The Likeness by Tana French

  “Oh, God, no,” Frank said easily. “Would I ever say such a thing? I’ve been in many a punch-up; I even won most of them, not to blow my own horn here. Here’s the difference, though. I’ve got into fights because the other guy jumped me first—”

  “Just like this guy jumped us.”

  “When you deliberately goaded him into it. You think I haven’t heard that tape?”

  “We’d lost him, Frank. If we hadn’t made him break cover, he’d have got away clean as a whistle.”

  “Let me finish, babe. I’ve got into fights because the other guy started it, or because I couldn’t get out of them without blowing my cover, or just to earn a little respect, bump up my place in the pecking order. But I can safely say that I’ve never got into a fight because I was so emotionally involved that I couldn’t resist beating the holy crap out of someone. Not on the job, anyway. Can you say the same?”

  Those wide blue eyes, amiable and mildly interested; that impeccable, disarming combo of openness and just a hint of steel. The edginess was building into a full-on danger signal, the electric warning animals get before thunder. Frank was questioning me the way he would question a suspect. I was one misstep away from being pulled off this case.

  I forced myself to take my time: gave an embarrassed little shrug, shifted on the armchair. “It wasn’t emotional involvement,” I said at last, looking down at my fingers twisted in the fringe of a cushion. “Not like you mean, anyway. It’s . . . Look, Frank, I know you were worried about my nerve, at the beginning of this. I don’t blame you.”

  “What can I say,” Frank said. He was slouching back and watching me with nothing at all on his face, but he was listening; I was still in with a chance. “People talk. The subject of Operation Vestal had come up, once or twice.”

  I grimaced. “I bet it had. And I bet I can guess what they said, too. Most people had me written off as a burnout before I’d even cleared out my desk. I know you took a chance sending me in here, Frank. I’m not sure how much you heard . . .”

  “This and that.”

  “But you’ve got to know we fucked up royally, and there’s someone on the streets right now who should be doing life.” The hard catch in my voice: I didn’t have to fake it. “And that sucks, Frank, it really does. I wasn’t about to let that happen again, and I wasn’t going to have you thinking I’d lost my nerve, because I haven’t. I thought if I could just get this guy—”

  Frank shot off the sofa like he’d been spring-loaded. “Get the—Jesus, Mary and Elvis, you’re not here to get bloody anyone! What did I tell you, right from the beginning? The one thing you have to do is point me and O’Neill in the right direction, and we’ll do the rest. What, was I not clear enough? Should I have fucking written it down for you? What?”

  If it hadn’t been for the others in the next room, the volume would have been through the roof—when Frank is mad, everyone knows all about it. I did a small quick flinch and got my head at an appropriately humble angle, but inside I was delighted: being bollocked out of it as a disobedient subordinate was a huge improvement on being batted around like a suspect. Getting overenthusiastic, needing to prove yourself after a bad slipup: those were things Frank could understand, things that happen all the time, and they’re venial sins. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Frank, I’m really sorry. I know I got carried away, and it won’t happen again, but I couldn’t stand the thought of blowing my cover and I couldn’t stand the thought of you knowing I let him get away and Jesus, Frank, he was so close I could taste him . . .”

  Frank stared at me for a long moment; then he sighed, collapsed back onto the sofa and cracked his neck. “Look,” he said, “you brought another case with you onto this one. Everyone’s done it. No one with half a brain does it twice. Sorry you caught a bad one, and all that, but if you want to prove something to me or anyone else, you’ll do it by leaving your old cases at home and working this one properly.”

  He believed me. From the first minute of this case, Frank had had that other one hanging like a question mark in a corner of his mind; all I had needed to do was mirror it back to him at the right angle. For the first time ever, Operation Vestal, bless its sick dark heart, was actually coming in useful.

  “I know,” I said, looking down at my hands twisted together in my lap. “Believe me, I do.”

  “You could have blown this whole case, do you realize that?”

  “Tell me I didn’t fuck it up terminally,” I said. “Are you going to pick the guy up anyway?”

  Frank sighed. “Yeah, probably. We don’t have much choice, at this point. It would be nice if you could join us for the interview—you might be able to contribute something good on the psychological front, and I think it could be useful to put our man face to face with Lexie and see what happens. Do you think you can manage to do that without leaping across the table and knocking his teeth in?”

  I glanced up fast, but there was a wry grin at one corner of his mouth. “You’ve always been a funny guy,” I said, hoping the wave of relief wouldn’t leak into my voice. “I’ll do my best. Get a big table, just in case.”

  “Your nerve is just fine, you know that?” Frank told me, picking up his notebook and fishing his pen back out of his pocket. “You’ve got enough bloody nerve for three people. Get out of my sight before you annoy me again, and send in someone who won’t turn my hair gray. Send Abby.”

  I headed out to the kitchen and told Rafe that Frank wanted to see him next, just out of boldness and to show Frank I wasn’t scared of him, even though I was; of course I was.

  * * *

  “Well,” said Daniel, when Frank had finished doing his thing and steered Doherty off, presumably to break the good news to Sam. “I think that went well.”

  We were in the kitchen, tidying up the teacups and eating the leftover biscuits. “But that wasn’t bad at all,” Justin said, amazed. “I was expecting them to be horrible, but Mackey was actually nice this time.”

  “God, though, the local goon,” Abby said, reaching over me for another biscuit. “He spent the whole time staring at Lex, did you see that? Cretin.”

  “He’s not a cretin,” I said. Doherty had amazed me by getting through a full two hours without calling me “Detective,” so I was feeling charitable. “He just has good taste.”

  “I still say they’ll do nothing,” said Rafe, but not bitchily. Whether it was something Frank had said to them, or just the relief of getting his visit over with, they all looked better: looser, lighter. The sharp-edged tension of last night had faded away, at least for now.

  “Let’s wait and see,” Daniel said, bending his head to a match to light his cigarette. “At least you’ll have an exciting story to tell Four-Boobs Brenda, next time she backs you against the photocopier.” Even Rafe laughed.

  * * *

  We were drinking wine and playing 110, that night, when my mobile rang. It startled the bejasus out of me—it wasn’t like any of us got calls on a regular basis—and I almost missed the call, trying to find my phone; it was in the coat closet, still in the pocket of the communal jacket after last night’s walk. “Hi,” I said.

  “Miss Madison?” said Sam, sounding deeply self-conscious. “It’s Detective O’Neill here.”

  “Oh,” I said. I had been heading back to the sitting room, but I reversed and leaned up against the front door, where there was no chance of the others picking up his voice. “Hi.”

  “Can you talk?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  “For definite?”

  “Totally.”

  “Jesus,” Sam said, on a deep rush of breath. “Thank God. That prick Mackey heard the whole thing, did you know that? Didn’t ring me, didn’t say a word, just waited for this morning and headed down to you. Left me sitting on my arse in the incident room, like an eejit. If this case doesn’t wind up soon, I’m going to end up splattering that fucker.”

  Sam almost never swears unless he’s full-on furious. “Fair enough,” I said. “I’m not surprised.”

  A moment’s pause. “The others are there, right?”

  “More o
r less.”

  “I’ll keep it short. We sent Byrne to watch Naylor’s house, have a look at him when he came home from work this evening, and the man’s face is in bits—the three of ye did a good job, by the sound of things. He’s my fella, all right. I’m pulling him in tomorrow morning—into the Murder squad, this time. I don’t care about spooking him, not any more. If he gets itchy feet, I can hold him on breaking and entering. Do you want to come in, have a look?”

  “Sure,” I said. A big part of me wanted to wuss out: spend tomorrow in the library with the others around me, eat lunch in the Buttery watching rain fall outside the windows, forget all about what might be happening just up the road, while I still could. But whatever this interview turned out to be, I needed to be there for it. “What time?”

  “I’ll catch him before he goes to work, have him in here from about eight. Come whenever you like. Are you . . . You’re OK with coming into the squad?”

  I’d forgotten even to worry about that. “No problem.”

  “He fits the profile, doesn’t he? Bang on.”

  “I guess,” I said, “yeah.” In the sitting room there was a comical groan from Rafe—he had obviously just made a mess of his hand—and a burst of laughter from the others. “You bastard,” Rafe was saying, but he was laughing too, “you sly bastard, I fall for it every time . . .” Sam is a good interrogator. If there was something to get out of Naylor, odds were he would get it.

  “This could be it,” Sam said. The hope in his voice made me flinch, the intensity of it. “If I play my cards right tomorrow, this could be the end of it. You could be coming home.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sounds good. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “I love you,” Sam said, keeping his voice down, right before he hung up. I stood there in the cool hallway for a long moment, biting down on my thumbnail and listening to the sounds from the sitting room—voices and the snap of cards, clink of glass, the crackle and whoosh of the fire—before I went back inside.

  “Who was that?” Daniel asked, looking up from his hand.

  “That detective,” I said. “He wants me to come in to them.”

  “Which one?”

  “The cute blond one. O’Neill.”

  “Why?”

  Everyone was looking at me, motionless as startled animals; Abby had stopped with a card pulled halfway out of her hand. “They’ve found some guy,” I said, sliding back into my chair. “About last night. They’re going to question him tomorrow.”

  “You’re joking,” Abby said. “Already?”

  “Go on, get it over with,” Rafe told Daniel. “Say I told you so. You know you want to.”

  Daniel paid no attention. “But why you? What do they want?”

  I shrugged. "They just want me to have a look at him. And O’Neill asked if I remembered anything more, about that night. I think he’s hoping I’ll take one look at this guy and point a trembling finger and go, ‘That’s him! The man who stabbed me!’ ”

  “One of you has seen way too many made-for-TV movies,” said Rafe.

  “Have you?” Daniel asked. “Remembered anything more?”

  “Sweet fuck-all,” I said. My imagination, or did some wire-fine tension drop out of the air? Abby changed her mind about her hand, tucked the card back in and pulled out another; Justin reached for the wine bottle. “Maybe he’ll get someone to hypnotize me—do they do that in real life?”

  “Get him to program you to get some work done every once in a while,” Rafe said.

  “Oo. Could he? Program me to get my thesis done faster?”

  “Possibly he could, but I doubt he will,” Daniel said. “I’m not sure evidence obtained under hypnosis is admissible in court. Where are you meeting O’Neill?”

  “His work,” I said. “I would have tried to get him to meet up in the pub, come for a pint in Brogan’s, or something, but I don’t think he’d go for it.”

  “I thought you hated Brogan’s,” Daniel said, surprised.

  I was opening my mouth for a fast backpedal—Duh, course I do, I was only messing . . . It was nothing about Daniel that saved me; he was looking at me over his cards with calm, unblinking, owlish eyes. It was the puzzled little drop of Justin’s eyebrows, the cock of Abby’s head: they had no idea what he was talking about. Something was wrong.

  “Me?” I said, puzzled. “I don’t mind Brogan’s. I never really think about it; I only said it ’cause it’s right across from where he works.”

  Daniel shrugged. “I must have confused it with somewhere else,” he said. He was smiling at me, that extraordinary sweet smile, and I felt it again: that sudden slackening in the air, the sigh of release. “You and your quirks; I can’t keep track.” I made a face at him.

  “What are you doing flirting with cops, anyway?” Rafe demanded. “That’s just wrong on so many levels.”

  “What? He’s cute.” My hands were shaking; I didn’t dare pick up my cards. It had taken a second to sink in: Daniel had tried to trap me. I had been a fraction of a second from bouncing happily down his false trail.

  “You’re incorrigible,” Justin said, topping up my wine. “Anyway, the other one is much more attractive, in a bastard-y kind of way. Mackey.”

  “Oh, ewww,” I said. Those fucking onions—I was sure, from that smile, that I had called this one right, but whether it had been enough to reassure Daniel; with him you could never tell . . . “No way. Bet you anything he’s got a hairy back. Back me up here, Abby.”

  “Different strokes,” Abby said comfortably. “And you’re both incorrigible.”

  "Mackey’s a prat,” Rafe said. “And O’Neill’s a yokel. And it’s diamonds and it’s Abby’s go.”

  I managed to pick up my cards and tried to work out what the hell to do with them. I watched Daniel all evening, as carefully as I could without getting caught, but he was the same as always: gentle, polite, distant; paying no more attention to me than to anyone else. When I put my hand on his shoulder, on my way past to get another bottle of wine, he reached up and covered it with his own hand, squeezed hard.

  15

  I didn’t get to Dublin Castle till almost eleven, the next morning. I wanted to let the daily routine kick in first—breakfast, the drive to town, everyone getting to work in the library; I figured it would settle the others, make them less likely to want to go with me. It worked. Daniel did ask, when I stood up and started putting on my jacket, “Would you like me to come along, for moral support?” but when I shook my head he nodded and went back to his book. “Do the trembling-finger-point either way,” Rafe told me. "Give O’Neill a thrill.”

  Outside the door of the Murder squad’s building, I chickened out. It was the entrance I couldn’t do: checking in at reception like a visitor, making excruciating chirpy small talk with Bernadette the squad admin, waiting under fascinated passing eyes for someone to come steer me through the corridors like I’d never been there before. I phoned Frank and told him to come get me.

  “Good timing,” he said, when he stuck his head out the door. “We were just taking a little break, to re-evaluate the situation, shall we say.”

  “Re-evaluate what?” I asked.

  He held the door open for me, stood back. “You’ll see. It’s been a fun morning all round. You really did a number on our boy’s face, didn’t you?”

  He was right. John Naylor was sitting at an interview-room table with his arms folded, wearing the same colorless sweater and old jeans, and he wasn’t good-looking any more. He had two black eyes; one cheek was lopsided, purple and swollen; there was a dark split in his bottom lip; the bridge of his nose had a horrible squashy look. I tried to remember his fingers going for my eyes, his knee in my stomach, but I couldn’t square those with this battered guy rocking his chair on its back legs and humming “The Rising of the Moon” to himself. The sight of him, what we had done to him, made my throat close up.

  Sam was in the observation room, leaning against the one-way glass with his hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, watching Naylor. “Cassie,” he said, blinking. He looked exhausted. “Hi.”

  “Jesus,” I said, nodding at Naylor.

  “You’re telling me. He’
s saying he came off his bike, face first into a wall. And that’s about all he’s saying.”

  “I was just telling Cassie,” Frank said, “we’ve got a bit of a situation on our hands.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said. He rubbed at the corners of his eyes, like he was trying to wake up. “A situation, yeah. We pulled Naylor in around, what, eight o’clock? We’ve been going at him ever since, but he’s giving us nothing; just stares at the wall and sings to himself. Rebel songs, mostly.”

  “He made an exception for me,” said Frank. “Stopped the concert long enough to call me a dirty Dub bastard who should be ashamed of myself for licking West Brit arse. I think he fancies me. Here’s the thing, though: we managed to get a warrant to search his place, and the Bureau just brought in what they found. Obviously we were hoping for a bloody knife or bloody clothing or what-have-you, but no such luck. Instead . . . surprise, surprise.”