“Working? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“That’s what you called it. I’m doing exactly what you sent me in there to do, I’m finally getting somewhere, why the hell are you shoving a spoke in my wheels?”
Frank leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. “If you want to play dirty, Cass, I can play too. Not as much fun when you’re on the receiving end, is it?”
The thing was that I knew he wasn’t playing dirty, not really. Making me sit in the naughty corner and think about what I’d done was one thing: he was furious enough-and with good reason-that he probably wanted to punch me in the eye, and I knew well that unless I pulled off a spectacular last-minute save I was going to be in big trouble when I came in the next day. But he would never, no matter how angry he was, do anything that might jeopardize the case. And I knew, cool as snow under all the spitting mad, that I could use that.
“OK,” I said, taking a breath and running my hands over my hair, “OK. Fair enough. I deserved that.”
He laughed, a short, tight bark. “You don’t want to get me started on what you deserve, babe. Trust me on that one.”
“I know, Frank,” I said. “And when we’ve got the time, I’ll let you give me hell for as long as you want, but not now. How’re you doing with the others?”
He shrugged. “As well as could be expected.”
“In other words, you’ve got nowhere.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, I do. I know those four. You can keep going at them till you have to retire, and you’ll still get nowhere.”
“It’s possible,” Frank said blandly. “We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we? I’ve got a few years left in me.”
“Come on, Frank. You’re the one who’s said that, right from the beginning: those four stick together like glue, there’s no point in going at them from the outside. Wasn’t that why you wanted me on the inside to start with?”
A noncommittal little tilt of his chin, like a shrug.
“You know well you’re not going to get anything good out of them. You just want to rattle them, right? So let’s rattle them together. I know you’re pissed off with me, but that’ll keep till tomorrow. For now, we’re still on the same side.”
One of Frank’s eyebrows flickered. “We are?”
“Yeah, Frank, we are. And the two of us together can do a lot more damage than you can on your own.”
“Sounds fun,” Frank said. He was lounging against the wall with his hands in his pockets, eyes hooded lazily to hide the sharp, assessing glint. “What kind of damage did you have in mind?”
I moved round the table and sat on the edge, leaning in towards him, as close as I could get. “Interview me and let the others eavesdrop. Not Daniel-he doesn’t rattle, all that’ll happen if we push him is he’ll walk out-but the other three. Switch on their intercoms to pick up this room, put them near monitors, whatever-if you can make it look accidental, great, but if you can’t it doesn’t matter. If you want to keep an eye on their reactions, then let Sam do the interview.”
“While you say what, exactly?”
“I’ll let it slip that my memory’s starting to come back. I’ll keep it vague, stick to stuff I can’t get wrong-running for the cottage, blood, that kind of thing. If that doesn’t rattle them, nothing will.”
“Ah,” Frank said, with a wry tip of a grin. “So that’s what you were setting up, with the sulks and the temper tantrums and the whole prima-donna bit. I should have guessed. Silly me.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, sure, I was going to do it anyway. But this way’s even better. Like I said, we can do a lot more damage together. I can get edgy, make it obvious that there’s more I’m not telling you… If you want to script it for me, then fine, do it, I’ll say whatever you want. Come on, Frankie, what do you say? You and me?”
Frank thought this over. “And what do you want in exchange?” he inquired. “Just so I know.”
I gave him my best wicked grin. “Relax, Frank. Nothing that’ll jeopardize your professional soul. I just need to know how much you’ve told them, so I don’t shove my foot in my mouth. And you were planning to share that with me anyway, right? Since we’re on the same side and all.”
“Yeah,” Frank said dryly, on a sigh. “Naturally. I’ve told them sweet fuck-all, Cass. Your arsenal is still intact. That being the case, it would make me a very happy camper if you were to actually use some of it, sooner or later.”
“I’m going to, believe me. Which reminds me,” I added, as an afterthought. “The other thing I need: can you keep Daniel out of my hair for a while? Whenever you’ve finished with us, send the rest of us home-don’t tell him we’re gone, though, or he’ll be out of here faster than a speeding bullet. Then give me an hour, two if you can, before you cut him loose. Don’t spook him, just keep it routine and keep him talking. OK?”
“Interesting,” Frank said. “Why?”
“I want to have a chat with the others without him around.”
“That much I got. Why?”
“Because I think it’ll work, is why. He’s the one in charge there, you know that; he decides what they say and don’t say. If the others are shaken up and they don’t have him around to keep a lid on them, who knows what they’ll come out with?”
Frank picked at something between his front teeth, examined his thumbnail. “What exactly are you aiming for?” he asked.
“I won’t know till I hear it. But we’ve always said they were hiding something, right? I don’t want to walk off this case without doing my best to get it out of them. I’m going to hit them with everything I’ve got-guilt trips, tears, tantrums, threats, the kid, Slow Eddie, you name it. Maybe I’ll get a confession-”
“Which I’ve said from the beginning,” Frank pointed out, “is not what we need from you. What with that annoying little admissibility rule, and all.”
“You’re telling me you’d turn down a confession if I brought you one on a silver platter? Even if it’s not admissible, that doesn’t mean it’s not useful. You pull them in, play them the tape, go at them hard-Justin’s cracking already, one good tap and he’ll fall apart.? It took me a second to realize where the dejr vu was coming from. The fact that I was having the exact same argument with Frank that I had had with Daniel gave me a strange cold twist in my stomach. “A confession may not be exactly what you asked Santy to bring you, but at this stage, Frankie, we can’t afford to pick and choose.”
“I’ll admit it would be better than what we’ve got now. Which is a big heaping plate of fuck-all.”
“There you go. And I could end up with something a lot better than that. Maybe they’ll give us the weapon, the crime scene, who knows?”
“The old ketchup technique,” Frank said, still inspecting his thumbnail with interest. “Turn ’em upside down, give ’em a good shake and hope something comes out.”
“Frank,” I said, and waited till he glanced up at me. “This is my last shot. Tomorrow I come in. Let me have it.”
Frank sighed, leaned his head back against the wall and had a leisurely look around the room; I saw him take in the new graffiti, the bits of exploded pen in the corner. “What I’m curious about,” he said eventually, “is how you’re so sure that one of them did it.”
My blood stopped moving for a second. All Frank had ever wanted from me was one solid lead. If he found out I had that already, I was toast: off the case and into big trouble, faster than you can say Up Shit Creek. I would never even make it back to Glenskehy. “Well, I’m not sure,” I said easily. “But, like you said, they’ve got motive.”
“Yeah, they’ve got motive. Of a kind. But then, so do Naylor and Eddie and a whole bunch of other people, some of whom we presumably haven’t even identified yet. This girl put herself in harm’s way on a regular basis, Cass. She may not have ripped people off financially-although that’s debatable: you could argue that she got her share of Whitethorn House under false pretenses-but she ripped them off emotionally. That’s a dangerous thing to do. She lived at risk. And yet you’re very, very sure which risk caught up with her.”
I shrugged, hands going out. “This is the only one I can go after. I’ve got one day left; I don’t want to ditch this case without giving it everything I’ve got. What are you bitching about, anyway? You’ve always liked them for it.”
“Oh, you picked up on that? I underestimated you, babe. Yeah, I’ve always liked them. But you haven’t. A few days ago you were claiming these four were a bunch of fluffy little bunnies who wouldn’t hurt a fly between them,
