by Tana French
‘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 actual
ly 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?’