In the Woods (16 page)

“What the fuck— Am I under arrest?”

“No. Do you drink red wine?”

He shot me a brief, sarcastic glance. “Are you offering?”

“Why don’t you want to answer the question?”

“That is my answer. I drink whatever’s going. Why?” I nodded thought fully and wrote this down.

“What’s with the tape?” Cassie asked curiously, leaning across the table to point at the masking tape wrapped around his hands. In the Woods 93

“For blisters. Band-Aids don’t stay on, when you’re using a mattock in the rain.”

“Couldn’t you just wear gloves?”

“Some people do,” Mark said. His tone implied that these people lacked testosterone, in one way or another.

“Would you have any objection to letting us see what’s underneath?” I said.

He gave me a fishy look, but he unwound the tape, taking his time, and dropped it on the table. He held up his hands with a sardonic flourish. “See anything you like?”

Cassie leaned farther forward on her arms, took a good look, gestured to him to turn his hands over. I couldn’t see any scrapes or fingernail marks, only the remains of large blisters, half healed, at the base of each finger.

“Ow,” Cassie said. “How’d you get those?”

Mark shrugged dismissively. “Usually I have calluses, but I was out for a few weeks there, hurt my back—had to stick to cataloguing finds. My hands went soft. When I went back to work, this is what I got.”

“Must have driven you mental, not being able to work,” Cassie said.

“Aye, it did all right,” Mark said briefly. “Shite timing.”

I picked up the masking tape between finger and thumb and dropped it in the bin. “Where were you Monday night?” I asked, leaning against the wall behind Mark.

“In the team house. Like I told you yesterday.”

“Are you a member of Move the Motorway?” Cassie asked.

“Yeah, I am. Most of us are. Your man Devlin came round a while back, asking us if we wanted to join up. It’s not illegal yet, as far as I know.”

“So you know Jonathan Devlin?” I asked.

“That’s what I just said. We’re not bosom buddies, but yeah, I know the man.”

I leaned over his shoulder and flicked through the crime-scene photos, giving him glimpses but not leaving him time for a proper look. I found one of the more disturbing shots and flipped it across to him. “But you told us you didn’t know her.”

Mark held the photo between the tips of his fingers and gave it a long, impassive look. “I told you I’d seen her around the dig but I didn’t know her name, and I don’t. Should I?”

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“I think you should, yes,” I said. “She’s Devlin’s daughter.”

He spun to stare at me for a second, brows knitting; then he looked back at the photo. After a moment he shook his head. “Nah. I met a daughter of Devlin’s at a protest, back in spring, but she was older. Rosemary, Rosaleen, something.”

“What did you think of her?” Cassie asked.

Mark shrugged. “Good-looking girl. Talked a lot. She was working the membership table, signing people up, but I don’t think she was really into the campaign; more into flirting with the fellas. She never bothered showing up again.”

“You found her attractive,” I said, wandering over to the one-way glass and checking my shave in the reflection.

“Pretty enough. Not my type.”

“But you noticed that she wasn’t at any subsequent protests. Why were you looking for her?”

I could see him, in the glass, staring suspiciously at the back of my head. Finally he shoved the photo away and settled back in his chair, chin jutting.

“I wasn’t.”

“Did you make any attempt to get in contact with her again?”

“No.”

“How did you know she was Devlin’s daughter?”

“I don’t remember.”

I was starting to get a bad feeling about this. Mark was impatient and pissed off, and the shower of disconnected questions was making him wary, but he didn’t seem remotely nervous or scared or anything like that; his main feeling about the whole thing appeared to be irritation. Basically, he wasn’t acting like a guilty man.

“Listen,” Cassie said, tucking one foot up under her, “what’s the real story on the dig and the motorway?”

Mark laughed, a mirthless little snort. “It’s a lovely bedtime story. The government announced the plans in 2000. Everyone knew there was plenty of archaeology around Knocknaree, so they brought in a team to do a survey. The team came back, said the site was way more important than anyone had thought and only an idiot would build on it, the motorway would have to be moved. The government said that was very interesting, thanks very much, and they weren’t moving it an inch. It took massive rows before they’d even allow an excavation. Finally they were gracious enough to say OK, we could In the Woods 95

do a two-year dig—it’d take at least five years to do that site justice. Since then there’s been thousands of people fighting this every way we can—

petitions, demonstrations, lawsuits. The government doesn’t give a fuck.”

“But why?” Cassie asked. “Why don’t they just move the thing?”

He shrugged, his mouth twisting savagely. “Don’t ask me. We’ll find out all about it in some tribunal, when it’s ten or fifteen years too late.”

“What about Tuesday night?” I said. “Where were you?”

“The team house. Can I go now?”

“In a while,” I told him. “When was the last time you spent the night on the site?”

His shoulders stiffened, almost imperceptibly. “I’ve never spent the night on the site,” he said, after a moment.

“Don’t split hairs. The wood beside the site.”

“Who said I’ve ever slept there?”

“Look, Mark,” Cassie told him, suddenly and bluntly, “you were in the wood either Monday night or Tuesday night. We can prove it with forensic evidence if we have to, but that’s going to waste a lot of our time, and believe me, we’ll make sure it wastes plenty of yours. I don’t think you killed that girl, but we need to know when you were in the wood, what you were doing there and whether you saw or heard anything useful. So we can spend the rest of the day trying to drag it out of you, or you can just get it over with and go back to work. Your call.”

“What forensic evidence?” Mark demanded skeptically.

Cassie gave him a little mischievous smile and pulled the rollie, neatly encased in a Ziploc bag, out of her pocket. She waved it at him. “DNA. You left your butts at your campsite.”

“Jesus,” Mark said, staring at it. He looked like he was deciding whether or not to be furious.

“Just doing my job,” she said cheerfully, pocketing the bag.

“Jesus,” he said again. He bit his lip, but he couldn’t hide the grudging smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “And I walked straight into it. You’re some woman, all the same.”

“So they tell me. About sleeping in the wood . . .”

Silence. Finally Mark stirred, glanced up at the clock on the wall, sighed.

“Yeah. I’ve spent the odd night there.”

I moved back around the table, sat down and opened my notebook.

“Monday or Tuesday? Or both?”

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“Monday, only.”

“What time did you get there?”

“About half past ten. I lit a fire and went to sleep when it burned down, around two o’clock.”

“Do you do that on every site?” Cassie asked. “Or just Knocknaree?”

“Just Knocknaree.”

“Why?”

Mark watched his fingers, drumming slowly on the table again. Cassie and I waited.

“You know what it means, Knocknaree?” he said eventually. “Hill of the king. We’re not sure when the name originated, but we’re pretty sure it’s a pre-Christian religious reference, not a political one. There’s no evidence of any royal burials or dwelling places on the site, but we found Bronze Age religious artifacts all over the place—the altar stone, votive figurines, a gold offering cup, remains of animal sacrifices and some possible human ones. That used to be a major religious site, that hill.”

“Who were they worshipping?”

He shrugged, drumming harder. I wanted to slam a hand down over his fingers.

“So you were keeping vigil,” Cassie said quietly. She was leaning back casually in her chair, but every line of her face was alert and intent, focused on him.

Mark moved his head uncomfortably. “Something like that.”

“The wine you spilled,” Cassie said. He glanced up sharply, then cut his eyes away again. “A libation?”

“I suppose.”

“Let me see if I have this right,” I said. “You decide to sleep a few yards from where a little girl gets murdered, and you feel we should believe you were there for religious reasons.”

Suddenly he caught fire, throwing himself forward and jabbing a finger at me, fast and feral. I flinched before I could stop myself. “Come here, Detective, you listen to me. I don’t believe in the Church, do you get me? Any church. Religion exists to keep people in their place and paying into the collection plate. I had my name taken off the church register the day I turned eighteen. And I don’t believe in any government. They’re the same as the Church, every one of them. Different words, same goal: keep the poor under your thumb and supporting the rich. The only things I believe in are out In the Woods 97

on that there dig.” His eyes were narrow, incandescent, eyes for behind a rifle atop a doomed barricade. “There’s more to worship on that site than in any fucking church in the world. It’s sacrilege that they’re about to run a motorway over it. If they were about to tear down Westminster Abbey to build a car park, would you blame people for keeping vigil there? Then don’t fucking patronize me for doing the same thing.” He stared me out of it until I blinked, then flung himself back in the chair and folded his arms.

“I take it that was a denial that you had anything to do with the murder,” I said coolly, when I was sure my voice was under control. For some reason, that little rant had got to me more than I liked to admit. Mark raised his eyes to the ceiling.

“Mark,” Cassie said. “I know exactly what you mean. I feel the same way about what I do.” He gave her a long, hard green stare, without moving, but finally he nodded. “But you’ve got to see Detective Ryan’s point: a lot of people won’t have a clue what you’re on about. To them, it’s going to look suspicious as hell. We need to eliminate you from the investigation.”

“You want me to take a lie-detector test, I will. But I wasn’t even there on Tuesday night. I was there on Monday. What does that have to do with anything?” I got that sinking feeling again. Unless he was a lot better at this than I thought, he was taking it for granted that Katy had died on Tuesday night, the night before her body had appeared on the site.

“OK,” Cassie said. “Fair enough. Can you prove where you were from the time you left work on Tuesday till you went back in on Wednesday morning?”

Mark sucked his teeth and picked at a blister, and I suddenly realized he looked embarrassed; it made him seem much younger. “Yeah, actually, I can. I went back to the house, took a shower, had dinner with the rest of the lads, we played cards and had a few cans in the garden. You can ask them.”

“And then?” I said. “What time did you go to bed?”

“Most people went in around one.”

“And can anyone vouch for your whereabouts after that? Do you share a room?”

“Nah. I’ve a room to myself, because of being assistant site director. I stayed up awhile longer, in the garden. I was talking with Mel. I was with her till breakfast.” He was doing his best to sound blasé, but all that arrogant self-possession had vanished; he looked prickly and self-conscious and about fifteen. I was dying to laugh. I didn’t dare look at Cassie. 98

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“All night?” I said, maliciously.

“Yeah.”

“In the garden? Wasn’t that a little chilly?”

“We went inside at maybe three o’clock. After that we were in my room, till eight. That’s when we get up.”

“Well, well, well,” I said sweetly. “Most alibis aren’t nearly that enjoyable.” He shot me a poisonous look.

“Let’s go back to Monday night,” Cassie said. “While you were in the wood, did you see or hear anything unusual?”

“No. But it’s dark out there—country-dark, not your city-dark. No streetlights or nothing. I wouldn’t have seen someone ten feet away. And I mightn’t have heard them, either; there are plenty of noises anyway.” Dark, and wood-noises: that trill went down my spine again.

“Not necessarily in the wood,” Cassie said. “On the dig, or on the road, maybe? Was anyone out there after, say, half past eleven?”

“Hang on, now,” Mark said suddenly, almost reluctantly. “Out on the site. There was someone.”

Neither Cassie nor I moved, but I felt the electric spark of alertness shoot between us. We had been about ready to give up on Mark, check his alibi and put him on a question-mark list and send him back to his mattock, at least for now—in the urgent first days of an investigation, you have no time to waste on any but the most crucial things—but he had our full attention again.

“Could you give us a description?” I asked.

He glanced at me with dislike. “Yeah. They looked a lot like a torch. It was dark.”

“Mark,” said Cassie. “From the beginning?”

“Someone carrying a torch cut across the site, from the estate towards the road. That’s it. All I saw was the torch beam.”

“What time?”

“I wasn’t looking at my watch. One, maybe? A little before?”

“Think back. Could you tell anything about them at all—maybe their height, from the angle of the torch?”

He thought, eyes narrowing. “Nah. It looked fairly low to the ground, but the dark fucks up your sense of perspective, yeah? They were moving slow enough, but anyone would; you’ve seen the site, it’s all ditches and bits of wall.”

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“Big torch or small?”

“Small beam, not that strong. It wasn’t one of those big heavy things with the handle. Just a little torch.”

“When you first saw it,” Cassie said, “it was up by the estate wall—

where, at the end farthest from the road?”

“Somewhere around there, yeah. I figured they’d come out of the back gate, or maybe over the wall.” The back gate of the estate was at the end of the Devlins’ street, only three houses away. He could have seen Jonathan or Margaret, slowed down by a body and looking for a place to leave it; or Katy, slipping through the dark to meet someone, armed with nothing but a torch-beam and a house key that would never be able to take her home.