sides from each other. Before I finally went to sleep I took the chair from Lexie’s dressing table, for the first time in weeks, and braced it against my door.
Saturday went fast, in a helpless nightmare daze. Daniel had decided-partly because working on the house always settled them all down, presumably, and partly to keep everyone in one room and under his eye-that we needed to spend the day sanding floors: “We’ve been neglecting the dining room,” he told us, at breakfast. “It’s starting to look terribly shabby, next to the sitting room. I think today we should start bringing it up to scratch. What do you think?”
“Good idea,” said Abby, sliding eggs onto his plate and giving him a tired, determinedly positive smile. Justin shrugged and went back to picking at toast; I said, “Whatever,” into the frying pan; Rafe took his coffee and left without a word. “Good,” Daniel said serenely, going back to his book. “That’s a plan, then.”
The rest of the day was just about as excruciating as I’d expected. The Happy Place magic was apparently on its day off. Rafe was in a silent, fuming rage with the whole world; he kept banging the sander into the walls, making everyone jump, till Daniel took it out of his hands without a word and passed him a sheet of sandpaper instead. I turned up my sulk as loud as I could and hoped it would have some effect on someone, and that sooner or later-not too much later-I would find a way to use it.
Outside the windows it was raining, thin petulant rain. We didn’t talk. Once or twice I saw Abby wipe her face, but she always had her back to the rest of us and I couldn’t tell if she was crying or if it was just the sawdust. It got everywhere: drifting up our noses, down our necks, working its way into the skin of our hands. Justin wheezed ostentatiously and had great dramatic coughing fits into a handkerchief until finally Daniel put down the sander, stalked out, and came back with an ancient, hideous gas mask, which he held out to Justin in silence. No one laughed.
“They’ve got asbestos in them,” Rafe said, scrubbing viciously at an awkward corner of floor. “Are you actually trying to kill him, or do you just want to give that impression?”
Justin gave the mask a horrified look. “I don’t want to breathe asbestos.”
“If you’d prefer to tie your handkerchief around your mouth,” said Daniel, “then do that instead. Just stop moaning.” He shoved the mask into Justin’s hands, went back to the sander and fired it up again.
The gas mask that had sent me and Rafe into a giddy fit, that night on the patio. Daniel can wear it into college, we’ll get Abby to embroider it… Justin dumped it gingerly in a bare corner, where it sat for the rest of the day, staring at us all with huge, empty, desolate eyes.
“And what’s been going on with your mike?” Frank inquired, that night. “Just out of curiosity.”
“Ah, fuck,” I said. “What, it’s doing it again? I thought I’d fixed it.”
A skeptical pause. “Doing what again?”
“This morning when I went to change my bandage, the jack was out. I think I put the bandage on wrong, after my shower last night, and the jack pulled out when I moved. How much did you miss? Is it working now?” I stuck a hand down my top and tapped the mike. “Can you hear that?”
“Loud and clear,” Frank said dryly. “It popped out a few times during the night, but I doubt I missed anything significant there-I certainly hope not, anyway. I lost a minute or two of your midnight chat with Daniel, though.”
I put a grin in my voice. “Oh, that? He was edgy because of the stroppy-bitch act. He wanted to know what was wrong, so I told him to leave me alone. Then the others heard us and got in on the action, and he gave up and went to bed. I told you it would work, Frankie. They’re going up the walls.”
“Right,” Frank said, after a moment. “So apparently I didn’t miss anything educational. And as long as I’m working this case, I suppose I can’t say I don’t believe in coincidences. But if that wire happens to come loose again, even for one second, I’m coming down there and dragging you in by the scruff of your neck. So get out your Super Glue.” And he hung up.
I walked home trying to work out what I would do next if I were in Daniel’s shoes, but as it turned out he wasn’t the one I should have been worrying about. I knew, even before I got into the house, that something had happened. They were all in the kitchen-the guys had obviously been halfway through the washing up, Rafe was holding a spatula like a weapon and Justin was dripping suds all over the floor-and they were all talking at once.
“-doing their job,” Daniel was saying flatly, as I opened the French doors. “If we don’t let them-”
“But why?” Justin wailed, over him. “Why would they-”
Then they saw me. There was a second of absolute silence, all of them staring at me, voices sliced off in midword.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“The cops want us to come in,” said Rafe. He threw the spatula into the sink, with a clang and a splash. Water spattered on Daniel’s shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“I can’t go through that again,” Justin said, sagging back against the counter. “I can’t.”
“Come in where? What for?”
“Mackey rang Daniel,” said Abby. “They want us to come talk to them, first thing tomorrow morning. All of us.”
“Why?” That toerag Frank. He had known, when I phoned him, that he was going to pull this crap. He hadn’t even bothered to hint at it.
Rafe shrugged. “He didn’t share. Just that he, quote, wants a chat with us. Unquote.”
“But why there?” Justin demanded frantically. He was staring at Daniel’s phone, on the kitchen table, like it might pounce. “Before, they always came here. Why do we have to-”
“Where does he want us to go?” I asked.
“Dublin Castle,” Abby said. “The Serious Crime office, or squad, or whatever they call it.”
Serious and Organized Crime work downstairs from Murder; all Frank had to do was whisk us up an extra flight of stairs. S amp;O do not investigate your average stabbing, not unless there’s a crime lord involved, but the others didn’t know that, and it sounded impressive.
“Did you know about this?” Daniel asked me. He was giving me a cold stare that I didn’t like one bit. Rafe raised his eyes to the ceiling and muttered something that included the words “paranoid freak.”
“No. How would I?”
“I thought your friend Mackey might have rung you as well. While you were out.”
“He didn’t. And he’s not my friend.” I didn’t bother hiding the pissed-off look; let Daniel try to figure out whether it was genuine. I had two days left, and Frank was going to eat away one of them with endless pointless nothing questions about what we put in our sandwiches and how we felt about Four-Boobs Brenda. He wanted us first thing in the morning: he was planning to stretch this out for as long as he could, eight hours, twelve. I wondered if it would be in character for Lexie to kick him in the goolies.
“I knew we shouldn’t have rung them about that rock,” Justin said wretchedly. “I knew it. They were leaving us alone.”
“So let’s not go,” I said. Probably Frank would class this as doing something stupid, breaking one of his conditions, but I was too annoyed to care. “They can’t make us.”
A startled pause. “Is that true?” Abby asked Daniel.
“I think so, actually,” Daniel said. He was examining me speculatively; I could almost hear the wheels spinning. “We’re not under arrest. This was a request, not a command, although that’s not how Mackey made it sound. All the same, I think we need to go.”
“Oh, do you?” Rafe inquired, not nicely. “Do you really? And what if I think we should let Mackey go fuck himself?”
