by Tana French
He’s watching me, and his face has that same immobility it took on last night. The scraping light finds crow’s-feet and smile-lines I never noticed before. I can’t tell whether he wants me to say yes; yes, let’s flush this toxic godawful mess and walk away.
He’s right: we could do it. We could even square it with our consciences, near enough. Like he said, we’ll get a conviction around the same time we get a Lotto win. Even if we do, justice does nothing for the dead; nothing we do will make any difference to Aislinn. There’s no family needing answers, not this time. And it’s not like McCann and Breslin are going to turn into a rampaging serial-killer team if we don’t take them down; they’ll go back to being who they always were, and Breslin will go back to keeping it in his pants. No harm done, all round.
Except that, when you get down to it, I’m right where I thought I was when we figured Breslin and McCann were bent. If I keep my mouth shut, then they’ve put their hands on me and knotted me into someone else, living a whole different life, even if from outside it looks just like the old one. Breslin and McCann will be running me and my every day after all, whether they even wanted to or not.
I owe this case. I’ve got beef with this case. I need to shoot it right between the eyes, skin it and stuff it and mount it on my wall, for when my grandkids ask me to tell them stories about way back a million years ago when I used to be a D.
I can’t make myself tell Steve I’m gone, not yet. ‘Nah,’ I say. ‘I’ve started now; might as well finish.’
The sudden loosening in his face could be anything, relief or disappointment, till it resolves itself into a small, very sweet smile. ‘I might as well come along for the ride, so,’ he says. ‘I’ve never had food poisoning; I’d only make a bollix of faking it.’
For some reason that gets me, solid in the gut. Not like I’m welling up, or any of that shite, but something swells hard under my ribs. Weird how, when I realised I’m leaving, it never occurred to me that that’s gonna mean leaving Steve. Somewhere along the way I must’ve started taking the little bollix for granted, thinking he’d always be there, like a brother. I don’t do that shite. Because the fact is, Steve won’t always be there. Once I’m gone, we’ll stay in touch for a while. We’ll go for the odd pint, laugh too hard at each other’s stories and have conversations full of awkward stumbles where he tries to talk tactfully around work and his new partner, and I try to get him to knock that shit off. Then the pints will get further apart, and then one of us will get into a relationship and won’t be around as much; the texts will start with ‘Hey, too long no see,’ and all of a sudden we’ll realise it’s been a year since we met up. And that’ll be, in every way that counts, the end of that.
I can’t afford to be getting maudlin. ‘You little goody-goody,’ I say. ‘I bet you never once mitched off school, did you?’
‘Ah, I did. To visit my dying granny.’
I concentrate on the kids eating flowerbed, and the cyclist doing improbable stretches to show off his glutes to the nannies, till I can wipe my mind blank again. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Good. In that case, I’m gonna go show Aislinn’s fairy tale to Lucy. You go play with Breslin. Tell him you and me called in to Rory – he’s gonna hear anyway. Say I was giving Rory hassle about his exes saying he was too full-on; I was asking if he stalked them too, he denied it, the poor guy got all upset. Play it like you’re still not totally sold on Rory, I’m still pissed off with you for having doubts, and you’re still pissed off with me for dissing them. That way Breslin’ll want to keep you close, and he won’t be too worried about me going MIA for an hour.’
Steve’s nodding, thinking it through. ‘All sounds good. If he asks where you’ve gone . . . ?’
‘You don’t know. I told you it was none of your business.’
After a moment Steve asks, ‘When do we pull the pin?’
‘Today,’ I say. ‘It has to be. Breslin’s expecting to haul Rory in later on, arrest him and start preparing the file for the prosecutors. If I don’t do that, he’s gonna start wondering why not, and then they’ll be on guard.’
He nods. ‘Who do we go for? Breslin or McCann?’
‘I vote McCann. Unless Lucy comes out with something top-notch that we can use on Breslin. Breslin’s been watching us for days now; he’s got a lot better handle on us than McCann does. Plus, if we even hint any of this to Breslin, he’s gonna throw the mother of all self-righteous tantrums, and I’ve had enough of those for one week. We’ll find a way to get him out of our hair for a while, and we’ll tackle McCann.’
‘OK,’ Steve says, at the end of a long breath. ‘OK. McCann.’
‘And you’d better get moving, before Breslin starts wondering where you are.’
‘Right.’ He pulls the photo arrays out of his case and hands me a couple of each. ‘Good luck.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘You too.’
For some reason me and Steve slap hands as we’re leaving. We don’t normally do that shite, what with not being sixteen, but it feels like we need something, on our way into this.
Chapter 15
This time Lucy answers the buzzer fast. When she opens the front door, she’s dressed – black combats and a hoodie again, but clean ones, and she’s got Docs on. She looks at me, expressionless, and waits.
‘Morning,’ I say. ‘Are you OK to talk for a while, or is this too early?’
She says, ‘I figured you’d be earlier.’ Then she turns and heads back up the stairs.
Her sitting room is cold, the uncompromising damp cold after a night with the heat off. It smells of toast, smoke – the legal kind this time – and coffee. The stuffed fox and the old phones and the coil of cable are gone; instead there’s a record player and a stack of beat-up albums, a big cardboard box of flowery crockery, and a roll of canvas that touches the ceiling, coming unrolled to show a painted country lane disappearing into the distance. The room feels charged up with too many stories, jostling in the corners, pushing for space.
Lucy sits down first this time, grabbing the sofa with its back to the window and leaving me the one that takes the light – she learns fast. She’s got her armoury lined up ready on the coffee table: pack of smokes, lighter, ashtray, mug of coffee. She doesn’t offer me any. She sits still and watches me, braced for my first move.
I take the shitty sofa. ‘I’m going to tell you some stuff I’ve been thinking,’ I say. ‘I don’t want you to tell me whether I’m right or wrong till I’m done talking. I don’t want you to say anything at all. I just want you to listen. OK?’
‘I’ve told you everything I’ve got to tell.’
‘Just listen. OK?’
She shrugs. ‘If you want.’ She makes a thing of settling herself back into her sofa, cross-legged, mug nested in her lap, ready to humour me.
I can play that game too. I rearrange cushions, shift my arse on my bockety sofa, find the best angle to stretch out my legs. Lucy winds tighter, wanting me to get on with it.
‘So,’ I say, when I’m good and comfortable. ‘Let’s start with your friendship with Aislinn. You two were a lot closer than you tried to make out. Her phone records say you guys talked or texted basically every day. You were proper friends; best friends.’
Lucy pokes her coffee with her fingertip, scoops out a speck of something and examines it. The solid black of her against the blue-and-rust-striped Mexican blankets, and the white-blond forelock falling in her white face, make her hard to see, like a blank spot in the middle of my vision.
‘So there has to be a reason you didn’t want us knowing that, on Sunday. And the point when you started claiming you and Aislinn weren’t close was when you told us about her secret fella. Which has to mean three things. A, you know more about him than you let on. B, you’re scared of him; you don’t want him finding out you know anything. And C, you think he might find out through us.’
One blink, on the word scared. She rubs her fingertip clean on the edge of the cup.
I say, ‘Me and my partner, at f
irst we wondered if Aislinn was going out with some gangster.’ The way Lucy’s face closes down would tell me, if I didn’t already know, how far off target that was. ‘It took us till last night to click. Aislinn’s married fella wasn’t a gangster. He was a cop.’
The silence stays. I’m better at leaving it than Lucy; more practice. In the end she moves. ‘Is that it?’
‘Yeah. Your turn.’
‘For what? I’ve got nothing to say.’
‘You do. I can see exactly why you’re scared’ – that blink again – ‘but if you wanted to keep your mouth shut, you would’ve. You told us Aislinn was seeing someone on the side because you wanted us to track him down. You didn’t want to get in too deep; you were hoping that, if you pointed us in the right direction, we’d get there on our own. And we have.’
Lucy’s eyes are still on her coffee. She says, ‘Then you don’t need me.’
‘If we didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I’m pretty sure I know who Aislinn was seeing. I’m pretty sure I know who killed her. But I can’t prove any of it.’
‘Or you’re saying that because you want to find out how much I know.’
I say, ‘You want to hear something I haven’t told anyone? We’ve got lockers, at work. A couple of months back, someone jimmied mine open and pissed in it. All over my running gear and half a dozen interviews’ worth of notes.’
Lucy doesn’t look up, but I catch the flick of her lashes: she’s listening. I say, ‘Here’s the part that matters. Murder works separate from the other squads; there’s no one else in our building. And the locker room has a combination lock on it. One of my own squad did that.’
She looks up then. ‘Why?’
‘Because they don’t like me. They want me out. That’s not important. The point is, this isn’t the telly, where cops are all blood brothers and anyone who gets on the wrong side of a cop ends up dead in a ditch while the rest of us lose the evidence. I don’t have any squad loyalty. I’m not here to clean up anyone’s mess. I’m just working my case. Anyone gets in my way, cop or not, I’ve got no problem running him down.’
‘That’s supposed to reassure me?’
‘If I was just here to shut your mouth, I would’ve done it by now. One way or another. I already know you know something; if I didn’t want it coming out, I wouldn’t need the details.’
For a second I think I’ve got through, but then Lucy’s face shuts down again. She says flatly, ‘You’re better at this than I am. I know that. I’ve got no chance of figuring out whether you’re telling me the truth.’
I take out my phone, find Aislinn’s fairy tale and pass it across the table to Lucy. ‘Here,’ I say. ‘I think this is for you.’
I’m hoping to God it won’t break her down again, because I don’t have time to stick her back together today, but Lucy’s made of tough stuff. She has to bite down on her lips once, and when she looks up at me her eyes are too shiny, but she’s doing her sobbing in private now.
I say, ‘That’s Aislinn’s handwriting. Right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And it’s meant for you.’
‘Yeah. It is.’
I say, ‘I don’t understand all of it, but I get this much: if the story doesn’t have a happy ending, you’re supposed to tell me the rest. I think this qualifies as a pretty shitty ending.’
That gets something like a laugh, helpless and raw. ‘Carabossa and Meladina,’ Lucy says. ‘When we were kids, and Aislinn used to make up stories about us having crazy adventures, those were our names. I can’t even remember where they came from. I should have asked her.’
I say, ‘If I wanted this story kept under wraps, I wouldn’t have brought you that. You’re right, there are detectives who’d try to bury the whole thing. You didn’t get them. You got me.’
Lucy’s touching the phone screen, just lightly, two fingertips. ‘Can I have this?’ she asks. ‘Could you send it to me, or print it out for me?’
‘Right now it’s evidence. I can’t go passing it around. Once the case is over, yeah, I’ll get you a copy. I promise.’
Lucy nods. ‘OK. Thanks.’
I hold out my hand. She takes one more moment with that message; then she catches a small tight breath and straightens her back. ‘Yeah,’ she says, and passes me the phone. ‘The guy Aislinn was seeing was a Guard. A detective.’
Flash of her eyes, checking my reaction. I ask, ‘Did you ever meet him?’
‘Yeah. The same night Aislinn did. I wasn’t going to let her—’
‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘One step at a time. Do you think you could identify him?’
‘Yeah. Definitely.’
I open my satchel and find the Breslin photo array. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘If you see the man who Aislinn was going out with, I want you to tell me. If he’s not there, or you’re not sure, say so. Ready?’
Lucy nods. She’s bracing herself for his face.
I pass her the card. She scans; then her face goes blank with bafflement. ‘No. He’s not here.’
What the fuck? ‘Take your time,’ I say. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m positive. None of these guys look anything like him. At all.’ Lucy almost shoves the card back at me. She’s gone wary again, wondering what I’m playing at. I’d swear it’s real.
In the moment as I bend to put the card back in my satchel – wondering wildly where the hell I go from here, wishing I’d brought Steve – it hits me.
I pull out the other photo array, the McCann one. ‘Try these guys,’ I say. ‘Do you recognise any of them?’
It takes less than a second: the scan, the quick burst of breath through her nose, the clamp of tension grabbing her whole body. ‘Him,’ Lucy says quietly, and her finger comes down on McCann. ‘That’s him.’
‘The man Aislinn was seeing.’
‘Yeah.’
‘How sure are you?’
‘A hundred per cent. That’s him.’
‘Write it down,’ I say, passing her a pen. ‘At the bottom of the sheet. Which number you recognise, and where you recognise him from. Sign and date it. Then initial beside the photo you’re identifying.’
She writes neatly, steadily; only the fast rise and fall of her chest and the slight huff of her breath give away that her adrenaline’s running wild. Mine is too. The big mystery about why McCann was hanging around Viking Gardens for weeks: gone. Aislinn’s neighbour thought the guy climbing the wall was fair-haired, but yellow half-light from a streetlamp would turn McCann’s grey streaks fair. The phone calls from McCann’s wife giving him grief about missing another dinner, the slump to his back while Breslin promised to get rid of me, the state of him the last few days, it all fits.
The only piece that still won’t drop into place is why the hell Aislinn wanted McCann; what the hell me and Steve have been missing, all along.
Lucy passes me back the photo array. ‘Is that OK?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, giving it a quick read. ‘Thanks. Now you can tell me the story.’
She takes a breath. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘All of it. Start from the beginning.’
‘OK.’ Lucy wipes her hands down her thighs – rubbing away sweat or the feel of that photo, I can’t tell. ‘OK. OK. I guess the beginning was maybe seven or eight months after Ash’s mum died – so about two and a half years ago? Ash and I were out for a pint, and she said, “Guess what I’m going to do.” She was ducking her head down and looking up at me like this, out of the corner of her eye, this bashful little smile – for a second I thought she was going to get a nipple piercing or something . . .’ Lucy laughs, a small dry sound. ‘If only. But then she said, “I’m going to find out what happened to my dad.” Which was the last thing I expected. She was always making up stories about where he was, or the ways he might come back; but she’d never talked about actually tracking him down.’
I say – I can sound as empathetic as anyone – ‘Maybe she didn’t feel able to do it while her mam was alive. Looking after her would
’ve taken all of Aislinn’s energy; I’m not surprised she had none left for her da.’
Lucy’s nodding fast. ‘That’s what I figured. I thought it could be a good idea – not finding him, specifically; there were too many ways that could go pear-shaped. But this was the first time she’d ever come up with a plan to go after something she wanted. I thought that had to be good, for her to learn how to do that. Right? That makes sense, right?’
‘Total sense,’ I say – and I actually mean it – and watch the relief rush through Lucy. ‘She wasn’t going to get a lot out of life till she did.’
‘Exactly. So I said great idea, fair play to you. Aislinn told work she had a dentist appointment, dressed up in her best gear, and went in to the Missing Persons squad. They gave her the runaround at first, but finally this detective looked up her dad on some computer system and said he was dead. Aislinn was . . .’ Lucy bites down on her lips, remembering. ‘God. She was devastated. She rang work and said the anaesthetic had made her feel faint and she couldn’t come in, and then she went home and cried all day. I went over there after work, and she looked like roadkill. Everything had gone out of her; she was just . . . lost.’
This is the part where I should probably feel bad: my callousness turning poor Aislinn’s story down the path towards tragedy, blah blah blah. Yesterday, I would have felt fuck-all. Like I said to Steve: if she wanted to hook her life onto some guy who wasn’t even around, that was her problem. But today, I don’t know what it is. All of a sudden it feels like there were so many people nudging Aislinn from every direction: me, Gary, her ma, her da, on and on, all those fingers poking, shoulders barging, everyone shoving her life whatever way happened to suit them. It makes my skin leap like flies are covering it. And finally someone didn’t bother nudging: her life didn’t suit him, and he punched it right out.