‘I get you just fine,’ I say. ‘I’m missing nothing.’ I crumple the statement sheet in my fist and shove it into my coat pocket. ‘See you ’round.’
‘Yeah,’ McCann says. ‘See you.’ He turns away again, dark sagging profile against the growing light. The dirty reek of his cigarette follows me into the building.
Me and McCann are both early. The cleaner is still hoovering the corridor; when I pass the squad-room door, the only sounds inside are patchy two-man chat and the perky squawking of drivetime radio. Incident Room C is empty except for Steve, sprawled at our desk, looking rumpled and hugging a cup of coffee.
‘You’re in early,’ I say.
‘Couldn’t sleep.’
‘Me neither. Any sign of Breslin?’
‘Nope.’
‘Good.’ I’m not in the humour for Breslin. There’s a stack of little plastic photo albums on Steve’s desk: mug books. I nod at them. ‘What’re those for?’
‘Gang lads,’ Steve says, through a yawn. ‘Lanigan’s lot, mostly. I want to run them past the barman in Ganly’s. Then I’ll show them to Aislinn’s neighbours, see if anyone recognises—’
I say, ‘The gang theory’s dead.’ It feels like punching a bruise.
Steve’s face looks slapped blank. He says, ‘Wait. What?’
‘Gone. Out the window. I never want to hear about it again. Is that clear enough?’
‘Hang on,’ Steve says. He’s lifted his hands and forgotten them in mid-air, trying to get his head together. ‘Hang on. No. Then what was Breslin playing at yesterday, ditching Gaffney? Don’t tell me you actually believe he stopped off for a shag.’
I toss my satchel on the floor and throw myself into my chair. It feels good, watching this hit Steve. ‘Maybe he was getting his nails done. Maybe he didn’t go anywhere special; he just wanted to show us he wasn’t going to take orders from the likes of us. I don’t care either way.’
‘And you saw him give Gaffney the cash for his sandwich, yeah? The roll of fifties? What was he doing with those?’
‘Did you not hear me? I don’t care. I don’t care if he wants to carry around his entire savings fund in his pocket so the Illuminati can’t get their hands on it. His problem. Not ours.’
‘OK,’ Steve says carefully. He’s looking at me like I might have rabies. ‘OK. What the hell happened last night?’
‘Last night,’ I say, ‘I had a chat with a guy I know. He knows the gang scene inside out, and he says we can rule out that angle. Aislinn had fuck-all to do with gangs. End of story. On the tiny off-chance he finds anything to contradict that, he’ll let us know, but we shouldn’t hold our breath. And we should be very bloody grateful that we found this out before we made twats of ourselves in front of the entire squad.’
Steve looks like a lorry splattered his hamster. He says, ‘How well do you know this guy?’
‘Well enough. We go back.’
‘Are you sure you can trust him?’
The face on him; like this can’t be happening, not to his very own special pet idea. ‘If I didn’t fucking trust him, would I have fucking asked him for his opinion?’
‘No. I’m only—’
‘No. And do I look fucking brain-damaged?’
‘No—’
‘No. So when I say we can trust him, it probably means we can trust him.’
‘Fair enough,’ Steve says. His face has turned neutral; he’s drawn back inside himself, which is what he does when he’s pissed off. ‘Let’s do that.’
I leave him to sulk it off and go back to work, or try to. It’s not clicking; I have to read every sentence three times before it sinks in. Normally I can concentrate through anything – squad rooms teach you that, specially the kind of squad room I’ve been working in – but what Steve said is pinching at me.
Fleas knows an awful lot about me and my career, for someone who’s been deep under for years. I thought that was nice, him bothering to keep up. Which it might well have been; or it might not.
All of a sudden I’m second-guessing every step of our lovely cosy conversation, looking for cracks where the hidden agenda might have shown through: Fleas getting me to back off in case I jeopardise a drugs op, or just because he doesn’t need my cooties all over whatever he’s doing; Fleas brushing me off because he’s gone rogue and he’s protecting his new boss. I’m second-guessing myself, too, wondering if I actually needed to talk to Fleas for investigative purposes or if deep down I was just looking for an excuse to have a sandwich and a chat with someone who doesn’t know I’m untouchable. I don’t believe in second-guessing and I don’t believe in introspective crap, and I’m not happy about catching myself doing both. I wish I’d given Steve more hassle while I was at it. I hope he’s feeling like shite.
I have a skim through my messages, the ones that have made it as far as my desk or my inbox. If someone’s swiped the good stuff, he’s been thorough. Cooper’s revised post-mortem report; a couple of tips that will need following up – someone saw a woman who might have been Aislinn in a nightclub, a few weeks back, having a drunken argument with a guy who looked like a rugby player; someone else saw three teenage guys hanging around the top of Viking Gardens on Saturday afternoon, looking suspicious, whatever that means. Bureau reports: the stains on Aislinn’s mattress aren’t semen, meaning they’re probably sweat. The techs are trying for DNA, but they’re not promising anything: Aislinn kept her place hot, mattresses aren’t sterile, warmth and bacterial action could have degraded the DNA till it’s useless. I have a hard time believing it’ll make a lot of difference, either way.
A massive stack of paper that turns out to be a year’s worth of Aislinn’s e-mail records, to cross-check against her account in case anything’s been deleted. That should keep someone busy until his brain – or hers – blows up. This kind of crap is why God created floaters, but if there’s one tiny worthwhile thing to find in this case, Aislinn’s electronics is probably where to find it. I split the stack in two and slide one half over to Steve, who says ‘Thanks,’ without looking up and shoves it to one side. I consider kicking the sulky little bollix under the table. Instead I spread out Aislinn’s e-mail records and the printouts of her mailboxes on my desk and start going back and forth between them, working backwards, making sure every e-mail is accounted for. 3.18 a.m. on Sunday, sale notice from some makeup website, still in the inbox. 3.02 a.m. on Sunday, spam from an imaginary Russian babe looking for company, still in the inbox. I want to put my head down on the paper and sleep.
The floaters show up one by one, snap out of their morning fog when they see me and Steve, and get stuck into the jobs they picked up at yesterday’s case meeting. I give Cooper’s report to Gaffney to type up – I’m still pissed off with him for not getting a voice ID off the Stoneybatter uniform. Breslin sweeps in singing to himself, throws the room a cheerful ‘Hi-diddly-hi, camperinos!’ and tells me and Steve, ‘Two of Rory’s lucky exes down, yesterday evening; two to go. Who’s the man?’
‘You’re the man,’ Steve says automatically, turning over a page. ‘Did you get anything good?’
‘No surprises. Rory’s a predictable little bastard. We’ll see if the other two have anything nice for me.’ Breslin leans against our desk and tries to read what I’m doing, upside down. ‘What’s all this, then?’
‘Aislinn’s e-mail records,’ I say.
‘Huh,’ Breslin says. ‘And?’
‘And if you want seventy per cent off a fabulous goddess gown, I can tell you where to go.’
‘Sounds like you’re having a blast.’ Breslin gives me his best movie-star grin, picks up Aislinn’s sent e-mails and has a flick through them. ‘Jesus, I see what you mean. This could get old. You want me to take over? You can have Rory’s exes.’
‘Nah.’ I’m not even gonna pretend to get all suspicious. He’s working hard for it, but I’m done playing Breslin’s game. ‘I’ve started; I’ll finish.’
‘Conway.’ Breslin switches the grin to mildly rueful. ‘Thi
s is me trying to show you that I do know who’s the boss of this investigation. If you need scut work done, I’m offering to do it.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I’m grand.’
After a moment Breslin shrugs. ‘Suit yourself.’ He has another skim through the e-mails, taking his time, and drops them back on my desk. ‘Moran? You need to get out of the office for a while?’ He turns Steve’s paperwork round to face him and has a good look. As far as I can tell, it’s Aislinn’s e-mail records, even though I would’ve sworn Steve was ignoring them up until Breslin came in.
‘Ah, no,’ Steve says. ‘I’m nearly done, sure. If I haven’t died of boredom by now . . .’
Breslin shrugs and shoves Steve’s stuff back to him. ‘Remember,’ he says, aiming a finger at me. ‘I made the offer.’
‘I will,’ I say. ‘Enjoy the exes.’
‘Yeah, I’m not getting my hopes up. You should see the first two.’ Breslin swings into his chair, makes oily phone calls setting up appointments, and sweeps out again. ‘And I don’t need backup today, either,’ he says, tossing me and Steve a wink on his way past. ‘If you catch my drift.’ We both pull out automated smiles.
‘What did he even come in for?’ Steve wants to know, when he’s gone. ‘He could’ve made those calls from anywhere.’
His voice still has some of that flat note to it, but he’s talking, which presumably should make me feel all warm inside. I say, ‘He couldn’t stay away from your pretty face.’
‘Seriously. He just wanted to check out what we’re doing. And try to take over the electronics. Again. What’s he scared we might find in there?’
I say, ‘I don’t care.’ And, when he opens his mouth again: ‘I don’t care.’
Steve rolls his eyes to the ceiling, shoves the e-mail records out of his way and goes back to whatever he’s really doing. I try to pick up where I left off, but my focus is shot; all the spam is blurring into one endless Viagra ad. My legs are twitching to get up and move.
The one thing that’s still kicking feebly inside my head: Lucy’s story about Aislinn’s secret boyfriend. That’s where all the gang bollix started, and now that we’ve cleared away the bollix, the story is still there and it still needs explaining. It occurs to me, which it should’ve done two days ago, that there are other reasons why Lucy could’ve been cagey. Maybe the boyfriend is a married guy she works with – Aislinn met Rory through Lucy, after all; if she met someone else too, there’s a decent chance it was the same way – and Lucy doesn’t want drama on the job if he finds out she dobbed him in. Or maybe, just like I thought at first, he never existed. I think about hauling Lucy out of her flat and going at her hard, so she can tell me the boyfriend story was revenge on one of Aislinn’s exes or a way to make sure we didn’t neglect any possibilities, and I can take this whole staggering wheezing sidetrack out back and put it out of its misery.
That’s when Steve’s head jerks up. ‘Antoinette,’ he says. He’s forgotten all about sulking.
‘What?’
He pushes a statement sheet across the desk. His eyebrows are halfway up his forehead.
I look down, where he’s pointing. The statement is one of his photocopies from the day before, an alibi from one of Desmond Murray’s taxi customers. The reporting officer’s signature is a scrawl, but the name typed underneath is Detective Garda Joseph McCann.
My eyes meet Steve’s. He says, very softly, ‘What the hell?’
Ireland is small, the pool of Ds is small, it would be weirder if there wasn’t at least one guy from the Desmond Murray case working Murder now. This explains why Gary was so keen for me to keep my mouth shut, anyway: if I go stirring up trouble, it’s gonna be close to home. Beyond that I can’t tell, through the last few months and the struggling light at the windows, whether this is another handful of nothing or whether it should set all my alarms screaming.
I say, ‘We need to check the rest of what you’ve got from that file. Give me half.’
We flip fast and with one eye on the door. That scrawl is everywhere. If we’d been in less of a rush, we would never have missed it yesterday: McCann, McCann, McCann. He didn’t get drafted in to give a hand with the initial push, like Gary did. He was right at the heart of this case.
Aislinn leaning over my desk, all big eyes and twisting fingers, going on about the detective who had patted her on the head and told her You have great memories of him; we don’t want to change that, do we? Sometimes these things are better left as they are . . . That could have been McCann.
Steve is holding out a thick sheaf of pages, easily a third of what he started with. He says quietly, ‘All of these.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. I lift my own sheaf, the same size. ‘And these.’
Steve takes them out of my hand, tucks them back into the file and locks it away in his desk drawer, nice and easy. I’m not sure whether to slag him for paranoia or tell him to hurry up.
‘Here’s the big question,’ he says. ‘Have McCann and Breslin copped that Aislinn’s missing da was McCann’s missing person?’
I clasp my hands at the back of my neck to keep them still. None of the floaters are looking our way. ‘I don’t know. I was watching Breslin, when I told him that box was the missing-persons file. I’d swear he was relieved. If there’s something he doesn’t want us finding, it’s not that.’
‘You told him we’d looked through the file and found nothing good. Maybe he was relieved that we’d missed McCann’s name.’
‘Why? How would they even make the connection?’
‘Breslin’s telling McCann about our case, mentions the vic’s name . . .’
‘Like we said before: there’s got to be dozens of Aislinn Murrays out there. You honestly think McCann would remember a name as common as that? After seventeen years? She wasn’t even the missing person, or the family contact; she was just some little kid in the background.’
‘He worked the Desmond Murray disappearance hard,’ Steve says. ‘It could have stuck in his mind.’
‘So what if it did? There’s nothing dodgy about the disappearance; there’s not even room for anything dodgy. Why would they care if we link it up with our case?’
Steve is shaking his head. ‘Nothing dodgy, except the Ds not dropping the family a hint. Say Breslin and McCann know McCann screwed up there, yeah? Maybe they think it played into Aislinn getting killed, somehow. Or maybe it’s not even that: they just don’t want the screw-up coming out. So they’re trying to shove Rory Fallon down our throats and hope we swallow fast.’
Maybe it’s the fatigue, the heat and not enough coffee, wrapping layers of fuzz around my brain; I can’t tell whether the story rings true, or whether it just sounds good because Steve is putting a nice shape on it. He says, ‘It probably would’ve worked, too – if you hadn’t been working the Missing Persons desk that day, or if you didn’t have that memory on you. We might never even have found out about Desmond going missing, never mind Aislinn trying to track him down.’
I would love to believe it. If Breslin is messing with this case, not with us – meaning me – personally; if there are no gangs involved, no bent cops, just some dumb screw-up McCann made seventeen years ago and doesn’t want coming out now; then we’ve got the pair of them in a headlock, with a great chance at working out a deal that will make everyone very happy. For a second I can feel it, right through my body: the weight of the room lifting off me, the rush of strength hitting every cell like oxygen, Let’s see you try and push me around now motherfuckers. Me finally holding the high cards, ramming them so far up Roche’s hole that he’ll be spitting aces for months, and the Murder squad unfolding at long fucking last into the place I’ve dreamed of coming in to every morning.
Only I don’t believe it, no matter how hard I try. The room clamps back down around me – thick hot air, Reilly typing like he’s beating the keyboard into submission. It squeezes that strength right out of me, squashes it into a wad and tosses it away.
I say, ‘Yeah, that’d be fu
n. Only why would McCann and Breslin care? Maybe it wasn’t nice of the Ds to keep Evelyn Murray in the dark, but they were going by the book. What’s the worst that’s gonna happen to them if it comes out now? “Here’s a copy of the policy on victim sensitivity, have a read sometime”? It’s not like they’re gonna get reverted back into uniform, specially not after all this time.’
‘Depends on why they kept Evelyn in the dark. I don’t care what your man Gary says: that’s weird, Antoinette. It is. When you worked Missing Persons, did you ever do that to a family? Get an answer and walk away from them without one single hint? Ever?’
Steve’s head close to mine, and the squeezed-tight urgency in his voice: they feel idiotic, make me feel like a kid playing cops, with a cardboard badge and a bunch of gibberish learned off the telly. I shift away from him. ‘So? McCann wasn’t even the lead D. Even if there was a dodgy reason behind them making that call, the buck wouldn’t stop with him.’
Steve says, ‘How long’s McCann been married?’
‘Bernadette sent round a card for some anniversary, last year. Silver one, must’ve been. So?’
‘So he was married back when he was working this case. Gary said a lot of the Ds were smitten with Evelyn. What if that went further, for McCann? What if he was stretching out the case so he had an excuse to keep seeing her?’
The heat and the clacking keyboards are piling more fuzz onto my mind, thick as insulation. I picture grabbing Reilly’s keyboard and snapping it over my knee. ‘Only the case didn’t stretch out. They closed it as soon as they found Desmond.’
‘They did, yeah, officially at least – and we even said it was weird they didn’t do it sooner, remember? But maybe McCann told Evelyn he’d keep investigating in his free time, stay in touch, give her updates. Maybe there was actually something between them, maybe not; but either way, McCann might not want that coming out. His marriage isn’t in great shape, right? And he’s got a bunch of kids, hasn’t he? If the wife finds out he was using his job to chase Evelyn Murray, she could use that to—’