Authors: Tana French
The gaffer nods. ‘I would’ve put money on that. Nice to know I’m not losing the bit I have.’ He resettles himself in his chair, adjusts his waistband over his belly. ‘Now we’ve got that cleared up,’ he says. ‘Let’s talk about Saturday night.’
McCann opens his mouth, but O’Kelly lifts a hand. ‘No. Hang on. That’s not what I’m asking you.’
McCann shuts up.
‘Breslin told these two you found Aislinn dead. But he told me that you – that his
mate
, I mean – didn’t even check for a pulse. Why?’
A shake of McCann’s head, baffled and wary. This isn’t what he was expecting. Not what I was expecting, either. I’m not sure, any more, that I have the foggiest clue what the gaffer is at.
‘He wanted me thinking the mate was a civilian, is why. So he said the mate panicked and did a runner, the way a civilian would. The way no D would, ever.’ O’Kelly shoots a sharp glance at McCann, under his eyebrows. ‘You happy with that?’
A humourless twist of McCann’s mouth. ‘Not happy with any of this.’
‘You shouldn’t be. You let Breslin paint you as a civilian, to keep you out of hassle with your gaffer. How does that sit with you?’
McCann’s jaw moves. ‘Not great.’
‘Good. Because it’s not sitting great with me, either.’ O’Kelly leaves that for a moment, but McCann’s got nothing to add. ‘And then, a minute ago, you said Aislinn made you feel the way you used to feel on a good case: like what you did mattered.’
Nod.
‘Used to feel, you said. Meaning not any more.’
McCann’s eyes are on the floor.
‘Since when?’
‘Don’t know. A couple of years back.’
‘What happened?’
O’Kelly’s leaning forward, elbows on the desk, as close as he can get. Me and Steve aren’t moving. We’re not even in the room. This is between McCann and O’Kelly.
McCann says, ‘It wasn’t the job. It was me. What I said before: somewhere in there, it started feeling like everything I’d ever do was already set in stone. Middle of a big interview, out of nowhere I’d get this feeling like my mouth was moving by itself, like I was reading off a script and there was no way I could change it. It’d hit me that it didn’t matter who was sitting in my seat, asking the questions; the ending would be the same if it was me, Winters, O’Gorman, anyone. Felt like I was vanishing. It wasn’t that I stopped seeing myself as a D. I stopped seeing myself at all.’
The gaffer says, heavily, ‘I should’ve spotted that.’
McCann says urgently, ‘It never made a difference on the job, gaffer. I never slacked. No matter what, I gave it a hundred per cent.’
‘I know.’ O’Kelly leans back in his chair, runs a hand over his mouth. ‘What were you planning? Transfer off the squad? Hold out till you had your thirty and retire?’
McCann’s face upturned to him, like a kid’s, begging. ‘No. Gaffer, no. I thought midlife crisis, I’ll work through it, come out the other side, get my head back— I wasn’t going anywhere. Here till they drag me out.’
O’Kelly says – not brutal, just quiet and simple – ‘That’s out now.’
McCann bites down on his lip.
‘I can’t have you on the squad.’
After a long time, the smallest slice of a nod.
‘And I can’t palm you off on some other squad. Not knowing what I do.’
That nod again.
‘And the story’s going to come out, one way or another. Aislinn’s mate: we can keep her quiet for a while, but sooner or later she’ll cop that the case is going nowhere, and she’ll find herself a journo to talk to.’ O’Kelly doesn’t look at me and Steve, doesn’t act like he even knows we’re there, but I wonder. ‘And we’ll have the Garda Ombudsman jumping down our throats. There’ll be two inquiries, minimum: ours, and theirs. Breslin’ll be for the chop.’ That pulls a quick in-breath through McCann’s nose, jerks his head back. ‘What do you expect? Withholding evidence, and there’s that phone call to Stoneybatter to prove it. He’ll be lucky if he’s not up on charges.’
‘Gaffer,’ McCann says. The raw desperation gashing his voice open; I can’t look at him. ‘It’s not Breslin’s fault. He did nothing, only stood by me. Please—’
‘I won’t be able to do anything for Breslin, McCann. I’m for the chop, too.’ No self-pity in O’Kelly’s voice; these are facts, no different from fingerprint results or alibi times. ‘Unless I put in my papers before the investigation finishes up. In which case I won’t be around to give Breslin a dig-out.’
‘Christ,’ McCann says, barely above a whisper. ‘Ah, Christ, gaffer. I’m sorry.’
‘No. Don’t be getting maudlin on me. It’s done now.’ O’Kelly’s face across the desk, all unmovable grooves and crevices, like something carved a long time ago to send a message I can’t read. ‘You’ve got a choice. You can go out like a scumbag. Or you can be a D one more time.’
The silence goes on for so long. The office has changed, shifted, the same way the cosy interview room did. Crayon drawings, tiny flakes stirring in the snow globe. Thin skin stretched over clean bones and clacking teeth.
McCann says, quietly, ‘Saturday evening, after dinner, I told my wife I was going for a pint and I headed over to Aislinn’s house. I went in through the kitchen; saw the dinner cooking, but I didn’t think anything of it. There was music playing, dancy stuff, Aislinn didn’t hear me come in. I went out into the sitting room calling her – quiet, like always, so the neighbours wouldn’t hear – and I saw the table, set for two. Wineglasses. Candle. I thought it was for us. Should’ve known. I’m never over to her on Saturdays – mostly my wife wants to go out to a restaurant, only that evening she had a headache; no way Aislinn would’ve guessed I was coming. But all I could think about was seeing her.’
I risk a flash of sideways glance at Steve and meet him risking one at me, wide-eyed. We’re the only ones gobsmacked here. McCann’s voice doesn’t even hold a flicker of surprise at what he’s doing. The moment he walked into this room, he knew what O’Kelly would want from him. Breslin knew, too; that’s why they didn’t come to the gaffer with a version that had McCann in it, beg him to thin-blue-line it all away. Me and Steve were the only fools who didn’t get it.
‘And then she came out of the bedroom,’ McCann says. ‘Bright blue dress, beautiful; winter evening like that, nothing but grey and damp, and then this blue that’d light up your whole head . . . Her hair down, she knew I loved it like that. Putting an earring in one ear. I went to go to her, I . . .’ His hands come up, sketching the offer of an embrace.
‘Aislinn . . . she jumped a mile. Then she saw it was me. I expected her to laugh and kiss me, but the face on her; horrified. Like I was an intruder. That was when I started to cop: it wasn’t me she was waiting for. She put up her hands to stop me touching her, and she said, “You need to go.” ’
He’s breathing hard, the rush of disbelief hitting him all over again. ‘I couldn’t wrap my head . . . I asked her, I said, “What? What are you doing? What are you on about?” But she just kept pointing at the back door, telling me to go. I was begging her, don’t even know what I was saying. I said, “What’s happened? Just Wednesday night we were, three days ago, we— Have you had enough of me going home to my wife? Am I not spending enough time with you? I’ll end it with my wife tonight, I’ll move in, do anything— Was there something someone said about me, did your mate Lucy, I’ll explain, let me—”
‘But she was just shaking her head: no, not that, no, no, just go. She was trying to move me towards the kitchen,
herding
me, only I wouldn’t, or I couldn’t . . . I said – stupid, standing there, couldn’t keep up – I said, “Are we done? Does this mean we’re done?” And Aislinn, she stopped like she’d never thought of that. Startled. And then she said, “Well. Yes. I suppose it does.” ’
There’s no way I’d risk a glance at Steve now. Neither of us is breathing.
‘It felt like a joke,’ McCann says. ‘I was waiting for the punchline. But her face: she meant it. I said, all I could say, “
Why?
”
‘She said, “Go home.” I said, “Tell me why and I’ll go. Whatever it is, just tell me. I can’t live wondering.”
‘She looked at me and she laughed. Aislinn’s got a lovely laugh, sweet little giggle, but this wasn’t— This was something different. Great wild laugh, huge. She sounded . . .’
McCann’s throat moves as he hears that laugh again, growing and growing to fill his head, unstoppable. ‘She sounded happy. The happiest I’d ever heard her. And then she said, “You keep on wondering. Now fuck off.” ’
He stops talking.
O’Kelly says, ‘And.’
McCann says, ‘And I hit her.’
Me and Steve, we went at McCann by ripping away what he believed most about his life, blowing it up in front of his eyes, and hoping there’d be too little of him left to hold out against us. Just like Aislinn had been planning. But when we took as much of McCann as we could, shredded him into the last thing he ever wanted to be, we left him with
No comment
.
O’Kelly offered McCann a way back to who he was. McCann’s taken it.
He says, ‘It wasn’t murder, gaffer. It was manslaughter. I never meant her to die.’
The gaffer says, ‘I know.’
‘It never came to me that she might. Not till after.’
‘I know.’
I’m taking in a breath to say it. Cooper’s report. McCann is no bodybuilder. He landed that punch when Aislinn was down, head on the stone fireplace.
O’Kelly hears the breath. His eyes flick to me and he waits for what I’m going to say. His face still hasn’t changed. Only the eyes, moving in shadow, look alive.
I shut my mouth.
The gaffer’s eyes go back to McCann. He says, ‘We need this on record. You understand that?’
McCann nods. He keeps nodding for a long time.
O’Kelly leans his hands on the desk to stand up. ‘Time to go,’ he says.
McCann’s face turns up to him, quickly.
‘I’ll do it,’ the gaffer says. Steadying, like a surgeon promising to cut it out himself, not to let the med students touch the scalpel.
McCann says, ‘Maura.’
‘I’ll go see her. Soon as we’re done.’
McCann nods again. He stands up. Stays by the chair, arms hanging at his sides, waiting to be told where to go next.
The gaffer tugs down his jacket, carefully, like he’s got somewhere important to be. He switches off the desk lamp and looks around his office, absently, touching his pockets. His eyes fall on me and Steve like he forgot we were there.
‘Go home,’ he says.
We don’t talk. Down the long silent corridor, the padding of our feet on the carpet like muffled heartbeats. Down the stairs, through the cold draught that fidgets in the stairwell, to the locker room: coats on, satchels on shoulders, locker doors closing. Back upstairs, the smiles and the nods and the few words with Bernadette at reception stuffing tissue packets and throat lozenges into her bag, ready to go home. And outside, to the wide sharp blast of city-smell and cold.
The great courtyard, the floodlights, the civil servants scurrying home. It all looks strange: small stark paper things, far away. A big solve does that to you, leaves the world scoured dawn-white, sand-white, empty except for the solve smooth and heavy as a deep-dived rock in your hand.
Only it’s more than that, this time. The cobblestones feel wrong under my feet, thin skins of stone over bottomless fog. The squad I’ve spent the last two years hating, the mob of sniggering fucktards backstabbing the solo warrior while she gallantly fought her doomed battle: that’s gone, peeled away like a smeared film that was stuck down hard over the real thing. The squad I would’ve chopped off an arm to join, the shining line of ass-kicking superheroes, that went a long time ago. What’s left underneath is smaller than either of those, quieter and more complicated, done in finer detail. Roche, begging for a punch in the gob, which is high on my to-do list. The lads, each of them deep in his own mix of dodgy alibis and messy fibre evidence and the baby’s chickenpox, occasionally glancing up to roll their eyes at Roche’s bullshit or mine. The gaffer – it occurs to me that just maybe the gaffer throws the odd domestic our way, not because they piss me off, but because they have a good clearance rate and he wants our stats solid; or maybe, even simpler, because he knows we’ll work the hell out of them. All of them, and Steve. And me.
We stand in the courtyard, hands in our pockets, shoulders up against the cold. We’re not sure where to go from here; there’s no rule book, no ritual, to tell us what comes after a day like this one. Above us the Murder windows are lit and alert, ready for whatever tonight’s got in store. Somewhere up there O’Kelly and McCann are in an interview room, heads bent close, talking low and steady. Breslin is alone in the observation room, watching through the slow swell and ebb of his breath on the glass, not moving.
Steve says, ‘He was looking after us.’
He means the gaffer, sending us home. ‘I know,’ I say. It’ll be O’Kelly’s name on McCann’s statement sheet, O’Kelly’s name on the book of evidence that goes to the prosecutor. When we walk into the squad room tomorrow, we won’t be hissed out of it. Breslin will hate our guts, as long as he lives. The rest of them will watch O’Kelly, walking out of the building shoulder to shoulder with McCann to take him to booking, and understand.