‘Or,’ I say, ‘you can do me a quick favour, and we’ll forget the whole thing. I’ll even throw you a bit of a scoop, just to show there’s no hard feelings.’
‘I’d go with that one,’ Steve advises him. ‘If it was me, like.’
‘The favour,’ Crowley says. Most of the pompous puff has leaked out of his voice. ‘What’s the favour?’
‘You’ve been showing up at way too many of my crime scenes, the last while,’ I say. ‘Who’s been tipping you off?’
Crowley nearly crumples off his bench with relief. He tries to cover by pursing his lips and doing scruples. Me and Steve wait.
‘I’m not the kind of person who stirs up trouble—’ That makes Steve snort. ‘Unless it’s morally necessary.’
‘It is, of course,’ Steve says cheerfully. ‘You spill, Conway sorts out whatever beef the lads have with her, everyone gets to concentrate on catching criminals, justice is served. Plus you don’t have to waste your time fighting charges; you can keep on fighting the good fight instead. It’s morally all tickety-boo.’
‘I’m not going to rat you out to your buddies,’ I say. ‘You can keep your cosy little relationships going. I just want to know who’s fucking me about.’
Crowley makes a face at hearing Language out of a girl, but he’s smart enough to keep his gob shut. He taps his lips with one fingertip and leaves another few seconds for his scruples to impress us. Then he sighs. ‘Detective Roche lets me know when he thinks I might take an interest in one of your cases.’
No surprise there. ‘Roche and who else?’
After a moment he says, reluctantly – hates to jeopardise his beautiful new friendship – ‘Detective Breslin rang me on Sunday morning. He mentioned the Aislinn Murray case.’
‘Yeah, we already knew that. Is he the one who gave you my home address? Or was that Roche?’
‘I got it from a contact.’
‘What kind of contact?’
‘You can’t make me reveal my sources. I know you people would love to turn this country into a totalitarian—’
Steve pumps his fist and goes ‘Yesss!’ at the phone. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘You were saying? Totalitarian something?’
I say, ‘This wasn’t a journalistic source, moron. This was someone helping you to help a criminal break into my house. You think that’s protected?’
‘It could be. You don’t know what else he told me.’
‘Crowley. You want me to ask them instead?’
He shrugs like a teenager in a sulk. ‘All right. Breslin.’
The little fucker. I should’ve punched him when I had the chance. ‘How’d you get it out of him?’
‘Oh, please. I didn’t put him on the rack. When he rang me about the Aislinn Murray case, he told me you had a terrible tendency to dither – I’m only quoting.’ Crowley holds up his hands and smirks at me. ‘He said you could take months to close the most blindingly obvious case. Normally that would be your problem, but this time Detective Breslin was stuck on the case with you, and he didn’t want his name associated with that nonsense. He needed pressure put on you to actually do your job – quoting again, Detective, only quoting! So I came up with a little bit of pressure.’
‘No better man,’ Steve says, to his phone. ‘We could hardly think straight, we were that pressurised. Amn’t I right, Conway?’
Crowley shoots him a suspicious look. ‘And then, when the man claiming to be your father rang me—’
I say, ‘That’s why you were falling over yourself to believe he was actually my da. Here I thought it was just because the idea of shoving your greasy fingers into my private life gave you such a hard-on, you couldn’t think straight. But you were figuring, if this guy was legit, then siccing him on me would turn up the pressure another notch. And you’d get a pat on the head and a nice treat from your handler. Am I right?’
Crowley prisses up his mouth. ‘The tone you’re taking is inappropriate and it’s deliberately inflammatory. I’m under no obligation to—’
‘You can stick my tone up your hole. You rang Breslin and drooled down the phone to him about how you could fuck up my personal life till my head was so wrecked, I’d sign off on anything; all you needed was my home address. And he couldn’t wait to hand it over. Am I missing anything out?’
He has his arms folded and he’s refusing to look at me, to show me that my behaviour is unacceptable. ‘If you already know everything, why ask me?’
‘Oh, but I don’t know everything, not yet. Roche’s been siccing you on my cases, Breslin did it the once. Who else?’
He shakes his head. ‘That’s all.’
‘Crowley,’ I say, warning. ‘You don’t get to buy your way out of this by throwing me two names. Spill, or the deal’s off.’
Crowley does what’s meant to be wounded nobility, but comes out looking like indigestion. ‘I actually know when transparency is important, Detective Conway – and there are plenty of Guards who can’t say that. Other detectives do contact me – there actually are some who care about the public’s right to know – but not about your cases.’
I can’t tell what sends up the sudden wild spurt of anger: the chance that he’s lying, or the chance that he’s telling the truth. I go in close across the table and I say, right into his face, ‘Don’t you fuck with me. Whoever you’re skipping, I will find out, d’you get me? And you’ll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder and wishing you’d gone for a career cleaning the jacks in Supermac’s.’
‘I’m not! I’m not skipping anyone. Detective Roche, and this time Detective Breslin. That’s it.’ It’s the fear on Crowley’s face that convinces me. He adds, bitchily, ‘I’m sure you think you’re interesting enough to deserve a mass conspiracy, but apparently not everyone agrees.’
My head feels strange, weightless. All this time I’ve been thinking the whole squad’s out for my blood, the squad room is a curtain swelling with the enemy army behind it, I’m the lone fighter lifting her sword and knowing she’s going down. Except every time I pull back the curtain, all I find is the same one wanker.
The lads throwing slaggings my way: I took it for granted the edges were sharpened deliberately and smeared with poison, carefully constructed to slice till I dropped. It never occurred to me that it was just slagging, with a bit of extra edge because I don’t get on with most of them and because – ever since that first arse-slap off Roche, half of them watching, none of them saying a word – I haven’t tried. Fleas, hinting to see whether I fancied coming back to Undercover: I assumed it was because he knew I was crashing and burning in Murder, I never once thought it could be just that we were good together and he misses me. Steve, spinning his what-ifs and watching them whirl, considering all their glinting angles: I thought, for a few hours in there I actually believed, he was using them to lure me over a cliff-edge so he could watch me go splat and wave bye-bye from the top. I’m glad my skin means him and Crowley won’t see the blush.
I was doing exactly the same thing as Aislinn: getting lost so deep inside the story in my head, I couldn’t see past its walls to the outside world. I feel those walls shift and start to waver, with a rumble that shakes my bones from the inside out. I feel my face naked to the ice-flavoured air that pours through the cracks and keeps coming. A great shiver is building in my back.
Crowley and Steve are both watching me, waiting to see if I’m gonna let Crowley off the hook. Steve’s game is yelping for attention.
‘OK,’ I say. I want to walk out, but I’m not done here. I shove everything else to the back of my mind. ‘OK. We’ll go with that.’
Crowley says – the fear’s vanished; he’s straight back into hyena mode – ‘You mentioned having a bit of news for me.’
‘Oh yeah,’ I say. My focus is back; this is gonna be fun. ‘Have I got a scoop for you. You’re gonna love this.’
Crowley whips out his voice recorder, but I shake my head. ‘Nah. This is non-attributable. It comes from sources close to the investi
gation. Got it?’ ‘Sources close to the investigation’ means cops. I don’t want McCann and Breslin thinking Lucy’s been talking.
He gets pouty, but I sit back and have a watch of Steve jabbing manically at his phone screen. In the end Crowley sighs and puts the recorder away. ‘I suppose so.’
‘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’Kel
ly 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.