"In the Woods" - читать интересную книгу автора (French Tana)

14

We pulled Jonathan in the next day: I rang him up and asked him, in my best professional voice, if he would mind coming in after work, just to help us out with a few things. Sam had Terence Andrews in the main interview room, the big one with an observation chamber for lineups ("Jesus, Mary and the Seven Dwarves," O'Kelly said, "all of a sudden we've suspects coming out of the woodwork. I should've taken away your floaters sooner, got ye three off your lazy arses"), but this was fine with us: we wanted a small room, the smaller the better.

We decorated it as carefully as a stage set. Photos of Katy, alive and dead, spanning half a wall; Peter and Jamie and the scary runners and the grazes on my knees across the other half (we had a shot of my broken fingernails, but it made me far more uncomfortable than it could possibly have made Jonathan-my thumbs have a very distinctive turn to them, and already at twelve my hands were almost man-sized-and Cassie said nothing when I slid it back into the file); maps and charts and every bit of esoteric-looking paperwork we could find, the blood work, timelines, files and cryptically labeled boxes stacked in corners.

"That ought to do it," I said, surveying the final result. It was actually quite impressive, in a nightmarish way.

"Mmm." A corner of one of the post-mortem shots was peeling away from the wall, and Cassie absently pressed it back into place. Her hand lingered there for a second, fingertips lying lightly across Katy's bare gray arm. I knew what she was thinking-if Devlin was innocent, then this was wanton cruelty-but I had no room to worry about this. More often than we like to admit, cruelty comes with the job.

We had half an hour or so before Devlin got off work, and we were far too antsy to start on anything else. We left our interview room-which was beginning to freak me out a little, all those round watching eyes; I told myself this was a good sign-and went into the observation chamber to see how Sam was getting on.

He had been doing his research; Terence Andrews now had a nice big section of whiteboard all to himself. He had studied commerce at UCD, and though his marks had been unimpressive he had apparently gained a firm grasp of the essentials: at twenty-three he had married Dolores Lehane, a Dublin debutante, and her property-developer daddy had set him up in the business. Dolores had left him four years ago and was living in London. The marriage had been childless but hardly unproductive: Andrews had a bustling little empire, concentrated in the greater Dublin area but with outposts in Budapest and Prague, and rumor had it that Dolores's lawyers and the Revenue knew about less than half of it.

According to Sam, though, he had got a little overenthusiastic. The flashy executive pad and the pimpmobile (customized silver Porsche, tinted windows, chrome, the whole enchilada) and the golf-club memberships were all bravado: Andrews had barely more actual cash than I did, his bank manager was starting to get restive, and over the past six months he had been selling off bits of his land, still undeveloped, to pay the mortgages on the rest. "If that motorway doesn't go through Knocknaree, and fast," Sam said succinctly, "the boy's banjaxed."

I had disliked Andrews well before I knew his name, and I saw nothing that changed my opinion. He was on the short side, balding badly, with beefy, florid features. He had a massive paunch and a squint in one eye, but where most men would have tried to conceal these infirmities he used them as blunt weapons: he wore the belly thrown out in front of him like a status symbol-No cheap Guinness in here, sunshine, this was built by restaurants you couldn't afford in a million years-and every time Sam got distracted and glanced over his shoulder to see what Andrews was looking at, Andrews's mouth twitched into a triumphant little smirk.

He had brought his lawyer with him, of course, and was answering about one question out of ten. Sam had managed, working his way doggedly through a dizzying pile of paperwork, to prove that Andrews owned large amounts of land in Knocknaree; upon which Andrews had quit denying that he'd ever heard of the place. He wouldn't touch questions about his financial situation, though-he clapped Sam on the shoulder and said genially, "If I were on a cop's salary, Sam, boy, I'd be more worried about my own finances than anyone else's," while the lawyer murmured colorlessly, in the background, "My client cannot disclose any information on that subject"-and both of them were profoundly, smoothly shocked at the mention of the threatening phone calls. I fidgeted and checked my watch every thirty seconds; Cassie leaned against the glass, eating an apple and abstractedly offering me a bite now and then.

Andrews did, however, have an alibi for the night of Katy's death, and after a certain amount of aggrieved rhetoric he agreed to provide it. He had been at a poker night in Killiney with a few of "the lads," and when the game wound up around midnight he had decided not to drive home-"Cops aren't as understanding as they used to be," he said, with a wink at Sam-and had stayed in the host's spare room. He gave the names and phone numbers of The Lads, so Sam could confirm this.

"That's grand," Sam said at last. "We'll just need to do a voice lineup, so we can eliminate you as the source of the phone calls."

A wounded expression spread across Andrews's pudgy features. "I'm sure you realize it's hard for me to go out of my way for you, Sam," he said, "after the way I've been treated." Cassie started to giggle.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Mr. Andrews," Sam said gravely. "Could you tell me what aspects of your treatment have been the problem, exactly?"

"You've dragged me in here for most of a business day, Sam, and treated me like a suspect," Andrews said, his voice swelling and quavering with the injustice of it all. I started to laugh as well. "Now, I know you're used to dealing with little scumbags with nothing better to do, but you have to realize what this means to a man in my position. I'm missing out on some wonderful opportunities because I'm here helping you out, I may have lost thousands today already, and now you want me to hang around doing some voice what-d'you-call-it for a man I've never even heard of?" Sam had been right: he did have a squeaky little tenor voice on him.

"Sure, we can fix that," Sam said. "We don't need to do the voice lineup now. If it suits you better to come back and do it this evening or tomorrow morning, outside business hours, I'll set it up then. How's that?"

Andrews pouted. The lawyer-he was the naturally peripheral type, I don't even remember what he looked like-raised a tentative finger and requested a moment to confer with his client. Sam turned off the camera and joined us in the observation room, loosening his tie.

"Hi," he said. "Exciting watching, yeah?"

"Riveting," I said. "It must be even more fun from inside."

"I'm telling you. A laugh a minute, this boy. God, did you see that bloody eye? It took me ages to cop on, I thought at first he'd just no attention span-"

"Your suspect's more fun than our suspect," Cassie said. "Ours doesn't even have a twitch or anything."

"Speaking of whom," I said, "don't schedule the lineup for tonight. Devlin's got a prior appointment, and afterwards, with any luck, he'll be in no mood for anything else." If we were really lucky, I knew, the case-both cases-could be over that evening, with no need for Andrews to do anything at all, but I didn't mention this. Even the thought made my throat tighten irritatingly.

"God, that's right," Sam said. "I forgot. Sorry. We're getting somewhere, though, aren't we? Two good suspects in one day."

"Damn, we're good," Cassie said. "Andrews high five!" She crossed her eyes, swiped at Sam's hand and missed. We were all very keyed up.

"If someone hits you on the back of the head you'll be stuck that way," Sam said. "That's what happened to Andrews."

"Hit him again and see if you can unstick him."

"My God, you're politically incorrect," I told her. "I'm going to report you to the National Commission for Squinty Bastards' Rights."

"He's giving me bugger-all," Sam said. "But that's grand; I didn't expect to get much out of him today. All I want is to rattle him a bit, and get him to agree to the voice lineup. Once we have an ID, I can put the pressure on."

"Hang on. Is he langered?" Cassie asked. She leaned forward, breath misting the glass, to watch Andrews as he gestured and muttered furiously in his lawyer's ear.

Sam grinned. "Well spotted. I don't think he's actually drunk-not drunk enough to get chatty, anyway, unfortunately-but there's a smell of booze off him, all right, when you get up close. If just the thought of coming in here got him shook enough that he needed a drink, he's got something to hide. Maybe it's just the phone calls, but…"

Andrews's lawyer stood up, rubbing his hands on the sides of his trousers, and waved nervously at the glass. "Round two," Sam said, trying to work his tie back into place. "See ye later, lads. Good luck."

Cassie aimed her apple core at the bin in the corner and missed. "Andrews jump shot," Sam said, and headed out, grinning.

We left him to it and went outside for a cigarette-it might be awhile before we got another chance. There is a little overhead bridge crossing one of the pathways into the formal garden, and we sat there, our backs against the railings. The castle grounds were golden and nostalgic in the slanting late-afternoon light. Tourists in shorts and backpacks wandered past, gawking up at the crenellations; one of them, for no reason that I could fathom, took a photo of us. A couple of little kids were whirling around the maze of brick trails in the garden, arms out superhero style.

Cassie's mood had shifted abruptly; the burst of ebullience had dissipated and she was shut away in a private circle of thought, arms on her knees, wayward wisps of smoke trailing from the cigarette burning forgotten between her fingers. She has these moods occasionally, and I was glad of this one. I didn't want to talk. All I could think was that we were about to hit Jonathan Devlin hard, with everything we had, and if he was ever going to crack then it would be today; and I had absolutely no idea what I would do, what would happen, if he did.

Suddenly Cassie's head went up; her gaze moved past me, over my shoulder. "Look," she said.

I turned. Jonathan Devlin was coming across the courtyard, his shoulders set forward and his hands deep in the pockets of his big brown overcoat. The high, arrogant lines of the surrounding buildings should have dwarfed him, but instead they seemed to me to align themselves around him, swooping into strange geometries with him at their crux, imbuing him with some impenetrable significance. He hadn't seen us. His head was down and the sun, low over the gardens, was in his face; to him we would have been only hazy silhouettes, suspended in a bright nimbus like the carved saints and gargoyles. Behind him his shadow fluttered long and black across the cobblestones.

He passed directly beneath us, and we watched his back as he trudged towards the door. "Well," I said. I mashed out my cigarette. "I think that's our cue."

I got up and held out a hand to pull Cassie to her feet, but she didn't move. Her eyes on mine were suddenly sober, intent, questioning.

"What?" I said.

"You shouldn't be doing this interview."

I didn't answer. I didn't move, just stood there on the bridge with my hand held out to her. After a moment she shook her head wryly and the expression that had startled me disappeared, and she caught my hand and let me pull her up.

We brought him into the interview room. When he saw the wall his eyes widened sharply, but he said nothing. "Detectives Maddox and Ryan interviewing Jonathan Michael Devlin," Cassie said, riffling through one of the boxes and coming up with an overstuffed file. "You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence. OK?"

"Am I under arrest?" Jonathan demanded. He hadn't moved from the door. "For what?"

"What?" I said, puzzled. "Oh, the caution…God, no. That's routine. We just want to update you on the investigation's progress, and see if you can help us move things forward another step."

"If you were under arrest," Cassie said, dumping the file on the table, "you'd know all about it. What did you think you might be under arrest for?"

Jonathan shrugged. She smiled at him and pulled out a chair, facing the scary wall. "Have a seat." After a moment, he slowly took off his coat and sat down.

I took him through the update. I was the one he had trusted with his story, and that trust was a small close-range weapon that I didn't intend to detonate until the right moment. For now, I was his ally. I was, to a large extent, honest with him. I told him about the leads we had followed up, the tests the lab had run. I listed for him, one by one, the suspects we had identified and eliminated: the locals who thought he was stopping progress, the pedophiles and confession junkies and Tracksuit Shadows, the guy who thought Katy's leotard was immodest; Sandra. I could feel the frail, mute army of photographs ranged behind me, waiting. Jonathan did well, he kept his eyes on mine almost all the time; but I could see the effort of will that went into it.

"So what you're telling me is that you're getting nowhere," he said eventually, heavily. He looked terribly tired.

"God, no," Cassie said. She had been sitting at the corner of the table, chin propped on one palm, watching in silence. "Not at all. What Detective Ryan is telling you is that we've come a long way, these last few weeks. We've done a lot of eliminating. And here's what we've got left." She inclined her head towards the wall; he didn't take his eyes off her face. "We've got evidence that your daughter's murderer is a local man with intimate knowledge of the Knocknaree area. We've got forensic evidence linking her death to the 1984 disappearances of Peter Savage and Germaine Rowan, which indicates that the murderer is probably aged at least thirty-five and has had strong ties to the area for over twenty years. And a lot of the men fitting that description have alibis, so that narrows it down even further."

"We also have evidence," I said, "to suggest that this isn't some thrill killer. This man isn't killing at random. He's doing it because he feels he has no choice."

"So you think he's insane," Jonathan said. His mouth twisted. "Some lunatic-"

"Not necessarily," I said. "I'm just saying that sometimes situations get out of hand. Sometimes they end in tragedies that nobody really wanted to happen."

"So you see, Mr. Devlin, that narrows it down again: we're looking for someone who knew all three children and had motive to want them dead," Cassie said. She was tilting her chair back, hands behind her head, her eyes steady on his. "We're going to get this guy. We're getting closer every day. So if there's anything you want to tell us-anything at all, about either case-this is the time to do it."

Jonathan didn't answer immediately. The room was very quiet, only the soft drone of the fluorescent bars overhead and the slow, monotonous creak of Cassie rocking her chair on its back legs. Jonathan's eyes fell away from hers and moved past her, across the photographs: Katy suspended in that impossible arabesque, Katy laughing on a blurry green lawn with her hair blown sideways and a sandwich in her hands, Katy with one eye a slit open and blood crusted dark on her lip. The bare, simple pain on his face was almost indecent. I had to force myself not to look away.

The silence stretched tighter. Almost imperceptibly, something I recognized was happening to Jonathan. There's a specific crumbling in the mouth and spine, a sagging as though the underlying musculature is dissolving to water, that every detective knows: it belongs to the instant before a suspect confesses, as he finally and almost with relief lets his defenses fall away. Cassie had stopped rocking her chair. My pulse was running high in my throat, and I felt the photographs behind me catch tiny swift breaths and hold them, poised to swoop off the paper and down the corridor and out into the dark evening, freed, if only he gave the word.

Jonathan wiped a hand hard across his mouth and folded his arms and looked back at Cassie. "No," he said. "There's nothing."

Cassie and I let out our breath in unison. I had known, really, that it was too much to hope for, so soon, and-after that first sinking second-I hardly cared; because now, at last, I was sure that Jonathan knew something. He had as good as told us so.

This actually came as something of a shock. The whole case had been so crowded with possibilities and hypotheticals ("OK. So say just for a second that Mark did do it, right, and the illness and the old case aren't related after all, and say Mel's telling the truth: who could he have got to dump the body?") that certainty had started to seem unimaginable, some remote childhood dream. I felt as if I had been moving among empty dresses hung in some dim attic and had suddenly bumped smack into a human body, warm and solid and alive.

Cassie eased the front legs of her chair to the floor. "OK," she said, "OK. Let's go back to the beginning. The rape of Sandra Scully. When did that happen, exactly?"

Jonathan's head turned sharply towards me. "You're all right," I told him, in an undertone. "Statute of limitations." In fact, we still hadn't bothered to check this, but it was moot: there was no chance we would ever be able to charge him, anyway.

He gave me a long, wary look. "Summer of '84," he said, finally. "I wouldn't know the date."

"We've got statements putting it in the first two weeks of August," Cassie said, opening the file. "Does that sound right to you?"

"Could well have been."

"We also have statements saying that there were witnesses."

He shrugged. "I wouldn't know."

"Actually, Jonathan," Cassie said, "we've been told that you chased them into the woods and came back saying, 'Bloody kids.' Sounds to me like you knew they were there."

"Maybe I did. I don't remember."

"How did you feel about the fact that there were kids out there who knew what you'd done?"

Another shrug. "Like I said. I don't remember that."

"Cathal says…" She flipped pages. "Cathal Mills says you were terrified they'd go to the cops. He says you were, quote, so scared you were practically shitting your pants, unquote."

No response. He settled deeper into the chair, arms folded, solid as a wall.

"What'd you do to stop them turning you in?"

"Nothing."

Cassie laughed. "Ah, come on, Jonathan. We know who those witnesses were."

"You've one up on me, then." His face was still braced into hard angles, giving away nothing, but a red flush was building across his cheeks: he was getting angry.

"And only a few days after the rape," Cassie said, "two of them disappeared." She got up-unhurriedly, stretching-and crossed the room to the wall of photos.

"Peter Savage," she said, laying a finger on his school picture. "I'd like you to look at the photograph, please, Mr. Devlin." She waited until Jonathan's head came up and he stared, defiantly, at the picture. "People say he was a born leader. He might have been heading up the Move the Motorway campaign with you, if he'd lived. His parents can't move house, do you know that? Joseph Savage got offered his dream job, a few years back, but it would've involved moving to Galway, and they couldn't bear the thought that Peter might come home someday and find them gone."

Jonathan began to say something, but she didn't give him time. "Germaine Rowan"-her hand moved to the next picture-"a.k.a. Jamie. She wanted to be a vet when she grew up. Her mother hasn't moved a thing in her room. She dusts it every Saturday. When the phone numbers went to seven digits, back in the nineties-remember that?-Alicia Rowan went into Telecom Éireann's head office and begged them, in tears, to let her keep the old six-digit one, in case someday Jamie tried to ring home."

"We had nothing-" Jonathan started, but she cut him off again, her voice rising, bearing down on his.

"And Adam Ryan." The photo of my scraped knees. "His parents moved away, because of the publicity and because they were afraid that whoever did this would come back for him. They've dropped off the radar. But wherever he is, he's been living with the fallout every day of his life. You love Knocknaree, right, Jonathan? You love being part of a community where you've lived since you were a tiny kid? Adam might have felt the same way, if he'd got the chance. But now he's out there somewhere, could be anywhere in the world, and he can't ever come home."

The words tolled through me like the lost bells of some underwater city. She was good, Cassie: just for a split second, I was filled with such a wild and utter desolation that I could have thrown back my head and howled like a dog.

"Do you know how the Savages and Alicia Rowan feel about you, Jonathan?" Cassie demanded. "They envy you. You had to bury your daughter, but the only thing worse than that is never having the chance to do it. Remember how you felt the day Katy was missing? They've felt that way for twenty years."

"All these people deserve to know what happened, Mr. Devlin," I said quietly. "And it's not just for their sakes, either. We've been working on the assumption that the two cases are connected. If we're wrong, then we need to know that, or Katy's killer could slip straight through our fingers."

Something shot across Jonathan's eyes-something, I thought, like a strange, sick mixture of horror and hope, but it was gone too quickly for me to be sure.

"What happened that day?" Cassie asked. "The fourteenth of August, 1984. The day Peter and Jamie vanished."

Jonathan settled deeper into the chair and shook his head. "I've told you all I know."

"Mr. Devlin," I said, leaning forward to him, "it's easy to understand how this happened. You were utterly terrified about the whole thing with Sandra."

"You knew she was no threat," Cassie said. "She was mad about Cathal, she wouldn't say anything to get him into trouble-and if she did, it would be her word against all of yours. Juries have a tendency to doubt rape victims, especially rape victims who've had consensual sex with two of their assailants. You could call her a slut and be home free. But those kids…one word from them could land you in jail at any minute. You could never feel safe, as long as they were around."

She left the wall, pulled a chair close beside him and sat down. "You didn't go into Stillorgan at all that day," she said softly, "did you?"

Jonathan shifted, a tiny squaring of the shoulders. "Yeah," he said, heavily. "I did. Myself and Cathal and Shane. To the pictures."

"What'd you see?"

"Whatever I told the cops at the time. It's been twenty years."

Cassie shook her head. "No," she said, a slight, cool syllable that dropped like a depth charge. "Maybe one of you-I'd bet on Shane; he's the one I'd leave out, myself-went to the pictures, so he could tell the other two the plot of the film, in case anyone asked. Maybe, if you were smart, you all three went into the cinema and then slipped out the fire exit as soon as the lights went down, so you'd have an alibi. But before six o'clock, two of you, at least, were back in Knocknaree, in the wood."

"What," said Jonathan. His face was pulled into a disgusted grimace.

"The kids always went home for tea at half past six, and you knew it could take you awhile to find them; the wood was pretty big, back then. But you found them, all right. They were playing, not hiding; probably they were making plenty of noise. You sneaked up on them, just like they'd snuck up on you, and you grabbed them."

We had talked all this over beforehand, of course we had: gone through it again and again, found a theory that fit with everything we had, tested every detail. But some tiny slippery unease was stirring in me, twitching and elbowing-Not like that, it wasn't like that-and it was too late: there was no way left to stop.

"We never even went into the bloody wood that day. We-"

"You pulled the kids' shoes off, to make it harder for them to run away. Then you killed Jamie. We won't be sure how till we find the bodies, but I'm betting on a blade. You either stabbed her or cut her throat. Somehow or other, her blood went into Adam's shoes; maybe you deliberately used them to catch the blood, trying not to leave too much evidence. Maybe you were planning to throw the shoes into the river, along with the bodies. But then, Jonathan, while you were dealing with Peter, you took your eye off Adam. He grabbed his shoes and he ran like fuck. There were slash marks in his T-shirt: I think one of you was stabbing at him as he ran, just missed him… But you lost him. He knew that wood even better than you did, and he hid till the searchers found him. How did that make you feel, Jonathan? Knowing that you'd done all that for nothing, and there was still a witness out there?"

Jonathan stared into space, his jaw set. My hands were shaking; I slid them under the edge of the table.

"See, Jonathan," Cassie said, "this is why I think there were only two of you there. Three big guys against three little kids, it would've been no contest: you wouldn't have needed to take their shoes off to stop them running, you could have just held down one kid each, and Adam would never have made it home. But if there were only two of you, trying to subdue the three of them…"

"Mr. Devlin," I said. My voice sounded strange, echoing. "If you're the one who wasn't actually there-if you're the one who went to the cinema to provide an alibi-then you need to tell us. There's a big, big difference between being a murderer and being an accessory."

Jonathan shot me a vicious et-tu-Brute look. "You're out of your bloody minds," he said. He was breathing hard through his nose. "You-fuck this. We never touched those kids."

"I know you weren't the ringleader, Mr. Devlin," I said. "That was Cathal Mills. He's told us so. He said, and I quote, 'Jonner would never in a million years have had the balls to think of it.' If you were only an accessory, or only a witness, do yourself a favor and tell us now."

"That's a load of shite. Cathal didn't confess to any murders, because we didn't commit any murders. I haven't a clue what happened to those kids and I don't give a damn. I've nothing to say about them. I just want to know who did this to Katy."

"Katy," Cassie said, her eyebrows lifting. "OK, fair enough: we'll come back to Peter and Jamie. Let's talk about Katy." She shoved her chair back with a screech-Jonathan's shoulders leaped-and crossed, fast, to the wall. "These are Katy's medical records. Four years of unexplained gastric illness, ending this spring when she told her ballet teacher it was going to stop and, hey presto, it stopped. Our medical examiner says there was no sign of anything wrong with her. Do you know what that says to us? It says someone was poisoning Katy. It's easily done: a little toilet bleach here, a dose of oven cleaner there, even salt water'll do it. It happens all the time."

I was watching Jonathan. The angry flush had drained out of his cheeks; he was white, bone-white. That tiny convulsive unease inside me evaporated like mist and it hit me, all over again: he knew.

"And that wasn't some stranger, Jonathan, that wasn't someone with a stake in the motorway and a grudge against you. That was someone who had daily access to Katy, someone she trusted. But by this spring, when she got a second chance at ballet school, that trust was starting to wear a little thin. She refused to keep taking the stuff. Probably she threatened to tell. And just a few months later"-a sharp slap to one of the piteous post-mortem shots-"Katy's dead."

"Were you covering for your wife, Mr. Devlin?" I asked gently. I could hardly breathe. "When a child's poisoned, it's usually the mother. If you were just trying to keep your family together, we can help you with that. We can get Mrs. Devlin the help she needs."

"Margaret loves our girls," Jonathan said. His voice was taut, over-tightened. "She would never-"

"Never what?" inquired Cassie. "She'd never make Katy sick, or she'd never kill her?"

"Never do anything to hurt her. Ever."

"Then who does that leave?" Cassie asked. She was leaning against the wall, fingering the post-mortem photo and watching him, cool as a girl in a painting. "Rosalind and Jessica both have a rock-solid alibi for the night Katy died. Who's left?"

"Don't you dare even suggest I hurt my daughter," he said, a low, warning rumble. "Don't you dare."

"We've got three murdered children, Mr. Devlin, all murdered in the same place, all very probably murdered to cover up other crimes. And we've got one guy smack bang in the middle of each case: you. If you've got a good explanation for that, we need to hear it now."

"This is unbefuckinglievable," Jonathan said. His voice was rising dangerously. "Katy's-someone's after killing my daughter and you want me to give you an explanation? That's your bloody job. You're the ones should be giving me explanations, not accusing me of-"

I was on my feet almost before I knew it. I threw down my notebook with a flat smack and pitched myself forward on my hands, leaning across the table into his face. "A local guy, Jonathan, thirty-five or over, been living in Knocknaree more than twenty years. A guy with no solid alibi. A guy who knew Peter and Jamie, had daily access to Katy, and had a strong motive to kill all of them. Who the fuck does that sound like to you? You name me one other man who fits that description, and I swear to God you can walk out that door and we'll never hassle you again. Come on, Jonathan. Name one. Just one."

"Then arrest me!" he roared. He slammed out his fists at me, palms up, wrists pressed together. "Come on, if you're so bloody sure, all your evidence-Arrest me! Come on!"

I cannot tell you, I wonder if you can imagine, how badly I wanted to do it. My whole life was shooting through my mind as a drowning man's is said to-tear-sodden nights in a chilly dorm and bikes zigzagging look-Ma-no-hands, pocket-warm butter-and-sugar sandwiches, the detectives' voices yammering endlessly at my ears-and I knew we didn't have enough, it would never stick, in twelve hours he would walk out that door free as a bird and guilty as sin. I had never been so sure of anything in my life. "Fuck this," I said, shoving up my shirt cuffs. "No, Devlin. No. You've been sitting here bullshitting us all evening, and I've had enough."

"Arrest me or-"

I lunged at him. He leaped backwards, sending the chair clattering, finding a corner and throwing up his fists in the same reflexive movement. Cassie was on me already, grabbing my raised arm with both hands. "Jesus, Ryan! Stop!"

We had done it so many times. It's our last resort, when we know a suspect is guilty but we need a confession and he won't talk. After the lunge and grab I slowly relax, shake off Cassie's loosening hands, still glaring at the suspect; finally roll my shoulders and stretch out my neck and sprawl in my chair, drumming my fingers restlessly, while she goes back to questioning him with a watchful eye on me for any sign of renewed ferocity. A few minutes later she starts, checks her mobile, says, "Dammit, I have to take this. Ryan…just stay cool, OK? Remember what happened last time," and leaves us alone together. It works; mostly I don't even have to stand up again. Ten times we'd done it, twelve? We had it as smoothly choreographed as any screen stunt.

But this wasn't the same, this was the real thing for which all the other times and all the other cases had been nothing but practice, and it infuriated me even more that Cassie didn't realize this. I tried to jerk my arm away; she was stronger than I expected, wrists like steel, and I heard a seam rip somewhere in my sleeve. We swayed in a thick, clumsy struggle. "Get off me-"

"Rob, no-"

Her voice came to me thin and meaningless through the huge red roaring in my head. All I could see was Jonathan, brows down and chin braced like a boxer, cornered and waiting only a few feet away. I reefed my arm forward with all my strength and felt her stumble back as her grip slipped away, but the chair got under my feet and before I could kick it aside and reach him she had recovered, caught my other arm and twisted it up behind my back, one fast, clinical move. I gasped.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" she said straight into my ear, low and furious. "He doesn't know anything."

The words hit me like a slap of cold water in the face. I knew that even if she was wrong there was nothing in the world I could do about it, and it left me breathless, helpless. I felt as if I had been filleted.

Cassie felt the fight drain out of me. She shoved me away and stepped back swiftly, her hands still tense and ready. We stared at each other across the room like enemies, both of us breathing hard.

There was something dark and spreading on her lower lip, and after a moment I realized it was blood. For a hideous, free-falling second I thought I had hit her. (Later I found out that I hadn't, in fact: when I pulled away, the recoil flung one of her wrists back to smack her in the mouth, cutting her lip on her front teeth; not that this makes much of a difference.) It brought me back to myself, a little. "Cassie-" I said.

She ignored me. "Mr. Devlin," she said coolly, as if nothing at all had happened; there was only the faintest hint of a tremor in her voice. Jonathan-I had forgotten he was there-moved slowly out of the corner, his eyes still on me. "We'll be releasing you without charge for now. But I would strongly advise you to stay where we can find you and not to attempt to contact your rape victim in any way. Understood?"

"Yeah," Devlin said, after a moment. "Fine." He yanked the chair upright, pulled his tangled coat off the back and threw it on in quick, angry jabs. At the door he turned and gave me a hard look, and I thought for a moment he was going to say something, but he changed his mind and left, shaking his head disgustedly. Cassie followed him out and whipped the door shut behind her; it was too heavy for a proper slam, it closed with an unsatisfying thump.

I sank into a chair and put my face in my hands. I had never done anything like this before, ever. I abhor physical violence, I always have; the very thought makes me flinch. Even when I was a prefect, with arguably more power and less accountability than any adult outside of small South American countries, I never once caned anyone. But a minute ago I had been tussling with Cassie like some drunk in a bar brawl, ready to dogfight Jonathan Devlin on the interview-room floor, swept away by the overwhelming desire to knee him in the guts and beat his face to bloody pulp. And I had hurt Cassie. I wondered, with detached, lucid interest, whether I was losing my mind.

After a few minutes Cassie came back in, shut the door and leaned against it, hands shoved into her jeans pockets. Her lip had stopped bleeding.

"Cassie," I said, rubbing my hands over my face. "I'm really sorry. Are you OK?"

"What the hell was that?" She had a hot, bright spot of color on each cheekbone.

"I thought he knew something. I was sure." My hands were shaking so hard it looked phony, like an inept actor simulating shock. I clasped them together to stop it.

Eventually she said, very quietly, "Rob, you can't keep this up." I didn't answer. After a long time, I heard the door close behind her.