He’s watching me, and his face has that same immobility it took on last night. The scraping light finds crow’s-feet and smile-lines I never noticed before. I can’t tell whether he wants me to say yes; yes, let’s flush this toxic godawful mess and walk away.
He’s right: we could do it. We could even square it with our consciences, near enough. Like he said, we’ll get a conviction around the same time we get a Lotto win. Even if we do, justice does nothing for the dead; nothing we do will make any difference to Aislinn. There’s no family needing answers, not this time. And it’s not like McCann and Breslin are going to turn into a rampaging serial-killer team if we don’t take them down; they’ll go back to being who they always were, and Breslin will go back to keeping it in his pants. No harm done, all round.
Except that, when you get down to it, I’m right where I thought I was when we figured Breslin and McCann were bent. If I keep my mouth shut, then they’ve put their hands on me and knotted me into someone else, living a whole different life, even if from outside it looks just like the old one. Breslin and McCann will be running me and my every day after all, whether they even wanted to or not.
I owe this case. I’ve got beef with this case. I need to shoot it right between the eyes, skin it and stuff it and mount it on my wall, for when my grandkids ask me to tell them stories about way back a million years ago when I used to be a D.
I can’t make myself tell Steve I’m gone, not yet. ‘Nah,’ I say. ‘I’ve started now; might as well finish.’
The sudden loosening in his face could be anything, relief or disappointment, till it resolves itself into a small, very sweet smile. ‘I might as well come along for the ride, so,’ he says. ‘I’ve never had food poisoning; I’d only make a bollix of faking it.’
For some reason that gets me, solid in the gut. Not like I’m welling up, or any of that shite, but something swells hard under my ribs. Weird how, when I realised I’m leaving, it never occurred to me that that’s gonna mean leaving Steve. Somewhere along the way I must’ve started taking the little bollix for granted, thinking he’d always be there, like a brother. I don’t do that shite. Because the fact is, Steve won’t always be there. Once I’m gone, we’ll stay in touch for a while. We’ll go for the odd pint, laugh too hard at each other’s stories and have conversations full of awkward stumbles where he tries to talk tactfully around work and his new partner, and I try to get him to knock that shit off. Then the pints will get further apart, and then one of us will get into a relationship and won’t be around as much; the texts will start with ‘Hey, too long no see,’ and all of a sudden we’ll realise it’s been a year since we met up. And that’ll be, in every way that counts, the end of that.
I can’t afford to be getting maudlin. ‘You little goody-goody,’ I say. ‘I bet you never once mitched off school, did you?’
‘Ah, I did. To visit my dying granny.’
I concentrate on the kids eating flowerbed, and the cyclist doing improbable stretches to show off his glutes to the nannies, till I can wipe my mind blank again. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Good. In that case, I’m gonna go show Aislinn’s fairy tale to Lucy. You go play with Breslin. Tell him you and me called in to Rory – he’s gonna hear anyway. Say I was giving Rory hassle about his exes saying he was too full-on; I was asking if he stalked them too, he denied it, the poor guy got all upset. Play it like you’re still not totally sold on Rory, I’m still pissed off with you for having doubts, and you’re still pissed off with me for dissing them. That way Breslin’ll want to keep you close, and he won’t be too worried about me going MIA for an hour.’
Steve’s nodding, thinking it through. ‘All sounds good. If he asks where you’ve gone . . . ?’
‘You don’t know. I told you it was none of your business.’
After a moment Steve asks, ‘When do we pull the pin?’
‘Today,’ I say. ‘It has to be. Breslin’s expecting to haul Rory in later on, arrest him and start preparing the file for the prosecutors. If I don’t do that, he’s gonna start wondering why not, and then they’ll be on guard.’
He nods. ‘Who do we go for? Breslin or McCann?’
‘I vote McCann. Unless Lucy comes out with something top-notch that we can use on Breslin. Breslin’s been watching us for days now; he’s got a lot better handle on us than McCann does. Plus, if we even hint any of this to Breslin, he’s gonna throw the mother of all self-righteous tantrums, and I’ve had enough of those for one week. We’ll find a way to get him out of our hair for a while, and we’ll tackle McCann.’
‘OK,’ Steve says, at the end of a long breath. ‘OK. McCann.’
‘And you’d better get moving, before Breslin starts wondering where you are.’
‘Right.’ He pulls the photo arrays out of his case and hands me a couple of each. ‘Good luck.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘You too.’
For some reason me and Steve slap hands as we’re leaving. We don’t normally do that shite, what with not being sixteen, but it feels like we need something, on our way into this.
Chapter 15
This time Lucy answers the buzzer fast. When she opens the front door, she’s dressed – black combats and a hoodie again, but clean ones, and she’s got Docs on. She looks at me, expressionless, and waits.
‘Morning,’ I say. ‘Are you OK to talk for a while, or is this too early?’
She says, ‘I figured you’d be earlier.’ Then she turns and heads back up the stairs.
Her sitting room is cold, the uncompromising damp cold after a night with the heat off. It smells of toast, smoke – the legal kind this time – and coffee. The stuffed fox and the old phones and the coil of cable are gone; instead there’s a record player and a stack of beat-up albums, a big cardboard box of flowery crockery, and a roll of canvas that touches the ceiling, coming unrolled to show a painted country lane disappearing into the distance. The room feels charged up with too many stories, jostling in the corners, pushing for space.
Lucy sits down first this time, grabbing the sofa with its back to the window and leaving me the one that takes the light – she learns fast. She’s got her armoury lined up ready on the coffee table: pack of smokes, lighter, ashtray, mug of coffee. She doesn’t offer me any. She sits still and watches me, braced for my first move.
I take the shitty sofa. ‘I’m going to tell you some stuff I’ve been thinking,’ I say. ‘I don’t want you to tell me whether I’m right or wrong till I’m done talking. I don’t want you to say anything at all. I just want you to listen. OK?’
‘I’ve told you everything I’ve got to tell.’
‘Just listen. OK?’
She shrugs. ‘If you want.’ She makes a thing of settling herself back into her sofa, cross-legged, mug nested in her lap, ready to humour me.