Page 57 of 56 Days
“Is that therole-playingthing? I did that already.”
“I’m not sure it took.”
“What do you think it means, then?”
“Well...” Lee sighs. “I think we’ve probably been biased by the fact that we found it in the letterbox for an apartment where someone’s been decomposing for a fortnight. It could be something innocuous. Positive.Nice, even. Like... an invitation.”
“All right, Pollyanna.”
“Did that architect crowd ring you back yet?”
“Nah. I’ll try them again.” Karl takes out his phone and unlocks it with a thumb, spilling a few drops of coffee on the leg of his jeans in the process. “Let’s ask them if they’re missing an Ollie.”
Ollie.
Ollie St Ledger.
The name and everything it means comes speeding from the back of Lee’s brain to its front and center.
Suddenly she knows exactly where she knows it from and this knowledge lodges a cold stone of dread right in the center of her chest.
“Back in a sec,” she says to Karl, who already has his phone to his ear.
Lee climbs out of the car, setting her coffee on the roof. She walks a few steps away, dials the reception at Sundrive Road, and asks if anyone there has a mobile number for Detective Inspector Bill O’Leary, retired. Someone has a number of someone who might, and she waits while they make a call.
Ollie St Ledger.
Christ, if it’shimin there...
She’ll be lucky to get that currynextFriday night.
Still on hold, Lee returns to collect her coffee and sips it while pacing back and forth just outside the outer cordon of Garda tape.
Through the rear window of the car, she can see that Karl has finished his call and is now looking at her questioningly in therear-viewmirror’s reflection.
She turns her back to him.
She won’t say anything to him until she’s sure.
Ollie St Ledger.He’d hardly be using that name. Hewouldn’tbe, surely? He’d have changed it. To his mother maiden’s name, usually, in cases like this. That’s what tends to happen.
Not that there’s a lot of cases like this one.
A voice comes on the end of the line and says they’ve got Bill’s number, that they’ll text it to her.
Lee stops pacing and looks down at the phone, waiting for the message to come in, willing the sender to type faster.
If he’s not using that name—and he almost certainly isn’t—that means that whoever put that envelope in his letterbox knows who he really is.
Orthinksthey do, which, if that envelope is related to the fact that he’s lying dead on the floor of his bathroom now and they’re wrong about it, is much, much worse.
Ding.
Lee taps the number in the text, initiating a call.
It rings an excruciating number of times before the voice of an older man answers with a gruff, “Yeah?”
“Bill, it’s Lee Riordan. How are you?”
