Read Online The Likeness: A Novel by Tana French - Free Book Online

plausible enough, but Frank has always had a habit of tossing lures in a few directions at once to distract you from the hook in the middle. “I’ve still got no intention of doing this, Frankie,” I said.
“Fair enough,” Frank said, unperturbed. He took a big swig of his wine and settled himself more comfortably on the sofa. “I had a chat with the brass, by the way, and this is now officially a joint investigation: Murder and Undercover. But your boyfriend probably already told you that.”
He hadn’t. Sam had stayed at his own place the last couple of nights (“I’ll be up at six, sure, no reason you should be as well. Unless you need me to come over? Will you be OK on your own?”); I hadn’t seen him since the murder scene. “I’m sure everyone’s delighted,” I said. Joint investigations are a pain in the hole. They always end up getting spectacularly bogged down in endless, pointless testosterone competitions.
Frank shrugged. “They’ll survive. Want to hear what we’ve got on this girl so far?”
Of course I did. I wanted it the way an alcoholic must want booze: badly enough to shove aside the hard knowledge that this was a truly lousy idea. “You might as well tell me,” I said. “Since you’re here.”
“Beautiful,” Frank said, rummaging through the plastic bag for the cigarettes. “OK: she first shows up in February 2002, when she pulls Alexandra Madison’s birth cert and uses it to open a bank account. She uses the birth cert, an account statement and her face to pull your old records from UCD, and she uses those to get into Trinity, to do a PhD in English.”
“Organized,” I said.
“Oh yeah. Organized, creative and persuasive. She was a natural at this; I couldn’t have done it better myself. She never tried to sign on the dole, which was smart; just got herself a job in a café in town, worked there full-time for the summer, then started at Trinity come October. Her thesis title is—you’ll like this—‘Other Voices: Identity, Concealment and Truth.’ It’s about women who wrote under other identities.”
“Cute,” I said. “So she had a sense of humor.”
Frank gave me a quizzical look. “We don’t have to like her, babe,” he said, after a moment. “We just have to find out who killed her.”
“You do. I don’t. Got anything else?”
He flipped a smoke between his lips and found his lighter. “OK, so she’s in Trinity. She makes friends with four other English postgrads, hangs out almost exclusively with them. Last September, one of them inherits a house from his great-uncle, and they all move into it. Whitethorn House, it’s called. It’s outside Glenskehy, just over half a mile from where she was found. On Wednesday night, she goes for a walk and never comes home. The other four alibi each other.”
“Which you could have told me over the phone,” I said.
“Ah,” Frank said, rummaging in his jacket pocket, “but I couldn’t have shown you these. Here we go: the Fantastic Four. Her housemates.” He pulled out a handful of photos and spread them on the table.
One of them was a snapshot, taken on a winter day, thin gray sky and a sprinkle of snow on the ground: five people in front of a big Georgian house, heads tilted together and hair blown sideways in a swirl of wind. Lexie was in the middle, bundled in that same peacoat and laughing, and my mind did that wild lurch and swerve again: When was I ... ? Frank was watching me like a hunting dog. I put the photo down.
The other shots were stills pulled off some kind of home video—they had that look, blurry edges where people were moving—and printed out in the Murder squad room: the printer always leaves a streak across the top right corner. Four full-length shots, four blown-up head shots, all taken in the same room against the same ratty wallpaper striped with tiny flowers. There was a huge fir tree, no decorations, caught in the corner of two of the shots: just before Christmas.
“Daniel March,”