"I would love to make you do it," Cassie said, "but somebody might see you, and the grapevine would blow a fuse on that one. Ryan, you little bastard. You ruined my perfectly good sulk."
"You couldn't have kept it up anyway," I said, enormously relieved. "You would have cracked by lunchtime."
"Don't push it. Come here, you." She held out an arm, and I bent and gave her a quick hug. "Thank you."
"You're very welcome," I said. "And I really mean it: no more obnoxiousness."
Cassie watched me as I took off my coat. "Look," she said, "it's not just that you've been a pain in the hole. I've been
"Cass, I'm genuinely, honest-to-God fine," I said. "Yesterday was a huge wake-up call. I swear on anything you can think of, I've worked out how to deal with this case."
"Rob, remember how you said to kick you if you got too weird about this one? This is me kicking you. Metaphorically, for now."
"Look, give me one more week. If by the end of next week you think I'm still not handling this, I'll swap with Sam. OK?"
"OK," Cassie said finally, though she still looked unconvinced. I was in such a good mood that this unexpected protective streak, which normally would have given me the fidgets, seemed very touching; probably because I knew it was no longer necessary. I gave her shoulder a clumsy little squeeze on the way to my desk.
"Actually," she said, as I sat down, "this whole Sandra Scully thing has one major silver lining. You know how we've been wanting to get our hands on Rosalind and Jessica's medical records? Well, we've got Katy showing physical signs of abuse, Jessica showing psychological signs and now Jonathan admitting to rape. I think there's a good chance we've got enough circumstantial stuff to pull the records."
"Maddox," I said, "you're a star." This was the one thing that had been nagging at me, the fact that I had made a fool of myself by sending us off on a wild-goose chase. Apparently it hadn't been that pointless after all. "But I thought you thought Devlin wasn't our guy."
Cassie shrugged. "Not exactly. He's hiding something, but it could be just abuse-well, not
"I'm not sure either."
She raised an eyebrow. "You seemed pretty sure yesterday."
"Speaking of which," I said, a little awkwardly, "do you have any idea whether he's filed a complaint on me? I don't have the bollocks to check."
"Because you apologized so nicely," Cassie told me, "I'm going to overlook that wonderful setup line. He didn't say anything about it to me, and anyway you'd know if he had: you'd be able to hear O'Kelly all the way to Knocknaree. That's why I'm assuming Cathal Mills hasn't filed anything on me for saying he had a teeny weenie, either."
"He won't. Can you seriously see him sitting down with some desk sergeant and explaining that you suggested he might have a limp mini-dick? Devlin's a different story, though. He's half off his trolley right now anyway-"
"Don't be bitching about Jonathan Devlin," Sam said, bouncing into the incident room. He was flushed and overexcited, his collar twisted and a forelock of fair hair tumbling into his eyes. "Devlin is The Man. Honestly, if I didn't think he might take me up wrong, I'd snog the face off him."
"You'll make a lovely couple," I said, putting down my pen. "What's he done?" Cassie spun her chair around, a smile of anticipation starting on her face.
Sam pulled out his chair with a flourish, dropped into it and swung his feet up onto the table like a private eye in an old movie; if he had had a hat, he would have sent it spinning across the room. "He's only after picking Andrews out of the voice lineup. Andrews and his lawyer nearly had a conniption about it, and Devlin wasn't best pleased to hear from me either-what the hell did ye say to him?-but they all did it in the end. I rang Devlin up-I figured that was the best way; you know how everyone always sounds different down the phone?-and I got Andrews and a bunch of the lads to say a few sentences from the phone calls: 'Nice little girl you've got there,' 'You have no idea what you're messing with…'"
