I knew where this was going. “What the hell have you been watching?”
Sam laughed. “Ibiza Uncovered. See what happens to my taste when you’re not here?”
“You’re just looking for topless chicks,” I said. “Emma and Susanna and I have been meaning to go away since we were in school, only we haven’t got round to it yet. Maybe this summer.”
“But now they’ve both got kids, haven’t they? That makes it harder to go off on a girlie break. I was thinking…” That shy note again. “I got a couple of brochures from the travel agencies. Italy, mostly; I know you like the old archaeology. Could I bring you on holiday, when this finishes up?”
I had no idea what I thought about this, and no room to figure it out. “That sounds gorgeous,” I said, “and you’re wonderful to think of it. Can we decide when I get home? The thing is, I’m not sure how long this is going to take.”
There was a tiny silence that made me grimace. I hate hurting Sam; it’s like kicking a dog too gentle to ever bite back. “It’s been more than two weeks already. I thought Mackey said a month max.”
Frank says whatever comes in useful at the time. Undercover investigations can last for years, and although I couldn’t see that happening here-the long operations are aimed at ongoing criminal activity, not once-off crimes-I was pretty sure that a month was something he had made up at random to get Sam off his back. For a second I almost hoped so. The thought of leaving all this, back to DV and Dublin crowds and corporate clothes, was vastly depressing.
“In theory, yeah,” I said, “but you can’t put an exact time on something like this. It could be less than a month-I could be home any time, if one of us gets something solid. But if I pick up a good lead and it needs following through, I might be here a week or two extra.”
Sam made a furious, frustrated sound. “If I ever talk about doing a joint investigation again, lock me in a closet till I get sense. I need a deadline here. I’ve been holding off on all kinds of stuff-getting DNA off the lads to test against the baby… Till you’re done in there, sure, I can’t even tell anyone we’re dealing with a murder. A few weeks is one thing-”
I had stopped listening to him. Somewhere, down the lane or deep in the trees, there was a sound. Not one of the usual noises, night birds and leaves and small hunting animals, I knew those by now; something else.
“Hang on,” I said, softly, through Sam’s sentence.
I took the phone away from my ear and listened, holding my breath. It was coming from down the lane, towards the main road, faint but getting closer: a slow, rhythmic crunching noise. Footsteps on pebbles.
“Gotta go,” I said into the phone, just above a whisper. “Ring you back later if I can.” I switched the phone off, shoved it into my pocket, tucked up my legs among the branches and sat still.
The footsteps were steady and coming nearer; someone big, from the weight of them. There was nothing up this lane except Whitethorn House. I pulled my sweater up, slowly, to cover the bottom half of my face. In the dark, it’s the flash of white that gives you away.
Night changes your sense of distance, makes things sound closer than they are, and it seemed like forever before someone came into view: just a flick of movement at first, a dappled shadow passing slowly under the leaves. Flash of fair hair, silver as a ghost’s in the pale light. I had to fight the instinct to turn my head away. This was a bad place to wait for something to step out of the dark. There were too many unknown things around me, moving intently along their secret routes on their own private business, and some of them had to be the kind that isn’t safe for us to see.
Then he stepped into a patch of moonlight and I saw that it was just a guy, tall, with a rugby build and a designer-looking leather jacket. He moved like he was unsure, hesitating, glancing off into the trees on either side. When he was only a few yards away he turned his head and looked straight at my tree, and in the instant before I shut my eyes-that’s the other thing that can give you away, that glint, we’re all programmed to spot watching eyes-I saw his face. He was my age, maybe a little younger, good-looking in a forgettable clean-cut way, with a hazy, perplexed frown, and he wasn’t on the KA list. I had never seen him before.
He passed under me, so close I could have dropped a leaf on his head, and vanished up the lane. I stayed put. If he was someone’s friend come to visit, I was going to be up there a long time, but I didn’t think he was. The hesitancy, the confused glances around; he wasn’t looking for the house. He was looking for something, or someone, else.
Three times, in her last weeks, Lexie had met N-or at least planned to meet N-somewhere. And on the night she died, if the other four were telling the truth, she had gone out for that walk and met her killer.
