Read Online Faithful Place by Tana French - Free Book Online Page B

to do my own dirty work, the door opened and Mrs. Daly peered out at us.
    “Kevin,” she said. “How are—” and then she recognized me. Her eyes went round and she made a noise like a hiccup.
    I said smoothly, “Mrs. Daly, I’m sorry to disturb you. Could we come in for a moment?”
    She had a hand up to her chest. Kev had been right about the fingernails. “I don’t . . .”
    Every cop knows how to get in a door past someone who’s not sure. “If I could just bring this in out of the rain,” I said, juggling the case around her. “I think it’s important for you and Mr. Daly to have a look at it.”
    Kevin trailed after me, looking uncomfortable. Mrs. Daly screeched “Matt!” up the stairs without taking her eyes off us.
    “Ma?” Nora came out of the front room, all grown up and wearing a dress that showed it. “Who—Jaysus. Francis? ”
    “In the flesh. Howya, Nora.”
    “Holy God,” Nora said. Then her eyes went over my shoulder, to the stairs.
    I had remembered Mr. Daly as Schwarzenegger in a cardigan, but he was on the short side of medium, a wiry, straight-backed guy with close-cut hair and a stubborn jaw. It got tighter while he examined me, taking his time. Then he told me, “We’ve got nothing to say to you.”
    I cut my eyes sideways at Kevin. “Mr. Daly,” he said, fast, “we really, really need to show you something.”
    “You can show us anything you like. Your brother needs to get out of my house.”
    “No, I know, and he wouldn’t have come, only we didn’t have a choice, honest to God. This is important. Seriously. Could we not . . . ? Please?”
    He was perfect, shuffling his feet and shoving his floppy fringe out of his eyes, all embarrassed and clumsy and urgent; kicking him out would have been like kicking a big fluffy sheepdog. No wonder the kid was in sales. “We wouldn’t bother you,” he added humbly, for good measure, “only that we don’t know what else to do. Just five minutes?”
    After a moment, Mr. Daly gave a stiff, reluctant nod. I would have paid good money for a blow-up Kevin doll that I could carry around in the back of my car and whip out in emergencies.
    They brought us into the front room, which was barer than Ma’s and brighter: plain beige carpet, cream paint instead of wallpaper, a picture of John Paul II and an old trade-union poster framed on the wall, not a doily or a plaster duck in sight. Even when we were all kids running in and out of each other’s houses, I had never been in that room. For a long time I wanted to be invited in there, in the hot, vicious way you want something when you’ve been told you’re not good enough. This wasn’t how I’d pictured the circumstances. In my version, I had my arm around Rosie and she had a ring on her finger, an expensive coat on her back, a bun in the oven and a huge smile straight across her face.
    Nora sat us down around the coffee table; I saw her think about tea and biscuits, and then think twice. I put the suitcase on the table, made a big deal about pulling on my gloves—Mr. Daly was probably the only person in the parish who would rather have a cop in his front room than a Mackey—and peeled the bin liner away. “Have any of you seen this before?” I asked.
    Silence, for a second. Then Mrs. Daly made a sound between a gasp and a moan, and reached to grab the case. I got a hand out in time. “I’m going to have to ask you not to touch that.”
    Mr. Daly said, roughly, “Where . . .” and took a breath between his teeth. “Where did you get that?”
    I asked, “Do you recognize it?”
    “It’s mine,” Mrs. Daly said, into her knuckles. “I brought it on our honeymoon.”
    “ Where did you get that ,” Mr. Daly said, louder. His face was turning an unhealthy shade of red.
    I gave Kevin the eyebrow. He told the story pretty well, all things considered: builders, birth cert, phone calls. I held up various items to illustrate, like an air hostess demonstrating life jackets, and