by Tana French
That gets a snort. ‘Rory Fallon. Was it?’
‘You recognised him, yeah? When we brought him in?’
Brief shake of his head, wry click of his tongue: he’s not falling for that. ‘Nah. Bres mentioned that Fallon’s been doing a bit of hanging around Stoneybatter himself, the last while. Bit of stalking. Right?’
Me and Steve don’t answer. McCann nods, satisfied. ‘That means he was possessive about Aislinn. More than that: obsessive. Probably he saw me going in or out of her gaff, one night, did he?’
We look back at him.
‘Yeah. That would’ve sent him wild with jealousy. Saturday evening, when he got in her door, the first thing he did was confront her, ask her if she was seeing someone else. Poor Aislinn didn’t deny it, or didn’t deny it well enough, and . . .’
One hand closes into a fist and lifts off the table, just an inch, twisting.
‘No wonder he’s saying he saw me Saturday night. He’d say anything to get you looking somewhere else. And you’d be a pair of fools to fall for it. God knows no jury would.’
Steve says, and all of us hear the defensive note weakening his voice, ‘No one’s said we’re falling for anything. We’re only talking here.’
McCann leans back in his chair and stuffs his hands in his pockets, one corner of his mouth tugging upwards. He doesn’t bother trying to keep the triumph off his face. He thinks he’s seen everything we’ve got, held steady against it and blown it all away.
He says, ‘What do you think happens if the squad finds out you were only talking to me like this? Over nothing but a few shags?’
‘Ah, come on,’ Steve says. He’s practically begging. ‘You’re a witness. We had to talk to you. You know we did.’
‘I’m a witness to nothing.’
‘You knew the vic. You were sleeping with the vic. We couldn’t just—’
‘You ask me very nicely,’ McCann says, ‘and you don’t go trying to scupper my marriage, I’ll forget this ever happened.’
‘We won’t tell your wife about Aislinn. I swear.’
‘Good call,’ McCann says. He stretches, rolls his shoulders back. ‘We done here, yeah?’
Steve gives me a quick, uncertain glance. ‘No,’ I say stubbornly. ‘Seeing as we’re here, we might as well finish up.’
‘Five more minutes?’ Steve asks McCann. ‘Honest to God, it won’t take longer than that, we’ve just got a few more—’
McCann laughs and spreads his arms. ‘You want one last shot? Take it.’
‘Thanks,’ Steve says humbly. ‘I mean, no, we don’t – we just—’
I say, ‘I want to ask you about Aislinn. What was going on in her head.’
McCann snorts. ‘This psychological shite, Conway. Honest to God, you need to grow out of that. Rory Fallon got obsessed and lost the head. All the rest, what Aislinn was thinking, that’s not your problem. Nobody cares.’
‘Probably you’re right. Humour me anyway, yeah?’ McCann settles back into his chair on a long-suffering sigh. ‘You told us,’ I say, ‘just a few minutes ago: when someone who’s trying to get you into bed says they love you – like Aislinn said she loved you – chances are it’s bollix. They’ve got a hidden agenda. Right?’
‘Right. Only Aislinn wasn’t trying to get me into bed. That just happened.’
‘You ran her through the system, at the start. Because you thought she might have a hidden agenda. Right?’
‘Right. And she came up clean.’
‘She did, yeah. That was really enough to make you relax? You never wondered again, no? Girl like that, guy like you, and you genuinely figured she was on the up-and-up?’
‘Maybe he genuinely did,’ Steve says, examining McCann critically. ‘Hormones, man. Scramble the brain.’
‘Ah, he wondered,’ I say. ‘He wondered all the time. He hated himself for doing it, tried to stop – didn’t you, McCann? But he couldn’t. You know what I think? I think, deep down, he knew.’
McCann’s lip lifts. ‘You think I don’t know what you’re at? You’ve got some nerve, trying this shite on me. Go play with Rory Fallon some more. Get Bres to show you how it’s done. See if you can learn something.’ He shoves his chair back from the table. ‘I’m done here.’
Steve takes the Des Murray family pic out of his suit pocket and lays it on the table. ‘Do you recognise any of these people?’ he asks.
McCann leans over and whips it up, ready to toss it back at Steve after one glance, but the photo catches him. He holds it between his fingertips and we watch his face, held to stillness with all his will, as he recognises Evelyn, then Des, and fumbles for what the hell they have to do with this. As that chubby little girl and her tentative smile start to ring a bell. We watch the tremor run through his mind, coming from deep inside the foundations, as he finally begins to understand.
Steve puts a finger on Desmond Murray. He says, ‘Can you identify this man?’
McCann doesn’t hear him.
I lean in and tap the photo. ‘McCann. Who’s this?’
McCann blinks. He says thickly, like his mind’s too taken up to work his mouth right, ‘Name’s Desmond Murray.’
‘How do you know him?’
‘You already know.’
‘We want to hear it from you.’
‘He went missing. A long time back. I worked the case.’
‘And this?’ I move my finger to Evelyn Murray. ‘Who’s this?’
‘The wife. Evelyn.’
‘And this?’
My finger’s on Aislinn. Steve’s leaning across the table beside me, the two of us close in McCann’s face, watching every twitch. There’s a long silence before McCann says, ‘That’s the daughter.’
‘Her name.’
One breath. ‘Aislinn.’
A second of silence, while that falls through the air.
‘You seriously didn’t remember her?’ Steve asks, incredulous. ‘I know she’d grown up and all, but her face didn’t even ring a bell? Her name? Nothing?’
After a moment McCann’s head moves, side to side.
I say, ‘She remembered you.’
He can’t stop shaking his head.
‘That’s why she picked you out in Horgan’s,’ I say. ‘Not because she was a badge bunny and you were a D. Because she wanted to know what happened to her da.’
‘I wondered if maybe it started out as curiosity,’ Steve says, ‘or some fucked-up way of getting closer to her da’ – that gets one sharp flicker of a wince, at the corner of McCann’s mouth – ‘and then, as she got to know you, it turned real.’
I snort. ‘Hey,’ Steve says, ‘stranger things have happened. Is that what you’re wondering, too?’
McCann lifts his head to look at Steve for a second. The flash of hope is terrible.
I pick up my phone again and swipe, methodically, feeling McCann fighting not to look, till I get to Aislinn’s little fairy tale that she left for Lucy. ‘Have a read of this,’ I say, and pass it to McCann.
His eyes close once, for a second, as he reads. When he finishes, he reaches out and puts the phone on the table in slow motion, like a drunk. He doesn’t look at us.
‘Recognise the handwriting?’ I ask.
Nod.
‘Whose is it?’
After a second: ‘Aislinn.’
‘Yeah. And the bad guy in the story? The one who fucked up her life, and now she’s planning on fucking up his? You know who that is, right?’
McCann says nothing. I can hear his breath, heavy puffs through his nose, in the thick overheated air.
When we know he’s not going to answer, I say, ‘That’s you, McCann. Do you get that?’
Nothing. His hands are over the photo, covering it, so he doesn’t have to see.
I lean in closer, tap the table in front of him. ‘Pay attention to this part. I want you to be very clear on exactly why all this happened.’
One flicker of his eyelids. He’s got blurry inklings, but not enough. He’s desperate t
o hear the rest.
‘Remember talking to Aislinn about her da’s case?’
McCann says, ‘I never named names.’
I laugh out loud. Out of all the things he could be worrying about, he picks that; God forbid we should think he was unprofessional. ‘You didn’t need to. She knew exactly who you were talking about; she’s the one who steered the conversation there to begin with. Do you remember what you told her?’
He shakes his head, trying to think. ‘How we tracked him all the way to England. How we found him with the bit on the . . . Aislinn never, she never said a word. Never batted an eyelid. Just kept listening, nodding . . .’
‘Aislinn was good,’ I say. ‘Aislinn was a whole lot better at this than you realised. Do you remember telling her how you talked to her da? How he asked you to tell Aislinn and her ma he was OK, and you decided to say nothing?’
McCann’s eyes have come up to me. ‘You didn’t meet Evelyn Murray. Delicate little thing, the shyest, sweetest – like someone out of an old book, the one who’d die at the end of consumption or one of them things, just because the world was too much for her. Made of glass, Evelyn was.’ To the spreading grin on my face: ‘Fuck you. I wasn’t shagging her. Never laid a finger on her, never would’ve.’
‘Whatever,’ I say. ‘If you cared that much about her, why not pass on the message?’
‘Because finding out her man had run off with a younger model, that would’ve killed her. Smashed her to bits. I wasn’t going to do that to her.’
I say, ‘But you had no problem taking over the rest of her life. Everything she ever did after you walked in her door, every thought that ever went through her head, it had your fingerprints all over it. And you knew it would.’
I’m leaning in, across the table that’s specially chosen to be narrow enough that I can get close, see every coarse hair of this fucker’s stubble, I can smell the tea on his breath and the stale smoke on his clothes and the acrid reek of rage and terror in his sweat, I’m close enough to draw blood a dozen ways. ‘Be honest with yourself, McCann: that’s why you kept your mouth shut. Isn’t it? You couldn’t have Evelyn, but you loved the thought that you owned the rest of her life. Every time she woke up wondering whether Des would walk in the door today, every time she leaped when the phone rang, every night she dreamed he was dead, she belonged to you. Did you think about that sometimes, when your wife was a bitch and you were lying beside her daydreaming about sweet little Evelyn? Did it turn you on, knowing that whatever she was doing at that second, whatever she was thinking, you’d made her do it?’
McCann’s staring at me, those bloodshot blue eyes. I’ve never seen hate like this before, not coming my way. I’ve only ever seen hate this intimate between couples, families. I’ve put my finger right between his ribs, onto his deepest hidden places. I’ve got him.
He says, low and clenched and right into my face, ‘Fuck you to hell. It was for her own sake. You know what her man said about her? For his excuse? Said she’d been suffocating the life out of him for ten years. Said he was going mental, another few months in that house would’ve sent him off his chomp. You think I should’ve told her that? Let that own the rest of her life, instead? She wasn’t the kind who could throw that off, move on. It would’ve wrecked her. At least my way let her keep some self-respect, remember her marriage the way she thought it had been. Gave her a chance.’
‘Except,’ I say, ‘you got Aislinn as part of the package. You never even bothered thinking of that, did you? You took over Aislinn’s life, too. Every day was what you’d made it into, and it was shite. Then she grew up and went looking for some answers, and then she found out who had deliberately kept them away from her till it was too late.’
McCann’s mouth opens. We watch the moment when something spired and shining explodes with a tremendous roar inside his mind, jagged shards rocketing everywhere, burrowing deep into every tender spot.
I say, ‘Let me tell you what Aislinn decided, the night you told her that story. She decided it was her turn to make your life into whatever the fuck she wanted. That’s why the two of you started shagging, McCann. Not because hey, dick happens; because Aislinn figured you’d be easier to push around if you were pussy-whipped. And she was right. She nearly had you, didn’t she? When were you going to tell your missus it was over? Was it going to be this week? Today?’
He can’t talk. I lean in even closer and I say, softly and very clearly, ‘The whole thing was a lie. Every time Aislinn kissed you, every time she slept with you, every time she said she loved you, it took everything she had not to puke. She forced herself to go through all that so she’d have her chance to give you what you deserved.’
McCann’s head is down and swaying. His shoulders are hunched like a bleeding animal’s, trying to stay on its feet.
‘Now do you understand why she kept those photos?’
His breathing, like something out of a hospital ward, in the pretty pastel room.
‘You were right: she was going to take them to your wife, if she couldn’t make you leave on your own. One way or another, Aislinn was going to break up your marriage. And then she was going to welcome you with open arms and tell you that your wife never deserved you to begin with and you were better off with someone who’d treat you right. And once the dust settled, once the divorce papers were filed and your kids hated your cheating guts and there was no way your missus would ever let you in the door again, then Aislinn was going to dump you right on your arse and leave you there in the mess that was your brand-new life.’
Nothing, just that thick breathing. This is it. There’s nothing left of McCann; between us and Aislinn, we’ve taken the lot. If he’s going to talk, it’s from this seething nowhere place we’ve brought him to.
Steve says quietly, ‘You were in love with her. Weren’t you?’
McCann’s head lifts. His eyes move across us like he’s blind. His mouth opens and he takes one shallow breath and holds onto it for a long moment before he says, ‘No comment.’
It stays in the air like a dark spot. The room looks skewed to the point of insane, all those cute colours and smarmy little comforts straining to cover the grinning white interview-room bones – table, chairs, camera, one-way glass – underneath.
Steve says, ‘When you walked in on her getting ready for Rory. Did that hit you out of the blue? Or did you already have your suspicions?’
‘No comment.’
‘Talk to us, man. What did she say? Did she tell you to get out and not come back? Did she laugh at you, for thinking a woman like her could love you? What?’
‘No comment.’
He’s not even trying to look at us, not any more. He’s staring at the wall between our heads, blank-eyed, tuning us out so everything we say is just faraway babble. I’ve seen that look before, on rapists, murderers. The ones we’re never going to break, because they know what they are and they’re not fighting it.
‘Where were you last Saturday evening?’ Steve asks.
‘No comment.’
The click of the door handle turning makes me and Steve jump. McCann doesn’t move. Breslin stands in the doorway, rain glittering on his black overcoat, smiling at us all.
Chapter 17
‘Mac,’ Breslin says. ‘You’re wanted in the squad room.’
McCann looks up at him. Their eyes meet for a second that shuts me and Steve out completely.
‘Go on,’ Breslin says. ‘I’ll catch up with you in a few.’
McCann pulls himself out of his chair, joint by joint, and heads for the door. Breslin gives him a quick clap on the shoulder as he passes. McCann nods automatically.
‘Interview terminated at 3.24 p.m.,’ Breslin says, strolling over to the camera. He reaches up and switches it off. As he turns to the water cooler: ‘Well well well. Look who’s best buddies again. Sweet.’
I say, ‘I’d like to know what made you think we weren’t best buddies all along.’
‘You’ll have to forgive me if I d
on’t give a damn about your relationship right this minute. You just had the brass neck to accuse my partner—’
‘We’ll talk about that when I say so. Right now I want to know which one of the floaters went squealing to you, yesterday morning, told you me and Moran had had a row.’
‘Reilly,’ Steve says. ‘Wasn’t it? We started arguing, he stopped typing.’
I remember that, the sudden heavy silence where that witless clacking had been battering my brain. ‘I told you Reilly was a bright spark,’ Breslin says. ‘Unlike me, apparently. I spent twenty minutes sitting in the Top House before the penny dropped. Fair play to you, Conway: you make a very convincing South Dublin airhead. I didn’t know you had it in you.’ He raises his water cup to me. ‘I was lucky with traffic, though. Got back in time to catch the good parts of the show.’
He must catch a flick of surprise off one of us, because he laughs. ‘You thought I got back from my road trip and came charging straight in to save Mac from you two big scary avengers? I was in the observation room. Because I knew Mac didn’t need saving, seeing as he’s done nothing – well, apart from sticking his dick in the wrong place, which isn’t a hanging offence in my book. But I think we can all agree he’s had a tough few days, so when I saw you two going all out to wreck his head, I figured it might be time to call a halt.’
He wanders over to the table, flicks up the Murray family photo to have a long look. ‘Huh. No wonder Mac didn’t recognise her.’ He flips the photo back at the table, ignores it when it misses and spins to the ground. ‘So,’ he says. ‘All the time I thought we were working together. All the time I was getting a lovely warm feeling about what beautiful interviews we pulled off with Rory. This was what was going on in your heads. Tell me: when you looked in the mirror this morning, you didn’t taste just a little bit of sick in the back of your throats?’
Breslin doing what he does best. It feels strange, somehow it feels like a loss, that I don’t have the faintest urge to punch his face in. ‘And all the time I thought we were working together,’ I say, ‘all the time I was enjoying those beautiful interviews, you were keeping this back. You wanna throw stones?’