‘Write it down,’ I say, passing her a pen. ‘At the bottom of the sheet. Which number you recognise, and where you recognise him from. Sign and date it. Then initial beside the photo you’re identifying.’
She writes neatly, steadily; only the fast rise and fall of her chest and the slight huff of her breath give away that her adrenaline’s running wild. Mine is too. The big mystery about why McCann was hanging around Viking Gardens for weeks: gone. Aislinn’s neighbour thought the guy climbing the wall was fair-haired, but yellow half-light from a streetlamp would turn McCann’s grey streaks fair. The phone calls from McCann’s wife giving him grief about missing another dinner, the slump to his back while Breslin promised to get rid of me, the state of him the last few days, it all fits.
The only piece that still won’t drop into place is why the hell Aislinn wanted McCann; what the hell me and Steve have been missing, all along.
Lucy passes me back the photo array. ‘Is that OK?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, giving it a quick read. ‘Thanks. Now you can tell me the story.’
She takes a breath. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘All of it. Start from the beginning.’
‘OK.’ Lucy wipes her hands down her thighs – rubbing away sweat or the feel of that photo, I can’t tell. ‘OK. OK. I guess the beginning was maybe seven or eight months after Ash’s mum died – so about two and a half years ago? Ash and I were out for a pint, and she said, “Guess what I’m going to do.” She was ducking her head down and looking up at me like this, out of the corner of her eye, this bashful little smile – for a second I thought she was going to get a nipple piercing or something . . .’ Lucy laughs, a small dry sound. ‘If only. But then she said, “I’m going to find out what happened to my dad.” Which was the last thing I expected. She was always making up stories about where he was, or the ways he might come back; but she’d never talked about actually tracking him down.’
I say – I can sound as empathetic as anyone – ‘Maybe she didn’t feel able to do it while her mam was alive. Looking after her would’ve taken all of Aislinn’s energy; I’m not surprised she had none left for her da.’
Lucy’s nodding fast. ‘That’s what I figured. I thought it could be a good idea – not finding him, specifically; there were too many ways that could go pear-shaped. But this was the first time she’d ever come up with a plan to go after something she wanted. I thought that had to be good, for her to learn how to do that. Right? That makes sense, right?’
‘Total sense,’ I say – and I actually mean it – and watch the relief rush through Lucy. ‘She wasn’t going to get a lot out of life till she did.’
‘Exactly. So I said great idea, fair play to you. Aislinn told work she had a dentist appointment, dressed up in her best gear, and went in to the Missing Persons squad. They gave her the runaround at first, but finally this detective looked up her dad on some computer system and said he was dead. Aislinn was . . .’ Lucy bites down on her lips, remembering. ‘God. She was devastated. She rang work and said the anaesthetic had made her feel faint and she couldn’t come in, and then she went home and cried all day. I went over there after work, and she looked like roadkill. Everything had gone out of her; she was just . . . lost.’
This is the part where I should probably feel bad: my callousness turning poor Aislinn’s story down the path towards tragedy, blah blah blah. Yesterday, I would have felt fuck-all. Like I said to Steve: if she wanted to hook her life onto some guy who wasn’t even around, that was her problem. But today, I don’t know what it is. All of a sudden it feels like there were so many people nudging Aislinn from every direction: me, Gary, her ma, her da, on and on, all those fingers poking, shoulders barging, everyone shoving her life whatever way happened to suit them. It makes my skin leap like flies are covering it. And finally someone didn’t bother nudging: her life didn’t suit him, and he punched it right out.
Lucy says, ‘I was scared she’d go back to just drifting along, you know? That this had been her one chance at actually getting hold of her life, and now it had been smashed like that, she’d never give it another go. So I said, like a fucking idiot, I said, “Maybe someone who worked on the case could tell you what happened to him.” I was only trying to make Ash feel better. I just wanted to give her something to go after.’
That appeal is back in her eyes. ‘Sounds right to me,’ I say. ‘That’s probably exactly what I would’ve said.’
‘I should’ve kept my stupid mouth shut. But at the time, I actually thought I’d done the perfect thing. Aislinn stopped crying, just like that, and dived for her phone. I went, “What?” and she said I’d just reminded her of something the Missing Persons guy had said. He’d mentioned the names of the detectives who were in charge of the case, when her dad first went missing. Detective Feeney and Detective McCann.’
Hearing the name in her voice touches the back of my neck, one icy drop. I say, ‘And?’
Lucy says, ‘She Googled them. She found Detective Feeney’s obituary – she only vaguely recognised the photo, but it said he’d spent twenty-three years in Missing Persons, so she knew it had to be him. So that was a dead end. But Detective McCann . . . it took Ash a while to find anything on him, but finally she came up with a news video of him leaving court after some murder case – so she knew he was on the Murder squad now. And him she recognised straightaway. She’d forgotten his name – she just knew it was McSomething – but she remembered him spending a fair bit of time at her house, trying to talk her mum down. And she remembered him patting her on the head and saying, “Sometimes things are better off left. You’ve got great memories of your daddy, don’t you? We wouldn’t want to change that.” Aislinn kept saying, “That has to mean he knows something, doesn’t it? He definitely knew something.” I said maybe, maybe not, maybe he was just trying to make you feel better about them not knowing anything, right? But she wouldn’t let go of it. For weeks, that was all she talked about. Finally I was like, “For fuck’s sake, just track down the guy and ask him.” ’
‘And did she?’