He shoved the lock of hair away with his wrist; his face, laughing and open, was triumphant as a little boy's. "Andrews was mumbling and drawling and all sorts, trying to make his voice sound different, but my main man Jonathan picked him out in five seconds flat, not a bother on him. He was yelling at me down the phone, wanting to know who it was, and Andrews and his lawyer-I had your man Devlin on speakerphone so they could hear it themselves, I didn't want any arguments later-they were sitting there with faces on them like a pair of slapped arses. It was brilliant."
"Oh, well done, you," Cassie said, leaning across the table to high-five him. Sam, grinning, held up his other palm to me.
"To be honest, I'm delighted with myself. It's nowhere near enough to charge him with the murder, but we can probably bring some kind of harassment charge-and it's definitely enough for us to hold him for questioning and see how far we get."
"Have you kept him in?" I asked.
Sam shook his head. "I didn't say a word to him after the lineup, just thanked him and said I'd be in touch. I want to let him worry about it for a while."
"Oh, that's underhanded, O'Neill," I said gravely. "I wouldn't have thought it of you." Sam was fun to tease. He didn't always fall for it, but when he did he got all earnest and stammery.
He gave me a withering look. "And, as well, I want to see if there's any chance I can tap his phone for a few days. If he's our boy, I'd bet he didn't do it himself. His alibi checks out, and anyway he's not the type to mess up his fancy gear doing his own dirty work; he'd hire someone. The voice ID might get him panicky enough to ring his hit man, or at least say something stupid to someone."
"Go through his old phone records again, too," I reminded him. "See who he was talking to last month."
"O'Gorman's already on it," Sam said smugly. "I'll give Andrews a week or two, see if anything turns up, and then pull him in. And"-he looked suddenly bashful, caught between shame and mischief-"you know how Devlin said Andrews sounded locked on the phone? And how we wondered if he was a little tipsy yesterday? I think our boyo might have a bit of a drinking problem. I wonder what he'd be like if we went to see him at, say, eight or nine in the evening. He might be-you know…more likely to talk, less likely to call his lawyer. I know it's bad to take advantage of the man's failing, but…"
"Rob's right," Cassie said, shaking her head. "You've got a cruel streak."
Sam's eyes rounded in dismay for an instant; then the penny dropped. "Feck the pair of ye," he said happily, and spun his chair round in a full circle, feet still in the air.
We were all giddy that night, giddy as children given an unexpected day off school. Sam, to our collective disbelief, had managed to coax O'Kelly into convincing a judge to give him an order to tap Andrews's phone for two weeks. Normally you can't get a tap unless there are large amounts of explosives involved, but Operation Vestal was still front-page news almost every other day-"NO NEW LEADS IN KATY'S MURDER (page 5: 'Is Your Child Safe?')"-and the high drama of it all gave us some extra leverage. Sam was jubilant: "I know the little bastard's hiding something, lads, I'd put money on it. All it'll take is a few too many pints one of these nights, and bang! we'll have him." He had brought a lovely buttery white wine to celebrate. I was light-headed with reprieve and hungrier than I'd been in weeks; I cooked a huge Spanish omelet, tried to flip it high like a pancake and nearly sent it into the sink. Cassie flew around the flat, barefoot below summery cropped jeans, slicing a baguette and turning Michelle Shocked up loud and slagging my hand-eye coordination-"And someone actually gave this guy a personal firearm, it's only a matter of time before he starts showing it off to impress some girl and shoots himself in the leg…"
After dinner we played Cranium, a slapdash, improvised three-person version-I am at a loss for words to adequately describe Sam, after four glasses of wine, trying to mime "carburetor." ("C-3PO? Milking a cow?…That little man out of Swiss clocks!") The long white curtains billowed and spun in the breeze through the open sash window and a sliver of moon hung in the dimming sky, and I couldn't remember the last time I had had an evening like this, a happy, silly evening with no tiny gray shades plucking at the edges of every conversation.
When Sam left, Cassie taught me how to swing dance. We had had inappropriate cappuccinos after dinner, to christen the new machine, and we were both hours away from being able to sleep, and scratchy old music was pouring out of the CD player; Cassie caught my hands and pulled me up from the sofa. "How the hell do you know how to swing dance?" I demanded.
"My aunt and uncle thought kids should have Lessons. Lots of them. I can do charcoal drawings and play piano, too."
"All at once? I can play the triangle. And I have two left feet."
