by French, Tana
‘You think she knows more about Aislinn’s married fella than she’s letting on?’
‘I think we’ve only got Lucy’s word for it that this married fella even exists.’ We’re keeping our voices down; Tesco guy and buggy mammy look like they’ve barely noticed we’re here, but you never know. ‘She was dead careful not to give us anything we could disprove, you notice that? No name, no description, no dates, no place where they might’ve met, nothing.’
Steve has his roll opened up across his lap and is carefully decorating it with brown sauce. ‘You figure she made him up on the spot? Why, but?’
I say, ‘She cares way too much whether Rory’s our prime suspect. It’s not just that she wants to know who did this to her mate; she wants to know whether we’re looking at Rory, specifically.’
‘Yeah.’ Steve squirts the last of the brown sauce into his mouth and tosses the packet into a bin by the bench. ‘I couldn’t figure out whether she was hoping it was yes or no, though. She was straight in there giving us Rory’s name, telling us he was due at Aislinn’s last night; but after that . . .’
‘Right. Giving us his name and the appointment was no big deal: she had to know we had that already, or would any minute. And after that, it was all about what a good guy he was, how she never got any kind of threat vibe off him, how happy Aislinn was with him. Could be all true; she could be trying to steer us away from him because she genuinely doesn’t think it’s him, doesn’t want us wasting our time while the real guy gets away. But I’m wondering if her feelings for Rory were as nonexistent as she’s claiming.’
Steve’s eyebrows go up. ‘“I thought he was kind of boring, but Ash was obviously seeing something I missed . . .” ’
‘Yeah, we’ve only got Lucy’s word for that, too. For all we know, she was just as into Rory as Aislinn was. For all we know, she was actually seeing him behind Aislinn’s back.’
‘We just said: she cared about Aislinn. A lot.’
‘And for some reason, she’s not happy admitting that. Could be guilt.’ I get more coffee into me. ‘Like she said herself, that love-triangle shite can go way wrong.’
‘She’s got an alibi,’ Steve points out.
‘Yeah, plus the shock was genuine. Lucy’s not our woman. But her alibi means she can’t give Rory an alibi. So if she wants him off the hook, for whatever reason, the only thing she can do is come up with some mysterious other guy for us to chase.’
Steve chews and thinks. ‘We’ll cross-check Lucy’s and Rory’s numbers, Facebook accounts, e-mails, see if they’ve been in touch. Not that it proves anything if they haven’t; Lucy could still be into him.’
‘Yeah.’ The dinosaur kid is hovering, balancing on his scooter and eyeing our rolls. I give him a hairy look till he backs off. ‘And we need to go through Aislinn’s stuff ASAP, see if we find any evidence that this other fella existed. If he did, there’s gonna be something. Texts, calls, e-mails.’
Steve examines his breakfast roll, picking an angle. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘Maybe.’
‘What’re you on about, “maybe”? There’s no such thing as invisible, not any more. If he didn’t leave tracks, it’s because he wasn’t there.’
‘Tell you what I was thinking,’ Steve says. ‘Just an idea, now. But I was wondering: what if Aislinn’s other fella was a crim? A gangster, like?’
Fried egg nearly goes down my nose. ‘Jesus, Moran. How desperate are you to make this one interesting? Shame they got Whitey Bulger, or you could’ve told yourself it was him.’
‘Yeah yeah yeah. Think about it. It explains why Lucy doesn’t want us going after Rory: she’s positive it’s the other guy, doesn’t want us heading the wrong way. It explains why she figured straightaway we were there about Aislinn. It explains why she texted her to be careful, last night: if Aislinn was two-timing a crim, she’d want to be bloody careful about inviting some new fella around for dinner—’
I still have my mouth open to slag strips off him when it sinks in: Little Mr Optimist is right. It would fit.
‘Jesus,’ I say. That pulse is hammering right through me, practically lifting me off the bench. Forget coffee; this job, when it’s right, this job is the hit that speed freaks throw their lives away hunting. ‘And it’d explain why Lucy’s keeping stuff back. She wants us to get him, but the last thing she wants is to be up on the stand with some gangster watching her explain how she’s the one who dobbed him in. So she throws the idea out there for us to chase down, but she makes a big deal about how she doesn’t know the other guy’s name, doesn’t know anything about him, can’t even swear he exists, her and Aislinn weren’t actually that close. Fair play to you, Steo. It works.’
‘Not just a pretty face,’ Steve says, through roll, giving me a thumbs-up. When he’s swallowed: ‘And if it was a gangster, he might’ve been careful not to leave a trail. No texts, calls, none of that.’
‘Specially if he was a married gangster. Half of them are married to each other’s sisters, cousins, whatever. Playing offside could get you kneecapped.’ I’ve got my second wind now, all right. If this pans out, the gaffer is gonna shit a hedgehog; this is about as far from routine as a lovers’ tiff can get. ‘Jesus. It actually plays.’
‘It’d explain why the call came in to Stoneybatter station, too. Most civilians, if they want an ambulance, they’ll just ring 999—’
‘But a crim, or a crim’s mate, he’s gonna know that 999 calls are recorded. And he’s not gonna want his voice on tape, where we can identify it – specially if he’s already known to us. So he rings the local station instead.’
‘Exactly,’ Steve says. ‘The only thing, though. Does Aislinn seem to you like the type who’d go out with a gangster? Nice girl like that?’
‘Hell, yeah. She’s exactly the type. Her life was so boring, just thinking about it makes me want to hit myself in the face with a hammer for a bit of excitement. You know what she had in her bookcase? Bunch of books about crime in Ireland, including a big thick one on gangs.’
Steve lets out a huff of laughter. ‘Look at that. Maybe she was the type after all.’
‘I thought she was just looking for second-hand thrills, but she could’ve been reading up on her new fella’s job – or maybe the book was just for kicks, but then she got a chance at the real thing. And you heard Lucy: it’s not like Aislinn had some big moral sense, or even basic common sense, that’d stop her getting involved with a crim.’ I’m working to keep my voice even. It’s early days; this is a stack of made-up ifs and maybes that could dissolve into nothing any second. ‘If some dodgy geezer starts chatting her up in a club? As long as he’s good-looking and he dresses OK, she’s gonna be fucking thrilled. It’s gonna make her year.’
‘Most of them don’t dress OK, but,’ Steve points out. ‘The gang lads. They dress like shite. Lot of them look like shite, too.’
‘So that’ll narrow it down. Then, after a few months, the thrill’s wearing off, Aislinn’s starting to notice that Mr Excitement is basically just a scumbag. And that’s when she meets Nice Guy Rory. She dumps the scumbag – or else she can’t get up the guts to do it, just starts seeing Rory on the QT. Either way, the scumbag’s not happy.’
Steve says, ‘You think Lucy knows a name?’
‘If there’s a name to know.’
‘If. You think?’
‘Probably just a first name, or a nickname. And she’s not gonna give it to us. If he’s out there, we’ll have to find him ourselves.’
‘I’ve got no one good in Organised Crime. Do you?’
‘Not really. Sort of.’ I can’t stay sitting any longer, not with this bouncing in front of me. I shove the last bite of breakfast roll into my mouth, ball up the wrapper and toss it over Steve into the bin. ‘Don’t worry about it yet. Right now, we’re just gonna have a nice friendly chat with Rory Fallon. Depending on what comes out of that, we can decide if it’s worth following up this other thing. Meanwhile—’
Something moves in the corner of my ey
e and I whip around fast, but it’s just the guy in the Tesco uniform, scurrying back to his shelf-stacking now he’s got his fix on board. He flinches and tries to glare, but I point a finger at him and he concentrates on scurrying. When I’m on a case, I get what O’Kelly would probably call jumpy and what I call alert. Not just me; a lot of Ds do. It’s an animal thing: when you’re tracking a top predator, even though you’re not his prey and he’ll probably shit himself when you come face to face, your alert level hits orange and stays there. I’ve been having trouble coming off orange alert lately, even when I’m not working.
I say, ‘Meanwhile, I vote we say fuck-all about this.’
‘To Breslin.’
‘To anyone.’ If this doesn’t pan out, we’re gonna be the squad joke: the idiots who went full-on gangbusters on their by-numbers lovers’ tiff. ‘It’s all hypothetical; no point throwing it out there till we’ve got something solid. For now, all anyone needs to know is Lucy told us about Aislinn’s background, said Rory seemed like a nice guy, end of.’
‘Works for me,’ Steve says, just a little too promptly.
‘No shit,’ I say, realising. ‘That’s why you wanted to keep her far away from work. You cunning little bastard.’
‘Like I said.’ Steve grins and crumples his napkin bib. ‘Not just a pretty face.’
The dinosaur kid has fallen off his scooter and is sitting on the path trying to work up a convincing wail. We dodge around him and we’re heading for the gate, me dialling the floaters to tell them to bring Fallon in, when I catch the plastic bag in the corner of my eye and realise what’s sticking out of it: a dead cat, fur plastered sleek against its skull, lips pulled back to show spiky teeth open wide in a frozen howl of fury.
Chapter 3
The squad room has come alive. The printer is going, someone’s phone is ringing, the blinds are open to try and drag in the half-arsed sunlight; the place smells of half a dozen different lunches, tea, shower gel, sweat, heat and action. O’Gorman is leaning back in his chair with his feet up on his desk, throwing crisps into his mouth and shouting to King about some match; King is reading a statement sheet and saying ‘Yeah’ whenever O’Gorman pauses for breath. Winters and Healy are arguing about some witness who Healy wants to shake up a little and Winters thinks is a waste of time. Quigley is working his way through one of the filing cabinets, wearing a put-out look on his flabby puss and slamming the drawers harder than he needs to; next to the filing cabinet, McCann is hunched over his desk, shuffling paper and flinching at every slam – he looks like he’s got a bastard of a hangover, but the permanent eyebags and five o’clock shadow mean he mostly looks like that anyway. O’Neill has his phone pressed to one ear and a finger stuck in the other. Beside Steve’s and my desks, two guys who have to be our floaters are leaning awkwardly on whatever they can find, trying to look at home and stay out of the way and laugh at one of Roche’s pointless stories, hoping he’ll remember next time he needs someone to do his scut work.
No Breslin, but his overcoat is hanging over the back of his chair. He’s probably still sorting out the incident room and bitching to himself about being ordered around by the likes of me. I’m not worried: Breslin’s been at this game too long to get snotty when it’s not useful to him.
A few people glance up when me and Steve come in, then go back to whatever they’re doing. No one says howya. Neither do we. We head for our desks and the floaters. When I’m in the squad room I stride, fast and hard, to smack down the instinct to tiptoe along in case someone sticks a foot in front of me. No one has yet, but it feels like a matter of time.
‘Hey,’ I say to the floaters, who’ve straightened up and put on their alert faces. They’re both around our age: a gym rat already starting to go bald in front, and a fat blond guy trying for a tache that isn’t working out. ‘Conway, and this is Moran. Got something for us?’
‘Stanton,’ says the gym rat, doing a fake salute.
‘Deasy,’ says the fat one. ‘Yeah: we brought in your man Rory Fallon a few minutes ago.’
‘Poor bastard,’ says Roche from his corner, which reeks of aftershave and sticky keyboard. Roche is a big no-necker who went into this gig because the only way he can get a stiffy is by bullying people into tears, but he’s no fool: he knows exactly when to keep that instinct chained up and when to let it out for a run, and he gets results. ‘Will I tell him to go ahead and cut off his own balls, save himself some time and hassle?’
‘It’s not my fault my solve rate’s higher than yours, Roche,’ I tell him. ‘It’s because you’re a retard. Learn to live with it.’
The floaters look startled and try to hide it. Roche shoots me a bull-stare that I don’t bother noticing. ‘What’s the story on Fallon?’ I ask, dumping my satchel on my chair.
‘Twenty-nine, owns a bookshop in Ranelagh,’ says the fat guy. ‘Lives above the shop.’
‘With anyone?’
‘Nah. On his ownio.’
Which is a pisser: a flatmate would have been not only a nice witness to have, but also an obvious candidate for the guy who called it in. Steve asks, ‘Anything happen that we should know about, while you were sitting on his house?’
They look at each other, shake their heads. ‘Not a lot,’ says the gym rat. ‘He opened the front curtains around ten, in his pyjamas. No other visible movement. By the time we picked him up, he’d got dressed, but no shoes, so it didn’t look like he was planning on heading out.’
‘He’d had breakfast,’ says the fat guy. ‘Coffee and a fry-up, by the smell.’
Steve catches my eye. A guy punches his girlfriend to death, goes home and snuggles into his pyjamas for a nice bit of kip, gets up in the morning and stuffs his face with egg and sausage. It could happen; Fallon could have been dazed into autopilot, or a psychopath, or setting up his defence. Or.
The room is hot, a dry edgy heat that pricks at the skin on my neck. I pull my coat off. ‘What’d you say to him?’
‘Like you told us,’ the fat one says. ‘Nothing. Just said we thought he might have some information that would help us out with an investigation, and asked him if he’d mind coming in for a chat.’
‘And he just said yeah? No hassle, no questions?’
The two of them shake their heads. ‘Accommodating guy,’ says the gym rat.
‘No shit,’ I say. Most people, if you ask them to come in to a cop shop and answer some questions, they want at least a little info before they ditch the day’s plans and toddle along after you. Either Rory Fallon is a natural pushover, or he really, really wants to look like a helpful guy with nothing to hide.
‘Did he say anything along the way?’ Steve asks.
‘Wanted to know what this was about, once we got in the car,’ says the fat guy. Which is also interesting. Obviously Rory might know exactly what this is about, but he doesn’t think we can prove he knows, which means Lucy wasn’t straight on the phone to him the minute we left. One point against the Lucy-and-Rory theory. ‘We said we didn’t know all the details; the investigating detectives would fill him in. After that he kept his mouth shut.’
‘We were nice,’ says the gym rat. ‘Made him a cup of tea, told him how great he was for helping us out, we’d be nowhere without responsible citizens like him and all that jazz. We figured you’d like him relaxed.’
‘Lovely,’ Steve says. ‘Where’d you put him?’
‘The interview room down the end.’
‘Is he the type who’ll start thinking about leaving if we keep him on ice for a few minutes?’
Both of them laugh. ‘Nah,’ says the gym rat. ‘Like I said: accommodating.’
‘He’s a good boy,’ says the fat guy. ‘Gone bad.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘We’re going to need a list of his associates. Can you get cracking on that? I’m specially interested in close male friends, brothers, father, close male cousins. Some guy called this in, and if it wasn’t Fallon, we need to know who it was.’ The gym rat is taking notes and making sure I notice
. I say, ‘The incident room should be ready to work in by now. Case meeting at four. If that changes, I’ll let you know.’
The floaters head off at a snappy pace, carefully judged to make them look on the ball but not rushed. I remember that walk; I remember practising it, on my way in to make lists and photocopy statements for some Murder D, hoping I could walk myself into this squad room and never have to walk out again. For a weird second I feel something almost like sorry for Stanton and Deasy, until I realise that if they ever make it in here, they’re gonna get on just dandy.
Steve has turned on his computer and is clicking away. I say, ‘How come you want to keep Fallon on ice?’
‘Only for a minute.’ Steve is typing. ‘He heads home and goes to bed, gets up and makes himself a fry? Whatever way you look at it, that’s pretty cold for a good law-abiding citizen. Even if he’s just trying to look innocent. I want to run him through the system, see what pops up.’
‘Run her, too. I want to know where I remember her from.’ I dial my voicemail, tuck the phone under my jaw and start sorting through the statements from last night’s scumbagfest – we need to get the file to the prosecutors before our hold on the scumbags runs out. McCann is mumbling into his mobile, clearly taking job-related shite from his missus (‘I know that. Tonight I swear I’ll be home by— Yeah, I know about the reservations. Of course I’ll be—’), and Roche is miming whipcracks.
I have another voicemail from Breslin – I’m starting to get my hopes up that we can work this entire case without ever actually seeing each other. ‘Yeah, Conway. Hi.’ Still smooth, in case Hollywood is listening, but just a faint edge of displeasure: me and Steve have been bad little Ds. ‘Looks like we’re having some trouble liaising here. I’m back at base. I’ll go ahead and get that incident room sorted out for us; you ring me back ASAP. Talk soon.’ I delete it.
‘Rory Fallon isn’t in the system,’ Steve says.
‘At all?’
‘At all.’
‘Little Holy Mary,’ I say. Staying out of the system is rarer than you’d think; even a speeding ticket puts you on file. Rory has officially never done anything naughty in his life. ‘That doesn’t mean he was actually a virgin till last night. Just that he never got caught.’