The Trespasser

Chapter 13

All the way home I’m waiting for something, or someone: another uniform pulling me over, the lamppost guy leaping out in front of my car as I turn onto my road, Fleas sticking his head out of the darkness in my kitchen. Nothing happens. My street is a blank; as soon as I step into the house, I know it’s empty. I clear it anyway.

I’m craving sleep, a lot of it, ideally with someone armed and trustworthy outside my bedroom door, but I’m not going to bed till I know I’m wrecked enough to crash out the second I hit the sheets. There’s a whole list of stuff I’m not gonna think about tonight, but it covers so much territory and I’m so tired that my mind keeps getting mixed up and letting bits slip through. For half a second, before I pull myself up sharp, I wonder what Steve is doing.

There’s fuck-all in my fridge, and me and Fleas killed off my emergency fish fingers. I ring my ma and tell her about Sophie’s vase, which has blood spatter on it because two scumbags broke into an old woman’s gaff and punched her in the stomach till she puked blood, to which my ma says ‘Huh.’ She doesn’t bring up Aislinn and neither do I. While she smokes, I make coffee and a pile of toast, cut the green bit off an old chunk of cheese, and take the lot into the sitting room.

No wind shoving at the window tonight; it’s died down, leaving a thick, still cold. I look out into the dark and think, Come on, motherfucker. Come and get me. I leave the curtains wide open.

I’ve got an e-mail from Fleas. Hiya Rach! Great to hear from you. No news here, all the gang are OK, no one doin anythin special. Kinda busy at the mo but love to meet up sometime when we both have the free time. Take care sunshine xx. Meaning no one in his corner of the underworld is suddenly drowning his sorrows or looking twitchy or sobbing on Fleas’s shoulder about his dead girlfriend. And meaning bye, see you someday maybe.

Sophie’s team didn’t find any dating sites on Aislinn’s laptop, but they haven’t reported back on her work computer yet. I take a look at Random Google Blonde’s accounts. She’s doing well for herself: dozens of messages. About a quarter of them are dick pics, which are presumably meant to send her running for her smelling salts rather than to start off meaningful relationships, although you never know. Most of the rest are one-line nothing, guys shotgunning all the pretty girls who join up, hoping one will bite. Two of them are worth a closer look. No photos, careful wording about no strings and discretion: married guys looking for fun on the side, and looking for a girl who matches Aislinn’s specs to join them.

I’m working on my reply when something moves, in the corner of my eye. I whip around, not fast enough. A big dark shape skims away from my window before I can get a decent look.

I grab my keys and dive for the door. By the time I get it open, the road is empty.

I head for my car, forcing myself to keep the pace casual: just getting something I forgot, no biggie. My breath puffs clouds into the air, but the cold doesn’t touch me. I smell turf smoke and hear cars zipping past the top of the road and feel my leg muscles throbbing to go.

I’m pulling open the car door when the light twitches. There’s someone under the streetlamp at the top of the road: a tall guy, hovering. I slam the car door and take one step in that direction and he vanishes, into the dark around the corner, going at a fair old clip.

I’m pretty sure I’m faster than him, but Stoneybatter is good for twists and laneways, and if he knows his way around, he’s gone. Even if he doesn’t, he can just nip into a pub, turn and stare with the rest if I come bursting in; what am I gonna do about it? I need to nab him on my own turf.

I go back inside, pull the sitting-room curtains almost closed and watch the road through the crack at one side.

If I get another shot, it’ll be my last. One more close call and the guy’s gonna know for sure he’s been burned.

There isn’t a way for me to do this on my own. I run through every backup option I can think of – Fleas, Sophie, Gary, my mate Lisa, all my other mates, the neighbours. I even consider my ma. I swear to God, for a quarter of a second I consider Breslin.

I can’t do it. There’s no one, on all that list, who I can make myself ring up to say Hi, I can’t do this, come help me. To every single one of them, I’d be a different person after that call. The emptiness of my gaff feels dense enough to tilt it on its foundations.

The guy’s got some self-control, at least: it’s twenty-five minutes before a thicker darkness moves in the shadows outside the street-lamp’s circle. In the same second I feel my heartbeat rise to it, I realise that I’ve known all along what I’m gonna do.

The thicker darkness settles and stays. I get out my phone, I take a breath and I ring Steve.

It takes him a few rings to pick up. ‘Hi,’ he says.

‘Hi. Are you doing anything important?’

‘Not a lot.’

He leaves it there. That carefully neutral voice, while he tries to work out, or decide, whether we’re still partners.

I don’t have time for fancy dancing. ‘Steve,’ I say. ‘Listen. I need a hand.’ It feels rough in my throat, but when I glance out the window, the guy is still there, motionless at the edge of the lamplight.

There’s a long second of silence. I shut my eyes.

Then Steve says, ‘OK. What’s up?’

His voice has thawed two notches, maybe three. It’s fucking ridiculous how relieved I am, but I don’t have time to deal with that either. ‘Some fucker’s been casing my gaff for the last few days,’ I say, ‘and I’ve had enough. I can’t go out there and get him myself; he’s got a clear line of sight on every route I can take, and if he sees me coming he’ll do a legger.’

Steve says, and he’s put everything else aside to focus on this, ‘But he’s not watching for me.’

‘That’s what I’m hoping.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘At the top of my road.’ Steve knows my gaff; he’s never been inside, but we’ve swung by to pick something up once or twice. ‘He was looking in my front window earlier on, and I’ve seen him down the laneway out the back, but he mostly hangs out at the corner. Tall guy, solid build, middle-aged, dark overcoat, trilby-type hat.’

I feel Steve clock the match to the guy who went over Aislinn’s wall. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘What do you want me to do with him?’

‘Bring him in here. I want a word with him.’

‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, tops.’ I can hear him moving already: pulling on shoes, or getting into a coat.

‘Ring me when you’re almost at my road. Let it ring once, then hang up.’

‘Right.’ Keys jingling; Steve’s ready. ‘Mind yourself.’

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘See you soon.’

I put my phone in my pocket, sit back down on the sofa and click shite at random on my laptop. The window feels like fingernails drumming at the side of my head. I don’t look around. When my phone rings once, what feels like an hour later, I manage not to jump.

I stretch, stand up and wander over to the front door, out of sight of the window. I get out my gun and press my eye up against the peephole.

Darkness and the yellow door across the road, bulging insanely in the fisheye lens. The yappy little dog next door throwing a fit. Girls shrieking, somewhere far away. Then a fast jumble of footsteps coming closer, over the cobblestones.

I hold the doorknob and make myself wait till a wild flap of black rears up in the peephole. Then I whip the door open, two guys pressed close together stumble inside, and I slam the door behind them.

They trip on the rug, get their balance back and stagger to a standstill in the middle of my sitting room. Steve is gripping the other guy’s coat collar with one hand and twisting his arm up behind his back with the other. Big guy, black hair going grey – his hat’s gone missing somewhere along the way – long black overcoat. ‘Get off me-’

‘I’ve got him,’ I say, and point my gun at the guy’s head. Steve lets go and jumps back.

‘For God’s sake,’ the man says, and then he turns to face me and all three of us go still.

He wasn’t expecting the gun. I wasn’t expecting him. I was all ready for anything from a serial killer to one of our own, but not for this guy.

I’ve never seen him before, but I’ve seen everything about him, every day: the strong curve of his nose, the hooded dark eyes, the long black slashes of his eyebrows. For a second it feels like some fucked-up practical joke; my mind, skidding, grabbing for handholds, wonders if the squad wankers somehow organised this to wreck my head. He’s the spit of me.

Steve is staring back and forth between us. His hands are open by his sides, like he’s not sure what to do with them.

I say, ‘Steve. You can go.’ My lips are numb.

The man says, ‘Antoinette-’

‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll shoot you.’ I tighten my hands on the gun. He shuts up. ‘Steve: go home.’

Steve starts to ask, ‘Are you-’

‘Go. Now.’

After a moment he leaves, practically tiptoeing. The door closes softly behind him. Me and the guy are left looking at each other.

He adjusts his coat collar where Steve had a hold of it. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure who that was-’

‘I asked him to bring you in,’ I say. ‘I’ve had enough of you hanging around my road.’

He’s not fazed. ‘In that case, perhaps you both did me a favour. I’m not sure when I would have got up the momentum to knock on your door.’

His accent is educated English, with something else overlaid on top – Nordie, maybe Belfast. He hasn’t spent the last thirty-two years in a palace in Egypt or a nightclub in Brazil. He’s spent them a train ride away.

‘Have a good look around,’ I say. ‘You want the full tour?’

He’s examining my face, intensely enough that I twitch, wanting to smash in his nose with the gun butt to make him stop. He says, ‘You’re very like me. Do you understand that?’

‘I’m not blind,’ I say. ‘And I’m not stupid.’

That gets a tiny satisfied smile, like me not being an idiot is to his credit. ‘I never thought you would be.’

All that maths homework I saved up to drop at his feet. There’s a silence, while he waits for me to say something, or maybe throw myself into his arms. I don’t.

‘This is a very strange moment for me,’ he says. ‘I’ve been looking for you for almost a year.’

‘Wow. A whole year, yeah?’

‘I did consider making contact at the beginning. I give you my word, I did. But I didn’t know your name, and your mother had gone off the radar really very effectively. And at the time, given the various complications in my life, in many ways I felt you would be better off without-’

‘And now, what, you need a kidney?’

A thin smile. ‘The year before last, my mother and father died, within months of each other.’ A smaller pause, for me to say sorry for his loss or feel bereaved or fuck knows what. ‘Losing one’s parents causes an immense shift in perspective. It brought home to me the value of their presence within my life, on a much broader scale than I had ever understood it before: the value of being rooted within a greater story than one’s own. I became acutely aware, for the first time, just what I had deprived you of. As soon as I reached that realisation, I began looking for you.’

Those dark eyes, all intense and urgent and meaningful. No wonder my ma fell for it; she was only twenty. I’m not. The truth is he was feeling vulnerable all of a sudden, what with being next in line, and he needed someone who could make him feel like he wasn’t gonna vanish into nothing. ‘At one point I actually hired a private detective,’ he says, ‘but all I could give him was your mother’s name, and-’

‘You’ve found me now.’

‘As soon as I knew how to find you, I came. I booked a hotel in Dublin and drove down that very day.’

The face on him says he expects me to be all moved. ‘Shame you didn’t find out a few weeks earlier,’ I say. ‘You could’ve got your Christmas shopping in.’

‘Is that really necessary?’ He nods at my gun. ‘You must know I have no intention of hurting you. And it does put a damper on the conversation.’

There’s a smile at one corner of his mouth, a smile that he expects to work. A charmer, this guy. Shame that gene skipped a generation.

‘There’s no conversation,’ I say. If Steve had the sense to do what I told him, he’s in his car and well gone by now, too far for this guy to chase him down and try to pump him for info. ‘You’re leaving.’

That takes the smile away. He says, carefully, ‘I realise you must be angry with me-’

‘I’m not angry. I’m done with you. Go on.’ I motion at the door with the gun.

‘No,’ he says. His hands come up towards me. ‘Let me stay. Please. Just for a little while; an hour. Half an hour. If you still want me to leave after that, I will.’

I say, ‘Out. Now.’

‘Wait.’ He hasn’t moved, but his voice sounds like a leap to bar the door. ‘Please. I’m not going to pry. You can tell me as much as you like, or nothing – it’s up to you. And I’ll tell you anything you want to know – you must have questions. Anything. Just ask me.’

Here it is: my deepest and darkest, the one that no best mate or partner or lover will ever know. In that second I see what Aislinn saw. I see the moment she chased over barriers and through muck and out the other side of death; it bursts into my house like ball lightning and it sings in front of me, an arm’s reach away. What’s your name, how did you and my ma meet, why did you go, where have you been, what do you do, tell me all of it, all … I see me tilting like a hawk high in warm air, while below me he unrolls all my might-have-beens, for me to circle above at my leisure till every fork and tributary is stamped into my mind, reclaimed and mine. I see him opening his cloak to show me all the lost pages of my story written in silver on the night-sky lining.

‘OK,’ I say. I lower the gun. ‘Yeah: I’ve got questions.’ I can hardly breathe.

‘And I can stay. Half an hour.’

‘Sure. Why not.’

He nods. He waits, gazing at me too intently to blink, hanging for the questions like they’re the best gift I could ever give him.

They would be. This is what my ma was telling me, through all her bullshit fairy tales. If I let him give me the answers, he’ll own me. Everything in my life, past and future, will be his: what he decides to make it into.

I say, ‘How’d you track me down?’

He blinks then.

‘You said anything I want to know.’

He glances at the sofa. ‘May I sit down?’

‘No. First you start answering. Then I’ll see.’

A wry quirk of one eyebrow, like he’s decided to humour an overwrought kid. I use that look on witnesses sometimes. ‘All right. I went to my local shop on Sunday afternoon, to buy my newspaper. While I was in the queue, I glanced at the other papers on the stand. Your photograph was on a front page. I knew as soon as I saw you.’

It sends red straight through me: he’s got no right recognising me. ‘So?’ I say. ‘What’d you do?’

‘I looked you up in the phone book, but you’re unlisted. I was certain your work wouldn’t give me any information. So I rang the paper and asked to speak to the journalist who had written the article. I told him who I was – I could hardly expect him to give me any information otherwise – and that I was hoping to get in touch but uncertain of my welcome.’ A dry glance at the gun. ‘With good reason, apparently.’

‘And he just handed over my address?’ Even for Crowley, that doesn’t ring true; Crowley does nothing for nothing. ‘What’d you give him?’

‘I haven’t given him anything.’

I know that crisp snap of denial, too; too well to fall for it. ‘Yet,’ I say. ‘What’d you promise him?’

He thinks about lying, but he’s too smart to risk it. ‘The journalist said he could provide me with an address for you. In exchange for an interview after our meeting.’

I can just picture it. Top Cop’s Childhood Anguish; side-by-side photos of my shitty block of flats and his detached house in a leafy suburb; ‘All the time she was searching for the truth on the job, she was really searching for me,’ sobs long-lost dad. Not the front page, or anything; part of some glurge spread about fatherless women. Just thinking about it makes me want to puke. Crowley wouldn’t even need to publish it; he could just wave it under my nose and demand every scoop I ever have, and know I would hand them over.

I say, ‘And you said yeah, sure, no problem.’

‘I wasn’t overjoyed about the prospect. Baring my soul for some tabloid isn’t something I ever envisioned myself doing. But I would have done much more than that to find you.’

He doesn’t come across like an idiot, although you never can tell. I say, ‘Or you could have just rung up my work and asked for me. Or sent me a letter.’

‘I could have, yes.’ He runs a palm down one cheek and sighs. ‘I’ll be honest. I wanted the chance to observe you for a while, before making that commitment.’

Meaning he wanted the chance to decide whether I was good enough to contact. If I’d had a fella in a shiny tracksuit, half a dozen screaming brats and a smoke hanging off my lip, he could have turned around and gone home: no harm, no foul, story ended before it began.

Maybe he even believes that’s why he did it this way, but I don’t. I know exactly what he was at. Playing this the approved way – break the news nice and gently from a distance, have a few careful getting-to-know-you phone calls, meet on neutral territory when everyone’s comfortable with it, all that shite – that would’ve let me decide when and whether. This guy was never going to do that. He wanted this situation – wanted me – on his terms, start to finish. Unlucky for him, that gene didn’t skip a generation.

I say, ‘So you spent the next three days hanging around outside my gaff like a peeper.’

That flares his nostrils. ‘I don’t enjoy admitting it. But I said I would tell you anything you asked. I hope now you realise I meant it.’

‘Your journalist buddy gets nothing. First thing tomorrow, you ring him and tell him you had the wrong woman. And make it convincing.’

His head lifts. Pride looks good on him and he knows it. ‘I gave him my word.’

He wants me to beg, or stamp my foot and remind him he owes me more than he owes some hack. I laugh, one crack – I’m not going to give him more. ‘What’s he gonna do, sue?’

‘Obviously not. But I prefer to fulfil my obligations.’ When the corner of my mouth lifts: ‘And I don’t think either of us particularly wants him as an enemy.’

‘Trust me: you’d rather have him for an enemy than me. You think I don’t have friends on the force around your way? You want to spend the rest of your life being pulled over and breathalysed every time you get in your car? Brought in for questioning every time a kid says the bad man had brown skin?’

His mouth – wide hard-cut curves, like mine – has tightened. He says, ‘This obviously means a lot to you.’

He leaves space for me to take the bait. I don’t.

‘All right. I’ll tell the journalist I was mistaken.’ He nods at the sofa. ‘Now may I sit down?’

The cheeky fuck is already moving towards my sofa. ‘Great,’ I say. I lift the gun and point it at him again. ‘You can go now.’

That startles him. ‘But your questions. Don’t you want to know-’

‘Nope. Off you go.’

He doesn’t move. ‘We said half an hour.’

‘I’m finished early.’

‘Half an hour. That was the agreement.’

I laugh out loud. ‘You should’ve got it in writing. Fuck off. Don’t come back.’

His jaw sets. ‘If you’re trying to hurt me-’

‘I’m trying to get you out of my gaff. If I want to hurt you, I’ll use this.’ I move my chin at the gun. ‘Go on.’

For a second I think I’m going to have to do it. He’s not used to backing down. Funny, that: neither am I.

I see the moment when he realises I’ll do it. It widens his eyes and he eases back a step, towards the door, but he’s not done. ‘I understand that this has been a shock. Believe me, this wasn’t the way I would have chosen to- Let me leave you my card. When you feel differently-’

His hand’s going to his breast pocket. ‘No,’ I say, and train my gun on that hand till it stops moving. ‘We’re done. If I ever see you again, I’m gonna shoot you dead. Then I’ll explain how terrified I was of my stalker, my friend Steve will back me up, and I’ll sell the story of our tragic misunderstanding to your journalist pal for big bucks.’

Slowly his hand moves away from his pocket. He says, ‘You’re not what I visualised.’

‘No shit,’ I say. ‘Bye.’

For a moment he stands there in the middle of my sitting room, staring at my sofa without seeing it, like he can’t get a hold of what comes next or how to do it. He doesn’t look like the spit of me, not any more. He looks like some middle-aged guy who’s spent too long, the last few days, standing in the cold and imagining.

In the end he moves. With the door open he turns and I think he’s going to say something, but he just nods and steps out into the night.

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.’

‘There’s Rory,’ Steve says. ‘He’s hiding something: that half-hour when he got to Aislinn’s early, something happened there. Maybe he saw something, or she said something…’

‘Shit,’ I say, straightening up fast. ‘Were you in the observation room when Breslin asked him for evidence that Aislinn had a stalker?’

‘Jesus.’ Steve catches his breath with a hiss. ‘Yeah, I saw that. Rory started to say something about having seen some bloke on Saturday night, and Breslin shut him right down.’

‘Breslin and me,’ I say. ‘I was right in there, backing him up, like a bloody idiot. But listen: the guy Rory saw, that can’t have been Breslin. If it was, Rory would’ve recognised him on Sunday – or at least today, when he brought it up. And you and me would’ve seen that, if he recognised Breslin; we couldn’t have missed that. Breslin’s not the one who was in Stoneybatter Saturday night.’

‘Huh,’ Steve says. He’s gone immobile again, only his mind moving, twisting and rearranging the case like a Rubik’s cube. ‘Try this. Breslin was Aislinn’s fella. Over the last few weeks, he starts to suspect she’s two-timing him. Maybe he checks her phone – it only had a swipe lock, remember? – and he finds the texts between her and Rory. And then, sometime last week, he finds Rory’s text about the dinner date.’

‘Breslin wouldn’t like being two-timed,’ I say. ‘The ego on him; he wouldn’t like it one little bit.’

‘But he’d have better sense than to do his own dirty work.’ Steve’s eyes come up to meet mine. ‘You know who he would’ve brought in.’

I say, ‘McCann.’ The thought of putting yourself in your partner’s hands like that does something weird inside my head. I look at Steve and he looks different from ever before: his freckles are more vivid, the lines of his mouth are more definite, I can almost see warmth coming off his skin. He looks more real.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘McCann.’

I say, ‘Breslin sets up a beautiful alibi, just in case – what do you bet him and the missus had friends over, Saturday night, or went to a nice crowded restaurant? And McCann heads down to Stoneybatter to sort out that cheating bitch.’

‘The way it went down,’ Steve says. ‘That can’t have been the plan.’

There’s a question in his voice. He means did they want Aislinn dead.

‘Nah,’ I say. ‘Just for two-timing Breslin? He might’ve been raging, but I don’t care how close him and McCann are: there’s no chance McCann would get himself into something like this just because Breslin can’t keep his mot in line.’

‘So McCann was just planning to talk to her. Drop a few hints about why it’s a bad idea to cheat on a cop. Maybe talk to Rory, too, warn him off. Just talk.’

He badly wants to believe that. A surprisingly big part of me does, too. ‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘Probably. Only something goes wrong. Maybe Aislinn goes to scream and McCann panics, something like that.’

‘And he hits her. Or pushes her down and then hits her.’ Steve’s hand is tight around his glass. This shit is hard to say, physically hard. It goes against the grain. Our throats want to close over it.

‘When he realises what’s after happening,’ I say, ‘he wipes the place down, legs it out of there and gets hold of Breslin. Once Breslin’s finished throwing a wobbler and had a chance to think, he calls it in to Stoneybatter. He times it so Aislinn will be found when he’s on shift, and he’ll be there to keep an eye on the investigation. And that’s where we came in.’

For a long time it feels like there’s nothing else to say. It feels like there might never be anything to say; like the one and only thing we can do is sit here on my sofa, drinking whiskey, while a man shouts far away outside and that small nagging wind flutters in the chimney.

The house is getting cold enough that in the end I have to move, to turn on the heat. ‘You take Rory,’ I say, when I come back. ‘You were getting on great guns with him there, on Sunday. I’ll take Lucy.’

Steve scrapes at his glass with a thumbnail, thinking. ‘Rory first. First thing in the morning.’

‘Yeah. Then anything he gives us, we might be able to use it to crack Lucy.’

‘Breslin,’ Steve says. He looks up at me. ‘What do we do with him?’

I can’t even think of what I actually want to do with Breslin. I say, ‘You’ve got a date with him to check out Rory’s rep with the locals, remember? Once that’s done, someone needs to chase up the rest of the people who were in evening classes with Aislinn. No harm letting Breslin do that now.’

‘If Lucy or Rory IDs him or McCann…’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘That’s when it gets interesting.’

‘Shit,’ Steve says. It’s sinking in: this is real, and we’re stuck with it. ‘Ah, shit.’

I start to laugh. The face on him is beautiful: like a good citizen coming home and finding a dead hooker and a K of coke in his bed.

‘Jesus, Antoinette. What’s funny? This is fucked up. We’re talking about one of our own squad. Killing someone; murdering her, maybe.’ I’m laughing harder. ‘No. Have you even- If this is true, what the hell are we going to-’

‘You should see yourself. The state of you. Don’t you dare have a heart attack in my gaff. The rumours-’

‘Antoinette. What are we going to do?’

Obviously, I don’t have a clue either. I would tell him we’ll figure it out as we go along, except that seems unlikely. ‘Cheer up,’ I say. ‘Maybe it’ll all turn out to be nothing. Maybe you’ll give Rory a nudge tomorrow and he’ll confess on your shoulder. Bring tissues.’

Steve takes a deep breath and runs a hand down his face. ‘It could be nothing. Right? It could. Breslin was shagging Aislinn, he went down there late Saturday night looking for his hole and found her dead, and he freaked out. Like anyone would. The rest is coincidence and rubbish. It could be.’

‘It could, yeah.’ It isn’t.

‘It could. This is all fairy tale. There’s no solid evidence; it’s all maybe-what-ifs.’

He’s grinning at me, but the grin is a complicated one. Steve knows some, at least, of what’s gone on in my head over the last few hours. He’s here anyway.

‘Yeah yeah yeah,’ I say. It comes out easy, but he’s right, and it catches at me in places I can’t see. ‘Your money’s still on the big bad drugs gang, is it?’

‘Jesus,’ Steve says. The grin is fading. ‘I actually wish that had panned out. Just to keep our lives simple.’

‘Ah, no. If our lives were simple, I’d still be bitching about it, and you’d be bitching about me bitching about it. This is way better.’

He makes a helpless sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. ‘God. All that shite with the fifty-quid notes…’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘All that shite.’ All Breslin’s fancy hints that he was on the take: all to give me and Steve a nice dead end to chase. The first day, when I asked the whole squad room who had run Aislinn through the system, McCann must’ve shat a brick. First chance he got, he grabbed Breslin and the two of them came up with something that would account for the check on Aislinn, account for anything else we found that linked her to them, keep us occupied till Breslin could break Rory, and lead us exactly nowhere. Breslin must’ve had fun, muttering darkly into his phone, layering on the obvious fake stories about stopping off for a shag to let us dig out the non-obvious fake story underneath, watching us lick it all up.

And now I know exactly why Breslin threw away his red herring, this morning. It wasn’t because he could tell I was ready to jump. It was because when he got back in from interviewing Rory’s exes, his pocket floater – and if that wasn’t Reilly, I’m gonna find out who it is – told him that me and Steve had had a row and Steve had walked out. Breslin knew I was the one who’d been closer to sold on Rory from the start, he made an educated guess that that had been a big part of the row, and he knew I’d be itching to have the last word on Steve. And to help me do exactly that, he had the CCTV evidence of Rory stalking Aislinn. He dropped the bent-cop bullshit and played hard to that, aiming to get Rory arrested fast and to keep me and Steve apart till the file had gone to the prosecutors.

And me, I was so busy bracing myself to fight anyone who was out to sink me or own me or generally use me as his very own dollhouse dolly, it never occurred to me that this might not be about me to begin with. I skipped right off with the nice man waving candy – Steve did too, in his own way – and if that cocky fuck hadn’t been hanging around outside my gaff, or if I hadn’t made myself ring Steve, or if Steve was a very slightly different guy, we wouldn’t be sitting here.

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘For coming down.’

‘You’re all right. There was nothing decent on the telly.’

I kind of want to say sorry, but explaining what I’m apologising for and not apologising for would take too much hassle and embarrassment and overall shite. Steve might be thinking the same thing, I don’t know. Instead I get the whiskey bottle and give us both a refill. We sit there, drinking, while the stuff we should probably be saying out loud gets itself done in the silence.

‘Fuck me,’ I say, suddenly realising. ‘I’m half English.’

‘And you’re middle-class,’ Steve says. ‘Next time you go home, you’re going to get the shite kicked out of you.’

‘Shh. Nobody has to know.’

‘They’ll smell it off you.’

‘Seriously,’ I say. I’m looking at him. ‘Nobody has to know.’

Steve gives me a straight look back. ‘They won’t.’

‘Good.’

‘Unless someone else talks. Do you know how your man tracked you down?’

‘He got my address off Crowley,’ I say. The taste of that makes me finish my whiskey. ‘I need to sort the little wankstain before he blabs.’

‘He’s not a problem. We’ll do it tomorrow.’

The we sounds good. ‘It’s gonna be a long day.’

‘Yeah.’ Steve takes a deep breath, throws back the last of his drink and head-shakes away the burn. ‘I’ll head. Get some rest for this one.’

‘You’re over the limit. Get a taxi, come get the car tomorrow.’

‘I’ll start walking, pick one up along the way. Clear my head.’ He stands up and pulls on his coat. ‘Are you coming to Rory’s with me?’

‘Yeah, I’ll come. He still thinks I’m OK. Early, like seven? You need to get back in time for your date with Breslin.’

He nods. Breslin’s name doesn’t even bring back an echo of that horrified look; we’re somewhere out on the other side of that. ‘Seven works.’

He doesn’t ask – even after me calling him for help because there’s a nasty man outside my house, he doesn’t ask – whether I’m gonna be OK on my own, or whether I want him to stay. If I was a totally different person, I might hug him or some shit for that.

‘Text me when you’re home,’ I say, instead. ‘Let me know you got in OK.’

Steve rolls his eyes. ‘No one’s lying in wait to jump me.’

‘I know that, you spa. But I’m the one who dragged you out. I feel responsible. You want to get yourself jumped on your own time, go for it.’

‘Thanks a lot.’ He grins at me, wrapping his scarf around his neck. ‘I’ll text you.’

When he’s gone I take my laptop to bed and shoot some Nazis. I don’t even have to stop myself thinking about all the shit on my lengthening list of shit I don’t want to think about. My mind is done for the night, shorted out; there’s nothing left but a dial tone.

It’s half an hour before my phone beeps. Home safe. See you tomorrow.

I text back Yeah, see you then. Night. I crash out practically before I can put down the phone.