"Not that I recall," I said. I remembered running hard, my own breathing rasping in my ears, unsure what was happening but knowing that something was horribly wrong; remembered the three of us staring at one another, panting, at the edge of the wood. I seriously doubted that we would have decided to go back to the clearing and make weird flapping noises and a smell of goat. "She probably imagined it."
Cassie shrugged. "Sure, she might have. But I sort of wondered if there could've actually been some kind of wild animal in the wood."
Ireland's most ferocious form of wildlife is probably badgers, but there are regular flurries of atavistic rumor, usually somewhere in the Midlands: dead sheep found with their throats torn out, late-night travelers crossing paths with huge slouching shadows or glowing eyes. Mostly the animal in question turns out to be a rogue sheepdog or a pet kitty seen in tricky lighting, but some go unexplained. I thought, unwillingly, of the rips across the back of my T-shirt. Cassie, without exactly believing in the mysterious wild animal, has always been fascinated by it-because its lineage goes back to the Black Dog that stalked medieval wayfarers, and because she loves the idea that not every inch of the country is mapped and regulated and monitored by CCTV, that there are still secret corners of Ireland where some untamed thing the size of a puma might be going about its hidden business.
I like the thought, too, normally, but I had no time for it just then. All through this case, since the moment the car crested the hill and we saw Knocknaree spread out in front of us, the opaque membrane between me and that day in the wood had been slowly, relentlessly thinning; it had grown so fine that I could hear the small furtive movements on the other side, beating wings and tiny scrabbling feet like a moth battering against your cupped hands. I had no room for left-field theories about escaped exotic pets or leftover elk or the Loch Ness monster or whatever the hell Cassie had in mind.
"No," I said. "No, Cass. We practically lived in that wood; if there was anything bigger than a fox in there, we would have known. And the searchers would have found some sign of it. Either some voyeur with bad BO was watching them, or Sandra imagined the whole thing."
"Fair enough," Cassie said, neutrally. I started the car again. "Hang on; how are we going to do this?"
"I am not fucking sitting in the car for this one," I told her, hearing my voice rise dangerously.
She raised her eyebrows a fraction. "I was thinking
"Oh," I said, a little awkwardly. "OK. Thanks, Cass. That sounds good."
She got out of the car and I started sliding over to the passenger side, thinking she wanted to drive; but she went over to the trees and kicked around in the undergrowth until she spotted my lighter. "Here," she said, getting back into the car and giving me a little one-sided smile. "Now I want my Christmas present."
As I pulled up in front of the Devlins' house, Cassie said, "Rob, maybe you've already thought of it, but this could point in a whole other direction."
"How so?" I said absently.
"You know what I was saying about the token feel to Katy's rape-how it didn't seem like a sexual thing? You've given us someone who has a non-sexual motive for wanting Devlin's daughter to be raped, and who'd
"Sandra? Suddenly, after twenty years?"
"All the publicity about Katy-the newspaper article, the fund-raiser…That could've set her off."
"Cassie," I said, taking a deep breath, "I'm just a simple small-town boy. I prefer to concentrate on the obvious. The obvious, right now, is Jonathan Devlin."
"I'm only saying. It might come in useful." She reached over and ruffled my hair, quickly and clumsily. "Go for it, small-town boy. Break a leg."
Jonathan was home, alone. Margaret had taken the girls to her sister's, he said, and I wondered how long ago and why. He looked awful. He had lost so much weight that his clothes and his face sagged loosely, and his hair was cut even shorter, tight to his head; it gave him a lonely, desperate look, somehow, and I thought of ancient civilizations where the bereaved offered their hair on loved ones' funeral pyres. He motioned me to the sofa and took an armchair opposite me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped in front of him. The house felt deserted; there was no smell of cooking food, no TV or washing machine in the background, no books left open on chair arms, nothing to imply that when I arrived he had been doing anything at all.
