The Trespasser

Chapter 17

‘Mac,’ Breslin says. ‘You’re wanted in the squad room.’

McCann looks up at him. Their eyes meet for a second that shuts me and Steve out completely.

‘Go on,’ Breslin says. ‘I’ll catch up with you in a few.’

McCann pulls himself out of his chair, joint by joint, and heads for the door. Breslin gives him a quick clap on the shoulder as he passes. McCann nods automatically.

‘Interview terminated at 3.24 p.m.,’ Breslin says, strolling over to the camera. He reaches up and switches it off. As he turns to the water cooler: ‘Well well well. Look who’s best buddies again. Sweet.’

I say, ‘I’d like to know what made you think we weren’t best buddies all along.’

‘You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t give a damn about your relationship right this minute. You just had the brass neck to accuse my partner-’

‘We’ll talk about that when I say so. Right now I want to know which one of the floaters went squealing to you, yesterday morning, told you me and Moran had had a row.’

‘Reilly,’ Steve says. ‘Wasn’t it? We started arguing, he stopped typing.’

I remember that, the sudden heavy silence where that witless clacking had been battering my brain. ‘I told you Reilly was a bright spark,’ Breslin says. ‘Unlike me, apparently. I spent twenty minutes sitting in the Top House before the penny dropped. Fair play to you, Conway: you make a very convincing South Dublin airhead. I didn’t know you had it in you.’ He raises his water cup to me. ‘I was lucky with traffic, though. Got back in time to catch the good parts of the show.’

He must catch a flick of surprise off one of us, because he laughs. ‘You thought I got back from my road trip and came charging straight in to save Mac from you two big scary avengers? I was in the observation room. Because I knew Mac didn’t need saving, seeing as he’s done nothing – well, apart from sticking his dick in the wrong place, which isn’t a hanging offence in my book. But I think we can all agree he’s had a tough few days, so when I saw you two going all out to wreck his head, I figured it might be time to call a halt.’

He wanders over to the table, flicks up the Murray family photo to have a long look. ‘Huh. No wonder Mac didn’t recognise her.’ He flips the photo back at the table, ignores it when it misses and spins to the ground. ‘So,’ he says. ‘All the time I thought we were working together. All the time I was getting a lovely warm feeling about what beautiful interviews we pulled off with Rory. This was what was going on in your heads. Tell me: when you looked in the mirror this morning, you didn’t taste just a little bit of sick in the back of your throats?’

Breslin doing what he does best. It feels strange, somehow it feels like a loss, that I don’t have the faintest urge to punch his face in. ‘And all the time I thought we were working together,’ I say, ‘all the time I was enjoying those beautiful interviews, you were keeping this back. You wanna throw stones?’

His eyes snap wide and he points a finger at me. ‘No no no, Conway. Don’t you try to turn this around on me. You’ve just proved that I was dead fucking right not to let you in. This interview…’ His mouth twists up in disgust; he takes a swig of water to wash it away. ‘Go ahead; tell me. What do you think you accomplished with this interview?’

I say, ‘We got enough for a warrant on McCann’s gaff.’

Breslin thinks that over, nodding. ‘A warrant. Nice. And what are you planning on finding in there?’

‘Those brown leather gloves McCann wears all winter? The ones I haven’t seen once this week? Either we’ll find Aislinn’s blood on them, or we won’t find them at all.’

‘Wow,’ Breslin says, raising his eyebrows. ‘Impressive. I’d say Mac would be shitting himself if he heard that. Shall I save you some hassle? Would you like to hear what actually happened?’

‘Love to,’ I say. ‘From McCann, but.’

Breslin clicks his tongue. ‘Not going to happen. Mac’s got more sense than to put it on the record – to be honest, after that little stunt you pulled, I’ll be amazed if he ever wants to talk to either of you again, on or off the record. But I figure it’ll simplify all our lives if you know the facts.’

Steve says, ‘And it’ll be unrecorded, unverifiable, inadmissible hearsay.’

‘Them’s the breaks. Do you want to hear this or not?’

Deep down, I don’t. When McCann left the room he took something with him, some dark savage charge sizzling the air. Without him at its heart, the room’s gone flat and sickly and stupid. I just want to walk out and keep walking, anywhere I don’t have to think about what comes next or look at Breslin’s self-righteous gob. I lean back in my chair and rub my hands over my face, trying to find some of that charge again.

‘OK,’ Steve says. ‘Let’s hear it.’

‘Don’t do me any favours.’

‘We’d like to know.’

‘Conway?’

‘Why not,’ I say. I take my hands off my face, but I don’t have the energy to straighten up.

Breslin doesn’t join us at the table. He tosses his water cup in the bin, sticks his hands in his pockets and starts pacing, a leisurely stroll, the cool professor explaining something to his enthralled students. ‘Saturday evening,’ he says. ‘Mac had dinner at home with his family, and then he decided to call in to Aislinn. He got there around quarter to eight, give or take – he didn’t check his watch. He went in the back door to the kitchen, same as usual. The lights were on and he could see Aislinn had been in the middle of cooking dinner, but she didn’t call out or come to meet him. Mac went into the sitting room and found her lying there with her head on the fireplace.’

‘Must’ve been a shock,’ Steve says. Breslin shoots him a sharp glance, but Steve’s face is blank.

‘It was, yeah. Obviously.’

‘Most people would’ve gone to bits.’

‘Most civilians would have. Mac was devastated, but he kept it together. That doesn’t make him a killer. It makes him a cop.’

‘He also found the table set for a romantic dinner,’ I say. ‘That must’ve been a shock, too. What’d he make of that?’

Breslin says, in a voice meant to tell me his patience isn’t going to last forever, ‘He didn’t make anything of it, Conway. To the extent that he even thought about it, what with his girlfriend’s body lying there on the floor in front of him, he took it for granted the dinner was meant for him, just in case he decided to turn up, which he sometimes did. He thought someone had gained entry to the house, maybe a perv, more likely a junkie – let’s be honest, it’s not the nicest area, is it? – and Aislinn had come off worst. Later, it occurred to him that Aislinn might have been seeing someone on the side and it could have gone wrong; but at the time, that didn’t even come into his head. As Moran just pointed out, he was in shock.’

Steve asks, ‘Was Aislinn alive?’

Breslin shakes his head. ‘Mac checked her pulse and her breathing straightaway – so yeah, he probably did get blood on his gloves, and he may even have got rid of them because of that. She was gone.’

Minutes or hours, Cooper said; probably progressed rapidly. It all plays, so far. It’s bollix, but a jury might go for it.

I say, ‘So he rang it straight in and got a team of Ds on the scene.’

He stares at me, those pale pop-eyes frozen too hard to blink. ‘Don’t be cute, Conway. Just don’t. This isn’t the moment. Maybe you genuinely believe that’s what you would have done in his place, but it’s bullshit. If Mac had called it in, he would have been at the centre of a murder investigation, meaning he would have been working a desk till this was sorted, however long that took. If the case didn’t get cleared, he would have been finished as a Murder D: there’s no way you can be an effective investigator when you’re under suspicion yourself. He would have lost his wife and kids. Quite possibly he would have ended up going on trial; there was a chance he could’ve ended up going to prison. For life. And for what? He hadn’t done anything; he didn’t have any info that could help the investigation. He would have been throwing himself on his sword, personally and professionally, for nothing. If you genuinely think you’re that much of a saint, I’m delighted for you. But I’m not convinced.’

The thing I’m not about to tell Breslin: I don’t have a clue what I would have done. I can picture it, clear as nightmare: standing there in the middle of someone else’s bloody wreckage, feeling it silt up fast and faster around my ankles, my calves, my knees, and thinking No.

I stare right back at him. ‘What I would do doesn’t matter. What did McCann do?’

‘He cleared the house, in case the assailant was still inside, which he wasn’t. When McCann was sure the guy was gone, he wiped the place down to get rid of his old fingerprints – honest to God, Conway, I’m going to need you to take off that superior disapproving face. I can’t concentrate while I have to look at that.’

There’s no expression on me at all; Breslin just wants me in the wrong. ‘If you don’t like my face,’ I say, ‘you can look at Moran. Or shut your eyes, for all I care.’

Breslin sighs, shakes his head and makes a big deal of turning his shoulder to me and focusing all his attention on Steve. ‘So McCann wiped for prints. He had a look around Aislinn’s bedroom to see if she’d kept any of his notes, which she hadn’t – at least, not in the obvious places. He considered sticking around in case the assailant came back, but he decided that was unlikely enough that it wasn’t worth the risk.’

Steve says, all puzzled furrowed brow, ‘Why’d he turn off the cooker? That’s been bothering me from the start.’

‘So that any evidence wouldn’t be destroyed-’ I snort. ‘Fingerprints aren’t everything, Conway. McCann knew the killer could have left behind DNA, hairs, fibres, valuable stuff; he wasn’t about to ruin that. And he didn’t want the place to catch on fire and burn Aislinn to death, if by some tiny chance he was wrong and she was still alive. And…’ Breslin smiles a little sad smile. ‘He didn’t say this to me, because Mac doesn’t like looking like a sap any more than you or I do, but I’m pretty sure he also couldn’t stand the idea of Aislinn’s body being burned. He was fond of her, you know.’

‘Aah,’ I say. I half expect Steve to move, signalling me to dial it back, but he doesn’t. Steve’s gone past wanting to be buddies with Breslin.

‘Conway. Just stop. I know you hate this squad and everyone in it, but think like a fucking detective for a second, instead of a teenage reject who’s finally got one up on the popular girls. If Mac had killed Aislinn, why would he turn off that cooker? He would have turned it up to full and hoped the place burned to the ground.’

I say, ‘What’d he do next?’

Breslin sighs through gritted teeth. ‘He went out the back door, locked it behind him and went home. Don’t bother checking the CCTV; you won’t find him. Not Saturday night, not any night. It’s easy enough to find out where the cameras are and plan your route around them. If it came to a divorce, Mac wasn’t about to give his wife anything a private dick could turn up to use against him.’

It plays; of course it plays. Just like McCann’s story does, and Rory’s, and Lucy’s. All these stories. They hum like fist-sized hornets in the corners of the ceiling, circling idly, saving their strength. I want to pull out my gun and blow them away, neatly, one by one, vaporise them into swirls of black grit drifting downwards and gone.

I ask, ‘When did he tell you all this?’

‘He phoned me as soon as his wife went to sleep. In fairness, Conway, it’s not exactly like he could have that conversation while he was walking through town on a Saturday night. Or on the sofa with his missus watching telly beside him. He took the first chance he got.’

I say, ‘And you believed him.’

That whips Breslin around to face me full-on. ‘Yes, Conway. Yes. I do believe him. Partly it’s because of a little thing called loyalty, which you apparently haven’t got the first clue about. He’s my partner; if I catch him with a dead body at his feet and a smoking gun in his hand, it’s my job to believe he’s been framed. But mostly it’s because I know Mac. I’ve known him for a long, long time. You’ll be lucky if you ever have a partner you know like I know Mac. And there’s no fucking way he did this.’

My eyes meet Steve’s for a second. I can’t tell whether Breslin believes that load, or whether he’s convinced himself he does because he needs to be that guy, the noble knight standing by his partner through thick and thin. Probably it’s the second one, which means it’s here to stay. You can knock down a genuine belief, if you load up with enough facts that contradict it; but a belief that’s built on nothing except who the person wants to be, nothing can crumble that. We could show Breslin video of McCann bashing Aislinn’s face in, and the noble knight would find a way around it.

‘Do you two get that? Is that going into your heads?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘And you called it in to Stoneybatter.’

‘I did, yeah. And just by the way, McCann knew I was doing it, and he agreed. As soon as the initial shock wore off, he started thinking like a cop again. Because that’s who he is. Not a killer. A cop.’

‘Uh-huh. So why’d you wait till five in the morning? If McCann called you as soon as his wife went asleep, we’re talking what, midnight? Why wait five hours?’

Breslin sighs and holds up his hands. ‘OK. You got me. Good for you. I wanted to be sure I’d be there when the case came in to the squad. Obviously McCann wasn’t going to come within a mile of the investigation, or the whole thing could collapse-’

‘Honourable,’ I say. ‘I’m impressed.’

Breslin throws me a filthy look, but he doesn’t bother answering. ‘-but we figured I should keep an eye on things. See if there was a moment when Mac needed to come forward, that kind of- Conway, why are you even bothering to listen to me, if you’re just going to sneer at everything I say? Would you be happier waiting outside while I have an actual conversation with Moran?’

‘See if there was a moment when you could send the investigating detectives off on a wild-goose chase, more like. This week must have been hilarious for you, was it? Watching me and Moran chase our tails-’

Breslin’s across the room so fast I almost flinch. ‘What are you accusing me of? No’ – with a finger in my face, when I start to answer – ‘you be careful. You be very fucking careful.’

I’m done with being very fucking careful. I slap his finger away, hard enough that I see the flare in his eyes when he thinks about hitting me, but no such luck. Steve’s half out of his chair, but he has the sense not to come in. ‘You’ve been obstructing my investigation. That’s not an accusation, that’s a fucking fact. You’ve been playing bent cop, so that if me and Moran found anything linking McCann to Aislinn, we’d have a beautiful dead end to chase till you could get Rory Fallon oven-ready. Waving fifties around, giving Gaffney the brush-off, inventing sketchy phone calls- Did Reilly hand you that too? Go running to you, squealing about how we were looking at gang members-’

Breslin laughs at the top of his lungs, right in my face. ‘You think I needed Reilly for that? The two of you told me yourselves. First you demand to know who ran Aislinn through the system and why. And then Sunday afternoon, Moran, when the gaffer called you in, you know what you left open on your computer? A search for Dublin-based males aged twenty to fifty with a history of gang activity. And Monday morning, Conway, along you came, pouring on the fake concern about whether I was stressed over money troubles. You seriously thought I was too thick to put two and two together?’

In the corner of my eye I can see Steve’s blazing redner. Mine probably matches it. Me poking every shadow with sticks, all ready for a poison nest of spies plotting to get me, and all that was in there was me not being subtle enough and Steve forgetting to hit Exit.

Breslin steps back and spreads his arms. ‘If you think I obstructed your investigation, go ahead and file a complaint. What are you going to put in it? Breslin paid for his sandwich the wrong way? Breslin didn’t want Gaffney hanging off him?’ He’s got a grin on him, a nasty one. ‘If you saw anything dodgy there, kids, it was in the eye of the beholder. If you went chasing after some wild hare, that was all on you. Not my problem.’

Neither of us answers that. I can still smell Breslin’s aftershave.

‘If you don’t have enough to file a complaint,’ Breslin says, ‘then I think you owe me an apology.’

I say, ‘Now we’re gonna tell you our story. And it’s a lot better than yours.’

His face pulls into a grimace of pure disbelief. ‘What are you talking about? This isn’t about who’s got the best story, Conway. This is about what actually happened on Saturday night. And I’ve already told you that.’

‘Humour me. Don’t worry, ours is shorter than yours, too.’

Breslin sighs, long and noisy, and makes a big thing of pushing mugs out of the way so he can settle his arse against the counter. ‘All right,’ he says, folding his arms. ‘Go for it. Blow me away.’

‘Saturday evening,’ I say. ‘McCann had dinner at home and then decided to call round to Aislinn. He hadn’t given her any notice, but that wasn’t supposed to matter: she was supposed to be available whenever he wanted her. He got there sometime after seven-forty, when Rory left the laneway to go to Tesco. McCann went over the wall and in the back door, same as usual.’

Breslin’s nodding away, giving me a wide-eyed stare of disbelief: isn’t this the same story he told us? ‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘This is where it gets good. He found Aislinn all dressed up and cooking dinner, and he didn’t get the welcome he was expecting: she obviously didn’t want him there. McCann went out into the sitting room to see what was going on, and he found the table all set for a romantic dinner that he knew bloody well didn’t involve him.’

‘By that point,’ Steve says, ‘his whole life was hanging on Aislinn Murray. He was getting ready to leave his wife, his kids-’

‘I’m guessing Breslin knew that already,’ I say. Breslin rolls his eyes to the ceiling.

‘McCann had ripped up what he thought was going to be the rest of his life,’ Steve says, ‘thrown it away, and rewritten it from scratch around Aislinn.’

‘Gobshite,’ I say, aside to Steve, and see the flash of anger in Breslin’s eye.

Steve says, ‘And she set it on fire.’

‘I wonder how much she told him,’ I say.

‘Not the whole story, anyway. Not the bit about her da. You saw his face when we brought that out. Genuine shock.’

‘Ah, yeah. She never got that far. But I’d say she made it pretty clear that her and McCann were done, and he needed to get the hell out, rapid, so she could bang her new fella in peace.’

‘Ouch,’ Steve says, wincing. ‘No wonder he lost the head.’

‘Anyone would. Anyone. I would.’

‘Most people would lose it a lot worse than that. One second out of control, one punch? That’s nothing. No way he could guess it would end like this.’

Breslin’s still leaning back with his arms folded, watching us under his eyelids, with a wry smile twisting one corner of his mouth. ‘It’s a cute story. So this was just a silly little manslaughter, no big deal, and Mac should own up and take his slap on the wrist like a good boy?’

I say, ‘What do you think he should do? Keep his mouth shut, go back to the squad and his missus like nothing ever happened?’

‘I do, actually. Because your cute story falls apart the second I start looking at it like an actual detective. Psychologically, it makes bugger-all sense, and while I don’t normally give too many fucks about the psychological stuff, in this case you’ve got literally nothing else, so I figure it’s worth a bit of attention. First off’ – he raises a finger – ‘why would Rory come as some big shock to Mac? Enough of a shock to make him punch a woman in the face, hard enough to kill her? Mac wasn’t in love with Aislinn. If you don’t believe that, there’s the fact that he had told Aislinn she was welcome to see other people – witness the fact that she invited Rory to her place, where she knew Mac might show up any time, rather than going over to his. If you don’t believe that, you’ve got Lucy’s evidence that Mac had access to Aislinn’s phone, specifically because he wanted to check her texts. That phone is packed with weeks’ worth of texts to and from Rory, including ones setting up that dinner date. And you’re telling me Rory would’ve shocked Mac right out of his mind?’

I say, ‘By the time Rory came on the scene, McCann wasn’t reading Aislinn’s texts any more. Too embarrassed, plus he hadn’t found anything worth reading.’

‘Yeah, I saw you humiliate him over that. You got him good there, guys. Well done.’ Breslin throws us a few slow claps. ‘But if Mac had cared that much about whether Aislinn had another guy on the side, I’m thinking he would have managed to overcome a bit of embarrassment and check her texts. Whether he felt like admitting it to you two or not.’

Steve says, ‘Unless Aislinn had him fooled well enough that it never occurred to him she might be seeing someone else.’

‘Sure. Which would mean he’s not the jealous type, which would mean he wouldn’t lose the plot when he found out. We’re back where we started: it doesn’t add up, psychologically. And the second problem.’ Breslin raises another finger. ‘Rory could’ve turned off that cooker because he didn’t like the smell, or because his mummy trained him never to leave appliances on. Mac couldn’t have. He’s not some civilian pussy-boy who’d go to pieces and do dumb shit for no good reason. Even under serious stress, he was thinking straight – straight enough to wipe the joint for prints, remember. He wasn’t going to touch anything in that house without a solid reason. If he’d killed Aislinn, if he knew that all the forensics would point to him and burning the gaff down could only help him get away with it, why the hell would he turn off the cooker?’

I say, ‘So the smoke alarm wouldn’t go off. McCann was thinking straight, all right. He needed time to wipe the house down – and more than that, he realised Aislinn’s fella could come in very useful. A boyfriend on the spot, all on his own with no one to vouch for his actions, right around the time of the attack: man, that’s a killer’s dream.’

Breslin’s shaking his head, doing a small smile of pure disgust. I don’t care. ‘The only problem was,’ I say, ‘seeing as McCann hadn’t actually been reading Aislinn’s texts, he didn’t know exactly when the boyfriend was due to arrive. Even if he checked her phone and found the appointment time – which he didn’t want to do, because the techs would be able to see that he’d done it, and when – that didn’t guarantee that the boyfriend wouldn’t be running late. If McCann left the cooker on, it might set off the smoke alarm – and Aislinn might be found – while this fella was still somewhere else, with an alibi. Even if McCann disabled the alarm, he risked having a neighbour or the boyfriend notice smoke and call it in while the boyfriend could still be excluded. The cooker had to be turned off.’

Breslin shrugs. ‘I suppose you might be able to argue that. Like I said, it’s a cute story. But that’s all it is. There’s nothing solid underneath. You can prove that Mac had an affair with Aislinn. Good for you. But when it comes to Saturday night, you can prove exactly bugger-all. You’ve got an ID from the prime suspect, who has every motive to drag someone else into this mess. You’ve got some bizarre convoluted story you heard from some woman who may or may not have been the vic’s best friend, may or may not have been in love with the vic herself, and may or may not be holding a jealous grudge against the lucky guy who got to shag the vic. And if you actually get a warrant to search Mac’s gaff, which I can’t believe you’d be stupid enough to do, you’ll probably have proof that he’s lost his brown gloves. And that’s it. That’s what you’ve got.’

Silence.

‘What are you planning to do with it?’

More silence.

‘Yeah. That’s what I thought.’ Breslin fills himself another cup of water, and we listen to the bubbles force their way up the cooler. He takes a long deliberate sip before he says, ‘I hope you two realise what you’ve done to this case.’

Neither of us bites.

‘You’ve fucked it right up the ass. Do you get that? You’ll never get McCann for this, because A, you’ve got no evidence that he did it, and B, he didn’t do it, Fallon did. If you actually try going after Mac, the prosecutor will laugh your file right out of his office. If you somehow manage to get him into court – which you won’t – the defence will pull in Rory Fallon and your mountain of actual evidence against him, and the jury will acquit before the jury-room door closes. Wouldn’t you? Be honest. If you were on the jury, and the sum total of the evidence was what you’ve just told me, would you vote to convict?’

Me and Steve don’t answer.

‘Of course you wouldn’t. Neither would anyone else in the country, except maybe the odd cop-hater who’d vote to convict him of being Jack the Ripper. But now that you’ve opened up this whole can of worms with Mac, you’re never going to get Fallon. The prosecutors get him into court, the defence pulls in McCann – wrecks his marriage and possibly his career in the process, but hey, that’s not your problem, am I right? – and bang, reasonable doubt. Bye-bye, Rory. Have a nice life. See you when your next girlfriend pisses you off.’

He raises his cup to an imaginary Rory.

‘You’re done, kids. All you’ve got left to do here is pack up your case file and send it down to the basement – and, of course, find a good explanation to give the gaffer and the media for why this case has crashed into a wall and poor Aislinn won’t be getting the justice she deserves. Are you proud of yourselves? Does this feel like a good week’s work to you?’

We stay silent. There’s nothing we could say that has any point to it.

Breslin sighs and strolls over to the video camera. ‘The only thing we can do with this mess,’ he says, ‘is keep it from ruining McCann’s life. Frankly, after what you’ve put him through for absolutely no good reason, that’s the least you can do.’

He reaches up to the video camera, hits the eject button and pulls out the tape. ‘Am I right that you had more sense than to log this interview anywhere?’

Steve nods.

‘When you got McCann to come with you. You managed not to make it obvious what you were doing?’

Nod.

‘You haven’t taken an official statement from Lucy Riordan?’

I shake my head.

‘Let’s all thank God for small mercies,’ Breslin says. He brings the videotape down on his palm with a flat rattle. ‘So. The last hour or so never happened. You’ll get rid of those photo arrays and take a nice appropriate statement from Lucy – I’m sure you can figure out a way to do that. I’ll explain to the gaffer that you’ve been doing a fine job, but we’re not getting enough for a charge that’ll hold up, so we’ve decided to back-burner Rory Fallon for now, keep working the forensics and electronics, and hope something pops up down the road.’ Or, more like, reassure the gaffer that he’s got me and Steve under control, like he promised to all along. I can hardly stand to look at his face. ‘The gaffer’ll hold off the media till they find something else to gnaw on. We’ll keep an eye on Rory, make sure his near miss keeps him scared straight. And we’ll all live happily ever after.’ Breslin brings the tape down on his palm again. ‘Does that sound like a plan?’

After a moment I say, ‘Yeah.’

‘Moran?’

Steve takes a breath. ‘Yeah.’

‘It’s not going to run into any glitches along the way. Am I right?’

I say, ‘No glitches.’

‘Good.’ Breslin tucks the tape inside his jacket and heads for the door. With his hand on the handle, he turns for an exit line.

‘It might be a while before you get this,’ he says, ‘but you two owe me big-time. I’m sure it doesn’t feel like it right now. But a few years down the road, when Rory Fallon gets locked and spills his guts to his new girlfriend, and you’re still here to make the collar, you’re going to realise I’m the best thing that ever happened to you. I’ll take my thank-yous then. If they come with a nice bottle of bourbon thrown in, it won’t go to waste.’

Before either of us can come up with a sensible response to that steaming heap, he gives us a nod and he’s gone, bang of the door and fast firm strides down the corridor, off to tell McCann that everything’s gonna be just fine.

After a few moments Steve bends to pick up the Murray family photo. He says, ‘I thought we had him there. McCann. When we brought this out. I really thought…’

‘Yeah, I did too. It was good, that. It should’ve worked.’ I let myself have five seconds to think about just how good that interview was; how good we were together, me and Steve. How it felt like we could read each other’s mind. I give myself those five seconds to understand what I’m losing.

‘“No comment,” ’ Steve says. He tucks the photo back into his jacket pocket, carefully, like it might matter again sometime.

I say, ‘We should have seen it.’

Way back at the very beginning, when Lucy turned squirrelly about Aislinn’s secret boyfriend, we should have seen it. Us running around chasing imaginary gangsters, whipping up drama about bent cops and shushing each other about complicated suspicions, when the obvious was jumping up and down in front of us, waving its arms for attention.

‘I’m a fucking eejit for leaving that search on my computer,’ Steve says. ‘No sleep, the gaffer called us in, I got rattled-’

‘No worse than me, trying to pump Breslin and making a balls of it. Don’t worry about it.’

‘If I hadn’t started us down the whole gang road-’

I say, ‘Even if you hadn’t. I don’t think we would’ve seen it.’

Steve said it days ago: Breslin is used to being the good guy, any story that gets room in his head has to grow out of that beginning. It’s not just Breslin. All of us Ds know, certain sure, we’re the good guys. Without that to stand on, there isn’t a way through the parts of this job that are dark dripping hell. Breslin the bent cop, McCann the bent cop, those we could picture. There are cops who’ll go that way, always have been; hazard of the job. But a killer cop, one of our own transformed into the thing we spend our lives trying to bring down, that’s different. That wrenches the world inside out. Even me, and I’ve got years’ worth of reasons to know that the police aren’t always good guys: when it was there in front of my face, my eyes weren’t able to see it.

Breslin and McCann at the top of the stairs, muttering about how urgently they needed this case nailed shut: a kid could have seen why. It never came near my mind.

Maybe Breslin really did believe McCann, when he rang out of the night with a story that was just barely plausible, and not just because he needed to be the noble white knight. Maybe he believed it because when the other possibility came into his mind, the only thing his mind could do was spit it out and leap away.

‘Maybe not.’ Steve is staring blankly at the place where Breslin was. ‘Even if we had, it would’ve probably made no difference. It’s not like there’s extra evidence we could’ve got our hands on. We’d be banjaxed anyway.’

It would have made a difference, but. All the ways it would have made all the difference hang in my head, weaving together into one thick dark curtain. I haven’t got a way to put it into words: what might be gone for good behind its slow sway; what these few days might have changed, if only we’d seen.

I say, ‘I’m not done.’ I get my phone out and I start skimming through my contacts.

Steve’s eyes move to me, dark and doubtful. ‘We’re not going to get him. What Breslin said, it sucks but he’s right.’

‘I know.’

He starts to say something else, but I lift a finger: the phone’s ringing. ‘Louis Crowley,’ says Creepy Crowley suspiciously. The background noise sounds like he’s in a pub.

‘Howya,’ I say. ‘Antoinette Conway, Murder squad. I need to talk to you. Like, now. Where are you?’

I throw in a good pinch of suppressed desperation, to get him drooling, and it works. ‘Hmm,’ Crowley says. ‘I’m not sure I have the time.’

‘Come on. You won’t regret it.’

The little prick thinks he knows exactly what’s going on here, and he’s gonna wring every last drop out of it. ‘Well,’ he says, on a sigh, loving this. ‘I suppose… I’m in Grogan’s. I’ll be here for another half-hour. If you get here before I leave, I can give you a few minutes.’

‘Great,’ I say, letting the rush of gratitude slip through. ‘I- Great. I’ll be there.’ And I hang up.

‘Was that Crowley?’ Steve asks. His eyebrows are up.

‘I need to shut him down, remember? And I’ve got an idea.’ I shove the phone in my pocket, stand up and tug the creases out of my suit. ‘Come with me? I could do with backup.’

All of a sudden there’s a twitch tugging at the corner of Steve’s mouth. He says, ‘Would this idea count as a glitch in the Plan?’

‘I fucking well hope so. You coming or not?’

Steve shoves back his chair and stands up, grinning. ‘Wouldn’t miss it.’

No one is in the corridors; when we get our coats, no one’s in the locker room. The familiar run of sound comes through the squad-room door, keyboards, phone calls, bitching, the printer; in the middle of it all is that smooth power-voice of Breslin’s, raised in some punchline that gets a big laugh. Up in Incident Room C, the floaters are working away, busy little bees piling up paper that’ll go straight down to the basement. Even reception is empty; Bernadette’s on break or in the jacks. We walk out of the Murder building and no one even knows we’re gone.

Crowley’s on his own at a corner table in Grogan’s, sipping a pint of Smithwick’s and reading a bet-up paperback with SARTRE on the cover in massive letters, so everyone will get that he’s on a higher plane. He pretends he doesn’t notice us till we’re practically on top of his table. ‘Crowley,’ I say.

He does a bad fake startle and puts the book down. Steve is a surprise, but Crowley covers OK: ‘Ah,’ he says, holding out his hand and giving Steve a gracious smile, ignoring me, to put me in my place. ‘Detective Moran.’

‘Howya,’ Steve says, without taking Crowley up on the handshake. He thumps down on a stool, long legs sprawled everywhere, pulls out his phone and gives it his full attention.

I can see Crowley trying to figure this out. I sit down opposite him, prop my elbows on the table and my chin on my fingers, and smile at him. ‘Howya.’

‘Yes,’ he says, with a nice mix of distaste and wariness; he’s not getting the feed of desperation I promised him. ‘Hello.’

‘Nice articles you’ve been running. I’ve never been on the front page before. I feel like Kim Kardashian.’

‘Hardly,’ Crowley says, eyeballing me. ‘You liked the photo?’

‘Crowley,’ I say. ‘You’re after making a bad mistake.’

This isn’t going the way Crowley expected, but he holds up well – after all, he’s still got the upper hand, whether I behave myself or not. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. If you don’t want to look like a bully in the eyes of the nation-’ Steve has fired up some game that’s a mixture of beeping noises and cherry bombs; Crowley twitches, but he manages to hang on to his train of moral outrage. ‘-then don’t try to bully the agents of free speech. It really is that simple.’

‘Nah nah nah. I’m not here about the photo. My problem is a guy who saw the photo. He rang you up looking for my address, and you gave it to him.’

‘Haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,’ Crowley says. He folds his pudgy little hands on the table and smirks at me. ‘How is your father, by the way?’

While I’m still being puzzled, Steve’s head snaps up and he lets out a great big snort of laughter. ‘He did not. Did he?’

Crowley’s eyes zip back and forth between us. The smirk’s fading. This is why I wanted Steve along: if I was here to beg Crowley to keep my deepest family secret just between us, I wouldn’t have brought company. ‘Who didn’t do what?’ I demand. ‘And you, where do you know my da from?’

‘Your man who rang you,’ Steve says, to Crowley. ‘He didn’t actually tell you he was Conway’s da. Did he?’

‘Ah, for fuck’s sake,’ I say. ‘Seriously?’

Steve starts to laugh properly. Crowley shoots him a poison look. ‘That’s what he said. He said he’d lost touch a long time back and wanted to reconnect.’

‘And you fell for it?’ I demand. ‘Just like that?’

‘He seemed legit. I didn’t see any reason to doubt him.’

‘You’re supposed to be a journalist,’ Steve points out, still grinning. ‘Doubt’s supposed to be your thing.’

‘Jesus,’ I say. ‘I don’t even like you, and I’m scarlet for you.’

‘You got played, man,’ Steve says, shaking his head and going back to his game. ‘Played like a pound-shop kazoo.’

‘Crowley,’ I say. ‘You’re a walking fucking lobotomy. The guy who rang you isn’t my da’ – Steve starts laughing again on that. ‘He’s a scumbag from up North who I helped put away for a few years, and when he saw that photo it occurred to him that this was his big chance to get his own back. And you gave him my fucking home address.’

A lot of the air goes out of Crowley.

‘He’s been casing my gaff ever since,’ I say, ‘and last night I found him in my sitting room. You figure he was just there for the chats?’

‘“Conwaaay,” ’ Steve says, in his deepest voice. ‘“I am your faaather.” ’

‘Luckily for everyone,’ I say, ‘I sorted the situation. He’s not gonna be back. The only problem I’ve got left is you. Me and my partner, we’ve been trying to decide what to charge you with.’

‘Conspiracy to commit burglary,’ Steve suggests, jabbing away at his phone. ‘And assault, depending on whether your man was only planning on leaving a chocolate log in Conway’s fridge or whether he was hoping to do very bad things to her personally. Or accessory before the fact. Or we could go for the lot, just for laughs, and see what sticks.’

Crowley’s gone even paler and sweatier than usual. He says, ‘I want to talk to my solicitor.’

‘You’re in deep shite here,’ I tell him. ‘Lucky for you, though, I’ve got a use for you.’

‘I’m serious. I want to talk to my solicitor right now.’

‘Hey, genius,’ Steve says, zapping something with a nuke noise and a flourish. ‘Tell us: does this look like an interview room?’

‘No. Because I’m not under arrest. I know my rights-’

‘Course you do,’ Steve says. ‘Since you’re not under arrest, you’ve got no right to a solicitor. You’ve got the right to leave any time you like, obviously.’ I shift my stool back helpfully, making room for Crowley to go. ‘I wouldn’t recommend it, but. If you do, we’ll take this to our boss, and then you will be under arrest. And then you can have any solicitor you like.’

Crowley starts to get up. When we watch him with interest and don’t try to stop him, he changes his mind.

‘Or,’ I say, ‘you can do me a quick favour, and we’ll forget the whole thing. I’ll even throw you a bit of a scoop, just to show there’s no hard feelings.’

‘I’d go with that one,’ Steve advises him. ‘If it was me, like.’

‘The favour,’ Crowley says. Most of the pompous puff has leaked out of his voice. ‘What’s the favour?’

‘You’ve been showing up at way too many of my crime scenes, the last while,’ I say. ‘Who’s been tipping you off?’

Crowley nearly crumples off his bench with relief. He tries to cover by pursing his lips and doing scruples. Me and Steve wait.

‘I’m not the kind of person who stirs up trouble-’ That makes Steve snort. ‘Unless it’s morally necessary.’

‘It is, of course,’ Steve says cheerfully. ‘You spill, Conway sorts out whatever beef the lads have with her, everyone gets to concentrate on catching criminals, justice is served. Plus you don’t have to waste your time fighting charges; you can keep on fighting the good fight instead. It’s morally all tickety-boo.’

‘I’m not going to rat you out to your buddies,’ I say. ‘You can keep your cosy little relationships going. I just want to know who’s fucking me about.’

Crowley makes a face at hearing Language out of a girl, but he’s smart enough to keep his gob shut. He taps his lips with one fingertip and leaves another few seconds for his scruples to impress us. Then he sighs. ‘Detective Roche lets me know when he thinks I might take an interest in one of your cases.’

No surprise there. ‘Roche and who else?’

After a moment he says, reluctantly – hates to jeopardise his beautiful new friendship – ‘Detective Breslin rang me on Sunday morning. He mentioned the Aislinn Murray case.’

‘Yeah, we already knew that. Is he the one who gave you my home address? Or was that Roche?’

‘I got it from a contact.’

‘What kind of contact?’

‘You can’t make me reveal my sources. I know you people would love to turn this country into a totalitarian-’

Steve pumps his fist and goes ‘Yesss!’ at the phone. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘You were saying? Totalitarian something?’

I say, ‘This wasn’t a journalistic source, moron. This was someone helping you to help a criminal break into my house. You think that’s protected?’

‘It could be. You don’t know what else he told me.’

‘Crowley. You want me to ask them instead?’

He shrugs like a teenager in a sulk. ‘All right. Breslin.’

The little fucker. I should’ve punched him when I had the chance. ‘How’d you get it out of him?’

‘Oh, please. I didn’t put him on the rack. When he rang me about the Aislinn Murray case, he told me you had a terrible tendency to dither – I’m only quoting.’ Crowley holds up his hands and smirks at me. ‘He said you could take months to close the most blindingly obvious case. Normally that would be your problem, but this time Detective Breslin was stuck on the case with you, and he didn’t want his name associated with that nonsense. He needed pressure put on you to actually do your job – quoting again, Detective, only quoting! So I came up with a little bit of pressure.’

‘No better man,’ Steve says, to his phone. ‘We could hardly think straight, we were that pressurised. Amn’t I right, Conway?’

Crowley shoots him a suspicious look. ‘And then, when the man claiming to be your father rang me-’

I say, ‘That’s why you were falling over yourself to believe he was actually my da. Here I thought it was just because the idea of shoving your greasy fingers into my private life gave you such a hard-on, you couldn’t think straight. But you were figuring, if this guy was legit, then siccing him on me would turn up the pressure another notch. And you’d get a pat on the head and a nice treat from your handler. Am I right?’

Crowley prisses up his mouth. ‘The tone you’re taking is inappropriate and it’s deliberately inflammatory. I’m under no obligation to-’

‘You can stick my tone up your hole. You rang Breslin and drooled down the phone to him about how you could fuck up my personal life till my head was so wrecked, I’d sign off on anything; all you needed was my home address. And he couldn’t wait to hand it over. Am I missing anything out?’

He has his arms folded and he’s refusing to look at me, to show me that my behaviour is unacceptable. ‘If you already know everything, why ask me?’

‘Oh, but I don’t know everything, not yet. Roche’s been siccing you on my cases, Breslin did it the once. Who else?’

He shakes his head. ‘That’s all.’

‘Crowley,’ I say, warning. ‘You don’t get to buy your way out of this by throwing me two names. Spill, or the deal’s off.’

Crowley does what’s meant to be wounded nobility, but comes out looking like indigestion. ‘I actually know when transparency is important, Detective Conway – and there are plenty of Guards who can’t say that. Other detectives do contact me – there actually are some who care about the public’s right to know – but not about your cases.’

I can’t tell what sends up the sudden wild spurt of anger: the chance that he’s lying, or the chance that he’s telling the truth. I go in close across the table and I say, right into his face, ‘Don’t you fuck with me. Whoever you’re skipping, I will find out, d’you get me? And you’ll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder and wishing you’d gone for a career cleaning the jacks in Supermac’s.’

‘I’m not! I’m not skipping anyone. Detective Roche, and this time Detective Breslin. That’s it.’ It’s the fear on Crowley’s face that convinces me. He adds, bitchily, ‘I’m sure you think you’re interesting enough to deserve a mass conspiracy, but apparently not everyone agrees.’

My head feels strange, weightless. All this time I’ve been thinking the whole squad’s out for my blood, the squad room is a curtain swelling with the enemy army behind it, I’m the lone fighter lifting her sword and knowing she’s going down. Except every time I pull back the curtain, all I find is the same one wanker.

The lads throwing slaggings my way: I took it for granted the edges were sharpened deliberately and smeared with poison, carefully constructed to slice till I dropped. It never occurred to me that it was just slagging, with a bit of extra edge because I don’t get on with most of them and because – ever since that first arse-slap off Roche, half of them watching, none of them saying a word – I haven’t tried. Fleas, hinting to see whether I fancied coming back to Undercover: I assumed it was because he knew I was crashing and burning in Murder, I never once thought it could be just that we were good together and he misses me. Steve, spinning his what-ifs and watching them whirl, considering all their glinting angles: I thought, for a few hours in there I actually believed, he was using them to lure me over a cliff-edge so he could watch me go splat and wave bye-bye from the top. I’m glad my skin means him and Crowley won’t see the blush.

I was doing exactly the same thing as Aislinn: getting lost so deep inside the story in my head, I couldn’t see past its walls to the outside world. I feel those walls shift and start to waver, with a rumble that shakes my bones from the inside out. I feel my face naked to the ice-flavoured air that pours through the cracks and keeps coming. A great shiver is building in my back.

Crowley and Steve are both watching me, waiting to see if I’m gonna let Crowley off the hook. Steve’s game is yelping for attention.

‘OK,’ I say. I want to walk out, but I’m not done here. I shove everything else to the back of my mind. ‘OK. We’ll go with that.’

Crowley says – the fear’s vanished; he’s straight back into hyena mode – ‘You mentioned having a bit of news for me.’

‘Oh yeah,’ I say. My focus is back; this is gonna be fun. ‘Have I got a scoop for you. You’re gonna love this.’

Crowley whips out his voice recorder, but I shake my head. ‘Nah. This is non-attributable. It comes from sources close to the investigation. Got it?’ ‘Sources close to the investigation’ means cops. I don’t want McCann and Breslin thinking Lucy’s been talking.

He gets pouty, but I sit back and have a watch of Steve jabbing manically at his phone screen. In the end Crowley sighs and puts the recorder away. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Good man,’ I say, sitting up again. ‘Get a load of this. Aislinn Murray, right?’ Crowley nods, filling up with drool, hoping I’m about to tell him she was raped in creative ways. ‘She was having an affair. With a married guy.’

Crowley’s only delighted to settle for that. He does a man-of-the-world head-shake. ‘I knew she was too good to be true. Knew it. Girls who look like that, my God, they think they can get away with anything. Sometimes – oops, so sorry, Your Highness! – it doesn’t work out like that.’

He’s already rewriting the story in his head, whizzing through his best euphemisms for ‘homewrecking nympho who got what she deserved’. Steve says, ‘It gets better. Guess what her fella does for a living.’

‘Hmmm.’ Crowley pinches his chin and thinks. ‘Well. Obviously a girl like that would have liked money. But I’d hazard a guess that she was even more aroused by power. Would I be right?’

Me and Steve are well impressed. ‘How come you’re not doing our job?’ Steve wants to know. ‘We could do with that kind of smarts on the squad.’

‘Ah, well, not everyone’s the type who can work for The Man, Detective Moran. I think we must be talking about a politician. Let me see…’ Crowley steeples his fingers against his lips. He’s got the whole story rolling out in his head, ready for ink. ‘Aislinn’s job wouldn’t have taken her into those circles, so they must have met socially, meaning he’s young enough to be out and about-’

‘Even better than that,’ I say. I have a quick glance around the pub, lean across the table and head-beckon Crowley in. When him and his patchouli reek get close enough for a whisper: ‘He’s a cop.’

‘Even better,’ Steve says, ditching his phone and leaning in beside me. ‘He’s a detective.’

‘Even better,’ I say. ‘He’s a Murder detective.’

‘Not me,’ Steve adds. ‘I’m single. Thank Jaysus.’

We both sit back and smile big wide smiles at Crowley.

He stares at us, sticky little mind racing while he tries to work out our angle and whether we’re bullshitting him. ‘I can’t run that,’ he says.

I say, ‘You’re going to run it.’

‘I can’t. I’ll be sued. The Courier will be sued.’

‘Not if you don’t name names,’ Steve reassures him. ‘There’s two dozen of us on the squad, all guys except Conway here, and most of them are married. That’s, what, sixteen or seventeen people it could be? You’re safe as houses.’

‘I have contacts who would be furious. I’m not going to sabotage my career.’

‘Everyone on Murder already hates you, man,’ Steve points out, going back to his game. ‘Except Roche and Breslin, and just to ease your mind, it’s not them. So it’s not like you’re going to burn any bridges.’

‘You’ll be a hero,’ I say. ‘Ireland’s bravest investigative journalist, daring to take on The Man and strike a blow for truth and transparency, never even thinking about the risk to himself. It’s gonna be great.’

‘Think how much hoop you’ll get,’ Steve says. Crowley throws him a look of disdain.

I say, ‘The story runs tomorrow. A married detective, not involved in investigating Aislinn Murray’s murder but in a position very close to that investigation, was having an affair with her. If we need you to throw anything else in there at some stage, we’ll let you know.’

And the brass will have no choice: there’ll be an internal investigation. It won’t find enough for charges, any more than we did, but at least McCann won’t be prancing back to his marriage and his lifetime Murder billet like none of this ever happened. Aislinn’s getting the job done in the end. I wonder if some part of her realised, in dark glints during the long nights when she couldn’t sleep for planning, that this was the only way it could go down.

I ask, ‘Is that all clear?’

Crowley’s shaking his head, but it’s at us and our crudeness and our general inferiority as human beings; we all know he’s gonna do it. ‘Great,’ I say. I shove my stool back and stand up; Steve kills his game. ‘See you round.’ And we leave Crowley and SARTRE to get to work on his brand-new scoop.

Outside, the air is mild enough to trick you into turning your face to it, looking for warmth. It’s only five o’clock, but it’s dark and the streets are starting to shift into their evening buzz, clumps of smokers laughing outside the pubs, girls hurrying home swinging shopping bags to get ready for the night out. ‘I want to ask you something,’ I say to Steve. ‘Do you know who pissed in my locker, that time?’

I never told him about that, but he doesn’t pretend it’s news. He watches me steadily, hands in his overcoat pockets. ‘Not for definite. No one’s going to talk about that around me.’

‘Breslin said-’ Breslin said of course Steve would’ve heard the stories, of course Steve would’ve told me if he’d been on my side. Breslin said a load of stuff. I shut my trap.

Steve hears the rest anyway. He says matter-of-factly, ‘Everyone knows I got here because you put in a word for me. They see us working together. No one’s going to try messing with that. They’re not thick.’

It catches me with a warmth that almost hurts. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘No.’

Steve says, ‘From what I’ve walked in on, but, the locker was Roche.’

‘How about the poster with my head Photoshopped onto the gash pic?’

‘Yeah. Roche.’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘OK.’ I turn in a circle, looking up at the city lights painting the clouds a tricky grey-gold. ‘All the other shite? Not the small stuff. The real shite.’

‘Like I said: I wouldn’t know. But I’ve never heard anything to say anyone else was in on it.’

I say, ‘You never told me.’

That gets a flick of one corner of his mouth. ‘’Cause you would’ve listened, yeah?’

Steve hanging on to his precious gangster story for dear life, building it bigger and fancier and twirlier, waving his arms for me to look. Here I thought he was trying to cheer me up so I wouldn’t get him in the lads’ bad books. All along he was hoping, if he could just come up with a good enough alternative, maybe he could snap me out of convincing myself the whole case – the whole squad – was one great big conspiracy to shaft me. I can’t decide which of us is the bigger spa.

‘Huh,’ I say. The air smells tasty and restless, all those places you could spend your evening, all the things waiting to happen inside those beckoning open doors. ‘Would you look at that.’

‘What?’

‘I just wish I’d copped earlier. Is all.’

Steve waits.

I say, ‘We need to talk to the gaffer.’