The Trespasser

Chapter 4

Everyone has an interview shtick. One guy on the squad does a beautiful line in Father Confessor, piling on the guilt and waving absolution like a doggy treat; another one does Narky Headmaster, staring over his glasses and snapping out questions. I do Warrior Woman, ready to rush out with her guns blazing and avenge all your wrongs, if you’ll just tell her what they are, and her flipside Stroppy Man-Hating Bitch when we want to piss off a rapist or a Neanderthal; I also do Cool Girl, who’s one of the lads and stands her round and has a laugh, who guys can talk to when they wouldn’t feel comfortable talking to another fella. Steve does Nice Boy Next Door and variations. With women, Breslin does Gallant Gentleman, taking their coats and bending his head to listen to every word; with guys he does Chief Jock, your best pal but you better stay on his good side or he’ll flush your head down the jacks. We size up the target and wheel out the one that we think has the best chance.

Rory doesn’t need Warrior Woman, at least as far as we know, and Stroppy Man-Hating Bitch would probably scare him under the table, but Cool Girl should relax him a notch or two. It sounds like he’d get on great with Nice Boy Next Door, but that’s out for now. I just hope Chief Jock doesn’t intimidate him enough, or piss me off enough, to send this whole thing off the rails.

Rory starts off our relationship by costing me a tenner: he doesn’t cry. He jumps a mile when Breslin throws the door open, but when I give him my Cool Girl nod and grin, he comes up with some kind of smile back. ‘Howya,’ I say, throwing myself into a chair opposite him and pulling out my notebook. ‘I’m Detective Conway, and that’s Detective Breslin. Thanks for coming in.’

‘No problem.’ Rory tries to work out whether we’re going to shake hands. We’re not. ‘I’m Rory Fallon. Is-’

‘Morning,’ Breslin says, heading over to the video recorder. ‘You OK to talk? Not too hungover? I know how it goes: young guy like you, Sunday morning…’

‘I’m fine.’ Rory’s voice cracks on the word. He clears his throat.

Breslin grins, hitting buttons. ‘Disgraceful. You’ll have to do better next weekend.’

I nod at his half-drunk cup of tea. ‘Can I get you a reheat on that? Or a coffee, maybe?’

‘No, thanks. I’m fine.’ Rory barely has the edge of his arse on the seat; he looks ready to leg it at the first loud noise, if there was anywhere to leg it to. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Ah-ah,’ Breslin says, turning from the video to point a finger at him. ‘Hang on there, man. We can’t get down to business yet. These days we have to get any conversation on tape and video. For everyone’s protection, you know what I mean?’

After a second Rory nods uncertainly. ‘Yeah. I guess.’

‘Course you do,’ Breslin says cheerfully. ‘Just give me a minute and we can chat away to our hearts’ content.’ He goes back to messing with the recorder, whistling softly between his teeth.

Rory’s shoulders are up around his ears. He says, ‘Do I need a lawyer? Or something?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say, lowering my notebook to give him my full attention. ‘Do you?’

‘I just mean – I mean, shouldn’t I have one?’

I raise my eyebrows. ‘Any reason why?’

‘No. I don’t have anything to- Am I not supposed to have one?’

‘You can have one if you want, man,’ Breslin tells him. ‘Absolutely. Pick a solicitor, give him a ring, we’ll all wait around till he can join us; not a problem. I can tell you exactly what he’ll do, though. He’ll sit next to you, every now and then he’ll say, “You don’t have to answer that question,” and he’ll charge you by the minute for it. I can tell you the same thing for free: you don’t have to answer any of our questions. We tell everyone, first thing: you are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence. Clear enough? Or would you be happier paying for it?’

‘No. I mean- Yeah. I guess I’m OK without a solicitor.’

And that’s the caution out of the way. ‘You are, of course,’ Breslin says, giving the video recorder a pat. ‘Okely-dokely: that’s working. Detectives Conway and Breslin interviewing Mr Rory Fallon. Let’s talk.’

Rory says – just like Lucy did – ‘Is this about Aislinn?’

‘Hey, whoa there, Rory,’ Breslin says, lifting his hands and laughing. I grin along. ‘Slow down, will you? We’ll get there, I promise. But me and Detective Conway, we’re going to be doing hundreds of these interviews, so we need to stick to asking the same questions in the same order, or we’ll get mixed up and forget what we’ve already asked who. So do us a favour: let us do this our way. OK?’

‘OK. Sorry.’ But Rory’s shoulders have dropped – what with him being just one of hundreds, and what with us being just a couple of dumb goons on the verge of losing our place in our script. Breslin is good. I’ve watched him work before, but I’ve never shared an interview room with him, and in spite of myself I’m not hating it.

‘No problem,’ I say easily. Breslin drops into the chair next to mine and we get comfortable, flipping notebook pages, settling our arses into the quirks of our chairs, checking that our Biros work. ‘So,’ I say, ‘let’s start at the beginning. What’d you do yesterday? From, like, noon onwards?’

Rory takes a deep breath and pushes his glasses up his nose. ‘Right. At noon I was in the shop – I own the Wayward Bookshop, in Ranelagh? Right below my flat, where you – well, your colleagues – came and got me?’

‘Been past it a hundred times, kept meaning to go in,’ I say. ‘I’ll have to do it now, or you’ll be filing complaints about me.’ Me and Breslin have a little chuckle about that. Rory smiles automatically: a good boy, giving us what we expect from him. ‘So how was business yesterday?’

‘Pretty good. Saturdays I get a lot of regulars – mums and dads bringing the kids in to pick out a book, mostly. We’ve got a good children’s section, if you – I mean, I just mean if you were, I’m not-’

He’s blinking away anxiously. ‘I’ll bring the nephews in to you,’ I say. I don’t have nephews. ‘You can recommend them something with dinosaurs. How’s business overall?’

‘It’s all right. I mean…’ Rory does a twisty shrug. ‘Bookshops are all having a hard time these days. At least we’ve got regulars.’

Meaning Rory is under pressure. We’ll check what ‘all right’ means to him. ‘I’ll definitely have to bring the nephews in to support you, so,’ I say, smiling. ‘What time did you finish up?’

‘I close at six.’

‘And what’d you do then?’

‘I went back up to my flat and had a shower. I was, um, I had a…’ Rory is turning a cute shade of pink. ‘I was going over to a girl’s house for dinner. A woman’s house.’

‘Ohhh yeah,’ says Breslin, tilting his chair back and grinning. ‘My man Rory’s a playa. Tell your Uncle Don the whole story. Girlfriend? Friend with benefits? True love?’

‘She’s…’ The pink gets deeper. Rory swipes his palms across his cheeks like he can wipe it away. ‘Well. I don’t know if I’d call her my girlfriend, exactly. We’ve only been on a few dates. But yes, I’m hoping it’ll go somewhere.’

Present tense. Not that that means much; he’s not a fool. I smile at all the adorable young love; Rory manages a smile back.

‘So you made a bit of an effort,’ Breslin says. ‘Right? Tell me you made a bit of an effort, Rory. That shirt’s fine for selling The Gruffalo to soccer moms, but if you want to impress your way into a babe’s – well, into her good books, let’s put it that way – it’s not going to do the job. What’d you wear?’

‘Just a shirt and a pullover and trousers. I mean, they were decent ones, they weren’t-’

Sceptical look off Breslin. ‘What colour? What kind?’

‘A white linen shirt and a light blue pullover, and dark blue trousers? I’m normally a jeans guy, but Aislinn’s… I knew she’d be wearing something a bit fancier, so I thought I should too.’

‘Hmm. Sounds like it could’ve been a lot worse. You’ve got decent taste when you try, my son.’ Breslin nods at the overcoat on the back of Rory’s chair. ‘That coat?’

Rory glances uncertainly back and forth between it and Breslin. ‘Yes. I don’t really have another proper winter coat. I got it at Arnott’s, it’s not just some… I mean, it’s OK, right?’

‘Not bad,’ Breslin says, squinting critically at the coat. ‘It’ll do. You didn’t wear those gloves with it, though. Did you? You didn’t.’

Rory’s head whips around to the gloves. ‘Yeah, I did. Why? What’s wrong with them?’

‘Yeesh,’ Breslin says, grimacing. He reaches across the table and pokes the gloves with his pen, flips them over. They look clean. ‘Maybe I’m getting old; maybe nowadays all the cool kids go on dates looking like they borrowed their hands off a mountain biker. You really wore these?’

‘It was cold.’

‘So? You’ve got to suffer for style, Rory. You don’t have a black pair? At least those wouldn’t have stuck out like a couple of sore thumbs.’

‘I looked. I thought I had black leather ones, somewhere, but I don’t know where they’ve gone. These were the only ones I could find.’

We’ll look too. ‘Quit hassling the poor guy,’ I tell Breslin. ‘You take the gloves off as soon as you’re in the door anyway, amn’t I right, Rory? Who cares what they look like?’

Breslin rolls his eyes and sits back, shaking his head. Rory throws me a quick grateful glance. We’re turning the interview room into familiar ground – even Breslin’s slaggings are the type Rory has to have taken in school on a regular basis – and that’s settling him. He’s not a helpless little weenie, the way I thought from all that fidgeting and dithering at the start. It’s more complicated than that. Inside his comfort zone, Rory does fine. Take him outside it and he stops coping.

I’m normally a jeans guy … Aislinn wasn’t his comfort zone.

I say, ‘So where does Aislinn live?’

‘Stoneybatter.’

‘Convenient,’ I say, nodding. ‘Just a quick hop across the river, and you’re there. How’d you get there?’

‘Bus. I walked down to Morehampton Road – it wasn’t raining yet – and I caught the 39A up to Stoneybatter. It stops practically around the corner from her house.’

‘Whoa whoa whoa. Rewind.’ Breslin’s eyebrows are up. ‘Bus? You took the bus to her place? Way to impress a lady, Rory. Do you not own a car, no?’

Rory’s going all pink and flustered again. I love blushers. ‘No, I do, yeah. Just, I was thinking – I mean, if we had wine with dinner, and if I needed to get home-’

‘You do? What kind of car?’

‘It’s a Toyota Yaris-’

Breslin snorted. ‘Yeah? What year?’

‘2007.’

‘Jesus,’ Breslin says, grinning into his notebook. ‘Now I see why you took the bus. Carry on.’

Rory ducks his head and pokes his glasses up his nose. Apparently he’s the type who takes wedgies meekly. When those guys finally snap, they do it right. I ask, ‘What time did you leave home?’

Rory instantly sits up straighter. He’s so glad to hear me doing the talking instead of Breslin, he’d tell me anything. ‘Quarter to seven.’

Which is the most interesting thing he’s said so far. His appointment with Aislinn was for eight. It doesn’t take an hour and a quarter to get from Ranelagh to Stoneybatter, specially not on a Saturday evening. He could have walked in half the time.

‘And when did you get the bus?’ I ask.

‘Just before seven. One got there as soon as I reached the stop.’

We can check that: CCTV on the bus. I write it down. ‘What time were you due at Aislinn’s place?’

‘Eight, but I – I mean, I didn’t want to be late. If I was early, I could always just walk around for a while.’

‘Brrr,’ I say, making a face. ‘In that weather? Doing what?’

Rory shifts his feet like he can’t get them comfortable. Talking about that extra time is turning him jumpy. I would only love to stamp Rory innocent and chase off after Steve’s gangster, but I can smell it, hot as blood: there’s something here.

He says, ‘I don’t know. Just… making sure I could find the house, that kind of thing.’

I look puzzled. ‘But you said her place was practically around the corner from the bus stop. That sounds like you already knew your way around.’

Rory’s blinking hard. ‘What?… No – no, not like that. But Aislinn had given me directions. And I’d looked up the map on my phone. It wasn’t complicated. I just wanted to allow a little extra time, just in case.’

I leave a sceptical pause, but he doesn’t jump into it. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘So you got off the 39A in Stoneybatter – what time?’

‘A little before half-seven. There wasn’t much traffic.’

In plenty of time to reach Aislinn’s house, kill her, and be back outside the door knocking and looking confused by eight o’clock. It even makes sense of turning off the cooker: Rory didn’t want the fire alarm going off before he had time to act out his little play with the calls and the texts and presumably the worried pacing, for anyone who might be watching. That hot smell fills up my nose.

I glance over at the one-way glass, which stares blankly back. One look at Steve would have told me if his mind was matching mine. Instead I have Breslin, who’s rocking his chair on its back legs and doodling in his notebook. I think about kicking the chair out from under him.

‘You were well early,’ I say. ‘What’d you do?’

Rory says, ‘I walked round to the top of Viking Gardens – that’s Aislinn’s road. To make sure I had the directions right. Like I said.’

‘See anyone on Viking Gardens?’

‘No. The street was empty. I didn’t hang around there, though. I didn’t want anyone thinking I was a burglar or a, a stalker.’ Another jab at his glasses.

‘Did you go into the road? Find Aislinn’s house?’

‘No. It’s a straight road, a cul-de-sac – I could see the whole thing from the top; I didn’t need to find the house in advance. And I wasn’t keen on the idea of Aislinn looking out her window and seeing me there half an hour early. She would have had to invite me in, and she wouldn’t have been ready, and overall it would have been really awkward.’

He’s edgy as hell, but the answers are coming easily, no stumbling or backtracking. That doesn’t mean much, though; not with this guy. He’s already told us he’s the type who thinks ahead, goes through every hypothetical, makes sure he’s got everything in place so his plans will run smoothly. If he planned a murder, he’d have his alibi story down pat; probably he’d do a walk-through a couple of days in advance. And if he didn’t plan it, he would be well able to spend the night coming up with a good story and running through it a few hundred times. This guy’s real comfort zone is inside his head.

‘Plus she would have thought you were some obsessive freak who spent his spare time staring at her windows,’ Breslin points out. Rory flinches. ‘That’s never a good look. What’d you do instead?’

‘I was going to just wander around till eight o’clock. But then I realised I hadn’t brought anything with me.’

‘What, you mean condoms?’ Breslin breaks into a big grin. ‘Now there’s self-confidence.’

Rory’s head shoots down and he starts jabbing at his glasses again. ‘No! I mean flowers. I didn’t want to show up empty-handed. Aislinn had said not to bother bringing wine, but I’d been planning to buy her flowers in Ranelagh, except I forgot – I was concentrating so hard on what to wear and getting it ironed right and what time to leave… I only realised when I got to her road.’

‘Awk-ward,’ Breslin says, singsong. He’s tilting his chair back again and playing with his pen.

‘Well, yes. For a second there I was panicking. But there’s a Tesco up on Prussia Street, so-’

‘Hang on,’ I say, confused. ‘I thought you didn’t know the area.’

‘I don’t. I- What?’

‘How’d you know where the Tesco is?’

Rory blinks at me. ‘I looked it up on my phone. So I headed up there-’

I know before Breslin opens his mouth that he’s gonna come in. We’re working well together: me keeping things chilled so we can get the basic info, him leaning in whenever he gets an opening to poke Rory with sticks, me standing under the piñata ready to catch whatever sweeties come tumbling out. I don’t like working well with Breslin. It feels like he’s suckering me all over again, in ways I can’t pin down.

‘Tesco flowers?’ he asks. His face is halfway between a grin and a cringe. ‘I thought you said this Aislinn’s the fancy type.’

Rory shifts his arse on the chair. ‘I did. She is. But at that hour-’

‘She’s the fancy type, she’s been slaving over a hot cooker all day for you, and you’re going to show up with a bunch of half-dead shocking-pink daisies? Come on.’

‘Well, no, it wasn’t what I’d planned. I wanted – Aislinn told me that when she was little her father used to take her to Powerscourt and they’d walk around the Japanese garden together, looking at the azaleas, and he’d tell her stories about a brave princess called Aislinn. So I wanted to see if I could find her an azalea plant. I thought…’ A tiny rueful smile, down at his hands. ‘I thought it would make her happy.’

‘That’s nice,’ I say, nodding. ‘Really nice. I’d say she’d have loved that.’

‘Now that,’ Breslin says approvingly, pointing his Biro at Rory, ‘that’s bringing your A game. That’s the kind of thing that gets a guy places, if you know what I mean. That might even have made up for those.’ The gloves. ‘Shame you screwed it up. I’m betting Tesco doesn’t stock azaleas.’

‘I know it doesn’t. But at that hour on a Saturday evening, nowhere else was going to be open. I thought even a bunch of ugly flowers was better than nothing.’ Rory glances anxiously between the two of us, looking for approval.

Breslin grimaces and wavers one hand. ‘Depends on the girl. If she’s the downmarket type, sure, but with this one… Never mind; too late now. So you headed up to Tesco…?’

‘Yes. They didn’t have a lot of flowers left, and most of them were what you said – big daisies dyed strange colours – but I found a bunch of irises that were OK.’

‘Nothing wrong with irises,’ I say. ‘What time did you get to the Tesco?’

‘About quarter to eight. Maybe just after.’

And we can check that, too. CCTV on the bus, CCTV in the Tesco: the whole timeline Rory’s laying out is verifiable, and I wonder if that’s deliberate. Those forgotten flowers were very convenient. The Tesco is seven or eight minutes’ walk from Viking Gardens: just enough to account nice and neatly for that extra half-hour.

If Rory rushed there or back – and we need to go looking for someone who saw him rushing – he could have shaved a couple of minutes off that walk. The actual murder took almost no time: two seconds for the punch, maybe ten or twenty to check Aislinn’s breathing and her pulse, ten to turn off the cooker, gone inside a minute. It’s the build-up to the murder that could have taken time; if there was a build-up.

If Rory is our boy, he’s no routine rock-bottom-stupid wimp. He’s nervous, but he’s covering every crack before we can reach it, one step ahead all the way. If we’re stuck with him, then at least we’re gonna get a fight.

‘Cutting it a bit fine,’ I say. ‘How long were you there?’

‘Only a couple of minutes. I hurried. Like you said, I didn’t have a lot of time left. Things like this are why I like being early.’

‘Fair enough,’ I say. ‘So when you left Tesco…?’

‘I went back to Viking Gardens. I got there in time – I checked my watch: it was just before eight.’

‘Was there anyone on the road?’

Rory thinks, rubbing at his nose. ‘There was an old man walking his dog – a smallish white dog. He was heading out of Viking Gardens. He nodded to me. I don’t think there was anyone else.’

Easy to check, again. ‘So then what?’

‘I went down the road looking at the house numbers till I found Aislinn’s house – it’s number twenty-six. I rang the bell…’

He trails off. I say, ‘And?’

‘She didn’t answer the door.’

This time the blush comes up hot and fast. I can feel Steve behind the glass swaying towards that blush, positive that it means he was right and Rory Fallon is a holy innocent. I’m not so sure. That blush could be the memory of humiliation, or it could be the lie showing.

‘Huh,’ I say. ‘Weird. What did you think was going on?’

Rory’s head is going down. ‘At that stage I just thought Aislinn hadn’t heard me. I knew the bell was working – I could hear it going off inside the house – but I thought maybe she was in the toilet, or she’d gone out the back for some reason.’

‘So what’d you do?’

‘I waited a minute and then knocked. Then I rang the bell again. She still didn’t answer, so after a few more minutes I texted her – I was wondering if I had the address wrong. I waited for ages, but she didn’t text me back.’

‘Ooo,’ Breslin says, wincing. ‘That’s gotta sting.’

‘I thought maybe she hadn’t heard the text alert-’ Rory catches the mix of pity and amusement on Breslin’s face and ducks his head back down. ‘It could happen. She could have been cooking or something, and left her phone in another room – those text alerts can be awfully quiet-’

‘I’m always missing mine,’ I agree. ‘Pain in the hole. So did you try her again?’

‘I rang her. The house is only a little cottage, one storey, so I thought she’d definitely hear the ring, no matter where she was. But she didn’t answer.’ Rory glances up, catches Breslin’s dry grin and winces. ‘I tried one more time – this time I put my ear to the door, to see if I could hear the phone ringing inside – I was wondering if she was even there, or if… But I couldn’t hear anything.’

We’ll check that. I say, ‘What did you figure the story was?’

‘I wasn’t sure. I thought probably…’ Rory’s voice has almost vanished.

‘Speak up,’ Breslin says. ‘The camera needs to hear this.’

Rory manages a little more volume, but he’s still having trouble looking at us. ‘Well. Aislinn cancelled a date at the last minute, a couple of weeks ago. She never said why; just that something had come up. And it was pretty complicated trying to schedule our other dates, as well – I’d suggest a day and it wouldn’t work for her, or it would at first and then there was a problem – and sometimes she doesn’t answer her phone… I don’t know whether it’s some mind-game – that really, really doesn’t seem like something Aislinn would do, but obviously I don’t know her that well yet – or whether there’s something in her life that she’s not ready to tell me about, like a parent with dementia or alcoholism who sometimes needs looking after at short notice?’ No mention of two-timing, although the possibility has to have occurred to him. Maybe he’s just dodging the slagging from Breslin, but it’s an interesting one to leave out. ‘So I thought this was probably more of the same. Whatever that was.’

‘And you standing there with your lovely Tesco irises,’ Breslin says, almost keeping back a smirk. ‘All ready for action.’ Rory’s head goes down farther.

I say, nice and sympathetic, ‘Were you worried? That something had happened to Aislinn?’

Rory turns towards me gratefully. ‘Yes. I was, a bit. That’s why I asked, when you came in, whether this was about her. I was afraid she might have fainted, or slipped in the shower, or she might be too sick even to pick up her phone – I mean, that might have been the thing she wasn’t ready to tell me about: some illness, epilepsy or… But I didn’t know what to do about it. I couldn’t ring 999 and tell them the emergency was that a woman wasn’t answering her door to a guy she’d only known a few weeks – they’d have laughed in my face and told me it sounded like I needed a new girlfriend. Even I knew that was the most likely scenario. But I couldn’t help imagining all the possibilities – I do that, even when it’s not… Is Aislinn OK?’

He was out of his comfort zone, and he turned into a useless dithery little spa; or he wants us to think he did. I say, ‘So what did you do?’

‘There was a crack between the curtains, and I could see light inside, so I tried to look through the crack. I was a bit worried that the neighbours would see me and call the police, but I did have texts from Aislinn inviting me over, and I thought maybe the police coming wouldn’t be such a bad idea, because then at least they could check and make sure nothing was up-’

This guy couldn’t order a sandwich without tying himself in knots about the possible consequences of mayonnaise. ‘What did you see?’

Rory shakes his head. ‘Nothing. It was only a narrow crack, and the angle meant that all I could see was a bit of sofa and a lamp – the lamp was on. I didn’t want to stay there too long; I just had a quick look.’

‘Did you see any movement? Shadows? Any indication that there was someone home?’

‘No. Nothing like that. The shadows were flickering a bit, but not really like someone was moving around; more like there was a fire in the fireplace.’

Which there was. I make a note to check whether you can see the flicker through the curtains. If Rory’s our guy, he’s got good self-control; a lot of people wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation to give us a mysterious intruder. ‘So what did you do?’

‘I texted her one more time, just in case we had got our wires crossed on the day or-’ Breslin snorts. Rory flinches. ‘I said just in case. I realise most likely I’ve been dumped. I already said I realise that. But if it was all some misunderstanding, and I went off in a huff and deleted her number off my phone, then we could both be missing out on something amazing. I didn’t want to take that risk. I’d rather make an idiot of myself.’

‘Looks like you got your wish,’ Breslin says. ‘You should’ve walked when she didn’t answer the door. If she wants to fix the situation, let her do the work. Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen.’

‘I don’t do that stuff.’

‘No? How’s that working out for you?’

I say, ‘He’s a decent human being, Breslin. That’s actually a good thing. Rory: when she didn’t answer that text, what’d you do?’

Rory says quietly, ‘I gave up. It was gone half-eight, I was freezing, it was starting to rain – and whatever was going on, it wasn’t going to make any difference if I stood there all night. So I left.’

‘You must’ve been well pissed off,’ Breslin says. ‘Here’s you hauling your arse halfway across the city on a shitty winter night, legging it up to Tesco and back, and she can’t even be bothered letting you in? I’d be fuming.’

‘I wasn’t. I was more just… upset. I mean, I was a bit annoyed as well, but-’

‘Course you were. Did you do any banging on the door? Any yelling? Swearing? Kicking lampposts?’ And as Rory opens his mouth: ‘Remember, we’ll be checking with the neighbours.’

‘No. I didn’t do anything like that.’ Rory has his face turned away, like not kicking Aislinn’s door in makes him less of a man. ‘I just went home.’

‘Fair play,’ I say. ‘Some guys would’ve made tits of themselves in front of her whole road. Not the way to impress a girl. Did you catch the bus again?’

‘I walked. I didn’t feel like waiting for the bus, or having to see people. I just… I walked.’

Meaning no bus driver or passengers who could tell us if he was acting stunned or shaky, or if there was blood all over his gloves. I pull my eyebrows into a concerned shape. ‘Jesus, I wouldn’t fancy that walk. Right through town on a Saturday night, drunk eejits looking for trouble… No one gave you hassle?’

Rory’s shoulders twitch in some kind of shrug. He’s trying to vanish into his chest again. ‘I probably wouldn’t even have noticed if they’d tried. Some guy roared something right behind me, on Aungier Street, but I don’t know what it was – I don’t think it was in English – and I’m not sure he was talking to me. I was just…’ The twitch again. ‘I wasn’t really paying attention.’

‘Doesn’t sound like you missed much,’ I say. ‘What’d you do with the flowers?’

‘I threw them away.’ All of a sudden the evening surges up in Rory’s voice, turns it defeated and raw and horribly sad. Losing Aislinn has hit him hard, in one way or another. ‘At first I forgot I even had them, and when I realised, I just wanted to get rid of them. I thought I should find someone to give them to, instead of wasting them, but I didn’t have the energy. I shoved them in a bin. After all that.’

‘A bin where?’

‘On the quays. Yeah: I walked all that way basically wearing a sign that said “DUMPED”, before I remembered the flowers existed. Hilarious, right?’ That’s to Breslin.

‘I would’ve done the same,’ I say. I flick an eyebrow at the one-way glass: Steve needs to send a couple of floaters to go through the bins on the quays, before they get emptied. There could be blood on that shitty bouquet. ‘Only I would probably have stopped for a pint on my way home. You didn’t, no?’

‘No. I just wanted to get home.’ Rory rubs his hands down his face. The strain is starting to get to him. ‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’

I ask, ‘And you got home when?’

‘I’m not sure. A bit before half-nine, maybe. I didn’t look at my watch.’

Breslin says, ‘Who’d you ring?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When you got in. Who’d you ring to bitch about your big date going to shite? Your best mate? Your brother?’

‘No one.’

Breslin stares. ‘You’re not serious. Ah, Rory, tell me you had someone you could ring. Because plenty of people get the old heave-ho somewhere along the way – it happens – but if you genuinely got home from a night like that and you couldn’t think of a single bloke to ring for a good bitching session about women and the world… well, that’s just the saddest thing I’ve heard in weeks. Months.’

Rory says, ‘I didn’t ring anyone. I made myself a sandwich because for obvious reasons I hadn’t had any dinner, and I sat in my flat looking out my window and feeling like the world’s biggest fool, and imagining more and more ridiculous ways that everything might still be all right, and wishing I were the kind of person who could deal with this by going out and getting drunk off my face and getting into a fight or shagging some stranger.’

The savage humiliation in his voice bites at the air. It tastes good. If we get to him, it’ll be through that: humiliation.

If Aislinn got to him, it was the same way. Finding out she was shagging someone else would probably have done the job.

‘And at midnight, when Aislinn still hadn’t rung me or texted me, I went to bed. The last thing I wanted in the world was to ring up one of my mates and tell him this story. OK?’

Breslin keeps up the incredulous stare for another minute. Rory looks away and pulls at his shirt cuff, but he keeps his mouth shut.

So far, Rory’s been all about a nice checkable story, and he has to know we can check phone records. If he talked to anyone, it was in a way he figures we can’t trace. I wonder if any of his mates live near his route home.

I leave it. ‘Just so there’s no confusion,’ I say, ‘can you confirm that this is the woman you were seeing? The woman whose house you went to last night?’

I pull a photo of Aislinn out of my file and slide it across the table to Rory. He glances up, wide-eyed, forgetting all about the flash of bitterness. ‘Why do you have…? You already- Did something – what-?’

‘Like Detective Breslin said,’ I tell him, nice but firm, ‘we need to do this in order. Is this the woman whose house you went to last night?’

For a moment I think Rory’s gonna grow a pair and demand some answers, but I don’t break the smile or the stare, and in the end he blinks. ‘Yeah. That’s her.’

‘Mr Fallon has identified a photo of Aislinn Murray,’ I tell the tape.

‘Let’s have a look.’ Breslin leans across to pick up the photo. His eyebrows shoot up and he gives a long, low whistle. ‘Oh, my. Respect to you, my friend: she’s a little corker.’

That takes Rory’s mind off his questions. He hits Breslin with a hot glare, which Breslin doesn’t notice – he’s still holding up the photo at arm’s length, nodding away appreciatively. ‘She’s beautiful. That isn’t what I like about her.’

Breslin throws him a disbelieving glance, over the photo. ‘Uh-huh. You’re there for her sparkling personality.’

‘Yeah. I am. She’s interesting, she’s intelligent, she’s warm, she’s got a wonderful imagination- It’s not about her looks. Physically, she’s not even my normal type.’

A snort explodes out of Breslin. ‘Oh, please. She’s everyone’s type. Are you telling me you prefer them ugly? Given the choice, you would’ve gone for some fat hairy troll with a face like a smashed doughnut, but somehow you got stuck with this instead? My heart bleeds for you.’

Rory flushes. ‘No. I’m just saying I’ve never ended up with a girl who’s so… well, so elegant. All my other girlfriends have been more the casual type.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ Breslin says, eyeing Rory’s shirt. ‘So how’d you pull this one? No offence, but let’s face facts: you’re punching well above your weight there. It doesn’t bother you, does it? Me pointing that out?’

‘No. I already said she’s beautiful.’ Rory is shifting in his chair, wanting Breslin to put the photo down. Breslin gives it another leer.

‘She’s a stunner. Whereas you… well, there’s nothing wrong with you, but you’re not exactly Brad Pitt, are you?’

‘I know that.’

‘So how’d you manage this?’ Breslin waves the photo.

‘We got talking. At a book launch in the shop, at the beginning of December. That’s it.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Breslin gives him another sceptical once-over. ‘What’s your technique? Seriously. Any tips you’ve got, I’d love to hear them.’

Rory’s getting ruffled: sitting up straighter, trying to stare Breslin out of it. ‘I don’t have a technique. I just talked to her. I never even considered that it might turn into anything. I know perfectly well that anyone would take one look at Aislinn and one look at me and bet any amount of money against us ending up together, because I thought the same thing. I only talked to her because she was off on her own in the children’s section, and since it’s my shop, I felt responsible for making sure everyone was having a good time.’

‘And then,’ I say, ‘you clicked.’

I’m smiling at him, and it pulls an answering smile before he remembers. ‘Yes. We really did. Or I thought we did.’

‘What’d you talk about?’

‘Books, mostly. Aislinn was leafing through a collection of George MacDonald fairy tales; I loved that book when I was little, so I told her that, and she said she loved it too – we’d even had the same edition. And from there we just… We both like magic realism, and we both like spinoffs, reworkings – Aislinn loved Wide Sargasso Sea; I was telling her she had to read American Ghosts and Old World Wonders. And she told me how, when she was fourteen, she got so annoyed at the ending of Little Women that she actually rewrote it and had Jo marry Laurie. She glued the pages into her copy, so that when she reread the book she could pretend that was the real story. She was funny, talking about that – how furious she was with Louisa May Alcott, till she found a solution… We laughed a lot.’ Rory is smiling again, unconsciously.

He’s yapping away like I’m his best mate. I know me and Breslin are doing the business, and I know Rory’s what-if head is throwing out scenarios where one stroppy answer lands him in a cell full of Oz extras, but still: by this time, he should be digging in his heels and asking for answers, not sitting there handing over big wads of whatever we ask for. The accommodating type, the floaters said, but this goes beyond accommodating. The only ones who never push back are the ones who have something to hide.

I want to look at Steve. The one-way glass stares back at me.

‘So you swapped phone numbers,’ I say. ‘And then…?’

‘We texted back and forth a bit, and then we went for a few drinks at the Market Bar. And we got on great again. It felt – I know this makes me sound like a teenager, but it felt like something incredible was happening. We couldn’t stop talking. We couldn’t stop laughing. We got there at eight, and we didn’t leave till they threw us out.’

‘Sounds like the date everyone dreams about,’ I say.

Rory’s palms turn upwards. ‘That’s what it felt like. Aislinn… She was telling me she used to be plain – that’s the word she used, “plain” – and now every time a guy tries to chat her up, all she can think is that he wouldn’t have gone near her a few years ago, and she can’t get past that; she can’t respect someone like that. She said with me it felt different; she felt like I actually would have talked to her exactly the same way, even back then – which I would have. She sounded… startled by it. More than startled: almost giddy. You see what I mean? We did click. It wasn’t just me.’

That doesn’t sound like the game-playing Rules addict I’ve been picturing. Aislinn’s doing it again: getting blurrier with everything I find out about her. That, or she was feeding Rory bullshit, or Rory is feeding us bullshit.

Breslin says, ‘And at the end of the evening?’

‘I walked her to a taxi.’

‘Come on, Rory. You know what I’m talking about. Did you get a little kiss on the way?’

Rory’s chin goes up. ‘How is that relevant?’ He’s going for dignified, but he hasn’t got the oomph to pull it off.

Breslin snickers into his notebook. ‘Not even a snog,’ he says to me. ‘You were calling this a dream date?’

Rory bites. ‘We did kiss. All right?’

‘Aah,’ Breslin says. ‘Sweet. Just a kiss?’

‘Yes. Just a kiss.’

Breslin grins. I say, ‘And after that night?’

‘We kept texting. I invited her out for dinner. Like I said, it took a while to set it up, but we sorted it out in the end. We went to Pestle.’

‘Very nice,’ Breslin says, nodding. Even I’ve heard of Pestle, although I want those brain cells back. ‘Did you sell a kidney?’

A sad flicker of smile from Rory. ‘I thought Aislinn would like it. I wasn’t thinking about it being super-trendy; I just chose it because it has an enclosed roof garden, so we could look out over the city and talk about, I don’t know, all the people out there and what they might be… In hindsight, I misjudged completely. It must have seemed like I was doing the same thing as those other guys: judging her based on her looks. Do you think’ – his face turns to me, suddenly wide-eyed – ‘do you think that’s why she…?’

‘Not enough info to tell,’ I say. ‘Did she seem like she was enjoying the evening?’

‘Yes. I mean…’ A shadow slips across Rory’s face. ‘She did. She really did. But she seemed like there was something on her mind, too; like she couldn’t quite relax. Every time things were going well – when we started having a good conversation, or having a laugh – Aislinn would get this worried look, and she’d turn quiet, and I’d have to pick up the conversation from scratch and get it moving again. That was when I started wondering if there was something she wasn’t ready to tell me, like a family situation or-’

‘Or,’ Breslin says, ‘maybe she was starting to realise that she wasn’t actually that into you. And every time she saw you thinking things were going great guns, she got worried because as far as she was concerned this was the date from hell and she didn’t know how to break it to you.’

That gets to Rory. ‘It wasn’t the date from hell. I know I would say that’ – Breslin’s started to say something, but Rory raises his voice to force him down; he’s getting ballsy – ‘but I was there, and I’m not just fooling myself. Most of the time, we were getting on great.’

‘If you say so,’ Breslin says, almost holding back the twitch at the corner of his mouth. ‘And at the end of that evening?’

‘We kissed again. I assume that’s what you’re asking.’

The front legs of Breslin’s chair come down with a bang. ‘You kissed? She didn’t invite you home with her? You mortgage your organs to take her to Pestle, and all you get is a snog up against a lamppost like a fucking teenager? If that’s your idea of a date going well-’

Rory snaps, ‘Two days later she invited me over to her house for dinner. You can check my phone: I’ve got the text messages right on there. Would she have done that if it had been the date from hell?’

Breslin’s grinning, a wet open grin like hunger. He’s loving this.

I feel it too. We’re getting good at Rory, we know how to work him now; he’s all ours. We can bounce him up and down, fling him into fancy shapes, like our very own little yoyo.

I don’t want to bounce him too hard, not yet. I shoot Breslin a warning look and say, ‘And the dinner invitation was for last night.’

‘Yeah.’ Rory’s spine slumps; his little feisty moment is over. ‘At first it was for last week, but Aislinn had something come up. So we switched it to last night.’

Breslin backs off a little, but not all the way. ‘When we were talking about how you got to Aislinn’s place, you said’ – he flicks back through his notes – ‘that you took the bus in case you had wine with dinner and you needed to get home afterwards. Meaning you weren’t sure whether you were going to be spending the night at her place or not. Is that right?’

Rory’s starting to go pink again. ‘I had no idea. That was why I didn’t bring the car – I didn’t want Aislinn to think I was assuming she’d invite me to stay. Or that I was pressuring her to.’

I’m amazed this guy manages to get out of bed in the morning without working himself into a panic attack over the chance that he might trip on the bath mat and stab himself through the eye socket with his toothbrush and be left with a permanent twitch that’ll ruin his chances of landing an airplane safely if the pilot has a heart attack and doom hundreds to a fiery death. Normally this shit makes me roll my eyes, but here it’s gonna come in useful, as soon as we’re ready to start pushing.

What-if-maybe crap is for weak people. It belongs to the ones who don’t have the strength to make actual situations go their way, so they have to hide away in daydreams where they can play at controlling what comes next. And that makes them even weaker. Every what-if is a gift to anyone who’s looking for a hold on you, and that means us. If a guy’s whole head is in reality, then reality is the only route we can take to get to him. If he’s letting his mind prance off down dozens of twisty hypothetical fairy tales, every one of those is a crack we can use to prise him open.

Breslin says, ‘But you thought last night might be The Night.’

‘I didn’t have a clue. That’s what I’m-’

‘Come on, Rory. Don’t bullshit me. It’s your third date, right? You’d blown the budget on her, last time? She’d invited you over for a taste of her home cooking? Any normal guy’s going to be expecting-’

‘I wasn’t expecting anything. The price of the restaurant has nothing to do with- Aislinn’s not a-’

Rory is fun when he’s pissed off: like a fluffy little attack gerbil. Breslin raises his eyes to the ceiling. ‘OK, let’s try this. Did you bring condoms?’

‘I don’t see how that’s-’

‘Rory. Don’t get coy now. We’re all grown-ups here. When you knocked on Aislinn’s door last night, did you have a condom on you, yes or no?’

After a moment Rory says, ‘Yes. I had a pack in my coat pocket. Just in case.’

‘You’ve got your priorities straight,’ Breslin says, sitting back and smirking. ‘You forgot the flowers, but the johnnies: those you remembered.’

‘You’re showing your age, Breslin,’ I say smoothly, smirking right back at him. ‘Your generation was weird about safe sex. My and Rory’s lot, we don’t go anywhere without a three-pack, just on the off-chance.’ Breslin throws me a narky look that’s only partly put on. I say, ‘Am I right, Rory? Still got them in your coat?’

If he’s got them, that backs up the claim that this is the coat he was wearing last night. But Rory shakes his head. ‘I took them out. When I got home and took off my coat, I felt them in the pocket, and I just…’ He’s breathing fast. ‘I felt like I should have known all along that this was never going to happen. Just like you said.’ That’s thrown at Breslin, who tilts his head in acknowledgement. ‘Like the only possible reason Aislinn could have been seeing me was to set me up for some awful candid-camera thing, and while I was knocking and texting and ringing like an idiot, she’d been behind that door with all her friends, all of them splitting their sides laughing at the loser who genuinely thought he had a chance with her.’

The emotion is real. It’s gripping his whole body, ready to lift him off the chair by the scruff of his neck and slam him against the wall. That doesn’t make the story true. That blast of humiliation could have hit him when he says it did, or it could have hit when he arrived early at Aislinn’s and she didn’t give him the welcome he was expecting; or it could have come weeks back, when she told him she was seeing someone else, or when they left Pestle and she didn’t invite him home, and he decided to punish her.

Rory is still going. ‘I threw the condom packet across the room. It made me feel ridiculous and disgusting and sleazy and… It’s somewhere in my living room. I hope I never find it.’

I say, matter-of-fact but sympathetic – Cool Girl is big on matter-of-fact sympathy – ‘If she genuinely didn’t bother answering the door, that was a shitty thing to do.’

Rory shrugs. He’s folding over his hands again. That rant emptied him out; he even looks smaller. ‘Maybe. I don’t know what happened.’

Breslin moves. Rory glances up in time to catch the smirk. He flinches away from it.

‘No, seriously,’ I say. ‘You’ve got every right to be well pissed off.’

Rory says, ‘I’m not even pissed off. I just wish I understood.’ He looks exhausted, suddenly. He takes off his glasses and pulls down the cuff of one sleeve to polish them. Now that he can’t see me properly, he has an easier time looking at me. Bare and half blind, his eyes look clean as an animal’s. ‘Just so I can stop making up scenarios. That’s all I did last night. I couldn’t make my mind stop it. I think I got about two hours’ sleep.’ Which would cover things nicely if anyone heard him moving around in the middle of the night, or saw a light on. ‘I just want to know. That’s all.’

I say, ‘Why do you think we brought you in here?’

‘I don’t know.’ Rory’s spine tenses up. He can feel it: we’re headed for the real stuff. ‘Obviously, something’s happened. Probably near Aislinn’s house, since you were asking me what I… But I can’t – there are too many – I mean, I’m hoping it’s not-’

I say, and I don’t make it gentle, ‘Aislinn’s dead.’

It hits Rory like a strobe light to the face. He jerks back in his chair, hands spasming in front of him – his glasses go skittering halfway across the table. For a second there I think he’s having some kind of attack – he’s the type who would carry around an inhaler – but he gets himself back. He grabs for his glasses and shoves them onto his nose; it takes him three clumsy tries, catching them when they fall off and fumbling to get them right way up and trying not to smear the lenses. Then he presses his palms together, jams his fingers up against his mouth and breathes hard into them, staring at nothing.

Me and Breslin wait.

Rory says, into his fingers, ‘How? When?’

‘Last night. Someone killed her.’

His body jerks. ‘Oh God. Oh God. Is that why – was she – when I was knocking, was she – was the person still-’

I say, ‘Now do you see why we needed to talk to you?’

‘Yes. I- Oh God!’ Rory’s eyes snap into focus; focused on me, and huge. The penny’s dropped, or he’s decided to play it that way. ‘You don’t think – wait. No. Do you think I – am I a suspect?’

Breslin laughs, one cold note.

‘What? What? Why is that funny?’

‘Listen to that,’ Breslin says, to me. ‘He’s all about how much he cared about Aislinn and her great personality, right up until we tell him the poor girl’s dead. And just like that, it’s all about him. Forget her.’

‘I do care about her! I just – this wasn’t-’ Rory grabs for air. He looks like shit: white and ragged, staring wildly back and forth between us. I hope he brought his inhaler. ‘I thought a burglary, maybe. Or a, an assault. I never-’

His hands go to his head, and he rubs the heels back and forth on his temples. He’s breathing hard.

It all looks right. Shock and grief are clumsy, they’re ugly, they’re not pretty tears and a dabbing hanky. But Rory’s had all night to build himself an armour suit of what-if and dress up in it. And, because he’s used to focusing on what could have happened just as much as on what actually did, he could walk around in his made-up story like it’s the true one.

The one place where his story cracked and peeled: around that half-hour between him getting off the bus and him knocking on Aislinn’s door. There’s something there. Everything else could play either way, innocent or guilty. That half-hour, the half-hour that matters, wasn’t innocent.

The shock could be real and he could still be our guy. There’s one obvious reason why he might have been expecting to hear about an assault instead of a murder.

I say, ‘Why did you think there might have been a burglary or an assault?’

‘Can I-’ Rory’s voice has gone thick. He swallows hard, but his chin is shaking. ‘Can I please have a minute by myself?’

Breslin says, ‘What for?’

‘Because I just found out-’ He jerks his head like there are small things flying in his face. ‘I just need a minute.’

‘You’re doing grand,’ I say. ‘We’ll only be a little longer. Hang in there.’

‘No. I can’t. I need-’

‘We’re asking you to help us out here,’ Breslin says. ‘Any reason why you have a problem with that?’

‘I just need to clear my head. I just- Do I have to stay? Am I allowed to leave?’ Rory’s voice is spinning higher and louder.

Breslin’s leaning back in his chair, watching, with a curl to his lip. ‘Rory. Pull yourself together.’ But Rory is beyond reach of the snap of disgust. ‘This is just routine. It’s not personal. We’ll be having this same conversation with every single person who had anything to do with Aislinn. And I can guarantee you, the people who cared about her will want to do anything they can to help us. You don’t?’

‘I do. I just- I’m not under arrest, right? I can just go for a walk? And then come back?’

Not a total pushover, after all. Fluffy little Rory is well able to push back, when he really wants to.

He’s one nudge away from trying to walk out. If he goes for the door, I’m gonna have to choose: let him go, or arrest him. Neither of those sounds good.

‘Jesus, man, have you seen the weather?’ I say easily. ‘It’s lashing. You’ll get soaked. Plus, we’ll lose this interview room, and then we’ll all be hanging around for hours before we get another one.’ Rory stares at me, too disoriented to work out what he thinks about that. ‘Tell you what: we’ll give you a few minutes to yourself, OK? Just to get your breath. It’s a lot to take in.’

There’s a small sharp movement from Breslin, but I don’t look around. I give Rory a Cool Girl smile, enough sympathy to warm it but not enough to feel sticky. ‘We’ll have a cup of tea and come back to you,’ I say, scraping back my chair and standing up, before he can come up with a decision. ‘Can I get you a cuppa while I’m at it?’

‘No. Thanks. All I want is-’

Rory’s voice splits open. He presses the back of one hand against his mouth.

Breslin hasn’t moved. Those pale eyes are on me. They say, clear as a death grip on my wrist, Sit the fuck down.

I say, without taking my eyes off Breslin’s, ‘We’ll see you in a few, Rory. Hang in there.’

Then I turn around and go for the door. I leave it open behind me, but I don’t look back. I’m halfway to the observation room before I hear the nasty, juddering scrape of Breslin pushing back his chair on the grimy linoleum.

Steve’s at the one-way glass, with his shirtsleeves rolled up and red hair sticking out in all directions; he’s been putting a lot into watching us. I head over to see what Rory’s doing with his alone time. On the way my eyes hit Steve’s, but only for a second that says Later.

Rory has his elbows on the table and his face in his hands. The jump of his shoulders claims he’s crying. I can’t see if there are actual tears.

‘Well well well,’ Breslin says behind me, swinging the door shut with a bang. ‘I thought that went pretty well, for a first round. Nice work, Conway.’

Patronising fuck. ‘You didn’t do a bad job yourself,’ I say.

‘I’m not sure that was the right call, pulling out just when he’s going to pieces. That’s always a good moment to push for a confession.’ Breslin loosens his collar with a finger and rolls back his shoulders. ‘But hey: we got to him once, we can do it again. Am I right?’

‘Not a problem,’ I say. ‘So: what’s the betting?’

Breslin’s head pops forward like he can’t believe he heard me right. ‘Say what?’

‘The suspect, Detective. Guilty or not. I’m asking for your opinion.’

Breslin’s eyebrows are hitting his careful hairline. ‘Are you serious?’

‘About wanting your opinion? More or less.’

Steve has wandered over to the water cooler and is filling a plastic cup, watching us. Breslin lifts a hand. ‘Whoa whoa whoa. Let’s just stall the ball here. Are you saying you’ve got doubts?’

‘I’m saying I’d like your opinion. If that’s a problem, though, I can live without it.’ I’m right back to wanting to throat-punch the bollix. The fine thread of alliance that built up between the two of us in the interview room lasted all of thirty seconds outside it.

‘Talk to me, Conway. Are you trying to be super-careful, yeah? Make sure you’ve got all your bases covered? Is that what’s going on?’

It’s not a bad technique – make the other person explain herself, you’ve got her on the back foot right there – but this is what I mean about Breslin not being as smart as he thinks: I just saw him use it on Rory, plus it should have occurred to him that, what with me being a detective, I might just know the same tricks he does. I lean a shoulder against the one-way glass, where I can keep one eye on Rory, and stick my hands in my pockets. ‘Do you think we should be?’

Breslin sighs. ‘Well. I guess we’ve got to face it: one of the last things your rep needs is a ding for jumping the gun. But the other last thing you need is a rep for being so indecisive that you’ll let your guy walk rather than put your balls on the line. Are you getting me?’

Steve says, doing mildly bewildered, ‘Hang on a sec. You’re saying you deffo think he did it, yeah?’

Breslin sighs exasperatedly and runs his hands over what’s left of his hair, carefully so he won’t bother it. ‘Well, yeah, Moran. I kind of do. This guy was the victim’s boyfriend, so that’s Strike One. He was actually at the crime scene at the relevant time, he’s not even trying to deny it, so that’s Strike Two. He was wearing non-fibre gloves, same as our killer: Strike Three. He was wearing a black wool overcoat, and we’ve got black wool fibres on the body: Strike Four. And he basically admits that he was getting impatient for his ride, after all the time and money he’d put into this girl, and she wasn’t showing any signs of giving up the goods. That’s a great big Strike Five. I’m not a baseball aficionado, but I’m pretty sure it takes less than that to put a guy well and truly out.’

Steve is sipping his water and nodding through Breslin’s list. ‘I’d say it does, all right,’ he says agreeably. His accent has got stronger. I put on the Thicko Skanger act too, now and then, but I do it for suspects, not for my own squad. Sometimes Steve makes me want to puke. ‘I think I’ll keep an open mind a little longer, but.’

Breslin lets the exasperation go up a notch. ‘Open about what? There’s nothing else here, Moran. There’s our boy Fallon, there’s a shitload of circumstantial evidence all pointing straight at him, and that’s it. What are you being open-minded about? Aliens? The CIA?’

Steve pulls his arse up onto the rickety table, getting comfortable for the chats. I leave him to it. ‘Here’s the only thing,’ he says. ‘How’d the actual killing play out?’

‘What are you talking about? He punched her. She hit her head. She died. That’s how it played out.’

Steve thinks that over, brow furrowed – bit slow on the uptake, us skangers. ‘Why, but?’ he asks.

Breslin’s head goes back and he bares his teeth at the ceiling, halfway between a smile and a grimace. ‘Moran. Moran. Do I look like Poirot to you?’

‘Huh?… Not a lot.’

‘No. Because this isn’t Saturday evening in front of the telly with a nice cup of tea and a digestive biscuit, and so I don’t care about motive. I don’t. And neither should you. You ought to know that by now.’

Steve scratches at his nose. ‘You’re probably right, man. I’d say you are. It’s just I’m not seeing it. I like being able to see things in my head, know what I mean? Picture them, like.’ He frames his hands in front of his eyes, to make sure Breslin gets the concept of picturing something.

Breslin takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly, so we can see how much he’s putting into keeping his temper with us. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘OK. Let’s go ahead and spend some time picturing it.’

‘Thanks,’ Steve says, giving him a humble smile. ‘I appreciate that.’

‘Rory shows up with his shitty Tesco bouquet. Aislinn, who clearly wasn’t the shitty Tesco type, isn’t happy. She gets snotty. Rory’s not having that – he’s been blowing his budget and rearranging his schedule and racing around Stoneybatter in the rain to make her happy, but that’s not good enough for Princess Special? He pulls out a Jane Austen quote about high-maintenance bitches, or prick-teases, or whatever literary types call girls like that. Aislinn slaps him down hard: she tells him exactly why he’s not good enough for her, including why she hasn’t let him into her knickers and why after this she never will. She goes one put-down too far, and bam.’ Breslin mimes a little punch, not bothering to put much into it. ‘And here we all are. Can you picture that OK? Yeah?’

‘That’d work, all right.’ Steve nods, picturing away. ‘Only you’d think the bouquet would get a bit messed up, like, in all the action. He’d drop it, or something. We didn’t find any petals on the floor.’

‘So no petals happened to come off. Or Rory’s got the brains to pick them up. We’re not talking about a massive struggle; we’re talking a bit of that’ – Breslin makes a yappy-mouth sign – ‘one punch and a few seconds of oh-shit. A couple of petals would have been great, but in this job you can’t get too demanding. You need to work with what you’ve got, instead of fussing about what you haven’t.’ Breslin’s giving Steve the beginnings of a smile, all ready to kiss and make up. ‘Am I right or am I right?’

Steve says cheerfully, ‘You’re dead right, man. I’d just like to shake a few more trees and see if anything falls out, is all.’ When Breslin rears away, rolling his jaw: ‘I’m new, you know? I’ve got loads to learn. Might as well get in the practice while I can.’

‘You’re not that fucking new. You’ve both been on the job long enough that you should be able to handle your own cases without a babysitter. This kind of shit right here is why the gaffer decided you need one.’

‘And we appreciate you taking on the job, man. Seriously. But I’ve gotta get there in my own time, know what I mean? Otherwise I’ll never learn. Sure, what harm?’

‘Moran. Come on. The harm is that you two are about to embarrass yourselves – and let’s be honest here, it’s not like you can afford to do that. If you actually let this guy walk out of here while you go shaking trees or whatever it was, you look weak as fuck. You look unsure. And not just to the rest of us. The longer you leave it, the more the defence is going to make of it: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, even the cops weren’t positive my client was guilty, how can you not share their reasonable doubt? Doesn’t that bother you at all?’

In the interview room, Rory lifts his head and wipes his face with the heels of his hands. He’s red and blotchy; the tears are there, for whatever that’s worth.

Steve raises his cup to Breslin. ‘Don’t worry, man. We’ll make sure the gaffer knows you did your best to light a fire under us.’

‘Whoa there. Hang on a second. You think this is about me?’ Breslin switches to a nice mix of stunned and wounded. ‘You seriously think that’s what I’m worried about? My rep?’

‘Ah, God, no,’ Steve says, giving him a big sweet smile. ‘Your rep’s amazing – stellar, is that the word I’m looking for? It’d take more than the likes of us to mess it up. I’m just saying, don’t worry: we’ll make sure credit goes where credit’s due.’

‘This isn’t about me. I don’t work like that. This isn’t even about you – if it was just your reps on the line, then sure, I’d try to stop you making a hames of this for your own sakes, but in the end I’d have to let you make your own choices. This is about the squad. If you take a month to get up the balls to charge Mr Obvious in there, the media won’t be yelling about how Conway and Moran need to get their act together; they’ll be yelling about how the Murder squad needs to start taking its job seriously and actually protecting the public from scumbags. I’m hoping you two have at least enough loyalty to give a damn about that.’

Breslin’s worked himself up into enough of a righteous lather that I can’t tell whether he actually thinks he means that shite. I say, ‘How’s the squad gonna look if we charge the wrong guy?’

‘Having to drop the charges,’ Steve says, doing a cringe-face. ‘Public apology, more than likely. Media yelling about how the Murder squad’s a shower of incompetent wankers who don’t care who they lock up as long as they get the solve. Witnesses afraid to come to us, in case they end up in cuffs because we’re in such a hurry to charge anyone we can get our hands on…’ He shakes his head. ‘Not good, man. For the squad, like.’

Breslin sighs again. ‘Conway. Moran,’ he says, changing tack to go gentle. ‘The guy is guilty as sin. Take it from someone who was putting scumbags away when you two were kids filling out your application forms for Templemore: he’s our man. The question here isn’t whether he did it. The question is whether you two are able to do what needs doing.’

I say, ‘We’ll all just have to keep our fingers crossed. Won’t we?’

‘OK. Listen.’ Breslin leans back against the wall, gives us both the smile that melts witnesses. ‘I know you guys haven’t been getting an easy ride around here. Probably you thought I’d missed that, or didn’t care, but you’d be surprised how many of us are pulling for you. I’ve always said you’ll make a great pair of Murder Ds, once you find your feet.’

‘Thanks, man,’ Steve says. Steve gets basically no hassle, except what rubs off from me; Breslin just wants the pair of us paranoid. ‘That means a lot.’

‘Not a problem. You’ve just got to get past the routine bullshit. Newbies get hazed; it’s part of the job. It’s not personal.’

The slimy bastard is too thick to realise he used the same words to Rory Fallon, five minutes back, or else he thinks we are. And he thinks we’re thick enough to believe our shitpile is just routine, or desperate enough to pretend we do.

‘The lads just need to see whether you can take the heat. And this?’ Breslin points at the one-way glass. ‘This is your chance to show them. I know all the silly shite has to have knocked your confidence, but if schoolkid crap can take you to the point where you don’t trust your own judgement enough to charge a slam-dunk like this one, maybe you’d be better off back in blue. Yeah, that sounds harsh’ – lifting a hand like one of us tried to break in, which we didn’t – ‘but it’s what you need to hear.’

I know better than to look at Steve. In the corner of my eye he’s still peacefully swinging his legs and drinking his water, but I can feel him knowing better than to look at me.

Breslin wants us to charge Rory Fallon. He wants it badly. It could be because he’s sick of babysitting the kindergarten case, wants to wind it up and go back to his pal McCann and their PhD-level fancy conspiracies and gang-boss shootings. Could be because he wants to shake himself in front of O’Kelly – It took those two a month to crack their last domestic, with me on board it takes them a day, now give my ego a hand job and put me up for promotion. Could be just that he’s so in the habit of arm-twisting, he can’t get through his day without that buzz. But.

I’ve been taking it for granted that whoever threw me to Crowley did it on the spur of the moment, for kicks, like whoever dropped my phone in my coffee back when I still left it on my desk. It didn’t occur to me, till this moment, that a lot more thought could have gone into it.

Creepy Crowley is whipping this case up into a big one, and someone is egging him on. If I fuck up spectacularly, like for example if I charge Fallon when there’s some great big chunk of exonerating evidence that somehow managed to vanish on its way to my desk, and if the papers somehow happen to get hold of the story, the whole country will explode with it. And there’ll be the excuse the squad’s gagging for: I’ll be gone.

In an interview, this is where I’d be on my feet, stopping the tape – Interview paused at 2.52 p.m., Detectives Conway and Moran leaving the interview room - and getting me and Steve the hell out of there. We need a chat, right now. I watch Breslin blandly and wait to see what comes next.

‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ Breslin says. ‘Moran, you go have a look through the CCTV, see if you can pick up Rory Fallon leaving the vic’s place last night and track him through town – maybe we can figure out where he ditched the gloves. Meanwhile, Conway and I will have another go at Rory, try for a confession – shouldn’t be a problem to us, am I right?’ He gives me a big pally grin and, I swear to God, an actual clap on the shoulder. I nearly punch the presumptuous fucker. ‘Even if we don’t get it, no big deal: we’ve got plenty on him already. We arrest him, charge him, I get to tell the lads that when the chips are down you two can do the business, and I can pretty much guarantee you won’t be getting any more hassle in the squad room. Everyone’s a happy camper.’

He’s a hair away from spelling it out for us: You go along with me on this, and I’ll sort out the lads for you. This isn’t just because he wants to get back to McCann, or because he wants to look pretty for the gaffer. He’s itching to get Fallon charged.

And he’s positive we’re gonna jump on the deal. He’s already tightening his tie and heading for the door.

I say, ‘Here’s what we’ll do. Deasy and Stanton are making a list of Rory Fallon’s KAs. If Rory’s our boy, then the guy who called it in will be on that list. I’d like you to have chats with them all, see if you can identify the caller. Start with best mates and brothers if he’s got them. If there’s no joy there, you can work your way down.’

Breslin has turned round. He’s staring at me, but he’s managing to stay nice and neutral, ready to keep the matey stuff coming if we let him. When he’s sure I’m done, he says, ‘Why?’

I say, ‘Because me and Detective Moran will take Fallon from here.’

Breslin looks back and forth between us – he’s aiming for big dog who’s been patient with the bold puppies long enough, but him having to look up at us takes some of the oomph out of it. He says, ‘I’m going to need an explanation here.’

I’m opening my mouth on Because this is our fucking case and the next time you try to give me an order you’re getting a knee in the balls, but Steve gets in there first. He says, ‘You’re dead right, man: we need to earn the lads’ respect. And that’s not going to happen if you get our confession for us. We appreciate the offer, but we’re going to have to handle this one ourselves.’

Which I have to admit is better than my version. The second of taken-aback on Breslin’s face gives me my control back. I tell Steve, ‘Detective Breslin knows that, you thicko. Does he look like a rookie to you? He was testing us. He was trying to see if we’d wimp out and offload the tough stuff on someone else when we got the chance, or if we’ve got the nads to actually do our job.’

Steve’s mouth opens. Then he bursts out laughing. ‘Jesus! And me standing here like an eejit, giving you the big speech about earning the lads’ respect. Fair play to you, man; you had me going, all right.’

Breslin’s got a bit of a smile on his mouth, but those pale eyes still moving back and forth between us are cold and expressionless. He doesn’t know whether he believes us or not.

I let myself crack a half-grin. ‘He had me, too, at first. There’s a reason he’s got that stellar rep. Thanks, Breslin: we get the message, loud and clear. We’ll do our job. And once we’ve done it, we’ll see you in the incident room. Case meeting at four.’

I give him a pleasant nod and turn away, to the one-way glass. Overlaid on Rory, Breslin’s reflection stays still, staring at me. My back prickles.

Then he shrugs. ‘I’d love to think you know what you’re doing,’ he says. ‘See you at four.’

The reflection turns and vanishes. The observation-room door clicks shut.

Me and Steve wait, listening, watching Rory fumble in his pocket and find a crumpled tissue and try to mop up the mess that’s his face. Then I go to the door and open it fast. The corridor is empty.

Steve says, ‘I don’t like this.’ His accent’s gone back to normal.

I say, ‘Me neither.’

‘What’s he playing at?’

‘I don’t know.’ I leave the door open. I’m trying to pace, but the observation room is too small; every two steps I’m slamming off a wall. The stink has thickened till it’s like another person in there, shoving us aside. ‘Did you hear him? “I can guarantee you won’t get any more hassle in the squad room…” He was trying to bribe us.’

‘Why would he want Fallon charged? This badly?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t think he was one of the ones trying to fuck me up.’ Steve has to see what goes down, what with not being in a coma, but I don’t do heart-to-hearts; this is the first time I’ve talked about this shit straight out, and it doesn’t feel good. ‘But if we charge Fallon too soon, and then it all goes tits-up, and Crowley splatters it all over the country…’ Even the thought – the burst of applause in the squad room, the smirk on Roche, the naked relief in O’Kelly’s voice as he explains that this isn’t working out – sends red zigzags across my brain. I say, ‘That’d be one way to put me out of commission.’

Steve has split his plastic water cup and is folding it into shapes. He says, ‘It could be just that: him trying to fuck us up.’ The ‘us’ is cute – no one’s on any campaign to fuck Steve up – but it gives me a quick ridiculous beat of warmth anyway. ‘I’ve never got that vibe off him either, but. I always got the sense he doesn’t give a monkey’s about us, either way.’

‘Me too. But if he was serious about getting rid of us, that’s exactly the sense we would get. Breslin’s no genius, but he’s been at this a long time. He’s well able to hide what he’s at.’

‘Or,’ Steve says. ‘If the gangster thing pans out…’

He leaves it there. The sharp crack of folding plastic jabs me in the ear.

Bent cops exist. Fewer in real life than on the telly, but they’re out there. Everything from the guy squaring a speeding fine in exchange for match tickets, to the guy who’s owned by a gang boss, body and soul.

If a gangster boyfriend killed Aislinn, the first thing he or his pals would do is ring their best bitch-boy and tell him to sort it out. The perfect way to sort it out, no loose ends, no worries, would be charging Rory Fallon and closing the case.

‘Breslin,’ I say. I’ve stopped pacing; stopped breathing, almost. ‘Breslin. You think? Seriously?’

Steve lifts one shoulder.

‘Nah. I don’t see it. He’s all about being the big hero. He wouldn’t be able to handle seeing himself as the bad guys’ pet cop. It’d blow his brain cells.’

Steve says, ‘Breslin would find a way to see himself as the hero, no matter what he did. That’s where he starts: with the idea that he’s the good guy, so whatever he’s doing must be right. Then he works backwards from there to figure out how.’

Which is true, but I never thought about it that way before – I’ve never spent this much time thinking anything about Breslin before. I don’t like the feel it gives me, clamped onto the back of my neck. What Steve’s talking about, it’s not just Breslin who thinks that way; we all do. When you badger a statement out of some traumatised witness, or manipulate a mother into giving evidence that’ll put her own kid in jail, you get to enjoy the buzz of winning without tying yourself in knots over the deeper moral subtleties, because you’re the good guy in this story. Steve is shredding that into something different, something tangled and thorny; dangerous.

He says, ‘And he’s the type they go for. Wife, kids, mortgage…’

The gang boys don’t bother with the likes of me and Steve, working-class singles on the way up; unless there’s a gambling problem or a coke habit, we don’t come with enough leverage. But Breslin has a high-maintenance blonde wife and three bucktoothed blond boys, like something out of an ad, and a house in a snazzy part of Templeogue. That’s a lot of needs tugging at his sleeves, and a lot to lose if he were to change his mind down the line. Once he was in, even one toe, he wouldn’t be getting out.

Breslin and McCann pull a lot of the big gang murders; they spend a lot of their time talking to seriously hard-core guys. It would be a miracle if, somewhere along the way, someone hadn’t made Breslin an offer.

That same flex to the air that I felt in the squad room, straight lines buckling at the edges of my eyes. My heart is going hard.

I say, ‘Yeah. He is.’

‘Exactly the type. And a Murder D would be worth top dollar to a gang boss.’

Breslin wears good suits, but we all do. He drives a 2014 BMW and he bangs on about how his kids go to private school because he’s not having them surrounded by skangers and immigrants who can barely speak English – and that’s just the skangers, ha ha ha, no offence, Conway, Moran – but I always figured Daddy and Mummy were bankrolling him. He takes his family to the Maldives for holidays, but if I’d cared enough to think about it, I would’ve assumed he’d squared a few penalty points for his bank manager in exchange for a sky-high credit-card limit and no pressure to pay it off.

Me and Steve have been wanting an interesting case. This could be a lot more interesting than we bargained for.

Steve says, ‘And if he’s the one who fed Crowley his info, that would explain why.’

Enough mud in the water can take you a long way towards reasonable doubt. The air twitches, in the corners.

And I can’t keep the grin off my face.

If Steve’s right, then there’s some high-level danger headed our way, from a bunch of directions at once. Gangs don’t kill cops, it would draw too much hassle, but they don’t have a problem firebombing your car to tell you to back off. And that’s small-time, compared to what the lads will do if we dob Breslin in to Internal Affairs.

I can’t wait for them all to bring it on. Danger doesn’t bother me; I’ll eat danger with a spoon. Breslin the puffed-up little tosspot, trying to twist me like a balloon animal, he made me feel like I was in a straitjacket and writhing to punch him. But Breslin the bent cop: he’s a dare, a bad poison dare that no one with sense should take, and I’ve always had a thing for dares.

Steve’s eyeing me like I’ve lost it. ‘What? What’s funny?’

‘Nothing. I like a challenge.’

‘So you think I’m right. You think he’s…’ Steve doesn’t finish.

That sobers me up a notch. ‘I don’t know yet. We’re way into the hypothetical here. I don’t like hypotheticals.’ I bite down on one thumb to get rid of the grin. ‘All we know for definite is, Breslin wants this guy charged and the case closed, ASAP. We need to stall till we’ve got a handle on why. What you came up with back there, about doing our own dirty work: that was good. That should buy us some time.’

The twist to Steve’s mouth doesn’t look convinced. ‘You think he went for it?’

‘Not sure. I think so. I hope so.’ The memory of Breslin’s cold stare makes me bite down harder. ‘Either way, that’s the line we stick to: we’re the thicko rookies who don’t get how things work around here, and we want to do our case our way. Are you OK with that?’

Part of me expects Steve to squirm away. There’s a decent chance that the bullshit here is all about me; as long as he plays it right, he can sidestep the blast and slot right into the squad once I’m a smoking crater, but he’ll blow his chance if he convinces Breslin he’s an idiot. But he grins. ‘I can manage thicko rookie.’

‘Right up your alley,’ I say. The relief hits me harder than I want to think about. ‘No acting required.’

‘Hey, you use what you’ve got.’ Steve tilts a thumb at the one-way glass. ‘What do we do with him?’

Rory has finished his cry. He’s getting antsy, popping his head up to peer worriedly around like a specky meerkat, wondering where we’ve disappeared to. He should be the biggest thing in our day. I practically forgot he existed.

I say, ‘We have one more go. Like we told Breslin we would.’

‘That means leaving Breslin to talk to his KAs. You think that’s safe?’

If Breslin’s looking to fuck up either Rory or me, there are a dozen ways that Rory’s pals could be a pure gift to him. I say, ‘Probably not, but what the hell, let’s live dangerously. It was the only way I could think of to get rid of him. And I don’t want him in with Fallon any longer. Fallon can’t take being pushed around; if Breslin shoves him any more, he’s gonna walk. And whether he’s our guy or not, I don’t want him thinking we’re big scary bullies out to get him. Not yet, anyway.’

‘“Whether or not,” ’ Steve says. ‘You’re not sure any more?’

I lift one shoulder. ‘I was when I came out of there. Not a hundred per cent, but almost. There’s something dodgy about him getting to Stoneybatter early – he didn’t like talking about it, did you spot that?’

‘Yeah. But the reaction when you told him Aislinn was dead: that looked real to me.’

‘To me, too. But even if it was, that doesn’t say he’s innocent.’ Rory’s got his sodden tissue between finger and thumb and he’s looking around for somewhere to put it. He gives up and tucks it in his pocket. I say, ‘He might not have known he’d killed her. He throws the punch, she goes down, but when he checks her pulse or her breathing she’s still alive; so he turns off the cooker to make sure the place won’t burn down around her, and he legs it. He thinks she’s just got a concussion or whatever; he spends the night praying it’s knocked the memory right out of her head. And when he finds out she’s dead, and all of a sudden he’s staring down the barrel of a murder charge, he nearly shits himself.’

‘That’d play,’ Steve says.

‘When I came out of there, I would’ve put money on it. But now…’ Rory half-stands up, then sits down again, like standing might not be allowed. I say, ‘You?’

Steve runs a thumbnail along the ribbing of the plastic cup and watches Rory try to stay sitting. ‘The thing is, even if Rory is our guy, that doesn’t mean there’s no secret gangster boyfriend and Breslin’s clean.’ His voice goes down on that. We both glance automatically at the door: nothing. ‘Assume the boyfriend exists, right? Even if he did nothing to Aislinn, he isn’t going to want us sniffing around his business, checking his movements, telling his missus about his bit on the side… The second he finds out Aislinn’s dead – if he calls round to her for a quickie late last night, say – he’s going to put in a call to his guy on the inside and tell him to get it sorted, fast.’

‘And the slower we get it sorted,’ I say, ‘the longer we’ve got to find out if there’s something else going on.’ Just saying the words lifts my heart rate.

‘So we stall,’ Steve says.

‘Not stall. Breslin’s right, we don’t need a rep for getting nothing done. We’ll just take it nice and easy. Whatever’s going on here, I don’t want Rory back in till we know every single thing we can get about this case. If we go at him again, I want us going in with enough ammo to blow him away.’

Steve nods. ‘And right now?’

I check my watch: just under an hour till the case meeting. ‘Right now we take him through his story again, see if he’s got anything he wants to tell us, get his coat and gloves, try and convince him to let us go through his flat. Then we send him home and do this case meeting. After that-’

‘After that, we get some fucking sleep. I’m wrecked.’

Saying it pulls a huge yawn out of him. I bite one back, but too late: it’s hit me that I’m shattered too. My vision is jumping; I can’t tell how far away the walls are. ‘But Breslin’s not,’ I say. ‘If we go home, we’re leaving him in charge to do whatever he wants.’

‘And if we don’t, we’re tipping him off.’

Steve’s right. For a dead kid or a dead cop, you work twenty-four hours straight if you need to, then grab a shower and a quick kip and head in for another twenty-four. If you do that for every case, you’ll burn out inside three months. Your basic murder gets an eight-hour shift, maybe twelve or fourteen if something interesting happens. If me and Steve go twenty-four hours for this, we might as well run to Breslin and tell him we think there’s something dodgy going on.

I say, ‘So what do we do about him?’

‘Load him up with busywork at the case meeting. Keep him out of trouble.’

‘Yeah, right. He’d love that. Big man like him-’

Steve’s grinning. ‘This isn’t about his ego, remember? He told us so. It’s all about the squad. He won’t mind tracking down every passenger on the 39A, not when it’s for the squad.’

I’m grinning too. ‘Search every bin between Stoneybatter and Ranelagh: Breslin, for the sake of the squad. Go to the post-mortem: Breslin, for the sake of the squad. Type up statements-’

‘Pizza run: Breslin, for the sake of the squad-’

We’re both on the edge of a full-on fit of the giggles. If I relax that much, I’m gonna fall asleep right here on my feet.

‘We’ll keep him on checking out Fallon,’ I say. ‘If he gets through the KAs, he can talk to Fallon’s old girlfriends, see if he’s got any history of giving out the slaps-’

‘He won’t have.’ Steve runs his hand under the water-cooler tap and over his face, trying to wake himself up.

‘Probably not. But if Breslin wants Fallon charged this bad, he won’t have a problem digging for dirt on him, right? That should keep him too busy to make trouble for us, at least for the evening. And we’ll send a floater with him. Might make him think twice before he disappears any statement he doesn’t like.’

There must be something in my voice. Steve glances up sharply. ‘Has more stuff been going missing on you? Since that witness on the Petrescu case, like?’

‘Nah,’ I say – I’m not about to sob on his shoulder about the mean boys who stole my lovely statement sheet. ‘That doesn’t mean it won’t. We need to be careful here.’

Steve is still watching me, palming drops of water off his jaw, and I feel like it’s half a blink too long before he answers. But he says, easily enough, ‘A floater won’t stop Breslin from feeding Crowley info, if he’s the one doing it.’

‘I know that. What’s your plan? You gonna follow him into the jacks, make sure he doesn’t text Crowley with one hand while he’s got his dick in the other?’

‘Nah, the floater’s a good idea. We can tell Breslin he needs mentoring.’

That gets a snort out of me. ‘He’ll eat that up. It might not work – Breslin’ll probably wrap the guy round his finger – but it’s better than nothing.’

Steve says, ‘We need to keep Breslin away from Aislinn’s electronics.’

Her phone, her e-mails, her social media accounts; the places where, if there is a gangster boyfriend, there might be something to point us his way. ‘At the case meeting we’ll make sure everyone knows we’ve got those,’ I say. ‘Breslin’s probably already had a look through her phone, when he went to the scene, but there’s nothing good on there as far as I could tell.’

‘Tell you what else we need to do,’ Steve says. ‘We need to have chats with Breslin, whenever we get the chance. Or let him chat to us, more like.’

‘Ah, Jaysus. Shoot me now.’

‘We do. Get him talking. He’s not an idiot, but…’

‘But he loves the sound of his own voice,’ I say. ‘Yeah. Let him knock himself out enlightening us; you never know what might slip out. Chats with McCann, too, if the chance comes up.’ McCann and Breslin have been partnering for ten years. They’re tight. If Breslin wants Rory Fallon done, for whatever reason, or if he just wants this case to blow up in my face, McCann will know. ‘Not that he’s much of a talker, but you never know.’

‘It’s the best we can do. We definitely can’t talk to Organised Crime now, not upfront.’ Steve is biting a cuticle, staring at Rory without seeing him. ‘You said you’ve got a mate in there. Can you get on to him? See if he’s heard anything?’

‘Yeah, it’s not that simple.’ I wet my palm at the water cooler and run it around my neck. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘And we don’t type anything up.’

‘God, no. Or leave anything on our desks.’ I think about my statements, locked in my desk drawer; no one’s gonna bother screwing with those again, they like mixing it up to keep me on my toes, but all of a sudden the diddy little lock feels like a joke. ‘Or in the desk drawers. Notes stay on us.’

Steve bites down on the corner of his lip. He says, ‘Jesus.’

This is all a load of nothing, shadows that could be thrown by something huge or by something barely worth tracking down, but the adrenaline is banging through me and I can’t help loving it. I almost flick water at Steve. ‘The face on you. Cheer up, man. This could be the best bit of action we’ve ever seen.’

‘This isn’t my kind of action. Hiding stuff from our own squad-’

‘Chillax on the jacks,’ I say. ‘It’s probably all a load of shite. Like I said: just being careful.’

Movement in the corridor. I’m at the door in two long steps, but it’s just Winters walking an unimpressed little prick in a tracksuit to one of the other interview rooms. All the same: ‘We better move,’ I say. ‘Before Breslin comes back to check up on us.’

Steve nods and tosses his mangled cup into the bin. I take one more look at Rory, who by this point is jittering like his chair is electrified. Then we head in to take it nice and easy for a while.

The interview room stinks of sweat and crying. ‘Detectives Conway and Moran entering the interview room,’ I tell the video recorder.

‘Hi,’ Steve says, taking a seat and giving Rory a sympathetic grin. ‘Detective Breslin had to head off. I’ll be joining you instead. Detective Moran.’

Rory barely nods. I say, pulling up my chair, ‘How’re you doing?’

‘I’m all right.’ His nose is stuffed up. ‘Sorry for…’

‘Not a problem,’ I say. ‘Are you OK to talk now?’

Rory gives me a red-eyed, accusing stare. He says, ‘You knew all along. That I’ve been seeing Aislinn. That I was going to her house last night. You knew.’

Bless his middle-class little heart. He’s genuinely miffed that officers of the force would deceive him. I say, ‘Yeah. We did. I know that was a shitty thing to do to you, but we’re investigating a murder here, and sometimes the only way to get the info we need is by doing things that aren’t ideal. If we’d told you what was up, you might have gone cagey on us, and we couldn’t risk that. You might know something vital, even if you don’t realise it.’

‘I’ve told you everything I know.’

He’s actually in a sulk with me. I sit back in my chair and glance at Steve, handing over.

‘You think you have,’ Steve says, ‘but that was before you knew what’s happened. What I’ve found is, a shock like that, it can shake people’s memories loose. Could you do me a favour and have another think back over last night? Just in case?’

Rory looks him over suspiciously, but Nice Boy Next Door gives him an earnest hopeful gaze back and Rory decides my bad behaviour isn’t Steve’s fault. He’s all primed to like Steve anyway, just for not being Breslin. ‘I suppose. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t-’

‘Ah, brilliant,’ Steve says. ‘Even the smallest thing could help us out. Did you notice anyone you can describe, while you were in Stoneybatter? Hear anything odd? Anything at all stand out to you?’

‘Not really. I’m not very observant to begin with, and last night I was concentrating on… on Aislinn. I wasn’t really paying attention to anything else.’

‘Oh, yeah. I’ve been there. When you’re just starting a relationship, specially one that’s taking off like yours was, nothing else even exists.’

Steve is smiling, and it pulls a twitch that’s almost a smile out of Rory. ‘That’s it exactly. You know what the weather was like, yesterday: it was a rotten evening, I was freezing, a tree dumped rain down the back of my collar… But I felt like I was in a wonderful story. The smell of turf-smoke, and the rain falling through the light of the streetlamps…’

‘See? That’s what I’m talking about: you remember more than you thought. And you were in Stoneybatter for a full hour, right? Half-seven to half-eight. You must’ve seen someone.’

And there it is again: the sudden involuntary twist to Rory’s neck, the jab at his glasses. Steve brings up that extra time, and all of a sudden Rory doesn’t like this game. That blood-smell hits the back of my nose again. The lift of Steve’s head tells me he smells it too.

Rory’s memory comes back: anything to distract us. ‘I did, actually. I passed three women on Prussia Street, when I was on my way to Tesco. They were dressed like they were going out, and two of them had hair like Aislinn’s, long and blond and straight – that’s why I noticed them. They were sharing an umbrella and laughing. And when I got off the bus there were a bunch of boys in hoodies kicking a football on Astrid Road, around the corner from Aislinn’s house – they didn’t stop when I got close, so I had to step onto the street and dodge around them. But I don’t see how any of them could be…’

Steve nods away like this is crucial info. ‘You never know. They might’ve seen something. It’s all good stuff.’ I scribble in my notebook, crucial-info-style. There’s a decent chance all these people are imaginary. ‘Anyone else? Anything else?’

Rory shakes his head. Steve waits, but nothing else pops out. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘What about your conversations with Aislinn? Take a second and think back over those. Did she ever mention anyone who bothered her? Someone at work who was a bit creepy, maybe? An ex who wouldn’t take no for an answer?’

Rory is shaking his head.

‘OK. Was there anything that seemed to make her uncomfortable? She ever get a bit cagey when any particular subject came up?’

‘Actually…’ Rory has relaxed again, now that we’ve moved away from the hot spot. ‘Yes. When it came to her parents, Aislinn was… Something was odd. She told me they were both dead – she said her dad died in a car accident when she was little, and her mum had MS for a long time and finally died of it a few years back…?’

He glances back and forth between us, hoping we’ll give him a yes or a no. We don’t.

‘But she seemed very uncomfortable talking about it, and she changed the subject straightaway. It could have been just because we didn’t know each other that well yet, but I wondered if maybe there was more to the story – like if one of them was still alive, but with some problem, like I said. I mean, obviously I wasn’t about to ask, but… I wondered.’

This isn’t what Steve’s angling for. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Interesting; we’ll definitely check it out. Anything else?’

Rory shakes his head. ‘That’s the only thing I can think of.’

‘You’re positive? I’m not joking: any little thing could make a difference. Anything.’

There’s a moment’s silence. Rory catches his breath to say something; then he lets it out again. He isn’t looking at Steve any more.

Steve waits, watching him, easy and interested as a pal in a pub. Rory says, suddenly and unwillingly, ‘I just wish I knew what else you’re not telling me.’

‘Course you do,’ Steve says matter-of-factly. ‘All I can say is, we don’t keep things back just for the laugh. We’re doing it to catch the person who killed Aislinn.’

Rory’s eyes come up, with an effort, to meet Steve’s. He asks, ‘Am I a suspect?’ And he braces himself for the answer.

Steve says, ‘Right now, everyone who had any kind of connection with Aislinn is a potential suspect. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by trying to claim you’re the exception.’

Rory must have known, but it still lights him up with fear. ‘I never even saw her last night. And I cared about her, I thought we were going to – why would I-’

Whatever he was thinking about telling us, it’s gone. ‘Fair enough,’ Steve says reasonably, ‘but we have to figure everyone we talk to is going to say the same thing. And one person’s going to be lying. We’d be only delighted to eliminate you – the faster we narrow it down, the better – but we can’t do it just on your word. You can see that, right?’

‘Then how do you do it?’

‘Evidence. We always need fingerprints, and on this case we’re also asking for coats and gloves – obviously I can’t tell you why, but they should go a long way towards crossing you off our list. You’re all right with that, yeah? We can hang on to those?’ Steve nods at Rory’s gear.

Rory’s taken aback, but Steve hasn’t left him much choice. ‘I guess – I mean… yes, OK. I’ll get them back, right?’

‘Course,’ Steve says, reaching across the table to hook the gloves across with his pen. ‘It might take a few days, just. OK if we have a look in your apartment for any others that we might need to eliminate?’

‘I’m not…’ Rory blinks fast. The strain and the airless room are getting to him; he’s starting to have a hard time keeping up. ‘Can’t you just take these? They’re the ones I was wearing last night, if that’s-’

‘See, though,’ Steve explains, ‘we’re not just trying to take this particular coat off our list. We’re trying to take you off our list. That means we need anything you could’ve worn, not just what you did wear. See what I mean?’

Rory pushes up his glasses to press his fingers into the corners of his eyes. ‘Yes. OK. Whatever you need. I’d rather be there, though – when you’re in my apartment. I don’t like the thought of people… Is that all right?’

‘Not a problem,’ Steve says easily. ‘The lads who bring you home can just take a quick look around while they’re at it. We’ll get on that as fast as we can, yeah? Get your prints done and get you out of here, back to your day.’

Rory’s eyes close, against his fingertips. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’d like that very much.’

I toss Rory’s gloves and his coat into evidence bags and head off to send them to Sophie, before he can change his mind. Then I type up his statement, and ignore the squad-room turds ignoring me, while Steve prints off a map so Rory can draw us his route home – as near as he can remember, or wants to – and takes him through his story one more time. I give the two of them as much alone time as we can afford, in case Rory’s still holding a grudge against me, but when I come back into the interview room Steve throws me a minuscule shake of his head: nothing interesting has happened.

‘Here,’ Rory says, pushing the map across the table. He’s looking rough. His lips are parched and the mousy hair is plastered flat to his head, like he’s been running in heat. ‘Is that OK?’

There’s a careful line winding from Stoneybatter to Ranelagh, and a tiny tidy X labelled ‘FLOWERS’ on the quays. ‘That’s great,’ Steve says. ‘Thanks a million.’

‘Have a read of that,’ I say, holding out the statement and a pen. ‘If it’s all correct, initial every page and then sign at the end.’

Rory doesn’t move to take the statement. ‘Do you think…’ He catches a long breath. ‘If I hadn’t left when I did. If I’d kept banging on the door, or if I’d called the police, or if I’d broken in. Would I have been able to save her?’

I almost say yes. If he’s not our guy, he’s such a godawful damp weenie, the kind who needs regular slaps across the back of the head just to keep him from vanishing up his own hole, plus he just wasted half our day by being in the wrong place looking guilty as hell. All I have to do is say yes, and he’ll spend the rest of his life whipping himself with a more and more elaborate fantasy where he storms into that cottage in the nick of time and saves Aislinn from a herd of rampaging bikers and they live happily ever after and have 2.4 damp weenie kids. It’s practically irresistible.

But if he is our guy, he’s no idiot, and he’ll find a way to use any info I hand him. ‘No way to know,’ I say. ‘Here,’ and I dump the statement under his nose.

He reads it, or at least he spends a while staring at each page. At the end, he signs like he barely remembers how.

It’s headed for four o’clock. We get hold of the floaters who’ve been pulling CCTV footage – Kellegher and Reilly – and tell them what we want done with Rory and his gaff. Steve finds an old hoodie in his locker so Rory won’t freeze his delicate self on the way home. Then we tell him how great he is and hand him over.

‘You owe me a tenner,’ Steve says, as we watch Kellegher and Reilly walk him down the corridor. From the back, sandwiched between their farmer shoulders and their cop walks, Rory looks like a nerd being marched behind the school to get a few slaps.

I check that I’ve got all the statement pages. ‘Like fuck I do. Did you not see him bawling his eyes out there? Pay up.’

‘Doesn’t count. It has to be because he’s petrified of us, not because he just found out his girlfriend died.’

‘Since when?’ Steve is right, but I feel like yanking his chain. ‘Nah nah nah. You can’t make up the rules to suit-’

‘Since always. When did I ever try to get away with-’

‘When did I ever try to stiff you just because I didn’t like the timing of-’

Rory and the floaters are gone, in a jumble of footsteps echoing down the marble stairwell. I slam the interview-room door and we head for the squad room to get our stuff together. The corridor still feels like it’s twitching with covered pits and pointed sticks, but that doesn’t feel like such a bad thing, not any more.