to be by my side through this fresh crisis. No answer. I didn’t leave a message; this didn’t feel like the kind of thing that belonged on voicemail.
To-day I expected to travel to Limerick but the rain having flooded the road I could not. I was greatly disappointed and out of—humor?—with my wife . . . It was almost six o’clock, surely they should be done taking his statement by now, how much of an epic could it be? I tried Hugo’s mobile, but it rang out. I dug through pockets and drawers till I found Rafferty’s card and—heart slamming—rang his number: straight to voicemail.
I had got to the Elaine McNamara crisis, and Haskins was working himself into a moral tizzy. On the one hand we may as Caroline says teach her to become chaste virtuous and—industrious? Yet this seems a small penance for her sin . . . I flipped ahead: this went on for pages.
Dimming sky outside the window, evening chill striking through the glass. Hugo had been very firm about not telling anyone, but I was losing my mind. Susanna was probably still in a snit with me, but she was the only person who might have some sensible ideas about what to do.
It took a few rings before she decided to pick up. “Toby.” Cool, wary. “How’s the head?”
“Listen,” I said. “Something’s happened.”
When I had finished there was a silence. In the background Sallie was singing, peacefully and slightly off-key: Itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout . . .
“OK,” Susanna said eventually. “Right. Have you talked to Leon?”
“Not yet. Just you.”
“Good. Don’t tell anyone else. Leave it.”
“Why?”
Splashing water: Sallie was in the bath. “Well. I don’t know about your dad, but mine’s pretty stressed out already. No point in upsetting him more when this could all blow over by morning.”
“You don’t think they’re going to notice Hugo’s been arrested?”
“He hasn’t been, yet. You’re jumping the gun. Here, Sal, put some soap on it—”
“He confessed. Of course he’s going to be—”
“People make false confessions all the time. The detectives aren’t going to just take Hugo’s word for it. They check—whether his story matches their evidence, whether he knows things only the killer could know. All that stuff.”
Down came the rainbow washed out all the rain . . . This whole conversation felt wrong, not going the way I had expected— “So why don’t you want Leon knowing? If it’s no big deal?”
“Leon’s not dealing too well with all this. In case you hadn’t noticed. I don’t want him freaking out.”
“What? He’s not some fragile little flower who we have to protect from, from, we’re not kids any more”—and what if I had tried to protect him, like Rafferty thought, back when we actually were kids? look where that had landed me—“He’s a grown man. If we can handle this, he can too.”
Susanna sighed. “Look,” she said, lower. “I don’t know if you’ve realized this, but Leon thinks you killed Dominic.” A small pause to see how I took that. When I said nothing: “He has from the start, actually. And he has some complicated thing going on where he’s pretty pissed off about the idea of you getting away with it.”
“Well he can go fuck himself,” I said, on a surge of anger, my voice rising. “Did he say that to the cops? Is that why they were giving me shit?”
“No. And he’s not going to—don’t worry, I’ve talked to him, he’s under control. He doesn’t actually want you to go to jail, not really. He just feels like you’ve always got away with everything and it’s not fair.”
“Jesus Christ! What are we, six?”
“Yeah, I know. It’s stupid leftover kid stuff. But if he hears about this, I don’t know what he’ll do. And I’d rather not find out unless we have to.”
“OK,” I said, after a moment. I didn’t like the sound of this. I had known Leon was stressed, obviously, but Susanna was talking like he was on the verge of an epic meltdown, and I was clearly first in line to be collateral damage. “What am I supposed to do if he shows up here and wants to know where Hugo’s gone?”
“He won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“He was pretty upset, last night. I don’t think he wants to talk to you for a while.”
“Oh, great,” I said. I didn’t particularly want to talk to Leon either, but having him out there in a massive strop with me didn’t feel like a good idea.