Page 83 of 56 Days
“I just want to go home.”
He doesn’t argue. He squeezes her hand and they turn and walk back the way they came, mostly in silence, until they are back alongside the canal itself, back inside the mirage.
People are still lounging by the water, lit now by thelate-afternoonsun. Music drifts out of open windows. Thepuffed-popcornblooms of pinkcherry-blossomtrees sway gently in the breeze.
But it all looks like playing pretend now.
When they get back to the Crossings, Ciara’s eyes go to the letterboxes. A slim, cream envelope is sticking out of the flap of the box for apartment one.
“Oliver,” she says, pointing. “Look.”
He follows her direction, frowns.
“Junk, probably,” he says. “Or a menu.”
He pulls the envelope out of the flap and looks at it for a second, blinking rapidly. Something is handwritten on the front—a name, it couldn’t be anything more—but when Ciara takes a step closer to try to see it for herself, Oliver abruptly turns and slips the envelope into the letterbox beside his, the one for apartment number two.
“What did it say?”
Oliver’s response is, “It wasn’t for me,” which, she’ll think afterward, doesn’t at all answer her question.
Today
Lee stands on the kitchen side of the breakfast bar with her notebook open in front of her and a pen in her hand. Karl is in the doorway that connects the living room to the hall, leaning against the frame, arms folded. Laura Mannix is perched on the farthest seat of the couch, rocking back and forth a little, wringing her hands in her lap, head down.
The balcony door is open all the way and both Lee and Karl are wearing masks. It isn’t ideal, but they can’t have this conversation anywhere anyone else might overhear.
“Right,” Lee says to Laura. “Tell him what you told me.”
She has no idea how cooperative this woman is going to be. During the ten minutes they spent alone together, waiting for Garda Claire O’Herlihy to find Karl and bring him up here, Laura oscillated between bouts of cocky indignation and brittle nervousness.
When she speaks now, her tone hits somewhere in the middle.
“I’m a journalist. Currently the senior producer onThe Jason Dineen Show. Previously features editor for ThePaper.ie.”
Karl greets this news with a shake of his head that Lee knows him well enough to know means he’s not angry, just disappointed.
“Tell him why you’re here,” Lee says. “When you own a house in Dundrum.”
Laura looks down at her hands and mumbles something.
“Try telling us at an audible level.”
“Isaid”—she’s flipped back to indignation—“I’m here because of the Mill River case.”
Lee and Karl exchange a glance.
Karl says, “Do elaborate.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Oh, do you have somewhere you need to be? Apologies, but we have a guy putrefying downstairs so we’d really appreciate it if you could spare us just a few minutes of your time.”
Laura glares at him. “I was at theTribuneback then. When it happened. We all knew their names, it was an open secret. A few months back, a group of us go out for pints and someone brings it up. One of the guys, a crime correspondent, says he heard that St Ledger was in London, living it up. Girlfriend, good job, the lot. And I thought,Well, that’s just the kind of injustice our listeners would want to know about—”
Karl mutters, “Be unnecessarily outraged about, you mean.”
“—so I started doing a little digging. Figured if I found anything tangible, I could use it for the show but also get a feature out of it too, maybe.” A pause. “And I wouldn’t call itunnecessary, Detective. He’s a convicted murderer.”
