Authors: Tana French
Not a total pushover, after all. Fluffy little Rory is well able to push back, when he really wants to.
He’s one nudge away from trying to walk out. If he goes for the door, I’m gonna have to choose: let him go, or arrest him. Neither of those sounds good.
‘Jesus, man, have you seen the weather?’ I say easily. ‘It’s lashing. You’ll get soaked. Plus, we’ll lose this interview room, and then we’ll all be hanging around for hours before we get another one.’ Rory stares at me, too disoriented to work out what he thinks about that. ‘Tell you what: we’ll give you a few minutes to yourself, OK? Just to get your breath. It’s a lot to take in.’
There’s a small sharp movement from Breslin, but I don’t look around. I give Rory a Cool Girl smile, enough sympathy to warm it but not enough to feel sticky. ‘We’ll have a cup of tea and come back to you,’ I say, scraping back my chair and standing up, before he can come up with a decision. ‘Can I get you a cuppa while I’m at it?’
‘No. Thanks. All I want is—’
Rory’s voice splits open. He presses the back of one hand against his mouth.
Breslin hasn’t moved. Those pale eyes are on me. They say, clear as a death grip on my wrist,
Sit the fuck down.
I say, without taking my eyes off Breslin’s, ‘We’ll see you in a few, Rory. Hang in there.’
Then I turn around and go for the door. I leave it open behind me, but I don’t look back. I’m halfway to the observation room before I hear the nasty, juddering scrape of Breslin pushing back his chair on the grimy linoleum.
Steve’s at the one-way glass, with his shirtsleeves rolled up and red hair sticking out in all directions; he’s been putting a lot into watching us. I head over to see what Rory’s doing with his alone time. On the way my eyes hit Steve’s, but only for a second that says
Later
.
Rory has his elbows on the table and his face in his hands. The jump of his shoulders claims he’s crying. I can’t see if there are actual tears.
‘Well well well,’ Breslin says behind me, swinging the door shut with a bang. ‘I thought that went pretty well, for a first round. Nice work, Conway.’
Patronising fuck. ‘You didn’t do a bad job yourself,’ I say.
‘I’m not sure that was the right call, pulling out just when he’s going to pieces. That’s always a good moment to push for a confession.’ Breslin loosens his collar with a finger and rolls back his shoulders. ‘But hey: we got to him once, we can do it again. Am I right?’
‘Not a problem,’ I say. ‘So: what’s the betting?’
Breslin’s head pops forward like he can’t believe he heard me right. ‘Say what?’
‘The suspect, Detective. Guilty or not. I’m asking for your opinion.’
Breslin’s eyebrows are hitting his careful hairline. ‘Are you serious?’
‘About wanting your opinion? More or less.’
Steve has wandered over to the water cooler and is filling a plastic cup, watching us. Breslin lifts a hand. ‘Whoa whoa whoa. Let’s just stall the ball here. Are you saying you’ve got doubts?’
‘I’m saying I’d like your opinion. If that’s a problem, though, I can live without it.’ I’m right back to wanting to throat-punch the bollix. The fine thread of alliance that built up between the two of us in the interview room lasted all of thirty seconds outside it.
‘Talk to me, Conway. Are you trying to be super-careful, yeah? Make sure you’ve got all your bases covered? Is that what’s going on?’
It’s not a bad technique – make the other person explain herself, you’ve got her on the back foot right there – but this is what I mean about Breslin not being as smart as he thinks: I just saw him use it on Rory, plus it should have occurred to him that, what with me being a detective, I might just know the same tricks he does. I lean a shoulder against the one-way glass, where I can keep one eye on Rory, and stick my hands in my pockets. ‘Do you think we should be?’
Breslin sighs. ‘Well. I guess we’ve got to face it: one of the last things your rep needs is a ding for jumping the gun. But the
other
last thing you need is a rep for being so indecisive that you’ll let your guy walk rather than put your balls on the line. Are you getting me?’
Steve says, doing mildly bewildered, ‘Hang on a sec. You’re saying you deffo think he did it, yeah?’
Breslin sighs exasperatedly and runs his hands over what’s left of his hair, carefully so he won’t bother it. ‘Well, yeah, Moran. I kind of do. This guy was the victim’s boyfriend, so that’s Strike One. He was actually
at
the crime scene
at the relevant time, he’s not even trying to deny it, so that’s Strike Two. He was wearing non-fibre gloves, same as our killer: Strike Three. He was wearing a black wool overcoat, and we’ve got black wool fibres on the body: Strike Four. And he basically admits that he was getting impatient for his ride, after all the time and money he’d put into this girl, and she wasn’t showing any signs of giving up the goods. That’s a great big Strike Five. I’m not a baseball aficionado, but I’m pretty sure it takes less than that to put a guy well and truly out.’
Steve is sipping his water and nodding through Breslin’s list. ‘I’d say it does, all right,’ he says agreeably. His accent has got stronger. I put on the Thicko Skanger act too, now and then, but I do it for suspects, not for my own squad. Sometimes Steve makes me want to puke. ‘I think I’ll keep an open mind a little longer, but.’
Breslin lets the exasperation go up a notch. ‘Open about
what
? There’s nothing else
here
, Moran. There’s our boy Fallon, there’s a shitload of circumstantial evidence all pointing straight at him, and that’s it. What are you being open-minded about? Aliens? The CIA?’
Steve pulls his arse up onto the rickety table, getting comfortable for the chats. I leave him to it. ‘Here’s the only thing,’ he says. ‘How’d the actual killing play out?’
‘What are you talking about? He punched her. She hit her head. She died. That’s how it
played out
.’
Steve thinks that over, brow furrowed – bit slow on the uptake, us skangers. ‘Why, but?’ he asks.
Breslin’s head goes back and he bares his teeth at the ceiling, halfway between a smile and a grimace. ‘Moran. Moran. Do I look like Poirot to you?’
‘Huh? . . . Not a lot.’
‘No. Because this isn’t Saturday evening in front of the telly with a nice cup of tea and a digestive biscuit, and so I don’t
care
about motive. I don’t. And neither should you. You ought to know that by now.’
Steve scratches at his nose. ‘You’re probably right, man. I’d say you are. It’s just I’m not seeing it. I like being able to see things in my head, know what I mean? Picture them, like.’ He frames his hands in front of his eyes, to make sure Breslin gets the concept of picturing something.
Breslin takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly, so we can see how much he’s putting into keeping his temper with us. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘OK. Let’s go ahead and spend some time
picturing
it.’
‘Thanks,’ Steve says, giving him a humble smile. ‘I appreciate that.’
‘Rory shows up with his shitty Tesco bouquet. Aislinn, who clearly wasn’t the shitty Tesco type, isn’t happy. She gets snotty. Rory’s not having that – he’s been blowing his budget and rearranging his schedule and racing around Stoneybatter in the rain to make her happy, but that’s not good enough for Princess Special? He pulls out a Jane Austen quote about high-maintenance bitches, or prick-teases, or whatever literary types call girls like that. Aislinn slaps him down hard: she tells him exactly why he’s not good enough for her, including why she hasn’t let him into her knickers and why after this she never will. She goes one put-down too far, and bam.’ Breslin mimes a little punch, not bothering to put much into it. ‘And here we all are. Can you picture that OK? Yeah?’
‘That’d work, all right.’ Steve nods, picturing away. ‘Only you’d think the bouquet would get a bit messed up, like, in all the action. He’d drop it, or something. We didn’t find any petals on the floor.’
‘So no petals happened to come off. Or Rory’s got the brains to pick them up. We’re not talking about a massive struggle; we’re talking a bit of that’ – Breslin makes a yappy-mouth sign – ‘one punch and a few seconds of oh-shit. A couple of petals would have been great, but in this job you can’t get too demanding. You need to work with what you’ve got, instead of fussing about what you haven’t.’ Breslin’s giving Steve the beginnings of a smile, all ready to kiss and make up. ‘Am I right or am I right?’
Steve says cheerfully, ‘You’re dead right, man. I’d just like to shake a few more trees and see if anything falls out, is all.’ When Breslin rears away, rolling his jaw: ‘I’m new, you know? I’ve got loads to learn. Might as well get in the practice while I can.’
‘You’re not that fucking new. You’ve both been on the job long enough that you should be able to handle your own cases without a babysitter. This kind of shit right here is why the gaffer decided you need one.’
‘And we appreciate you taking on the job, man. Seriously. But I’ve gotta get there in my own time, know what I mean? Otherwise I’ll never learn. Sure, what harm?’
‘Moran. Come on. The
harm
is that you two are about to embarrass yourselves – and let’s be honest here, it’s not like you can afford to do that. If you actually let this guy walk out of here while you go shaking trees or whatever it was, you look weak as fuck. You look
unsure
. And not just to the rest of us. The longer you leave it, the more the defence is going to make of it:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, even the cops weren’t positive my client was guilty, how can you not share their reasonable doubt?
Doesn’t that bother you at all?’
In the interview room, Rory lifts his head and wipes his face with the heels of his hands. He’s red and blotchy; the tears are there, for whatever that’s worth.
Steve raises his cup to Breslin. ‘Don’t worry, man. We’ll make sure the gaffer knows you did your best to light a fire under us.’
‘
Whoa
there. Hang on a second. You think this is about me?’ Breslin switches to a nice mix of stunned and wounded. ‘You seriously think that’s what I’m worried about? My rep?’
‘Ah, God, no,’ Steve says, giving him a big sweet smile. ‘Your rep’s amazing – stellar, is that the word I’m looking for? It’d take more than the likes of us to mess it up. I’m just saying, don’t worry: we’ll make sure credit goes where credit’s due.’
‘This isn’t about
me
. I don’t work like that. This isn’t even about you – if it was just your reps on the line, then sure, I’d try to stop you making a hames of this for your own sakes, but in the end I’d have to let you make your own choices. This is about the
squad
. If you take a month to get up the balls to charge Mr Obvious in there, the media won’t be yelling about how Conway and Moran need to get their act together; they’ll be yelling about how
the
Murder squad
needs to start taking its job seriously and actually protecting the public from scumbags. I’m hoping you two have at least enough loyalty to give a damn about that.’
Breslin’s worked himself up into enough of a righteous lather that I can’t tell whether he actually thinks he means that shite. I say, ‘How’s the squad gonna look if we charge the wrong guy?’
‘Having to drop the charges,’ Steve says, doing a cringe-face. ‘Public apology, more than likely. Media yelling about how the Murder squad’s a shower of incompetent wankers who don’t care who they lock up as long as they get the solve. Witnesses afraid to come to us, in case they end up in cuffs because we’re in such a hurry to charge anyone we can get our hands on . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘Not good, man. For the squad, like.’
Breslin sighs again. ‘Conway. Moran,’ he says, changing tack to go gentle. ‘The guy is guilty as sin. Take it from someone who was putting scumbags away when you two were kids filling out your application forms for Templemore: he’s our man. The question here isn’t whether he did it. The question is whether you two are able to do what needs doing.’
I say, ‘We’ll all just have to keep our fingers crossed. Won’t we?’
‘OK. Listen.’ Breslin leans back against the wall, gives us both the smile that melts witnesses. ‘I know you guys haven’t been getting an easy ride around here. Probably you thought I’d missed that, or didn’t care, but you’d be surprised how many of us are pulling for you. I’ve always said you’ll make a great pair of Murder Ds, once you find your feet.’
‘Thanks, man,’ Steve says. Steve gets basically no hassle, except what rubs off from me; Breslin just wants the pair of us paranoid. ‘That means a lot.’
‘Not a problem. You’ve just got to get past the routine bullshit. Newbies get hazed; it’s part of the job. It’s not personal.’
The slimy bastard is too thick to realise he used the same words to Rory Fallon, five minutes back, or else he thinks we are. And he thinks we’re thick enough to believe our shitpile is just routine, or desperate enough to pretend we do.
‘The lads just need to see whether you can take the heat. And this?’ Breslin points at the one-way glass. ‘This is your chance to show them. I know all the silly shite has to have knocked your confidence, but if schoolkid crap can take you to the point where you don’t trust your own judgement enough to charge a slam-dunk like this one, maybe you’d be better off back in blue. Yeah, that sounds harsh’ – lifting a hand like one of us tried to break in, which we didn’t – ‘but it’s what you need to hear.’