by Tana French
I’m not convinced. Gentle to start with, maybe, but someone who’s been as hard on herself as Aislinn had been for a solid year and a half, she’s not gonna go easy on anyone else. I let that go. ‘That doesn’t answer the question.’
‘Dangerous to her. Maybe to Detective McCann, too, but I wasn’t thinking about him; just about Ash. She didn’t realise this was real. She didn’t get the difference.’
That one is probably true. ‘So then Detective McCann contacted her,’ I say. ‘And they met up again?’
Lucy asks, ‘Is it OK if I smoke?’
‘Go for it.’
She doesn’t look at me while she disentangles her legs from the striped blankets, puts her coffee cup down, opens the smoke packet and finds a cigarette and shakes the lighter. She’s still got time to play it safe: I don’t know the rest of the story, Aislinn wouldn’t tell me, once she actually got her hands on Joe she got cagey . . .
There’s nothing I can say that I haven’t said already. I keep still and wait.
In the end Lucy blows a long stream of smoke away from me and says, ‘They met regularly. At least once a week, usually twice or three times.’
‘Were you ever there for the meetings?’
‘Not after that first time. I wanted to go, but Ash said I’d only cramp her style. Everything had to be about Joe.’
‘What’d they do?’
‘They weren’t sleeping together. Not then. Nothing like that. They just talked. He’d pick her up – never at her place, in case the neighbours saw him; always down on the quays – and they’d go for a drive, up the mountains or somewhere. I didn’t like that. I mean, you guys are always finding bodies up the mountains, right? He’s picked up this girl, he’s made sure no one saw him, he’s taking her to the middle of nowhere . . . How serial-killer can you get?’
I ask, ‘Did you have any reason to think he might be dangerous?’
Lucy shakes her head, reluctantly. ‘No. Ash said he was always nice to her – a total gentleman, was the way she put it. She didn’t exactly like him; she said he was way too intense about everything, even when he tried to make her laugh he was intense about it – but his stories were interesting, and he was an OK guy. He really cared about his work, and that reassured her: it meant he’d probably done a good job on her dad’s case, so there would be something to find out, right?’ A humourless little breath of smoke that could be a laugh. ‘Jesus. No shit.’
I say, ‘And he was OK with just talking? He wasn’t trying to move the relationship into something sexual?’
‘No. Ash was right about him not being the affair type: he never tried it on with her, not even a kiss. He was a romantic, she said; he liked being into her from afar. But he was into her, all right. Aislinn felt bad about it, what with him being married—’
‘On Sunday you told us she’d have no problem shagging a married man,’ I say. ‘Never mind going for drives with one.’
Lucy doesn’t bother with embarrassment. ‘Yeah, I lied. I needed you to know that she’d be on for going out with a married guy, and I couldn’t exactly explain why it was only this one particular married guy.’
Even when grief had just punched Lucy straight in the face, her mind was going ninety. She was well scared. ‘Fair enough,’ I say. ‘So Joe wasn’t coming on to Aislinn, but he was into her.’
‘Oh yeah. He kept telling her how great she was, how gorgeous, how intelligent – what he meant was she acted like everything that came out of his mouth was pure gold, which of course she did – and how he and his wife didn’t get on. He said the two of them had drifted into getting married when they were way too young, and they should never have done it, because his wife was too thick to understand his job and too selfish to get that he was doing something that mattered; all she cared about was that he wasn’t around to help with the kids’ homework or eat the dinner she’d cooked.’ A wry twist to Lucy’s mouth, around her cigarette. ‘Yeah. So Aislinn took her cue from that. She piled it on thick about what an amazing job Joe had, how amazing it was to know someone who was doing something so important, and please would he tell her another story about how he had been amazing and solved an amazing case? And of course he did.’
Of course he did. Like Aislinn said: McCann is a romantic, at heart. He wanted to see himself riding down the green hill with light flashing off his spear, doing battle to save the world from itself. No way the job was letting him tell himself that story, not after this many years. His wife wasn’t doing it either. Aislinn let him tell it to her instead.
‘And then,’ Lucy says, ‘at the end of August, Aislinn decided it was time to go for it. She and Joe went for a picnic somewhere, and she started asking him what Missing Persons had been like, because it sounded so incredibly mysterious – she had it all planned; she’d written out her questions and learned them off by heart, she made me run lines with her the way actors do. She let Joe tell her a couple of stories while she gasped in the right places. She waited for him to come up with a bad one – some teenager who OD’d – and then she said ohmyGod, the family must’ve been totally in bits! How did he deal with it when the families were really upset? Because she’d never be able to deal with families who were going through something like that, she’d just totally go to pieces, but she was sure Joe was just amazing at getting people through the absolute worst time of their lives, right? And once he’d told her some story about that, Ash said she betted that sometimes, when they didn’t find the missing person, Joe stuck around for the family even after the case was officially over, because she knew he wouldn’t just leave them to pick up the pieces themselves, right? And next thing you know . . .’
Lucy grinds out her smoke. Her voice has changed; she’s wrung it dry, making sure nothing seeps in there that might break out of control. She says, ‘It was that easy. They hadn’t even finished their sandwiches, and Joe was telling her all about this poor woman whose husband ran off on her, left her with a little girl. The woman was the delicate type, Joe said – Aislinn could see him getting all misty, remembering – she wasn’t able for a nasty shock like that. He went all out, trying to get the poor woman some answers, and he finally tracked down the husband. In England, living with some younger woman.’
I say, ‘That had to hurt.’
‘Yeah. It wasn’t exactly what Ash had been hoping to hear.’ A twitch of Lucy’s mouth, like a flinch. ‘But she could have handled it. She was ready for something like that; not as ready as she thought she was, but she would’ve dealt with it . . . Only Joe kept talking. He said he rang the guy up, gave him a bit of hassle about shirking his responsibilities, asked what they were supposed to tell the wife. And the guy said something along the lines of, “Just tell her I’m OK. Tell her I’m so sorry. And I’ll get in touch when things settle down a bit.” Which Joe knew he wouldn’t; apparently the ones who do a runner without even leaving a note, they’re the ones who never find the exact right moment to get back in touch.’
‘Huh,’ I say. Gary said – I’m pretty sure Gary believed – that Des Murray told the cops to say nothing, not one word, to his wife. ‘Only Joe didn’t pass on the message to Mrs Murray.’
‘No,’ Lucy says. ‘What Joe did was, Joe decided it wouldn’t be good for her to hear that. The poor helpless little woman wasn’t able for that kind of news, don’t you know; she would have been destroyed. He decided she’d be better off knowing nothing at all.’ That tic at the corner of her mouth again. ‘So that’s what he told her: nothing. He was very proud of himself, for taking the whole thing off her shoulders.’
I just bet he was. At least when I palmed Aislinn off on Gary, I had the basic honesty not to do it for her own good. I did it because I felt like it, and fuck her. ‘What did Aislinn do when she heard that?’
‘She told me she almost smashed her glass and put the sharp end in Joe’s throat, only her hands felt too weak to do it. So instead she said to him – all wide-eyed, all thrilled to hear such an amazing story – she said he had been so right, t
hat had been so brave of him, so wise, that woman had been so lucky he was on the case. And then she told him she was getting a headache, and would he mind terribly if she went home and had a sleep? And he drove her back home and told her to take a Nurofen, and they both waved goodbye.’
‘And she rang you straightaway,’ I say. ‘Yeah?’
‘No. She came here. She was . . .’ Lucy catches a hiss of breath, remembering. ‘I’ve never seen her like that. I’ve never seen anyone like that. She was so furious she was screaming into the sofa cushions – all dolled up in this pink flowery dress, screaming, “How dare he, how dare he, who the fuck does he think he is” – mascara all over her face from crying, and her hair coming down out of this fancy twist, and she was beating the cushions with her fists, she was biting at them . . . Do you get that at all? I mean, do you get why she was raging?’
She’s staring at me. ‘Yeah, I do,’ I say. ‘I get it, one hundred per cent. He had no right to make that call.’
She keeps up the stare, eyes flicking back and forth across my face. I say, ‘It would’ve been one thing if Aislinn’s da had been dead from the time he went missing. McCann wouldn’t have been taking anything away from her by keeping his mouth shut. But her da was alive. She could’ve got in touch with him any time. Her ma might not have lost the plot, if she’d known what was going on.’
Lucy says, ‘More than that.’ And waits, to see if I get it.
I do. I say – and I hear my voice saying it, into the small cluttered room that’s getting colder – ‘Aislinn had been thinking McCann kept his mouth shut for his own sake. Because a cop car hit her da, or because finding him would fuck up some big investigation. She could handle that; people do selfish shit, other people get caught in the crossfire, that’s life. But then she found out McCann had done it because of her and her ma. Because he’d decided their lives should play out this way. Her and her ma, they weren’t just collateral damage. They were the target.’
The light through the window is hitting me in the face, relentless, stripping me bare. I manage not to blink or move away.
Lucy nods: I’ve passed. ‘Right. Fuck whether they might actually have an opinion, right? What they might want? He was the cop, he had the right to decide that for them. They weren’t even people; they were just extras in his hero film. That was what had Aislinn losing her mind. That.’
Her voice has filled out again, ripe and pulsing with Aislinn’s anger and her own. She’ll tell me anything.
All that rubbish from the gaffer about me not being good enough with witnesses. This witness, who’s got every reason to shut down on me, she trusts me enough to give me everything she’s got. I wish that could still make me, even the smallest part of me, feel anything other than sad.
I say, ‘And so her plan changed.’
Lucy laughs, one sharp breath. ‘You know the first thing I thought, when she showed up on my doorstep sobbing her heart out and kicking the walls? At least it’s over. Thank God. I didn’t say that to Ash till I had her calmed down – which took forever; I had to listen to the whole story three or four times over, every detail, she couldn’t stop telling me. But finally I got a shot of whiskey and a cup of tea into her – I mean, she looked like she could’ve used a massive spliff or a Valium or something, but I didn’t have any and I just knew sweet tea for shock, right? It worked, anyway: she was still raging, but she settled down enough that at least she could sit still and she was only crying off and on, and I could get a word in edgewise. So I said, “Look, the only good thing is that now you know. Now you can leave it. Like you said.”
‘Ash practically came up off the sofa. Her hands were—’ Lucy’s hands shoot up, rigid claws. ‘I thought she was going to go for me, or dig her nails into her own face, I didn’t know whether to grab her before she could . . . But she went, “You think I’m going to fucking leave this?” – Ash doesn’t swear. “I’m not done. I’m nowhere near— I’m going to get that fucker. He thought he had the right to decide my life – no. No. No. I’m not going to just lie down and take it, yes sir whatever you want sir do it to me harder sir— Fuck him.” She was so angry she was panting, but it was a different kind of angry from before. She looked dangerous. Ash, like; the least dangerous person in the world. Her voice was wrecked from crying, this hard hoarse voice that didn’t even sound like her – she said, “Now I’m going to do it to him. I’m going to make the rest of his life into whatever the fuck I want.”
‘I went, “OK, hang on, what?” And Ash said, “He’s already half in love with me. I’m going to get him the rest of the way there. Then I’m going to convince him to leave his wife and get a divorce so that he and I can be together. I’m going to make him tell her all about me, so there’s no way she’ll ever take him back. And then I’m going to dump him.” ’
And there it is, the one piece me and Steve couldn’t find: why Aislinn wanted McCann. ‘Jesus Christ,’ I say. ‘There’s no way that was going to end well.’
‘I know that. I told her that. In those exact words.’
‘I thought Aislinn was good at people.’
Lucy says, ‘She is. That’s what freaked me out the most. In order to come up with a fucking looper idea like that one, she had to have completely lost hold of everything she knew about how people work. She was so obsessed with the story in her head, the fact that there were actual people involved wasn’t even a factor any more.’
She reaches for her smoke packet, not to open it, just to have something in her hands. ‘I tried to wake her up. I said, “I thought Joe wasn’t the type to have affairs.” And Ash said, “He isn’t. I can get past that. It won’t be that hard; he’s always dropping little hints about how he and his wife are basically staying together out of habit and he loves her but he’s not in love with her, blah blah clichés. Which is just him trying to convince us both that it’s totally fine for us to be going for drives together, but I can use it. I’ll make him think he’s the brave romantic hero breaking out of his meaningless marriage and turning himself into something special by following True Love. Him telling my mum that he’d never leave his wife and kids, never, the sanctimonious fuck, and all the time he knew— I’ll have him dumping her by Christmas. Just watch me.” ’
I say, ‘Being blunt here: she was planning on shagging his brains out till he couldn’t think straight.’
That makes Lucy blink, but she says evenly, ‘Yeah. She was.’
‘Not everyone would be on for that.’ Which is putting it mildly. There are plenty of undercovers, trained professionals, who won’t shag the targets. For a civilian, Aislinn was hardcore.
Lucy moves on the sofa, like a spring is sticking into her. ‘Ash was weird about some things,’ she says. ‘Sex, love, all that. She was all into reading romantic books that ended happy-ever-after, but when it came to her own life: no way. She said – ever since we were kids, she said it, and she meant it – that she was never going to fall in love. She went out with a couple of guys, but that was just for the experience – she didn’t want to be thirty and a virgin who didn’t know what a date felt like. The second the guys seemed like they might be getting serious, Aislinn broke it off.’
‘Because of her dad,’ I say. ‘And her ma.’
‘Yeah. She said look what it does to you, falling in love. Just look. It means someone else has hold of your whole life. At any second, like that’ – a snap of her fingers – ‘they could decide to change it into something else. You might never even know why. And you might never get it back, your life. They could just walk out and take it with them, and it’s gone for good.’
Lucy’s eyes are on nothing and her voice has changed, lightened and tightened: Aislinn’s voice, quick and urgent, running under her own. She’s remembering. For that second I want to nod to her – to Aislinn, not Lucy; that nod across a crowded room to the person you peg as a cop, to the only other woman there, to the only person dressed in your same style. The nod that says, whether you like each other or not, You and me, we get it.
Lucy says, ‘I mean, I thought she was doing exactly that anyway: letting her parents have her life. She was going to deliberately miss out on falling in love, because of what they did. But Ash said I didn’t get it. She said this was her; her own decision. She was right, I didn’t exactly get it, but I did get that the idea of shagging Joe . . . it didn’t mean the same thing to Aislinn as it would to most people. Sex wasn’t something she was hoping would be special, or mind-blowing; she specifically didn’t want it to be. And this, getting Joe, this was the most important thing in her life. So if sex could help her do it, why not?’
‘Well,’ I say. ‘You said she’d never hurt anyone. This plan was going to hurt Joe’s wife, and his kids. A lot.’
Lucy turns the smoke packet between her fingers. ‘I know. I said that to her, that day. I thought it would stop her for sure.’
‘Why didn’t it?’
She shakes her head. ‘It should’ve. When I said Ash wouldn’t hurt anyone, I wasn’t just being sappy, trying to make her into a saint because she’s . . . dead. She genuinely was like that.’ She turns the smoke packet faster. This is jabbing at her. ‘I don’t know. Yeah, she was obsessed, but still, I couldn’t believe . . . But she just stared at me. Like I was talking gibberish. I still don’t get it.’
But I get it. Lucy’s right: Aislinn had got good at tangling people in her stories, building the relentless current that drew them in deeper and deeper, tugged them step by step towards the ending she could see waiting misty and beckoning on the far shore. She had got too good: in the end she tangled herself. By the time Lucy pointed out McCann’s wife and kids, it was too late for Aislinn to pull free. Her own current had grown too strong for her. It wound around her ankles, her knees, rising, and it dragged her downstream to a shore she never saw waiting.
Lucy says, ‘She’d wiped her face on her dress. This flowy pink dress that she’d bought specially for the big day, to make her look sexy and adorable and harmless and everything that would make Joe more likely to spill his guts – she’d spent two hundred quid on it – and she’d been smearing the skirt across her face like it was a tissue. It was covered in mascara and foundation and tears and snot. And all of a sudden Ash looked down like she was only noticing, and she went, “Jesus, what a mess! I’ll have to get this dry-cleaned. Joe likes it; I’ll need it again.” And she found a tissue and started dabbing at the worst bits. Like she’d spilled tea on it, or something. She wasn’t angry any more, or crying; it was like none of that had ever happened.’