Faithful Place Read Online Free PDF Page B

the plastic window in the front of the envelope.
    . . . LAOGHAIRE-HOLYHEAD . . . DEPARTING . . . :30AM . . . Wherever Rosie had gone, she had got there without our ferry tickets.
    Everyone was staring at me. Kevin looked genuinely upset. “Well,” I said. “That appears to be Rosie Daly’s suitcase, all right.” I started to transfer stuff from the lid back into the case, leaving the papers till last so they wouldn’t get crushed.
    “Will we call the Guards?” Carmel asked. Da cleared his throat, spectacularly, like he was going to spit; Ma shot him a ferocious look.
    I asked, “And say what?”
    Clearly no one had thought about this. “Someone stuck a suitcase behind a fireplace, twenty-odd years ago,” I said. “It’s hardly the crime of the century. The Dalys can ring the Guards if they want, but I’m warning you now, I wouldn’t expect them to bring out the big guns for the Case of the Blocked Chimney.”
    “But Rosie, sure,” Jackie said. She was tugging at a piece of hair and gazing at me, all bunny-teeth and big worried blue eyes. “She’s missing. And that yoke there, that’s a clue, or evidence, or whatever you call it. Should we not . . . ?”
    “Was she reported missing?”
    Glances back and forth: nobody knew. I seriously doubted it. In the Liberties, cops are like the jellyfish in Pacman: they’re part of the game, you get good at avoiding them, and you definitely don’t go looking for them. “If she wasn’t,” I said, shutting the case with my fingertips, “it’s a little late now.”
    “But,” Jackie said. “Hang on. Does this not look like . . . ? You know. Like she didn’t go off to England after all. Does it not seem like maybe someone might have . . . ?”
    “What Jackie’s trying to say here,” Shay told me, “is it looks like someone knocked Rosie off, shoved her in a bin liner, hauled her round to the piggeries, dumped her in, and put that case up a fireplace to get it out of the way.”
    “Seamus Mackey! God bless us!” from Ma. Carmel crossed herself.
    This possibility had already occurred to me. “Could be,” I said, “sure. Or she could have been abducted by aliens and dropped off in Kentucky by mistake. Personally, I’d go for the simplest explanation, which is that she stuck that case up the chimney herself, didn’t get a chance to take it back out, and headed over to England without a change of undies. But if you need a little extra drama in your life, feel free.”
    “Right,” said Shay. There are plenty of things wrong with Shay, but stupid isn’t one of them. “And that’s why you need that shite”—the gloves, which I was stuffing back into my jacket. “Because you don’t think there’s any crime here.”
    “Reflex,” I said, grinning at him. “A pig is a pig twenty-four seven, know what I mean?” Shay made a disgusted noise.
    Ma said, with a nice blend of awe, envy and blood lust, “Theresa Daly’ll go mental. Mental.”
    For a wide variety of reasons, I needed to get to the Dalys before anyone else did. “I’ll have a chat with her and Mr. Daly, see what they want to do. What time do they get home, Saturdays?”
    Shay shrugged. “Depends. Sometimes not till after lunch, sometimes first thing in the morning. Whenever Nora can drop them back.”
    This was a pisser. I could tell by the look of Ma that she was already planning to pounce on them before they got their key in the door. I considered sleeping in my car and cutting her off at the pass, but there was no parking within surveillance range. Shay was watching me and enjoying himself.
    Then Ma hitched up her bosom and said, “You can stay the night here, Francis, if you like. The sofa still pulls out.”
    I didn’t assume this was a reunion burst of the warm and fuzzies. My ma likes you to owe her. This is never a good idea, but I couldn’t come up with a better one. She added, “Unless you’re too posh for that nowadays,” in case I thought she was going soft.
    “Not at