Authors: Jennifer Fallon
‘To that end,’ Namito added, motioning his sister forward, ‘and with the knowledge that the
Youkai
may come and go as they please, regardless of what restraints I might employ, my sister has volunteered to guarantee your safety.’
‘Thank you,’ Ren said to Aoi, touched by the gesture but not sure what it involved. Aoi stood beside her brother, her head bowed. ‘Do you understand what this assurance means, Renkavana?’
‘That she likes me?’ Ren ventured. He felt bad for Aoi, because he had no intention of staying in this realm a moment longer than he had to. He’d done enough damage to the Ikushima for them to be well rid of him, and the clock was ticking on his life in another realm. As soon as Trása learned how to open a rift, Ren would be gone, no matter how many honourable assurances the lovely Aoi made on his behalf.
‘It means that if you try to escape, she must commit
jigai
.’
Ren looked at Namito blankly for a moment. He had never heard the word before and despite his gift for learning languages, he had no idea what the
Daimyo
was talking about.
‘
Jigai?
’
Ren’s lack of understanding did little to endear him to Namito. ‘It is the female version of
Seppuku
,’ the samurai lord explained. ‘Surely the
Youkai
are not so devoid of honour they do not understand what that means.’
His heart skipped a beat. Ren knew what
Seppuku
was. ‘She has to
kill
herself if I escape?’ he asked, staring at Aoi in horror.
‘No freaking way! Why would you promise to do that? You don’t know me! You’re insane!’
‘You came to the defence of the Ikushima against the Tanabe,’ Aoi said, raising her head to look him in the eye. ‘I believe that despite being
Youkai
, your heart is good. I have assured my brother of this and he has taken me at my word. I do not fear
jigai,
Renkavana, because you will not let me down. You will not escape. So I do not have to die.’
Namito was watching Ren closely. ‘Then it is understood,’ he said. ‘My sister’s life is in your hands, Renkavana. I trust you are worthy of this honour.’
Interesting that they considered Aoi’s ludicrous oath an honour, when Ren considered it nothing more than inspired lunacy. But he had to concede one thing.
It worked.
He nodded slowly and reluctantly. ‘I won’t try to escape unless you release Aoi from her oath.’
Namito bowed to him formally. ‘You have much honour, Renkavana,’ he said. ‘For a
Youkai
.’
I had a different word in mind
, Ren thought, as he bowed to Namito in return,
but we can go with honour, if you like.
‘
Daimyo
Namito. Aoi,’ Ren said in English with a smile and in a tone so pleasant and respectful, Namito and Aoi would never guess the true meaning of his words. ‘I just want you to know that I think you and your whole family are raving fucking lunatics. I am also here to tell you that first chance I get, I’m going to make you choke on this ridiculous oath, dipshit, because I am out of here, as soon as Trása finds a
Leipreachán
to show us how to open a rift.’
Namito smiled tentatively, leaned across to his sister and asked, ‘Do you understand what he’s saying?’
‘He’s sealing his oath with a prayer to the gods in his own tongue, I think,’ she whispered back.
‘Ah,’ Namito said, turning to Ren. He smiled again and bowed even lower. ‘Then it is settled.’
‘Absolutely,’ Ren agreed, bowing just as low to Namito.
‘In that case,’ Aoi added, holding her arm out in the direction of the gate, ‘shall we retire to the main house for breakfast, gentlemen?
Obaasan
is waiting and she has prepared a fresh bowl of
natt
for us.’
‘Why don’t we,’ Ren agreed, suddenly not surprised that in a world where a sticky web of fermented soybeans and raw egg was typically served with breakfast, suicide was seen as an honourable way to ensure someone’s cooperation.
Brendá Duggan stared at the footage playing on the monitor of Pete’s computer, shaking her head. ‘After all this time? That’s all you’ve got?’
The squad room was all but deserted. It was almost seven, and the rest of the NBCI not involved with the Kavanaugh case had gone home for the day. Those assigned to it were either still in the field interviewing possible witnesses, tracking Ren Kavanaugh’s movements prior to kidnapping Hayley Boyle from the St Christopher’s Visual Rehabilitation Centre, or down the hall in the conference room, which had been turned into the command post for the investigation, carefully compiling evidence.
The main office was nothing more than a long room of empty desks, fluorescent lights and a depressing and pervasive aroma of stale coffee.
‘We called all the major news services,’ Logan said. He was sitting beside Pete wearing a visitor’s pass clipped to the pocket of his chequered shirt. They were both unshaven and bleary-eyed, and had been poring over these images for two days now. They knew little more now than when they started.
‘This is the best we could get,’ Pete confirmed. ‘The CNN guy got a slightly better angle than George, but it was still a blur.’
‘Nobody else caught a shot of Boyle opening the trunk of the car?’
‘Every other camera at the golf club was following Kiva Kavanaugh across the fairways,’ Pete said.
Logan nodded in agreement. ‘To be honest, were it not for my cameraman having a hangover that morning and being a bit slow on the uptake, we probably wouldn’t even have this.’
‘This’ was depressingly brief. As Logan said, the big news item of the day was Kiva’s arrival. What her chauffeur was up to didn’t rate as news, because at that point the TV cameras had been following what they assumed was a car chase with the fugitive Ren Kavanaugh. It wasn’t until after Kiva and her chauffeur had left the Castle Golf Club that news of Hayley Boyle’s abduction from St Christopher’s became widely known and the role of her father became newsworthy.
Logan’s cameraman had caught less than ten seconds of something — or someone — seeming to drop into the open trunk of the Bentley. The footage they had didn’t even show him closing it, or what he did after that, because the camera had turned to follow Kiva. Not until she returned to the car did they have another shot of Patrick Boyle. That footage showed Kiva briefly talking to him followed by a comforting hug, before he opened the door for her and she climbed into the back of the Bentley. As he drove through the pack of press waiting in the car park, his expression was inscrutable, revealing nothing.
Surely that meant something, Pete thought. The press might know nothing of his daughter’s disappearance, but Patrick
had
known and didn’t seem all that concerned.
‘You have squat,’ Duggan told them, looking as disappointed as Logan and Pete were. Pete got the feeling that despite her insistence the brothers were pursuing a theory with as much credibility as the Loch Ness monster, she was secretly hoping they were right. It would certainly make the case much easier to solve.
And remove the guilt all cops felt when a child went missing and they were unable to do anything to bring her home safe and sound.
‘It still doesn’t explain why he would open the trunk at the golf club.’
The inspector threw her hands up. ‘I don’t know, Pete. To check the spare tyre? Change his hat? Reload the CD stacker? God, there’d be a thousand plausible explanations. Sorry, lads, I can’t get a warrant for
anything
based on this.’
‘It’s enough to question Boyle, isn’t it?’ Logan asked, seeing his exclusive slip away. ‘Or maybe I could …’
‘Or maybe you could stay out of it,’ Duggan told him sternly. ‘I’m only letting you in here, Logan, because I’m not going to be accused of leaving any stone unturned. But this isn’t an exclusive and it doesn’t give you the right to go off half-cocked and do anything more to impede my investigation than you already have.’
‘There’s a girl’s life at stake here,’ Logan reminded her.
Duggan was unmoved, and unimpressed by the reminder. ‘According to your theory, Sherlock, she’s in no danger at all because she’s probably home safe and sound with her father. Or are you suggesting he had nothing to do with her disappearance but is protecting Ren Kavanaugh from us, even knowing full well that the boy may be responsible for her death? You can’t have it both ways.’
Pete wished he knew what to say that would change her mind. She was right about them lacking proof, but that didn’t alter the fact that there were sufficient oddities here for them to add up to something suspicious. And he’d seen them. Both of them.
‘Could this be a publicity stunt?’ Logan asked thoughtfully, hitting replay on the monitor. ‘I mean,
Rain of Tuscany
is nearing the end of its cinema release. And Kiva was due to appear on
Oprah
this week until Ren inconsiderately reappeared. It might
be her chauffeur’s daughter that’s gone missing, but it’s her son who’s accused of doing the kidnapping. Pick up a newspaper. Turn on a TV. Kiva Kavanaugh is everywhere these days.’
The inspector snorted at the very idea. ‘That’s ridiculous. Nobody would do something like this as a publicity stunt.’
‘Ever heard of Fairlie Arrow?’
‘Who?’ Brendá asked.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Pete said, wishing Logan would just shut up about it. It was all right for him to sit there with his temporary visitor badge and tell the inspector how to do her job, but Logan would be gone soon, and Pete still had to work with her.
‘Happened about ten years ago,’ Logan said, anxious to show the inspector he knew something she didn’t. ‘An Australian singer faked her own abduction — supposedly by an obsessed fan — hoping to use the media attention and public sympathy to revive her career.’
Duggan nodded thoughtfully. ‘I remember something about that. She’d checked into a local motel, hadn’t she?’
Logan nodded. ‘And sat down to watch the fun unfold on national television. The motel cleaner recognised her and called the cops.’
‘I take your point, Logan,’ Duggan conceded. ‘But Kiva Kavanaugh isn’t some washed-up lounge singer looking for her fifteen minutes. She can’t move without someone taking a photo of her.’
‘And she’s had nothing but trouble and bad press ever since that kid of hers mouthed-off at her film premiere in London a couple of days before all this crap started.’
Pete shook his head. He didn’t buy the publicity stunt theory for a moment. ‘It doesn’t make sense. If she’s set this up to deflect attention from Ren’s other charges, where did the twin come from? And why have him mixed up in a kidnapping and make things worse for him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Logan said. ‘But Kiva Kavanaugh hiring a look-alike to confuse the issue and using her chauffeur and his kid to help out makes a damn sight more sense than Patrick Boyle doing something like this on his own.’
‘Something like
what
, Logan?’ Duggan asked impatiently. ‘You have no proof he’s done anything.’
‘What about the other photos? The tattoo that seems to have shifted on the Kavanaugh kid’s hand?’
‘Smoke and mirrors. For all you know, this is all part of the set-up.’
Pete realised the argument had circled back to where it was the other night, as they sat in Brendá Duggan’s kitchen, staring at the conflicting photos of Ren Kavanaugh. Two days of going cross-eyed staring at TV monitors and CCTV footage plus a pounding headache, and they hadn’t achieved a damn thing.
‘Inspector?’
Brendá looked over her shoulder at the uniformed Garda standing at the entrance to the squad room. ‘Yes, Eileen?’
‘Commissioner Byrne is on the phone, ma’am. He says it’s urgent.’
Duggan turned back to Pete and Logan. ‘That’ll be
my
boss asking for a progress report.’
‘You gonna tell him about this?’ Logan asked, pointing at the monitor and the frustrating, shadowy twenty seconds of footage that posed more questions than it answered.
‘Tell him what exactly?’ she asked in exasperation. It was a rhetorical question apparently, because the inspector turned on her heel and headed back toward her office down the hall without waiting for a response.
As soon as she was out of earshot, Pete punched Logan on the arm. ‘Are you
trying
to get me busted back to traffic?’
Logan grinned. ‘Don’t sweat it, little brother. You can come
work for me when she fires you. I could use someone to carry my equipment around.’
‘Yeah,’ Pete agreed, ignoring the little brother jibe. Logan had three minutes on him at best, but he was fond of reminding Pete about it whenever he wanted to needle him a little. ‘And your make-up.’
Logan laughed. ‘Touché. Did you want a coffee? A real coffee, I mean, not that toxic waste you serve in the —’ He stopped abruptly, and nudged Pete’s arm to get his attention. He was staring at the entrance to the squad room. ‘You have a visitor.’
Pete spun around in his chair to see who the visitor was.
Standing at the entrance to the squad room, cap in hand, looking about uncertainly, was Kiva Kavanaugh’s chauffeur, the father of their missing kidnap victim, Patrick Boyle.
Darragh spent the night in his brother’s bed. With Kiva convinced he was Ren, there was no way to avoid it, and in truth, Darragh didn’t want to avoid anything about his brother’s life — with the possible exception of the people trying to arrest him. It was both strange and enlightening to see the world — even for a short time — through his brother’s eyes.
For this chance, he had come to this realm. For a chance to walk in his brother’s shoes, Darragh had risked everything. It wasn’t whimsy that made him seek out his brother’s life. He had a head full of Rónán’s memories and without any context, those memories were likely to drive him insane. He needed to understand them better. He needed to put a face to the people, the places and the experiences that loomed large in his brother’s mind.