“For a few minutes, only. I came in to have a word with the doctors, see what state you were in. For a while there they were afraid they might lose you. Nice to see you’re tougher than they thought.”
He had a big man’s voice, easy and Dubliny, with a comforting rumble running along the bottom of it. He was smiling again, and—even though a part of me knew it was pitiful to feel so grateful to this random guy for acting like I was a normal person, not a patient or a victim or someone to be handled with kid gloves in case he fell to pieces—I found myself smiling back. “Yeah, I’m pretty happy about that part too.”
“We’re doing everything we can to find out who did this. We’re hoping you can give us a hand. We don’t want to stress you out”—Flashy Suit shook his head, in the background—“we can go into more depth once you’re out of the hospital, when you’re ready to give us a full statement. For now we just need enough to get us started. Are you able to give it a shot?”
“Yeah,” I said. The slurring to my speech, I didn’t want them thinking I was handicapped, but I could hardly say no— “Sure. But I don’t know how much use I’ll be. I don’t remember a lot.”
“Ah, don’t worry about that,” Martin said. Flashy Suit got out a notebook and a pen. “Just give us what you’ve got. You never know what might point us in the right direction. Will I top that up for you, before we get started?”
He was pointing at the water glass on my bedside table. “Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”
Martin extracted my water jug from the jumble on the trolley table and filled my glass. “Now,” he said, putting the jug back on the table. He hitched up his trouser legs more comfortably and leaned his elbows on his thighs, hands clasped, ready for conversation. “Tell us: is there any reason why anyone would want to do this to you?”
Luckily I knew there was some pressing reason why I shouldn’t mention my Gouger theory to the cops, even though I couldn’t remember what that was. “No,” I said. “No reason at all.”
“No enemies?”
“No.” Martin was looking at me steadily, out of small pleasant blue eyes. I looked back, grateful for the meds, which would have stopped me getting twitchy even if I had tried.
“Any hassle with the neighbors? Arguments over parking spaces, someone who thinks you play your stereo too loud?”
“Not that I can think of. I don’t really see the neighbors.”
“That’s the best kind. See this fella here?” To Flashy Suit: “Tell him about your man and the lawn mower.”
“Jesus,” said Flashy Suit, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “My old neighbor, yeah? I’d always cut the grass on a Saturday—at noon, like; not even early. Only your man next door, he liked to sleep in. He gave me some grief about it, I told him to buy earplugs. So he recorded me cutting the grass and played it up against the bedroom wall, all night long.”
“Jesus,” I said, since he clearly expected something from me. “What’d you do?”
“Flashed the badge, had a chat with him about antisocial behavior.” They both chuckled. “That settled him. The point is, but, not everyone’s got a badge to flash. That’s when things can turn nasty.”
“I guess I’ve been lucky,” I said. “Plus the stuff, the”—I was looking for insulation—“the walls in our place are pretty good.”
“Hang on to those neighbors of yours,” Martin advised me. “Worth thousands, neighbors with no hassle. Do you owe anyone money?”
It took me a second to catch up. “What? . . . Not like that. I mean, me and my friends, if we’re on a, a night out, maybe someone subs someone twenty quid? But I’ve never owed anyone money money.”
“Wise man,” said Martin, with a wry half smile. “D’you know something, you’d be amazed how rare that is. I’d say at least half of the burglary cases we get—half?”
“More,” Flashy Suit said.
“Probably more. The fella owed someone money. And even if that had nothing to do with what happened, we have to convince him to tell us about it—people don’t realize, we’re not out to fuck over the victim here; if you like the odd bit of coke and you got behind with your dealer, that’s not our problem, we’re only interested in closing our case. And once the fella does tell us, we have to track down the lender and eliminate him. And that’s all wasting time we could be using to catch the actual guys. I’m always delighted when we don’t have to go through all that rigmarole. Nothing like that here, no?”
“No. Honestly.”
Flashy Suit wrote that down. “How’s the love life?” Martin asked.
“Good. I’ve got a girlfriend, we’ve been together three years—” Somehow I knew this wasn’t news to them, even before Martin said, “We’ve talked to Melissa. Lovely girl. Any hassles there?”
Melissa hadn’t mentioned anything about detectives. “No,” I said. “God, no. We’re very happy.”
“A jealous ex on either side? Anyone’s heart get broken when the two of you got together?”
“No. Her last ex, they split up because he was, he”—I wanted emigrated—“he went to Australia, I think it was? It wasn’t a bad breakup or anything. And Melissa and I didn’t even meet till months after. And I don’t really see any of my exes, but we didn’t have bad breakups either.” I was finding all this kind of unsettling. I had always considered the world to be basically a safe place, as long as I didn’t decide to do anything actively dumb like getting hooked on heroin or moving to Baghdad. These guys were talking like I had been happily bopping along through a minefield where all you had to do was break up with your girlfriend or mow your lawn and boom, curtains for you.
“What about since you two got together? Anyone been giving you the eye? Anyone you had to knock back?”
“Not really.” There had been an artist a few months back, a very pretty hippie-type from Galway, who kept finding reasons why she needed to discuss the publicity campaign for her show in person; I had enjoyed the attention, obviously, but once she started touching my arm too much I had moved things to email, and she had got the message straightaway. “I mean, people flirt, sometimes. Nothing serious.”
“Who flirts?”
I wasn’t about to sic these guys on the artist, when she had clearly had nothing to do with this and the embarrassment factor would have been sky-high all round. “Just, like, random girls. At parties or wherever. In shops. No one in particular.”
Martin left that there for a few seconds, but I drank my water and looked back at him. My eyes still weren’t always tracking right; every now and then part of Martin’s head would disappear, or there would be two of him, until I managed to blink hard enough to reset my focus. I felt a small pathetic rush of gratitude towards these guys for taking up my attention, leaving no room for the terror to take hold.
“Fair enough,” Martin said, in the end. “Ever followed through with any of them?”
“What?”
“Ever cheated on Melissa?” And before I could answer: “Listen, man, we’re not here to get you in hassle. Whatever you tell us, if we can keep it to ourselves, we will. But anything that might have pissed anyone off, we need to know.”
“I get that,” I said. “But I haven’t cheated on her. Ever.”
“Good man.” Martin gave me a nod. “She’s a keeper. Mad about you, too.”
“I’m mad about her.”
“Aah,” said Flashy Suit, scratching his head with his pen and giving me a grin. “Young love.”
“Anyone else mad about her?” Martin asked. “Anyone been hanging around her that you didn’t like the cut of?”