Authors: Tana French
‘My money’s on Fallon doing it himself,’ Breslin says. ‘He’s exactly the type who’d bottle it after a few hours, start trying to put things right just when it’s too late.’
‘The phone number came up private,’ Steve says. ‘Who wants to get on it?’
All their hands shoot up. ‘Easy there, boys,’ Breslin says, grinning. ‘There’s plenty to go round.’
‘Gaffney, you take the phone number,’ I say – I need to give the kid a pat, settle him after the mug thing. Meehan writes that down. ‘Stanton, Deasy: you were working on a list of Fallon’s KAs. How’s that going?’
‘Nothing surprising,’ Stanton says. ‘Mother, father, two older brothers, no sisters; handful of mates from school and college, a few ex-flatmates, long list of work colleagues and friends – mostly history teachers, librarians, that kind of thing. I’ll e-mail it on to you.’
‘Do that. Detective Breslin, you’ve already started talking to the KAs, am I right?’
‘Both Fallon’s brothers sounded appropriately shocked,’ Breslin says. ‘According to them, they knew about Rory’s big date, but that’s as far as they’d got; they were waiting to hear all the dirty details. They claim they didn’t ring Stoneybatter station this morning, or ever, but then they would, wouldn’t they? I’ve got them both coming in for separate chats after this.’
Breslin’s planning on working a long shift, for a bog-standard case. ‘If they don’t pan out, keep working your way down the list,’ I say. ‘Start with anyone who lives near Rory’s route home, where he could’ve got a surprise visit last night. And while you’re at it, get the brothers and the best mates on tape. We need to run their voices and Fallon’s past the guy at Stoneybatter who took the call, see if he recognises any of them. Can you follow that up?’
For a second I think Breslin’s gonna tell me to stick my scut work, but he says, ‘Why not,’ although there’s a twist to his mouth. ‘Great,’ I say. ‘We need someone to go through CCTV – we’ll put Kellegher and Reilly down for that; they’re pulling all the local footage they can get, they might as well watch it.’
Meehan nods, writing.
‘And someone needs to pull footage from the northbound 39A bus route yesterday evening: find the buses that stopped on Morehampton Road around seven, see if you can pick out Rory Fallon getting on, confirm what time he boarded and what time he got off in Stoneybatter.’ The gym rat has a finger up. That whipcrack rhythm, the one I used to love: even though I know better, it still hits me like a triple espresso. ‘Stanton’s on that. And we need someone to head out to Stoneybatter and time the route Rory says he took from the bus stop: down Astrid Road to the top of Viking Gardens, then up to Tesco on Prussia Street, buy a bunch of flowers and head back down to Viking Gardens. Meehan, you’re around the same build and age as Fallon; can you do that? Time it twice: once at your normal pace, once as fast as you can go.’
Meehan nods. Steve says, glancing back and forth between him and Gaffney, ‘Did Rory’s flowers show up in the bins on the quays?’
‘I looked,’ Meehan says. ‘Gaffney kept going with the door-to-door. The bins hadn’t been emptied since last night, by the state of them, but no irises anywhere. Some lad probably robbed them to give to his bird.’
‘Or,’ Breslin says, ‘they were never in the bins at all: Rory Boy tossed them in the river, because he didn’t want us pulling Aislinn’s blood or hair or carpet fibres off them. Where are we on her KAs?’
‘She didn’t have any immediate family, or much of a social life,’ I say, ‘but her friend Lucy gave us a few names and numbers to start us off. Someone needs to go round to Aislinn’s workplace, get her boss to come in and ID the body, and have the chats with all her colleagues. I want to know if she talked about Rory, and what she said.’
Steve says, ‘And we need to know if any of the colleagues had a thing for her. Just on the off-chance that Rory’s telling the truth’ – Breslin snorts – ‘someone might not have been happy that Aislinn had got herself a fella. And her colleagues were the only people she spent any amount of time with.’ Nice touch. If anyone spots us doing something that doesn’t point to Rory, we’ve got a potential stalker colleague to take the heat. It might even turn out to be true.
‘Why don’t you two cover the office romance,’ Breslin says. ‘Feminine intuition, and all that jazz.’
‘Mine’s in the shop,’ I say. ‘Transmission went. We’ll just have to go with actual detective work. Deasy, Stanton, you head over there first thing tomorrow.’
‘The other place Aislinn spent time was at evening classes,’ Steve says. ‘She could have picked up a stalker there. We need someone to work out what classes she took, make lists of all the other students or whatever they call them.’
‘Gaffney, you take that,’ I say. ‘Me and Moran will handle Aislinn’s phone records, e-mails, social media, all that—’
‘I can make a start on that tonight,’ Breslin says. ‘I don’t mind staying a few hours late, if that’ll help put this case to bed, but I can’t exactly show up at Rory’s KAs’ houses at nine in the evening looking for chats. I might as well get cracking on the vic’s social life.’
My look clicks against Steve’s for a split second, before his head goes down over his notebook. Breslin could just be trying to buff up his stellar rep – everyone always wants the vic’s electronics, because more often than not, there’s something good in there – or he could be looking to make me into the loser who couldn’t find her own evidence. Or he could need to get rid of anything in there that points to a gangster pal.
Meehan has stopped writing and is looking back and forth between us, uncertain. ‘Me and Moran have already started on it,’ I say. ‘We’ve been in since last night and we need to catch a few hours’ kip, but we’ll get back onto Aislinn’s electronics first thing tomorrow morning. You’ve started on Rory Fallon, Detective Breslin; you might as well stick with him. We need someone to make a list of his exes and see what they’ve got to say about him, specially about what winds him up and what he’s like when he doesn’t get his way. If you can stay late tonight, why don’t you get the ball rolling on that.’
Breslin has on a face like he’s found a hair in his soup and knows the waiter is too useless to fix it. ‘Why don’t I do that.’
‘Great,’ I say. After a moment, Meehan’s pen starts moving again. ‘Detective Gaffney: first murder case, am I right?’
‘It is, yeah.’ He’s from somewhere involving sheep.
‘OK,’ I say, sending the gaffer a mental thank-you for not bothering to get us floaters with actual experience. ‘You stick close to Detective Breslin for now; he’ll show you the ropes, help you get the hang of this.’ Breslin nods pleasantly at Gaffney, no objections, but that means nothing. ‘Can you stay late tonight, yeah?’
Gaffney sits up even straighter. ‘I can, of course.’
‘Anyone who can’t?’ No one moves. ‘Good. We need someone to pull Aislinn’s financials – Gaffney, start on that; you’ll need to go through them anyway, for her evening-class payments.’
Breslin sighs, just loud enough to make it clear that I’m wasting valuable time and resources. Steve says, to everyone, ‘We don’t have a motive yet. The romance gone bad is the obvious one, but we can’t rule out a financial angle. Rory mentioned that his bookshop’s been having a hard time; and Aislinn’s mate Lucy Riordan said she had a bit of cash stashed away. Rory could have asked her to put a few grand into the bookshop and got nasty when she turned him down, something like that.’
Breslin shrugs. He’s started doodling on the corner of his notebook.
‘We’ll need Rory’s financials, too,’ I say. ‘Gaffney, pull those while you’re at it. Someone needs to get onto the phone company and start them tracking where Fallon’s phone went last night: Deasy, got a decent contact at Vodafone? Someone to confirm Lucy Riordan’s alibi with the rest of the staff at the Torch Theatre: Stanton, you handle that. Someone to talk to the staff at the Market Bar and Pestle, see if they can tell us anything about Aislinn and Rory’s dates: Meehan, yeah? Someone to assign one of the uniforms from the scene to go to the autopsy: Deasy, you do that. It’ll be early tomorrow morning; make sure he’s not late, or Cooper will throw a shit fit.’ Snorts from everyone who’s met Cooper. ‘Me and Moran will follow up with the techs, make sure we’re kept updated. There’ll be more, but those should get us started. Any questions?’
Head-shakes. They’re fidgeting at the starting line.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Let’s go.’Meehan claps the book of jobs shut. They swing to their desks, their phones, to Rory’s statement, diving to see who can hit the ground running fastest. Incident Room C leaps with the energy ricocheting off the shining rows of desks, splintering on the windows.
And underneath all that, hidden and working away, the small ferocious buzzing of the thing at the back of my mind and Steve’s, nudging for us to let it loose. Breslin’s slick fair head is bent over his notebook, but when he feels me looking he glances up and gives me a great big smile.
Steve types up our report for the gaffer while I go through the stuff the floaters brought back. They’re all competent enough, although Deasy can’t spell and Gaffney feels the need to share every detail of everything, relevant or not (‘Witness advised that she was taking her daughter Ava aged eight to visit her grandfather in St James’s Hospital after severe stroke and saw Murray getting out of car . . .’). Nothing particularly interesting in the door-to-door: Aislinn was friendly with her neighbours – no bad blood over noise or parking spaces, nothing like that – but not close to any of them; a few of them saw a woman matching Lucy’s description going into or out of her house now and then; none of them ever saw any other visitors. Aislinn never mentioned a boyfriend. They saw her going out semi-regularly in the evenings, all dolled up, but they weren’t on gossip-swapping terms and they have no idea where she was heading or what she did there. The old couple in Number 24 are half deaf and heard nothing last night; the young couple in Number 28 heard Aislinn blasting her Beyoncé, but they say she turned the music either down or off a little before eight – they could pinpoint it because eight is the baby’s bedtime, so they appreciated the volume control. After that, not a sound.
The old fella in Number 3 backs Rory’s story, or bits of it: he was heading out to walk his dog (a white male terrier named Harold, according to Gaffney) just before eight o’clock last night, and he saw a guy matching Rory’s description turning in to Viking Gardens. When he got back fifteen minutes later, the guy was still there, down at the bottom of the road, messing about with his phone. None of the other neighbours were outside in those fifteen minutes – Viking Gardens is mostly old people and a few young families, no one heading out on the Saturday-night batter – which means Rory could have been let into the house, killed Aislinn, and been back outside texting up a cover story by ten past eight; but I don’t buy it. The part that turned him twitchy was earlier, before the Tesco side-trip. None of the neighbours were out in the road then, to see him or not.
Steve is still typing. Breslin’s headed off for his chats with Rory’s brothers, taking Gaffney with him and dispensing wisdom all the way; Meehan has buttoned his overcoat to the neck and gone off to time himself wandering around Stoneybatter, Deasy’s having a laugh with his contact at the phone company, Stanton’s laying down the law to someone from the buses. Their voices wander around the high corners of the room, turning blurry at the edges from too much space. The windows are dark.
My phone rings. ‘Conway,’ I say.
O’Kelly says, ‘You and Moran, my office. I want an update.’
‘We’ll be right in,’ I say, and hear him hang up. I look at Steve, who’s slumped in his chair, giving his report a last once-over. ‘The gaffer wants to see us.’
Steve’s head comes up and he blinks at me. Each of those takes a few seconds; he’s two-thirds asleep. For once he looks his age. ‘Why?’
‘He wants an update.’
‘Oh, Jaysus.’ The gaffer wants in-person updates when you’re working a big one, which this isn’t, or when you’re taking too long to get a solve, which even if you’re in his bad books should be longer than one day. This can’t be good.
The rumours say I got this gig because O’Kelly needed to tick the token boxes and I tick two for the price of one – and those are the nice rumours. All of them are bullshit. When the gaffer brought me on board, he was down a D – one of his top guys had just put in his papers early – and I was Missing Persons’ shining star, waving a sheaf of fancy high-profile solves in each hand. I was fresh off a headline-buster where I’d whipped out every kind of detective work in the book, from tracing phone pings and wi-fi logons to coaxing info out of family members and bullying it out of friends, in order to track down a newly dumped dad who had gone on the run with his two little boys, and then I’d spent four hours talking him into coming out of his car with the kids instead of driving the lot of them off a pier. I was hot stuff, back then. Me and the gaffer both had every reason to think this was gonna be great.
O’Kelly knows what’s been going down, I know he knows, but he’s never said a word; just watched and waited. No gaffer wants this on his squad, wants the sniping in corners and the grey poison smog hanging over the squad room. Any gaffer in the world would be wondering, by now, how he could get rid of me.
Steve hits Print on the report; the printer gets to work with a smug purr, nothing like the half-dead wheeze off the squad-room yoke. We find our combs, sort our hair, brush down our jackets. Steve has something blue smudged on his shirt front, but I don’t have the heart to tell him, in case the effort of trying to clean it off kills him. I assume I’ve got whiteboard marker on my face, or something, and he’s doing the same for me.