“Three years? That’s ridiculous.”
“And?”
“I’m not telling. Not three years, that’s for certain.”
He picked up the album’s sleeve. It was a plain white square, inscrutable and blank. It seemed to say, “Think nothing.” He was envious of Tozer’s ecstatic reaction, her thoughtless lust for the music. The distance between them remained.
“I like it,” he said. “It’s good. Even the eight minutes of noise.”
She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. “To be honest,” said Tozer, “I think that one is total rubbish.”
“Really? I thought it was, you know, good.”
“I’m a bit disappointed, really,” said Tozer. “I mean, there’s good stuff on it, but it doesn’t really sound like the Beatles. Most of the time it sounds like four blokes doing weird stuff. It’s not really the Beatles anymore, know what I mean?”
“I liked it.”
“It makes me feel sad. It sounds like they’re falling apart. Shall I turn it over?”
When she was back, he said, “What did you mean when you said you’d never make a copper?”
She leaned over and felt for her packet of cigarettes. He looked at the long line of vertebrae twisting down to her buttocks as she padded her palm around the floor under the bed looking for the matches. The beauty of her bone beneath the skin.
“Want one?”
He shook his head. He had smoked his five cigarettes for the day.
“I’ve decided I’m leaving the police,” she said. “I don’t fit in.”
“Of course you do,” he said, though he didn’t really believe it. She didn’t fit in. That was what he loved about her. It was what she stood for: the importance of not having to fit in.
“You look shocked,” she said.
“I am.”
“I’m sorry about that time at Paddington in the rain. I felt really bad, leaving you there. I was acting like a big kid.”
“Yes,” he said. “You were.” She hit him on the arm.
“I’m going back to the farm,” she said. “I’m going to look after it for my dad. Mum says he’s getting worse. He can’t cope anymore.”
He sat up and looked at her. He had only just slept with her for the first time and now she was going away. “I thought you didn’t want to live there anymore. I thought you couldn’t stand living there.”
“I didn’t. I don’t. But I’m allowed to change my mind, aren’t I?”
Breen was silent. The music next door seemed too loud now.
“It’s what I know. I can make a go of it, I think. Do things differently.”
He wondered at her ability to be one thing one minute, another the next. “Why?”
“I used to think I had to save the world to make up for what happened to my sister. I don’t really think that anymore. The world carries on without me. And people get killed all the time, don’t they? Besides. I don’t think my mum can cope anymore with Dad.”
She got up, naked, and said, “I’m just going to the toilet.”
He lay in bed, breathing in the scent she left behind. She came back a few minutes later with a bottle of Scotch she had found in his kitchen and poured two small glasses. He brushed his hand over her face, past the plaster on her forehead.
“I don’t have to save anyone anymore. Just myself. I’ll leave saving people to you,” she said.
His clothes were folded neatly by the bed. Hers were scattered across the floor.
“Don’t you want to find her killer anymore?”
“Course I do. But I realized that we may never find out who he is. That’s the reality, isn’t it? It’s too long now. And it’s so horrible it makes me cry, but I’ve got to live with that. We don’t always know, do we? Even when we do. Even when we arrest people. Or shoot them. It’s a lot messier than we like to say.”
He couldn’t bring himself to say, “But what about me?” Instead he said, “I was thinking I was going to take a holiday. A long one. I’ve got leave owing.”
“You?”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t think you knew how.”
She was teasing him, but it was probably what she thought as well, he realized. “I’m going to go to Ireland,” he announced. “I’ve got some money in the bank from my father. I thought I could go and find out where he was from.”
She nodded. “That’s good,” she said. “You should do that.”
“I was thinking, you could come too,” he said.
She licked the rim of her whisky glass. “I’ve heard it’s like Devon only wetter.”
“Probably.”
“I don’t think I’d like it then. I don’t think so, Cathal. You go.”
He tried not to show his disappointment. She was young. Uncommitted. Maybe this was the way it was now with girls.
“When are you going back home?” he asked.
“Gave in my notice today. Four weeks,” she said.
He tried to imagine her bringing in the cows day after day, but couldn’t see her in that role. He tried to imagine himself down there with her, but that was no better.
“If you don’t fit in, what makes you think I do?” he asked.
“You? You fit in fine,” she said.
It was just a careless comment, but he was stung by it. He chewed it over for a while. It was fine for her to change her mind from one day to the next, but he was set in stone. He was about to ask what she had meant by it, and perhaps start some childish argument of the kind that lovers might have, but they were not lovers, they had just had sex because they were two people who had gone through something terrifying together. He had wanted more, but he realized this was all there was. And when he turned to her, she was asleep, mouth open, eyes closed.
He lay there awhile, watching her naked chest rise and fall, feeling a weight pressing down on him. The bed was too small for the both of them. He tried to sleep, but he couldn’t.