In the Woods полностью

"Fair enough, alleged rape. I don't care either way unless it has some bearing on a murder. That's all I'm here to find out."

Jonathan caught his breath to say something; for a second I thought he was going to order me to leave. "We need to get one thing straight if you're going to spend another second in my house," he said. "I never laid a finger on any of my girls. Never."

"Nobody's accused you of-"

"You've been dancing around it since the first day you came here, and I don't like insinuations. I love my daughters. I hug them good night. That's it. I've never once touched any of them in any way that anyone could call wrong. Is that clear?"

"Crystal," I said, trying not to let it sound sarcastic.

"Good." He nodded, one sharp, controlled jerk. "Now, about this other thing: I'm not stupid, Detective Ryan. Just assuming that I did something that might land me in jail, why the hell would I tell you about it?"

"Listen," I said earnestly, "we're considering the possibility"-Bless you, Cassie-"that the victim might have had something to do with Katy's death, as revenge for this rape." His eyes widened. "It's only an outside chance and we have absolutely no solid evidence, so I don't want you to put too much weight on this. In particular, I don't want you to contact her in any way. If we do turn out to have a case, that could ruin the whole thing."

"I wouldn't contact her. Like I said, I'm not stupid."

"Good. I'm glad that's understood. But I do need to hear your version of what happened."

"And then what? You charge me with it?"

"I can't guarantee you anything," I said. "I'm certainly not going to arrest you. It's not up to me to decide whether to file charges-that's down to the prosecutor's office and the victim-but I doubt she'll be willing to come forward. And I haven't cautioned you, so anything you say wouldn't be admissible in court anyway. I just need to know how it happened. It's up to you, Mr. Devlin. How badly do you want me to find Katy's killer?"

Jonathan took his time. He stayed where he was, leaning forward, hands clasped, and gave me a long, suspicious glare. I tried to look trustworthy and not blink.

"If I could make you understand," he said finally, almost to himself. He pulled himself restlessly up from the chair and went to the window, leaned back against the glass; every time I blinked his silhouette rose up in front of my eyelids, bright-edged and looming against the barred panes. "Have you any friends you've known since you were a little young fella?"

"Not really, no."

"Nobody knows you like people you grew up with. I could run into Cathal or Shane tomorrow, after all this time, and they'd still know more about me than Margaret does. We were closer than most brothers. None of us had what you'd call a happy family: Shane never knew his da, Cathal's was a waster who never did a decent day's work in his life, my parents were both drunks. I'm not saying any of this as an excuse, mind you; I'm only trying to tell you what we were like. When we were ten we did the blood-brothers thing-did you ever do that? cut your wrists, press them together?"

"I don't think so," I said. I wondered, fleetingly, whether we had. It felt like the kind of thing we would have done.

"Shane was scared to cut himself, but Cathal talked him into it. He could sell holy water to the pope, Cathal." He was smiling, a little; I could hear it in his voice. "When we saw The Three Musketeers on the telly, Cathal decided that would be our motto: all for one and one for all. We had to have each other's back, he said, there was nobody else on our side. He was right, too." His head turned towards me, a brief, measuring look. "What are you-thirty, thirty-five?"

I nodded.

"You missed the worst of it. When we left school, it was the early eighties. This country was on its knees. There were no jobs, none. If you couldn't go into Daddy's business, you emigrated or went on the dole. Even if you had the money and the points for college-and we didn't-that just put it off for a few years. We'd nothing to do only hang around, nothing to look forward to, nothing to aim for; nothing at all, except each other. I don't know if you understand what a powerful thing that is. Dangerous."

I wasn't sure what I thought of the direction in which this appeared to be going, but I felt a sudden, unwelcome dart of something like envy. In school I had dreamed of friendships like this: the steel-tempered closeness of soldiers in battle or prisoners of war, the mystery attained only by men in extremis.

Jonathan took a breath. "Anyway. Then Cathal started going out with this girl-Sandra. It felt strange, at first: we'd all been out with girls here and there, but none of us had ever had a serious girlfriend before. But she was lovely, Sandra was; lovely. Always laughing, and this innocence about her-I think probably she was my first love, as well… When Cathal said she fancied me, too, wanted to be with me, I couldn't believe my luck."