"No." Cassie licked mustard off her thumb. "McCabe thought it was a tourist killer-some guy who was only here for a few days, probably over from England, maybe for work. See, they couldn't find a single good suspect. They did almost a thousand questionnaires, hundreds of interviews, ruled out all the known perverts and weirdos in south Dublin, accounted for every local man's movements down to the minute… You know what it's like: you almost always come up with a suspect, even if you don't have enough to charge him. They had
"That sounds familiar," I said grimly.
"Kiernan thinks it was because someone gave the guy a fake alibi so he never really made it onto their radar, but McCabe figured it was because he wasn't there to find. His theory was that the kids were playing by the river and followed it to where it comes out on the other side of the wood-it's a long walk, but they'd done it before. There's a little back road that goes right past that stretch of the river. McCabe thought someone was driving by, saw the kids and tried to drag them or lure them into his car. Adam fought, got away and ran back into the wood, and the guy drove off with the other two. McCabe talked to Interpol and the British police, but they didn't come up with anything useful."
"Kiernan and McCabe," I said, "both thought the children were murdered, then."
"McCabe wasn't sure, apparently. He thought there was a chance someone had abducted them-maybe someone mentally ill and desperate to have kids, or maybe…Well. At first they thought they might have just run away, but two twelve-year-olds with no money? They'd have been found within days."
"Well, Katy was no random tourist killing," Sam said. "He had to set up the meeting, keep her somewhere for the day…"
"Actually," I said, impressed by the pleasant, everyday tone of my voice, "I can't really see the old case as a car snatch, either. As far as I remember, the shoes were only put back on the kid after the blood in them had started to congeal. In other words, the abductor spent some time with all three of them, in the area, before one got away. To me, that says local."
"Knocknaree's a small place," Sam said. "What are the odds of two different child-murderers living there?"
Cassie balanced her plate on her crossed legs, linked her hands behind her neck and arched stiffness out of it. There were dark shadows under her eyes; I realized suddenly that her afternoon with Kiernan had hit her hard, and that her reluctance to tell the story might not have been just for my sake. There is a specific tiny compression to the corners of her mouth when she is holding something back, and I wondered what Kiernan had told her that she wasn't saying.
"They even searched the trees, you know that?" she said. "After a few weeks, some smart floater remembered an old case where a kid climbed a hollow tree and fell into a hole in the trunk; he wasn't found till forty years later. Kiernan and McCabe had people checking every tree, shining torches into hollows…"
Her voice drifted off and we fell silent. Sam munched his sandwich with even, unhurried appreciation, put down the plate and sighed contentedly. Finally Cassie stirred, held out a hand; I put her smoke packet into it. "Kiernan still dreams about it, you know," she said quietly, fishing out a cigarette. "Not as much as he used to, he said; only every few months, since he retired. He dreams that he's searching for the two kids in the wood at night, calling them, and someone leaps out of the bushes and rushes at him. He knows it's the person who took them, he can see his face-'Clear as I see you,' he said-but when he wakes up, he can't remember it."
The fire cracked and spat sharply. I caught it out of the corner of my eye and whipped round; I was sure I had seen something shoot out of the fireplace into the room, some small, black, clawed thing-baby bird, maybe, fallen down the chimney?-but there was nothing there. When I turned back Sam's eyes were on me, gray and calm and somehow sympathetic, but he only smiled and leaned across the table to refill my glass.
