We had our pizza, Jackie headed off to show Gavin some love, and Holly begged me into taking her to the Christmas ice rink in Ballsbridge. Holly skates like a fairy and I skate like a gorilla with neurological issues, which of course is a bonus for her because she gets to laugh at me when I smack into walls. By the time I dropped her back at Olivia’s, both of us were happily exhausted and a little high on all those tinned Christmas carols, and both of us were in a much better mood. The sight of us on the doorstep, sweaty and messy and grinning, even wrung a reluctant smile out of Liv. I headed into town and had a couple of pints with the lads, I went home-Twin Peaks had never looked prettier-and took out a few nests of zombies on the Xbox, and I went to sleep loving the thought of a nice ordinary day’s work so much that I thought I just might start off the next morning by snogging my office door.
I was right to enjoy the normal world while I had it. Deep down, even while I was shaking my fist at the sky and vowing never to darken the cobbles of that hellhole again, I must have known the Place was going to take that as a challenge. It hadn’t given me permission to leave the building, and it was going to come looking for me.
It was coming up to lunchtime on Monday, and I had just finished introducing my boy with the drug-dealer situation to his brand-new granny, when my office phone rang.
“Mackey,” I said.
Brian, our squad admin, said, “Personal call for you. Do you want to take it? I wouldn’t have hassled you, only it sounds… well. Urgent. To say the least.”
Kevin again; it had to be. Still a clingy little bastard, after all this time: one day of tagging along after me and he thought he was my new bestest buddy, or my sidekick, or God only knew what. The sooner that got nipped in the bud, the better. “What the hell,” I said, rubbing the spot between my eyebrows that had suddenly started to throb. “Put him through.”
“Her,” Brian said, “and she’s not a happy camper. I just thought I’d warn you.”
It was Jackie and she was crying hard. “Francis, thank God, please, you’ve got to come-I don’t understand, I don’t know what happened, please…”
Her voice dissolved into a wail, a high thin sound way beyond anything like embarrassment or control. Something cold tightened at the back of my neck. “Jackie!” I snapped. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
I could barely understand the answer: something about the Hearnes, and the Guards, and a garden. “Jackie, I know you’re upset, but I need you to pull it together for me, just for a second. Take a deep breath and tell me what’s happened.”
She gasped for breath. “Kevin. Francis… Francis… God… it’s Kevin.”
That icy clamp again, tighter. I said, “Is he hurt?”
“He’s-Francis, oh God… He’s dead. He’s-”
“Where are you?”
“Ma’s. Outside Ma’s.”
“Is that where Kevin is?”
“Yeah-no-not here, the back, the garden, he, he…”
Her voice disintegrated again. She was sobbing and hyperventilating at the same time. I said, “Jackie, listen to me. You need to sit down, drink something and make sure there’s someone looking after you. I’m on my way.”
I already had my jacket half on. In Undercover, nobody asks where you were this morning. I hung up and started running.
And there I was again, back in Faithful Place, just like I’d never been away. The first time I got out, it had let me run for twenty-two years before it jerked the leash tight. The second time, it had given me thirty-six hours.
The neighborhood was out again, like it had been on Saturday afternoon, but this time was different. The kids were in school and the adults were at work, so it was old people and stay-at-home mas and dole rats, wrapped tight against the slicing cold, and no one was milling around having a great day out. All the steps and all the windows were crammed with blank, watchful faces, but the street was empty except for my old friend the bogmonster, marching up and down like he was guarding the Vatican. The uniforms had been a step ahead this time, herded everyone back before that dangerous buzz could start to build. Somewhere a baby was wailing, but apart from that there was a killer silence, nothing but the far-off hum of traffic and the rap of the bogmonster’s shoe lifts, and the slow drip of the morning’s rain coming off the gutters.
No Bureau van this time, no Cooper, but in between the uniforms’ marked car and the morgue van was Scorcher’s pretty silver Beemer. The crime-scene tape was back up around Number 16, and a big guy in plain clothes-one of Scorch’s boys, by the suit-was keeping an eye on it. Whatever had got Kevin, it wasn’t a heart attack.
The bogmonster ignored me, which was a good choice. On the steps of Number 8 were Jackie, my ma and my da. Ma and Jackie were holding each other up; they looked like if either of them moved an inch they would both crumple. Da was ferociously laying into a cigarette.
