by Tana French
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.
Chapter 5
I used to love the first case meeting, love everything about it. The pulse of the incident room, everyone taut as greyhounds at the traps; in that room every answer comes in closer on top of the question, every glance snaps round faster. The whipcrack of the jobs being assigned, Murphy collect the CCTV footage, Vincent check gold Toyota Camrys, O’Leary talk to the girlfriend, bam bam bam. The moment when I’d shut my notebook and say Go, and we’d all be out of our seats and halfway to the door before my mouth closed on the word. I used to come out of that meeting feeling like the bastard we were after didn’t have a chance in hell. By this time, even the thought of it – floaters eyeing me up and down, wondering which of the rumours are true; me eyeing them back, wondering which of them is going to glom onto any slip-up, blow it up huge and barter it for a laugh and a pat on the back – turns me hangover-queasy and hangover-mean.
Incident Room C, but. I haven’t been in there since I was a floater chasing down pointless non-leads for the big boys; I’d forgotten. The white light exploding down from the high ceiling, skating and flashing on the whiteboard and the tall windows. The sleek computers lined up straining for action, the throb of them pumping at the air. The desks polished till they look like you could slice your thumb open on the edges. One step through the doorway, and that room blows the fatigue off me like dust and recharges me till I spark static. Walk in there and you could solve Jack the Ripper. And this time I’m no floater, there to jump when some big man snaps his fingers; this time I’m the big woman and every bit of this is all mine. Just for one second, that room blindsides me into loving the job, a hard green painful love like it’s growing from scratch all over again.
Steve’s lifted face, lips parted in a half-smile like a kid at the panto, says he feels the same way. That’s what smacks sense back into me. Steve falls arse over tip for anything beautiful, without bothering to think about how it got that way or why, or what’s underneath. I don’t.
I slap my stack of paper onto the boss desk, the double-length one at the head of
the room. ‘Gentlemen,’ I say, loud. ‘Let’s get started. Who owns this?’ I whip a coffee mug off the desk and hold it up.
Breslin is leaning against the whiteboard, holding court for Deasy and Stanton, the floaters who brought Rory in, and the pair we put on the door-to-door – a slight, fidgety dark guy called Meehan, who I’ve worked with before and like, and a prissy-faced newbie called Gaffney, who I’ve seen around and who’s holding himself so straight that his suit looks like a prefect’s uniform. Breslin, or more likely someone he was bossing around, has made a start on the whiteboard – shots of Aislinn, the crime scene, Rory, a map of Stoneybatter – and set out a heavy hardback notebook for the book of jobs, where we keep a list of what needs doing and who’s supposed to be doing it. We even have an electric kettle.
‘That’s mine,’ Gaffney says, bobbing forward to grab the mug and retreating fast, scarlet. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Meehan.’ I toss him the notebook. ‘Book of jobs, yeah?’ He catches it and nods. Steve dumps his stuff beside mine and starts handing out photocopies: the initial call sheet, the uniforms’ report, Rory’s statement. I head for the whiteboard and sketch out a fast timeline of last night. The floaters pick desks and settle fast: chitchat’s over.
‘The vic,’ I say, tapping the photo of Aislinn with my marker. ‘Aislinn Murray, twenty-six, lived alone in Stoneybatter, worked as a receptionist at a firm selling bathroom supplies to businesses. No criminal record, no calls to us. Assaulted yesterday evening in her home: Cooper’s preliminary exam says she took a punch to the face and hit her head on the fireplace surround. Texts on her phone narrow down the time to between 7.13 and 8.09.’ I move to Rory’s photo. ‘This guy here, Rory Fallon, he’s been seeing her for a couple of months. He was due at her house for dinner at eight o’clock.’
‘Stupid bastard,’ says Deasy, grinning. ‘A looker like her, he should’ve at least waited to kill her till after he’d got his hole.’
Snickers. Breslin clears his throat, with an indulgent smirk and a tilt of his head towards me. The snickers fade.
I say, ‘You can make it up to him, Deasy, seeing as it matters so much to you. Next time we bring him in, you go ahead and give him a blowjob in the jacks.’
Deasy pinches at his tache and makes a sour face. The snickers rise up again, prickly and equivocal.
I say, ‘Me and Moran and Breslin, we’ve just had a chat with Fallon. His story is that he was at Aislinn’s door at eight, but she didn’t answer, so he figured he’d been dumped and flounced off home to cry on his pillow.’
‘Amazingly enough,’ Breslin drawls, twirling his pen, ‘we don’t believe him.’
‘Our working theory,’ I say, ‘is that Fallon arrived at the vic’s place around half-seven, things went bad somehow, and he punched her. We’re guessing he thought she was just knocked out; he legged it home and hoped she wouldn’t call the cops on him, or wouldn’t remember what happened.’
That has Breslin nodding along approvingly, giving the newbies’ little theory his blessing. ‘More like manslaughter than murder,’ he says, ‘but that’s not our problem.’
‘By early this morning,’ I say, ‘either Fallon’s conscience got to him, or else he’d talked to a mate who wanted to do the right thing. An anonymous male caller reported to Stoneybatter station that there was a woman with head injuries at 26 Viking Gardens, and requested an ambulance.’
‘My money’s on Fallon doing it himself,’ Breslin says. ‘He’s exactly the type who’d bottle it after a few hours, start trying to put things right just when it’s too late.’
‘The phone number came up private,’ Steve says. ‘Who wants to get on it?’
All their hands shoot up. ‘Easy there, boys,’ Breslin says, grinning. ‘There’s plenty to go round.’
‘Gaffney, you take the phone number,’ I say – I need to give the kid a pat, settle him after the mug thing. Meehan writes that down. ‘Stanton, Deasy: you were working on a list of Fallon’s KAs. How’s that going?’
‘Nothing surprising,’ Stanton says. ‘Mother, father, two older brothers, no sisters; handful of mates from school and college, a few ex-flatmates, long list of work colleagues and friends – mostly history teachers, librarians, that kind of thing. I’ll e-mail it on to you.’
‘Do that. Detective Breslin, you’ve already started talking to the KAs, am I right?’
‘Both Fallon’s brothers sounded appropriately shocked,’ Breslin says. ‘According to them, they knew about Rory’s big date, but that’s as far as they’d got; they were waiting to hear all the dirty details. They claim they didn’t ring Stoneybatter station this morning, or ever, but then they would, wouldn’t they? I’ve got them both coming in for separate chats after this.’
Breslin’s planning on working a long shift, for a bog-standard case. ‘If they don’t pan out, keep working your way down the list,’ I say. ‘Start with anyone who lives near Rory’s route home, where he could’ve got a surprise visit last night. And while you’re at it, get the brothers and the best mates on tape. We need to run their voices and Fallon’s past the guy at Stoneybatter who took the call, see if he recognises any of them. Can you follow that up?’
For a second I think Breslin’s gonna tell me to stick my scut work, but he says, ‘Why not,’ although there’s a twist to his mouth. ‘Great,’ I say. ‘We need someone to go through CCTV – we’ll put Kellegher and Reilly down for that; they’re pulling all the local footage they can get, they might as well watch it.’
Meehan nods, writing.
‘And someone needs to pull footage from the northbound 39A bus route yesterday evening: find the buses that stopped on Morehampton Road around seven, see if you can pick out Rory Fallon getting on, confirm what time he boarded and what time he got off in Stoneybatter.’ The gym rat has a finger up. That whipcrack rhythm, the one I used to love: even though I know better, it still hits me like a triple espresso. ‘Stanton’s on that. And we need someone to head out to Stoneybatter and time the route Rory says he took from the bus stop: down Astrid Road to the top of Viking Gardens, then up to Tesco on Prussia Street, buy a bunch of flowers and head back down to Viking Gardens. Meehan, you’re around the same build and age as Fallon; can you do that? Time it twice: once at your normal pace, once as fast as you can go.’
Meehan nods. Steve says, glancing back and forth between him and Gaffney, ‘Did Rory’s flowers show up in the bins on the quays?’
‘I looked,’ Meehan says. ‘Gaffney kept going with the door-to-door. The bins hadn’t been emptied since last night, by the state of them, but no irises anywhere. Some lad probably robbed them to give to his bird.’
‘Or,’ Breslin says, ‘they were never in the bins at all: Rory Boy tossed them in the river, because he didn’t want us pulling Aislinn’s blood or hair or carpet fibres off them. Where are we on her KAs?’
‘She didn’t have any immediate family, or much of a social life,’ I say, ‘but her friend Lucy gave us a few names and numbers to start us off. Someone needs to go round to Aislinn’s workplace, get her boss to come in and ID the body, and have the chats with all her colleagues. I want to know if she talked about Rory, and what she said.’
Steve says, ‘And we need to know if any of the colleagues had a thing for her. Just on the off-chance that Rory’s telling the truth’ – Breslin snorts – ‘someone might not have been happy that Aislinn had got herself a fella. And her colleagues were the only people she spent any amount of time with.’ Nice touch. If anyone spots us doing something that doesn’t point to Rory, we’ve got a potential stalker colleague to take the heat. It might even turn out to be true.
‘Why don’t you two cover the office romance,’ Breslin says. ‘Feminine intuition, and all that jazz.’
‘Mine’s in the shop,’ I say. ‘Transmission went. We’ll just have to go with actual detective work. Deasy, Stanton, you head over there first thing tomorrow.’
‘The other place Aislinn spent time was at evening classes,’ St
eve says. ‘She could have picked up a stalker there. We need someone to work out what classes she took, make lists of all the other students or whatever they call them.’
‘Gaffney, you take that,’ I say. ‘Me and Moran will handle Aislinn’s phone records, e-mails, social media, all that—’
‘I can make a start on that tonight,’ Breslin says. ‘I don’t mind staying a few hours late, if that’ll help put this case to bed, but I can’t exactly show up at Rory’s KAs’ houses at nine in the evening looking for chats. I might as well get cracking on the vic’s social life.’
My look clicks against Steve’s for a split second, before his head goes down over his notebook. Breslin could just be trying to buff up his stellar rep – everyone always wants the vic’s electronics, because more often than not, there’s something good in there – or he could be looking to make me into the loser who couldn’t find her own evidence. Or he could need to get rid of anything in there that points to a gangster pal.
Meehan has stopped writing and is looking back and forth between us, uncertain. ‘Me and Moran have already started on it,’ I say. ‘We’ve been in since last night and we need to catch a few hours’ kip, but we’ll get back onto Aislinn’s electronics first thing tomorrow morning. You’ve started on Rory Fallon, Detective Breslin; you might as well stick with him. We need someone to make a list of his exes and see what they’ve got to say about him, specially about what winds him up and what he’s like when he doesn’t get his way. If you can stay late tonight, why don’t you get the ball rolling on that.’
Breslin has on a face like he’s found a hair in his soup and knows the waiter is too useless to fix it. ‘Why don’t I do that.’
‘Great,’ I say. After a moment, Meehan’s pen starts moving again. ‘Detective Gaffney: first murder case, am I right?’
‘It is, yeah.’ He’s from somewhere involving sheep.
‘OK,’ I say, sending the gaffer a mental thank-you for not bothering to get us floaters with actual experience. ‘You stick close to Detective Breslin for now; he’ll show you the ropes, help you get the hang of this.’ Breslin nods pleasantly at Gaffney, no objections, but that means nothing. ‘Can you stay late tonight, yeah?’