Lake of Sorrows

She had been here. The lipstick-stained tissue in the bathroom bin—Ursula had left it there, deliberately planting seeds of doubt. Nora’s mind crashed back through all the sly looks she’d received the past few days; Ursula had been probing, checking to see whether those seeds had taken root.

“I should have stayed last night. Maybe Ursula would still be alive if I’d just taken the time to talk to her and calm her down.”

Cormac paused for a moment. “I wanted you to know what really happened before things get crazy. Because they will get crazy; I think we can count on that. But I didn’t hurt her, Nora. I would never—”

His dark eyes overflowed with remorse and supplication, and it seemed as though he was waiting for a response, for her to say something reassuring—Of course, of course you wouldn’t. But she was thinking: No one knows what he’s capable of until it’s done and he’s face-to-face with it. People snap, they do stupid things, they don’t think. Her throat felt thick; no words would come.

“Please say something, Nora.”

She was suddenly aware that she was pressing her fingernails into tightly clenched fists. She uncurled her hands, and tried to unclench her stomach as well. He reached out and gripped her wrist. “I know. I know it’s a crazy, stupid story. No one will believe me, and I don’t blame them. But I can only tell you what truly happened.”

She looked into the deep brown pools of his eyes, then down at the fingers encircling her forearm—the same fingers that had coaxed such wild, furious music from his flute, that had touched her and stroked her hair when she wept. “We’ll get all this sorted,” was all she said. But she could see the relief break over his face like a wave.

4

Ward stood for a moment in the light streaming through Ursula Downes’s missing kitchen window. It had been a huge window of plate glass, unshaded. Must have seemed like a lighted stage to someone looking in at night. He looked out the window at the rise of the back garden, saw the sagging wires on the clothesline vibrate in the wind. He checked the locks on the back door, one of those that latch without a key, and a separate dead-bolt. Both front and back doors had been left open. Neither one had been forced, which meant that Ursula Downes’s killer either had a key or was someone known to her, someone she would have let into the house. Or the killer could have just entered through the smashed window. Most of the glass had been cleared away; there was a broom in the corner and the bin was full of broken plate glass. He drew out one shard with gloved fingers, and noticed tiny droplets of what appeared to be red spray paint on the glass. “Can we have a closer look at this?” he asked the first crime-scene technician who passed by. “Reconstruct the glass and see if it’s graffiti or writing of some kind?”

The tech nodded and took the bin of broken glass. Ward turned his attention to the presses. Lots of tea and a few tins of beans and sardines, but the fridge was empty except for milk and several nearly empty take-away containers. Ursula Downes was not a cook, apparently.

In the sitting room, marks on the carpet looked as if someone had been moving the furniture recently—covering up a violent struggle, or looking for something? Ursula Downes had not left a large imprint on her temporary lodging; there weren’t many personal items in the sitting room. He had a suspicion that her flat in Dublin wouldn’t be that much homier than this. She didn’t seem the type to go in for soft cushions.

A rucksack sat on the floor next to the table. He picked it up and unzipped the front pocket, and found a single lipstick, a mobile phone, a diary. The precious details that would help him unlock her life and death were here, waiting to be winnowed. He bagged the rucksack as evidence—he’d take it with him and have a closer look at the station.

Suddenly a white-garbed officer appeared at his elbow. “Dr. Friel’s ready for you, sir.”

Ward took several slow, deep breaths before walking into the bathroom where the body was. The scene-of-crime officers had removed and bagged the peat to allow Dr. Friel better access to the body. Ursula Downes’s pale corpse was still partly submerged in the tub. The cloying smell of blood hung in the air. For him, the odor of death was usually worse than the sight of the body, but he wasn’t prepared for this one. A thin black thong cut into the flesh of her neck just below the chin, and below it gaped a dreadful wound.

“Not a very deep ligature,” said Dr. Friel, beside him. “Possibly not done to kill her, but to cut off airflow temporarily, or to control the bleeding. And there are three knots in the cord.”

“Just like Danny Brazil.” Ward mentally went through the list of people who would have known about the ligature on the previous victim. “What about the slashing?”

“Almost certainly a right-handed person, from the angle of the cut and the spatter.”

“So you believe she was alive when her throat was cut?”