Page 133 of 56 Days
“Think about it: none of the other residents reported seeing this Ciara woman.”
“They didn’t remember seeing Oliver either. Not since lockdown began.”
“There were no pictures of her on his phone.”
“There were no pictures ofanybodyon his phone.”
“And all the text messages conveniently contain no identifying information that might lead us to Miss Mysterious. I rest my case.” He winks. “The end.”
“We’ll have to get thecell-towerdata for the Ciara phone. Track its location. Maybe that would lead us to CCTV or something. A traffic cam. Something on a city street. We might find her that way.”
“Or we might waste hours of manpower investigating a noncrime to get a grainy picture of Laura Mannix.”
“So what doyousuggest we do, Karl?”
“I think if we’re going to do anything, it’s get Laura on obstruction of justice. She should’ve called us two weeks ago and she’s been fibbing to us today. She stillisfibbing, if my theory is correct. Which, of course, I think it is.”
“Of course,” Lee says, rolling her eyes.
“I think there’s a far greater chance of that than there is of anything else going on here. I mean, consider the alternative. Someoneforce-fedthis dude one of his own roofies and pushed him through the shower door, and left absolutely no definitive proof of their existence save for a phone that no doubt will be registered to somemade-upname and useless address. Wiped the apartment clean. Managed to be going in and out of it for however long they were together without being seen except by one woman who can’t be trusted. Knew to leave before theseven-dayCCTV loop kicked in. And made the whole thing look like it was just a tragic accident. We both know that master criminals are nowhere near as common as Netflix would have us believe.”
“Hmm,” is all Lee says to this. She looks at the clock on the wall. “Better make a move.” She gets up with a groan.
Karl gets up too, stretches. “So what are we saying here?”
“Let’s go with accidental death pending toxicology and further inquiries. Low chance of blowback. We’ll tell the Super we’re going to try to find this mysterious Ciara woman and bring Laura Mannix in for a more formal chat.” She sighs. “And here was I, thinking I’d have a nice quiet, relaxing weekend... I was even going to get my shit together, you know?”
“Do you ever think,” Karl says, “that maybe youhaveyour shit together, it’s just that your shit doesn’t look like everybody else’s?”
“Did you just come up with that?”
“I’m not just a pretty face, you know,” he says with a wink.
“Right now, you’re not even that.”
“It’s hard to hear you through the glass house you’re standing in.”
“Oh—and after we do this, you’re going to give Eddie Moynihan his cuffs back.”
“What?” Karl makes a face. “Why?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
They start making their way around the desks, heading in the direction of the Superintendent’s office.
“Where am I going to say I got them?”
“I don’t know,” Lee says. “But whatever you do, don’t tell him where they’ve been.”
3 Days From Now
On Tuesday thetwo-kilometerrestriction becomes five, and Ciara is up with the dawn. She knocks back a coffee—she’s kept that habit, even investing in aknock-offNespresso machine she saw on sale in Aldi—before sticking her feet into her sneakers and heading outside. The sun is weak and chilly, but pushing its way up into a cloudless sky. She walks along the canal, then cuts down Haddington Road past St. John’s College, turning right onto Bath Avenue. When the expanse of Sandymount Strand comes into view—and, beyond it, the gentlesteel-bluewaves of the Irish Sea stretching all the way to the horizon—she feels a physical release, a lead weight disappearing from her shoulders, a lightness shooting through her heart. And then the assault of the sea breeze, whipping her hair in every direction and sandblasting the skin on her face.
She likes it.
It’s waking her up, bringing her back.
For more than two weeks now, she’s been mostly hiding out in the studio apartment, scurrying out after dark to buy groceries and newspapers, scouring them and the internet for news on Oliver St Ledger. It finally came on Friday online, Saturday morning in print:Gardaí in Dublin are investigating the death of a29-year-oldman whose body was found at an apartment block in Harold’s Cross, Dublin 6, early this morning. The grim discovery was made following reports by neighbors of an odor emanating from the man’s apartment... foul play is not suspected.
