Tana French - The Likeness

Unknown

The Likeness
Tana French
Viking

VIKINGPublished by the Penguin GroupPenguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, EnglandPenguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, IndiaPenguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South AfricaPenguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, EnglandFirst published in 2008 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.Copyright Tana French, 2008All rights reservedPUBLISHERS NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATAFrench, Tana.The likeness / Tana French.p. cm.ISBN: 1-4362-2829-81. Women detectivesIrelandFiction. 2. MurderInvestigationFiction. I. Title.PR6106.R457L55 2008823.92dc22

2008003940

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Also by Tana French

In the Woods

For Anthony, for a million reasons

Prologue

Some nights, if Im sleeping on my own, I still dream about Whitethorn House. In the dream its always spring, cool fine light with a late-afternoon haze. I climb the worn stone steps and knock on the doorthat great brass knocker, going black with age and heavy enough to startle you every timeand an old woman with an apron and a deft, uncompromising face lets me in. Then she hangs the big rusted key back on her belt and walks away down the drive, under the falling cherry blossom, and I close the door behind her.The house is always empty. The bedrooms are bare and bright, only my footsteps echoing off the floorboards, circling up through the sun and the dust motes to the high ceilings. Smell of wild hyacinths, drifting through the wide-open windows, and of beeswax polish. Chips of white paint flaking off the window sashes and a tendril of ivy swaying in over the sill. Wood doves, lazy somewhere outside.In the sitting room the piano is open, wood glowing chestnut and almost too bright to look at in the bars of sun, the breeze stirring the yellowed sheet music like a finger. The table is laid ready for us, five settingsthe bone-china plates and the long-stemmed wineglasses, fresh-cut honeysuckle trailing from a crystal bowlbut the silverware has gone dim with tarnish and the heavy damask napkins are frilled with dust. Daniels cigarette case lies by his place at the head of the table, open and empty except for a burnt-down match.Somewhere in the house, faint as a fingernail-flick at the edge of my hearing, there are sounds: a scuffle, whispers. It almost stops my heart. The others arent gone, I got it all wrong somehow. Theyre only hiding; theyre still here, for ever and ever.I follow the tiny noises through the house room by room, stopping at every step to listen, but Im never quick enough: they slide away like mirages, always just behind that door or up those stairs. The tip of a giggle, instantly muffled; a creak of wood. I leave wardrobe doors swinging open, I take the steps three at a time, I swing round the newel post at the top and catch a flash of movement in the corner of my eye: the spotted old mirror at the end of the corridor, my face reflected in it, laughing. T his is Lexie Madisons story, not mine. Id love to tell you one without getting into the other, but it doesnt work that way. I used to think I sewed us together at the edges with my own hands, pulled the stitches tight and I could unpick them any time I wanted. Now I think it always ran deeper than that and farther, underground; out of sight and way beyond my control.This much is mine, though: everything I did. Frank puts it all down to the others, mainly to Daniel, while as far as I can tell Sam thinks that, in some obscure and slightly bizarro way, it was Lexies fault. When I say it wasnt like that, they give me careful sideways looks and change the subjectI get the feeling Frank thinks I have some creepy variant of Stockholm syndrome. That does happen to undercovers sometimes, but not this time. Im not trying to protect anyone; theres no one left to protect. Lexie and the others will never know theyre taking the blame and wouldnt care if they did. But give me more credit than that. Someone else may have dealt the hand, but I picked it up off the table, I played every card, and I had my reasons.

* * *

This is the main thing you need to know about Alexandra Madison: she never existed. Frank Mackey and I invented her, a long time ago, on a bright summer afternoon in his dusty office on Harcourt Street. He wanted people to infiltrate a drug ring in University College Dublin. I wanted the job, maybe more than I had ever wanted anything in my life.He was a legend: Frank Mackey, still in his thirties and already running undercover operations; the best Undercover agent Irelands ever had, people said, reckless and fearless, a tightrope artist with no net, ever. He walked into IRA cells and criminal gangs like he was walking into his local pub. Everyone had told me the story: when the Snakea career gangster and five-star wacko, who once left one of his own men quadriplegic for not buying his roundgot suspicious and threatened to use a nail gun on Franks hands, Frank looked him in the eye without breaking a sweat and bluffed him down till the Snake slapped him on the back and gave him a fake Rolex by way of apology. Frank still wears it.I was a shiny green rookie, only a year out of Templemore Training College. A couple of days earlier, when Frank had sent out the call for cops who had a college education and could pass for early twenties, I had been wearing a neon yellow vest that was too big for me and patrolling a small town in Sligo where most of the locals looked disturbingly alike. I should have been nervous of him, but I wasnt, not at all. I wanted the assignment too badly to have room for anything else.His office door was open and he was sitting on the edge of his desk, wearing jeans and a faded blue T-shirt, flipping through my file. The office was small and had a disheveled look, like he used it mainly for storage. The desk was empty, not even a family photo; on the shelves, paperwork was mixed in with blues CDs, tabloids, a poker set and a womans pink cardigan with the tags still on. I decided I liked this guy.Cassandra Maddox, he said, glancing up.Yes, sir, I said. He was average height, stocky but fit, with good shoulders and close-cut brown hair. Id been expecting someone so nondescript he was practically invisible, maybe the Cancer Man fromNext page