by Tana French
‘She, no – she didn’t. It never, it didn’t happen, none of that – it—’
‘I bet you remember the exact look on her face. I bet you can’t get it out of your head. Was she disgusted with you? Scared of you? Did she think you were a freak? Or a psycho? Or a pathetic loser? What did she say, Rory?’
Rory tries to keep denying, but Breslin doesn’t give him the chance. He’s leaning across the table, close enough to make Rory smell his breath, his aftershave, the heat of his skin. ‘What? Did she laugh at you? Tell you to get out? Threaten to call us? What did it? What pushed you over the edge?’
‘I didn’t do anything!’
It comes out as a wild yelp. Breslin stares. ‘What the living fuck are you talking about? You stalked her, peeped at her, you call that nothing?’
‘No—’
‘Did she think it was nothing?’
‘She didn’t know! I—’
‘That’s a load of bollix. You keep babbling on about “needing a moment”, but twenty-five minutes isn’t a moment. Twenty-five minutes is more than enough time to take your moment out back, show up at Aislinn’s door, shove your foot in your mouth, lose the head, kill Aislinn, clean up after yourself, realise you need to account for all this time, and head for Tesco. Which is exactly what you did.’
Rory’s face is a strange mix of horror and something almost like relief. He’s run this scene in his head a hundred times already. Now that it’s taken shape and come to find him, it feels like something he already knows, all the sharp corners already rubbed smooth from so much handling. It’s actually easier, this time; we’re doing all the work for him. All he has to do is come out with his lines.
He says, ‘I never hurt her.’
After Breslin’s voice, his sounds weightless, a spindly thing floating on the hot air.
‘But you did go into her house,’ I say.
‘No. I swear.’
‘The Technical Bureau is processing the clothes you wore that night. What are you going to say when we find her carpet fibres on your trousers?’
‘You can’t. You won’t. I wasn’t in there.’
Breslin says, ‘No one else was.’
‘But the guy, the stalker guy—’
‘Oh, please. Did you seriously believe you were the first person to think of looking at Aislinn’s social life? Every guy who ever smiled at her, Rory, we’ve been all over him like a rash. Every one of them’s been eliminated. Have you got one reason, just one tiny reason, why I should believe your stalker exists?’
A sudden jerk out of Rory, his hands coming up. ‘Wait. Yes. There was a guy, on Saturday in the street I saw a guy—’
Our very own Pez machine: push open his mouth and out pops a brand-new story. I roll my eyes. Breslin laughs, a great full-blooded roar that slams Rory back in his chair. ‘Right. Only then aliens abducted you and wiped your memory, and it’s only just conveniently coming back.’
‘No—’
‘A piano fell on your head and you got amnesia.’
‘I didn’t—’
‘On Sunday you told us flat out that you didn’t remember seeing anyone in Stoneybatter except a bunch of teenagers playing football and some girls on a night out. There was no guy, Rory.’
Rory tries to talk, but that voice crashes through his like it’s a spiderweb, leaves it in tatters. ‘There’s nothing but you. Every piece we turn over, it’s got your face on it. The stalker was you, Rory. We all know it. Every single thing you told us about him, it turns out to have been you all along. The only thing left is the part where he knocks at Aislinn’s door and it all goes wrong – and guess what? That’ll turn out to be you, too.’
‘No it won’t. I was never in her house. Never.’
By this time he looks about a tenth of Breslin’s size, but he’s turned into all glare and chin. Not so easy to shove any more. We’ve found Rory’s sticking point.
I move in my chair. ‘There’s one more thing I think is important,’ I say, to Breslin.
‘We don’t need anything else, Conway. We’ve got plenty.’ Breslin reaches across to sweep the photos away from Rory and slaps them into a stack. ‘Let’s just put him under arrest, go get some dinner and come back to this afterwards.’
The word arrest opens Rory’s mouth, but only breath comes out. His eyes, white-ringed with terror, go to me. Shit just got real.
‘Hang on,’ I say to Breslin. ‘Hear me out.’
‘You’re the boss,’ he says, with a sigh. He leaves the photos and tilts his chair back, listening.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Aislinn had the cooker on, right? Making Rory that lovely fancy dinner.’
‘Yeah. And?’
‘And before Rory left, he turned it off.’
Rory starts to say, ‘I wasn’t—’ but Breslin lifts a hand to shut him up. ‘Right. That’s important how?’
‘The only reason to turn it off,’ I say, ‘would be that he didn’t want the house going on fire. Now, if Rory knew Aislinn was dead, or if he didn’t care whether she died or not – hang on a sec’ – Rory’s trying to talk again – ‘then his best bet would be to let the place burn. The house goes up in smoke, so does any evidence that he was there: the fibres, the prints, the DNA, the lot. Anyone who’s ever seen a cop show on the telly would know that. Amn’t I right?’
‘I’m listening,’ says Breslin. To Rory, who’s practically coming out of his seat: ‘You might want to sit down and pay attention to this, pal. It sounds like it might actually do you some good, and just being straight with you, you can’t afford to miss anything that’ll do that.’
After a second Rory sits back. His chest is going up and down like he’s been running.
Breslin asks, ‘Are you going to let Detective Conway finish what she’s saying?’
‘Yes. I will.’ When Breslin’s raised eyebrow prompts him: ‘Sorry. For interrupting.’
‘My point is,’ I say, ‘the only reason Rory wouldn’t want the place going on fire would be if he didn’t think Aislinn was dead, and he didn’t want her to die. Meaning he never intended to kill her.’
‘Ah-ha,’ Breslin says, nodding slowly. ‘Now I see what you’re getting at, Detective. You’re right: it is important. Everything else we’ve got looks like murder, and a pretty nasty one too; but if you’re right about why that cooker got turned off, then it’s not murder at all. It’s manslaughter.’
‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘If I’m right.’
‘If. There’s any number of reasons that cooker could’ve been turned off. Maybe Aislinn turned it off herself. Or maybe Rory’s got a touch of OCD going on, can’t leave a house without turning all the appliances off. But if you’re right . . .’
We both look at Rory. He’s glazing over. Too many stories logjamming in his head: he’s starting to lose hold of them all. Up to a point, this works for us: if the guy can’t keep track of what he’s said about what when, he gets sloppy. Too far past that point, though, he just stops making sense. If we’re gonna get anything out of Rory, it needs to be soon.
‘I’m done, Rory,’ I say. ‘You can talk now.’
Breslin lets him open his mouth before he says, ‘Actually, don’t. You’re about to tell us you were never in that house, and you need to think very, very hard before you do that. Murder is an automatic life sentence, Rory. Manslaughter is maybe six years, out in four. And if you don’t tell us why you turned off that cooker, then we’ve got nothing, not one thing, that says this was manslaughter, and a whole lot that says it was murder. So I’m telling you, Rory, for your own sake: before you say one more word, take just five minutes to think.’ And, when Rory tries talking again: ‘Ah-ah. Five minutes. I’ll tell you when it’s up.’ He shoots his cuff and looks at his watch. ‘Starting now.’
Rory gives up. He stares into space, rocking a little with fatigue.
‘One.’
Slowly the lines of Rory’s face solidify. He stops swaying. Inside his mind, things are moving.
Breslin’s made the wrong
call. I know what he’s at – he’s hoping the forced silence and the fear will bear down on Rory hard enough to crack him – but it’s the barrage of words and demands that was doing the job. Locking this guy into his own head is only giving him a chance to get his focus back and straighten out his stories. We’re losing him.
‘Two.’
‘Forget it,’ I say, bringing my hands down on the table with a bang. ‘That’s as much time as he’s getting. Rory: look at me.’ I snap my fingers in his face. He blinks. ‘Why’d you turn that cooker off?’
Too late. Rory says, ‘I didn’t. I’ve never been inside Aislinn’s house. I never hurt Aislinn in any way. And I want to go home.’
He stands up, wobbly-legged, and starts trying to pull his coat off the back of his chair. His hands are shaking; he keeps losing hold.
‘Whoa there,’ Breslin says. ‘We’re not done. Sit down.’
‘I’m done. Am I under arrest?’
I can see Breslin opening his mouth on the words. ‘No,’ I say, and ignore his head coming round towards me. ‘Not at the moment. But if you want us to believe your story, walking out on us isn’t the way to go about it. You need to stay here and work with us.’
‘No. If I’m not under arrest, I’m going home.’ Rory manages to get his coat off the chair and drops it.
‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ I say, closing my notebook. ‘You go home. Get some sleep. We’ll talk to Aislinn’s neighbours and see if any of them happened to look out their back windows and see you in the laneway between, say, 8.30 and 8.40. If they did, you’re off the hook: you wouldn’t have had time for the other thing.’ Obviously we’ve already talked to the neighbours, and I’m betting they would have mentioned some weirdo hanging around the laneway, but this doesn’t seem to occur to Rory. ‘Come back in to us tomorrow to sign your statement, and we’ll do updates then. Fair enough?’
Rory pulls his coat around his shoulders, not even trying the sleeves. ‘Yes. OK.’
‘We’ll come pick you up,’ Breslin says, keeping it just the right side of a threat. He stands up and stretches. ‘You’re not planning to be anywhere other than your flat or the bookshop, are you?’
‘No. I’m going nowhere.’
‘Good plan,’ Breslin tells him. He pulls the door open and sweeps his hand at it with a little mock bow. ‘After you.’
Steve is in the doorway of the observation room, suit jacket over his arm, sleeves rolled up against the heat. His eyes meet mine for a long level second. Then we’re past him and down the corridor, Rory speeding up towards the draught of cold fresh air coming up the stairwell, Breslin humming happily to himself under his breath.
Me and Breslin watch from the doorway as Rory heads off across the cobblestones. He looks small and messy, slams of wind flapping his coat and tangling in his hair, swerving him off course. It’s practically dark. Just a couple of months of bodyguard work, and I’ll have enough saved up for a holiday somewhere blazing hot in eye-shattering colours and very far away.
‘Enlighten me,’ Breslin says pleasantly. ‘Why is this guy going home?’
I say, ‘We’re nearly there with him. He was right on the edge, till that pause gave him a chance to pull his head together – and if we could get him there once, we can get him there again. But if we put him under arrest, he’s gonna get a solicitor in there, and we can say goodbye to any chance of a confession.’
‘We don’t need a confession, Conway. We’ve got enough circumstantial stuff to bury him alive.’
Which is probably true. I don’t care. My last murder case: this one isn’t gonna be tacked down with circumstantial this and reasonable inference that. I’m gonna hammer a stake right through its heart and leave it dead as dirt.
‘I want one,’ I say. ‘We can afford to leave Rory till tomorrow.’
‘Unless he jumps in the Liffey.’
‘He won’t. He still thinks I might wind up believing him. He wants that.’
Breslin watches me. ‘Is he right?’
‘No,’ I say. The adrenaline buzz is ebbing fast; I can feel the post-interrogation crash getting ready to hit. It leaves a sucking empty spot that, if you’re not careful, can feel like loss. I need caffeine, sugar, a dirty great burger. ‘He’s our man, all right.’
‘He is. And I hope you know that cooker doesn’t actually turn it into manslaughter, either. There’s no chance that little pussy-boy was thinking straight enough, after killing someone, to worry about burning the house down. His brain was juice. He probably turned the cooker off because the food was starting to burn and the smell bothered him. Cooper’s report still stands: could be manslaughter, if Rory managed to get up the strength for a serious punch, or he could’ve deliberately smashed her skull in when she was down. And the more I look at those pathetic excuses for muscles . . .’
‘Not my problem,’ I say. ‘The lawyers and the jury can figure that one out. All I want is a watertight case that he killed her.’
‘Well,’ Breslin says, heartily enough that for a second there I think he’s going to clap me on the back, ‘that shouldn’t be a problem to us. We’ll get every warm body out there looking for backup evidence, we’ll throw the lot at Rory, and he’ll fold like a cheap lawn chair. And if he doesn’t, hey, we’ll have enough circumstantial stuff to make our case watertight anyway. Right?’
‘Right,’ I say. Rory is gone, around the corner towards the gate. The splatter of yellow light on the empty cobblestones makes them look slick from hard rain, dangerous.
Wheels turning in Breslin’s mind, so heavy I can practically hear them. I keep my eyes on the place where Rory was until, finally, I feel Breslin move away and hear the door close behind him.
I ring Lucy from the women’s jacks. This time she answers, but her voice is barely above a whisper and she sounds hassled; someone in the background is calling orders and there’s a sudden blast of country music, cut off by an annoyed shout. The theatre has a new show opening that evening, they’re having technical problems and Lucy really has to go (in the background: ‘Luce! Any word on those parcans?’). She swears she’ll be home all tomorrow, but I can’t tell whether it’s true or whether she’s just saying whatever will get rid of me.
I’m gonna be banging on her door tomorrow morning before she’s anywhere near hauling her hangover out of bed. I hope she tells me she made up Aislinn’s secret boyfriend to make sure the investigation was good and thorough. I hope that, as I step out of Lucy’s flat, Sophie rings me to tell me that Aislinn’s password-protected computer folder turned out to be full of pictures of Daddy, scanned to make them handier for sobbing over.
Me, praying my most interesting leads will crash and burn. It feels against nature, like some parasite has slid into my head and is eating bits of my brain. But Lucy, and that folder: they’re the last two stubborn unruly strands stopping me from tying everything into a neat bow, leaving it outside the door of O’Kelly’s office with my badge on top, and walking away.
Steve is at our desk, checking e-mails. I sit down next to him and start flicking through the piles of paper that materialised while I was away. The floaters try not to let me catch them glancing over, wondering when the mad bitch is gonna lose it again.
The thick sheet of silence between me and Steve is growing edges like ripped tin. I say, ‘So you saw Rory in there.’
‘A fair bit of it,’ Steve says, without looking up. ‘Good interview.’
It doesn’t sound like a compliment. ‘Thanks,’ I say. I catch Breslin’s knowing eye on us: You were never right for each other. ‘Where were you?’
‘I ran the mug books past the barman and Aislinn’s neighbours. No hits.’ He waits for me to say I told you so. When I don’t: ‘Then I went and had chats with a few of the lads who worked the Des Murray disappearance – don’t worry, I was subtle about it.’
‘I’m not worried.’
Steve throws me a quick sideways glance, trying to work out how I mean that. ‘Anyway,’ he says, after a second. The ton
e to his voice, neutral, precise, arm’s-length; I’ve heard it before, but to defence solicitors and slippery journalists, never to me. ‘According to them, McCann had a bit of a thing for Evelyn Murray, all right. He was the one who pushed to keep the investigation going; he got very eloquent about this poor fragile woman with her life in ruins – and McCann isn’t the eloquent type, so the lads remembered it. He even found her someone to buy Des’s taxi plate, and made sure she got top dollar for it, so she and Aislinn weren’t stuck for cash. But the lads are all positive it never went as far as an affair. Even back then, McCann was getting called Holy Joe; not a chance he was riding a subject’s missus. They laughed at me for even thinking it.’
Another gap for my I told you so. I can’t take any longer sitting there next to him, being polite to each other under Breslin’s amused eye. I say, ‘Did you find a reason to think any of this has anything to do with our case?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Then let’s get this meeting done.’
I stand up. Even before I reach the front of the desk, the floaters have dropped their work and are sitting up straight, managing to be all attention without God forbid making eye contact with the rabid animal.
‘OK,’ I say, ‘good news. It’s looking pretty definite that Rory Fallon is our boy. He and the CCTV both say he’s been stalking Aislinn for at least a month. That’s how he spent the missing time before their date on Saturday night – or part of it, anyway: peeping in her windows.’
‘Little perv,’ Stanton says, grinning. ‘Better swab her walls for DNA.’
A quick edgy smatter of laughs. ‘Do it,’ I say. Rory’s leftovers might not prove murder, but they’ll up our chances at trial; juries hate a wanker. ‘He says he was hanging out in the laneway behind her patio, so get the techs to give that wall a good going-over – and try the wall under her kitchen window, too, just in case he got up the guts for a little close-range action.’
Stanton nods; Meehan puts it in the book of jobs. I say, ‘Our new working theory is that, when Rory arrived in Aislinn’s house, she somehow found out about the stalking. She told him to get out, and he lost the head.’