The Trespasser

Chapter 16

I get in my car and check my messages – phones go on mute during interviews, or Sod’s Law says your ma will ring. Text from Sophie: Got DNA profile from fluids on mattress. Male, not in system. Get me sample from your suspect we’ll run comparison. Steve’s sent me an audio file of Breslin explaining to him how much potential he has and how he should be sure not to throw it away. Random Google Blonde has another four million depressing messages from the various dating sites. I delete her accounts.

I text Steve: Ring me. Then I sit there, running the heat to try and thaw my feet after Lucy’s flat, and watch the people going past. They make me edgy. Dozens and dozens of people, they just keep coming, and every single one of their heads is crammed with stories they believe and stories they want to believe and stories someone else has made them believe, and every story is battering against the thin walls of the person’s skull, drilling and gnawing for its chance to escape and attack someone else, bore its way in and feed off that mind too. Even the cute little student mincing along in her flowery dress, the shuffling old fella with his shuffling spaniel, they look Ebola-lethal. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. Maybe I’m getting the flu.

It’s eleven minutes of this before my phone lights up with Steve’s name. ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘Can you talk?’

‘Yeah. Not for long; I’m supposed to be talking to the staff in the newsagent. Breslin’s only across the road, in the bakery. You get the file?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Listen. Once I showed Lucy that note from Aislinn, it took her about a quarter of a second to ID the mystery boyfriend. Only it wasn’t Breslin.’

Before Steve can ask what the hell, it hits him. ‘Jesus. McCann?’

‘Bingo.’

‘What the…? Why?’

I give him the fast version. At the end he says, after a moment of silence, ‘Oh Jesus.’ His voice sounds raw.

‘Yeah, we can do that part later. You got anything I should know?’

Steve says, ‘My guy at the mobile company e-mailed me. Full records on the phone that called it in.’

‘Anything to prove it’s Breslin’s?’

‘No. All the other numbers trace back to journalists. Including-’ I know what’s coming. I say it with him: ‘Crowley.’

Breslin, the little shit. He’s been top of the rat list from the get-go, but it still gives me a quick hit of anger. ‘Let me guess,’ I say. ‘Early Sunday morning.’

‘Quarter to seven.’

That pulls a hard crack of laughter out of me. ‘And then he came in and gave us a lecture about squad loyalty. What a load of bollix. Breslin figured if the pressure around this case got turned up high enough, I’d sign off on Rory Fallon just to get it off my desk. He knew that little cocksucker Crowley would jump on the chance to give me shite, and he shoved me straight under Crowley’s wheels. Gave Crowley the scoop, told him to go all out: hints that I wasn’t up to the job, photos that made me look like a raving lunatic. The bleeding shitehawk.’

‘Sounds about right,’ Steve says. The tight-wound note to his voice means something’s at him, but my mind’s not on that. My Crowley problem didn’t begin on Sunday morning.

‘When were the other calls from that phone to Crowley?’ I ask.

‘There’s just the one call. Eight to other journos, over the last year or so, but just the Sunday-morning one to Crowley.’

Crowley’s magic appearances started last summer, and there’ve been four or five of them since. If Breslin’s been using that phone to run his journos, he’s not the one who’s been running Crowley into my scenes; not until this one. Me sulking at my desk, convinced everything about this case was part of a big dark conspiracy against me. I feel like a gobshite all over again.

‘Here’s the thing,’ Steve says. His voice has tightened another notch. ‘How’d Breslin know we had the case?’

‘Because he’d called it in to Stoneybatter almost two hours earlier. Even allowing for delays, paramedics, uniforms, whatever, it had to be hitting the squad by then.’

‘No. How’d he know it was you and me? Crowley’s a cute hoor; he knows the score. He wouldn’t give serious trouble to O’Neill, say, or Winters, if one of them had pulled the case; he wouldn’t want to burn his bridges with them and all their mates. You and I are the only ones he’d be willing to hassle. Ringing Crowley wouldn’t have done Breslin any good, unless he already knew the case was going to us. And the gaffer only gave it to us just before seven.’

The silence lands hard. Down the line between me and Steve I hear wind, and a faraway kid screaming, and the hiss of emptiness.

‘Maybe Breslin knew we were on night shift,’ I say. ‘He knows the gaffer always throws us the domestics…’

I can hear in my own voice how weak it is. Steve says, ‘How’d he know the case wouldn’t come in ten minutes later and go to one of the day shift?’

The squad room, waiting in cold early light for the day to begin. O’Kelly tossing the call sheet on my desk: I picked it up on my way in, said I’d bring it upstairs to save Bernadette the hassle… I say, and my voice sounds calm and clean and very strange, ‘Breslin had talked to the gaffer.’

Steve says, ‘Can you think of any other way he could have known?’

‘Is there a call to the gaffer in the phone log?’

‘No. He must’ve used his regular phone for that. He knew we’d trace the Stoneybatter call; he wasn’t going to have the gaffer’s number showing up on that same phone. He couldn’t do anything about the calls to journos, but anyone can ring journos, and we can’t make them reveal their sources; he figured those wouldn’t come back on him.’

O’Kelly scanning the roster, hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels. You’ll need backup on this one. Breslin’s due in. Have him.

I say, ‘The gaffer knew all along. He put Breslin on the case to keep an eye on us.’

‘Yeah,’ Steve says. ‘Yeah. Fuck, Antoinette.’

We can’t afford to get angry or wired or anything else, not now. ‘Keep it together,’ I say sharply.

I hear Steve blow out a long breath. ‘I know.’

‘What time are you and Breslin gonna be back at the squad?’

‘We’re pretty near done here. Say forty-five minutes, an hour max.’

‘I’ll throw him a ball to chase. When he heads off, meet me in the garden outside HQ.’

‘OK. Gotta go.’ And Steve hangs up.

The people going past the car seem like they’re speeding up, driven along by that unstoppable savage thrumming inside their heads. I still have that off-kilter feeling like a fever starting. I can’t afford the flu today, any more than I can afford to lose the head.

I need to head out to Stoneybatter, but first I set my phone number to Private, ring the General Unit and ask them, in a timid little girly voice with a nice middle-class accent, if I could please talk to Detective Breslin about Aislinn Murray who got murdered. They put me through to the Murder Squad; when Bernadette answers and tells me Detective Breslin is out and she’ll get someone else for me, I get all nervy and say no, no thanks, but could I maybe leave him a message? And she pats me on the head, more or less, and puts me through to Breslin’s voicemail.

‘This is Detective Don Breslin.’ Smooth as a coffee ad. He probably did a dozen takes. ‘Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’ Beep.

I keep my mouth a few inches from the phone, just in case. ‘Um, hi. My name’s… um, I don’t really want to… But I’m a friend of Simon Fallon – I heard you were asking him about his brother Rory? And – I mean, I used to hang out with Rory as well, and he did some things that probably you should… I never reported it, but… Simon said you were really nice. I’m in the Top House bar, in Howth? In beside the fireplace? If maybe you could come here? I can probably stay till like four. Otherwise, I guess I can try you some other time, or… Well. Thanks. Bye.’

I put my phone away and floor it for Stoneybatter. That should do it. Breslin’ll get in, check his messages, cream his Armani suit, turn right around and zoom off to find out what terrible things Rory did to this poor girl. He’ll leave Steve behind, in case she can’t bring herself to spill her story to two big bad Ds at once. Forty minutes to Howth, at this time of day and in this weather. Say half an hour of waiting for Mystery Chick, or till four o’clock if we’re really in luck. Then forty minutes back. For at least two hours, me and Steve will have McCann all to ourselves.

Ganly’s is empty apart from the baldy barman, who’s stacking glasses and humming along to Perry Como singing ‘Magic Moments’ on the radio. ‘Ah,’ he says, giving me a nod. ‘It’s yourself. Did I win?’

‘You got into the next round,’ I say. ‘The woman you identified for me the other day: remember the guy who was in with her?’

‘More or less. I told yous before, he wasn’t the main thing on my mind.’

‘Would you have a look at a few photos for me, see if you can spot him?’

‘Your pal was already in yesterday, asking me the same thing. I was no use to him.’

‘He said that, yeah. These are different photos.’

The barman shrugs. ‘I’ll have a go, sure. Anything to help the forces of law and order.’

I pull out a fresh copy of the McCann photo array. ‘If you see the man here, tell me. If he’s not there, tell me. If you’re not sure, tell me. OK?’

‘I can manage that.’ The barman takes the card and gives it a long thoughtful gaze. ‘Would you look at that,’ he says. ‘I’d say you’ve got him this time. This lad here.’ He taps McCann’s face.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I wouldn’t stake my life on it, but I’d put fifty quid on it down the bookies. Will that do you any good?’

‘I’ll take it,’ I say, finding a pen. ‘Initial the photo you recognise. At the bottom, write down where you’ve seen him before and how sure you are, and sign.’

The barman writes, head bent close to the page. ‘Can you think of anyone else who was in that evening?’ I ask. ‘Anyone who might have noticed the pair of them?’

‘Ah, now. You’re asking a bit much. I don’t call the register at the beginning of every night.’

‘I might have to come in and have chats with your regulars, some night. I’ll try and keep it low-key.’

‘I had a feeling that was on the cards, all right.’ The barman passes me the sheet and the Biro. His writing is tiny and beautiful; it deserves fountain pen and thick yellowing paper, not this. ‘If you’re talking to this fella, tell him he’s not welcome back in here. I’m not asking you if he did anything to that young one. I’m just saying people come here for a bit of peace.’ He gives me one more long glance, as he picks up the next two glasses. ‘I wouldn’t have your job for all the tea in China,’ he says.

The uniform in Stoneybatter station says the voice sample might be the fella who rang Sunday morning, except he thinks that fella sounded a bit different from this one, he can’t explain how but not the same, maybe the voice was a bit higher and maybe it had a Meath accent, or else Kildare, it won’t come back to him properly. No surprise there; even if we hadn’t already smeared that pointless voice array all over his memory, I’m not the only one who can put on funny voices. We’ve got everything we’re going to get.

It’s lunchtime. I stop at Rory’s favourite Tesco, grab two bottles of Coke and two sandwiches with plenty of meat in them – this could be a long afternoon – and head back to HQ. Sleety rain spatters my windscreen with big dirty spots, but by the time I get to the Castle gardens, it’s stopped. I pick a stretch of wall among the bushes, out of sight of the windows, and use paper napkins to get the worst of the rain off it before I sit down and open my sandwich. A couple of small birds are hopping forlornly on the wet grass. When I toss them a chunk of bread, they panic and scatter into the bushes in a wild rattle of wings.

I’m only getting stuck into the sandwich when Steve comes through the garden gate, walking fast with his head down, like that’s gonna magically hide the red hair from anyone at a window. ‘Hey,’ he says.

‘Hiya. Breslin gone?’

Steve brushes at the wall and sits down beside me. ‘Just legged it. He got a message from some girl in Howth?’

‘Yeah. She’s not gonna be much use to him. You have lunch yet?’

‘Nah.’

‘Here.’

I pass him the other sandwich. Steve takes it and holds it in his two hands, not opening it. ‘Did you get anything good?’

‘Tentative ID off the barman. No joy out of the uniform. Sophie’s guys got a male DNA profile off the mattress.’

He says, ‘What do we do?’

I say, ‘We need to talk to McCann.’

There isn’t a way around it any longer. In two hours, maybe three, Breslin will be back and suspicious and wanting to arrest Rory. Those couple of hours are all we’ve got.

Steve nods. He asks, ‘How?’

We have so many weapons. You pick them up from watching other Ds, you sift them out of squad-room stories, you come up with your own and pass them around; you stash them all away safe, for the days when you’ll need them. By the time you make Murder, you have an arsenal that could pulverise cities.

You come into an interview carrying a ten-pound stack of papers, so the suspect thinks you’ve got that much against him. You stick a videotape on top, so he’ll think you’ve got video evidence. You flip through the papers, put your finger down and start to say something, catch yourself – Nah, we’ll save that for later - and move on, leaving him to fret about what you’re saving. You pull out a voice recorder – My handwriting’s only terrible, mind if I use this instead? – so that later, when you turn it off and lean in confidentially, he’ll think you’re off the record; he’ll forget all about the interview-room recorders, whirring away. You read imaginary texts on your phone and swap cryptic comments (Happy days, the searchers got lucky) with your partner. You do the fake lie-detector test with an app these days: give the guy some bollix about electromagnetic fields and have him press his thumb on your phone screen after each question, and when you get to the one where he’s lying, you shift a finger and it flashes red graphs and LIE LIE LIE. You tell him the live victim is dead and can’t contradict him, or the dead one is alive and talking. You tell him you can’t let him leave till the two of you work this out, but if he’ll just tell you what happened, he can be home on his sofa with a nice cup of tea in time for Downton Abbey. You tell him it wasn’t his fault, you tell him the vic was asking for it, you tell him anyone would’ve done the same thing. You tell him witnesses heard him talk about how he loved kiddie porn, you tell him the pathologist says he rode the dead body till it started falling apart, you pummel him with the sickest shite you can come up with until he can’t stop himself from shouting at you that that’s all bollix, that wasn’t the way it went; and then you lift one eyebrow and say Yeah, right, then how did it go? and you listen while he tells you.

All our weapons are useless this time. McCann’s known the feel of them by heart, he’s had them shaped to his hands by wear, since long before we ever laid eyes on them. We’re going in bare.

I say, ‘We talk to him. That’s all we can do.’

‘He won’t talk back.’

‘He wants to tell us his story. They all do. Deep down, he wants us to know that him and Aislinn, that was true love, and whatever she was playing at with Rory was a load of shite that was begging for a punch. So let’s see how much of that we can get him to tell us.’

Steve says, ‘We focus on the relationship. Nothing else. We don’t go near Breslin being involved, or McCann’ll go loyal and shut his trap. Just talk about Aislinn.’

‘We’ve got one grenade,’ I say. ‘When Breslin found out that file box was full of the Desmond Murray case, he was relieved. Meaning he didn’t know McCann had worked that case. Meaning two days ago, at least, McCann hadn’t made the connection: he didn’t know Aislinn was Des Murray’s daughter. He didn’t know she was playing him all along.’

Steve says, ‘We save that.’

‘Yeah. That oughta go off with a bang.’

The birds have forgotten their fright and come back to peck about on the grass. Breslin is across the river by now, heading north.

Steve asks, ‘Where do we do it?’

This is what I was thinking about, all the way back here in the car, all the time I was waiting for Steve. ‘Interview room,’ I say.

His face turns towards me. ‘You think? We could clear out the incident room. Or come out here, even.’

‘No. We throw everyone out of the incident room, we might as well put up a sign saying there’s some big secret thing going down. Anyway, from now on we need to document everything, if we want a snowball’s chance in hell of making a case.’

‘He’ll know. The second we head for an interview room, he’ll know.’

‘He will anyway. No matter where we take him, there’s no way we can make this seem like a nice friendly chat, not past the first thirty seconds. The moment we bring up him having met Aislinn, he’s gonna know.’

The thought of that moment flicks across us like a small black splatter of sleet. It stops us talking.

We get the sandwiches down us, the Coke for caffeine. Then we go into the Murder building, in through the glossy black door with the combination my fingers could press in my sleep, nodding to Bernadette on our way past. We take off our coats and hang them neatly in our lockers, I take off my satchel and stash it away. Steve finds a copy of the family photo from the Desmond Murray case and tucks it in his suit pocket; I take photos of the arrays, on my phone, and then I shove them to the bottom of my locker and hope no one picks today to piss in it again. The twin metal slams of our locker doors echo, sharp and startled, against the tiles of the small dim room.

We go side by side up the wide marble staircase, our footsteps circling blurrily around the stairwell, to the squad room. We go in there with no stack of papers, no videocassettes, no voice recorders. We go in with our hands empty.

The squad room’s almost deserted, everyone out on cases or on lunch. For a second there, it reminds me of early Sunday morning, just before the gaffer came in to dump this case on me and Steve. The quiet, just touched at the edges by the far-off drone of traffic; the white light of the fluorescents sealing the room against the thick grey press of cloud at the windows, charging the scattered paperwork and forgotten coffee cups with latent meaning. Me thinking how I could love this room, if only.

McCann is hunched in his corner, peck-typing. He looks worse every time I see him. Me, bloody eejit, asking Fleas to look out for anyone who seems like he’s had a bad week. You could fit your case notes in those eyebags.

‘McCann,’ I say. ‘Got a few minutes? We could do with a hand.’

He looks up from his computer and he knows.

For a second I think he’s gonna shut us down: got work of my own to do, bye. But he needs to know what we’ve got. And he’s the veteran; we’re rookies, can’t even get through this first step without cracking – Steve is shifting his feet, I’m rubbing at my mouth. McCann can’t resist. He figures he can do this, not a problem, and walk away.

‘All right.’ He hits Save and stands up. O’Neill and Winters, examining a statement sheet across the room, barely even glance over.

‘Thanks for this,’ Steve says, on our way up the stairs. ‘We really appreciate it.’

‘Yeah. What do you need a hand with?’

‘Aislinn Murray case,’ I say, over my shoulder. McCann’s face doesn’t change. ‘We need all the witnesses we can get. Is in here OK, yeah?’ I push open the door of the nice interview room, the pastel-yellow one with the coffee sachets that we used for Rory the second time round, and give McCann a hopeful look.

McCann grunts. He picks one of the chairs on the detectives’ side, with its back to the one-way mirror, and gives it a quick rock to see if it’s a dud. ‘I’ll have tea,’ he says, landing in it heavily. ‘Drop of milk, no sugar.’

‘You sure you’re all right for this?’ Steve asks, obediently heading for the kettle. ‘Not meaning to get personal, but you’re looking a bit rough, man.’

‘Thanks.’

‘The missus not doing your ironing this week, no?’ I want to know, with a grin that could go any way. ‘You in the doghouse?’

‘I’m grand. How’s your personal life?’

‘Shite,’ I say. Me and Steve laugh; McCann comes up with something that’s meant to be a smile, except he’s out of practice. ‘You’re married twenty-five years, amn’t I right? How do you do it?’

‘Twenty-six. Is this what you wanted me for, yeah? Relationship advice?’

‘Nah. You mind if we have this on?’ I’m already turning on the video camera.

McCann’s eyebrows jerk down; he didn’t think we had the nads. ‘Why the fuck do you want that yoke?’

‘Because I’m paranoid. A few months back, right? I got stuck helping Roche interview some scumbag’s mammy. I got her to drop the fake alibi; Roche told the gaffer it was him.’ I pull up the chair opposite McCann, the suspect’s chair. ‘Now I video everything. I’m thinking of getting myself a body cam.’

‘In fairness,’ Steve says apologetically, dropping teabags into cups, ‘it’s best practice to record witness statements, when we have the-’

‘Jesus Christ,’ McCann says. ‘Video whatever you want.’

‘Ah, man,’ Steve says. He’s practically curling into a ball with embarrassment, puppy-dog eyes begging McCann not to hold it against him. ‘I’m really sorry about this. We’d’ve only loved to not bother you with this shite. If it was only one bit of evidence, then we’d have just dumped it down the back of the file and left it to go away; we wouldn’t have taken up your time. But… I mean, it’s coming at us from all directions. We figured we’d be better off getting on top of it now.’

‘At least ye have the sense to make him the good cop,’ McCann says to me. ‘I can’t see you pulling that off.’

Steve does an awkward laugh. ‘No flies on you,’ I say, shaking my head ruefully. ‘No point in us trying to pull the wool over your eyes. We wouldn’t waste our time, or yours.’

‘You are wasting my time. What do you want?’

‘That’s you put in your place,’ I say to Steve. He manages an embarrassed half-grin as he makes his way to the table, eyes on his carefully balanced double handful of mugs. He passes them out and pulls the spare chair around the table, next to me. McCann slurps his tea and makes a face.

‘So let’s clear one thing up straightaway,’ I say, ‘save us all some time. You were having an affair with Aislinn Murray.’

McCann sucks his teeth and stares at me, not bothering to hide the disgust. ‘You little quisling,’ he says.

What surprises me is that I can’t even come up with a spark of anger at that. ‘We’ve got a witness who saw you chat Aislinn up and take her phone number,’ I say. ‘She’s ID’d your photo. We’ve got a witness who saw you and Aislinn having a drink in Ganly’s together. He’s ID’d your photo. We’ve got a witness who saw you in the vicinity of Viking Gardens at least three times over the past six weeks. He’s ID’d your photo. All of them will ID you in a lineup if you make us take it that far. Do I need to go to all that hassle, or can we just cut to the chase?’

McCann drinks his tea and thinks. I can see him rearranging pieces in his head like a chess player, tracking each strategy a dozen moves down the line.

What he needs to say is ‘No comment.’ That simple. Put up a wall of that, let us throw piece after piece of evidence at it till we run out, then walk away. This is the one and only non-idiotic thing to do, and every detective in the world knows that. We’ve all had jaw-dropped conversations where we can’t believe the moron actually talked to us, when all he had to do was keep his face shut and he could have gone home; we’ve all seen the pros fold their arms and repeat ‘No comment’ on a loop, till we give up and cut them loose. We’ve all thought it: If that was me, no way in hell would I open my big gob. We all know for a fact that if we ever get pulled in, innocent or guilty, it’ll be No comment all the way.

McCann can’t make himself do it. Once he says, ‘No comment,’ he loses hold of himself as the detective, maybe forever. Once those two words come out of his mouth, he’s no different from any junkie shoplifter, any pervert groping girls on buses: he’s the suspect.

He says, ‘I knew Aislinn Murray. We met up a few times.’

‘And that’s it,’ I say.

‘Yeah.’

‘Were you ever in her home?’

Cogs turning again, as he weighs up whether there might be anything we’ve managed to keep away from Breslin, any fingerprints he missed during his wipe-down, anything that could catch him out. ‘Yeah,’ he says eventually. ‘The odd chat, cup of tea.’

‘Ever shag her?’

‘You got a good reason for asking me that question?’

Me and Steve glance at each other. McCann doesn’t react.

I say, ‘We got male DNA off her mattress.’

‘It’s not mine.’

‘You mean you wore condoms. It’s not semen. It’s sweat.’

McCann goes back inside his head to think. I say helpfully, ‘We’re pretty sure Aislinn didn’t sleep with anyone else in the last couple of years.’

Not a budge out of him, as he weighs and measures. Then he nods. ‘Yeah. We had the odd shag.’

And that’s the preliminaries done with. Everything we can afford to give up, all three of us, is laid out on the table. Like the brisk initial stage of a board game, sacrifice this to take that, till almost by cooperation you’ve cleared the board of the small stuff, readied it for the real battle ahead.

‘Ah, man,’ Steve says ruefully, raking his fingers through his hair. ‘Ah, man. Of all the girls in this town, you had to pick one who was going to get herself murdered?’

McCann shrugs, swigs his tea. ‘What can I say. She didn’t seem like the type.’

‘You should’ve said,’ Steve tells him reproachfully. ‘As soon as the case came in.’

McCann’s eyes move across us both like we’re not worth stopping for. ‘If it’d been any other Ds, I would’ve.’

‘It’s not like we were going to ring your missus and grass you up.’

‘That’s what you say. You’re telling me you’d have stood by your squad? Look where we are.’

‘You know this needs doing,’ Steve says, worried. ‘It does. What do you want us to do? Ignore all this, go ahead with Rory, and have his defence dig this up and throw it in our faces halfway through the trial?’

‘I want you to have some respect. Something like this, you want to bring it up, you do it in private. Not in a fucking interview room. With a fucking camera going. Jesus.’ He shoots a narrow, furious glance at the camera.

‘If I was any other D,’ I say, ‘I would’ve. But I’ve taken enough shite from this squad that nowadays, anything that matters, I’m getting it on record. We’ll try and keep it to ourselves, but I can’t promise anything till I know what I’m dealing with.’

It’s the oldest line in the book. McCann’s mouth curls. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

‘So let’s hear it,’ I say. ‘Start with the first time you and Aislinn met. When, where, how.’

McCann leans back in his chair, stretches his legs out and folds his arms, settling in. ‘Horgan’s. Last summer; I don’t remember the date.’

‘Don’t worry about it. We can find that out. Had you seen her in there before?’

‘No.’

‘You would have noticed her.’

‘Yeah, I would. All the lads noticed her. Probably some of the girls, too.’ Snide look at me.

‘I’m not surprised,’ I say. ‘I’ve seen photos. How’d you get up the brass neck to chat her up?’

‘I didn’t. She came on to me.’

I laugh out loud. ‘Course she did. Gorgeous twenty-something, could have any fella in the bar, throws herself at some middle-aged guy with a faceful of wrinkles and a beer gut. She just won’t take no for an answer; what choice has the poor guy got?’

McCann has his arms folded tight, not budging. ‘I’m telling you. She wasn’t forward about it – I wouldn’t’ve been into that. But she was the one that gave me the eye.’

I’ve still got one eyebrow high. ‘Jaysus, come on,’ Steve says to me, reasonably. ‘People have different tastes. Just because someone wouldn’t be your cup of tea-’

‘I like them young enough to be some use to me,’ I tell McCann, throwing him a wink. ‘And good-looking.’

‘What do you do, pay for it?’ We’re starting to get to him.

‘-that doesn’t mean he’s not some other girl’s,’ Steve finishes. ‘It happens.’

‘It does happen,’ I admit. ‘On the soaps. Every time I turn on the telly, there’s some young babe hanging out of an uggo old enough to be her da. Does this look like the set off Fair City to you?’

‘Ah, Conway. It’s not just on the soaps. Real life, too.’

‘If you’re Donald Trump, sure. You been holding out on us, Joey? Are you a secret millionaire?’

He doesn’t like the ‘Joey’, but he almost hides it behind a wry grin. ‘I wish.’

‘Not everyone’s all about the money,’ Steve says. ‘Aislinn could’ve just liked the look of him. Nothing wrong with that.’

‘Maybe. Do you look like George Clooney, Joey? On your days off, like?’

‘You tell me.’

I grimace, waver one hand. ‘Gotta tell you, pal, I’m not seeing it. So I’m dying to know: why would she go for you? Don’t tell me you never wondered.’

McCann shifts. Unfolds his arms, shoves his hands in his pockets. He says, ‘She was a badge bunny.’

We thought the same thing. Aislinn led the whole lot of us down her garden path. What me and Steve need to know is whether McCann believes it still.

‘A girl like that goes hunting for a badge,’ I say, ‘and you’re what she brings home? Seriously?’

McCann’s jaw moves. ‘I was there.’

‘And so were plenty of others. Horgan’s is wall-to-wall cops. So why you?’

‘Because she wanted a D. She liked to hear about the job: what cases have you worked, what was it like, what did you do next? Gave her a thrill. You know what I’m talking about?’ The grin’s a nasty one. I don’t blink. ‘She picked me out because I was old enough, and dressed nice enough, that she figured I was a D – she knew her stuff, that one. When she heard I worked Murder, that was it. Her eyes lit up. I’d’ve had to hold her off with a garden rake. And you saw her: why would I want to do that?’

‘Because you’re married?’ I suggest. ‘I hear to some people that means you don’t go sticking your dick in any hole you can find.’

McCann lifts one shoulder. ‘We had a few shags. It happens. It was no big deal.’

Good call. If Aislinn was nothing but a shag, then there’s no reason he would’ve killed her for having another fella. I ask, ‘You do that on a regular basis, yeah? Cheat on your missus?’

‘No.’

‘Ever done it before?’

‘No.’

‘Then what was so special about Aislinn?’

‘Never had a bird that good-looking try it on with me before. And me and the missus, we hadn’t been getting on great. I figured, why not?’

Me and Steve throw each other a quick sideways glance, letting McCann catch it. I say, ‘That’s a lovely story. Romantic. But it doesn’t match Lucy Riordan’s.’

McCann shakes his head. ‘Who’s Lucy Riordan?’

‘Aislinn’s best mate. Short? Dyed-blond hair, cut up to here? Ring any bells?’

At that he laughs, teeth bared like an angry dog’s. ‘That little dyke? I’d say her story’s different, all right. She wasn’t Aislinn’s best mate, whatever she told you. She’s a hanger-on who was arse over tip in love with Aislinn, and she was raging that Ash had found herself a fella. Of course she’s going to tell some story that makes me the bad guy.’

Steve says, ‘Where’d you meet Lucy?’

‘You already know that. Your witness who saw me meet Aislinn, you think I don’t-’

‘We need your version.’

McCann flings himself back in his chair, folds his arms across his chest again and stares at us, lip curling up. ‘The two of ye are pathetic. Do you know that? Sitting there, trying your little interrogation techniques on me, going off on tangents- I was doing that to scumbags, actual scumbags, when ye were picking your spots and snogging posters of pop stars. Do you honestly think I’m going to fall for it?’

‘It’s not about falling for it,’ Steve says, wounded. ‘We’re hoping you’ll help us out here.’

I say, ‘Where’d you meet Lucy?’

‘Was that not in her story, no?’

‘Ah, come on, man,’ Steve says, leaning forward across the table. ‘You know as well as I do, we’re looking to scupper her story. You think we want you to be our man? Are you serious? If we find out you did this, we’re fucked. You think we want to sit out in that observation room trying to decide whether we’re going to charge one of our own squad with murder?’

McCann turns those deep-set eyes on me. He’s got years more practice being expressionless than I do; I can’t read anything there. He says, ‘You’ve got no reason to love this squad. You’re fucked anyway; might as well take someone down with you.’

Even though I know what he’s at, the matter-of-fact tone sends something cold into me. I say, ‘I’ve got no problem with you. You’ve never done anything on me.’

He nods. ‘If you’ve got any sense at all,’ he says, ‘you’ll walk away. That’s me giving you my best advice; the same as I’d tell one of my own young fellas, if he was sitting where you are. I didn’t do this, so you’re not going to prove I did. If you try, all you’ll do is fuck yourselves up. Forget leaving the squad; you’ll have to leave the force. Maybe the country.’

We’ve all told a suspect his life is over if he doesn’t do what we want. The cold works its way in deeper anyway. I say, ‘Where’d you meet Lucy?’

After a moment McCann shakes his head, slow and heavy. ‘Your funeral,’ he says. ‘She was in Horgan’s with Aislinn – keeping an eye on her. Aislinn sitting there in her little shiny dress, sucking on her glass and enjoying everyone staring while she picked out who she wanted; and the other one with a puss on her, giving the filthies to anyone who looked twice at Aislinn. Aislinn told me after, she said Lucy dragged her to the pub because she wanted to cry on Aislinn’s shoulder about how she couldn’t get a fella…’ The corner of McCann’s mouth goes up; for a second his face looks almost soft. ‘She was a real innocent, Aislinn, in a lot of ways. She was like a kid. She honest to God thought Lucy was looking for a fella. Have you checked Lucy’s alibi?’

‘Yeah,’ I say, and realise what I’ve admitted when I see his grin widen. ‘Rock-solid. Sorry.’

‘But you wondered.’

‘We did our job.’

‘Like you’re just doing your job right now.’ The grin’s turned savage. ‘I’ll bet a hundred quid that Lucy one’s trying to put this on me. What’s she saying? I hit Aislinn? I treated her like shite?’

Me and Steve do the sideways glance again. ‘Not exactly,’ Steve says.

‘Actually,’ I say, ‘not at all.’

McCann’s face has gone back to blank. He wasn’t expecting this.

‘According to Lucy,’ I say, ‘you treated Aislinn like she was made of diamond. What you two had going on wasn’t a few shags. It was the real thing. The big L.’

He laughs, a ferocious bark, loud enough to startle all three of us. He’s trying too hard. ‘Jaysus fuck. You believed that?’

‘Are you saying you never told Aislinn you loved her?’ Before he can answer: ‘Careful. We’ve got texts from Aislinn to Lucy.’

‘Maybe I did. I’ve got news for you, Conway: when a fella who’s trying to get into your knickers says it’s love, there’s a chance he might be bullshitting you. Or has no fella ever bothered?’

‘According to the texts,’ I say, ‘you and Aislinn saw each other a bunch of times in August, but yous didn’t start doing the do until the beginning of September. If you were only there for the riding, what was that all about?’

McCann shuts down again, takes his time weighing up his options. In the end he says, ‘I liked Aislinn. She was a good girl. Sweet. She was looking for thrills, like I told you, but she wasn’t some vampire type getting off on the guts and gore. She hadn’t had an easy life; her da died when she was only little, her ma had multiple sclerosis, Aislinn was one of those carer kids till the ma died a few years back. There hadn’t been a lot of excitement in her life, so she wanted to hear about mine.’

I’d swear he believes that. I can feel Steve clocking it too: we’ve still got our grenade.

She told Rory the same story: dead da, MS ma. No wonder she skidded away from it so fast. Using it to get McCann where she wanted him was one thing; using it on someone she wanted in her real life, that was something else. But the story was getting stronger, getting away from her. It came out anyway.

‘Me and the wife, we’ve been having a rough patch. It was nice to be around a woman who liked my company; nice to have somewhere peaceful to go, no one giving it all that about what a waste of space I am. Made everything that bit easier. That was what it was about, at first. Just the bit of peace.’

The pull at the corner of his mouth says we don’t need to point out the irony here. I say, ‘Where’d you hang out?’

‘I’d pick Aislinn up somewhere near her place, and we’d go for a drive. It was summer; she’d bring food, we’d take it for a picnic down the country. We’d find somewhere with a view where we could sit and talk.’ McCann’s trying to keep his voice flat, but the longing rises up and he can’t force it back down. He stops talking.

‘Aah,’ I say. ‘Sweet. You never brought the poor girl for an actual meal, no? Or a drink, even? Just had her make you sandwiches and sit on the grass getting ants in her knickers?’

‘She never had a problem with it, why should you? We went to her local once. I didn’t like it. Dublin’s still a small town. The wrong person sees you, he tells his missus who tells her ladies’ club pals and one of them’s your wife’s best friend, and bang, you’re sleeping on someone’s sofa.’

‘Because you went for a pint?’ Steve raises his eyebrows. ‘Sounds to me like you knew, deep down, this wasn’t just friendly chats.’

McCann’s lip lifts; it’s meant to be a smile, but it edges on a snarl. ‘Sounds to me like you’ve never been married. “Well, yeah, sweetheart, I did spend the evening on the piss with a gorgeous young blonde, but we were only chatting, honest to God” – you think that’s going to fly? Not with my wife, it’s not.’

Steve gives him a grin for that. ‘Fair enough,’ he acknowledges. ‘I’m starting to think I should stay single.’

‘You and everyone else.’ But the grin fades fast. ‘Me and Aislinn, I’m telling you: it started out innocent.’

‘How’d that change?’

McCann shrugs. He’s turning wary; we’re moving into the edges of dangerous territory.

‘Jesus, Moran,’ I say, in an undertone McCann can hear just fine. ‘He stuck his dick in her, is how that changed. He waited for his chance, and when he got it, he banged her like a cheap drum. You want the guy to draw you a diagram?’

McCann stretches his neck sharply; he doesn’t like that. ‘Jesus yourself,’ Steve tells me, in the same undertone. ‘I’m not asking for their favourite position. I’m just asking what made things go that way. This is the Monk McCann we’re talking about. He didn’t go in there planning to cheat on his missus.’ He gazes hopefully at McCann.

McCann stares back. ‘What do you think made it go that way? Man and a woman spend a bit of time together, they get to fancying each other, one day it gets out of hand-’ I’ve got one eyebrow high. ‘Laugh all you want. You tell me: why would Aislinn be with me if she didn’t want me? Just like you said at the beginning: I’m not rich and famous.’

‘You’re a D,’ I point out. ‘To some people, that could come in useful.’

‘I thought of that. I’m not a fool. I wondered if she might be dodgy and looking to get a cop on side.’

‘So you ran her through the system.’

‘I did, yeah. Go ahead and dob me in to the gaffer, if that’s what it takes to make you feel big. But don’t tell me you’ve never done it.’

‘Ah, background checks,’ I say. ‘The foundation of every beautiful romance.’

‘Like I said: I know I’m nothing special. I had to check. But Aislinn came up clean as a whistle. She wasn’t even looking for me to square penalty points. She wanted nothing from me.’ McCann spreads his hands. ‘This is all I’ve got. If she wanted me, it was for this.’

Me and Steve let that lie just long enough, and come just close enough to looking at each other, that McCann gets edgy. ‘What?’ he demands.

‘The affair,’ I say. ‘That began in September?’

‘The beginning of September. Yeah.’

‘Date.’

‘I don’t remember.’

I’ve made him lie, rather than sound like the sap who’s clinging on to every tiny detail, and he knows we know. I let a flicker of a smile slip through, and see his jaw muscle roll.

‘We’ll leave it at the beginning of September,’ I say, being generous, which gets another twitch of his jaw. ‘And it kept going till last weekend. Any breakups along the way, anything like that?’

McCann has his arms folded again; his cop face is back, a flat slab. ‘No. No problems. No arguments. Everything was great.’

‘Autumn,’ Steve says thoughtfully, examining his Biro. ‘Winter. And not being crude, but you two weren’t just chatting any more. I’d say the picnics up the mountains weren’t doing the job for yous, were they? Where’d you meet?’

None of your business grits McCann’s teeth, but he says, ‘Her place.’

Steve frowns. ‘None of the neighbours ever saw you.’

‘Because I didn’t want them seeing me. I went down the laneway behind Aislinn’s house, over the wall, in by the back door. She gave me a key.’

And there’s the autumn intruder. ‘Fair play to you, climbing walls at your age,’ I say, almost holding back a grin – McCann doesn’t like that either. ‘Better than the gym any day. How often were you there?’

He’d love to lie about that, but he can’t risk it. ‘A couple of times a week. It depended. On work, my family, all that.’

‘How’d you make the appointments?’

‘Sometimes we’d make plans for next time before I headed off. Other times I’d leave her a note saying when I could call round. Or if I got a free hour or two I wasn’t expecting, I’d just go round to her.’

‘Where’d you leave the notes?’

‘Post-it in a 7-Up bottle, throw it over her back wall. She knew to check.’

‘We didn’t find any Post-its in the house.’

‘I’d take them back when I got there. Get rid of them.’

I do startled. ‘Why?’

‘Why do you think? Because I’ve been in this job too long to leave evidence floating around.’

The cold flat glance says And way too long to get tied in knots by the likes of you. ‘Jaysus,’ I say. ‘Lot of hassle for the odd shag.’

‘Depends how good of a shag.’ That nasty grin again, but I’ve seen McCann use it on suspects and it doesn’t work on me.

‘Why not ring Aislinn, or text her? Your number wasn’t even on her phone. Why not?’

‘Because I didn’t want it there.’

‘And why not go in her front door like a normal person?’

He eyes me with dislike. ‘Why the hell do you think?’

‘I’m asking you. Did she get off on the top-secret hush-hush vibe, yeah? Or did you get off on knowing she had to be ready for you to show up at any minute?’

‘She didn’t have to do anything. I wasn’t her boss.’

I say, picking my words carefully, ‘Would you not have been… angry, let’s say, if she hadn’t?’

McCann’s jaw clamps. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘What I said. You had Aislinn sitting at home, day in, day out, ready to jump whenever you decided to pull the strings. If you had pulled and she hadn’t jumped, what would have happened?’

‘Nothing. Most of the time I let her know I was coming; it was only now and then that I called round to her out of the blue. If I’d showed up and she hadn’t been there, or she’d been busy, I would’ve left and come back another time. End of story.’

I’m all sceptical. ‘You sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘You wouldn’t have given her the odd slap, no? Not to hurt her; just to teach her she couldn’t mess you about.’

McCann says, ‘I’ve never hit a woman in my life.’

‘Hmm,’ I say. ‘OK. You made Aislinn set her phone on swipe lock because you wanted to be able to read her texts. Right?’

His head flinches to the side, a fraction of an inch, before he catches it and faces us square again. He doesn’t like thinking about this. ‘I didn’t make her do anything.’

‘Asked her to. Let’s say that.’

‘I asked her, yeah. She could’ve told me to stick it. She didn’t.’

‘And did you read them?’ I’m hoping he didn’t, mainly out of professional pride. I like to hope that if a Murder D set up a plan to walk in on his bit on the side with her bit on the side, he would’ve made a better job of it than this mess.

McCann buries his face in his tea, but I catch the faint flush under the stubble. Out of all the options, this is what gets to him: the image of himself grubbing around in Aislinn’s text messages. He’s still holding on to how he loved her; in his mind, that snooping is the one thing he’s done to taint that. ‘A few times. Nothing worth seeing, and I felt like a twat. I stopped.’

I believe him. McCann knew nothing about Rory, not till Saturday night. Aislinn’s frantic plan to move things along did nothing at all. Lucy was right: she was miles out of her depth.

I ask, ‘Do you make your wife keep her phone on swipe lock?’

‘Don’t get smart with me. No, I fucking don’t.’ The shame puts a snap in his voice. ‘I wasn’t controlling Aislinn. I just didn’t want my wife finding out about us. That’s why I checked the texts: I needed to know Aislinn wasn’t telling her mates. That’s why I went in the back. That’s why I didn’t want her having my number. I liked her a lot, even trusted her more or less, but not enough to put my whole life in her hands. I wasn’t about to put myself in a position where, say she got too attached or had a bout of PMS or got ideas about blackmail, she could just take her phone down to my gaff and blow the whole thing wide open. Is that simple enough for you?’ Which is his biggest speech yet. Trying to shove that memory away made him talky.

‘So,’ Steve says dryly, ‘you’re saying you had no plans to leave your wife for Aislinn, no?’

McCann lets out a short harsh burst of laughter, just too loud. ‘Fuck that. Me and my wife, we have some hassles, but I love her. Love my kids even more. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.’

‘So what were you going to do? Just keep on climbing Aislinn’s back wall’ – I snort; McCann gives me a filthy look – ‘for the rest of your lives?’

‘I didn’t have plans. I was having a laugh, seeing how things went.’

‘Even if he was planning on leaving his wife,’ I point out to Steve, ‘he would have wanted to keep Aislinn on the downlow. No point in giving the missus ammo for the divorce settlement.’

‘Did you not hear me? There wasn’t going to be a divorce settlement. Myself and Aislinn were grand exactly the way we were.’

I lift an eyebrow. ‘Yeah? Did Aislinn think you were grand the way you were?’

McCann shrugs. ‘Far as I could tell. If she didn’t, she would’ve ended it.’

‘You’re having your cake and eating it, and she gets the crumbs. What kind of person’s OK with that?’

‘I wasn’t taking anything away from her. We agreed from the start that she could see other fellas. Only fair.’

Nice move. Not a chance it’s true. ‘And she took you up on it,’ I say. ‘When did you find out she was seeing someone else?’

A quick blink: McCann needs to be careful here. ‘After she died, only.’

Steve and I glance at each other and leave a silence. McCann’s too old a hand to fall for that. He flicks us a sardonic look and waits us out.

‘We’ll go with that for now,’ I say. ‘So how did that make you feel?’

McCann snorts. ‘What are you, my therapist?’

‘Do you go to a therapist?’

‘No, I don’t. Do you?’

‘Then you don’t need to save the good stuff for him. How’d you feel when you found out Aislinn had another guy on the go?’

McCann’s all ready for this one. He shrugs. ‘No one likes sharing. But sure, I always used johnnies, so what harm?’

‘Were you surprised?’ Steve asks.

‘Didn’t think about that either way.’

‘Lucy was surprised. When she found out about Rory.’

That gets a sardonic grin. ‘Yeah. Bet she was only delighted: two guys between her and Aislinn now, instead of just one.’

Steve says, ‘She was surprised because Aislinn was in love with you, man. Mad about you. Did you know that?’

A twitch of McCann’s head, like that flew at him. He doesn’t know any more whether that was true or not, doesn’t want to think about it either way. He says – careful again, remembering those texts – ‘Doesn’t exactly come out of the blue.’

‘She’d never been in love before. You were the first. Did you know that, too?’

‘She might’ve mentioned it. I don’t remember.’

‘So,’ Steve says, ‘if she was head over heels with you, why was she having a romantic dinner with some other guy?’

McCann’s good. It’s only because I’m looking for it that I catch the snap of pain, quick and savage as a muzzle-flash. ‘Who knows. Women are mental.’

‘OK,’ I say, tapping the edge of my mug and frowning at it. ‘Let’s think it through. Aislinn was in love with you, but not vice versa. Right?’

McCann’s got his control back. He snorts. ‘Jesus. Nah. She was a good girl, good company. The sex was great. That’s all there was to it.’

‘Did she know you felt that way?’

‘I’d more sense than to say it to her, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘But she might’ve suspected. She wasn’t stupid.’

‘Might’ve. I wouldn’t know.’

‘If she suspected,’ Steve says, ‘she would’ve been devastated. First love: it’s powerful stuff. That didn’t bother you?’

We’re picking up the pace. McCann hasn’t missed it: his back’s straightened, there’s a focused blue flash to his eyes. For a second there I see him twenty years ago, all cheekbone ridges and dark stubble and those long-distance blue eyes, and I see why he still thought he might have a shot with Aislinn.

He says, ‘I wasn’t out to hurt her. But I wasn’t there to babysit, either. Aislinn was a grown woman.’

‘So could that be what her little thing with Rory was all about, yeah?’ I ask. ‘Trying to make you jealous?’

Shrug. ‘Doubt it. Seeing as I didn’t know he existed.’

‘She kept texts from him on her phone. She might’ve been betting you’d read them.’

That raw flush again, the minuscule flinch of his head. ‘Even if I had. Wouldn’t have worked, and Aislinn had enough cop-on to know that.’

‘Maybe she was using Rory as a distraction?’ Steve suggests. I know, sure as I know where my hands are, that he’s picked up on where I’m heading, he’s right beside me. ‘Trying to take her mind off you?’

‘Could’ve been.’

‘Meaning she did suspect you weren’t in as deep as she was.’

‘Could’ve done. She never mentioned it.’

I ask, ‘Did she ever talk about you leaving your wife?’

‘It came up. Nothing serious, just a mention.’ He’s stepping carefully again: the texts.

‘And what did you say?’

‘Brushed it off. Changed the subject. She didn’t push it.’

‘Huh,’ I say. I lean back in my chair, have a swallow of my tea – gone cold – and take out my phone. I go into my e-mail, taking my time, and find the Post-it photos from Aislinn’s secret folder.

Civilians’ eyes dive on anything you bring out; they can’t stop themselves. McCann’s don’t move from my face. I put my phone on the table in front of him. The small click of it going down snips at the air.

McCann waits till I sit back before he looks down. His face doesn’t change, but I feel the pulse of bafflement and wariness off him.

I say, ‘There’s more of them. Swipe.’

He swipes, keeps swiping. Something else stirs, under the bafflement: a wretched twist of pain and something almost like joy. McCann thinks he’s seeing proof that he got it all wrong; that Rory meant nothing to Aislinn. She was mad about him, after all.

After a dozen or so pics he takes a fast breath and shoves the phone back across the table. ‘I get the idea.’

I say, ‘Are these the notes you wrote to Aislinn, to let her know when you’d be calling round?’

Shrug. McCann settles back in his chair, hands shoved easily in his pockets, but the taut stillness holding every muscle gives him away. We’re building up to the big push, and he knows it.

‘I don’t have to be a handwriting expert to know these are consistent with your writing,’ I say, ‘but I can get one to confirm it for me if I have to. I can also pull your shift times for the last six months and cross-check them against the times and dates when Aislinn entered those photos into her computer. I’ll bet my paycheque every one of those notes will line up with a time when you were just coming out of work, or just going in.’

‘So maybe they’re my notes. So? I already told you I wrote them.’

‘And made sure to destroy them,’ Steve says. He’s picked up my phone and he’s skimming through the pictures. ‘You thought, anyway.’

‘Only Aislinn had other ideas,’ I say. McCann’s eyes close against that for an instant. ‘Every time you left her a note, she took a photo, put it on her computer – in a special password-protected folder – and deleted the phone pic. Why would she go to all that hassle?’

Shrug. ‘How would I know?’

‘If you had to guess.’

‘Souvenirs?’

That gets a laugh out of me. ‘You serious?’ I take the phone off Steve and wave it at McCann. ‘This is what you think a girl keeps for a souvenir?’

‘I don’t know what girls do and don’t do.’

‘Trust me. It’s not. So what was Aislinn at?’

After a moment McCann says, ‘She could’ve been thinking of showing them to my missus.’

‘You said she was happy with the way things were. Why would she want to do that?’

‘I thought she was. Doesn’t mean I was right.’

‘You told us you were being careful in case Aislinn “got too attached and blew the whole thing wide open”.’ I spin my phone on the table. ‘Looks like you were right to be careful.’

‘Not careful enough,’ Steve points out.

‘Looks to me,’ I say, ‘like Aislinn was making plans. She figured if your wife found out, she’d give you the boot, and you’d come running straight into Aislinn’s arms-’

‘Would your missus have given you the boot?’ Steve asks.

‘Nah.’

Steve’s eyebrows go up. ‘Nah?’

‘No way.’

‘Man, you said earlier she’d throw you out if she even knew you were going for drives with Aislinn. If she found out you’d been riding her, for months-’

‘She’d’ve given me holy hell. Called me every name under the sun. I’d’ve been in Breslin’s spare room for weeks, maybe months. God knows I’d’ve deserved it.’ The vicious scrape to McCann’s voice says he means that. ‘But we’d have sorted it in the end. No question.’

I’ve got an eyebrow up. ‘Uh-huh. Easy to say that now.’

‘It’s a fact. She’d’ve made me beg, grovel, but she’d’ve taken me back. The kids-’

‘Yeah, let’s not forget the kids. How traumatised would they have been?’

That tightens his jaw. ‘They’re grown adults, or near enough. A few weeks of Mammy and Daddy fighting isn’t the end of the world.’

‘How would they have felt about Daddy fucking some girl young enough to be their sister?’

‘Jesus,’ Steve says, wincing. ‘Guaranteed long-term estrangement, right there.’

McCann snaps, ‘They wouldn’t have found out.’

‘No? Your missus wouldn’t have mentioned it? She a saint?’

‘Sounds like one,’ Steve says.

‘She’d want to be,’ I say.

‘She cares about the kids. She wouldn’t have hurt them.’

We’re going faster, harder, leaning forward, slamming the questions across the table. McCann’s meeting us beat for beat, firing back answers without a second’s pause, that blue glint grown to a blaze. He thinks this is it. He can see exactly where we’re going, and he thinks this theory is where we’re putting our money. All he has to do is kill off this one, and we’ll be left in tatters.

‘Either way,’ Steve says, ‘it’d be a lot easier not to go through all that hassle. Wouldn’t it?’

‘Yeah, it would. Lucky for me, that never came up.’

‘Lucky,’ I say, eyebrows way up. ‘Is that what we’re calling this, yeah? We’ve got a dead girl in the morgue, but hey, look how lucky you got?’

McCann throws me a disgusted glare and doesn’t bother answering. ‘In fairness,’ Steve says, ‘McCann dodged a bullet there, all right. I’d call that lucky.’

‘He did,’ I said. ‘He definitely did that. Did Aislinn threaten to go to your wife, McCann?’

McCann’s shaking his head, slow and definite. He’s on solid ground here: doesn’t need to worry about Aislinn’s texts, because he’s telling the truth. ‘Never.’

‘She just hinted.’

‘Nah. Not even a hint.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘Yeah, I am. Positive. Ask Lucy the Lezzer, ask anyone you want: let’s see you find one bit of evidence that Aislinn ever mentioned going to my missus. One. Just one.’

‘We’ve got two dozen.’

‘Those notes?’ McCann laughs in my face, a wide-mouthed bark. ‘Jesus, Conway, tell me you know better than that. How are those evidence of anyone threatening anything? Maybe Aislinn was planning on using them to twist my arm – you can’t even prove that much – but she hadn’t got around to doing it. I hadn’t a clue those notes existed. I didn’t even have access to them – password-protected, didn’t you say? Computer Crime can go through the times when that folder was opened, show that they don’t match the times when I was round at Aislinn’s. Those notes are nothing.’

I’m shaking my head. ‘Doesn’t matter whether you knew about them or not. Aislinn could’ve sent copies to your wife.’

‘She didn’t. Check her computer logs, printer, work printer, anything she had access to. Bet you anything they were never printed out.’

‘She could have e-mailed them.’

‘Go ahead and check her e-mail accounts. You think Aislinn had my wife’s e-mail address? How stupid do I look?’

‘Or she just called round to your gaff when you were at work.’

‘She didn’t. Trace her movements, look for anyone who saw her round my way. Good luck with it.’

‘Is your wife gonna say the same?’

That brings McCann up and forward, halfway across the table with his teeth bared in my face, in one savage move. ‘Don’t you fucking dare bring this to my wife. She knows nothing about Aislinn, and it’s staying that way. Have you got that?’

‘Routine procedure,’ I say, raising my hands. ‘I’ve got to follow up every lead.’

‘Follow up whatever you want. But if you tell my wife about Aislinn, I’ll wreck you. You hear that?’

‘Look at that,’ I say, with a touch of a grin. ‘Looks like your missus finding out about your affair might be a problem after all.’

McCann’s jaw clamps hard. He wants to hit me. I stare back, still grinning, and hope he tries.

After a moment his eyes cut away from mine. He eases back into his seat, rolls his neck. ‘If you need to talk to my wife,’ he says, ‘talk to her. But you work around the affair. Even the pair of ye should be able to do that. Ask her if she’s had any anonymous letters, any strange callers. I can tell you exactly what she’ll say, but if you need to feel like the big boys for a day…’

Steve says, ‘If you don’t want us talking to your missus, man, then don’t make us. You talk to us instead.’

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’

‘OK,’ I say. ‘Where were you Saturday evening?’

The grin lifts his top lip like a snarl. He leans back, folds his arms and laughs, up at the ceiling. ‘Now we’re getting to it. About bloody time.’

‘Where were you?’

‘Are you not going to caution me?’

‘If you want. 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.’ That gets another vicious huff of laughter. ‘Where were you Saturday evening?’

‘None of your business.’

Which is smart: no alibi means nothing we can break. ‘“No comment,” ’ I say. ‘Is that what you’re telling us?’

‘No. I’m telling you it’s none of your bloody business.’

‘What’ll your wife say when we ask her whether you were home?’

‘Only one way to find out.’

Steve says, leaning forward, ‘We’re not trying to catch you out here, man. We’re asking. If you can prove where you were, we can stop this whole thing. We’ll find a way that none of this ever has to come out. But we can’t do that unless we know the story.’

McCann throws him a stare like he can’t believe Steve actually tried that one on him. ‘I’ve got nothing to say about Saturday night. Except I never hurt Aislinn. That’s it. We can stay here all year and that’s all I’ll have to say to you.’

‘It’s not gonna be that simple,’ I say. ‘Remember that witness who saw you hanging around Stoneybatter over the last few weeks?’

‘So?’

‘That same witness saw you leaving the laneway behind Viking Gardens just after half-eight on Saturday night.’

That gets a snort. ‘Rory Fallon. Was it?’

‘You recognised him, yeah? When we brought him in?’

Brief shake of his head, wry click of his tongue: he’s not falling for that. ‘Nah. Bres mentioned that Fallon’s been doing a bit of hanging around Stoneybatter himself, the last while. Bit of stalking. Right?’

Me and Steve don’t answer. McCann nods, satisfied. ‘That means he was possessive about Aislinn. More than that: obsessive. Probably he saw me going in or out of her gaff, one night, did he?’

We look back at him.

‘Yeah. That would’ve sent him wild with jealousy. Saturday evening, when he got in her door, the first thing he did was confront her, ask her if she was seeing someone else. Poor Aislinn didn’t deny it, or didn’t deny it well enough, and…’

One hand closes into a fist and lifts off the table, just an inch, twisting.

‘No wonder he’s saying he saw me Saturday night. He’d say anything to get you looking somewhere else. And you’d be a pair of fools to fall for it. God knows no jury would.’

Steve says, and all of us hear the defensive note weakening his voice, ‘No one’s said we’re falling for anything. We’re only talking here.’

McCann leans back in his chair and stuffs his hands in his pockets, one corner of his mouth tugging upwards. He doesn’t bother trying to keep the triumph off his face. He thinks he’s seen everything we’ve got, held steady against it and blown it all away.

He says, ‘What do you think happens if the squad finds out you were only talking to me like this? Over nothing but a few shags?’

‘Ah, come on,’ Steve says. He’s practically begging. ‘You’re a witness. We had to talk to you. You know we did.’

‘I’m a witness to nothing.’

‘You knew the vic. You were sleeping with the vic. We couldn’t just-’

‘You ask me very nicely,’ McCann says, ‘and you don’t go trying to scupper my marriage, I’ll forget this ever happened.’

‘We won’t tell your wife about Aislinn. I swear.’

‘Good call,’ McCann says. He stretches, rolls his shoulders back. ‘We done here, yeah?’

Steve gives me a quick, uncertain glance. ‘No,’ I say stubbornly. ‘Seeing as we’re here, we might as well finish up.’

‘Five more minutes?’ Steve asks McCann. ‘Honest to God, it won’t take longer than that, we’ve just got a few more-’

McCann laughs and spreads his arms. ‘You want one last shot? Take it.’

‘Thanks,’ Steve says humbly. ‘I mean, no, we don’t – we just-’

I say, ‘I want to ask you about Aislinn. What was going on in her head.’

McCann snorts. ‘This psychological shite, Conway. Honest to God, you need to grow out of that. Rory Fallon got obsessed and lost the head. All the rest, what Aislinn was thinking, that’s not your problem. Nobody cares.’

‘Probably you’re right. Humour me anyway, yeah?’ McCann settles back into his chair on a long-suffering sigh. ‘You told us,’ I say, ‘just a few minutes ago: when someone who’s trying to get you into bed says they love you – like Aislinn said she loved you – chances are it’s bollix. They’ve got a hidden agenda. Right?’

‘Right. Only Aislinn wasn’t trying to get me into bed. That just happened.’

‘You ran her through the system, at the start. Because you thought she might have a hidden agenda. Right?’

‘Right. And she came up clean.’

‘She did, yeah. That was really enough to make you relax? You never wondered again, no? Girl like that, guy like you, and you genuinely figured she was on the up-and-up?’

‘Maybe he genuinely did,’ Steve says, examining McCann critically. ‘Hormones, man. Scramble the brain.’

‘Ah, he wondered,’ I say. ‘He wondered all the time. He hated himself for doing it, tried to stop – didn’t you, McCann? But he couldn’t. You know what I think? I think, deep down, he knew.’

McCann’s lip lifts. ‘You think I don’t know what you’re at? You’ve got some nerve, trying this shite on me. Go play with Rory Fallon some more. Get Bres to show you how it’s done. See if you can learn something.’ He shoves his chair back from the table. ‘I’m done here.’

Steve takes the Des Murray family pic out of his suit pocket and lays it on the table. ‘Do you recognise any of these people?’ he asks.

McCann leans over and whips it up, ready to toss it back at Steve after one glance, but the photo catches him. He holds it between his fingertips and we watch his face, held to stillness with all his will, as he recognises Evelyn, then Des, and fumbles for what the hell they have to do with this. As that chubby little girl and her tentative smile start to ring a bell. We watch the tremor run through his mind, coming from deep inside the foundations, as he finally begins to understand.

Steve puts a finger on Desmond Murray. He says, ‘Can you identify this man?’

McCann doesn’t hear him.

I lean in and tap the photo. ‘McCann. Who’s this?’

McCann blinks. He says thickly, like his mind’s too taken up to work his mouth right, ‘Name’s Desmond Murray.’

‘How do you know him?’

‘You already know.’

‘We want to hear it from you.’

‘He went missing. A long time back. I worked the case.’

‘And this?’ I move my finger to Evelyn Murray. ‘Who’s this?’

‘The wife. Evelyn.’

‘And this?’

My finger’s on Aislinn. Steve’s leaning across the table beside me, the two of us close in McCann’s face, watching every twitch. There’s a long silence before McCann says, ‘That’s the daughter.’

‘Her name.’

One breath. ‘Aislinn.’

A second of silence, while that falls through the air.

‘You seriously didn’t remember her?’ Steve asks, incredulous. ‘I know she’d grown up and all, but her face didn’t even ring a bell? Her name? Nothing?’

After a moment McCann’s head moves, side to side.

I say, ‘She remembered you.’

He can’t stop shaking his head.

‘That’s why she picked you out in Horgan’s,’ I say. ‘Not because she was a badge bunny and you were a D. Because she wanted to know what happened to her da.’

‘I wondered if maybe it started out as curiosity,’ Steve says, ‘or some fucked-up way of getting closer to her da’ – that gets one sharp flicker of a wince, at the corner of McCann’s mouth – ‘and then, as she got to know you, it turned real.’

I snort. ‘Hey,’ Steve says, ‘stranger things have happened. Is that what you’re wondering, too?’

McCann lifts his head to look at Steve for a second. The flash of hope is terrible.

I pick up my phone again and swipe, methodically, feeling McCann fighting not to look, till I get to Aislinn’s little fairy tale that she left for Lucy. ‘Have a read of this,’ I say, and pass it to McCann.

His eyes close once, for a second, as he reads. When he finishes, he reaches out and puts the phone on the table in slow motion, like a drunk. He doesn’t look at us.

‘Recognise the handwriting?’ I ask.

Nod.

‘Whose is it?’

After a second: ‘Aislinn.’

‘Yeah. And the bad guy in the story? The one who fucked up her life, and now she’s planning on fucking up his? You know who that is, right?’

McCann says nothing. I can hear his breath, heavy puffs through his nose, in the thick overheated air.

When we know he’s not going to answer, I say, ‘That’s you, McCann. Do you get that?’

Nothing. His hands are over the photo, covering it, so he doesn’t have to see.

I lean in closer, tap the table in front of him. ‘Pay attention to this part. I want you to be very clear on exactly why all this happened.’

One flicker of his eyelids. He’s got blurry inklings, but not enough. He’s desperate to hear the rest.

‘Remember talking to Aislinn about her da’s case?’

McCann says, ‘I never named names.’

I laugh out loud. Out of all the things he could be worrying about, he picks that; God forbid we should think he was unprofessional. ‘You didn’t need to. She knew exactly who you were talking about; she’s the one who steered the conversation there to begin with. Do you remember what you told her?’

He shakes his head, trying to think. ‘How we tracked him all the way to England. How we found him with the bit on the… Aislinn never, she never said a word. Never batted an eyelid. Just kept listening, nodding…’

‘Aislinn was good,’ I say. ‘Aislinn was a whole lot better at this than you realised. Do you remember telling her how you talked to her da? How he asked you to tell Aislinn and her ma he was OK, and you decided to say nothing?’

McCann’s eyes have come up to me. ‘You didn’t meet Evelyn Murray. Delicate little thing, the shyest, sweetest – like someone out of an old book, the one who’d die at the end of consumption or one of them things, just because the world was too much for her. Made of glass, Evelyn was.’ To the spreading grin on my face: ‘Fuck you. I wasn’t shagging her. Never laid a finger on her, never would’ve.’

‘Whatever,’ I say. ‘If you cared that much about her, why not pass on the message?’

‘Because finding out her man had run off with a younger model, that would’ve killed her. Smashed her to bits. I wasn’t going to do that to her.’

I say, ‘But you had no problem taking over the rest of her life. Everything she ever did after you walked in her door, every thought that ever went through her head, it had your fingerprints all over it. And you knew it would.’

I’m leaning in, across the table that’s specially chosen to be narrow enough that I can get close, see every coarse hair of this fucker’s stubble, I can smell the tea on his breath and the stale smoke on his clothes and the acrid reek of rage and terror in his sweat, I’m close enough to draw blood a dozen ways. ‘Be honest with yourself, McCann: that’s why you kept your mouth shut. Isn’t it? You couldn’t have Evelyn, but you loved the thought that you owned the rest of her life. Every time she woke up wondering whether Des would walk in the door today, every time she leaped when the phone rang, every night she dreamed he was dead, she belonged to you. Did you think about that sometimes, when your wife was a bitch and you were lying beside her daydreaming about sweet little Evelyn? Did it turn you on, knowing that whatever she was doing at that second, whatever she was thinking, you’d made her do it?’

McCann’s staring at me, those bloodshot blue eyes. I’ve never seen hate like this before, not coming my way. I’ve only ever seen hate this intimate between couples, families. I’ve put my finger right between his ribs, onto his deepest hidden places. I’ve got him.

He says, low and clenched and right into my face, ‘Fuck you to hell. It was for her own sake. You know what her man said about her? For his excuse? Said she’d been suffocating the life out of him for ten years. Said he was going mental, another few months in that house would’ve sent him off his chomp. You think I should’ve told her that? Let that own the rest of her life, instead? She wasn’t the kind who could throw that off, move on. It would’ve wrecked her. At least my way let her keep some self-respect, remember her marriage the way she thought it had been. Gave her a chance.’

‘Except,’ I say, ‘you got Aislinn as part of the package. You never even bothered thinking of that, did you? You took over Aislinn’s life, too. Every day was what you’d made it into, and it was shite. Then she grew up and went looking for some answers, and then she found out who had deliberately kept them away from her till it was too late.’

McCann’s mouth opens. We watch the moment when something spired and shining explodes with a tremendous roar inside his mind, jagged shards rocketing everywhere, burrowing deep into every tender spot.

I say, ‘Let me tell you what Aislinn decided, the night you told her that story. She decided it was her turn to make your life into whatever the fuck she wanted. That’s why the two of you started shagging, McCann. Not because hey, dick happens; because Aislinn figured you’d be easier to push around if you were pussy-whipped. And she was right. She nearly had you, didn’t she? When were you going to tell your missus it was over? Was it going to be this week? Today?’

He can’t talk. I lean in even closer and I say, softly and very clearly, ‘The whole thing was a lie. Every time Aislinn kissed you, every time she slept with you, every time she said she loved you, it took everything she had not to puke. She forced herself to go through all that so she’d have her chance to give you what you deserved.’

McCann’s head is down and swaying. His shoulders are hunched like a bleeding animal’s, trying to stay on its feet.

‘Now do you understand why she kept those photos?’

His breathing, like something out of a hospital ward, in the pretty pastel room.

‘You were right: she was going to take them to your wife, if she couldn’t make you leave on your own. One way or another, Aislinn was going to break up your marriage. And then she was going to welcome you with open arms and tell you that your wife never deserved you to begin with and you were better off with someone who’d treat you right. And once the dust settled, once the divorce papers were filed and your kids hated your cheating guts and there was no way your missus would ever let you in the door again, then Aislinn was going to dump you right on your arse and leave you there in the mess that was your brand-new life.’

Nothing, just that thick breathing. This is it. There’s nothing left of McCann; between us and Aislinn, we’ve taken the lot. If he’s going to talk, it’s from this seething nowhere place we’ve brought him to.

Steve says quietly, ‘You were in love with her. Weren’t you?’

McCann’s head lifts. His eyes move across us like he’s blind. His mouth opens and he takes one shallow breath and holds onto it for a long moment before he says, ‘No comment.’

It stays in the air like a dark spot. The room looks skewed to the point of insane, all those cute colours and smarmy little comforts straining to cover the grinning white interview-room bones – table, chairs, camera, one-way glass – underneath.

Steve says, ‘When you walked in on her getting ready for Rory. Did that hit you out of the blue? Or did you already have your suspicions?’

‘No comment.’

‘Talk to us, man. What did she say? Did she tell you to get out and not come back? Did she laugh at you, for thinking a woman like her could love you? What?’

‘No comment.’

He’s not even trying to look at us, not any more. He’s staring at the wall between our heads, blank-eyed, tuning us out so everything we say is just faraway babble. I’ve seen that look before, on rapists, murderers. The ones we’re never going to break, because they know what they are and they’re not fighting it.

‘Where were you last Saturday evening?’ Steve asks.

‘No comment.’

The click of the door handle turning makes me and Steve jump. McCann doesn’t move. Breslin stands in the doorway, rain glittering on his black overcoat, smiling at us all.