Authors: Tana French
‘Jesus, Rory,’ I say reproachfully. ‘Why didn’t you tell us straight out?’
‘Because I know how it sounds! I know it makes me come across like some . . . I can’t expect you to understand what it was actually like.’
‘I’m doing my best. It’d be a lot easier if you’d told us the truth right away.’
‘I’m telling you now.’
Under the table, I touch my foot to Breslin’s ankle. He says, without missing a beat, ‘Well. Part of the truth, anyway. That wasn’t the only time you watched Aislinn. Was it?’
Rory’s eyes flash to him and to me and away to a corner. He picks fast. ‘Yes. That was the first time.’
‘No it wasn’t.’
I say, ‘That’s why you needed your moment out the back, to take in that this was real. Because you’d watched her in that kitchen, and daydreamed about going in there, so many times before. Right?’
‘Just like the guy in your scenario,’ Breslin says. ‘Your
hypothetical
scenario.’
‘It
was
hypothetical. You
asked
me to imagine—’
‘That moment must’ve felt amazing, did it?’ I ask. ‘After all those times when you’d had to turn around and go home again, in the cold . . .’
‘It— Yes, it felt wonderful. But not because I’d been— I wasn’t
stalking
Aislinn, I wasn’t—’
Rory’s starting to gibber again. ‘Shh,’ Breslin says.
‘What?’
‘Shh.’ Breslin picks up his file. ‘I want to show you something.’
He leans back and leafs through the file at his leisure, pausing occasionally to lick his thumb. Rory watches with his hands clenching the edge of the table, like he’s ready to leap out of his chair, but he keeps his mouth shut. His control isn’t completely gone.
‘Here.’ Breslin throws a handful of photos, big eight-by-tens, across the table. Rory grabs at them and sends them scattering. He catches one, takes one look and makes a high, startled whimper.
Breslin says, ‘Pick up the rest of them.’
Rory doesn’t move. His head is down over the photo, but his eyes aren’t focusing.
‘Pick them up.’
Rory moves automatically, stacking the photos one by one. His fingers are trembling.
‘Look at them.’
He braces himself before he goes through them, but every image still gets a hard blink out of him. Breslin tells the video camera, ‘I’ve just shown Mr Fallon images from CCTV footage taken in Stoneybatter over the past month.’
There’s a silence.
‘Rory. That’s you in those pictures. We can all agree on that, can’t we?’
More silence. Then Rory’s head moves, just a twitch: yes.
‘For the tape.’
‘Yes.’
Breslin leans forward – Rory flinches – and brings down a finger on the top photo, the face staring straight into the Tesco camera. ‘This is you. On the fourteenth of this month.’
‘Yes. I was just buying, I was in there looking for—’
His mind is flailing for a new story. I say, ‘You told us you’d never been to Stoneybatter before Saturday night. When you had to look up the nearest Tesco on your phone.’
His mouth moves as he tries to swallow.
Breslin’s finger is still mashed down on Rory’s photo face. ‘So,’ he says, pleasantly. ‘Your pretty little story about the guy who got hooked on spying on Aislinn. That was based on real events, as they say on the telly. Right?’
‘Not the – no. No. Not the part where—’ His breathing is starting to get away from him again. ‘I never, I—’
If he hyperventilates and faints on us, the paperwork is gonna take all night. I say, calm but firm, ‘Rory. The part about the guy wandering around Stoneybatter to feel closer to Aislinn. You’ve been doing a bit of that. Yeah?’
‘Yes. But—’
‘Hang on. One thing at a time. The part about him watching Aislinn from the laneway: you did a bit of that, too. Yeah?’
‘I just—’ Rory’s rubbing the back of one hand across his mouth, hard enough to leave red streaks. ‘No. I—’
‘Rory,’ I say. ‘Come on. You really want to tell us you were mooning around Stoneybatter for weeks, but you never went near Aislinn’s actual gaff till the exact night she got killed? Because I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘No. Wait.’ His hands fly up. He’s so easy to shove, step by step, back towards the corner he’s never going to get out of. ‘I watched her just, maybe, just a few times. Only to—’
Breslin – he’s pulled the photo over to himself and is examining it – says, ‘But on Saturday night, Aislinn caught you out.’
That voice. Easy, almost a drawl, almost friendly. But it fills up the air, leaves no room for anything else. ‘How did it happen? Did she come out onto the patio for some reason, see you hanging over her wall? Or maybe you said something about the trip to Tesco that made it obvious you knew your way around Stoneybatter. Maybe you said the kitchen looked nice with the new picture, or told her you love beef Wellington. And just like that’ – Breslin lifts his hand, lets it fall onto the photo with a flat thwack – ‘your dirty little secret’s out.’
Rory’s face is coated in a thin, sick shine of sweat. ‘I was never. No. I wasn’t in her house.’
Breslin ignores that. ‘You walk into that house thinking you’re walking into Paradise, and inside five minutes it’s all turned to shite. Jesus, man. Ouch. I’m scarlet for you just thinking about it.’ The sadistic curl at the corner of his mouth makes that into a joke. ‘How did Aislinn take it?’
‘She,
no
– she
didn’t
. It never, it didn’t happen, none of that – it—’
‘I bet you remember the exact look on her face. I bet you can’t get it out of your head. Was she disgusted with you? Scared of you? Did she think you were a freak? Or a psycho? Or a pathetic loser? What did she say, Rory?’
Rory tries to keep denying, but Breslin doesn’t give him the chance. He’s leaning across the table, close enough to make Rory smell his breath, his aftershave, the heat of his skin. ‘What? Did she laugh at you? Tell you to get out? Threaten to call us? What did it? What pushed you over the edge?’
‘I didn’t
do
anything!’
It comes out as a wild yelp. Breslin stares. ‘What the living fuck are you talking about? You stalked her, peeped at her, you call that nothing?’
‘No—’
‘Did she think it was nothing?’
‘She didn’t
know
! I—’
‘That’s a load of bollix. You keep babbling on about “needing a moment”, but twenty-five minutes isn’t a
moment
. Twenty-five minutes is more than enough time to take your
moment
out back, show up at Aislinn’s door, shove your foot in your mouth, lose the head, kill Aislinn, clean up after yourself, realise you need to account for all this time, and head for Tesco. Which is exactly what you did.’
Rory’s face is a strange mix of horror and something almost like relief. He’s run this scene in his head a hundred times already. Now that it’s taken shape and come to find him, it feels like something he already knows, all the sharp corners already rubbed smooth from so much handling. It’s actually easier, this time; we’re doing all the work for him. All he has to do is come out with his lines.
He says, ‘I never hurt her.’
After Breslin’s voice, his sounds weightless, a spindly thing floating on the hot air.
‘But you did go into her house,’ I say.
‘No. I swear.’
‘The Technical Bureau is processing the clothes you wore that night. What are you going to say when we find her carpet fibres on your trousers?’
‘You can’t. You won’t. I wasn’t in there.’
Breslin says, ‘No one else was.’
‘But the guy, the stalker guy—’
‘Oh, please. Did you seriously believe you were the first person to think of looking at Aislinn’s social life? Every guy who ever smiled at her, Rory, we’ve been all over him like a rash. Every one of them’s been eliminated. Have you got one reason, just one tiny reason, why I should believe your stalker exists?’
A sudden jerk out of Rory, his hands coming up. ‘Wait. Yes. There was a guy, on Saturday in the street I saw a guy—’
Our very own Pez machine: push open his mouth and out pops a brand-new story. I roll my eyes. Breslin laughs, a great full-blooded roar that slams Rory back in his chair. ‘Right. Only then aliens abducted you and wiped your memory, and it’s only just conveniently coming back.’
‘No—’
‘A piano fell on your head and you got amnesia.’
‘I didn’t—’
‘On Sunday you told us flat out that you didn’t remember seeing anyone in Stoneybatter except a bunch of teenagers playing football and some girls on a night out. There was no guy, Rory.’
Rory tries to talk, but that voice crashes through his like it’s a spiderweb, leaves it in tatters. ‘There’s nothing but you. Every piece we turn over, it’s got your face on it. The stalker was you, Rory. We all know it. Every single thing you told us about him, it turns out to have been you all along. The only thing left is the part where he knocks at Aislinn’s door and it all goes wrong – and guess what? That’ll turn out to be you, too.’
‘
No it won’t
. I was never in her house. Never.’
By this time he looks about a tenth of Breslin’s size, but he’s turned into all glare and chin. Not so easy to shove any more. We’ve found Rory’s sticking point.
I move in my chair. ‘There’s one more thing I think is important,’ I say, to Breslin.
‘We don’t need anything else, Conway. We’ve got plenty.’ Breslin reaches across to sweep the photos away from Rory and slaps them into a stack. ‘Let’s just put him under arrest, go get some dinner and come back to this afterwards.’
The word
arrest
opens Rory’s mouth, but only breath comes out. His eyes, white-ringed with terror, go to me. Shit just got real.
‘Hang on,’ I say to Breslin. ‘Hear me out.’
‘You’re the boss,’ he says, with a sigh. He leaves the photos and tilts his chair back, listening.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Aislinn had the cooker on, right? Making Rory that lovely fancy dinner.’
‘Yeah. And?’
‘And before Rory left, he turned it off.’
Rory starts to say, ‘I wasn’t—’ but Breslin lifts a hand to shut him up. ‘Right. That’s important how?’
‘The only reason to turn it off,’ I say, ‘would be that he didn’t want the house going on fire. Now, if Rory knew Aislinn was dead, or if he didn’t care whether she died or not – hang on a sec’ – Rory’s trying to talk again – ‘then his best bet would be to let the place burn. The house goes up in smoke, so does any evidence that he was there: the fibres, the prints, the DNA, the lot. Anyone who’s ever seen a cop show on the telly would know that. Amn’t I right?’
‘I’m listening,’ says Breslin. To Rory, who’s practically coming out of his seat: ‘You might want to sit down and pay attention to this, pal. It sounds like it might actually do you some good, and just being straight with you, you can’t afford to miss anything that’ll do that.’
After a second Rory sits back. His chest is going up and down like he’s been running.
Breslin asks, ‘Are you going to let Detective Conway finish what she’s saying?’
‘Yes. I will.’ When Breslin’s raised eyebrow prompts him: ‘Sorry. For interrupting.’
‘My point is,’ I say, ‘the only reason Rory
wouldn’t
want the place going on fire would be if he didn’t think Aislinn was dead, and he didn’t want her to die. Meaning he never intended to kill her.’
‘Ah-ha,’ Breslin says, nodding slowly. ‘Now I see what you’re getting at, Detective. You’re right: it is important. Everything else we’ve got looks like murder, and a pretty nasty one too; but if you’re right about why that cooker got turned off, then it’s not murder at all. It’s manslaughter.’
‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘
If
I’m right.’
‘
If.
There’s any number of reasons that cooker could’ve been turned off. Maybe Aislinn turned it off herself. Or maybe Rory’s got a touch of OCD going on, can’t leave a house without turning all the appliances off. But
if
you’re right . . .’
We both look at Rory. He’s glazing over. Too many stories logjamming in his head: he’s starting to lose hold of them all. Up to a point, this works for us: if the guy can’t keep track of what he’s said about what when, he gets sloppy. Too far past that point, though, he just stops making sense. If we’re gonna get anything out of Rory, it needs to be soon.
‘I’m done, Rory,’ I say. ‘You can talk now.’
Breslin lets him open his mouth before he says, ‘Actually, don’t. You’re about to tell us you were never in that house, and you need to think very, very hard before you do that. Murder is an automatic life sentence, Rory. Manslaughter is maybe six years, out in four. And if you don’t tell us why you turned off that cooker, then we’ve got nothing, not one thing, that says this was manslaughter, and a whole lot that says it was murder. So I’m telling you, Rory, for your own sake: before you say one more word, take just five minutes to think.’ And, when Rory tries talking again: ‘Ah-ah. Five minutes. I’ll tell you when it’s up.’ He shoots his cuff and looks at his watch. ‘Starting now.’