In the Woods

by Tana French

I thought of the stern Victorian determination to keep death in mind, the uncompromising tombstones: Remember, pilgrim, as you pass by, As you are now so once was I; As I am now so will you be.…Now death is un-cool, old-fashioned. To my mind the defining characteristic of our era is spin, everything tailored to vanishing point by market research, brands and bands manufactured to precise specifications; we are so used to things transmuting into whatever we would like them to be that it comes as a profound outrage to encounter death, stubbornly unspinnable, only and immutably itself.

Homicidal satanic cults are the detective’s version of yetis: no one has ever seen one and there is no proof that they exist, but one big blurry footprint and the media turn into a gibbering, foaming pack, so we have to act as though we take the idea at least semi-seriously.

“And there’s something odd about that family, sir,” I said. This was my line; we had to get the point across, in case we ever needed a little leeway in investigating the Devlins, but if Cassie had said it O’Kelly would have gone off into a long snide boring routine about women’s intuition. We were good at O’Kelly by this time. Our counterpoint has been polished to the seamlessness of a Beach Boys harmony—we can sense exactly when to swap the roles of front man and backup, good cop and bad cop, when my cool detachment needs to strike a balancing note of gravitas against Cassie’s bright ease—and it is for use even against our own. “I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something up in that house.” “Never ignore a hunch,” said O’Kelly. “Dangerous.” Cassie’s foot, swinging casually, nudged my back.

Nowadays it’s not just unfortunate if you have a low-paid job, have you noticed? It’s actually irresponsible: you’re not a good member of society, you’re being very very naughty not to have a big house and a fancy car.” “But if anyone asks for a raise,” I said, whapping the ice tray, “they’re being very very naughty to threaten their employer’s profit margin, after everything he’s done for the economy.” “Exactly. If you’re not rich, you’re a lesser being who shouldn’t have the gall to expect a living wage from the decent people who are.”

“Look: Mark believes in archaeology—in his heritage. That’s his faith. It’s not some abstract set of principles, and it’s not about his body or his bank account; it’s a concrete part of his whole life, every day, whether it pays off or not. He lives in it. That’s not batty, that’s healthy, and there’s something seriously wrong with a society where people think it’s weird.”

over the past few weeks I had come to think of my memories as solid, shining little things, to be hunted out and treasured, and it was deeply unsettling to think that they might be fool’s gold, tricky and fog-shaped and not at all what they seemed.

It was the unfairness of it that knocked the breath out of me. We’ll see, Jamie’s mother had said, don’t worry about it; and we had believed her and stopped worrying. No grown-up had ever betrayed us before, not about something that mattered like this, and I couldn’t take it in. We had lived that whole summer trusting that we had forever.

Believe’ doesn’t exist for her. Things aren’t true or false; they either suit her or they don’t. Nothing else means anything to her. You could give her a polygraph and she’d pass with flying colors.”

He looked exhausted—not the kind of exhaustion that can be healed by a good night’s sleep or a holiday; something bone-deep and indelible, settled in puffy grooves around his eyes and mouth.

I think she transferred because she had lied to O’Kelly and she had lied to Rosalind Devlin, and both of them had believed her; and because, when she told me the truth, I had called her a liar.