The Trespasser (70 page)

‘Good man,’ I say, sitting up again. ‘Get a load of this. Aislinn Murray, right?’ Crowley nods, filling up with drool, hoping I’m about to tell him she was raped in creative ways. ‘She was having an affair. With a married guy.’

Crowley’s only delighted to settle for that. He does a man-of-the-world head-shake. ‘I knew she was too good to be true. Knew it. Girls who look like that, my God, they think they can get away with anything. Sometimes – oops, so sorry, Your Highness! – it doesn’t work out like that.’

He’s already rewriting the story in his head, whizzing through his best euphemisms for ‘homewrecking nympho who got what she deserved’. Steve says, ‘It gets better. Guess what her fella does for a living.’

‘Hmmm.’ Crowley pinches his chin and thinks. ‘Well. Obviously a girl like that would have liked money. But I’d hazard a guess that she was even more aroused by power. Would I be right?’

Me and Steve are well impressed. ‘How come you’re not doing our job?’ Steve wants to know. ‘We could do with that kind of smarts on the squad.’

‘Ah, well, not everyone’s the type who can work for The Man, Detective Moran. I think we must be talking about a politician. Let me see . . .’ Crowley steeples his fingers against his lips. He’s got the whole story rolling out in his head, ready for ink. ‘Aislinn’s job wouldn’t have taken her into those circles, so they must have met socially, meaning he’s young enough to be out and about—’

‘Even better than that,’ I say. I have a quick glance around the pub, lean across the table and head-beckon Crowley in. When him and his patchouli reek get close enough for a whisper: ‘He’s a cop.’

‘Even better,’ Steve says, ditching his phone and leaning in beside me. ‘He’s a detective.’

‘Even better,’ I say. ‘He’s a Murder detective.’

‘Not me,’ Steve adds. ‘I’m single. Thank Jaysus.’

We both sit back and smile big wide smiles at Crowley.

He stares at us, sticky little mind racing while he tries to work out our angle and whether we’re bullshitting him. ‘I can’t run that,’ he says.

I say, ‘You’re going to run it.’

‘I can’t. I’ll be sued. The
Courier
will be sued.’

‘Not if you don’t name names,’ Steve reassures him. ‘There’s two dozen of us on the squad, all guys except Conway here, and most of them are married. That’s, what, sixteen or seventeen people it could be? You’re safe as houses.’

‘I have contacts who would be furious. I’m not going to sabotage my career.’

‘Everyone on Murder already hates you, man,’ Steve points out, going back to his game. ‘Except Roche and Breslin, and just to ease your mind, it’s not them. So it’s not like you’re going to burn any bridges.’

‘You’ll be a hero,’ I say. ‘Ireland’s bravest investigative journalist, daring to take on The Man and strike a blow for truth and transparency, never even thinking about the risk to himself. It’s gonna be great.’

‘Think how much hoop you’ll get,’ Steve says. Crowley throws him a look of disdain.

I say, ‘The story runs tomorrow. A married detective, not involved in investigating Aislinn Murray’s murder but in a position very close to that investigation, was having an affair with her. If we need you to throw anything else in there at some stage, we’ll let you know.’

And the brass will have no choice: there’ll be an internal investigation. It won’t find enough for charges, any more than we did, but at least McCann won’t be prancing back to his marriage and his lifetime Murder billet like none of this ever happened. Aislinn’s getting the job done in the end. I wonder if some part of her realised, in dark glints during the long nights when she couldn’t sleep for planning, that this was the only way it could go down.

I ask, ‘Is that all clear?’

Crowley’s shaking his head, but it’s at us and our crudeness and our general inferiority as human beings; we all know he’s gonna do it. ‘Great,’ I say. I shove my stool back and stand up; Steve kills his game. ‘See you round.’ And we leave Crowley and
SARTRE
to get to work on his brand-new scoop.

Outside, the air is mild enough to trick you into turning your face to it, looking for warmth. It’s only five o’clock, but it’s dark and the streets are starting to shift into their evening buzz, clumps of smokers laughing outside the pubs, girls hurrying home swinging shopping bags to get ready for the night out. ‘I want to ask you something,’ I say to Steve. ‘Do you know who pissed in my locker, that time?’

I never told him about that, but he doesn’t pretend it’s news. He watches me steadily, hands in his overcoat pockets. ‘Not for definite. No one’s going to talk about that around me.’

‘Breslin said—’ Breslin said of
course
Steve would’ve heard the stories, of
course
Steve would’ve told me if he’d been on my side. Breslin said a load of stuff. I shut my trap.

Steve hears the rest anyway. He says matter-of-factly, ‘Everyone knows I got here because you put in a word for me. They see us working together. No one’s going to try messing with that. They’re not thick.’

It catches me with a warmth that almost hurts. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘No.’

Steve says, ‘From what I’ve walked in on, but, the locker was Roche.’

‘How about the poster with my head Photoshopped onto the gash pic?’

‘Yeah. Roche.’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘OK.’ I turn in a circle, looking up at the city lights painting the clouds a tricky grey-gold. ‘All the other shite? Not the small stuff. The real shite.’

‘Like I said: I wouldn’t know. But I’ve never heard anything to say anyone else was in on it.’

I say, ‘You never told me.’

That gets a flick of one corner of his mouth. ‘’Cause you would’ve listened, yeah?’

Steve hanging on to his precious gangster story for dear life, building it bigger and fancier and twirlier, waving his arms for me to look. Here I thought he was trying to cheer me up so I wouldn’t get him in the lads’ bad books. All along he was hoping, if he could just come up with a good enough alternative, maybe he could snap me out of convincing myself the whole case – the whole squad – was one great big conspiracy to shaft me. I can’t decide which of us is the bigger spa.

‘Huh,’ I say. The air smells tasty and restless, all those places you could spend your evening, all the things waiting to happen inside those beckoning open doors. ‘Would you look at that.’

‘What?’

‘I just wish I’d copped earlier. Is all.’

Steve waits.

I say, ‘We need to talk to the gaffer.’

Chapter 18

Me and Steve, back in the gaffer’s office. It’s down the end of a corridor; with the click of the door, the silence closes around us and we’re a thousand miles from the rest of the squad. The layers of tat and clutter close in, too: spider plant, golf trophies, framed crap, stacks of pointless old files, and there’s a brand-new snow globe holding down a heap of paper on the desk, souvenir of some grandkid’s holiday. In the middle of it all, O’Kelly, taking off his reading glasses to look at us.

He says, ‘Breslin was in. He says you’ve hit a wall with the Aislinn Murray case; time to take a step back, hope ye catch a break somewhere down the road.’

He gets it bang on, gruff and not exactly delighted with us, but holding back from the bollocking because Breslin told him we’ve done a good job. For a second there I could almost believe it’s real, and all the rest is our imagination. The rush of fury pulls a sharp breath into me.

The gaffer watches us.

I say, ‘McCann killed Aislinn Murray.’

Not one muscle of O’Kelly changes. He says, ‘Sit down.’

We turn the spare chairs towards his desk and sit. The crisp whirl and click of Steve placing his chair is full up tight with that same fury.

‘Let’s hear it.’

We tell him what happened, while the darkness thickens at the window. We keep it very clear and very cold, no commentary, just fact stacked neatly on top of fact, the way the gaffer likes his reports. He picks up the shitty snow globe and turns it from angle to angle between his fingers, watching the shavings of plastic snow tumble, and listens.

When we’re done he says, still inspecting the snow globe, ‘How much of that can you prove?’

‘Not enough to put him away,’ Steve says. He’s barely holding down the savage edge of sarcasm:
Don’t be worrying, it’s all grand
. ‘Not even enough for a charge.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

‘McCann’s connection to the old case is on file,’ I say. The anger’s slicing through my voice, too, and I’m not even trying to hide it. ‘Gary O’Rourke and I can both confirm that Aislinn was trying to track down the story on her father. The affair’s solid: we’ve got forensics and the best mate’s statement, plus McCann admitted it. And we’ve got the best mate’s evidence that Aislinn was only stringing him along. When it comes to Saturday evening, we’ve got nothing but Rory Fallon’s statement about seeing McCann, which is worth bugger-all. McCann’s saying nothing. Breslin says McCann found her dead, but no one’s going to confirm that on record.’

O’Kelly’s eyes flick up to me. ‘Breslin said that.’

‘An hour ago.’

He swivels his chair, with a long low creak, to the window. He could be staring out over the courtyard, at the slope of cobblestones and the proud high-windowed rise of the building opposite, the old solid shapes he has to know by heart; only for the darkness.

Steve says, like it’s punched its way out of him, ‘He rang you Sunday morning. Before you gave us the case.’

One flicker of the gaffer’s eyelids. Except for that, we could think he didn’t hear.

‘We were a gift,’ I say. ‘The perfect stooges. Moran’s a newbie, Conway’s fighting a bad rep. Easy to point them in the wrong direction; if they come up with something you don’t like, easy to twist their arms, make them back off and shut their gobs. Worst comes to worst, easy to smear them bad enough that no one’ll listen to a word they say.’

O’Kelly ought to reef me out of it, for talking to my gaffer like that. He doesn’t even turn. The desk lamp slides gold light down the brass desk plaque saying
DET
.
SUPT
.
G
.
O
’
KELLY
.

After a long time he says, ‘Breslin said it was a mate of his.’

Neither of us answers.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out delicately, the way you do when you’re dying of a cough, afraid if you do it wrong you might explode. ‘Five in the morning, he rang me. He said his friend, one of his best friends, he had called round to his girlfriend that night. Found her in her sitting room unconscious, bet up. Pretty sure another boyfriend did it. I said, “What are you dragging me out of my bed for? Call it in, get the uniforms and the paramedics over there, see you in the morning.” Breslin said he was going to call it in as soon as we hung up. But then he said to me, “My friend’s got a wife and kids. He can’t be linked to this, gaffer. It’ll wreck his life. We need to keep him out of it.” ’

O’Kelly lets out a small, humourless snort of laughter. ‘I said don’t be giving me that shite about
my friend
; we all know what that means. But Breslin said no. He swore up and down: it’s not me, gaffer. You know me, I don’t step out on my missus. I’ll put you on to her, she can tell you I’ve been with her and the kids all weekend . . . A lie that size, from a fella I know the way I know Breslin, I wouldn’t have missed it. I believed him.’

He moves; the chair creaks sharply. ‘I said, “Your mate says he didn’t put a finger on her, just walked in and found the damage done. Do you believe him?” And Breslin said he did, yeah. Hundred per cent. Two hundred. A thousand. He wasn’t lying then, either. And Breslin’s no eejit. He’s had plenty of practice spotting bullshit stories.’

There’s a second of silence, while we all let that lie there.

‘I asked him, “Then what are you getting into hysterics about? If your friend did nothing and saw nothing, there’s no reason his name should ever come into this. The bird’ll wake up and tell the uniforms who gave her the slaps, they’ll pull the fella in, she’ll refuse to press charges, everyone’ll go home; rinse and repeat a month or two down the line. Your mate’s grand. I hope it scared him shitless enough that he’ll keep it in his trousers from now on.” ’

The cough breaks through. We wait while O’Kelly pulls a tissue out of his pocket and presses it to his mouth, makes ferocious revving noises to clear his throat.

He says, ‘But Breslin was worried. He said his mate hadn’t checked to see was the girl breathing. Too shaken up, too afraid of being snared; he’d just legged it out of there and rung Breslin. They had no way of knowing how long she’d been lying there. If she was dead, then his mate was fucked. He’d be dragged in, dragged through the muck, lose everything. All because he’d stuck his mickey in the wrong hole.’

The prickle of alert lifts Steve’s head at the same moment as mine. Breslin told us McCann checked and Aislinn was dead, meaning he would have done no good by calling it in, so he wasn’t a bad guy for leaving her bleeding on the floor. Both versions are bullshit anyway, but I’d love to know why he served O’Kelly a different flavour from us.