Authors: Tana French
Rory shakes his head. Steve waits, but nothing else pops out. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘What about your conversations with Aislinn? Take a second and think back over those. Did she ever mention anyone who bothered her? Someone at work who was a bit creepy, maybe? An ex who wouldn’t take no for an answer?’
Rory is shaking his head.
‘OK. Was there anything that seemed to make her uncomfortable? She ever get a bit cagey when any particular subject came up?’
‘Actually . . .’ Rory has relaxed again, now that we’ve moved away from the hot spot. ‘Yes. When it came to her parents, Aislinn was . . . Something was odd. She told me they were both dead – she said her dad died in a car accident when she was little, and her mum had MS for a long time and finally died of it a few years back . . . ?’
He glances back and forth between us, hoping we’ll give him a yes or a no. We don’t.
‘But she seemed very uncomfortable talking about it, and she changed the subject straightaway. It could have been just because we didn’t know each other that well yet, but I wondered if maybe there was more to the story – like if one of them was still alive, but with some problem, like I said. I mean, obviously I wasn’t about to ask, but . . . I wondered.’
This isn’t what Steve’s angling for. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Interesting; we’ll definitely check it out. Anything else?’
Rory shakes his head. ‘That’s the only thing I can think of.’
‘You’re positive? I’m not joking: any little thing could make a difference. Anything.’
There’s a moment’s silence. Rory catches his breath to say something; then he lets it out again. He isn’t looking at Steve any more.
Steve waits, watching him, easy and interested as a pal in a pub. Rory says, suddenly and unwillingly, ‘I just wish I knew what else you’re not telling me.’
‘Course you do,’ Steve says matter-of-factly. ‘All I can say is, we don’t keep things back just for the laugh. We’re doing it to catch the person who killed Aislinn.’
Rory’s eyes come up, with an effort, to meet Steve’s. He asks, ‘Am I a suspect?’ And he braces himself for the answer.
Steve says, ‘Right now, everyone who had any kind of connection with Aislinn is a potential suspect. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by trying to claim you’re the exception.’
Rory must have known, but it still lights him up with fear. ‘I never even
saw
her last night. And I cared about her, I thought we were going to – why would I—’
Whatever he was thinking about telling us, it’s gone. ‘Fair enough,’ Steve says reasonably, ‘but we have to figure everyone we talk to is going to say the same thing. And one person’s going to be lying. We’d be only delighted to eliminate you – the faster we narrow it down, the better – but we can’t do it just on your word. You can see that, right?’
‘Then how do you do it?’
‘Evidence. We always need fingerprints, and on this case we’re also asking for coats and gloves – obviously I can’t tell you why, but they should go a long way towards crossing you off our list. You’re all right with that, yeah? We can hang on to those?’ Steve nods at Rory’s gear.
Rory’s taken aback, but Steve hasn’t left him much choice. ‘I guess – I mean . . . yes, OK. I’ll get them back, right?’
‘Course,’ Steve says, reaching across the table to hook the gloves across with his pen. ‘It might take a few days, just. OK if we have a look in your apartment for any others that we might need to eliminate?’
‘I’m not . . .’ Rory blinks fast. The strain and the airless room are getting to him; he’s starting to have a hard time keeping up. ‘Can’t you just take these? They’re the ones I was wearing last night, if that’s—’
‘See, though,’ Steve explains, ‘we’re not just trying to take this particular coat off our list. We’re trying to take
you
off our list. That means we need anything you could’ve worn, not just what you did wear. See what I mean?’
Rory pushes up his glasses to press his fingers into the corners of his eyes. ‘Yes. OK. Whatever you need. I’d rather be there, though – when you’re in my apartment. I don’t like the thought of people . . . Is that all right?’
‘Not a problem,’ Steve says easily. ‘The lads who bring you home can just take a quick look around while they’re at it. We’ll get on that as fast as we can, yeah? Get your prints done and get you out of here, back to your day.’
Rory’s eyes close, against his fingertips. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’d like that very much.’
I toss Rory’s gloves and his coat into evidence bags and head off to send them to Sophie, before he can change his mind. Then I type up his statement, and ignore the squad-room turds ignoring me, while Steve prints off a map so Rory can draw us his route home – as near as he can remember, or wants to – and takes him through his story one more time. I give the two of them as much alone time as we can afford, in case Rory’s still holding a grudge against me, but when I come back into the interview room Steve throws me a minuscule shake of his head: nothing interesting has happened.
‘Here,’ Rory says, pushing the map across the table. He’s looking rough. His lips are parched and the mousy hair is plastered flat to his head, like he’s been running in heat. ‘Is that OK?’
There’s a careful line winding from Stoneybatter to Ranelagh, and a tiny tidy X labelled ‘FLOWERS’ on the quays. ‘That’s great,’ Steve says. ‘Thanks a million.’
‘Have a read of that,’ I say, holding out the statement and a pen. ‘If it’s all correct, initial every page and then sign at the end.’
Rory doesn’t move to take the statement. ‘Do you think . . .’ He catches a long breath. ‘If I hadn’t left when I did. If I’d kept banging on the door, or if I’d called the police, or if I’d broken in. Would I have been able to save her?’
I almost say yes. If he’s not our guy, he’s such a godawful damp weenie, the kind who needs regular slaps across the back of the head just to keep him from vanishing up his own hole, plus he just wasted half our day by being in the wrong place looking guilty as hell. All I have to do is say yes, and he’ll spend the rest of his life whipping himself with a more and more elaborate fantasy where he storms into that cottage in the nick of time and saves Aislinn from a herd of rampaging bikers and they live happily ever after and have 2.4 damp weenie kids. It’s practically irresistible.
But if he is our guy, he’s no idiot, and he’ll find a way to use any info I hand him. ‘No way to know,’ I say. ‘Here,’ and I dump the statement under his nose.
He reads it, or at least he spends a while staring at each page. At the end, he signs like he barely remembers how.
It’s headed for four o’clock. We get hold of the floaters who’ve been pulling CCTV footage – Kellegher and Reilly – and tell them what we want done with Rory and his gaff. Steve finds an old hoodie in his locker so Rory won’t freeze his delicate self on the way home. Then we tell him how great he is and hand him over.
‘You owe me a tenner,’ Steve says, as we watch Kellegher and Reilly walk him down the corridor. From the back, sandwiched between their farmer shoulders and their cop walks, Rory looks like a nerd being marched behind the school to get a few slaps.
I check that I’ve got all the statement pages. ‘Like fuck I do. Did you not see him bawling his eyes out there? Pay up.’
‘Doesn’t count. It has to be because he’s petrified of us, not because he just found out his girlfriend
died
.’
‘Since when?’ Steve is right, but I feel like yanking his chain. ‘Nah nah nah. You can’t make up the rules to suit—’
‘Since always. When did I ever try to get away with—’
‘When did I ever try to stiff you just because I didn’t like the timing of—’
Rory and the floaters are gone, in a jumble of footsteps echoing down the marble stairwell. I slam the interview-room door and we head for the squad room to get our stuff together. The corridor still feels like it’s twitching with covered pits and pointed sticks, but that doesn’t feel like such a bad thing, not any more.
Chapter 5
I used to love the first case meeting, love everything about it. The pulse of the incident room, everyone taut as greyhounds at the traps; in that room every answer comes in closer on top of the question, every glance snaps round faster. The whipcrack of the jobs being assigned,
Murphy collect the CCTV footage, Vincent check gold Toyota Camrys, O’Leary talk to the girlfriend
, bam bam bam. The moment when I’d shut my notebook and say
Go
, and we’d all be out of our seats and halfway to the door before my mouth closed on the word. I used to come out of that meeting feeling like the bastard we were after didn’t have a chance in hell. By this time, even the thought of it – floaters eyeing me up and down, wondering which of the rumours are true; me eyeing them back, wondering which of them is going to glom onto any slip-up, blow it up huge and barter it for a laugh and a pat on the back – turns me hangover-queasy and hangover-mean.
Incident Room C, but. I haven’t been in there since I was a floater chasing down pointless non-leads for the big boys; I’d forgotten. The white light exploding down from the high ceiling, skating and flashing on the whiteboard and the tall windows. The sleek computers lined up straining for action, the throb of them pumping at the air. The desks polished till they look like you could slice your thumb open on the edges. One step through the doorway, and that room blows the fatigue off me like dust and recharges me till I spark static. Walk in there and you could solve Jack the Ripper. And this time I’m no floater, there to jump when some big man snaps his fingers; this time I’m the big woman and every bit of this is all mine. Just for one second, that room blindsides me into loving the job, a hard green painful love like it’s growing from scratch all over again.
Steve’s lifted face, lips parted in a half-smile like a kid at the panto, says he feels the same way. That’s what smacks sense back into me. Steve falls arse over tip for anything beautiful, without bothering to think about how it got that way or why, or what’s underneath. I don’t.
I slap my stack of paper onto the boss desk, the double-length one at the head of the room. ‘Gentlemen,’ I say, loud. ‘Let’s get started. Who owns this?’ I whip a coffee mug off the desk and hold it up.
Breslin is leaning against the whiteboard, holding court for Deasy and Stanton, the floaters who brought Rory in, and the pair we put on the door-to-door – a slight, fidgety dark guy called Meehan, who I’ve worked with before and like, and a prissy-faced newbie called Gaffney, who I’ve seen around and who’s holding himself so straight that his suit looks like a prefect’s uniform. Breslin, or more likely someone he was bossing around, has made a start on the whiteboard – shots of Aislinn, the crime scene, Rory, a map of Stoneybatter – and set out a heavy hardback notebook for the book of jobs, where we keep a list of what needs doing and who’s supposed to be doing it. We even have an electric kettle.
‘That’s mine,’ Gaffney says, bobbing forward to grab the mug and retreating fast, scarlet. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Meehan.’ I toss him the notebook. ‘Book of jobs, yeah?’ He catches it and nods. Steve dumps his stuff beside mine and starts handing out photocopies: the initial call sheet, the uniforms’ report, Rory’s statement. I head for the whiteboard and sketch out a fast timeline of last night. The floaters pick desks and settle fast: chitchat’s over.
‘The vic,’ I say, tapping the photo of Aislinn with my marker. ‘Aislinn Murray, twenty-six, lived alone in Stoneybatter, worked as a receptionist at a firm selling bathroom supplies to businesses. No criminal record, no calls to us. Assaulted yesterday evening in her home: Cooper’s preliminary exam says she took a punch to the face and hit her head on the fireplace surround. Texts on her phone narrow down the time to between 7.13 and 8.09.’ I move to Rory’s photo. ‘This guy here, Rory Fallon, he’s been seeing her for a couple of months. He was due at her house for dinner at eight o’clock.’
‘Stupid bastard,’ says Deasy, grinning. ‘A looker like her, he should’ve at least waited to kill her till after he’d got his hole.’
Snickers. Breslin clears his throat, with an indulgent smirk and a tilt of his head towards me. The snickers fade.
I say, ‘You can make it up to him, Deasy, seeing as it matters so much to you. Next time we bring him in, you go ahead and give him a blowjob in the jacks.’
Deasy pinches at his tache and makes a sour face. The snickers rise up again, prickly and equivocal.
I say, ‘Me and Moran and Breslin, we’ve just had a chat with Fallon. His story is that he was at Aislinn’s door at eight, but she didn’t answer, so he figured he’d been dumped and flounced off home to cry on his pillow.’
‘Amazingly enough,’ Breslin drawls, twirling his pen, ‘we don’t believe him.’
‘Our working theory,’ I say, ‘is that Fallon arrived at the vic’s place around half-seven, things went bad somehow, and he punched her. We’re guessing he thought she was just knocked out; he legged it home and hoped she wouldn’t call the cops on him, or wouldn’t remember what happened.’
That has Breslin nodding along approvingly, giving the newbies’ little theory his blessing. ‘More like manslaughter than murder,’ he says, ‘but that’s not our problem.’
‘By early this morning,’ I say, ‘either Fallon’s conscience got to him, or else he’d talked to a mate who wanted to do the right thing. An anonymous male caller reported to Stoneybatter station that there was a woman with head injuries at 26 Viking Gardens, and requested an ambulance.’