Authors: Tana French
I go to the doorway and watch him to the top of the road. His hat is under the street lamp, rolling a little in the rising wind; he bends to pick it up like his back hurts, dusts it off and keeps walking, out of the light and around the corner. He doesn’t look back again.
I wait five minutes, then another five, to make sure he’s well gone. My hands are shaking – the cold is hitting me – and I make sure my gun’s pointing behind me, into the house. When I’m positive he’s not going to try coming back, I holster up and ring Steve.
He picks up fast. ‘You OK?’
‘I’m grand. Where are you?’
‘I’m only in the pub round the corner – what’s it called, the Something Inn. I thought just in case – I mean, I know you’re well able, but . . . Is he, like, still there? Or . . . ?’
He wants to know if I’ve got a corpse on my sitting-room floor. ‘He left. Can you come back here?’
‘Yeah,’ Steve says, too promptly – now the little spa thinks I want to cry on his shoulder. ‘Be there in five.’
He’s hurrying down the road in three, wind grabbing at his scarf. ‘Jesus, relax the kacks,’ I say, opening the door for him. ‘The gaff isn’t on fire.’
‘You OK?’
‘Like I already said. I’m grand. Did you leave your pint?’
‘I did, yeah. I thought—’
His hair is sticking out sideways, all orange and urgent. ‘You bleeding drama queen, you,’ I say. ‘Want a drink to make up for it?’
‘Sure. Thanks.’
I head into the kitchen and go for the booze cupboard. ‘Whiskey OK?’
‘Yeah, fine.’ Steve hangs in the doorway and has a good look around the room, to avoid looking at me. He says, to the kitchen window, ‘I saw him. His face, like.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Me too.’
Steve waits for me to say something else. I say, ‘Ice?’
‘Yeah. Please.’ He watches me set out glasses and pour – my hands are rock-steady again. ‘Did you . . . ? I mean, are you going to see him again?’
I pass him a glass. ‘I’m guessing no. I told him if I do, I’ll shoot him.’
The loud, startled snort that escapes Steve makes me realise how it sounds, and all of a sudden I’m laughing too. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Steve says, through a wave of laughter. ‘I don’t think that went the way he was planning.’
That makes me worse. ‘The poor fucker. I’d almost feel sorry for him, you know that?’
‘Seriously?’
‘No. I hope he shat himself.’ That leaves the pair of us helpless, leaning against walls. I wipe my eyes, knock back my whiskey and pour myself another. ‘Here,’ I say, holding out my hand for Steve’s glass. ‘You’ve earned it. I’d say you thought I wanted your help to dispose of a body, did you?’
Steve chokes halfway through his shot and doubles over, which sets me off again. He spills half of it, and my whiskey is too good to waste, but I don’t care. I feel better than I have in a long time. ‘The state of you,’ I say, whipping the glass off him. ‘You need to learn to hold your drink. Here.’ I hand him his refill and head for the sofa.
‘You genuinely are grand,’ Steve says, turning serious and giving me a proper once-over. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Told you.’ I lean back into the cushions and take a sip of my booze, tasting it properly this time. I can feel things shifting, in the back corners of my head: a change in the angles of light, weights rebalancing. Maybe tomorrow when I ring my ma, I’ll tell her how I spent my evening. Now that ought to get a reaction.
Steve says, ‘Then . . . ?’ Meaning,
Then what am I doing here?
I sit up. I say, and I’ve gone sober too, ‘Something’s after hitting me. About the case.’
That moment, when my vision slid and stuttered and I saw what Aislinn was chasing, in all its miraculous excruciating glow. In that moment I saw what me and Steve should have spotted a good twenty-four hours ago: what Aislinn saw when her chat with Gary sent her Daddy daydream splattering across the floor. When that soothing lifeline voice of Gary’s reached her, in the middle of the wreckage. She saw the obvious next place to look.
Steve takes the other end of the sofa. He balances his glass between his fingers, not drinking, and watches me.
I say, ‘Remember what Gary said, on the phone? He told Aislinn her da was dead, and she went to bits. So he kept talking, to calm her down: went on about how much her da had loved her, how he was obviously a great guy. Does that sound like it’d put her off missing her da? Make her go,
Ah, what the hell, I’ll just leave it
?’
‘Nah. Someone like her, that’d make her feel like she couldn’t let go; there had to be something there worth finding. That’s what I’ve been saying.’
‘Remember what else Gary said to her? He went on about the guys working the case. How they were good Ds, how thorough they’d been. How if there was anything to find, they’d have found it.’
Steve shakes his head, eyebrows pulling together:
And?
‘If I was Aislinn,’ I say. My heart is banging. ‘If I was someone like her. I wouldn’t go off chasing some half-baked gang fantasy for no good reason. I’d go after someone who I knew could give me actual info. I’d go looking for one of those Ds.’
There’s a silence. Faint wind struggles in the chimney.
Steve says, ‘How would you find them?’
‘I’ll bet you anything Gary named names. “I know Feeney and McCann, they’re great detectives, I’m sure they did everything they could . . .” ’
Steve says, like he’s not breathing right, ‘McCann.’
Another silence, and the wind.
I say, ‘Aislinn rings up Missing Persons and asks for Feeney or McCann. The admin tells her Feeney’s retired and McCann’s moved to Murder. She’s got no way to chase Feeney down, but it’s easy as pie to find out where Murder’s based and wait outside at the shift changes. She wouldn’t even have needed to ask around to pinpoint her guy; the amount of time she’d spent thinking about this, she’d have recognised him. Even after fifteen years.’
‘And then what? Say she tracked him down; then what?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know.’
Steve runs a hand over his head, trying automatically to smooth down his hair. ‘Are you figuring he was the secret boyfriend?’
‘I thought of that, but I can’t see any reason she’d want him. We’re back to the same old question: a girl like that, why would she go for some middle-aged cop starting a beer gut? Flirt with him to get the story on her dad: sure. But be his bit on the side for six months? Why?’
‘She’s trying to get closer to her dad, McCann’s the only link she’s got—’
‘Jaysus.’ I make a face. ‘Now that’s fucked up. I don’t see it, but. Gary was a link to her dad, too, and she didn’t pull anything like that on him. He would’ve said.’
‘Maybe she was a badge bunny.’ Steve is still running his hand over his hair, again and again. ‘She comes in to talk to you and Gary, gets a look around, decides she likes the vibe . . .’
They’re out there. Women, mostly, but I’ve run into a few guys along the way. You could have a face like a warthog and they wouldn’t give a damn; they barely see you. What they’re chasing is the buzz of second-hand adrenaline, second-hand power, the story that doesn’t end with
And then he worked in the call centre ever after
: tell me who you arrested today, keep the uniform on in the bedroom and get your handcuffs out. They’re easy enough to spot, but there are cops out there who love it; makes them feel like rock stars. And it lets them punch above their weight.
McCann would have been punching farther above than most, though. ‘If that was all she was after,’ I say, ‘she could’ve gone down to Copper Face Jack’s and had her pick of good-looking young fellas. Why him?’
‘Because she didn’t want some uniform who spent his day giving people hassle for not having their car tax up to date. Like we said before: after the life she’d had, she wanted thrills. She wanted a Murder D.’
I can see it. Murder are the big-game hunters; we spend our days going after the top predators. For these people, that makes us the top prey.
If that’s what Aislinn was after, Steve has a point: she didn’t have a lot of options. Murder is small: two dozen of us, give or take. Half are McCann’s age, or older. No one’s a supermodel.
All the same, I don’t believe she’d have picked out McCann. Going by Rory and the exes, rough and silent wasn’t her style. She would have skimmed straight over McCann and kept looking, gone for someone smoother around the edges, someone with a bit of chat to draw her in; someone like—
Someone like Breslin.
Breslin, with his lovely little wifey and three lovely little kiddies. Breslin, with plenty to lose if the badge bunny turned bunny-boiler. Breslin, pushing us to charge Rory Fallon and close the case.
I say, ‘Oh, Jesus.’
‘The only thing is the timing,’ Steve says. ‘If you’re right and Aislinn got McCann’s name off Gary, that was two and a half years ago. According to Lucy, she only picked up the secret boyfriend six months back. Why the gap?’
‘Try this,’ I say. ‘Aislinn goes to McCann looking for info, he gives her the brush-off. She doesn’t give up; every few months she’s back, hassling him for more. Then one day she turns up at the squad, he doesn’t feel like dealing with her, he sends his partner out to get rid of her for him. And Aislinn likes what she sees.’
Steve’s face has gone immobile. It changes him, strips away the studenty perkiness so that for once I can get a good look at what’s underneath. He’s turned adult, sharp, not someone to mess with.
I say, ‘Remember the neighbour who called in a guy going over Aislinn’s patio wall? Male, medium build, dark coat, probably middle-aged; and probably fair hair.’
Steve says, ‘Breslin the Monk. Having a full-on affair. You think?’
‘Everyone says Aislinn was something special, when it came to sucking people into her fantasies. The woman had talent, and she had practice. And Breslin, he overestimates himself and underestimates other people. Those are the ones who get tripped up. If she decided she wanted him . . .’
‘Yeah, but getting into something that risky? Breslin’s very careful of himself.’
‘He was careful. No calls, no texts, no e-mails, nothing. And remember how someone ran Aislinn through the system? Last September, right after she picked up her secret boyfriend? He was making sure she’d never been reported for stalking, harassment, blackmail, anything that said she might be a psycho.’
Something hard flashes in Steve’s face. He says, ‘Remember how you told Breslin to take the recordings of Rory’s male KAs down to Stoneybatter? To see if the uniform could ID the guy who called it in?’
‘Yeah. The pompous bastard palmed it off on Gaffney—’ And I stop there.
Steve says, ‘I thought he was too important for scut work.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Me too.’
‘That’s what he wanted us thinking. It was nothing to do with that. He couldn’t risk the uniform hearing his voice.’
That movie-trailer voice.
In a world
. . . Even the thickest uniform would remember that voice. Unless, maybe, someone made sure he was bombarded with possibles till his memory smeared beyond recovering.
Breslin called this in. My mind jams on that like a needle stuck on a record, hitting it over and over. This isn’t just us playing imagination games. This happened. Breslin called it in.
I say, ‘No wonder the call didn’t come in to 999. He couldn’t have a recording floating around.’
‘And no wonder the secret boyfriend’s invisible. Breslin wouldn’t go leaving love notes, or sending Facebook messages. Unless there’s something solid in that computer folder, we’ve got nothing.’
‘We’ve got Lucy. She could confirm the relationship. Whether she’ll do it is a whole other question.’
‘Lucy.’ Steve’s head goes back as it hits him. ‘Jesus Christ. And we were wondering why she was so cagey. She was trying to figure out whether we were pals of Breslin’s.’
The whiskey tastes ferocious in my mouth, dangerous. I say, ‘Because she thinks he killed Aislinn.’
Silence, a small one this time. My heart beats strong and slow in my ears.
Steve says, ‘That doesn’t mean she’s right.’
‘She was afraid of us,’ I say. ‘“I don’t know anything about Ash’s secret fella, she told me nothing, we’re not that close . . .” She was terrified that we were the cleanup crew, and if we thought she knew anything . . .’
‘But she dropped the hint about the boyfriend all the same. If we were actually on the up-and-up, she wanted us looking around, not fixating on Rory.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Fair play to Lucy. She’s got guts.’
Steve takes a swallow of his drink like he needs it. ‘Yeah, but enough guts to come out and say what she knows? It’s been two days now, she hasn’t been in touch about giving her statement . . . She wants nothing to do with us.’
‘We need her. Without her, we’ve got fuck-all linking Aislinn to either Breslin or McCann. We can’t exactly go showing her photo around the job, ask if anyone remembers seeing her with either of them.’
‘The barman in Ganly’s? He saw Aislinn with her fella.’
‘He didn’t see
them
. He saw Aislinn, with some middle-aged guy vaguely in the background. He’ll never make the ID.’