Cut to O'Kelly, in front of an imposing piece of cardboard with a police seal stamped on it. He was wearing a vile checked jacket that, on camera, seemed to ripple and heave of its own accord. He cleared his throat and went through our list, nonexistent dead livestock and all. Cassie held out a hand, not taking her eyes off the screen, and I found a fiver.
The orange presenter again. "And Knocknaree holds yet
"Here we go," I said, trying to make it sound light and wry.
Cassie took a sip of her coffee. "Are you going to tell O'Kelly?" she asked.
I had been waiting for this, and I knew all the reasons why she had to ask, but still it hit me with a jolt. I glanced at the guys at the bar; they were intent on the screen. "No," I said. "No. I'd be off the case. I want to work this one, Cass."
She nodded, slowly. "I know. If he finds out, though."
If he found out, there was a pretty good chance that both of us would be reverted back to uniform, or at the very least thrown off the squad. I had been trying not to think about this. "He won't," I said. "How could he? And if he does, we'll both say you had no idea."
"He wouldn't believe that for a second. And anyway that's not the point."
Fuzzy old footage of a cop with a hyperactive German shepherd, plunging into the wood. A diver pulling himself out of the river, shaking his head. "Cassie," I said. "I know what I'm asking. But please; I need to do this. I won't fuck it up."
I saw her lashes flicker and realized that my tone had come out more desperate than I intended. "We don't even know for sure that there's a link," I said, more quietly. "And if there is, I could end up remembering something that's useful to the investigation. Please, Cass. Back me up on this one."
She was silent for a moment, drinking her coffee and gazing thoughtfully at the TV. "Is there any chance that a really determined reporter could…?"
"No," I said briskly. I had, as you would expect, thought about this a lot. Even the file didn't mention my new name or my new school, and when we moved my father gave the police my grandmother's address; she died when I was about twenty, and the family sold her house. "My parents are unlisted, and my number's listed under Heather Quinn-"
"-And these days your name's Rob. We should be fine."
The "we," and the practical, considering tone-as if this were just another routine complication, in the same category as a reluctant witness or a suspect gone on the run-warmed me. "If it all goes horribly wrong, I'll let you fend off the paparazzi," I said.
"Cool. I'll learn karate."
On the screen the old footage was over, and the blonde was working up to a big finish. "…But, for now, all the people of Knocknaree can do is wait…and hope." They panned to the altar stone for a long moment, poignantly, and then cut back to the studio, and the orange presenter started giving the latest update on some endless depressing tribunal.
We dumped our stuff at Cassie's and went for a walk on the beach. I love Sandymount strand. It's pretty enough on the rare summery afternoons, brochure-blue sky and all the girls in camisoles and red shoulders, but for some reason I love it most of all on your bog-standard Irish days, when wind blows rain-spatter in your face and everything blurs into elusive, Puritan half-tones: gray-white clouds, gray-green sea off on the horizon, great sweep of bleached-fawn sand edged with a scatter of broken shells, wide abstract curves of dull silver where the tide is coming in unevenly. Cassie was wearing sage-green cords and her big russet duffel coat, and the wind was turning her nose red. A large earnest girl in shorts and a baseball cap-probably an American student-was jogging on the sand in front of us; up on the promenade, an underage mother in a tracksuit heaved along a twin stroller.
"So what are you thinking?" I asked.
I meant about the case, obviously, but Cassie was in a giddy mood-she generates more energy than most people, and she'd been sitting indoors most of the day. "Will you listen to him? A woman asking a guy what he's thinking is the ultimate crime, she's clingy and needy and he runs a mile, but when it's the other-"
"Behave yourself," I said, pulling her hood over her face.
"Help! I'm being oppressed!" she yelled through it. "Call the Equality Commission." The stroller girl gave us a sour look.
"You're overexcited," I told Cassie. "Calm down or I'll take you home with no ice cream."
