In the Woods полностью

I felt a wave of anger rising inside me, sheer fury with a thick, tangled quality to it. "No, Maddox. No. Don't even try to pull that. If anything, it's the other way around. You've never liked Rosalind, have you? You've been dying for a reason to go after her since day one, and now that Damien's given you this pathetic shred of an excuse, you're diving on it like a starving dog on a bone. My God, that poor girl told me a lot of women were jealous of her, but I have to say I gave you more credit than that. Apparently I was wrong."

"Jealous of-Jesus Christ, Rob, you've got some nerve! I gave you more credit than to think you'd back off a fucking suspect just because you're sorry for her, and you fancy her, and you're pissed off with me for some bloody bizarre reason of your own-"

She was losing her temper fast, and I saw this with a hard pleasure. My anger is cold, controlled, articulate; it can smash a short-fuse explosion like Cassie's to pieces any day. "I wish you'd keep your voice down," I said. "You're embarrassing yourself."

"Oh, you think? You're an embarrassment to this entire fucking squad." She jammed her notebook into her pocket, pages crumpling. "I'm going to get Rosalind Devlin-"

"No you're not. For Christ's sake, act like a bloody detective, not like some hysterical teenager with a vendetta."

"Yeah, I am, Rob. And you and Damien can do whatever you like, you can crawl up each other's arse and die for all I care-"

"Well," I said, "that certainly puts me in my place. Very professional."

"What the fuck goes on in your head?" Cassie yelled. She kicked the door shut behind her with a bang, and I heard the echoes reverberate, deep and ominous, up and down the corridor.

I gave her plenty of time to leave. Then I went out for a cigarette-Damien could look after himself, like a big boy, for a few more minutes. It was starting to get dark and it was still raining, thick apocalyptic sheets. I turned up the collar of my jacket and squashed uncomfortably into the doorway. My hands were shaking. Cassie and I had had fights before, of course we had; partners argue as ferociously as lovers. Once I got her so furious that she slammed her hand down on her desk and her wrist swelled up, and we didn't speak for almost two days. But even that had been different; utterly different.

I threw away my soggy cigarette half-smoked and went back inside. Part of me wanted to send Damien off for processing and go home and let Cassie deal with that when she came back to find us gone, but I knew I didn't have that luxury: I needed to find out his motive, and I needed to do it in time to prevent Cassie from giving Rosalind the third degree.

Damien had started to catch up with events. He was almost frantic with anxiety, biting at his cuticles and jiggling his knees, and he couldn't stop asking me questions: What would happen next? He was going to jail, right? For how long? His mother was going to have a heart attack, she had this heart condition… Was jail really dangerous, was it like on TV? I hoped, for his sake, that he didn't watch Oz.

Whenever I came too close to the subject of motive, though, he shut down: curled in on himself like a hedgehog, stopped meeting my eyes and started claiming memory loss. The argument with Cassie seemed to have thrown me off my rhythm; everything felt terribly unbalanced and irritating, and try as I might I couldn't get Damien to do anything but stare at the table and shake his head miserably.

"All right," I said at last. "Let me get a little background straight. Your father died nine years ago, is that correct?"

"Yeah." Damien glanced up tentatively. "Almost ten; it's his tenth anniversary at the end of October. Can I…when we're finished here, can I, like, get bailed out?"

"Bail can only be decided by a judge. Does your mother work?"

"No. She's got this, I told you…" He gestured vaguely towards his chest. "She gets disability. And my dad, he left us some…Oh, God, my mother!" He shot upright. "She's gonna be going crazy-What time is it?"

"Relax. We spoke to her earlier; she knows you're helping us with our inquiries. Even with the money your father left, it can't be easy to make ends meet."

"What?…Um, we do OK."

"All the same," I said, "if someone offered you a lot of money to do a job for him, you'd be tempted, wouldn't you?" Fuck Sam, and fuck O'Kelly: if Uncle Redmond had hired Damien, I needed to know now.

Damien's eyebrows drew together in what looked like genuine confusion. "What?"

"I could name you a few people who had several million reasons to go after the Devlin family. The thing is, Damien, they aren't the kind to do their own dirty work. They're the type who use hired help."

I paused, giving Damien a chance to say something. He merely looked dazed.

"If you're afraid of someone," I told him, as gently as I could, "we can protect you. And if someone hired you to do this, then you're not the real killer, are you? He is."