IN THE WOODS

5 of Chapter 1

It was so obvious that I was embarrassed nobody had thought of it. A detective wounded on duty gets his or her choice of assignment. I suppose we had overlooked this possibility because normally a stabbing would have practically shorted out the grapevine; we had heard nothing about this.

"Jesus," I said. "What happened?"

"I was undercover in UCD," Cassie said. This explained both the clothes and the information gap--undercover are serious about secrecy. "That's how I made detective so fast: there was a ring dealing on campus, and Drugs wanted to find out who was behind it, so they needed people who could pass for students. I went in as a psychology postgrad. I did a few years of psychology at Trinity before Templemore, so I could talk the talk, and I look young."

 She did. There was a specific clarity about her face that I've never seen in anyone else; her skin was poreless as a child's, and her feature----wide mouth, high round cheekbones, tilted nose, long curves of eyebrow------made other people's look smudged and blurry. As far I could tell she never wore makeup, except for a red-tinted lip balm that smelled of cinnamon and made her seems even younger. Few people would have considered her beautiful, but my tastes have always leaned toward bespoke rather than brand name, and I took far more pleasure in looking at her than at any of the busty blond clones whom magazines, insultingly, tell me I should desire.

"And you cover got blown?"

"No," she said, indignant. "I found out who the main dealer was--thin brain-dead rich boy from Blackrock, studying business, of course----and I spent months making friends with him, laughing at his crap jokes, proofreading his essays. The I suggested maybe  I could deal to the girls, they'd be less nervous buying drugs from another woman, right? He liked the idea, everything was going great, I was dropping hints that maybe it would be simpler if I met the supplier myself instead of getting stuffs through him. Only then  Dealer Boy started snorting a little too much of his own speed--this was in May, her had exams coming up. He got paranoid, decided I was trying to take over his business, and stabbed me." She took a sip of her own drink. "Don't tell Quigley, though. The operation's still going on, so I'm not supposed to talk about it. Let the poor little fucker enjoy his illusions."

 I was secretly terribly impressed, not only by the stabbing ( after all, I told myself, it wasn't as though she had done something outstandingly brave or intelligent; she had just failed to dodge fast enough) but by the dark, adrenaline-paced thought of undercover work and by the utter casualness with which she told the story. Having worked hard to perfect an air of easy indifference, I recognize the real thing when I see it.

"Jesus," I said again. "I bet he got a good going-over when they brought him in." I've never hit a suspect----I find there's no need to, as long as you make them think you might-- but there are guys who do, and anyone who stabs a cap is likely to pick up a few bruises en route to the station.

She cocked an eyebrow at me, amused. "They didn't. That would've wrecked the whole operation. They need him to get to the supplier; they just started over with a new undercover."

"But don't you want him taken down?" I said, frustrated by her calm and my own creeping sense of naïveté, " He stabbed you."

Cassie shrugged. " After all, if you think about it, he had a point: I was only pretending to be his friends to screw him over. And he was a strung-out drug dealer. That's what strung-out dealers do."

 After that my memory grows hazy again. I know that, determined to impress her in my turn, and never having been stabbed or involved in a shootout or anything, I told her a long and rambling and mostly true story about talking down a guy who was threatening to jump off the roof of a block of flats with his baby, when I was in Domestic Violence ( really, I think I must have been a little drunk: another reason I'm so sure we had hot we had hot whiskey). I remember a passionate conversation about Dylan Thomas, I think, Cassie kneeling up on the sofa and gesturing, her cigarette burning away forgotten in the ashtray. Bantering, smart but tentative as shy circling children, both of us checking covertly after each riposte to make sure we hadn't crossed any line or hurt any feelings. Firelight and the Cowboy Junkies, Cassie singing along in a sweet rough undertone.

 "The drugs you got from the Dealer Boy," I said, later. "Did you actually sell them to students?"

Cassie got up to put on the kettle. "Occasionally," she said.

"Didn't that bother you?"

"Everything about undercover bothered me," Cassie said. "Everything."