Tana French - In the Woods

Margaret Devlin let out her breath as if she'd been hit in the stomach. Tears began to fall down her cheeks, but she didn't seem to notice.

"Are you sure?" Devlin snapped. His eyes were huge. "How can you be sure?"

"Mr. Devlin," Cassie said gently, "I've seen the little girl. She looks exactly like your daughter Jessica. We'll be asking you to come see the body tomorrow, to confirm her identity, but there's no doubt in my mind. I'm sorry."

Devlin swung towards the window, away again, pressed a wrist against his mouth, lost and wild-eyed. "Oh, God," said Margaret. "Oh, God, Jonathan-"

"What happened to her?" Devlin cut in harshly. "How did she-how-"

"I'm afraid it looks as if she was murdered," Cassie said.

Margaret was heaving herself up out of the chair, in slow, underwater movements. "Where is she?" The tears were still pouring down her face, but her voice was eerily calm, almost brisk.

"She's with our doctors," Cassie said gently. If Katy had died differently, we might have taken them to her. But as it was, her skull smashed open, her face covered in blood…At the post-mortem, the morgue guys would wash off at least that gratuitous layer of horror.

Margaret looked around, dazed, patting mechanically at the pockets of her skirt. "Jonathan. I can't find my keys."

"Mrs. Devlin," Cassie said, putting a hand on her arm. "I'm afraid we can't take you to Katy yet. The doctors need to examine her. We'll let you know as soon as you can see her."

Margaret twitched away from her and moved in slow motion towards the door, dragging a clumsy hand across her face to smear the tears away. "Katy. Where is she?" Cassie shot a glance of appeal over her shoulder at Jonathan, but he was leaning both palms against the windowpane and staring out, unseeing, breathing too fast and too hard.

"Please, Mrs. Devlin," I said urgently, trying to unobtrusively get between her and the door. "I promise we'll take you to Katy as soon as we can, but at the moment you can't see her. It's simply not possible."

She stared at me, red-eyed, her mouth hanging open. "My baby," she gasped. Then her shoulders slumped and she started to weep, in deep, hoarse, unrestrained sobs. Her head fell back and she let Cassie take her gently by the shoulders and ease her back into her chair.

"How did she die?" Jonathan demanded, still staring fixedly out the window. The words were blurred, as if his lips were numb. "What way?"

"We won't know that until the doctors have finished examining her," I said. "We'll keep you informed of every development."

I heard light footsteps running down the stairs; the door flew open, and a girl stood in the doorway. Behind her Jessica was still in the hall, sucking a lock of hair and staring in at us.

"What is it?" said the girl breathlessly. "Oh, God…is it Katy?"

Nobody answered. Margaret pressed a fist to her mouth, turning her sobs into terrible choking sounds. The girl looked from face to face, her lips parted. She was tall and slim, with chestnut curls tumbling down her back, and it was hard to tell how old she was-eighteen or twenty, maybe, but she was made up far more expertly than any teenager I'd ever known, and she was wearing tailored black trousers and high-heeled shoes and a white shirt that looked expensive, with a purple silk scarf flung round her neck. She had a kind of vital, electric presence that filled the room. In that house, she was utterly, startlingly incongruous.

"Please," she said, appealing to me. Her voice was high and clear and carrying, with a newsreader accent that didn't match Jonathan and Margaret's soft, small-town working-class. "What's happened?"

"Rosalind," Jonathan said. His voice came out rough, and he cleared his throat. "They found Katy. She's dead. Someone killed her."

Jessica made a small, wordless noise. Rosalind stared at him for a moment; then her eyelids fluttered and she swayed, one hand going out to the door frame. Cassie got an arm around her waist and supported her to the sofa.

Rosalind leaned her head back against the cushions and gave Cassie a weak, grateful smile; Cassie smiled back. "Could I have some water?" she whispered.

"I'll get it," I said. In the kitchen-scrubbed linoleum, varnished faux-rustic table and chairs-I turned on the tap and had a quick look around. Nothing noteworthy, except that one high cupboard held an array of vitamin tubs and, at the back, an industrial-size bottle of Valium with a label made out to Margaret Devlin.

Rosalind sipped the water and took deep breaths, one slim hand to her breastbone. "Take Jess and go upstairs," Devlin told her.

"Please, let me stay," Rosalind said, lifting her chin. "Katy was my sister-whatever happened to her, I can…I can listen to it. I'm all right now. I'm sorry for being so…I'll be fine, really."

"We'd like Rosalind and Jessica to stay, Mr. Devlin," I said. "It's possible they might know something that could help us."

"Katy and I were very close," Rosalind said, looking up at me. Her eyes were her mother's, big and blue, with that touch of a droop at the outer corners. They shifted, over my shoulder: "Oh, Jessica," she said, holding out her arms. "Jessica, darling, come here." Jessica edged past me, with a flash of bright eyes like a wild animal's, and pressed up against Rosalind on the sofa.

"I'm very sorry to intrude at a time like this," I said, "but there are some questions we need to ask you as soon as possible, to help us find whoever did this. Do you feel able to talk now, or shall we come back in a few hours?"

Jonathan Devlin pulled over a chair from the dining table, slammed it down and sat, swallowing hard. "Do it now," he said. "Ask away."

Slowly we took them through it. They had last seen Katy on Monday evening. She had had a ballet class in Stillorgan, a few miles in towards the center of Dublin, from five o'clock till seven. Rosalind had met her at the bus stop at about 7:45 p.m. and walked her home. ("She said she'd had a lovely time," Rosalind said, her head bent over her clasped hands; a curtain of hair fell across her face. "She was such a wonderful dancer… She had a place in the Royal Ballet School, you know. She would have been leaving in just a few weeks…" Margaret sobbed, and Jonathan's hands gripped the arms of his chair convulsively.) Rosalind and Jessica had then gone to their Aunt Vera's house, across the estate, to spend the night with their cousins.

Katy had had her tea-baked beans on toast and orange juice-and then walked a neighbor's dog: her summer job, to earn money towards ballet school. She had got back at approximately ten to nine, taken a bath and then watched television with her parents. She had gone to bed at ten o'clock, as usual during the summer, and read for a few minutes before Margaret told her to turn out the light. Jonathan and Margaret watched more television and went to bed a little before midnight. On his way to bed Jonathan, as a matter of routine, checked that the house was secure: doors locked, windows locked, chain on the front door.

At 7:30 the next morning, he got up and left for work-he was a senior teller in a bank-without seeing Katy. He noticed that the chain was off the front door, but he assumed that Katy, who was an early riser, had gone to her aunt's house to have breakfast with her sisters and cousins. ("She does that sometimes," Rosalind said. "She likes fry-ups, and Mum…Well, in the mornings Mum's too tired to cook." A terrible, rending sound from Margaret.) All the girls had keys to the front door, Jonathan said, just in case. At 9:20, when Margaret got up and went to wake Katy, she was gone. Margaret waited for a while, assuming, like Jonathan, that Katy had woken early and gone to her aunt's; then she rang Vera, just to be sure; then she rang all Katy's friends, and finally she rang the police.