"Oh, it is. It made me very upset. So I told Katy that she should really stop doing ballet, since it was having such a bad effect on her, but she wouldn't listen. She needed to learn that she didn't have some kind of divine right to be the center of attention. Not everything in this world was all about her. So I stopped her from dancing, now and then. Do you want to know how?"
Cassie was breathing fast. "No. I don't."
"I made her sick, Detective Maddox," Rosalind said. "God, you mean you hadn't even figured out that much?"
"We wondered. We thought maybe your mother had been doing something-"
"My mother?" That note again, that dismissal beyond contempt. "Oh, please. My mother would have got herself caught within a week, even with you people in charge. I mixed juice with detergent, or cleaning things, or whatever I felt like that day, and I told Katy it was a secret recipe to improve her dancing. She was stupid enough to believe me. I was interested to see whether anyone would work it out, but nobody did. Can you imagine?"
"Jesus," Cassie said, barely above a whisper.
"Go, Cassie," Sam muttered. "That's grievous bodily harm. Go."
"She won't," I said. My voice sounded strange, jerky. "Not till she has her on murder."
"Look," Cassie said, and I heard her swallow. "We're about to go into the estate, and you said I only had till we got back to your house… I need to know what you're going to do about-"
"You'll know when I tell you. And we'll go in when I decide to go in. Actually, I think we might go back this way, so I can finish telling you my story."
"All the way back around the estate?"
"You were the one who demanded to talk to me, Detective Maddox," Rosalind said, reprovingly. "You're going to have to learn to take the consequences of your own actions."
"Shit," Sam murmured. They were moving away from us.
"She's not going to need backup, O'Neill," O'Kelly said. "The girl's a bitch, but it's not like she has an Uzi."
"Anyway. Katy just wouldn't learn." That sharp, dangerous note was seeping into Rosalind's voice again. "She finally managed to work out why she was getting sick-God, it took her years-and she threw an absolute tantrum at me. She said she was never going to drink anything I gave her again, blah blah blah, she actually threatened to tell our parents-I mean, they would never have believed her, she always did get hysterical about nothing, but all the same… See what I mean about Katy? She was a spoiled little brat. She always, always had to have her own way. If she didn't get it, she ran to Mummy and Daddy to tell tales."
"She just wanted to be a dancer," Cassie said quietly.
"And I had told her that wasn't acceptable," Rosalind snapped. "If she had simply done as she was told, none of this would have happened. Instead, she tried to threaten me. That's exactly what I knew this ballet-school thing would do to her, all those articles and fund-raisers, it was disgusting-she thought she could do whatever she liked. She said to me-this is exactly what she said, I'm not making this up-she stood there with her hands on her hips, God what a little prima donna, and she said, 'You shouldn't have done that to me. Don't ever do it again.' Who on earth did she think she was? She was completely out of control, the way she behaved to me was absolutely outrageous, and there was no way I was going to allow it."
Sam's hands were clenched into fists and I wasn't breathing. I was covered in a sick, cold sweat. I could no longer picture Rosalind in my mind's eye; the tender vision of the girl in white had been blown to pieces as if by a nuclear bomb. This was something unimaginable, something hollow as the yellowed husks that insects leave behind in dry grass, blowing with cold alien winds and a fine corrosive dust that shredded everything it touched.
"I've run into people who tried to tell me what to do," Cassie said. Her voice sounded tight, breathless. Even though she was the only one of us who had understood what to expect, this story had knocked the wind right out of her. "I didn't get someone to kill them."
"I think you'll find, actually, that I never told Damien to do anything to Katy." I heard Rosalind's smirk. "I can't help it if men always want to do things for me, can I? Ask him, if you want: he was the one who came up with every single idea. And, my God, it took him forever, it would have been quicker to train a monkey." O'Kelly snorted. "When the idea finally hit him, he looked like he had just discovered gravity, like he was some kind of genius. And then he kept having these doubts, it just went on and on-God, a few more weeks and I think I would have had to give up on him and start all over, before I lost my mind."
"He did what you wanted in the end," Cassie said. "So why did you break up with him? The poor guy's devastated."
"The same reason Detective Ryan broke up with you. I was so bored I wanted to scream. And no, actually, he didn't do what I wanted. He made a complete mess of the whole thing." Rosalind's voice was rising, cold and furious. "Panicking and hiding her body-he could have ruined everything. He could have got me into serious trouble. Honestly, he's just unbelievable. I even went to the bother of coming up with a story for him to tell you, to put you off his trail, but he couldn't even manage to get that right."
"The guy in the tracksuit?" Cassie said, and I heard that tautening at the edges of her voice: any minute now. "No, he told us that one. He just wasn't very convincing. We thought he was making a big deal out of nothing."
"You see what I mean? He was supposed to have sex with her, hit her on the head with a rock, and leave her body somewhere on the dig or in the wood. That was what I wanted. For God's sake, you'd think that would be simple enough even for Damien, but no. He didn't get a single one of those right. My God, he's lucky I just broke up with him. After the mess he made of this, I should have put you people on to him. He deserves whatever he gets."
And there it was: all we needed. The breath went out of me with a strange, painful little sound. Sam slumped back against the side of the van and ran his hands through his hair; O'Kelly gave a long, low whistle.
"Rosalind Frances Devlin," Cassie said, "I arrest you on suspicion that, on or around the seventeenth of August of this year, at Knocknaree in County Dublin, you did murder Katharine Bridget Devlin, contrary to common law."
"Get your hands off me," Rosalind snapped. We heard scuffling, the crunch of twigs snapping underfoot; then a swift, vicious noise like the hiss of a cat, and something between a smack and a thump, and a sharp gasp from Cassie.
"What the fuck-" said O'Kelly.
"Go," Sam said, "go," but I was already scrabbling for the door handle.
We ran, skidding around the corner, down the road towards the entrance of the estate. I have the longest legs and I outpaced Sam and O'Kelly easily. Everything seemed to be streaming past me in slow motion, swaying gates and bright-painted doors, a toddler on a tricycle gazing up open-mouthed and an old man in suspenders turning from his roses; the morning sunlight trickled down leisurely as honey, achingly bright after the dimness, and the boom of someone slamming the van door echoed on forever. Rosalind could have snatched up a sharp branch, a rock, a broken bottle; so many things can kill. I couldn't feel my feet hitting the pavement. I swung round the gatepost and threw myself up the main road, and leaves brushed my face as I turned onto the little path along the top wall, long wet grass, footprints in muddy patches. I felt as if I were dissolving, autumn breeze flowing cool and sweet between my ribs and into my veins, turning me from earth into air.