But I woke up in the morning with one image brilliantly clear in my head, slapped across the front of my mind like a neon sign. Nothing to do with Peter or Jamie or Katy: Emmett, Tom Emmett, one of those two Murder detectives who had paid a flying visit to Ballygobackwards when I was a trainee. Emmett was tall and very thin, with subtly wonderful clothes (now that I think of it, this is probably where I got my first immutable impression of how Murder detectives are supposed to dress) and a face straight out of an old cowboy movie, scored and polished like ancient wood. He was still on the squad when I joined-he's retired now-and he seemed like a pretty nice guy, but I never managed to get past that first awe of him; whenever he talked to me I would instantly congeal into an inarticulate, schoolboyish mess.
I had been skulking in the Ballygobackwards car park one afternoon, smoking and trying not to be too obvious about eavesdropping on their conversation. The other detective had asked a question-what, I couldn't hear-and Emmett had shaken his head briefly. "If he doesn't, then we've made a bollocks of the whole thing," he'd said, taking a last crisp drag on his cigarette and extinguishing it under one elegant shoe. "We'll have to go back. Right back to the beginning, and see where we went wrong." Then they'd turned and gone into the station, side by side, shoulders hunched and secretive in their discreet dark jackets.
I had, I knew-there's nothing like booze for triggering abject self-reproach-made a complete bollocks of just about everything, in just about every possible way. But that barely mattered, because the solution was suddenly so clear. I felt as if everything that had happened throughout this case-the Kavanagh nightmare, the awful interview with Jonathan, all the sleepless nights and little treacheries of the mind-had been sent by the hand of some wise kind god to bring me to this moment. Here I had been avoiding Knocknaree wood like the plague, I think I would have interviewed everyone in the country and racked my brain till it exploded before it occurred to me to take a step back in there, if I hadn't been battered to the point where I had no defense left against the single blindingly obvious thing: I was the one person who beyond any doubt knew at least some of the answers, and if anything could give them back to me, it was
It sounds facile, I'm sure. But I can't begin to describe to you what it meant to me, this thousand-watt bulb clicking on above my head, this beacon to tell me that I wasn't lost in a wilderness after all, that I knew exactly where to go. I almost burst out laughing, sitting there in bed with early-morning light streaming between the curtains. I should have had the mother of all hangovers, but I felt like I'd slept for a week; I was bubbling over with energy like a twenty-year-old. I showered and shaved and gave Heather such a cheerful "Good morning" that she looked taken aback and slightly suspicious, and then I drove into town singing along to terrible chart music on the car radio.
I found a parking space on Stephen's Green-it felt like a good omen; they're unheard of at that hour of the morning-and did some quick shopping on my way to work. In a little bookshop off Grafton Street I found a beautiful old copy of
Cassie was already at her desk with a pile of paperwork. Sam and the floaters, luckily for me, were nowhere to be seen. "Morning," she said, giving me a cool warning look.
"Here," I said, dumping the two bags in front of her.
"What's this?" she demanded, eyeing them suspiciously.
"That," I said, pointing at the coffee gadget, "is your belated Christmas present. And this one is an apology. I am so, so sorry, Cass-not just about yesterday, but about the way I've been all these last few weeks. I have been an utter pain in the arse and you have every right to be furious with me. But I absolutely promise that's over. From now on I will be a normal, sane, non-horrible human being."
"That'd be a first," Cassie said automatically, and my heart lifted. She opened the book-she loves Emily Brontë-and ran her fingers over the title page.
"Am I forgiven? I'll go down on my knees if you like. Seriously."
