“This wasn’t a random thing,” Cassie said. The archaeologists had put the Scissor Sisters back on and one of her feet swung, absently, in time with the beat. “Even if it wasn’t the parents. This guy didn’t go out and pick up the first vulnerable kid he saw. He put a lot of planning into this. He wasn’t just looking to kill a kid; he was after Katy.”

“And he knew the place pretty well,” I said, “if he could find the altar stone in the dark, carrying a body. It’s looking more and more like a local boy.” The wood was gay and sparkly in the sunlight, all birdsong and flirting leaves; I could feel the rows upon rows of identical, trim, innocuous houses ranged behind me. This fucking place, I almost said, but I didn’t. After the sandwiches we went looking for Auntie Vera and the cousins. It was a hot, still afternoon, but the estate had an eerie Marie Celeste emptiness, all 106

Tana French

the windows tightly closed and not a single kid playing; they were all inside, confused and antsy and safe under their parents’ eyes, trying to eavesdrop on the adult whispers and find out what was going on. The Foleys were an unprepossessing bunch. The fifteen-year-old settled into an armchair and folded her arms, hitching up her bust like someone’s mammy, and gave us a pale, bored, supercilious stare; the ten-year-old looked like a cartoon pig and chewed gum with her mouth open, wriggling her rump on the sofa and occasionally flicking the gum out on her tongue and then back into her mouth again. Even the youngest was one of those deeply unnerving toddlers who look like bonsai adults: it had a prim, pudgy face with a beaky nose, and it stared at me from Vera’s lap, its lips pursing, and then retracted its chin disapprovingly into the folds of its neck. I had a nasty conviction that, if it said anything, its voice would be a deep, fortya-day rasp. The house smelled of cabbage. I could not fathom why on earth Rosalind and Jessica would choose to spend any time there, and the fact that they had bothered me.