Sam looked a little bemused. Sometimes Cassie and I forget that we can have that effect on people, especially when we're off duty and in a good mood, which we were. I know this sounds odd, given what we had been doing all day, but in the squads with a high horror quota-Murder, Sex Crime, Domestic Violence-either you learn to switch off or you transfer to Art and Antiques. If you let yourself think too much about the victims (what went through their minds in their last seconds, all the things they'll never do, their devastated families), you end up with an unsolved case and a nervous breakdown. I was, obviously, having a harder time than usual switching off; but it was doing me good, the comforting routine of making dinner and annoying Cassie.
"Um, yes, please," Sam said. He looked around awkwardly for somewhere to put his coat; Cassie took it and tossed it on the futon. "My uncle has a house in Ballsbridge-yeah, yeah, I know," he said, as we both gave him mock-impressed looks, "and I still have a key. I sometimes stay the night if I'm after having a few pints." He looked from one to the other of us, waiting for us to comment.
"Good," said Cassie, diving into the wardrobe again and coming up with a glass tumbler that said NUTELLA on the side. "I hate when some people are drinking and some aren't. It makes the conversation go all lopsided. What the hell did you do to Cooper, by the way?"
Sam laughed, relaxed and rummaged for the corkscrew. "I swear, that wasn't my fault. My first three cases all came in at five in the evening; I rang him just when he was getting home."
"Uh-oh," Cassie said. "
"You're lucky he'll talk to you," I said.
"Barely," said Sam. "He still pretends he can't remember my name. He calls me Detective Neary or Detective O'Nolan-even on the
"It's Ryan's cleavage that does it," said Cassie, nudging me out of the way with her hip and throwing a handful of salt into the pan of water.
"I'll buy a Wonderbra," Sam said. He uncorked the bottle deftly, poured the wine and put glasses into our free hands. "Cheers, lads. Thanks for inviting me over. Here's to a quick solve and no nasty surprises."
After dinner we got down to business. I made coffee; Sam insisted on washing up. Cassie had the post-mortem notes and photos spread out on her coffee table, an old wooden chest beeswaxed to a shine, and she was sitting on the floor flipping back and forth, eating cherries from the fruit bowl with her other hand. I love watching Cassie when she's concentrating. Utterly focused, she is as absent and unselfconscious as a child-twisting a finger in a curl at the back of her head, pulling her legs into effortlessly odd angles, flipping a pen around her mouth and abruptly pulling it out to murmur something to herself.
"While we're waiting for Miss Cleo over there," I said to Sam-Cassie gave me the finger without looking up-"how was your day?"
Sam was rinsing plates with neat, bachelor efficiency. "Long. Hold music, and all these civil servants telling me I needed to speak to someone else and then putting me through to voicemail. It's not going to be as easy as it sounds, finding out who owns that land. I did talk to my uncle, asked him if this Move the Motorway was actually having any effect."
"And?" I said, trying not to sound cynical. I had nothing against Redmond O'Neill in particular-I had a vague image of a big, ruddy man with a shock of silver hair, but that was all-but I do have a firm general mistrust of politicians.
"He said no. Basically, he says, they're just a nuisance-" Cassie glanced up, raised an eyebrow. "I'm only quoting. They've been to court a few times, trying to stop the motorway; I've still to check the exact dates, but Red says the hearings were at the end of April, the beginning of June and the middle of July. That matches the phone calls to Jonathan Devlin."
"Apparently someone thought they were more than just a nuisance," I said.
"This last time in court, a few weeks ago, Move the Motorway got an injunction, but Red says it'll be thrown out on appeal. He's not worried."
"Well, that's nice to know," Cassie said sweetly.
"That motorway will do a lot of good, Cassie," Sam said gently. "There'll be new houses, new jobs-"
"I'm sure it will. I just don't see why it couldn't do all that good a few hundred yards to one side."
Sam shook his head. "I wouldn't know, sure. I don't understand all that stuff. But Red does, and he says it's badly needed."
Cassie was opening her mouth to say something else, but I caught the glint in her eye. "Stop being a brat and profile," I told her.
"OK," she said, as we brought over the coffee, "the main interesting thing is that it looks to me like this guy's heart wasn't in it."
