Tana French - The Likeness

“What I’d love to know,” Frank said after a while, and his tone had changed, “is when Daniel made you. Because he did, you know.” Fast glint of blue, as he glanced up at me. “From the way he talked, I’m pretty sure he knew you were wired-but that’s not what’s bothering me. We could have wired Lexie, if we’d had her; the wire wasn’t enough to tell him you were a cop. But when Daniel walked into that house yesterday, he knew for definite that you had a gun on you, and that you’d use it.” He settled into the sofa, one arm spread along the back, and drew on his smoke. “Any idea what gave you away?”

I shrugged. “I’d bet on the onions. I know we figured I’d saved that, but apparently Daniel played better poker than we thought.”

“No kidding,” said Frank. “And you’re sure that’s all it was? He didn’t have a problem with, for example, your taste in music?”

He knew; he knew about the Fauré. There was no way he could be certain, but all his instincts were telling him something was there. I made myself meet his eyes, look puzzled and a little rueful. “Nothing springs to mind.”

Curls of smoke hanging in the sunlight. “Right,” Frank said, at last. “Well. They say the devil’s in the details. There’s nothing you could have done about those onions-which means there’s nothing you could have done to prevent yourself getting burned. Right?”

“Right,” I said, and that at least came easy. “I did everything I could, Frank. I was Lexie Madison as hard as I knew how.”

“And if, just say, you’d figured out a couple of days ago that Daniel had made you, is there anything you could have done that might have made this end better?”

“No,” I said, and I knew that was true too. This day had begun years before, in Frank’s office, over burnt coffee and chocolate biscuits. By the time I tucked that timeline into my uniform shirt and walked back to the bus station, this day had been ready and waiting for us all. “I think this was the happiest ending we were ever going to get.”

He nodded. “Then you did your job. Leave it at that. You can’t blame yourself for the stuff other people do.”

I didn’t even try to explain to him what I was seeing, the fine spreading web through which we had all tugged one another to this place, the multiple innocences that make up guilt. I thought of Daniel with that unutterable sadness like a brand on his face, telling me, Lexie had no conception of action and consequence, and I felt that slim blade slide deeper between her and me, twisting.

“Which,” Frank said, “brings me to my reason for coming over here. I’ve got one more question left about this case, and I’ve got a funny feeling you might know the answer.” He glanced up from picking something out of his mug. “Did Daniel really stab our girl? Or was he just taking the rap, for some fucked-up reason all his own?”

Those level blue eyes, across the coffee table. “You heard what I heard,” I said. “He’s the only one who got specific; the other three never gave me a name. Are they saying it wasn’t him?”

“They’re saying sweet fuck-all. We’ve been going at them all today and most of last night, and we’ve yet to get a word out of them beyond ‘I want a glass of water.’ Justin did a fair bit of crying, and Rafe threw a chair when he found out he’d been nursing a viper in his bosom for the past month-we had to slap him in cuffs till he settled down-but that’s as far as the communication goes. They’re like bloody prisoners of war.”

Daniel’s finger pressed to his lips, his eyes moving among the others with an intensity I hadn’t understood, then. Even for this point beyond the farthest horizon of his own life, he had had a plan. And the other three, whether out of faith in him or out of habit or just because they had nothing else left to hold on to, were still doing what he had told them to do.

“One reason I ask,” Frank said, “is because the stories don’t quite match. Almost, but not quite. Daniel told you he happened to have a knife in his hand, because he was washing up; but on the tape, Rafe and Justin both describe Daniel using two hands in the struggle with Lexie. Before she got stabbed.”

“Maybe they’re confused,” I said. “It happened fast; you know what eye-witness accounts are worth. Or maybe Daniel was minimizing: trying to claim he just happened to have the knife, when actually he picked it up specifically to stab Lexie. We’ll probably never know exactly what happened.”

Frank drew on his cigarette, watching the tiny red glow. “As far as I can tell,” he said, “there’s only one person who was washing up, and who wasn’t doing something else with his hands between the point when the note came out and the point when Lexie got stabbed.”

“Daniel killed her,” I said, and it didn’t feel like a lie then and it doesn’t now. “I’m positive, Frank. He was telling the truth.”

Frank watched my face for a long minute, searching. Then: “OK,” he said, on a sigh. “I’ll take your word for it. I’m never going to think he was the type to snap like that, no plan, no organization; but hey, maybe we had less in common than you think. My money was on someone else from the start, but if everyone wants it to be Daniel…” A small backwards jerk of his head, like a shrug. “There’s not a lot I can do about it.”

He stubbed out his smoke and stood up. “Here,” he said, fishing in a jacket pocket. “I figure you might as well have this.”

He tossed something across the table to me; it flashed in the sunlight and I caught it reflexively, one-handed. It was a minicassette, the kind Undercover uses to record a mike feed.

“That’s you flushing your career down the jacks. I seem to have stepped on a cable while I was on the phone to you that day, disconnected something. The official tape has about fifteen minutes of nothing, before I caught the problem and plugged everything back in. The techs want me drawn and quartered for abusing their beloved gadgetry, but they’ll just have to get in the queue.”

Not his style, I had said to Sam the night before; not Frank’s style, to let me take the fall. And before that, way back at the beginning: Lexie Madison was Frank’s responsibility when he made her from nothing, she stayed his responsibility when she turned up dead. It wasn’t that he felt guilty about this godawful mess, nothing like that-once IA got off his back, he would probably never think about it again. But some people take care of their own, no matter what that turns out to mean.

“No copies,” Frank said. “You’ll be fine.”

“When I said you’re a lot like Daniel,” I said, “that wasn’t an insult.”

I saw the flick of something complicated in his eyes as he took that in. After a long moment, he nodded. “Fair enough,” he said.

“Thanks, Frank,” I said, and closed my hand over the tape. “Thank you.”

“Whoa,” Frank said suddenly. His hand shot out, across the table, and grabbed my wrist. “And what’s this?”

The ring. I’d forgotten; my head was still getting used to it. It took an effort not to giggle at the look on his face. I’d never seen Frank Mackey truly gobsmacked before. “I think it suits me,” I said. “You like?”

“Is this new? Or did I miss something before?”

“Pretty new,” I said, “yeah.”

That lazy, malicious grin, tongue stretching his cheek; all of a sudden he looked wide awake and sparking with energy, ready to roll. “Well, fuck me sideways with a broomstick,” he said. “I don’t know which of you two just surprised me more. I’ve got to say, hand on heart, I take my hat off to your Sammy. Wish him good luck from me, will you?”

He started to laugh. “Holy Mother of the Divine,” he said, “if this hasn’t just about made my day. Cassie Maddox getting married! Sweet Jesus! Wish that man luck from me!” and he ran off down the stairs, still laughing at the top of his lungs.