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.
