The Trespasser

Chapter 18

Me and Steve, back in the gaffer’s office. It’s down the end of a corridor; with the click of the door, the silence closes around us and we’re a thousand miles from the rest of the squad. The layers of tat and clutter close in, too: spider plant, golf trophies, framed crap, stacks of pointless old files, and there’s a brand-new snow globe holding down a heap of paper on the desk, souvenir of some grandkid’s holiday. In the middle of it all, O’Kelly, taking off his reading glasses to look at us.

He says, ‘Breslin was in. He says you’ve hit a wall with the Aislinn Murray case; time to take a step back, hope ye catch a break somewhere down the road.’

He gets it bang on, gruff and not exactly delighted with us, but holding back from the bollocking because Breslin told him we’ve done a good job. For a second there I could almost believe it’s real, and all the rest is our imagination. The rush of fury pulls a sharp breath into me.

The gaffer watches us.

I say, ‘McCann killed Aislinn Murray.’

Not one muscle of O’Kelly changes. He says, ‘Sit down.’

We turn the spare chairs towards his desk and sit. The crisp whirl and click of Steve placing his chair is full up tight with that same fury.

‘Let’s hear it.’

We tell him what happened, while the darkness thickens at the window. We keep it very clear and very cold, no commentary, just fact stacked neatly on top of fact, the way the gaffer likes his reports. He picks up the shitty snow globe and turns it from angle to angle between his fingers, watching the shavings of plastic snow tumble, and listens.

When we’re done he says, still inspecting the snow globe, ‘How much of that can you prove?’

‘Not enough to put him away,’ Steve says. He’s barely holding down the savage edge of sarcasm: Don’t be worrying, it’s all grand. ‘Not even enough for a charge.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

‘McCann’s connection to the old case is on file,’ I say. The anger’s slicing through my voice, too, and I’m not even trying to hide it. ‘Gary O’Rourke and I can both confirm that Aislinn was trying to track down the story on her father. The affair’s solid: we’ve got forensics and the best mate’s statement, plus McCann admitted it. And we’ve got the best mate’s evidence that Aislinn was only stringing him along. When it comes to Saturday evening, we’ve got nothing but Rory Fallon’s statement about seeing McCann, which is worth bugger-all. McCann’s saying nothing. Breslin says McCann found her dead, but no one’s going to confirm that on record.’

O’Kelly’s eyes flick up to me. ‘Breslin said that.’

‘An hour ago.’

He swivels his chair, with a long low creak, to the window. He could be staring out over the courtyard, at the slope of cobblestones and the proud high-windowed rise of the building opposite, the old solid shapes he has to know by heart; only for the darkness.

Steve says, like it’s punched its way out of him, ‘He rang you Sunday morning. Before you gave us the case.’

One flicker of the gaffer’s eyelids. Except for that, we could think he didn’t hear.

‘We were a gift,’ I say. ‘The perfect stooges. Moran’s a newbie, Conway’s fighting a bad rep. Easy to point them in the wrong direction; if they come up with something you don’t like, easy to twist their arms, make them back off and shut their gobs. Worst comes to worst, easy to smear them bad enough that no one’ll listen to a word they say.’

O’Kelly ought to reef me out of it, for talking to my gaffer like that. He doesn’t even turn. The desk lamp slides gold light down the brass desk plaque saying DET. SUPT. G. O’KELLY.

After a long time he says, ‘Breslin said it was a mate of his.’

Neither of us answers.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out delicately, the way you do when you’re dying of a cough, afraid if you do it wrong you might explode. ‘Five in the morning, he rang me. He said his friend, one of his best friends, he had called round to his girlfriend that night. Found her in her sitting room unconscious, bet up. Pretty sure another boyfriend did it. I said, “What are you dragging me out of my bed for? Call it in, get the uniforms and the paramedics over there, see you in the morning.” Breslin said he was going to call it in as soon as we hung up. But then he said to me, “My friend’s got a wife and kids. He can’t be linked to this, gaffer. It’ll wreck his life. We need to keep him out of it.” ’

O’Kelly lets out a small, humourless snort of laughter. ‘I said don’t be giving me that shite about my friend; we all know what that means. But Breslin said no. He swore up and down: it’s not me, gaffer. You know me, I don’t step out on my missus. I’ll put you on to her, she can tell you I’ve been with her and the kids all weekend… A lie that size, from a fella I know the way I know Breslin, I wouldn’t have missed it. I believed him.’

He moves; the chair creaks sharply. ‘I said, “Your mate says he didn’t put a finger on her, just walked in and found the damage done. Do you believe him?” And Breslin said he did, yeah. Hundred per cent. Two hundred. A thousand. He wasn’t lying then, either. And Breslin’s no eejit. He’s had plenty of practice spotting bullshit stories.’

There’s a second of silence, while we all let that lie there.

‘I asked him, “Then what are you getting into hysterics about? If your friend did nothing and saw nothing, there’s no reason his name should ever come into this. The bird’ll wake up and tell the uniforms who gave her the slaps, they’ll pull the fella in, she’ll refuse to press charges, everyone’ll go home; rinse and repeat a month or two down the line. Your mate’s grand. I hope it scared him shitless enough that he’ll keep it in his trousers from now on.” ’

The cough breaks through. We wait while O’Kelly pulls a tissue out of his pocket and presses it to his mouth, makes ferocious revving noises to clear his throat.

He says, ‘But Breslin was worried. He said his mate hadn’t checked to see was the girl breathing. Too shaken up, too afraid of being snared; he’d just legged it out of there and rung Breslin. They had no way of knowing how long she’d been lying there. If she was dead, then his mate was fucked. He’d be dragged in, dragged through the muck, lose everything. All because he’d stuck his mickey in the wrong hole.’

The prickle of alert lifts Steve’s head at the same moment as mine. Breslin told us McCann checked and Aislinn was dead, meaning he would have done no good by calling it in, so he wasn’t a bad guy for leaving her bleeding on the floor. Both versions are bullshit anyway, but I’d love to know why he served O’Kelly a different flavour from us.

O’Kelly either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t want to. ‘I said, “You want something. What is it?” Breslin said, “If she’s dead, I need to be on the case. I’m not asking to be in charge. I just want to be around, so I can see what’s going on, make sure my mate doesn’t get dragged in if there’s no need. If it’s all cut and dried, there’s no reason to ruin his life. If he’s needed, I’ll make sure he comes forward. I swear.” He said, “I’ve got thirteen years of credit, gaffer. I’m calling it in now.” ’

The corner of O’Kelly’s mouth twists as he remembers. ‘Breslin’s not the genius he thinks he is, but he’s a good man. He’s never let me down. Never asked me for a favour bigger than a plum slot for his holidays. If he wanted to cash in his chips on this one…’ His shoulders lift, fall again heavily. ‘In the end I said all right. I told him to watch himself, and watch his mate: I was going to be all over this one, and if I got any hints that anything was off, then he was gone and his pal was coming in for the chats. He said no problem. No problem at all. He told me how much he appreciated it, and how much he owed me, and a bit more arse-licking that I didn’t take much notice of. And then he went off to call it in.’

Another story. None of the rest were true straight through, not one. Victims, witnesses, killers, Ds, all frantically spinning stories to keep the world the way they want it, dragging them over our heads, stuffing them down our throats; and now our gaffer.

I say – I haven’t talked in so long that my voice comes out rough and patchy, dried out by the heating – ‘You knew who the mate was.’

O’Kelly’s eyes move to my face. They stay there like I make him too tired to look away. ‘You tell me, Conway. When you started smelling something rotten, did you straightaway think, “Ah, I know, must’ve been one of my own squad”?’

The weight of his voice – my own squad – falls on me like the swaying weight of deep water. Twenty-eight years, O’Kelly’s been on Murder; since me and Steve were sticky-faced kids pointing finger-guns at our pals. When he says my own squad, it means things I used to dream I’d understand someday.

I say, ‘No.’

‘And when you should’ve known. Did you think it then?’

‘No.’

‘No.’ His head turns back to the window. ‘Nor did I. But I wondered. I didn’t like that; I thought less of myself for it, still do. But there it was. That’s why I gave you the case: I needed to know. And ye were the only ones who wouldn’t drop it like a hot potato if Breslin wanted you to.’

And we waded right in and did his dirty work for him. Maybe he expects us to be grateful for the vote of confidence. I say, ‘Now you know.’

‘You’re positive. You’d bet your lives on it.’

Steve says, ‘He did it.’

O’Kelly nods a few times. ‘Right,’ he says quietly, to himself, not to us. ‘Right.’

I wait for it. Just for kicks, I try to guess which he’ll whip out first: the fatherly wisdom, the squad loyalty, the man-to-man chat, the guilt trip, the bribes, the threats. I hope Steve’s got no plans for this evening, because it could take a while before it sinks into the gaffer’s head that he’s getting nowhere. While I’m at it, I try to decide whether we should tell him it’s already too late, so we can enjoy the look on the bollix’s face, or whether we should play it safe and let him find out in the morning, along with everyone else, when the Courier comes out.

He swivels his chair to his desk and picks up the phone. His finger on the buttons is clumsier than it should be; his knuckles are swollen stiff. When someone answers, he says, ‘McCann. I need you in my office.’ And hangs up.

His eyes fall on us for a moment, in passing. ‘Ye can stay,’ he says. ‘As long as you act like adults. You get bitchy, you’re out.’ Then he goes back to looking out the window, at whatever it is he sees out there.

Me and Steve glance at each other just once. Steve’s face is quick and wary, all the angles sharpened. He doesn’t have a handle on where this is going either, and he doesn’t like that any more than I do. We swap a tiny nod: Stay steady. Then we sit still, listening to the faint singing hiss of the radiators and the slow rasp of O’Kelly’s breathing, and we wait for McCann to come.

The knock at the door snaps the silence. ‘Come,’ O’Kelly says, turning his chair, and there’s McCann in the doorway, jacket sagging, eyes sunk deep.

Two beats – one look at the gaffer, one at us – and he understands. His shoulders shift and roll forward as he gets ready for the fight.

‘Moran,’ O’Kelly says. ‘Give McCann a chair.’

I stand up with Steve and we move to the side, against the wall. For a second it looks like McCann’s going to stay standing, but then he yanks Steve’s chair farther from us and sits down. Legs wide, feet braced, chin forward.

O’Kelly says, ‘You should have told me.’

A fast raw flush springs up on McCann’s cheekbones. He opens his mouth to spew out a flood of reasons, excuses, justifications, whatever. Then he shuts it again.

‘How long have I been your gaffer?’

After a moment McCann says, ‘Eleven years.’

‘Any complaints?’

McCann shakes his head.

‘Have I had your back, along the way? Or have I hung you out to dry when things got tough?’

‘Had my back. Always.’

O’Kelly nods. He says, ‘A civilian who’s fucked up, he tries to hide it from his boss. A D in trouble, he goes to his gaffer.’

McCann can’t look at him. The flush deepens. ‘I should’ve. Straightaway. I know that.’

O’Kelly waits.

‘Sorry.’

‘OK,’ the gaffer says. He gives McCann the curt nod that means You’re off the hook, don’t fuck up again. ‘We’re talking now, anyway. And I want to know what in holy hell has been going on here. These two’ – he jerks his chin at me and Steve – ‘they’re trying to tell me you went pussy-blind: Aislinn Murray was out to fuck you over, you were thinking with your mickey, the whole thing went to shite. Is that true? This whole five-star clusterfuck, it’s all because you weren’t getting enough blood flow to the brain?’

McCann’s jaw moves. He doesn’t like that.

‘Because I know you – or anyway I thought I did – and I say it’s bollix. These two have come up with some story they like, and they’re making everything they get fit the story.’

It tracks cold right down into my stomach, like swallowed ice. The story we told him, the true one, it’ll never leave this room. By the time we walk out, O’Kelly and McCann between them will have sliced it to pieces and sewn it up into something unrecognisable, to set loose into the outside world. I knew it was coming, but it still hits home.

‘Fact is, everything they’ve got plays a couple of different ways.’

One fast glance from McCann.

O’Kelly holds up a thumb. ‘The photos of your notes. It’s a safe bet Aislinn was going to take those to your wife, but all that says is she wanted you for herself. Nothing to say why.’

Thumb and finger. ‘That fairy tale yoke she left for her mate. That just says she felt trapped – and I don’t blame her; you’re a fucking eejit, putting the girl in that situation, like she wanted to spend the rest of her life being your bit on the side – and she was angry with you, wanted to turn the tables so you couldn’t get away from her.’

A quick double blink from McCann. This is reaching him. Any second now, he’ll be jumping on board with whatever O’Kelly’s got planned.

Another finger. ‘Rory Fallon. Aislinn could’ve been trying to get you out of her head. She had enough sense to know the two of ye were a bad idea all round.’

McCann’s looking at him now. The drowning-man hope struggling on his face is terrible.

‘Maybe this is just me doing my own wishful thinking. I don’t want to believe you’d make a mess like this one, drag the whole squad into it, just for the sake of a ride. For you to fuck up this badly, then you and Aislinn, that had to be the real thing.’

Shame, mixed in with the hope.

‘We can’t ask Aislinn what was going on in her head. You’re the only other person who was there; if anyone knows, it’s you. So you tell me, McCann. Was it the real thing? Or are we all sitting here because you fancied a fuck?’

The clench of anger in his voice pulls it out of McCann. ‘It was real. I’m not that bloody stupid.’

‘Real,’ the gaffer says. And waits for more.

‘Maybe Aislinn did go into it wanting to fuck me over. Probably. Maybe she ended the same way – that mate of hers persuaded her, or, I don’t know. But there was a while in there…’

McCann rubs his eyes. In the merciless light they look red and sore, like he’s got an infection starting. He says, ‘I couldn’t believe it was happening. To me. I thought I knew the rest of my life like it had already happened. All the decisions that make a difference, I’d made them before I was twenty-five – the job, the wife, the neighbourhood, having kids. All that was left was for me to sit there and watch them play out. No twists left; no surprises.’

He lifts his head to look over at me and Steve. ‘You won’t get it now, you two. You’re still young enough that anything could happen. But you’ll find out. It’s like being in a film, one of those third-rate ones where by halfway through you know exactly where it’s headed, every step; you can’t remember why you’re even bothering to watch the rest. Because it’s there, just; because there’s nothing else to do. And then…’

He blinks hard, like that might clear his eyes.

‘And all of a sudden someone lifts you right out of it and drops you into a different film. Different music, different colours. She was brighter. Always bright colours. And anything could happen.’

Steve says, ‘So what you told us about just liking her company, that was bollix. You knew from the start that this was something special.’

McCann shakes his head. ‘Nah. I didn’t think that way. Not at first. I just… I loved being with her. Nothing more than that; I never thought of doing more than that. Just seeing her listen to my stories like they mattered. It reminded me of how I used to feel about the job, way back when. The look on her face: when I pulled a good case, I used to feel like that. Like what I did changed things.’

I risk a glance at the gaffer. His face is steady; the shadows of wrinkles and eye sockets turn it unreadable.

‘OK,’ Steve says, keeping the scepticism level well below bitchy. ‘So how did that change?’

‘One night,’ McCann says. He brushes a hand over his cheek, like something fine and cobwebby is catching at him. ‘One night. August. Aislinn said some guy had chatted her up at her evening class. Just in passing, she mentioned it – she wasn’t into him, she’d turned him down. But that was when it hit me: a girl like that, of course she’s going to want a fella. Not just someone for picnics and talk; a man who loves her. A man in her bed. Hit me like a ton of bricks, because I knew once she got him, I’d be gone.’

She made him think it was his idea, Lucy said. She did a good job of it.

‘And then I thought: why not me? Why not? We were loving each other’s company, couldn’t get enough. There was chemistry there – even I could tell that. The way she looked at me, the way her breathing went when we accidentally got close- There was something.’

A sharp glance at me and Steve. That faint stinging red has come up on his cheekbones again. ‘Probably it sounds pathetic to you: just a middle-aged fool head over heels for some young one, oldest story in the world. You weren’t there.’

Every murderer says that to us, sooner or later. You weren’t there. You don’t understand. There’s a small dry chip of silence while no one points that out.

I say, ‘It was that easy? You said, “Hey, let’s give it a go,” and Aislinn said, “Sure, why not?” ’

McCann shakes his head heavily. ‘I don’t know how I made it happen. You two, you keep talking like she hunted me down, but it wasn’t- She didn’t want to be some homewrecker. It took me a while to convince her she was doing no harm that hadn’t been done years ago. When I finally, when we finally… that was when I realised: she honest to God cared about me. She… It…’ A quick involuntary catch of breath. ‘That blew me away. Just blew me away.’

The wonder in his voice. He sounds like a teenager, lifting with joy and amazement, he sounds so tender you could bruise him with one wrong touch. Time after time it’s left me gobsmacked, how people will tell you things they should keep locked inside for life; how ferociously they need the story to be out in the air, in the world, to exist somewhere outside their own heads.

He says, ‘It was real. All that shite you’ve got, that means nothing. One time I fell getting over her wall, scraped up my knee. Aislinn knelt down in front of me and washed it, so gentle. You think she’d’ve done that if she only hated my guts? Maybe she did, some of the time, but she loved me as well. People are complicated. She was more complicated than I realised.’

He’s giving me and Steve a stare that’s a challenge. No takers. The whole thing is pure double-dipped fantasy, but the last thing we want to do is take it apart. Me and Steve, scrabbling so hard to pull the true story out of the tangle, we forgot the false ones come with their own ferocious, double-edged power.

The gaffer nods. ‘I would’ve put money on that. Nice to know I’m not losing the bit I have.’ He resettles himself in his chair, adjusts his waistband over his belly. ‘Now we’ve got that cleared up,’ he says. ‘Let’s talk about Saturday night.’

McCann opens his mouth, but O’Kelly lifts a hand. ‘No. Hang on. That’s not what I’m asking you.’

McCann shuts up.

‘Breslin told these two you found Aislinn dead. But he told me that you – that his mate, I mean – didn’t even check for a pulse. Why?’

A shake of McCann’s head, baffled and wary. This isn’t what he was expecting. Not what I was expecting, either. I’m not sure, any more, that I have the foggiest clue what the gaffer is at.

‘He wanted me thinking the mate was a civilian, is why. So he said the mate panicked and did a runner, the way a civilian would. The way no D would, ever.’ O’Kelly shoots a sharp glance at McCann, under his eyebrows. ‘You happy with that?’

A humourless twist of McCann’s mouth. ‘Not happy with any of this.’

‘You shouldn’t be. You let Breslin paint you as a civilian, to keep you out of hassle with your gaffer. How does that sit with you?’

McCann’s jaw moves. ‘Not great.’

‘Good. Because it’s not sitting great with me, either.’ O’Kelly leaves that for a moment, but McCann’s got nothing to add. ‘And then, a minute ago, you said Aislinn made you feel the way you used to feel on a good case: like what you did mattered.’

Nod.

‘Used to feel, you said. Meaning not any more.’

McCann’s eyes are on the floor.

‘Since when?’

‘Don’t know. A couple of years back.’

‘What happened?’

O’Kelly’s leaning forward, elbows on the desk, as close as he can get. Me and Steve aren’t moving. We’re not even in the room. This is between McCann and O’Kelly.

McCann says, ‘It wasn’t the job. It was me. What I said before: somewhere in there, it started feeling like everything I’d ever do was already set in stone. Middle of a big interview, out of nowhere I’d get this feeling like my mouth was moving by itself, like I was reading off a script and there was no way I could change it. It’d hit me that it didn’t matter who was sitting in my seat, asking the questions; the ending would be the same if it was me, Winters, O’Gorman, anyone. Felt like I was vanishing. It wasn’t that I stopped seeing myself as a D. I stopped seeing myself at all.’

The gaffer says, heavily, ‘I should’ve spotted that.’

McCann says urgently, ‘It never made a difference on the job, gaffer. I never slacked. No matter what, I gave it a hundred per cent.’

‘I know.’ O’Kelly leans back in his chair, runs a hand over his mouth. ‘What were you planning? Transfer off the squad? Hold out till you had your thirty and retire?’

McCann’s face upturned to him, like a kid’s, begging. ‘No. Gaffer, no. I thought midlife crisis, I’ll work through it, come out the other side, get my head back- I wasn’t going anywhere. Here till they drag me out.’

O’Kelly says – not brutal, just quiet and simple – ‘That’s out now.’

McCann bites down on his lip.

‘I can’t have you on the squad.’

After a long time, the smallest slice of a nod.

‘And I can’t palm you off on some other squad. Not knowing what I do.’

That nod again.

‘And the story’s going to come out, one way or another. Aislinn’s mate: we can keep her quiet for a while, but sooner or later she’ll cop that the case is going nowhere, and she’ll find herself a journo to talk to.’ O’Kelly doesn’t look at me and Steve, doesn’t act like he even knows we’re there, but I wonder. ‘And we’ll have the Garda Ombudsman jumping down our throats. There’ll be two inquiries, minimum: ours, and theirs. Breslin’ll be for the chop.’ That pulls a quick in-breath through McCann’s nose, jerks his head back. ‘What do you expect? Withholding evidence, and there’s that phone call to Stoneybatter to prove it. He’ll be lucky if he’s not up on charges.’

‘Gaffer,’ McCann says. The raw desperation gashing his voice open; I can’t look at him. ‘It’s not Breslin’s fault. He did nothing, only stood by me. Please-’

‘I won’t be able to do anything for Breslin, McCann. I’m for the chop, too.’ No self-pity in O’Kelly’s voice; these are facts, no different from fingerprint results or alibi times. ‘Unless I put in my papers before the investigation finishes up. In which case I won’t be around to give Breslin a dig-out.’

‘Christ,’ McCann says, barely above a whisper. ‘Ah, Christ, gaffer. I’m sorry.’

‘No. Don’t be getting maudlin on me. It’s done now.’ O’Kelly’s face across the desk, all unmovable grooves and crevices, like something carved a long time ago to send a message I can’t read. ‘You’ve got a choice. You can go out like a scumbag. Or you can be a D one more time.’

The silence goes on for so long. The office has changed, shifted, the same way the cosy interview room did. Crayon drawings, tiny flakes stirring in the snow globe. Thin skin stretched over clean bones and clacking teeth.

McCann says, quietly, ‘Saturday evening, after dinner, I told my wife I was going for a pint and I headed over to Aislinn’s house. I went in through the kitchen; saw the dinner cooking, but I didn’t think anything of it. There was music playing, dancy stuff, Aislinn didn’t hear me come in. I went out into the sitting room calling her – quiet, like always, so the neighbours wouldn’t hear – and I saw the table, set for two. Wineglasses. Candle. I thought it was for us. Should’ve known. I’m never over to her on Saturdays – mostly my wife wants to go out to a restaurant, only that evening she had a headache; no way Aislinn would’ve guessed I was coming. But all I could think about was seeing her.’

I risk a flash of sideways glance at Steve and meet him risking one at me, wide-eyed. We’re the only ones gobsmacked here. McCann’s voice doesn’t even hold a flicker of surprise at what he’s doing. The moment he walked into this room, he knew what O’Kelly would want from him. Breslin knew, too; that’s why they didn’t come to the gaffer with a version that had McCann in it, beg him to thin-blue-line it all away. Me and Steve were the only fools who didn’t get it.

‘And then she came out of the bedroom,’ McCann says. ‘Bright blue dress, beautiful; winter evening like that, nothing but grey and damp, and then this blue that’d light up your whole head… Her hair down, she knew I loved it like that. Putting an earring in one ear. I went to go to her, I…’ His hands come up, sketching the offer of an embrace.

‘Aislinn… she jumped a mile. Then she saw it was me. I expected her to laugh and kiss me, but the face on her; horrified. Like I was an intruder. That was when I started to cop: it wasn’t me she was waiting for. She put up her hands to stop me touching her, and she said, “You need to go.” ’

He’s breathing hard, the rush of disbelief hitting him all over again. ‘I couldn’t wrap my head… I asked her, I said, “What? What are you doing? What are you on about?” But she just kept pointing at the back door, telling me to go. I was begging her, don’t even know what I was saying. I said, “What’s happened? Just Wednesday night we were, three days ago, we- Have you had enough of me going home to my wife? Am I not spending enough time with you? I’ll end it with my wife tonight, I’ll move in, do anything- Was there something someone said about me, did your mate Lucy, I’ll explain, let me-”

‘But she was just shaking her head: no, not that, no, no, just go. She was trying to move me towards the kitchen, herding me, only I wouldn’t, or I couldn’t… I said – stupid, standing there, couldn’t keep up – I said, “Are we done? Does this mean we’re done?” And Aislinn, she stopped like she’d never thought of that. Startled. And then she said, “Well. Yes. I suppose it does.” ’

There’s no way I’d risk a glance at Steve now. Neither of us is breathing.

‘It felt like a joke,’ McCann says. ‘I was waiting for the punchline. But her face: she meant it. I said, all I could say, “Why?”

‘She said, “Go home.” I said, “Tell me why and I’ll go. Whatever it is, just tell me. I can’t live wondering.”

‘She looked at me and she laughed. Aislinn’s got a lovely laugh, sweet little giggle, but this wasn’t- This was something different. Great wild laugh, huge. She sounded…’

McCann’s throat moves as he hears that laugh again, growing and growing to fill his head, unstoppable. ‘She sounded happy. The happiest I’d ever heard her. And then she said, “You keep on wondering. Now fuck off.” ’

He stops talking.

O’Kelly says, ‘And.’

McCann says, ‘And I hit her.’

Me and Steve, we went at McCann by ripping away what he believed most about his life, blowing it up in front of his eyes, and hoping there’d be too little of him left to hold out against us. Just like Aislinn had been planning. But when we took as much of McCann as we could, shredded him into the last thing he ever wanted to be, we left him with No comment.

O’Kelly offered McCann a way back to who he was. McCann’s taken it.

He says, ‘It wasn’t murder, gaffer. It was manslaughter. I never meant her to die.’

The gaffer says, ‘I know.’

‘It never came to me that she might. Not till after.’

‘I know.’

I’m taking in a breath to say it. Cooper’s report. McCann is no bodybuilder. He landed that punch when Aislinn was down, head on the stone fireplace.

O’Kelly hears the breath. His eyes flick to me and he waits for what I’m going to say. His face still hasn’t changed. Only the eyes, moving in shadow, look alive.

I shut my mouth.

The gaffer’s eyes go back to McCann. He says, ‘We need this on record. You understand that?’

McCann nods. He keeps nodding for a long time.

O’Kelly leans his hands on the desk to stand up. ‘Time to go,’ he says.

McCann’s face turns up to him, quickly.

‘I’ll do it,’ the gaffer says. Steadying, like a surgeon promising to cut it out himself, not to let the med students touch the scalpel.

McCann says, ‘Maura.’

‘I’ll go see her. Soon as we’re done.’

McCann nods again. He stands up. Stays by the chair, arms hanging at his sides, waiting to be told where to go next.

The gaffer tugs down his jacket, carefully, like he’s got somewhere important to be. He switches off the desk lamp and looks around his office, absently, touching his pockets. His eyes fall on me and Steve like he forgot we were there.

‘Go home,’ he says.

We don’t talk. Down the long silent corridor, the padding of our feet on the carpet like muffled heartbeats. Down the stairs, through the cold draught that fidgets in the stairwell, to the locker room: coats on, satchels on shoulders, locker doors closing. Back upstairs, the smiles and the nods and the few words with Bernadette at reception stuffing tissue packets and throat lozenges into her bag, ready to go home. And outside, to the wide sharp blast of city-smell and cold.

The great courtyard, the floodlights, the civil servants scurrying home. It all looks strange: small stark paper things, far away. A big solve does that to you, leaves the world scoured dawn-white, sand-white, empty except for the solve smooth and heavy as a deep-dived rock in your hand.

Only it’s more than that, this time. The cobblestones feel wrong under my feet, thin skins of stone over bottomless fog. The squad I’ve spent the last two years hating, the mob of sniggering fucktards backstabbing the solo warrior while she gallantly fought her doomed battle: that’s gone, peeled away like a smeared film that was stuck down hard over the real thing. The squad I would’ve chopped off an arm to join, the shining line of ass-kicking superheroes, that went a long time ago. What’s left underneath is smaller than either of those, quieter and more complicated, done in finer detail. Roche, begging for a punch in the gob, which is high on my to-do list. The lads, each of them deep in his own mix of dodgy alibis and messy fibre evidence and the baby’s chickenpox, occasionally glancing up to roll their eyes at Roche’s bullshit or mine. The gaffer – it occurs to me that just maybe the gaffer throws the odd domestic our way, not because they piss me off, but because they have a good clearance rate and he wants our stats solid; or maybe, even simpler, because he knows we’ll work the hell out of them. All of them, and Steve. And me.

We stand in the courtyard, hands in our pockets, shoulders up against the cold. We’re not sure where to go from here; there’s no rule book, no ritual, to tell us what comes after a day like this one. Above us the Murder windows are lit and alert, ready for whatever tonight’s got in store. Somewhere up there O’Kelly and McCann are in an interview room, heads bent close, talking low and steady. Breslin is alone in the observation room, watching through the slow swell and ebb of his breath on the glass, not moving.

Steve says, ‘He was looking after us.’

He means the gaffer, sending us home. ‘I know,’ I say. It’ll be O’Kelly’s name on McCann’s statement sheet, O’Kelly’s name on the book of evidence that goes to the prosecutor. When we walk into the squad room tomorrow, we won’t be hissed out of it. Breslin will hate our guts, as long as he lives. The rest of them will watch O’Kelly, walking out of the building shoulder to shoulder with McCann to take him to booking, and understand.

Steve catches a sudden deep breath, blows it out again. ‘God,’ he says, and there’s a shake in his voice that he doesn’t bother trying to hide. ‘What a day.’

‘Look on the bright side. We’re never gonna have a worse week than this one.’

That pulls a helpless bark of laughter out of him. ‘You never know. We could get lucky: the Commissioner could get coked up and strangle a hooker.’

‘Fuck that. Someone else can work it. Just Quigley’s speed.’

Steve laughs again, but it’s gone fast. ‘The reason we didn’t see it from the start,’ he says, ‘is because we were thinking like cops. Both of us.’

He leaves it hanging there, like a question. He knows. Here I was so sure I was some secret-agent-level closed book, keeping my big plan all to myself. I watch our breath spread and fade on the air.

‘So,’ Steve says, squinting up at a shadow crossing one of the windows. ‘You putting in your papers?’

I can practically see the might-bes, bobbing like marsh lights over the cobblestones, skimming past the high windows, tricky and beckoning. Me in a suit that makes this one look like a binliner, striding through Harrods after some Saudi princess, one eye on her and the other on everything else. Me stretching out my legs in business class, checking exit routes in the hushed corridors of 24-carat hotels, lounging beside blinding blue sea with a cocktail in one hand and the other on the gun in my beach bag. All the might-have-beens, whirling in and out among the bars of the gate, and gone.

‘Nah,’ I say. ‘I hate paperwork.’

I swear Steve’s head falls back with relief. ‘Jaysus,’ he says. ‘I was worried.’

I never saw that one coming. ‘Yeah?’

His face turns towards me. He’s as startled as I am. ‘Course. What’d you think?’

‘Don’t know. Never thought about it.’ Not once. And I should’ve. For a second I see Breslin in the interview room, practically lifting off his feet with fury, There’s no fucking way he did this; Breslin in his dark sitting room, before dawn, muffling his voice on the phone to Stoneybatter station. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I’ve made a bleeding tosser of myself, the last while. A lot of ways.’

Steve doesn’t even try to deny that. ‘You’re all right. We’ve all done it.’

‘I’m not planning on doing it again.’

‘That’ll be nice.’

‘Fuck off, you.’ The cobblestones have lost that misty feel, they’re centuries’ worth of solid again, and the cold air hits my lungs like caffeine. I need to ring Crowley, tell him he’s off the hook for the article, make sure he knows he still owes me a big one and I’m gonna collect. I need to ring my ma and tell her about last night, whether I want to or not. Maybe it’ll give the pair of us a laugh. Maybe Fleas will e-mail me tomorrow, when he sees the headlines: Hiya Rach, saw your news, delighted everythings workin out for you, have to meet up to celebrate x. Maybe at the weekend I’ll text Lisa and the rest of my mates, see if they’re about. ‘You know what I need, I need a pint. Brogan’s?’

Steve hitches his satchel up his shoulder. ‘You’re buying. You still owe me for Rory not crying.’

‘What’re you on about? He bawled his eyes-’

‘I thought you were done being a tosser-’

‘Nice try. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna be a pushover-’

‘Ah, good, ’cause I was dead worried about that-’

I take one more look up at the rest of my life, waiting for me inside those neat sturdy squares of gold light. Then we start off across the courtyard, arguing, to get a few pints and a few hours’ kip before it’s time to head back and find out what’s in there.