56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard
Today
“She’s lying,” Lee says.
She and Karl have stepped into the corridor, leaving Laura Mannix alone inside her apartment, still insisting that everything she’d told them was the truth—and furiously and fruitlessly deleting pictures of their crime scene from her phone, if Lee’s instincts are correct.
“At least by omission,” she continues. “Because why would she assume it’s a suicide? We don’t know what he did yet, but for all she knows he’s lying downstairs in a pool of blood with a knife in his heart.”
“Or suspended from the ceiling in a gimp suit,” Karl offers.
“You know, I think I’ve had more than enough of your sex games for today—”
“—is a sentence I’ve never heard before,” he finishes, grinning.
“Karl,” she says warningly.
“All right, all right.” He folds his arms. “So, what? You think she’s been inside?”
“I know she has. I mean, does she really expect us to believe that she does this super-sleuthing, reconnaissance crap, tracks this guy like a bloodhound back to his apartment, and then can’t be arsed going from one side of the building to the other when there isn’t sight nor sound of him for two weeks? And ignores the smell in the lobby that’s coming from his side?” Lee scoffs. “There’s something she’s not telling us. This puzzle is missing a big piece. She says she’s doing this for the radio show, and that, yeah okay, she might get something out of it in the future, but who’s funding this fishing expedition in the meantime? Who’s paying to put her in a place like this, indefinitely, when she lives half an hour away? And why is she still here, when she hasn’t seen him for two weeks?”
Karl frowns. “Why is she still here?”
“For a front-row seat to this would be my guess. Which is why she talked to us. I bet we just secured ourselves two starring roles in her ‘definitive account,’ available soon from a bargain bin near you.”
“Suits me,” Karl says. “One step closer to Crimecall.”
“They’re never going to let you on there, Karly. Let it go.”
“But I’ve a face for it.”
“For narration, is it? Because that’s all they let our lowly ranks do on there: talk the public through the CCTV images.”
“Well, a boy can dream, can’t he?”
“The problem is—”
“I’m toogood-looking so I’d just distract from it? Beauty is a curse.”
“—if she did go in there and take photos, what can we even do about it? You can’t interfere with a crime scene before it’s designated a crime scene, so we don’t have her on that. It’s not trespassing without intent, so we don’t have her on burglary unless she took something of his when she left, which maybe she did, but . . .” Lee sighs. “Maybe obstruction. She didn’t tell anybody about the body and she just lied to us.”
“What about impeding the apprehension of an offender?” Karl suggests. “No warrant required. My favorite.”
“They’re definitely never going to let you on Crimecall if you go around saying shit like that, Karl. And who’s the offender? We don’t have a crime yet, remember?”
“What if we do?”
“Then we haul her in. But until then . . . Maybe I could convince the Super to get this place designated a secondary crime scene. Then we could search it, at least.”
“And annoy her.”
“Two good reasons.”
“In the meantime,” Karl says, “I have some good news for you.”
“And you waited until now to bring it up?”
“I spoke with the managing director of KB Studios, Kenneth Balfe. You can see what he did there. But get this: his son, also Kenneth but goes by Ken, is BFFs with Richard St Ledger, Oliver’s older brother. They’ve been friends since school; the families would’ve known each other. Richard lives in Australia now and Ken is in Toronto. Kenneth—stay with me here—knows the whole story, or thinks he does, because he was going on about what a good guy Oliver is and how he just made a mistake and he was only a child, yada, yada, yada. Said it was just ‘kids being kids.’ What kind of fucked-up kids does he know? Anyway—”
“So it is him, then?” Lee interrupts. “The Oliver St Ledger?”
“The guy who was living in that apartment was, yeah.”
“Did you get a—”
“Yes, I got a number for the brother.”
“And to think you started off the day butt-naked in handcuffs.”
“So you’ve been thinking about that, have you?”
“Is the elder Balfe here in Dublin? Could he identify the body for us?”
“Dalkey. And he’s going to call the brother.” Lee’s face must immediately convey her concern because Karl adds quickly, “I made it clear we don’t know who’s in there yet, don’t worry. Said I’d call him back when I knew.”
“I don’t want the brother getting a call from anyone else first.”
“I don’t think Balfe will be spreading the news. He seemed very concerned that his wife would find out about him not only employing a convicted child killer, but giving him a place to stay as well.”
“Did you ask Balfe why no one missed him?”
“He took unpaid leave a couple of weeks back. The firm was encouraging it to help with overheads while construction is stopped. He’d have been due back Tuesday.”
“He wouldn’t have been in contact with him otherwise? Socially?”
“Apparently not. The guy was doing his son’s friend a favor. Beyond that . . . I don’t think they were exactly bosom buddies.”
The door leading to the stairwell opens then, directly opposite, and Garda Declan Casey steps out.
“The pathologist has finished his initial survey of the scene,” he says to Lee. “Asked if you wanted a walk-through before they start on removing the body?”
“I do,” she says. Then, to Karl, “Get Lois Lane’s prints, would you? And whatever else you can get out of her. You never know, she might just admit she went in and took photos. Give them to you, even. Stranger things have happened.”
“Got it from the context,” he says, “but am I supposed to know who Lois Lane is?”
“Really, Karl?” Lee pauses. “She used to be the host of Crimecall.”
Declan frowns at this, and Lee indicates with a jerk of her head that he should set off back down the stairs before he corrects her and ruins it.
He turns and goes, and she follows him.
Tom Searson, deputy pathologist, is waiting for her in the lobby along with her old friend, the stench.
He’s in a full forensics suit—white disposable coveralls, gloves, mask—and holding out another one to her, still folded and wrapped in plastic.
She takes it with one hand while pulling her face mask off with the other.
“Lee,” Tom says with a smile in his voice. “Long time no see.”
He’s a short man with a bit of a beer belly, so the suit is stretched across his middle but baggy and loose everywhere else.
“I know. How are things?”
“Oh, you know.” He rests his hands on his belly and rocks on his heels a little. “Can’t complain.”
Lee rips open the plastic pack and starts pulling out the contents.
“You got here in record time,” she says. “Are you near?”
“Donnybrook. Could’ve cycled over.” Tom nods in the direction of apartment one. “Have you been in?”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“It’s particularly unpleasant in there, I must say.”
“Definitely in my Top Ten. Maybe even Top Five, with the maggots.”
Tom turns to collect a little jar of Vicks VapoRub off the top of the letterboxes.
“There’s no shame in it,” he says, holding up the jar. “I prefer to stick it out myself but I’m used to it. I’d rather you be able to concentrate. Consider it a study aid.”
“Hey, if it was good enough for Clarice . . .” Lee bends so she can step into the coverall. “What have we got in there, do you think?”
“Do you like riddles, Lee?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Riddles?”
“There’s one that goes like this,” Tom says. “A man takes to his bed in his chateau in the French Alps in the dead of winter, leaving the window open. The next morning he’s discovered dead of a stab wound to the heart, with a glass of bloody water on the bedside table next to him. How did he die?”
While he’s speaking, Lee zips the coveralls all the way up to her neck, takes the Vicks from Tom and smears a generous glob across her upper lip. Then she dabs a dot just inside each of her nostrils for good measure.
It immediately starts to sting, making her eyes water. But even on a shallow breath, the menthol feels as if it’s shooting its way straight into her brain.
She hopes it still feels that way when they get inside the apartment.
“I presume,” she says, “that if there was a shotgun under his bed or a serial killer waiting outside . . . ?”
“Trust that you’ve been furnished with all the pertinent details.”
Lee pulls on the pair of gloves and puts on a bigger, more rigid face mask.
“An icicle,” she says. “Grabbed it through the window, stuck himself with it, stuck it in the glass afterwards. It melted, the end.”
Tom’s eyes crinkle above his mask; he’s smiling.
“Very well done!”
“Why the hell are you asking me about riddles, Tom?”
“Because,” he says, pointing down the corridor, “we’ve got a good one waiting for us in there.”