The Trespasser

Chapter 3

The squad room has come alive. The printer is going, someone’s phone is ringing, the blinds are open to try and drag in the half-arsed sunlight; the place smells of half a dozen different lunches, tea, shower gel, sweat, heat and action. O’Gorman is leaning back in his chair with his feet up on his desk, throwing crisps into his mouth and shouting to King about some match; King is reading a statement sheet and saying ‘Yeah’ whenever O’Gorman pauses for breath. Winters and Healy are arguing about some witness who Healy wants to shake up a little and Winters thinks is a waste of time. Quigley is working his way through one of the filing cabinets, wearing a put-out look on his flabby puss and slamming the drawers harder than he needs to; next to the filing cabinet, McCann is hunched over his desk, shuffling paper and flinching at every slam – he looks like he’s got a bastard of a hangover, but the permanent eyebags and five o’clock shadow mean he mostly looks like that anyway. O’Neill has his phone pressed to one ear and a finger stuck in the other. Beside Steve’s and my desks, two guys who have to be our floaters are leaning awkwardly on whatever they can find, trying to look at home and stay out of the way and laugh at one of Roche’s pointless stories, hoping he’ll remember next time he needs someone to do his scut work.

No Breslin, but his overcoat is hanging over the back of his chair. He’s probably still sorting out the incident room and bitching to himself about being ordered around by the likes of me. I’m not worried: Breslin’s been at this game too long to get snotty when it’s not useful to him.

A few people glance up when me and Steve come in, then go back to whatever they’re doing. No one says howya. Neither do we. We head for our desks and the floaters. When I’m in the squad room I stride, fast and hard, to smack down the instinct to tiptoe along in case someone sticks a foot in front of me. No one has yet, but it feels like a matter of time.

‘Hey,’ I say to the floaters, who’ve straightened up and put on their alert faces. They’re both around our age: a gym rat already starting to go bald in front, and a fat blond guy trying for a tache that isn’t working out. ‘Conway, and this is Moran. Got something for us?’

‘Stanton,’ says the gym rat, doing a fake salute.

‘Deasy,’ says the fat one. ‘Yeah: we brought in your man Rory Fallon a few minutes ago.’

‘Poor bastard,’ says Roche from his corner, which reeks of aftershave and sticky keyboard. Roche is a big no-necker who went into this gig because the only way he can get a stiffy is by bullying people into tears, but he’s no fool: he knows exactly when to keep that instinct chained up and when to let it out for a run, and he gets results. ‘Will I tell him to go ahead and cut off his own balls, save himself some time and hassle?’

‘It’s not my fault my solve rate’s higher than yours, Roche,’ I tell him. ‘It’s because you’re a retard. Learn to live with it.’

The floaters look startled and try to hide it. Roche shoots me a bull-stare that I don’t bother noticing. ‘What’s the story on Fallon?’ I ask, dumping my satchel on my chair.

‘Twenty-nine, owns a bookshop in Ranelagh,’ says the fat guy. ‘Lives above the shop.’

‘With anyone?’

‘Nah. On his ownio.’

Which is a pisser: a flatmate would have been not only a nice witness to have, but also an obvious candidate for the guy who called it in. Steve asks, ‘Anything happen that we should know about, while you were sitting on his house?’

They look at each other, shake their heads. ‘Not a lot,’ says the gym rat. ‘He opened the front curtains around ten, in his pyjamas. No other visible movement. By the time we picked him up, he’d got dressed, but no shoes, so it didn’t look like he was planning on heading out.’

‘He’d had breakfast,’ says the fat guy. ‘Coffee and a fry-up, by the smell.’

Steve catches my eye. A guy punches his girlfriend to death, goes home and snuggles into his pyjamas for a nice bit of kip, gets up in the morning and stuffs his face with egg and sausage. It could happen; Fallon could have been dazed into autopilot, or a psychopath, or setting up his defence. Or.

The room is hot, a dry edgy heat that pricks at the skin on my neck. I pull my coat off. ‘What’d you say to him?’

‘Like you told us,’ the fat one says. ‘Nothing. Just said we thought he might have some information that would help us out with an investigation, and asked him if he’d mind coming in for a chat.’

‘And he just said yeah? No hassle, no questions?’

The two of them shake their heads. ‘Accommodating guy,’ says the gym rat.

‘No shit,’ I say. Most people, if you ask them to come in to a cop shop and answer some questions, they want at least a little info before they ditch the day’s plans and toddle along after you. Either Rory Fallon is a natural pushover, or he really, really wants to look like a helpful guy with nothing to hide.

‘Did he say anything along the way?’ Steve asks.

‘Wanted to know what this was about, once we got in the car,’ says the fat guy. Which is also interesting. Obviously Rory might know exactly what this is about, but he doesn’t think we can prove he knows, which means Lucy wasn’t straight on the phone to him the minute we left. One point against the Lucy-and-Rory theory. ‘We said we didn’t know all the details; the investigating detectives would fill him in. After that he kept his mouth shut.’

‘We were nice,’ says the gym rat. ‘Made him a cup of tea, told him how great he was for helping us out, we’d be nowhere without responsible citizens like him and all that jazz. We figured you’d like him relaxed.’

‘Lovely,’ Steve says. ‘Where’d you put him?’

‘The interview room down the end.’

‘Is he the type who’ll start thinking about leaving if we keep him on ice for a few minutes?’

Both of them laugh. ‘Nah,’ says the gym rat. ‘Like I said: accommodating.’

‘He’s a good boy,’ says the fat guy. ‘Gone bad.’

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘We’re going to need a list of his associates. Can you get cracking on that? I’m specially interested in close male friends, brothers, father, close male cousins. Some guy called this in, and if it wasn’t Fallon, we need to know who it was.’ The gym rat is taking notes and making sure I notice. I say, ‘The incident room should be ready to work in by now. Case meeting at four. If that changes, I’ll let you know.’

The floaters head off at a snappy pace, carefully judged to make them look on the ball but not rushed. I remember that walk; I remember practising it, on my way in to make lists and photocopy statements for some Murder D, hoping I could walk myself into this squad room and never have to walk out again. For a weird second I feel something almost like sorry for Stanton and Deasy, until I realise that if they ever make it in here, they’re gonna get on just dandy.

Steve has turned on his computer and is clicking away. I say, ‘How come you want to keep Fallon on ice?’

‘Only for a minute.’ Steve is typing. ‘He heads home and goes to bed, gets up and makes himself a fry? Whatever way you look at it, that’s pretty cold for a good law-abiding citizen. Even if he’s just trying to look innocent. I want to run him through the system, see what pops up.’

‘Run her, too. I want to know where I remember her from.’ I dial my voicemail, tuck the phone under my jaw and start sorting through the statements from last night’s scumbagfest – we need to get the file to the prosecutors before our hold on the scumbags runs out. McCann is mumbling into his mobile, clearly taking job-related shite from his missus (‘I know that. Tonight I swear I’ll be home by- Yeah, I know about the reservations. Of course I’ll be-’), and Roche is miming whipcracks.

I have another voicemail from Breslin – I’m starting to get my hopes up that we can work this entire case without ever actually seeing each other. ‘Yeah, Conway. Hi.’ Still smooth, in case Hollywood is listening, but just a faint edge of displeasure: me and Steve have been bad little Ds. ‘Looks like we’re having some trouble liaising here. I’m back at base. I’ll go ahead and get that incident room sorted out for us; you ring me back ASAP. Talk soon.’ I delete it.

‘Rory Fallon isn’t in the system,’ Steve says.

‘At all?’

‘At all.’

‘Little Holy Mary,’ I say. Staying out of the system is rarer than you’d think; even a speeding ticket puts you on file. Rory has officially never done anything naughty in his life. ‘That doesn’t mean he was actually a virgin till last night. Just that he never got caught.’

‘I know. I’m only telling you.’

‘Did you run Aislinn yet?’

‘Doing it now, hang on…’

I ring Breslin’s voicemail and leave him a message to meet us in the observation room in ten minutes. Steve says, ‘Nah. Nothing there either. Between the two of them, they’d make you heave.’

‘Looks like they were perfect for each other,’ I say. ‘Shame it didn’t work out.’ I finish flipping through the last witness statement, and stop.

The last page is missing. Without that – the page with the signature – the whole thing is worthless.

I’ll never prove I didn’t drop it on my way back from the interview room. There’s even an outside chance that actually happened – it was late, I was tired and pissed off and hurrying to finish up by the end of my shift. I can check: wander back and forth like an idiot, peering hopefully under desks and into bins, while this roomful of tossbubbles hide behind their monitors holding back baboon-howls of laughter and waiting to see who explodes first. Or I can go on the rampage looking to string up the fucker who pinched my statement sheet, which is probably what someone is hoping I’ll do. Or I can glue my mouth shut, track down my scumbag witness and spend another couple of hours re-convincing him that talking to cops is cool and digging his statement out of him, one-syllable word by one-syllable word, all over again.

‘Hey,’ Steve says. ‘Here’s something.’

It takes me a second to remember what he’s on about – I’m so angry I want to bite chunks off my desk. Steve glances up. ‘You OK?’

‘Yeah. What’ve you got? Aislinn’s in the system?’

‘Not her, no. It’s probably nothing, but her address comes up. Twentieth of October last, one o’clock in the morning, her neighbour in Number 24 rang Stoneybatter station. He was out on his patio having a last smoke before bed, and he saw someone go over Aislinn’s back wall, from her patio out into the laneway. The description’s not great – there’s a streetlamp at the end of the laneway, but the neighbour only saw the intruder for a second, from the back. Male, medium build, dark coat, the neighbour thought he might be middle-aged from the way he climbed; he thought fair hair, but that could’ve been the way the light reflected. Stoneybatter sent a couple of lads round to have a look, but by then he was well gone. No signs of an attempted break-in, so they figured the neighbour had disturbed him before he got started. They counselled Aislinn on security measures and dropped the whole thing.’

‘Huh,’ I say. It doesn’t tell me where I’ve seen Aislinn before, but it’s interesting enough to push the missing page to one side of my mind. ‘Anything in there about how she took it? Scared, panicky? Went round to Lucy’s for the night?’

‘Nah. Just, “Resident has a house alarm and locks in place but was advised to consider a monitored alarm system and a dog.” ’

‘Which she didn’t get.’ Roche is trying to earwig; I give him the finger and lower my voice. ‘For a woman on her own, Aislinn was pretty chilled out about the whole intruder thing. She sound to you like someone who had balls that big?’

Steve says, ‘She sounds like someone who knew there was nothing to be scared of.’

I say, ‘Because that wasn’t a burglar; it was the secret boyfriend. Will you look at that. Maybe he actually did exist.’ That excitement lunges up inside me again. I smack it down. ‘Even if he did, though, that doesn’t let Rory Fallon off the hook. Maybe he found out Aislinn was two-timing him, and he didn’t like it. Let’s go ask him.’

‘One sec, I just want to check one more thing-’ Steve dives back into his computer.

I shove what’s left of my statements into my desk drawer, which locks and which is where they would have been to begin with, if O’Kelly hadn’t caught us on the hop this morning. I stick the key in my trouser pocket. Then I flip through my notebook and try to suss out the squad room from behind it.

No one is obviously watching for me to lose the head, but then they wouldn’t be obvious. Quigley has found his file and is picking his ear while he reads it, which probably means he doesn’t expect anyone to be looking at him, although you never know. Quigley is a turd, O’Gorman is an ape, Roche is the best of both worlds: any of them, or all of them, would think it was hilarious to fuck up my day. McCann looks like he’s in too much pain to think about anything else, and O’Neill has always seemed sound enough, but I can’t rule anyone out.

Not that it matters. The point, and they know this as well as I do, isn’t who exactly is pulling this shit – it’ll be a different guy every time. The point is that, whoever it is, there’s fuck-all I can do about it.

‘Hang on,’ Steve says, low. ‘Here’s something else.’

This time I remember to answer. ‘Yeah? What?’

‘I figured we should find out if Aislinn’s shown up on Organised Crime’s radar, right? So I checked if anyone else has run her through the system.’ I start to stand up, heading over to have a look at Steve’s monitor, but he shoots me a fast head-shake and a warning stare. ‘Stay put. And yeah, sure enough: seventeenth of September last year, someone ran a check on her.’

We look at each other.

I say, ‘There’s got to be a couple of dozen Aislinn Murrays out there. Minimum.’

‘Aislinn Gwendolyn Murrays? Born the sixth of March ’88?’

My mind is speeding. ‘I don’t want to bring Organised Crime in on this. Not yet. I’ve got a pal-’

Steve says, so quietly that even I barely hear it, ‘The login was “Murder”.’

We look at each other some more. I can feel the same expression on my face that’s on Steve’s: wary; trying to work out just how wary to be.

‘If it was Murder business,’ I say, ‘then whoever it was shouldn’t have a problem sharing.’

Steve’s face shuts down into a warning. He’s opening his mouth to tell me why this is a bad idea, and he’s right – the smart thing is to keep this to ourselves, go at it through back channels – but that missing statement page is still digging at me, and I’ve had it up to here with keeping my mouth shut and tiptoeing around my own squad. I swivel my chair around to face the room and snap my fingers over my head. ‘Hey! Over here.’ I make it good and loud: faces turn, conversations fall away. ‘Aislinn Gwendolyn Murray, DOB sixth of March ’88. Anyone remember running her through the computer last September?’

Blank looks. A couple of the guys shake their heads. The rest don’t even bother, just go back to whatever they were doing.

I swivel my chair back around to face Steve.

He says, ‘Maybe whoever ran the search isn’t on shift. Or…’ He does some noncommittal thing with his head.

‘Or maybe he wouldn’t give me the steam off his piss if I was dying of thirst. I know.’ I hate when Steve gets tactful. ‘Or else it was a personal one, on the QT.’

It happens, a lot. You don’t like the cut of the young fella your daughter brought home, or the couple who viewed your rental flat: you run them through the computer, see if anything pops up. We’ve all done it – my ma wasn’t happy about her new neighbour, who did turn out to be a smackhead but at least not a dealer, and he moved out a few weeks later anyway, believe me – and anyone who gets outraged over it needs to get out more, but the fact is it’s illegal. If someone’s cousin was thinking of hiring Aislinn, or if someone’s parents were thinking of asking the nice young lady next door to mind their spare key, all it would take is thirty seconds on the computer; just doing a harmless favour, no reason anyone should ever know. Now that she’s a murder victim, though, anyone who’s been running illegal checks on her is gonna get a bollocking from the gaffer and lose a couple of days’ holiday, minimum. No wonder no one’s jumping to put his hand up.

Steve says, lower, ‘Or else it was on the QT, but it wasn’t personal. That would fit with the gang thing. Say someone from Organised Crime wants to check her out without his squad knowing about it, for whatever reason, so he gets a mate in Murder to do it for him…’

I have trouble seeing a way that one could be harmless. The room feels tricky, twisted: corners warping out of shape, shadows flexing. I say, ‘And the mate’s never gonna tell us about it.’

Steve says, even lower, ‘I know a fella in Computer Crime. He should be able to find out what computer the request came from.’

‘What computer. Not who was using it. If we had individual logins, instead of this one-squad-one-password shite-’

‘You want me to get onto him anyway?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Not yet.’ Everyone’s gone back to their conversations or their paperwork; no one is even looking at us. All the same, I wish I’d kept my big mouth shut.

The observation room is small and shitty. It has a sticky table, one lopsided chair and a water cooler that’s usually empty. There’s no window and the air vent hasn’t worked in years; if that was an interview room, the solicitors would start bitching about their clients’ right to breathe and it would get fixed pronto, but since no one cares about our breathing, the vent stays banjaxed. The place smells of sweat, years of spilled coffee, aftershave from guys who retired when me and Steve were in training, cigarette smoke from back before the ban. It’s worse in winter, when the heating brings out the full bouquet.

Breslin isn’t there yet. I throw my coat on the back of the chair – I don’t feel like leaving it in the squad room and having to wonder if someone’s wiped his dick on it – and head over to have a look at Rory Fallon. Steve moves in beside me, close enough to the one-way glass that our breath leaves mist.

Fallon looks younger than twenty-nine. He’s on the short side, maybe five eight, and slight with it. I could take him down one-handed, but all this took was one good punch, and even a wimp can get worked up enough for that. He’s got floppy brown hair that just got cut special for his big date, glasses with fake-tortoiseshell frames so old the plastic’s gone cloudy, a cream grandfather shirt tucked neatly into faded jeans, and fine, pointy features that make him look like either a lovely sensitive artiste or a wimp, depending on your perspective. He’s OK-looking, but he’s not what I was expecting Aislinn to go for, any more than Lucy is. I was all ready for a great big chunk of designer-label thicko who worked for an estate agent and couldn’t shut up about rugby. Rory looks like the kind of guy who thinks the good bit of a video game is when you’re exploring the terrain and admiring the state-of-the-art graphics, before you get to the crude part where you have to blow the baddies away.

‘A tenner says he cries,’ I say. Me and Steve have started doing this on domestics – gambling on the job is obviously a big no-no, but I manage to live with myself. Half of the suspects take one look at us and turn on the waterworks, and it makes me want to give them an almighty kick up the hole. I have to bite my tongue to stop myself telling them to man – or woman – the fuck up: you were big and tough when you beat your other half to pulp and splinters, where’s all the attitude now? If I have to put up with that shite, I figure I might as well make a few quid out of it.

‘Ah, arse,’ Steve says. ‘I hope I’ve got a tenner. Look at the state of him.’

‘Sucks to be you. Get in quicker next time.’

We watch Rory Fallon flick his head back and forth and fidget his feet under his chair while he tries to get a handle on the interview room. Interview rooms are designed so you can’t get a handle on them. The linoleum and the table and the chairs are all the plainest, most nondescript ones out there, and it’s not just because of budget cuts; it’s so your mind can’t read anything off them, and it starts reading stuff in. Long enough alone in an interview room and the place goes from nothing to sinister to pure horror film.

There’s a black overcoat neatly folded over the back of his chair, and a pair of grey nylon padded gloves lined up on the table. Rory’s hands are arranged the same way as the gloves, palms pressed down, thumbs just touching. His knuckles, as far as I can tell from this distance, are perfect: not a scratch.

Steve says, ‘See his hands?’

‘That doesn’t rule him out. Sophie said he probably wore gloves, remember?’

‘Ring her. See if they found prints in the end.’

I ring Sophie, hit speaker, keep one eye on the door for Breslin. ‘Sophie. Hey. It’s me and Moran.’

‘Hey. Update: we’ve basically finished processing the body and the sitting room-’ Her voice cuts out, comes back. ‘Fucking reception in here. Hang on a sec.’ A door slams. ‘Hi.’

‘How’re you doing on prints?’

‘It looks like we’re out of luck, basically.’ Wind whirls around Sophie’s voice; she’s out on the street. She does something, cups her hand around the phone, and the roar goes away. ‘We’ve got plenty on the dinner settings, the door handle, the wine bottle, wineglasses, but just offhand my guy says they’re all too small for a man and they all look like a match to the vic.’

‘We were right about the guy wearing gloves,’ I say. Steve makes a face.

‘We’ll keep looking, but I’m guessing yeah. Probably leather or Gore-Tex, something smooth like that. We didn’t find any fibres on the vic’s face where he punched her, and we should’ve, if the gloves were wool or anything knitted. Fibres would’ve stuck to the blood.’

I say, to Steve, ‘So thick gloves, probably. Meaning he might not have wrecked his hand, at least not enough to be visible.’

‘Meaning you’ve picked up your suspect,’ Sophie says. ‘And his hands are fine.’

‘Yeah. The dinner-date guy.’

‘Did you get whatever gloves he was wearing last night? Because if your killer wore gloves, he’s got the vic’s blood all over the right-hand one. Even if he cleaned it. That shit sticks around.’

‘Today he’s wearing grey nylon ones. They look clean, but we’ll get them down to you for testing, and if we get a search warrant we’ll send you any others out of his place, but I bet we’re out of luck there too. He probably dumped last night’s ones on his way home.’ I’ve got one eye on Fallon. He’s given up trying to get a handle on his surroundings and is sitting still, gazing down at his hands and taking deep breaths. He looks like he might be doing some kind of meditation thing. I give the glass a quick smack, put a stop to that shite. ‘Anything else we should know, before we start in on him?’

Sophie blows out an exasperated breath. ‘Not a lot. Most of this morning was a waste of our fucking time. The only solid thing we’ve got is three black wool fibres off the vic’s dress: two on the left side of the chest, one on the left side of the skirt. They don’t match anything she was wearing, obviously, and she doesn’t have a black coat, so it’s not like she popped out to the shops for something and got transfer from that. She could’ve thrown on a jumper to protect the dress while she was cooking, but we checked the bedroom and no black jumpers or cardigans.’ She’s keeping her voice down; someone is outside Aislinn’s place, maybe just the kids, maybe reporters. ‘So I’m thinking the fibres are transfer off your guy, from when he hugged her hello or grabbed her or whatever. Check if he owns a black wool coat.’

‘He came in wearing one.’ I glance at Steve, who shrugs: every other guy in Dublin owns a black wool overcoat. ‘We’ll send it over to you. Nice one, Sophie. Thanks.’

‘No problem. I’m going to head; there’s some baby reporter hanging over the tape trying to listen in. You want me to tell him we suspect ninja assassins?’

‘Go on, make his day. Talk soon.’

‘Hang on,’ Steve says, leaning in over the phone. ‘Hiya; it’s Moran. Can you process the bedroom? And the bathroom?’

‘Wow, brilliant idea. What did you think we were going to do with them? Spray-paint them?’

‘I mean places that probably wouldn’t have been touched last night, but might have been last time the vic had a fella staying over. The headboard, inside the bedside table, the underside of the toilet seat. And can you do the mattress for body fluids?’

‘Huh,’ Sophie says. ‘You looking at exes?’

‘Something like that. Thanks. Give the baby reporter our best.’

‘I’m going to tell him you’ll arrest him for not being in school. I swear to God, he’s about twelve, I’m getting old-’ and Sophie’s gone.

Fallon is giving his meditation thing a second try. Breslin is either building the incident room from the ground up or else punishing us for keeping him waiting. While I’ve got my phone out: ‘One sec,’ I say, swiping the screen and moving away from Steve.

The afternoon edition of the Courier is out. Creepy Crowley has gone to town.

The front page yells, ‘POLICE BAFFLED BY BRUTAL MURDER’. Underneath are two photos. Aislinn, the recent version, wearing a tight orange dress and sparkly eyeshadow and laughing – looks like a Christmas-party shot that Crowley pulled off someone’s Facebook. The other one is me, ducking out from under the crime-scene tape, looking my finest: eyebags, hair coming down, fists coming up, and my mouth opening in a snarl that would scare a Rottweiler.

My jaw is clamped so tight it hurts. I scroll down, but the text is just titillation, glurge and outrage – stunning young woman, prime of life, details of her injuries not yet released; quote from a local about how Aislinn went to the shops for him when the footpaths were icy, quote from a local who isn’t going to feel safe in her own home until we do our jobs and get this b****** off the streets; a snide little dig about ‘Detective Antoinette Conway, who led the investigation into the still-unsolved murder of Michael Murnane in Ballymun last September’, to make it clear that I’m incompetent and/or don’t give a shite about working-class victims. Down the sidebar: Parents Panic over Playground Pervert, plus a splatter of snottiness at the County Council, who should apparently do something about the shite weather, and some celebrity gushing about quinoa and what a normal life her kids lead.

‘What?’ Steve asks.

I manage to unclamp my jaw. ‘Nothing.’

‘No. What?’

It’s not like I can keep him away from newspapers forever, and hiding it would look like I’m upset that I’m a hound in the photo, about which I don’t give one fun-size fuck. ‘Here,’ I say, and pass him the phone.

His eyebrows go up. ‘Ah, Jaysus.’ A second later: ‘Whoa. Jaysus.’

‘No shit,’ I say.

The media don’t ID murder victims till they get the all-clear from us – for the sake of the families, who don’t need to find out from a supermarket newsstand, and because sometimes we have reasons for wanting to keep the ID quiet for a day or two. A lot of the time they drop enough info that locals can tell who it is – ‘the thirty-year-old father of two, who worked in finance’, or whatever – but then the locals knew already. And the media don’t use shots of the detectives on the case without permission, either, just in case we might not want to be instantly identifiable from ten metres away. I don’t let photos of me get out there, for a very good reason, but when a photo of Ds does go out, it’s one where they look professional and approachable and all that good shit; one that would make witnesses actually want to come talk to us, not one that’s going to terrify them into hiding because we look like hungover wolverines. If a journalist steps over the line, he pays: no more sources close to the investigation for you, and we make sure your editor knows it. That fuck Crowley has stepped over the line half a dozen ways.

He’s wiggled a toe over it plenty of times before, but that was all wimpy little stuff meant to make him feel like Bob Woodward without getting him in real hassle; never like this. Crowley doesn’t like cops, because he’s a rebel spirit who doesn’t bow down to The Man, but he’s a rebel spirit with rent to pay, so he keeps himself in check. Either he’s suddenly, late in life, grown himself a pair of nads, or he’s trying to commit career suicide; or someone is running him. Someone – the same someone who told Crowley where to find me this morning – told him to print those photos. Someone reassured him he won’t end up on any blacklist. Someone promised to make it worth his while.

Steve is still scrolling through the article. ‘There’s no inside info in there.’

Meaning nothing we can trace back to a source. ‘I know that. But he’s talking to someone on the inside. No question. If I find out who-’

Steve glances up. ‘We could swap Crowley for a scoop. Offer him first bite at every break on this case, if he tells us who his contact is.’

‘Won’t work. Whoever’s been onto Crowley, they’ve promised him plenty already. He’s not going to jeopardise that.’ I take my phone back and shove it in my pocket. ‘You know who had the best opportunity to talk to Crowley about this case.’

Steve says quietly, ‘Breslin.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Breslin likes looking good. That’d be one way to do it: turn this into a story where we’re making a balls of the case, till he steps in to save the day.’

I say, and I’m keeping my voice down too, ‘Or he just felt like fucking me around, getting a laugh from the lads. Or he’s got a deal in place with Crowley and he was due to throw him a bone, and lucky us just happened to be today’s bone.’

‘Maybe. Could be.’ Steve is watching the door. So am I. ‘Listen: we need to get on with Breslin. Either way.’

‘I get on with everyone. It’s who I am.’

‘Seriously.’

‘I’ll get on with him.’ I want to pace. I lean my arse on the edge of the table to keep myself still. ‘We’ll have to use him in the interviews. And we’ll have to keep him up to speed on your man in there’ – I jerk my chin at the one-way glass. ‘Apart from that, he doesn’t need to know anything about what we’re thinking.’

Steve says, suddenly and grimly, ‘Back when I was bursting my bollix trying to get on the squad? This isn’t what I was picturing.’

‘Me neither,’ I say. ‘Believe me.’ Trying to remember when today started makes my head swim. I get a vicious cramp of craving for cold air, music loud enough to blow my eardrums and a run that doesn’t stop till my whole body burns.

Breslin picks that moment to bang the observation-room door open. Both of us jump. He stays in the doorway, hands in his trouser pockets, looking us up and down. The curl to his mouth is a nicely judged balance between amused and cold.

‘Detective Conway. Detective Moran,’ he says. ‘At last.’

I should like Breslin just fine, given that he’s one of the few lads on the squad who haven’t given me more than the standard ration of shite, but I don’t. The first time you meet Breslin, you’re well impressed. He’s somewhere in his mid-forties, but he’s still in shape, all shoulders and straight back and none of the beer belly that gets hold of most Irish guys. He’s on the tall side, with pale eyes and slicked-back fair hair, and he’s good-looking – if you squint he looks sort of like some actor, I can’t remember the guy’s name but he plays maverick suits, which is a laugh given that Breslin is the least maverick guy around. But throw in the voice and somehow it all adds up to winner’s dazzle, the gold glow that shouts to everyone within range that this dude is something special: smarter, faster, savvier, smoother.

Breslin is so deep into this version of his bad self that he brings it sweeping into the room with him, and it carries you right along. Steve’s first few weeks in Murder, he watched Breslin the way a twelve-year-old with a crush watches the captain of the rugby team, drooling for a smile and a pat on the shoulder. I nearly bit my tongue in half not slagging the pathetic little bollix, but I managed because I knew it would wear off. I could practically have marked the day on the calendar. When I started on the squad, I spent a while praying Breslin and McCann would have a row so I could end up partnered with Breslin, on the fast track to glory. It wore off.

Sure enough, three weeks into Steve’s boy-crush, a guy in Vice ate his gun, and Breslin – in the middle of the squad room, surrounded by people who’d known the dead guy, worked with him, gone drinking with him – pushed back his chair, balanced a pen between his fingers and enlightened us with a deep and meaningful lecture about how the guy would still have been with us if he’d quit the smokes, got more exercise and put in the time to build up real friendships at work. The smarter guys on the squad kept working; the dumb ones nodded along, mouths hanging open at the genius unfolding in front of them. Poor Stevie looked like he’d just found out about Santy.

Once you realise Breslin is an idiot, you start counting the clichés on their way out of his mouth and noticing that the slick hair is organised over a balding spot, and somewhere in there you realise that he’s actually only around five foot ten and his solve rate is nothing special and you start wondering if he wears a girdle. None of that matters – the dazzle does its job on witnesses and suspects, and Breslin’s moved on long before it can wear off – but it left me pissed off with myself for being suckered, which left me pissed off with Breslin and everything about him.

‘Howya,’ I say. ‘Shame we didn’t manage to talk along the way. Reception’s a bastard.’

Breslin hasn’t moved from the doorway. ‘Sounds like you need a new phone, Detective Conway. But let’s move past that. We’re all here now.’

‘We are, yeah,’ I say. ‘You got a look around the scene?’

‘Yeah. Ten-a-penny lovers’ tiff. Let’s see how fast we can clear it and get back to the good stuff, shall we?’

‘That’s the plan,’ Steve says easily, before I can open my mouth. ‘Thanks for joining us. We appreciate it.’

‘No problem.’ Breslin gives Steve a gracious nod. ‘We’re in Incident Room C.’

Incident Room C has a whiteboard bigger than my kitchen, enough computers and phone lines for a major incident investigation, a lovely view over the gardens of Dublin Castle, and PowerPoint facilities just in case you get the urge to show slides. Steve and I have only ever been inside it as someone else’s floaters. ‘Nice one,’ I say.

‘Only the best.’ Breslin heads over to the glass for a look at Rory. ‘After all this, I’m just hoping the best friend – what’s her name? – gave you something good.’

‘Lucy Riordan,’ Steve says. ‘Background info, basically. Aislinn’s childhood wasn’t great: the da walked out, the ma had some kind of breakdown, Aislinn took on the carer role. It left her pretty sheltered – not a lot of life experience, not a lot of confidence. The ma died a few years back and Aislinn started coming out of herself, but she was still catching up, still pretty naïve. Just the type who’d miss a few red flags.’

‘And were there red flags?’

‘Not that Lucy knows of. Aislinn and Rory met at a book launch six or seven weeks back; they were both smitten, but Aislinn was playing it cool. Rory seemed like a nice guy, seemed to be treating Aislinn well. Lucy never got the sense he was a threat.’

‘No shit,’ Breslin says, examining Rory, who’s started jiggling one knee under the table. ‘Little wimp, isn’t he? He doesn’t look like he could punch out his granny. No reason why Lucy Whatsername should know that those can be the most dangerous ones, if they feel like they’ve been disrespected. It’s not her job to know that; it’s ours. What else?’

Steve shakes his head. ‘That’s about it.’

Breslin’s eyebrows go up. ‘That’s all the best mate had? What about other boyfriends? Disgruntled exes? Jealous women? Work enemies?’

We’re both shaking our heads now. ‘Nope,’ I say.

‘Come on, guys. Girls talk – am I right, Conway? I don’t even want to imagine what my missus tells her gal pals over the Chardonnay. The vic must’ve given your Lucy something juicier than that.’

‘According to Lucy, they weren’t that kind of close. They were mates because they had been since they were kids, and because Aislinn had no other friends, but they didn’t have a lot in common and they didn’t spill their guts to each other.’

Breslin thinks about that, leaning back against the glass and pinching his bottom lip. ‘You don’t think she’s keeping anything back?’

Me and Steve look at each other blankly. Steve shakes his head. ‘Nah.’

‘Lucy’s no idiot,’ I say. ‘She knows she needs to give us whatever she’s got. The only thing I wondered…’ I let it trail off. ‘Probably nothing.’

‘Hey, share with the class, Conway. Don’t worry about sounding stupid; we’re blue-skying here.’

What a tosspot. ‘Fair enough,’ I say. ‘I wondered if Lucy might’ve had a thing for Rory herself. She was all about what a great guy he was. I mean, maybe he is, but if my mate had just been killed, I’d be feeling at least a little bit dodgy about the new boyfriend.’

‘Huh,’ Breslin says. ‘Has this Lucy got an alibi for last night?’

‘Yeah. She works at the Torch Theatre; she was there at half-six in the evening, in company constantly from then till four this morning. We’ll verify it, but like I said, she’s no idiot; she wouldn’t have given us something we could break that easily.’

‘Well then. We’ll check for contact between her and our boy there, in case she’s mixed up in the motive somehow; but unless some contact shows up, I’m not seeing any way her hypothetical crush could be relevant to us. Are you?’ Me and Steve shake our heads, nice and humble. ‘Good brainstorming, though. Anything else come up?’

‘That’s the lot,’ I say.

‘Well,’ Breslin says, on the edge of a sigh but managing to restrain himself. ‘I guess your little side trip was worth a shot. Background info’s never really a waste. Now, though, I suggest we get our arses in gear and get stuck into the serious stuff. That sound good to you two?’

‘Sounds great,’ I say. Which it does: another sixty seconds of this and I’m gonna knee the fucker in the guts. ‘I’ll lead the interview, with you backing me up, Detective Breslin. Detective Moran, you observe from here, and be ready to switch in if I decide we need to mix it up a little.’

Steve nods. Breslin shoots his cuffs. ‘Come to Papa,’ he says to the one-way glass.

I say, ‘This is only a preliminary interview. I’m not looking for a confession; we can push for that once we’ve got forensics, post-mortem results, all the good stuff to throw at him.’ And once me and Steve have done enough private digging to know what we’re dealing with here. ‘Right now I’m just looking to put the outlines in place. What Rory’s like, what the relationship was like, his take on Aislinn, his story on last night. I want to know if he’ll admit to talking to anyone between eight last night and five this morning; if our guy didn’t call this in himself, he told someone who did, and we need that someone. I want his coat and his gloves – the techs got black wool fibres off the body, and they say our guy probably wore non-shedding gloves, which matches what Rory’s got in there; so if we can convince him to hand them over for testing and save us fucking around with a warrant, I’ll be a very happy camper. In a perfect world he’d let us go through his gaff and take any other coats and gloves we find, but I don’t want to get him uptight today, so if that doesn’t come easy, we’ll leave it and go the warrant route. OK?’

Breslin considers that. ‘Mm,’ he says. ‘OK; that’s one way to work it. The other way would be to try and knock this sucker on the head as fast as we can. I’m not saying I have any problem with being assigned to this case – that’s fine, happy to help out. I’m just saying I’ve put my other cases on hold to be here, and there’s a limit to how much time I want to put into a bog-standard domestic. I’m sure you guys feel the same. Am I right?’

I mainly feel he should shut his trap and do what the lead D tells him, but I catch the pop-eyed panic on Steve’s face. It makes me want to laugh, which takes me off the boil. ‘That’s a point,’ I say, pleasantly. ‘Let’s do this: for now, we’ll take it slow, like I was saying. As soon as I think we can afford to ramp it up, I promise I’ll give the word. Fair enough?’

Breslin doesn’t look pleased, but after a moment he shrugs. ‘Suit yourselves. In that case, can we get started while there’s still some of the shift left?’ And, when I straighten up off the table: ‘You might want to do something about that first, Detective. Unless it’s part of your cunning plan.’

‘That’ is a dab at the corner of his mouth. I rub at my face: a flake of egg yolk, which I’ve obviously been wearing since that breakfast roll. ‘Thanks,’ I say, partly to Breslin and partly to my partner Captain Eagle-Eye. He makes an apology face back.

‘First impressions and all that jazz. If we’re ready now, let’s rock and roll.’

Breslin holds the door open for me to leave the observation room first, so I can’t get a last word with Steve behind his back – not that we need to swap meaningful whispers, but still. The corridor should fold around me like home, scuffed sludge-green paint and worn carpet and all; should feel like my marked track through my own territory, leading me straight and safe to the enemy neatly arranged in my interview-room crosshairs. Instead it feels like an unflagged trail through No Man’s Land, pocked with ankle-breaking mud holes and booby-trapped all the way.