Authors: Tana French
I wait fifteen minutes – I’d love to leave it longer, but it’s five o’clock, and we’ve got the case meeting at half past – before I head out of the incident room, leaving my coat and my bag behind. With a bit of luck Breslin will assume I’m ringing my mammy back. I don’t look at Steve. I’m hoping I don’t need to.
Outside it’s dark; the whitish floodlights and the thick cold, and the odd civil servant scurrying home with his collar turned up, give the huge courtyard a queasy, ominous feel, some looming futurescape I’ve stumbled into by mistake and can’t find the way out of. I find a shadow, wrap my suit jacket tight and watch the clock on my phone.
Four minutes later the door opens and Steve nips out, trying to keep a massive armful of paper under control and close the door behind him without letting it bang. ‘About time,’ I say, catching a page that’s escaping.
‘Let’s get out of here. I’m supposed to be photocopying this shite. If Breslin goes looking for me—’
‘That’s the best you could come up with? Come on, quick—’ We dodge around the corner of the building, laughing at our bold selves like schoolkids mitching, which I suppose is better than thinking too hard about the fact that Incident Room C is supposedly all mine and yet here I am freezing my hole off.
You can see the gardens from our windows, and in the courtyard we might meet Gaffney coming back from Stoneybatter. We head up to the square outside the main Castle buildings, where only tourists go – not that there are any tourists in this weather – and find a corner out of the wind. The buildings feel a hundred feet tall around us; the floodlights strip out colour and texture till they could be made of anything, beaten metal or slick plastic or thin air.
Steve dumps his paper on the ground, with a foot on the pile to stop it blowing away. He’s in his shirtsleeves; he’s gonna freeze. I hold the phone between us, dial and hit speaker.
‘Hey,’ Gary says. ‘You got the stuff, yeah?’
Gary is ten years older than me and perfect for his job. A big chunk of Missing Persons is getting people who stay far from cops to talk to you – street hookers to tell you about the new girl who matches that teenager on the news, homeless addicts to drop by and mention the guy who tried to sleep on their patch last night and looked a lot like that poster and do they get a reward? Everyone talks to Gary, and he’ll talk to anyone, which is one reason I pointed Aislinn his way. Another big chunk of the job is wrangling the friends and families, and Gary can calm down a room just by walking into it; I once saw him trace an idiot teenage runaway in ten minutes flat, by getting her hysterical idiot best friend to chill out enough to remember the internet boyfriend’s name. He’s a big guy, he looks like he could build a shed if you needed one, and he has the kind of voice – quiet, deep, a touch of countryside – that makes you want to close your eyes and fall asleep to the sound of it. Just hearing that voice winds me down a notch.
‘Hey,’ I say. Gary’s in the Missing Persons squad room: I can hear the weave of chat, someone giving out, someone else laughing, a mobile ringing. ‘Yeah, I got it. You’re a gem. Just a couple of quick questions, OK? And do me a favour: can you go somewhere private?’
‘No problem. Hang on a mo—’ The creak of his chair, some comment with a grin built in from one of the other lads, ‘Yeah yeah yeah,’ from Gary. ‘Smart-arsed little bollix wants to know if my prostate’s giving me hassle,’ he tells me. ‘Young people nowadays; no respect.’
‘Awww, Gar. It’s OK. I respect you.’
‘At least you don’t mock my prostate. Never mock a man’s prostate. That’s dirty.’
‘Below the belt, yeah?’
‘Holy Jaysus. Is that what passes for humour over there?’ A door shuts, and the voices vanish: he’s out in the corridor. ‘Right. What did you want to know?’
Steve has his head up, keeping an eye on the entrances to the square, but he’s listening. ‘First thing,’ I say. ‘You guys went all out on the Desmond Murray case. Everything looked like he’d skipped voluntarily, it turned out he
had
skipped voluntarily, but yous worked it like a murder. How come?’
Gary snorts. ‘There’s an easy one. Because of the wife, basically. Did you see the photo?’
‘Yeah. She was good-looking.’
‘The photo doesn’t do her justice. She was a stunner. Not the kind you want to get in kinky underwear and shag senseless; the kind you want to look after. Open doors for her. Hold her umbrella.’ Gary’s voice getting fainter, water running, clink of cups; he’s rinsing a mug in the kitchen, phone tucked under his jaw. ‘And she knew how to work it, too. Looking at us like we were superheroes, going on about how she knew we’d find her husband and she felt so lucky to have us, she didn’t know
what
she’d have done if her whole world had been in the hands of people she couldn’t trust the way she trusted us – loads of that. Crying at all the right moments, and making sure she looked good while she was doing it – her husband’s just gone missing, but she’s still bothered to do her hair and her makeup and put on a pretty dress? She knew what she was at, all right.’
Sounds like Aislinn took after Mammy. ‘You think it was all an act? She didn’t give a damn about the hubby, just wanted attention?’
Gary clicks his tongue. ‘Nah, not that. The opposite of that. I think she was genuinely desperate to get her husband back – she wasn’t the social type, didn’t have friends, didn’t have a job, didn’t have anything apart from him and the kid; without him, her life was bollixed. And she knew the best way to make fellas go out of their way for her was by being pretty and making them want to take care of her.’
‘Cute,’ I say. I can hear the coffee machine whirring – instead of bitching nonstop about the crap coffee, the way we do in Murder, Missing Persons threw in a few quid each and bought a decent machine. ‘And it worked.’
‘Yeah. That type doesn’t do a lot for me, but a couple of the lads would’ve brought out the army to comb the country for her husband, if they could’ve. Tracking down a few mobiles, interviewing a few extra witnesses . . . that was nothing.’
He remembers a lot about this woman, for someone who wasn’t into her. I keep my mouth shut – Gary brings out my nice side. ‘So it wasn’t because anyone suspected Murray might’ve been involved with gangs?’
Gary laughs. ‘Jesus, no. Nothing like that. Pure as the driven snow, Murray was. When it came to the law, at least.’
I throw Steve a look. He grimaces: still unconvinced. He’s got his hands tucked into his armpits to keep them warm.
I roll my eyes and say, into the phone, ‘You sure you would’ve heard?’
‘Thanks a bunch, Antoinette.’
‘Come on, Gar, you know I’m not being a bitch here. But you had to be, what, twenty-six, twenty-seven? Out of uniform for like three weeks? The lead Ds weren’t necessarily telling you everything that went through their heads.’
The faint clinking of Gary stirring his coffee. He says, ‘Is that what it was like when you were here? You figure I held stuff back from you, just to keep the rookie in her place?’
I say, ‘No. You would’ve told me.’
Missing Persons isn’t like Murder. In Missing Persons, you don’t work your case aiming to take down a bad guy; you work it aiming to get a happy ending. If it even looks like there might be a bad guy to take down, mostly it’s not your problem any more – say a body shows up looking dodgy, you hand it straight over to Murder. You can go your entire career without ever using your handcuffs. That attracts a whole different type from Murder or Sex Crime, the squads where your mind is focused on the kill shot and happy endings aren’t on the menu, and it makes for a whole different atmosphere. Missing Persons was never my kind of place, but just for a second I’m swamped by how badly I want to be back there. I can smell the good coffee, hear Gar hamming up ‘Bring Him Home’ after a happy ending while everyone shouts at him to shut up and take it to
X Factor
; I’m coming up with new places to hide that rubber hamster. Like a little kid, wanting to run home to Mammy as soon as the going gets tough. I make myself sick.
‘Yeah, I would’ve,’ Gary says. ‘It was the same back then: if the lead Ds were thinking gangs, they would’ve told me. Where’d this gang idea come from?’
I keep my head angled away from Steve, in case that burst of wimp shows on my face. ‘Murray’s daughter, the one I sent to you when she came asking about him? She’s after turning up murdered.’
‘Huh,’ Gary says, surprised but not shocked. ‘God rest. She seemed like a sweet kid, way back when; sweet girl, when she came in to me. You think she got involved with a gang?’
‘Not really. It looks like the boyfriend threw a tantrum, but there’s some loose ends we want to clear up, just in case. We were wondering if she went looking for Daddy and trod on someone’s toes.’
‘No reason she would’ve. There’s nothing that would’ve pointed her anywhere dodgy.’
I really wanted Gary to tell me that something, anything, was dodgy here. I can feel it soaking through me along with the cold, just how badly I wanted it. I can’t tell whether I knew all along that he wasn’t going to.
Steve whispers, ‘The Ds. Why’d they keep their mouths shut?’
‘Second thing,’ I say. ‘Any reason why yous didn’t just tell them at the time where Daddy had gone?’
Gary makes an exasperated noise, through a mouthful of coffee. ‘Antoinette. I wasn’t joking you about the back-seat driving. It wasn’t your case; how they worked it isn’t your problem. You start shooting your mouth off about how you would’ve done it differently, all you’ll do is piss people off. You think you can afford that?’
Meaning word is getting around. Missing Persons have been informed that I’m poison. Even if I wanted to transfer back there, the gaffer probably wouldn’t take me. He knows I’m good, but no one wants a D who brings hassle with her. Whether it’s her own hassle or other people’s is beside the point.
I say, ‘So don’t make me go shooting my mouth off. Quit the hush-hush crap and tell me what was going on, and I won’t have to talk to the other Ds.’
‘There isn’t any hush-hush crap. By the time they tracked Murray down, I wasn’t working the case any more – I was only on board for the initial push – so I don’t know all the details. All I heard is, they found him in England, tucked up in his love nest with the bit on the side. One of our lads gave him a bell: he was happy as a pig in shite, no intention of coming home, and he didn’t want anyone telling his wife and kid anything. So they didn’t.’
Gary takes the silence for disapproval – which it isn’t: I wouldn’t have got involved in that mess, either. It’s some thicko part of me still hoping this isn’t the whole story. He says, ‘We’re not family therapists here. You know that. It’s not our job to sort out some fella’s love triangle; it’s our job to find the fella, and they did. They marked the case closed and moved on.’
Steve makes a wry face, up at the flat dark windows staring back: that’s still getting to him. I ask, ‘Without even telling the wife that Desmond was alive? You said she had all the Ds wrapped around her finger, jumping through hoops to bring her answers; but when they actually find some, they don’t let her anywhere near them?’
‘I’m just telling you what I heard. And I’m telling you not to go giving anyone shite about it. What’s it got to do with your case, either way?’
‘Nothing, probably. Like I said: just tying up loose ends. Shaking trees.’ I flick an eyebrow at Steve, who narrows his eyes at me:
Very funny
. ‘One last thing. I know it’s been a couple of years, but can you tell me what you said to Aislinn when she came in to you?’
Gary slurps coffee and thinks back. ‘She had a fair idea we knew more than we’d told her and her mam. She said her mam had died and she was desperate to find her dad. According to her, him vanishing had messed up her entire life. She wanted to track him down, look him in the eye and make him tell her why he did it. She wasn’t sure what was going to happen after that – she said something about once he saw her he’d remember how close they’d been, maybe they could have each other back . . . But even if it didn’t work out that way, according to her, once she knew the story she could move on. Make a life of her own.’
Sweet jumping Jesus on a pogo stick. I’m on Des Murray’s side here. He probably split because the alternative was braining his whole sappy family with a poker. ‘What’d you give her?’
‘I told her I couldn’t disclose any information from the investigation. But . . . sure, you saw her. She was in bits. She was trying not to cry, but she was right on the edge of it. She was begging me; for a second there I was scared she was going to go down on her knees on the floor of the interview room. In the end I put in a call, had a mate run Desmond Murray through the UK system, just to see was he dead or alive. No point in her chasing him all over the world if he was six feet under.’
Aislinn was Mammy’s daughter, all right; she might have looked helpless, but she knew how to make people do what she wanted. Even I ended up handing over Gary’s name and shift schedule. I’m liking her less all the time.
Gary says, ‘And I thought, if he was still alive, I might drop her a hint that she’d do better hiring a private detective in England. Sure, what harm?’
Missing Persons: happy-ending junkies, the lot of them. ‘And?’
‘And he was dead. A few years back. Nothing suspicious, he just died – heart attack, I think.’
And that’s Daddy out of the picture. I almost laugh out loud with relief. Instead I elbow Steve and mouth
See?
He shrugs:
It was worth a shot.
I roll my eyes.