He hesitates for a minute and then says, “Cool.” Kyoooool. I completely forgot about the way Roly Byrne pronounces cool and I smile in spite of myself. He points toward the airport exit. “I’ll take you through the city center so you can see the changes. Let’s go.”
His car is a late-model silver BMW, so clean I can practically see my reflection on the door. I run a hand over the hood. “Fancy car, detective.”
“Feck off,” he says good-naturedly and tosses my bag in the back seat. The interior of the car smells strongly of lavender. “Sorry,” he says, noticing me sniffing the air. “The wife has some special oil she plugs in. She says the car smells of stinky runners after I’ve been in it.” He grins, looks over at me. “It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? We’ve both kids, you’re a cop now. It’s twenty-three years.”
“It is weird,” I say. “Getting older is weird.”
Once we’re out of the airport, he hands over a paper cup of coffee. “That’s for you there, D’arcy.”
“Thanks. How thoughtful of you.”
“Oh, I’m a very thoughtful lad these days. You should see me, always doing the washing up, doing the school drop-off. I gave Laura a week at a yoga retreat for her fortieth, so.”
“Yoga? I never would have thought it.”
“You wouldn’t find me doing the yoga, now.” He winks at me and I laugh.
“So,” he says. “Do you even recognize the place?”
Coming down O’Connell Street, it’s almost the same, the wide bridge ahead, shops and neon signs, Dubliners crossing in every direction, but as we cross over the Liffey, I lose track of where I am for a second. There are new buildings, a new bridge, shaped like a harp. But then I see Trinity and the Bank of Ireland and the bottom of Grafton Street and I get my bearings again before we turn. “You should see her old neighborhood,” Roly says. “It’s all Facebook and Google offices down there. They’re even making some kind of skyscrapers out of Bolands Mills.”
We head south, through quieter Ballsbridge and Donnybrook. I’m off center from the changes to the landscape, the new buildings, the jet lag.
“I’m glad to see you happy,” I say. “Tell me about the job.” I’m not ready to talk about Erin yet.
He follows my lead. “Yeah, job’s good. I’m detective inspector on our Serious Crime Review Team, which is our cold-case squad. It was formed in 2007 and they put me on because I was a detective on the task force looking at the Southeast disappearances. I must have told you that. I’m hoping for the homicide squad at some point, but it’s good, so. Now, I’ve a bit of irony for you. My superintendent will be a familiar name to ya.”
“Wilcox?”
“That’s the one. He’s all right, though. Mostly leaves me to it. He’d rather play golf most days. But when I mentioned you were coming over he warned me off letting you get too close to the case. Again.” He looks over at me, serious now. “I’ve to watch myself, D’arcy. Just so you know.”
“Of course,” I say, feeling my spirits sink a bit.
“Anyway, I’ve a good team. You’ll meet them. I have a sergeant and two detective Gardaí I’ve assigned to the discovery. They want to ask you some questions about your … about Erin. They’re just getting up to speed now. The scarf’s only just been found. We have a tech designated to the team and she’s working away. Hopefully she’ll have something for us. It’s all a bit more reactive than the way we usually work. Normally we’d identify evidence for testing or witnesses to be interviewed again, but because of Niamh Horrigan we’re working parallel to the missing persons investigation. It’s a bit mad, to tell the truth, but if there’s a possibility of uncovering anything from the other cases that might help find her we’ll keep at it.”
“Of course. I’d like to help however I can.” The look on his face makes me add, “However Wilcox lets me.”
“How about you, D’arcy? How’s the job for you now?”
“Yeah. Job’s good on this end, too. I’m still working homicides. I like my team, like the work. Nothing to complain about. I made lieutenant a few years ago. Sometimes I don’t know how I got through the years after I got divorced, when Lilly was little, but she’s fifteen now and it feels like I’ve got room to breathe again.”
“Fair play to you,” Roly says. “Laura was home full-time during all the years ours were little. There were weeks I hardly saw them. But she kept things going. She’s a great woman now. You’ll meet her.” Roly and Laura have four kids, two girls a little older than Lilly and two little boys. He sent me a picture a few years back, the boys blond and impish, the girls tall and pretty, everyone dressed in Christmas best. “I saw you had a big case there a few years back,” he says quietly. “On those serial murders.”
I feel heat rise toward my face, every nerve ending in my body suddenly alert. I do the thing I do to stop the rush of adrenaline. I breathe. Inonetwothreefour. Outfivesixseveneight. The first breath slows the response, the second chases back the heat. “You Googled my cases, Roly?”
“Only I read about it on some law enforcement news thingy. I saw Long Island, like, and wondered if it was anything to do with you.”
I take another breath, feel him hearing it. “Yeah. That was a crazy one. How did you and Laura meet, again?”
He glances over. “Ah, it was a couple years after … well, after you left, after everything. You might remember I always liked to keep my flat nice. I went along to this decorator’s showhouse and there was a room that I loved. I just walked in and I thought to myself, I’d like to live here. A few months later, I started chatting to her at the pub, we started talking about our jobs, she said she was an interior designer and, trying to impress her, I told her all about the showhouse and the room I loved.”
I interrupt him. “And she’d done the room?”
“Ah, you bollixed my story. That’s right. That was it, but. I knew that night I was going to marry her. I didn’t tell her for a couple days.” He winks at me. “But I knew that night. Love at first sight, like.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me how my love life is going, Roly?” I grin at him from my reclining position.
“Since you bring it up, how’s your love life going?”
“It isn’t,” I say. “Not so’s you’d notice.”
“No? You’re not a whaddayacallit, cougar?”
I laugh. “I don’t think so. The only guy I’ve dated seriously since the divorce was like fifteen years older than me.”
“Really? An oul’ fella?”
“He wasn’t that old. I was thirty-five then. He was fifty.”
“Sure, I’ll be fifty in a few years,” he says soberly. “There hasn’t been anyone since then?”
“No,” I say. “Not really. It’s sad, isn’t it?”
“Why’d you get divorced? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“We got married because I was pregnant. It was okay for a bit, but … there wasn’t enough there to go the distance.” It’s the best way I can think to say it, but it doesn’t quite capture the sadness of my last couple of years with Brian. “It’s actually so much better now. We get along pretty well. Lilly’s doing great.”