The Trespasser

Chapter 12

Rory is in even worse shape than he was on Sunday. His hair still has that plastered-down look, his eyes are bloodshot and his skin is a dry, clothy white. He smells of clothes left too long in the washing machine. A smile jerks up on his face when he sees us, but it’s a reflex, jittery and mechanical. We’re gonna have fun getting him chilled out enough to be useful.

We start by taking him to the nice interview room, the one for shaken-up witnesses and victims’ relatives. It’s cute: pastel-yellow paint, chairs that don’t hate you, a kettle and a hotel-style basket of tea bags and itty-bitty sachets of instant coffee. My First Interview Room, we call it. Even through his jitters, Rory feels the difference; he relaxes enough to take off his second-best coat and hang it tidily over the back of his chair. Underneath he has on jeans and a baggy beige jumper that’s twenty quid’s worth of knitted depression.

‘Let’s get through the paperwork first,’ Breslin says, sliding a rights sheet and a pen across the table. Since Chief Jock is the intimidating one, he’s armed with a big file bursting with everything that could come in useful, plus random paper for padding. Cool Girl is on Rory’s side, deep down, so I’ve got nothing but my notebook and my pen. ‘Sorry about this; I know you’ve already done it, but we need a new one of these every time. You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence. Just like last time. Is that all OK?’

Rory signs without reading. ‘Thanks,’ Breslin says, through a yawn and a pec-display stretch. ‘I need real coffee, not that instant rubbish. Rory? Antoinette? What’ll I get you?’

Normally I’d smack down the ‘Antoinette’ crap, but I know what he’s at. ‘Oh God, yeah, real coffee,’ I say. ‘Black, no sugar. And see if you can find a couple of biscuits, would you? I’m starving.’

‘I’ll raid O’Gorman’s stash,’ Breslin says, grinning. ‘He buys the good stuff; no Rich Tea nonsense there. Rory, what’ll you have?’

‘Um, I-’ A baffled blink while Rory tries to chase down the potential implications of hot drinks. ‘Tea would be- No, coffee. With a bit of milk. Please.’

‘Your wish is my command,’ Breslin says, and hauls himself out of his chair with a groan. ‘I could sleep for a week. It’s this bloody weather. One decent bit of sunshine and I’d be a new man.’

‘Have a look through O’Gorman’s desk, while you’re at it,’ I say. ‘See if he’s got a couple of tickets to Barbados in there.’

‘If he does, we’re out of here. Rory, got your passport?’ Rory manages to catch up and find a laugh, a few seconds too late. Breslin throws us both a grin on his way out the door.

I lean back in my chair, stretching out my legs in front of me, and pull out my hair elastic to redo my bun while we wait. ‘Oof,’ I say. ‘Long few days. How’ve you been getting on?’

‘OK. It’s a lot to take in.’ Rory’s on guard. He hasn’t forgotten that I’m the mean cop who didn’t tell him Aislinn was dead. Steve would have had him cosy and chatting in no time.

Steve isn’t the only one who can play nice. ‘It is, all right,’ I say. ‘Do you want me to set you up with Victim Support, find you someone you can talk to? That’s their job, helping people through this kind of thing. They’re good.’

‘No. Thanks.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes. I’ll be fine. I just… what I really need is to know what happened. I need to know that.’

‘Well, yeah,’ I say, with a rueful grin. ‘Don’t we all.’

Rory risks a fast glance at me. ‘Don’t you…? Do you know yet?’

I sigh and give my head a massage, while I have the hair down. ‘To be honest with you, no, we don’t. We’ve followed a load of lines of investigation, and I can’t go into details, but basically none of them are taking us anywhere. That’s why we’re calling back the people who were closest to Aislinn: we’re hoping someone will be able to give us a fresh idea, kick-start things.’

Rory says, still wary, ‘I’d only known her a couple of months.’

‘I know, yeah. But a connection like you and Aislinn had, that counts more than years of sitting next to her in work and chatting about internet kitty pics.’ I get the tone right: no syrup, just direct and clean and matter-of-fact. ‘You understood her. That was obvious, last time we talked. You weren’t just seeing some blonde with a faceful of fancy makeup; you saw straight through all that. You saw who she really was.’

Rory says quietly, ‘That’s what it felt like.’

‘That’s valuable, man. Me, I’m never going to meet Aislinn. I’m relying on people like you to show me who she was. That’s how we’ll figure out what could’ve happened to her.’ I’ve forgotten all about putting my hair back up; too earnest about this conversation, too far into off-duty chat mode. ‘And I’d say you’ve thought about nothing else, the last couple of days. Am I right?’

Rory bites at his lips. After a moment: ‘More or less. Yes.’

‘And the last couple of nights.’

A nod.

‘Hang in there,’ I say gently. ‘I know what it’s like. At first it feels like it’s taken over your whole life, yeah? And you’re never going to get your head above water again?’

The breath and the wariness go out of Rory together. His shoulders fall forward; he pushes his fingers up under his glasses to rub at his eyes. ‘I haven’t slept. I don’t do well with no sleep, but I can’t… I’ve just been walking up and down my living room, hours and hours – my legs are killing me. Late last night something happened in the street outside, a man shouting, and I thought I was having a heart attack; I genuinely thought I was going to die, right there leaning against my wall. I haven’t been able to open the shop, I haven’t even been able to go out of my flat, in case I make a fool of myself by fainting if someone slams a car door.’ He gives me a glance that’s meant to be defiant. ‘I suppose you think that’s pathetic.’

I do, but even more, I think it’s gonna be useful. ‘Me?’ I say, startled. ‘Jesus, no. I’ve seen a lot of people go through this. The way you’re feeling, that’s par for the course.’

‘When you rang… I was actually relieved, do you know that? Which is obviously ridiculous, but all I could think was that now I don’t have to spend the day…’ His voice wavers. He presses his fingertips to his mouth.

‘You’re doing me a favour, too,’ I say, with just the right amount of sympathy in the smile. ‘In this weather, I’m a lot happier in here than out doing door-to-door.’

‘All I can do is think about it. How it might have happened. I’ve come up with dozens of scenarios. That’s why I can’t sleep. When I close my eyes, those are all I can see.’

‘Thank Jaysus,’ I say, heartfelt. And when Rory looks up, eyes widening: ‘That’s what we do, yeah? We come up with theories on how this could have happened, and then we try to match them to the facts. Only this time none of them are matching, and I have to admit, I’ve run out of theories. I’ve been going mental trying to come up with more. If you’ve got any new ones, then for Jaysus’ sake, throw them my way.’

That would give Steve a laugh: me, begging for all the if-then-maybe fantasy crap this guy can dish out. The thought of Steve jabs me up under the ribs hard enough to mess with my breath.

Rory manages a small, tugged-down smile. ‘How long have you got?’

‘Tell you what: start with your best shot. The one that, deep down, you think is actually what happened. If it’s any good… Jaysus, I’ll owe you big-time. And if it doesn’t fly, and that fella’s still not back with the coffee, you can throw the next one at me.’

He looks at me like I might be setting him up for some point-and-laugh joke. ‘Seriously?’

‘Of course, seriously,’ I say. ‘I told you: we rang you because we need all the help we can get. Anything you’ve got is better than a load of nothing. Unless you figure it was, like, aliens.’

This time the smile is almost real. ‘No aliens,’ Rory says. ‘I promise.’ I sit up and pull out my notebook, ready to catch the pearls of wisdom. ‘Well. This is the one I keep coming back to. The thing about Aislinn…’

Saying her name makes him flinch. He takes off his glasses and polishes them, turning me and the room blurry and soft, easy to talk to. ‘The thing you have to understand about Aislinn,’ he says, ‘is that she was the kind of person who made you daydream. When you were with her, you found yourself coming up with stories.’ His back is straightening already; I’ve got him on home ground. ‘I wondered if it was because she was a daydreamer herself – I could tell she was; it takes one to know one – but it was more than that. It was because she didn’t mind slipping into your daydream. Coming along for the ride. She liked it.’

Which sounds like a load of bollix to me: no one likes being turned into a bit part in someone else’s fantasy. If that reaches my face, Rory can’t see it, not with his glasses off; but he says, like he heard me thinking, ‘She did. Just to give you an idea: when we went for dinner, I said to her that it felt like we’d known each other for years. Aislinn said yes, she felt the same way – she said something like “Maybe we did meet, somewhere along the way. It’s a small country…” So I said, “Maybe we played together when we were little. Six, maybe. In a playground, in autumn. Maybe you’d brought your doll along…” Aislinn was smiling, and she said she always did bring her doll to the playground, a grubby old thing called Caramel. So I said, “Maybe you put Caramel down on a bench, so she could watch you on the swings, and I was on the swing next to yours. And then another little girl came along and thought Caramel had been abandoned, and picked her up…” ’

Remembering the doll’s name would have been adorable in the groom’s speech; in this context, it’s well over the line into creepy. Rory’s smiling faintly, back at the Aislinn in his memory. ‘I told her the whole story. The two of us saw the other little girl taking Caramel away, so we escaped from our families and followed her and her mother onto a bus and all the way into town, running after her down O’Connell Street, into Clery’s – I said a Guard went after us, but we dodged and hid inside a huge umbrella, and we foiled a pickpocket by tripping him up with the point of the umbrella… It turned out that the pickpocket had just robbed the little girl’s mother’s wallet, and they were so grateful to us, the little girl didn’t even mind giving Caramel back to Aislinn. And she and her mother brought us home in a horse-drawn carriage.’

Holy Jaysus. By this time I would have been out of the restaurant and halfway home, on the phone to my mate Lisa, breaking my shite laughing and swearing off relationships for life. ‘I see what you mean about the date going great guns,’ I say, smiling away. ‘That must’ve been lovely.’

‘It was. I’m sure it sounds silly, but at the time it felt-’ His chin goes up defiantly. ‘It felt magical. As if the whole thing had actually happened, but somehow we’d both forgotten, and telling the story was bringing it to life again. Aislinn was laughing, adding in bits of her own; she kept saying, “We must have been starving, maybe the man at the doughnut kiosk in O’Connell Street gave us doughnuts,” and “Maybe a dog almost sniffed us out under the umbrella, and we threw a bit of doughnut to make it go away…” Like I said: she was happy with me making up stories around her. She encouraged it. She brought it out in people.’

He makes it sound like the whole thing was as unthinking and cute as a smile, just Aislinn skipping along among the daisies scattering happy daydreams wherever she went. I’m not so sure. I think of her in Missing Persons that day, pelting me with everything that should have started my mind wandering off down stories: the mystery, the tears, the snippets of info about what her dad had been like, the scraps of childhood reminiscence. If I had bitten – and maybe I would have, if the Daddy crap hadn’t rubbed me up the wrong way – I would have been a lot more likely to give her what she was after: And then the genius detective solved the poor orphan girl’s problem, and they all lived happily ever after. It worked on Gary. Aislinn knew how to use her knack.

She didn’t get me. I raise a mental finger at her and say to Rory, ‘And you’re thinking that might have had something to do with what happened to her.’

Rory is nodding hard. ‘Yes. Yes. The thing about daydreams is that they don’t last. One brush up against reality, and that’s the end of them. I know I must sound ridiculously spacy to someone like you, but I do understand that much.’

A sudden slice to his voice, and a sharp flash of his eyes; gone almost too fast to catch, but I was watching. Rory isn’t fluffy clouds and adorable endings straight through; he’s got something solid and keen-edged at the centre. Just like Aislinn. That combination made the two of them a perfect match, and then it turned on them.

‘For someone like me,’ Rory says, ‘that’s not a problem. I spend half my time in my head anyway, always have. I realise that, too.’ That edge again. ‘So when I bang up against reality and it bursts my bubble, that’s not the end of the world. I’m used to it. Deep down, I was expecting it all the time.’

Which sounds a lot like a sideways explanation for why it couldn’t have been me, honest, Detective. You get them a lot. Mostly you get them from killers. I nod along, concentrating hard on all these valuable insights.

Rory says, ‘But a lot of people aren’t like that. It took me a while to realise, when I was younger: some people spend all their time focused on what’s actually happening.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I say. Confidentially: ‘You get a lot of cops like that. No imagination.’

That gets an automatic half-smile, but Rory’s too deep in his story to pay much attention to me. ‘So if a man like that were to run into Aislinn, he wouldn’t know how to prepare for the fact that his bubble was, almost definitely, going to burst. And when it did…’

‘I get you,’ I say, doing a little focused frown. ‘At least, I think I do. Tell me what you’re picturing. Specifics.’

Rory draws patterns on the table with one fingertip. He says, slowly, ‘I think he was someone who wouldn’t even have come onto your radar, because he knew Aislinn so briefly. They meet in a nightclub, maybe, or through her work, and they get talking. Maybe he gets her phone number and they meet up for a drink, or maybe it never even gets that far. But his mind’s already gone wild spinning stories, and he’s intoxicated by the feeling – especially since, to him, it’s brand-new.’

By now Breslin is waiting in the observation room, rolling his eyes and muttering at me to get a move on, while our coffee goes cold. He can do some deep breathing. If Rory needs all day to talk himself into this, then he’s gonna get all day.

‘And then, for whatever reason, Aislinn decides not to go any further with the relationship.’ Rory looks up at me. His fingers are pressing down hard on the tabletop. ‘If you’re not used to that reality check, it’s devastating. It’s like I imagine cold turkey would feel to a heroin addict: actual physical upheaval, as well as psychological. Your body and your mind, floundering.’

‘So he goes after her?’ I say.

Rory shakes his head vehemently. ‘No. Not like that. Someone who would do that, attack a woman just for breaking up with him after an evening or two – that’s a monster. A psychopath. And Aislinn wouldn’t have got involved with a monster to begin with. Just because she enjoyed daydreaming, that doesn’t mean she was oblivious to reality. This man must have been a decent guy. Things just got out of control.’

Your average innocent guy whose girlfriend’s been murdered, he’s gonna picture the killer as a foaming animal who deserves seven kinds of electric chair. Rory can’t afford to. ‘That makes sense, yeah,’ I say, taking notes and nodding. ‘So what does he do?’

‘If he can’t be with Aislinn, at least he needs more material for the daydreams. Something to feed them. She’s mentioned where she works, so he starts hanging around outside there, to see her come out. One evening he follows her home.’ Some new charge is revving up underneath Rory’s voice, powering it, swelling it. I don’t need to nudge him, not any more. ‘And once he knows where she lives, it becomes an addiction. He can’t stay away. He tries, but every few days he finds himself straying towards Stoneybatter, before he realises he’s going to do it. He finds himself wandering around the streets thinking about her feet touching those same pavements; buying chocolate bars he doesn’t want, just to shop where she does. He finds himself outside her house, watching her while she makes cups of herbal tea and does her ironing.’

He’s keeping close to the truth, staying parallel, almost touching. Smart choice: it makes the story ring almost true.

‘He gets used to it, being out there in the dark, curling his toes to keep them from freezing. Watching the light in her windows. Imagining himself turning the key in the door and stepping into that warmth, and her coming to kiss him. Imagining the two of them cooking dinner together in that bright kitchen. He finds a routine, a kind of equilibrium; a kind of contentment. He could live like that indefinitely.’

Rory has changed. No more timid little gerbil. He’s sitting forward, hands moving in fast, clean, confident gestures; that charge under his voice has built till every corner of the room hums with it. For the first time I can see why Aislinn went for him. This shite is the last thing I’d want in a guy, but it’s got power. Rory has risen up out of his beige huddle and become someone who would make you turn to look when he came through a door, and keep looking.

‘And then,’ he says. ‘Saturday night. This man went to watch Aislinn, as usual, but what he saw was different. He saw her all dressed up and made up, glowing like a treasure chest. He saw her making dinner, not just for herself, but for two people; taking two wineglasses out of the cupboard and bringing them into the sitting room. He saw her singing into her corkscrew, dancing, shaking her hair around and laughing at herself. He saw how happy she was. How she couldn’t wait.’

Getting ready singing into corkscrew like teenager w hairbrush. That smell of blood soaks the air again, butcher’s-shop thick. Rory’s imagination is good, but he’s not clairvoyant. He was watching Aislinn on Saturday night.

‘It would have knocked him breathless. He must have felt like the world was tilting, he must have thought he had believed in that daydream so hard that it had burst its way into reality… He wouldn’t have known that that’s not the way life works.’ A bitter wrench to one side of Rory’s mouth. ‘He would have been sure that, somehow, Aislinn was wearing that dress and cooking that meal for him. And when he could breathe again, he would have stepped out of the dark and wiped the worst of the rain off his coat, and he would have knocked on her door.’

Nice ending. Rory folds his hands, takes a long breath and looks at me expectantly. He wants to leave it there.

I’m loving this interview. Not just because it’s going well; I’m loving this interview because it’s clean. No ifs and maybes twitching in the corners, gumming up the air, itching inside my clothes. No layers on layers of outside chances and hypotheticals to take into account every time I open my mouth or listen to an answer. Just me and the guy across from me, and what we both know he did. It lies on the table between us, a solid thing with the taut dark shine of a meteorite, for the winner to claim.

I say, ‘And then?’

Rory’s neck twists. When I keep watching him, eyebrows up and inquiring, he says, ‘Well. And obviously Aislinn wasn’t getting ready for him; she was getting ready for me. She hadn’t so much as thought about him in months. So she would have been astonished to see him. Presumably she told him to leave. And that’s when he snapped.’

I keep up the inquiring look. ‘And…?’

Lower, to the table: ‘And hurt her.’ That charge is ebbing out of the room, out of Rory’s voice and his face, leaving him wispy and beige again. His lovely story has burst, just like he described, against the gravel-sharp reality of dead Aislinn. When the silence keeps going, even lower: ‘Killed her.’

‘How would he do it?’

Rory shakes his head.

‘Rory. Help me out here.’

‘Don’t you already know?’

‘I’m asking you a favour,’ I say gently, leaning in to catch his eye. ‘Pretend it’s just a made-up story, OK? Like the ones you told Aislinn? Just finish it for me. Please.’

‘I don’t… All I know is he wouldn’t have had a weapon with him. A knife or anything. He would never have been planning to… Maybe a, a, a lamp or something, something that was already there…’ He runs a trembling hand across his face. ‘I can’t-’

He’s not going to let slip that he knows how she died. No big deal; it was a long shot. ‘Wow,’ I say. I lean back in my chair, blow out a long sigh and run my hands through my hair. ‘Man. That’s some powerful stuff.’

‘Is it…’ Rory catches a deep breath. He pushes his glasses back on and blinks at me, trying to refocus. ‘Could it be useful? Do you think?’

‘It could,’ I say. ‘It could well be. I’m obviously not going to go into the details of what I’m thinking, but there’s a chance you could actually have given us something really valuable there. Thanks for doing that, man. Thanks a lot.’

‘No problem. Do you think-’

‘Hello-ello-ello,’ Breslin booms cheerfully, bursting the door open with his backside and swinging in with his hands full of mugs. ‘Sorry I took so long; that shower of uncivilised gits can never be arsed bringing their mugs back to the canteen, never mind washing them out. I had to chase these down. On the plus side-’ He hands out the mugs and sweeps a packet of biscuits out of his jacket pocket with a flourish. ‘O’Gorman’s stash didn’t let me down. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you chocolate-covered Oreos. Who’s your daddy?’

‘Ah, you star,’ I say. ‘I’m only starving.’

‘At your service.’ Breslin tosses an Oreo to me and one to Rory, who of course fumbles it, drops it on the carpet and has to go after it. He stares at it like he’s not sure what it’s for. ‘Get that into you,’ Breslin tells him. ‘Before O’Gorman comes looking.’

‘Come here,’ I say, dipping my Oreo in my coffee. ‘Rory’s got a theory.’

‘Thank Jesus,’ Breslin says. ‘At least someone has. Any good?’

‘Could be,’ I say, through most of my biscuit. ‘Long story short, he figures Aislinn was the type who could get a guy fantasising about happy-ever-afters a lot faster than normal. So there was some guy who Aislinn was seeing, so briefly that he hasn’t made it onto our radar; and once she dumped him, this guy got in over his head thinking about her. Started watching her. When he saw her getting ready for her dinner with Rory, he convinced himself she was waiting for him. Knocked on her door, got a nasty shock when she wasn’t happy to see him, and snapped.’

‘Interesting,’ Breslin says. He throws his biscuit into his mouth and chews meditatively, considering. ‘I like it. It could work with a lot of what we know.’

Rory doesn’t look encouraged. He’s huddled in his chair, picking carpet fluff off his Oreo. The second Breslin walked in, he faded and shrank and twisted like a boil-washed jumper.

‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘It’s got that feel, you know? In this job, you learn to recognise when something feels right. Practically and psychologically.’

‘We love that feel,’ Breslin tells Rory. ‘We’ve been hunting it all week. I’ve got to admit, my son, your theory is the nearest we’ve got to that feel. We’ll get people digging deeper into Aislinn’s incidental contacts – nightclubs, work connections. If this guy turns up, Rory, we owe you that ticket to Barbados after all.’

He leans back in his chair and takes a long slurp of coffee, sorting through his file. ‘Meanwhile,’ he says, ‘since we’re here, you mind clearing up a couple of small things? Just so we can cross them off our list?’

‘Ah, Jaysus, you and your lists,’ I say, rolling my eyes. ‘Ignore him, Rory. This guy makes lists of what he puts in his pockets, so he can double-check that he hasn’t dropped anything. Don’t get sucked in. Get out while you can.’

‘Don’t knock my lists, you,’ Breslin says, pointing at me. ‘How often have they saved our arses?’

‘Yeah yeah yeah.’

‘Rory? Is that cool with you? Just a few more minutes.’

We all know Rory’s not leaving, not with nowhere to go but round and round his flat and his head. He says, ‘I suppose-’

‘See?’ Breslin says to me. ‘Rory doesn’t mind humouring me. Am I right, Rory?’

‘Yes. I mean-’

‘I mind,’ I say. ‘If I have to put up with one more-’

‘Beautiful,’ Breslin says. ‘Suck it up, Conway.’ He flips paper. I sigh heavily, twisting my hair back into its bun: business time.

Breslin was right, we’re good in interviews. It shoves the message home: working well together means bugger-all else. I catch the smooth cold span of the one-way glass in the corner of my eye and wonder if Steve is behind it.

‘Ah,’ Breslin says. ‘Here we go: lovely list. Question One. Rory: Saturday evening, Aislinn and one of her friends were talking about you calling round for dinner. Sounds like she was looking forward to it.’ He gives Rory a smile, holds it till Rory more or less smiles back. ‘Sweet. And the friend warned Aislinn to’ – he pretends to check his notes – ‘“be careful OK?” Why would she do that?’

Rory stares, bewildered. ‘Who said that?’

‘Who would you expect to say it?’

‘I don’t – I wouldn’t. I hardly even know any of Aislinn’s friends. Who-?’

‘Hang on,’ Breslin says, lifting a hand. ‘You’re telling us that, if Aislinn’s friends had known you, they’d have had a reason to warn her to be careful? What reason?’

‘No. That’s not what I said. They wouldn’t have a-’

‘One of them thought she did.’

‘She didn’t. None of them had any reason. At all.’

‘Must’ve been a misunderstanding,’ I say. ‘Was there something the mate could’ve taken up wrong? A new fella on the scene, mates can get protective, start seeing red flags everywhere-’

‘Or jealous,’ Breslin offers. ‘Maybe the friend’s a hound, can’t get a fella of her own; she gets her knickers in a knot and decides to spin some little thing to try and put Aislinn off you. What could she have spun?’

Rory passes a hand over his eyes and tries to think. He’s abandoned his Oreo untouched; he’s figured out that we’re not playing that game any more. Me and Breslin are still all smiles, but the air in the room’s changed; the pulse is faster and harder and it’s Breslin setting it now, not Rory.

‘The only thing I can think of…’ We wait encouragingly. ‘I told you last time: it was complicated, setting up dates with Aislinn. But I kept trying, even when she cancelled. I suppose that could have come across as… I don’t know. Pushy? I mean, I know Aislinn didn’t think I was being too pushy, or she would have ended it, but maybe one of her friends might have-’

‘Whoa,’ Breslin says. ‘Slow down. You just said you kept pushing Aislinn for dates, even when she cancelled; but then you’re telling us, if she’d told you to get lost, you would’ve gone. Which is it?’

‘But- No. That’s not the same thing. She never said she didn’t want to see me any more. If she had, then of course I would have gone. Saying “I’m busy on Thursday” isn’t the same, it’s completely-’

Rory’s winding himself into a tangle of indignation and defensiveness. ‘Hey, you don’t need to convince us,’ I say. ‘The mate’s the one who was worried. We’re just trying to work out why.’

‘That’s the only thing I can think of. That’s it.’

Breslin gets up from the table and goes for a stroll, giving Rory two places to look. He says, ‘Sounds a bit thin to me.’

‘And me,’ I say. ‘The friend’s not the hysterical type, you know what I mean? If she thought Aislinn needed to be careful, she had a reason.’

‘Maybe…’ Rory clears his throat. ‘Um, if I’m right, about the guy watching Aislinn… Maybe Aislinn had noticed him, and mentioned him to her friend? And the friend was worried that he’d get angry about her having me over?’

Breslin stops and gives Rory a long quizzical gaze – Rory holds it, in a blinky way. He says, ‘Did Aislinn ever mention an ex who gave her the willies?’

Rory shakes his head.

‘Out loud for the tape.’

‘No. She didn’t.’

‘Most women aren’t gonna bring up the ex to the new boyfriend,’ I point out. ‘Makes you sound like a bunny-boiler.’

Breslin shrugs. ‘Fair enough, I guess. She ever mention having a stalker?’

The word makes Rory wince. ‘No.’

‘Not once?’

‘No. But she might not have wanted to – I don’t know, scare me off-’

‘What, she thought you’d run a mile just because some rando was hanging around? Would you have?’

‘No! I-’

‘Of course you wouldn’t. And Aislinn, not being an idiot, knew that. You think she would’ve bothered her arse with you, if she thought you were that much of a wimp? Conway: would you want a guy who scared that easy?’

‘Nah,’ I say. ‘I like them to have at least one ball.’

‘Exactly. I’m willing to bet Aislinn did too.’

Rory’s shifting. ‘OK. Maybe she didn’t, she might not have known the guy was watching her-’

‘Maybe not,’ Breslin says. He leans in sharply towards the table and Rory flinches, but he’s only going for another swig of his coffee. ‘Maybe not. In which case, we’re back where we started: when the friend told Aislinn to be careful, she couldn’t have been talking about the stalker ex. Who’s never entered anyone’s head but yours.’

Except that he did. It twinges like a sore tooth that I thought was fixed, sorted, gone: an ex entered Lucy’s head. According to her story, he was part of the reason she sent that text.

Breslin puts down his mug with a hard, precise clunk. ‘So,’ he asks, ‘what was the friend talking about?’

Rory shakes his head. He’s subsided back into his heap.

‘Out loud for the tape.’

‘I don’t know what she meant.’

‘Shame,’ Breslin says. ‘That could really do with an explanation. But if you’re sure you can’t help us there…’ A small pause for Rory to come in, which he doesn’t. ‘I suppose we can leave it, for now. Let’s move on down my list, shall we?’

He leans over his notes and scans. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘That’s right. Question Two.’

He pulls a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and unfolds it with a snap that makes Rory’s shoulders leap. He has another stroll around the room while he reads down the page, taking his time, wandering behind Rory to make him twist in his chair.

‘Tell me that’s not another list,’ I say, rolling my eyes at Rory. No response.

‘This,’ Breslin said, tapping the page, ‘this is Rory’s timeline for Saturday night.’

Rory’s shoulders stiffen. ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Yeah. That’s not as big a deal as you’re making out.’

‘You might be right. Let’s find out.’

‘What…?’ Rory’s voice wobbles. He clears his throat and tries again. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Ah,’ Breslin says. ‘This is going to get complicated, Rory, so stop me if you’re not following. According to you, you got on the 39A just before seven, and got off it in Stoneybatter just before half-seven. Walked around to Viking Gardens to make sure of the route – that brings us to, say, 7.32. Headed up to Tesco for flowers: we’ve timed it at around a seven-minute walk, so you’d have got there by 7.40.’

Rory has stopped tracking Breslin’s stroll. He’s rigid, feet braced on the floor, staring ahead.

‘Your statement says you spent “a couple of minutes” in Tesco; let’s say you left around 7.43. Another seven or eight minutes to get back to Viking Gardens, maybe less since you said you were hurrying: you’d have been at Aislinn’s door by 7.50. Are you with me?’

‘If you’re not,’ I say, ‘get Bres to write it down for you. Make him earn his wages.’

Rory says, without looking at me, ‘I’m following perfectly well.’

‘You are, of course,’ Breslin says heartily. ‘Except you told us you got to Aislinn’s just before eight. What’d you do with the extra eight or nine minutes?’

And his shoulders slacken again. Rory thinks he’s off the hook; he’s loosening, body and mind, with relief. ‘I haven’t got a clue. I mean, God, maybe I got off the bus a little later than I thought, or took a bit longer choosing the flowers; or maybe I reached Aislinn’s a few minutes earlier than I thought. Or all of those. I don’t really notice exact times; I haven’t been trained to, the way you have. I couldn’t tell you within eight minutes what time it is now, or how long we’ve been here.’

Breslin rubs at his nose, embarrassed. ‘When you put it like that…’

‘See?’ I say, to both of them. ‘No big deal.’

‘Professional deformation,’ Breslin says, with a rueful little laugh at himself. I laugh too, Rory lets out a slightly hysterical half-laugh, we all laugh together. ‘I swear to God, sometimes I think I’ve forgotten what it’s like being normal. I mean, a normal person couldn’t lose track of, like, hours, right? Or even half an hour? You couldn’t have got to Aislinn’s house at half-eight and thought it was eight o’clock. Ten minutes would be about the limit?’

‘I suppose,’ Rory says. He remembers his coffee and takes a quick, covert sip. ‘Probably.’

‘Huh,’ Breslin says, turning over his piece of paper. ‘I’ve got another timeline right here – get more of that coffee down you, you’re going to need it.’

‘So am I,’ I say, raising my mug to Rory and throwing him a wink. ‘Hang in there, man. The list’s gotta end sometime.’

‘Yeah, yeah. The sooner you two quit bitching, the faster we get through this.’ Breslin moves round to my side of the table, getting into firing position. ‘So. This timeline is built around CCTV. Which says you got on the bus at ten to seven, Rory, and you got off it in Stoneybatter at quarter past. That doesn’t exactly match what you told us, but hey, like we said: a few minutes here, a few minutes there, to normal people…’ He smiles at Rory, who’s still relaxed enough to smile back. ‘Except after that, the next time we can confirm your location is when you were caught on Tesco’s CCTV paying for the flowers, at 7.51.’

Rory’s smile is gone. He’s starting to cop on.

Breslin’s voice is getting more weight to it, words coming down on the table with thick cold thuds. ‘Like we said, from Aislinn’s place to Tesco is about a seven-minute walk. So if you were paying for the flowers at 7.51, you had to leave Viking Gardens by around 7.40. That leaves your movements unaccounted for from 7.15, when you got off the bus, until 7.40. Twenty-five minutes, Rory. We’ve just established that even a normal person couldn’t lose track of twenty-five minutes. Do you want to tell me what you were doing for those twenty-five minutes?’

Rory is staring at the space between me and Breslin. He’s clenched into one tight knot; his mouth barely moves when he says, ‘I’ve already told you.’

‘I thought you had,’ I say, miffed. The thought of losing his lovely ally makes his breathing speed up, but he doesn’t look at me. ‘But now it looks like you’ve been feeding us a great big heap of shite. You want to try again, before we decide you might have a reason for not wanting us to know what you were doing that night?’

‘I’ve told you what I did. I can’t help it if it doesn’t match your timeline.’

It’s not a bad strategy: pick a story, plant your feet on it and don’t budge, no matter what. Once you start shifting, we can shove you off balance, push you step by step to where we want you. We need Rory shifting.

Breslin swings his chair to the table and sits down in one fast sweep. I sit back: let him work it for now, while Rory wonders if I’m still his pal. He says, ‘How’d you know Aislinn didn’t have curtains in her kitchen?’

That gets through: Rory jerks and stares. ‘What?’

‘And the laneway out the back. How’d you know about that?’

‘The- I didn’t. I mean, I don’t. What lane-’

‘You described your theoretical stalker watching Aislinn cook the dinner and get out wineglasses: stuff she would have done in the kitchen, which is at the back of the house. You didn’t have him watching her set the table, which is in the living room at the front. In other words, you knew the stalker would have been able to watch from the back of the house.’

Rory blinks wildly, bewildered. Breslin says, grinning, ‘Dude, see that glass there? I was right behind it, listening, for your whole chat. Antoinette’s a top-notch detective, but she’s… how’ll I put this without getting a punch?’

‘Careful, you,’ I say.

‘Easy, tiger,’ Breslin says, leaning away and holding up a hand to block me. ‘Let’s just say she’s a little more willing than I am to believe that you’re on our side. She’s an optimist: she’s been hoping all along that this case would turn out to be some great big fascinating mystery.’ A slant of side-eye towards me, a hair’s breadth of grin that could mean anything. ‘Me, I’ve been around longer. I’m a suspicious guy – more of that professional deformation we were talking about. So I keep an eye on things. I heard just about every word you said. And I’m asking you: how did you know the stalker would have been watching Aislinn in her kitchen, unless you were the stalker?’

‘I was guessing. It’s – I mean, that’s just, it’s basic – basic common sense, if he didn’t want the neighbours seeing him, that he would-’ Rory’s breath isn’t working right. ‘And the kitchen, that’s where she’s going to be preparing, isn’t it, if I’m coming – which I was, I don’t mean if-’

He’s losing his foothold on that safe story. I say – a touch of worry, not happy with where things are going – ‘Here’s another thing. You talked about the stalker seeing Aislinn singing into her corkscrew. We know from her texts that that’s exactly what she was doing that evening. How did you know about that, unless you were watching her do it?’

Breslin says, before Rory can get enough air to answer, ‘Do me a favour: don’t try and tell us you were guessing. Unless you’re psychic, there’s no way in hell you could guess that. Are you psychic, Rory?’

‘What? No! How could – I don’t-’

‘Well, that’s a relief. So tell us how you knew about the corkscrew.’

Rory shakes his head, panting and wordless. I say, ‘Then I’ll tell you. You watched Aislinn from the back laneway that evening. Am I right?’

After a long moment his head rocks, helplessly, on his neck: yes.

‘That’s how you spent the missing twenty-five minutes.’

Another nod. That one-way glass, splattering light into the corner of my eye again. I hope Steve is behind it. I hope he’s scarlet right up to his hair.

‘Out loud for the tape,’ Breslin says.

Rory finds a pinch of voice. ‘I just wanted to… I was just taking a moment. To let it sink in that this was really happening. That’s all.’

‘And the only way you could do that,’ Breslin says, ‘was by peeping through Aislinn’s back window.’

He makes it sound filthy. Rory flinches. ‘I wasn’t- I was just standing there. Being happy. I don’t know how to explain-’

‘I guess I get it,’ I say doubtfully. ‘Sort of. It’s not like you were watching her shower – or were you?’

‘No! Even if I’d wanted to – which I didn’t; I would have left if…’ Breslin lets out an amused snort. Rory manages to ignore him by focusing on me. Telling the truth, or telling the story, has given him his breath back. ‘Anyway, I couldn’t have: the bathroom window is frosted. Aislinn was in the kitchen. She had music on – it was too windy for me to hear what, but I could tell it was something upbeat by the way she was dancing around, singing into… yeah. The corkscrew.’ A glance at me, too sad for defiance. ‘She was wearing a pink jumper and jeans, and she was taking things out of the fridge and opening them, putting them into pans, and dancing while she did it. After a bit she went out of the kitchen – I waited, and when she came back in she was wearing this blue dress… She looked – all blue and gold like that, it was like she’d just appeared in the kitchen, like one of those visions of saints that people used to have centuries ago. And she was smiling. And I couldn’t believe that, in just a few minutes, I would be in there with her. She would be smiling at me.’

The grief goes deep, right to the heart of his voice. That means nothing. ‘And then I thought of the flowers, and I headed for Tesco. And if I hadn’t…’ Rory grabs a fast breath through his nose, like he’s been hurt. ‘If I had just remembered that azalea plant, if I had just stayed there watching her- I would have been there. When he came. And I could have, I would have…’

His mouth starts to curl up. He presses his knuckles to it. I can feel Breslin clamping down a snide grin at the image of Rory throwing on his cape and tights and beating the shit out of the villain. Rory has presumably run through a couple of hundred variations on that scenario.

He says, through his fingers, ‘But I didn’t do any of that. I skipped off to Tesco like an idiot, and while I was gone someone came along and killed Aislinn. I may have seen him, but I didn’t even take it in, because I was utterly oblivious to everything except my own happy bubble. And when she didn’t answer her door, I waited and waited because I couldn’t find a way to believe that she had changed her mind, when just a few minutes earlier she had been acting like she couldn’t wait to see me. I was standing in the cold, trying to understand how that was possible, while she was lying inside, dead or dying. And in the end, instead of having the brains to realise that something had to be wrong and breaking the door in, I went home to feel sorry for myself. That’s it. That’s what happened.’

‘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.’

Rory gives up. He stares into space, rocking a little with fatigue.

‘One.’

Slowly the lines of Rory’s face solidify. He stops swaying. Inside his mind, things are moving.

Breslin’s made the wrong call. I know what he’s at – he’s hoping the forced silence and the fear will bear down on Rory hard enough to crack him – but it’s the barrage of words and demands that was doing the job. Locking this guy into his own head is only giving him a chance to get his focus back and straighten out his stories. We’re losing him.

‘Two.’

‘Forget it,’ I say, bringing my hands down on the table with a bang. ‘That’s as much time as he’s getting. Rory: look at me.’ I snap my fingers in his face. He blinks. ‘Why’d you turn that cooker off?’

Too late. Rory says, ‘I didn’t. I’ve never been inside Aislinn’s house. I never hurt Aislinn in any way. And I want to go home.’

He stands up, wobbly-legged, and starts trying to pull his coat off the back of his chair. His hands are shaking; he keeps losing hold.

‘Whoa there,’ Breslin says. ‘We’re not done. Sit down.’

‘I’m done. Am I under arrest?’

I can see Breslin opening his mouth on the words. ‘No,’ I say, and ignore his head coming round towards me. ‘Not at the moment. But if you want us to believe your story, walking out on us isn’t the way to go about it. You need to stay here and work with us.’

‘No. If I’m not under arrest, I’m going home.’ Rory manages to get his coat off the chair and drops it.

‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ I say, closing my notebook. ‘You go home. Get some sleep. We’ll talk to Aislinn’s neighbours and see if any of them happened to look out their back windows and see you in the laneway between, say, 8.30 and 8.40. If they did, you’re off the hook: you wouldn’t have had time for the other thing.’ Obviously we’ve already talked to the neighbours, and I’m betting they would have mentioned some weirdo hanging around the laneway, but this doesn’t seem to occur to Rory. ‘Come back in to us tomorrow to sign your statement, and we’ll do updates then. Fair enough?’

Rory pulls his coat around his shoulders, not even trying the sleeves. ‘Yes. OK.’

‘We’ll come pick you up,’ Breslin says, keeping it just the right side of a threat. He stands up and stretches. ‘You’re not planning to be anywhere other than your flat or the bookshop, are you?’

‘No. I’m going nowhere.’

‘Good plan,’ Breslin tells him. He pulls the door open and sweeps his hand at it with a little mock bow. ‘After you.’

Steve is in the doorway of the observation room, suit jacket over his arm, sleeves rolled up against the heat. His eyes meet mine for a long level second. Then we’re past him and down the corridor, Rory speeding up towards the draught of cold fresh air coming up the stairwell, Breslin humming happily to himself under his breath.

Me and Breslin watch from the doorway as Rory heads off across the cobblestones. He looks small and messy, slams of wind flapping his coat and tangling in his hair, swerving him off course. It’s practically dark. Just a couple of months of bodyguard work, and I’ll have enough saved up for a holiday somewhere blazing hot in eye-shattering colours and very far away.

‘Enlighten me,’ Breslin says pleasantly. ‘Why is this guy going home?’

I say, ‘We’re nearly there with him. He was right on the edge, till that pause gave him a chance to pull his head together – and if we could get him there once, we can get him there again. But if we put him under arrest, he’s gonna get a solicitor in there, and we can say goodbye to any chance of a confession.’

‘We don’t need a confession, Conway. We’ve got enough circumstantial stuff to bury him alive.’

Which is probably true. I don’t care. My last murder case: this one isn’t gonna be tacked down with circumstantial this and reasonable inference that. I’m gonna hammer a stake right through its heart and leave it dead as dirt.

‘I want one,’ I say. ‘We can afford to leave Rory till tomorrow.’

‘Unless he jumps in the Liffey.’

‘He won’t. He still thinks I might wind up believing him. He wants that.’

Breslin watches me. ‘Is he right?’

‘No,’ I say. The adrenaline buzz is ebbing fast; I can feel the post-interrogation crash getting ready to hit. It leaves a sucking empty spot that, if you’re not careful, can feel like loss. I need caffeine, sugar, a dirty great burger. ‘He’s our man, all right.’

‘He is. And I hope you know that cooker doesn’t actually turn it into manslaughter, either. There’s no chance that little pussy-boy was thinking straight enough, after killing someone, to worry about burning the house down. His brain was juice. He probably turned the cooker off because the food was starting to burn and the smell bothered him. Cooper’s report still stands: could be manslaughter, if Rory managed to get up the strength for a serious punch, or he could’ve deliberately smashed her skull in when she was down. And the more I look at those pathetic excuses for muscles…’

‘Not my problem,’ I say. ‘The lawyers and the jury can figure that one out. All I want is a watertight case that he killed her.’

‘Well,’ Breslin says, heartily enough that for a second there I think he’s going to clap me on the back, ‘that shouldn’t be a problem to us. We’ll get every warm body out there looking for backup evidence, we’ll throw the lot at Rory, and he’ll fold like a cheap lawn chair. And if he doesn’t, hey, we’ll have enough circumstantial stuff to make our case watertight anyway. Right?’

‘Right,’ I say. Rory is gone, around the corner towards the gate. The splatter of yellow light on the empty cobblestones makes them look slick from hard rain, dangerous.

Wheels turning in Breslin’s mind, so heavy I can practically hear them. I keep my eyes on the place where Rory was until, finally, I feel Breslin move away and hear the door close behind him.

I ring Lucy from the women’s jacks. This time she answers, but her voice is barely above a whisper and she sounds hassled; someone in the background is calling orders and there’s a sudden blast of country music, cut off by an annoyed shout. The theatre has a new show opening that evening, they’re having technical problems and Lucy really has to go (in the background: ‘Luce! Any word on those parcans?’). She swears she’ll be home all tomorrow, but I can’t tell whether it’s true or whether she’s just saying whatever will get rid of me.

I’m gonna be banging on her door tomorrow morning before she’s anywhere near hauling her hangover out of bed. I hope she tells me she made up Aislinn’s secret boyfriend to make sure the investigation was good and thorough. I hope that, as I step out of Lucy’s flat, Sophie rings me to tell me that Aislinn’s password-protected computer folder turned out to be full of pictures of Daddy, scanned to make them handier for sobbing over.

Me, praying my most interesting leads will crash and burn. It feels against nature, like some parasite has slid into my head and is eating bits of my brain. But Lucy, and that folder: they’re the last two stubborn unruly strands stopping me from tying everything into a neat bow, leaving it outside the door of O’Kelly’s office with my badge on top, and walking away.

Steve is at our desk, checking e-mails. I sit down next to him and start flicking through the piles of paper that materialised while I was away. The floaters try not to let me catch them glancing over, wondering when the mad bitch is gonna lose it again.

The thick sheet of silence between me and Steve is growing edges like ripped tin. I say, ‘So you saw Rory in there.’

‘A fair bit of it,’ Steve says, without looking up. ‘Good interview.’

It doesn’t sound like a compliment. ‘Thanks,’ I say. I catch Breslin’s knowing eye on us: You were never right for each other. ‘Where were you?’

‘I ran the mug books past the barman and Aislinn’s neighbours. No hits.’ He waits for me to say I told you so. When I don’t: ‘Then I went and had chats with a few of the lads who worked the Des Murray disappearance – don’t worry, I was subtle about it.’

‘I’m not worried.’

Steve throws me a quick sideways glance, trying to work out how I mean that. ‘Anyway,’ he says, after a second. The tone to his voice, neutral, precise, arm’s-length; I’ve heard it before, but to defence solicitors and slippery journalists, never to me. ‘According to them, McCann had a bit of a thing for Evelyn Murray, all right. He was the one who pushed to keep the investigation going; he got very eloquent about this poor fragile woman with her life in ruins – and McCann isn’t the eloquent type, so the lads remembered it. He even found her someone to buy Des’s taxi plate, and made sure she got top dollar for it, so she and Aislinn weren’t stuck for cash. But the lads are all positive it never went as far as an affair. Even back then, McCann was getting called Holy Joe; not a chance he was riding a subject’s missus. They laughed at me for even thinking it.’

Another gap for my I told you so. I can’t take any longer sitting there next to him, being polite to each other under Breslin’s amused eye. I say, ‘Did you find a reason to think any of this has anything to do with our case?’

‘No.’

‘Good. Then let’s get this meeting done.’

I stand up. Even before I reach the front of the desk, the floaters have dropped their work and are sitting up straight, managing to be all attention without God forbid making eye contact with the rabid animal.

‘OK,’ I say, ‘good news. It’s looking pretty definite that Rory Fallon is our boy. He and the CCTV both say he’s been stalking Aislinn for at least a month. That’s how he spent the missing time before their date on Saturday night – or part of it, anyway: peeping in her windows.’

‘Little perv,’ Stanton says, grinning. ‘Better swab her walls for DNA.’

A quick edgy smatter of laughs. ‘Do it,’ I say. Rory’s leftovers might not prove murder, but they’ll up our chances at trial; juries hate a wanker. ‘He says he was hanging out in the laneway behind her patio, so get the techs to give that wall a good going-over – and try the wall under her kitchen window, too, just in case he got up the guts for a little close-range action.’

Stanton nods; Meehan puts it in the book of jobs. I say, ‘Our new working theory is that, when Rory arrived in Aislinn’s house, she somehow found out about the stalking. She told him to get out, and he lost the head.’

‘Rory hasn’t spilled the beans yet,’ Breslin says, ‘but he’s come close. We’re hoping tomorrow’s the day.’

‘Before we pull him back in,’ I say, ‘let’s find out just how much stalking he did, and what kind. I need two guys walking Rory’s picture around Stoneybatter to see if anyone recognises him from the last couple of months. He’s got the bookshop to run, so we’re mainly looking at evenings and Sundays. Try everywhere: houses, shops, pubs, offices where the workers might’ve crossed paths with him on their way out. Any community groups or bingo nights or sports clubs, track down the members.’ Kellegher lifts a finger. ‘Kellegher, you and Gaffney take that. And I want to know what Rory’s phone’s been doing over the last two months: when it pinged towers around Stoneybatter, whether it logged onto any wireless networks in the area. Stanton, while you’re making calls, make those.’

The case has changed. Before, we were dragnetting, sifting through what came up and hoping there was something good in there. Now we’re hunting. We’ve got the prey in our sights and we’re closing in, and everything we do is building towards the moment when we’ll have him pinned down for the kill shot.

That feeling, it’s not some bullshit figure of speech. It lives inside you somewhere deeper and older and more real than anything else except sex, and when it comes rising it takes your whole body for its own. It’s a smell of blood raging at the back of your nose, it’s your arm muscle throbbing to let go the bowstring, it’s drums speeding in your ears and a victory roar building at the bottom of your gut. I let myself love that feeling, one last time. I let myself drink it down, cram every second of it deep into me, lay away my store of it to last me the rest of my life.

‘I want to know where Rory drinks,’ I say, ‘and what the barman and the regulars think of him – if he’s got a rep for fixating on some girl, not taking no for an answer, if he’s got a temper, anything that could be relevant.’ Meehan’s hand is up. ‘Meehan, have that; it’ll give you a change of scenery from Stoneybatter. And I want to know what the other Ranelagh businesses think of Rory. Whether anyone’s got any stories about him coming on a little strong to a customer in the bookshop, or hanging about outside the bakery waiting for the pretty one to finish her shift.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Breslin says. ‘Moran, fancy joining me?’

Steve looks up, startled, but Breslin gives him a bland smile and after a second he says, ‘Yeah. Sure.’

‘Great,’ Breslin says, throwing him a wink. ‘Let’s take this bad boy down.’

I don’t feel like going into my plans for tomorrow. ‘I’ll check in with the Bureau first thing in the morning,’ I say, ‘see if they’ve got anywhere with fibre matches and DNA.’ And with Aislinn’s computer folder, which I also don’t feel like mentioning. ‘Meanwhile, someone needs to stay on Rory’s gaff – just for tonight and part of tomorrow, till we’re ready to bring him back in.’ Breslin gives me an amused glance. I don’t actually think Rory’s gonna throw himself in the Liffey, or skip town, or ditch evidence we haven’t spotted, but I’m not gonna risk it for the sake of a few hours’ surveillance. ‘Deasy: do that, or stick a couple of uniforms on it if you want, but tell them they need plainclothes and an unmarked car.’

Deasy nods. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘If we don’t get a confession, this is the stuff that’s going to make the case. So give it your best. Thanks, and see you tomorrow.’

In the second before I turn away, to get Steve so we can pretend we’re still partners while we report to the gaffer, the incident room grabs me by the gut. For that second it glows warm and steady from every corner with twenty years’ worth of might-have-beens. Every time I could have walked in there laughing with Steve, every shout of triumph when I could have held up the phone record or the DNA result we’d been waiting for, every thank-you speech I could have made at the end of a big case: all of those rise up to find me, now that they’re unreachable.

I don’t do that shite. I’ve got half a dozen excuses handy – no sleep, no food, pressure, big decision, blah blah blah – but still, that against-nature feeling prickles my skin like nettlerash. ‘Let’s go,’ I say to Steve. ‘The gaffer.’ I head out the door without waiting for him, so we won’t have to walk down the corridor together.

O’Kelly is polishing the dust off his spider plant, with one of those fiddly little cloths that people use to clean their glasses. ‘Conway. Moran,’ he says, barely glancing up. ‘Tell me you’re getting somewhere.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Looks like we are.’

‘About fucking time. Let’s hear it.’

I give him the rundown. He listens, turning the plant to the light to make sure he gets every angle. ‘Huh,’ he says, when I’m done. ‘And you’re happy enough with that.’

One sideways eye has come up to me. I say, ‘We’ll have another shot at the confession tomorrow. Don’t worry: we won’t send the file to the prosecutors till we’ve got it locked down tight.’

‘I didn’t mean are you happy enough to send the file. I mean are you happy enough that Fallon did it.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. That eye, edged wet and red where the eyelid’s starting to droop like an old man’s. I can’t read him; I can’t make myself care whether or not he’s in on Breslin’s game. ‘He did it.’ I feel Steve’s weight shift beside me, but he says nothing.

The gaffer eyes me for another long moment before he turns back to his plant. He tilts a leaf to examine it, gives one spot an extra dab. ‘I thought you were waiting for something that wasn’t circumstantial.’

Last night, I told him that, back when this case was a wild thing shooting out curls of possibility in every direction. It feels like years ago. ‘That or till we eliminated everything else. We’ve done that.’

‘You have.’

I say, ‘There’s zero reason to think that anyone other than Rory Fallon was involved.’

O’Kelly tests the point of a leaf on the pad of his thumb. ‘All right,’ he says. ‘All right.’

He looks like he’s forgotten us; I can’t tell whether we’ve been dismissed. ‘We could use another floater,’ I say. ‘I sent Reilly back to the floater pool.’

That gets the gaffer’s attention. ‘Why?’

‘He found evidence. Instead of bringing it to me, or to Moran, he took it to Breslin.’

‘Can’t have that,’ O’Kelly says. He doesn’t try to hide the long glance at Steve. ‘OK: I’ll get you another one. Keep me updated.’

He turns his shoulder to us and works his fingers delicately into the plant, pushing the leaves apart to slide the cloth right down to the base.

Steve says, in the corridor, ‘Zero reason to think anyone but Rory was involved.’

His voice still has that remote sound. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Exactly zero reason.’

‘What about Lucy’s mystery guy? The folder on Aislinn’s computer?’

‘I’m seeing Lucy tomorrow. I’ll ring Sophie about the folder first thing. If either of them gives us anything solid, then we’ll review.’ I can hear the danger signs rising in my voice. ‘But right now: zero reason. Zero.’

‘The DNA on Aislinn’s mattress.’

‘That didn’t get there on Saturday night, or it would’ve been on the sheets as well. It’s got nothing to do with our case.’

Steve has stopped moving. He’s looking off down the corridor at the window – dark sky, layered in a thick yellowish vapour of light pollution – not at me.

I say, ‘You saw Rory in there. You heard him. Don’t you fucking tell me you still have doubts.’

It takes him too long to answer. I leave him there.

I’m pulling my coat on when it hits me: Breslin made it through the entire afternoon without once trying to hint that he’s on the take.

That should be a relief, but instead it jabs like a needle under a fingernail. As far as I can see, there’s no reason why Breslin should have suddenly, in the couple of hours I was away talking to Aislinn’s exes, decided to ditch his whole ornate cunning plan. He was doing a lovely job of setting me up – a few more nudges and, if it hadn’t been for Fleas, I would have been right in position for the kill shot – and out of nowhere he dropped the whole project and wandered away. I flick back mentally through the day, my chat with McCann, the floaters’ reports, checking for anything that could have made him change course: anything that might have tipped him off that I’d sussed him, or anything that could have made him decide I wasn’t worth owning after all. There’s nothing.

The only possibility left is the one jabbing deeper: Breslin knows, somehow, that there’s no point to that shite any more. The words I’m going to say to the gaffer stink like burning hair all around me, brand my face with their growing shadow. Breslin took one look at me and knew, with those dense-packed twenty years’ worth of detective instincts, that the kill shot had already been fired. He knew I’m worthless now.