by French, Tana
Ganly’s is empty apart from the baldy barman, who’s stacking glasses and humming along to Perry Como singing ‘Magic Moments’ on the radio. ‘Ah,’ he says, giving me a nod. ‘It’s yourself. Did I win?’
‘You got into the next round,’ I say. ‘The woman you identified for me the other day: remember the guy who was in with her?’
‘More or less. I told yous before, he wasn’t the main thing on my mind.’
‘Would you have a look at a few photos for me, see if you can spot him?’
‘Your pal was already in yesterday, asking me the same thing. I was no use to him.’
‘He said that, yeah. These are different photos.’
The barman shrugs. ‘I’ll have a go, sure. Anything to help the forces of law and order.’
I pull out a fresh copy of the McCann photo array. ‘If you see the man here, tell me. If he’s not there, tell me. If you’re not sure, tell me. OK?’
‘I can manage that.’ The barman takes the card and gives it a long thoughtful gaze. ‘Would you look at that,’ he says. ‘I’d say you’ve got him this time. This lad here.’ He taps McCann’s face.
‘Are you sure?’
‘I wouldn’t stake my life on it, but I’d put fifty quid on it down the bookies. Will that do you any good?’
‘I’ll take it,’ I say, finding a pen. ‘Initial the photo you recognise. At the bottom, write down where you’ve seen him before and how sure you are, and sign.’
The barman writes, head bent close to the page. ‘Can you think of anyone else who was in that evening?’ I ask. ‘Anyone who might have noticed the pair of them?’
‘Ah, now. You’re asking a bit much. I don’t call the register at the beginning of every night.’
‘I might have to come in and have chats with your regulars, some night. I’ll try and keep it low-key.’
‘I had a feeling that was on the cards, all right.’ The barman passes me the sheet and the Biro. His writing is tiny and beautiful; it deserves fountain pen and thick yellowing paper, not this. ‘If you’re talking to this fella, tell him he’s not welcome back in here. I’m not asking you if he did anything to that young one. I’m just saying people come here for a bit of peace.’ He gives me one more long glance, as he picks up the next two glasses. ‘I wouldn’t have your job for all the tea in China,’ he says.
The uniform in Stoneybatter station says the voice sample might be the fella who rang Sunday morning, except he thinks that fella sounded a bit different from this one, he can’t explain how but not the same, maybe the voice was a bit higher and maybe it had a Meath accent, or else Kildare, it won’t come back to him properly. No surprise there; even if we hadn’t already smeared that pointless voice array all over his memory, I’m not the only one who can put on funny voices. We’ve got everything we’re going to get.
It’s lunchtime. I stop at Rory’s favourite Tesco, grab two bottles of Coke and two sandwiches with plenty of meat in them – this could be a long afternoon – and head back to HQ. Sleety rain spatters my windscreen with big dirty spots, but by the time I get to the Castle gardens, it’s stopped. I pick a stretch of wall among the bushes, out of sight of the windows, and use paper napkins to get the worst of the rain off it before I sit down and open my sandwich. A couple of small birds are hopping forlornly on the wet grass. When I toss them a chunk of bread, they panic and scatter into the bushes in a wild rattle of wings.
I’m only getting stuck into the sandwich when Steve comes through the garden gate, walking fast with his head down, like that’s gonna magically hide the red hair from anyone at a window. ‘Hey,’ he says.
‘Hiya. Breslin gone?’
Steve brushes at the wall and sits down beside me. ‘Just legged it. He got a message from some girl in Howth?’
‘Yeah. She’s not gonna be much use to him. You have lunch yet?’
‘Nah.’
‘Here.’
I pass him the other sandwich. Steve takes it and holds it in his two hands, not opening it. ‘Did you get anything good?’
‘Tentative ID off the barman. No joy out of the uniform. Sophie’s guys got a male DNA profile off the mattress.’
He says, ‘What do we do?’
I say, ‘We need to talk to McCann.’
There isn’t a way around it any longer. In two hours, maybe three, Breslin will be back and suspicious and wanting to arrest Rory. Those couple of hours are all we’ve got.
Steve nods. He asks, ‘How?’
We have so many weapons. You pick them up from watching other Ds, you sift them out of squad-room stories, you come up with your own and pass them around; you stash them all away safe, for the days when you’ll need them. By the time you make Murder, you have an arsenal that could pulverise cities.
You come into an interview carrying a ten-pound stack of papers, so the suspect thinks you’ve got that much against him. You stick a videotape on top, so he’ll think you’ve got video evidence. You flip through the papers, put your finger down and start to say something, catch yourself – Nah, we’ll save that for later – and move on, leaving him to fret about what you’re saving. You pull out a voice recorder – My handwriting’s only terrible, mind if I use this instead? – so that later, when you turn it off and lean in confidentially, he’ll think you’re off the record; he’ll forget all about the interview-room recorders, whirring away. You read imaginary texts on your phone and swap cryptic comments (Happy days, the searchers got lucky) with your partner. You do the fake lie-detector test with an app these days: give the guy some bollix about electromagnetic fields and have him press his thumb on your phone screen after each question, and when you get to the one where he’s lying, you shift a finger and it flashes red graphs and LIE LIE LIE. You tell him the live victim is dead and can’t contradict him, or the dead one is alive and talking. You tell him you can’t let him leave till the two of you work this out, but if he’ll just tell you what happened, he can be home on his sofa with a nice cup of tea in time for Downton Abbey. You tell him it wasn’t his fault, you tell him the vic was asking for it, you tell him anyone would’ve done the same thing. You tell him witnesses heard him talk about how he loved kiddie porn, you tell him the pathologist says he rode the dead body till it started falling apart, you pummel him with the sickest shite you can come up with until he can’t stop himself from shouting at you that that’s all bollix, that wasn’t the way it went; and then you lift one eyebrow and say Yeah, right, then how did it go? and you listen while he tells you.
All our weapons are useless this time. McCann’s known the feel of them by heart, he’s had them shaped to his hands by wear, since long before we ever laid eyes on them. We’re going in bare.
I say, ‘We talk to him. That’s all we can do.’
‘He won’t talk back.’
‘He wants to tell us his story. They all do. Deep down, he wants us to know that him and Aislinn, that was true love, and whatever she was playing at with Rory was a load of shite that was begging for a punch. So let’s see how much of that we can get him to tell us.’
Steve says, ‘We focus on the relationship. Nothing else. We don’t go near Breslin being involved, or McCann’ll go loyal and shut his trap. Just talk about Aislinn.’
‘We’ve got one grenade,’ I say. ‘When Breslin found out that file box was full of the Desmond Murray case, he was relieved. Meaning he didn’t know McCann had worked that case. Meaning two days ago, at least, McCann hadn’t made the connection: he didn’t know Aislinn was Des Murray’s daughter. He didn’t know she was playing him all along.’
Steve says, ‘We save that.’
‘Yeah. That oughta go off with a bang.’
The birds have forgotten their fright and come back to peck about on the grass. Breslin is across the river by now, heading north.
Steve asks, ‘Where do we do it?’
This is what I was thinking about, all the way back here in the car, all the time I was waiting for Steve. ‘Interview room,’ I say.
‘No. We throw everyone out of the incident room, we might as well put up a sign saying there’s some big secret thing going down. Anyway, from now on we need to document everything, if we want a snowball’s chance in hell of making a case.’
‘He’ll know. The second we head for an interview room, he’ll know.’
‘He will anyway. No matter where we take him, there’s no way we can make this seem like a nice friendly chat, not past the first thirty seconds. The moment we bring up him having met Aislinn, he’s gonna know.’
The thought of that moment flicks across us like a small black splatter of sleet. It stops us talking.
We get the sandwiches down us, the Coke for caffeine. Then we go into the Murder building, in through the glossy black door with the combination my fingers could press in my sleep, nodding to Bernadette on our way past. We take off our coats and hang them neatly in our lockers, I take off my satchel and stash it away. Steve finds a copy of the family photo from the Desmond Murray case and tucks it in his suit pocket; I take photos of the arrays, on my phone, and then I shove them to the bottom of my locker and hope no one picks today to piss in it again. The twin metal slams of our locker doors echo, sharp and startled, against the tiles of the small dim room.
We go side by side up the wide marble staircase, our footsteps circling blurrily around the stairwell, to the squad room. We go in there with no stack of papers, no videocassettes, no voice recorders. We go in with our hands empty.
The squad room’s almost deserted, everyone out on cases or on lunch. For a second there, it reminds me of early Sunday morning, just before the gaffer came in to dump this case on me and Steve. The quiet, just touched at the edges by the far-off drone of traffic; the white light of the fluorescents sealing the room against the thick grey press of cloud at the windows, charging the scattered paperwork and forgotten coffee cups with latent meaning. Me thinking how I could love this room, if only.
McCann is hunched in his corner, peck-typing. He looks worse every time I see him. Me, bloody eejit, asking Fleas to look out for anyone who seems like he’s had a bad week. You could fit your case notes in those eyebags.
‘McCann,’ I say. ‘Got a few minutes? We could do with a hand.’
He looks up from his computer and he knows.
For a second I think he’s gonna shut us down: got work of my own to do, bye. But he needs to know what we’ve got. And he’s the veteran; we’re rookies, can’t even get through this first step without cracking – Steve is shifting his feet, I’m rubbing at my mouth. McCann can’t resist. He figures he can do this, not a problem, and walk away.
‘All right.’ He hits Save and stands up. O’Neill and Winters, examining a statement sheet across the room, barely even glance over.
‘Thanks for this,’ Steve says, on our way up the stairs. ‘We really appreciate it.’
‘Yeah. What do you need a hand with?’
‘Aislinn Murray case,’ I say, over my shoulder. McCann’s face doesn’t change. ‘We need all the witnesses we can get. Is in here OK, yeah?’ I push open the door of the nice interview room, the pastel-yellow one with the coffee sachets that we used for Rory the second time round, and give McCann a hopeful look.
McCann grunts. He picks one of the chairs on the detectives’ side, with its back to the one-way mirror, and gives it a quick rock to see if it’s a dud. ‘I’ll have tea,’ he says, landing in it heavily. ‘Drop of milk, no sugar.’
‘You sure you’re all right for this?’ Steve asks, obediently heading for the kettle. ‘Not meaning to get personal, but you’re looking a bit rough, man.’
‘Thanks.’
‘The missus not doing your ironing this week, no?’ I want to know, with a grin that could go any way. ‘You in the doghouse?’
‘I’m grand. How’s your personal life?’
‘Shite,’ I say. Me and Steve laugh; McCann comes up with something that’s meant to be a smile, except he’s out of practice. ‘You’re married twenty-five years, amn’t I right? How do you do it?’
‘Twenty-six. Is this what you wanted me for, yeah? Relationship advice?’
‘Nah. You mind if we have this on?’ I’m already turning on the video camera.
McCann’s eyebrows jerk down; he didn’t think we had the nads. ‘Why the fuck do you want that yoke?’
‘Because I’m paranoid. A few months back, right? I got stuck helping Roche interview some scumbag’s mammy. I got her to drop the fake alibi; Roche told the gaffer it was him.’ I pull up the chair opposite McCann, the suspect’s chair. ‘Now I video everything. I’m thinking of getting myself a body cam.’
‘In fairness,’ Steve says apologetically, dropping teabags into cups, ‘it’s best practice to record witness statements, when we have the—’
‘Jesus Christ,’ McCann says. ‘Video whatever you want.’
‘Ah, man,’ Steve says. He’s practically curling into a ball with embarrassment, puppy-dog eyes begging McCann not to hold it against him. ‘I’m really sorry about this. We’d’ve only loved to not bother you with this shite. If it was only one bit of evidence, then we’d have just dumped it down the back of the file and left it to go away; we wouldn’t have taken up your time. But . . . I mean, it’s coming at us from all directions. We figured we’d be better off getting on top of it now.’
‘At least ye have the sense to make him the good cop,’ McCann says to me. ‘I can’t see you pulling that off.’
Steve does an awkward laugh. ‘No flies on you,’ I say, shaking my head ruefully. ‘No point in us trying to pull the wool over your eyes. We wouldn’t waste our time, or yours.’
‘You are wasting my time. What do you want?’
‘That’s you put in your place,’ I say to Steve. He manages an embarrassed half-grin as he makes his way to the table, eyes on his carefully balanced double handful of mugs. He passes them out and pulls the spare chair around the table, next to me. McCann slurps his tea and makes a face.
‘So let’s clear one thing up straightaway,’ I say, ‘save us all some time. You were having an affair with Aislinn Murray.’
McCann sucks his teeth and stares at me, not bothering to hide the disgust. ‘You little quisling,’ he says.
What surprises me is that I can’t even come up with a spark of anger at that. ‘We’ve got a witness who saw you chat Aislinn up and take her phone number,’ I say. ‘She’s ID’d your photo. We’ve got a witness who saw you and Aislinn having a drink in Ganly’s together. He’s ID’d your photo. We’ve got a witness who saw you in the vicinity of Viking Gardens at least three times over the past six weeks. He’s ID’d your photo. All of them will ID you in a lineup if you make us take it that far. Do I need to go to all that hassle, or can we just cut to the chase?’
McCann drinks his tea and thinks. I can see him rearranging pieces in his head like a chess player, tracking each strategy a dozen moves down the line.
What he needs to say is ‘No comment.’ That simple. Put up a wall of that, let us throw piece after piece of evidence at it till we run out, then walk away. This is the one and only non-idiotic thing to do, and every detective in the world knows that. We’ve all had jaw-dropped conversations where we can’t believe the moron actually talked to us, when all he had to do was keep his face shut and he could have gone home; we’ve all seen the pros fold their arms and repeat ‘No comment’ on a loop, till we give up and cut them loose. We’ve all thought it: If that was me, no way in hell would I open my big gob. We all know for a fact that if we ever get pulled in, innocent or guilty, it’ll be No comment all the way.
McCann can’t make himself do it. Once he says, ‘No comment,’ he loses hold of himself as the detective, maybe forever. Once those two words come out of his mouth, he’s no different from any junkie shoplifter, any pervert groping girls on buses: he’s the suspect.
He says, ‘I knew Aislinn Murray. W
e met up a few times.’
‘And that’s it,’ I say.
‘Yeah.’
‘Were you ever in her home?’
Cogs turning again, as he weighs up whether there might be anything we’ve managed to keep away from Breslin, any fingerprints he missed during his wipe-down, anything that could catch him out. ‘Yeah,’ he says eventually. ‘The odd chat, cup of tea.’
‘Ever shag her?’
‘You got a good reason for asking me that question?’
Me and Steve glance at each other. McCann doesn’t react.
I say, ‘We got male DNA off her mattress.’
‘It’s not mine.’
‘You mean you wore condoms. It’s not semen. It’s sweat.’
McCann goes back inside his head to think. I say helpfully, ‘We’re pretty sure Aislinn didn’t sleep with anyone else in the last couple of years.’
Not a budge out of him, as he weighs and measures. Then he nods. ‘Yeah. We had the odd shag.’
And that’s the preliminaries done with. Everything we can afford to give up, all three of us, is laid out on the table. Like the brisk initial stage of a board game, sacrifice this to take that, till almost by cooperation you’ve cleared the board of the small stuff, readied it for the real battle ahead.
‘Ah, man,’ Steve says ruefully, raking his fingers through his hair. ‘Ah, man. Of all the girls in this town, you had to pick one who was going to get herself murdered?’
McCann shrugs, swigs his tea. ‘What can I say. She didn’t seem like the type.’
‘You should’ve said,’ Steve tells him reproachfully. ‘As soon as the case came in.’
McCann’s eyes move across us both like we’re not worth stopping for. ‘If it’d been any other Ds, I would’ve.’
‘It’s not like we were going to ring your missus and grass you up.’
‘That’s what you say. You’re telling me you’d have stood by your squad? Look where we are.’