan went out of the room and came back with a box of tissues. A birdlike, pop-eyed little woman-Auntie Vera, I assumed-tiptoed down the stairs and hovered uncertainly in the hallway for a few minutes, wringing her hands, then slowly retreated to the kitchen. Rosalind rubbed Jessica's limp fingers.