I picked up the T-shirt bag between finger and thumb and turned it over. I had read about the rips across the back, but I had never seen them before, and somehow I found them more shocking even than those terrible shoes. There was something unnatural about them-the perfect parallels, the neat shallow arcs; a stark, implacable impossibility.
Suddenly and compulsively, I wanted to be somewhere else. The low ceiling pressed down claustrophobically and the dusty air was hard to breathe; it was oppressively quiet, only the odd ominous vibration in the walls when a bus went past outside. I practically threw all the stuff back into the box, heaved it onto its shelf and snatched up the shoes, which I had left on the floor, ready to send to Sophie.
It was only then that it hit me, there in the chilly basement with half-forgotten cases all around and tiny sharp crackles coming from the box as the plastic bags settled: the immensity of what I had set in motion. Somehow, what with everything that was on my mind, I had failed to think this through. The old case seemed such a private thing that I had forgotten it could have implications in the outside world, too. But I (what the hell, I wondered, had I been thinking?) was about to take these shoes up to the buzzing incident room and put them in a padded envelope and tell one of the floaters to take them to Sophie.
It would have happened anyway, sooner or later-missing-child cases are never closed, it was only a matter of time before someone thought of running the old evidence through new technology. But if the lab managed to get DNA off the runners, and especially if they somehow matched it to the blood from the altar stone, this would no longer be just a minor lead in the Devlin case, a long shot between us and Sophie: the old case would explode back into active status. Everyone from O'Kelly up would want to make a huge deal of this shiny new high-tech evidence: the police never give up, no unsolved case is ever closed, the public can rest assured that behind the scenes we are moving in our own mysterious ways. The media would leap on the possibility of a serial child-killer in our midst. And we would have to follow through; we would need DNA samples from Peter's parents and Jamie's mother and-oh, God-from Adam Ryan. I looked down at the shoes and had a sudden mental image of a car, brakes come loose, drifting down a hill: slowly at first, harmless, almost comic, then gathering momentum and transforming into a merciless wrecking ball.
We took Mark back to the site and left him to brood darkly in the back of the car while I talked to Mel and Cassie had a quick word with their housemates. When I asked her how she'd spent Tuesday night, Mel went sunburn-red and couldn't look at me, but she said she and Mark had talked in the garden till late, ended up kissing and spent the rest of the night in his room. He had only left her once, for no more than two minutes, to go to the bathroom. "We've always got on great-the others used to take the piss out of us about it. I guess it was on the cards." She also confirmed that Mark occasionally spent the night away from the house, and that he'd told her he slept in Knocknaree wood: "I don't know if any of the others would know that, though. He's kind of private about it."
"You don't find it a little odd?"
She shrugged clumsily, rubbing at the back of her neck. "He's an intense guy. That's one of the things I like about him." God, she was young; I had a sudden urge to pat her shoulder and remind her to use protection.
The rest of the housemates told Cassie that Mark and Mel had been the last ones left in the garden Tuesday night, that they had come out of his room together the next morning and that everyone had spent the first few hours of the day, until Katy's body turned up, mercilessly giving them grief about it. They also said Mark sometimes stayed out, but they didn't know where he went. Their version of "an intense guy" ranged from "a little weird" through "a total slave driver."
We got more plasticky sandwiches from Lowry's shop and had lunch sitting on the estate wall. Mark was organizing the archaeologists into some new activity, gesturing in big militant jerks like a traffic cop. I could hear Sean complaining vociferously about something, and everyone else yelling at him to shut up and stop skiving and get a grip.
"I swear to God, Macker, if I find it on you, I'm going to shove it so far up your hole-"
"Ooh, Sean's PMS-ing."
"Have you checked up
"Maybe the cops took it away with them, Sean, better lie low for a while."
"Get to work, Sean," Mark shouted across.
"I can't
"Borrow one."
