‘Because . . .’ Rory rubs at his mouth. ‘OK. You see, I’d seen him before. Twice. In Stoneybatter. The first time was an evening maybe three weeks ago – I was looking for my chance to go down the laneway, and he was right at the top of it lighting a cigarette, so I had to walk around the block and try again. I was across the road from him, that time, so he might not have noticed me; I only noticed him because he was in my way. But the second time – I think about ten days ago – I passed right by him on Astrid Road when I was heading home, and we made eye contact. There was a good chance he’d remember me, if he had any memory at all for faces. I knew if I told you about seeing him on Saturday, you’d try to track him down – and if you did, he’d tell you about seeing me before, and then you’d know I’d been . . . I was hardly going to tell you about him. I was praying you wouldn’t find the guy.’
What the hell? hovers in the air between me and Steve. What was McCann doing, hanging around Aislinn’s gaff for weeks on end?
Rory takes the second of silence as disbelief. ‘I was scared! “Oh, by the way, Detective, I was spending half my evenings wandering around Stoneybatter peering in a woman’s window, and while I was at it I happened to notice another guy who might have been doing the same kind of thing, so you should really look at him . . .” I would have had to be insane to come out with that. Look what happened when you did find out.’
‘I get it,’ Steve says. ‘I do. And by the time that had come out, and you tried to mention this guy . . .’
‘No one was listening,’ I finish for him. ‘Yeah. I owe you an apology for that.’ Rory blinks, startled, and then comes up with a clumsy nod. ‘Lucky for us all Detective Moran picked up on it.’
‘Do you think you’d recognise the guy?’ Steve asks.
‘Yes. Almost definitely, yes. I’ve been thinking about him constantly, ever since I found out about Aislinn.’ Rory’s swaying forward eagerly; he’s our friend again. ‘The more I think about it, the more I think he . . . I mean, his face, Saturday night: something wasn’t right.’
Steve is pulling the photo array out of his bag. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I want you to have a look at this and tell me if the man you saw is on here. If he’s not, say so. If you’re not sure, say so. Yeah?’
Rory nods, gearing up to concentrate. Steve hands him the card.
It takes Rory all of two seconds. ‘This guy. That’s him.’
His finger is on McCann.
‘Take your time,’ Steve says. ‘Make sure you’ve looked at all the faces.’
Rory does another scan because he’s a good boy, but his finger doesn’t move. ‘It’s him.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m positive. He looks a bit younger here, but it’s him.’
And there it is: a solid link. No if-then-maybe; this is the real thing, at last. It shakes the air as it thuds down between me and Steve, dense and tarnish-black and too heavy to move. We’re stuck with it now.
Rory can feel us believing him. ‘Do you think he . . . ? Who is he?’
‘He’s a guy,’ Steve says. ‘We can’t go into details right now. Can you write down where you’ve seen the man, at the bottom there? Sign it and date it, and put your initials next to the photo you recognise.’
Rory leans the card on a shelf and writes carefully. ‘Here,’ he says, passing it back to Steve. ‘Is this OK?’
Steve reads. ‘That’s great. We’ll need you to come in and give an official statement, but not right now. You can relax.’
‘You mean . . . ? Do I still have to go in to you later on?’
‘I don’t know yet. We’ll see how the day goes. For now, just try and chill out a bit; get some kip, get some breakfast. I know that’s easier said.’
‘Am I still . . .’ Rory’s throat moves; he can’t get the word out. ‘Did you talk to Aislinn’s neighbours? Did any of them see me, in the . . . outside her place?’
‘Not yet. We’ll get back to you. Like I said: try and relax for now.’
‘Do you . . . you know. Do you still think I did this?’
Steve says, ‘I need to ask you, man. Is there anything else you’ve held back? Anything at all?’
Rory shakes his head vehemently. ‘No. That was it. I swear: there’s nothing.’
‘OK,’ Steve says. ‘If you think of anything else we should know, ring me straightaway. Meanwhile, all I can say is that we believe you saw this guy’ – I nod – ‘and we’re going to follow up on it very thoroughly. Yeah?’
‘Thanks,’ Rory says, confusedly, on a long breath out. ‘Thank you.’
I put my notebook away; Steve straightens the books that shifted when he leaned against them. ‘Um,’ Rory says, twisting his hands in the hem of that godawful jumper. ‘Can I say one thing?’
‘Sure,’ Steve says.
‘Me watching Aislinn. I know it sounds like . . . But remember when I said Aislinn didn’t mind being drawn into other people’s daydreams? And you didn’t believe me?’
He’s talking to me. ‘I remember you mentioning that, all right,’ I say.
‘When I watched her . . . I was trying to do the opposite of that. I was trying to feel what it was like to live there, be her. Trying to slip into that. Instead of doing it the other way round, like everyone else had.’
He’s wound himself into a tangle of jumper. ‘Does that . . . ? Does that make sense?’
It sounds like gold-plated self-justification bollix to me, but we need him on side, so I nod. ‘It does,’ Steve says gently. ‘We’ll keep it in mind.’
We leave Rory standing among his shelves, peering dazedly at us over the ranks of silhouetted badasses and spooky trees and women prancing in sundresses, like if we come back in a few hours they’ll have closed over his head and he’ll be gone.
Outside the door, I say, ‘What the hell was McCann at? Messing about in Stoneybatter weeks ago?’
‘Doing a recce, maybe,’ Steve says. ‘Getting the lie of the land, so that when it came time to do the job, he could get in and out without getting lost or getting spotted.’
‘Except he did get spotted. A bunch of times. That’s what Google Earth is for: so you can do your recce without getting your hands dirty.’
‘Yeah, but we can check what he’s been at on Google Earth. You can argue an ID; harder to argue with internet records.’
Deasy’s black Pajero is gone; two streetlamps down, there’s a white Nissan Qashqai that wasn’t there before. That was quick. I wonder if it’s Breslin in there, but I’m not about to check, not with Rory blinking behind the bookshop window. ‘Listen,’ I say, whipping around on Steve and pointing a finger in his face, ‘meet you in twenty minutes, in that park where we had breakfast Sunday. Make sure you’re not followed.’ I jab him in the shoulder. ‘Clear?’
‘Whatever,’ Steve says, rolling his eyes. ‘Jesus,’ and as I turn to stride off to my car, I see him throw his hands in the air in exasperation. Who knows whether it’ll fool Breslin, or his eyes and ears in the Qashqai. I get in my car and gun it like I’m well pissed off.
I’m first at the park, and I’m pretty sure there’s no one on my tail. The place is damp and near-deserted again, just a Lycra-wrapped cyclist stuffing down something depressing out of Tupperware and two nannies having what sounds like a bitching session in Portuguese while a clump of toddlers dig up a flowerbed. I pick the bench farthest from all of them and have a look through my notes on the Rory interview, while I wait for Steve.
The description that matches McCann. The times that give him anything up to an hour in Aislinn’s place. All in my handwriting, in my regulation notepad just like the ones packed with notes about the scumbags who danced on the other scumbag’s head and the rapist who strangled his victim with her own belt and all the rest of them. Witness identified Det Joseph McCann.