‘It’s not gonna be that simple,’ I say. ‘Remember that witness who saw you hanging around Stoneybatter over the last few weeks?’
‘So?’
‘That same witness saw you leaving the laneway behind Viking Gardens just after half-eight on Saturday night.’
That gets a snort. ‘Rory Fallon. Was it?’
‘You recognised him, yeah? When we brought him in?’
Brief shake of his head, wry click of his tongue: he’s not falling for that. ‘Nah. Bres mentioned that Fallon’s been doing a bit of hanging around Stoneybatter himself, the last while. Bit of stalking. Right?’
Me and Steve don’t answer. McCann nods, satisfied. ‘That means he was possessive about Aislinn. More than that: obsessive. Probably he saw me going in or out of her gaff, one night, did he?’
We look back at him.
‘Yeah. That would’ve sent him wild with jealousy. Saturday evening, when he got in her door, the first thing he did was confront her, ask her if she was seeing someone else. Poor Aislinn didn’t deny it, or didn’t deny it well enough, and . . .’
One hand closes into a fist and lifts off the table, just an inch, twisting.
‘No wonder he’s saying he saw me Saturday night. He’d say anything to get you looking somewhere else. And you’d be a pair of fools to fall for it. God knows no jury would.’
Steve says, and all of us hear the defensive note weakening his voice, ‘No one’s said we’re falling for anything. We’re only talking here.’
McCann leans back in his chair and stuffs his hands in his pockets, one corner of his mouth tugging upwards. He doesn’t bother trying to keep the triumph off his face. He thinks he’s seen everything we’ve got, held steady against it and blown it all away.
He says, ‘What do you think happens if the squad finds out you were only talking to me like this? Over nothing but a few shags?’
‘Ah, come on,’ Steve says. He’s practically begging. ‘You’re a witness. We had to talk to you. You know we did.’
‘I’m a witness to nothing.’
‘You knew the vic. You were sleeping with the vic. We couldn’t just—’
‘You ask me very nicely,’ McCann says, ‘and you don’t go trying to scupper my marriage, I’ll forget this ever happened.’
‘We won’t tell your wife about Aislinn. I swear.’
‘Good call,’ McCann says. He stretches, rolls his shoulders back. ‘We done here, yeah?’
Steve gives me a quick, uncertain glance. ‘No,’ I say stubbornly. ‘Seeing as we’re here, we might as well finish up.’
‘Five more minutes?’ Steve asks McCann. ‘Honest to God, it won’t take longer than that, we’ve just got a few more—’
McCann laughs and spreads his arms. ‘You want one last shot? Take it.’
‘Thanks,’ Steve says humbly. ‘I mean, no, we don’t – we just—’
I say, ‘I want to ask you about Aislinn. What was going on in her head.’
McCann snorts. ‘This psychological shite, Conway. Honest to God, you need to grow out of that. Rory Fallon got obsessed and lost the head. All the rest, what Aislinn was thinking, that’s not your problem. Nobody cares.’
‘Probably you’re right. Humour me anyway, yeah?’ McCann settles back into his chair on a long-suffering sigh. ‘You told us,’ I say, ‘just a few minutes ago: when someone who’s trying to get you into bed says they love you – like Aislinn said she loved you – chances are it’s bollix. They’ve got a hidden agenda. Right?’
‘Right. Only Aislinn wasn’t trying to get me into bed. That just happened.’
‘You ran her through the system, at the start. Because you thought she might have a hidden agenda. Right?’
‘Right. And she came up clean.’
‘She did, yeah. That was really enough to make you relax? You never wondered again, no? Girl like that, guy like you, and you genuinely figured she was on the up-and-up?’
‘Maybe he genuinely did,’ Steve says, examining McCann critically. ‘Hormones, man. Scramble the brain.’
‘Ah, he wondered,’ I say. ‘He wondered all the time. He hated himself for doing it, tried to stop – didn’t you, McCann? But he couldn’t. You know what I think? I think, deep down, he knew.’
McCann’s lip lifts. ‘You think I don’t know what you’re at? You’ve got some nerve, trying this shite on me. Go play with Rory Fallon some more. Get Bres to show you how it’s done. See if you can learn something.’ He shoves his chair back from the table. ‘I’m done here.’
Steve takes the Des Murray family pic out of his suit pocket and lays it on the table. ‘Do you recognise any of these people?’ he asks.
McCann leans over and whips it up, ready to toss it back at Steve after one glance, but the photo catches him. He holds it between his fingertips and we watch his face, held to stillness with all his will, as he recognises Evelyn, then Des, and fumbles for what the hell they have to do with this. As that chubby little girl and her tentative smile start to ring a bell. We watch the tremor run through his mind, coming from deep inside the foundations, as he finally begins to understand.
Steve puts a finger on Desmond Murray. He says, ‘Can you identify this man?’
McCann doesn’t hear him.
I lean in and tap the photo. ‘McCann. Who’s this?’
McCann blinks. He says thickly, like his mind’s too taken up to work his mouth right, ‘Name’s Desmond Murray.’
‘How do you know him?’
‘You already know.’
‘We want to hear it from you.’
‘He went missing. A long time back. I worked the case.’
‘And this?’ I move my finger to Evelyn Murray. ‘Who’s this?’
‘The wife. Evelyn.’
‘And this?’
My finger’s on Aislinn. Steve’s leaning across the table beside me, the two of us close in McCann’s face, watching every twitch. There’s a long silence before McCann says, ‘That’s the daughter.’
‘Her name.’
One breath. ‘Aislinn.’
A second of silence, while that falls through the air.
‘You seriously didn’t remember her?’ Steve asks, incredulous. ‘I know she’d grown up and all, but her face didn’t even ring a bell? Her name? Nothing?’
After a moment McCann’s head moves, side to side.
I say, ‘She remembered you.’
He can’t stop shaking his head.
‘That’s why she picked you out in Horgan’s,’ I say. ‘Not because she was a badge bunny and you were a D. Because she wanted to know what happened to her da.’
‘I wondered if maybe it started out as curiosity,’ Steve says, ‘or some fucked-up way of getting closer to her da’ – that gets one sharp flicker of a wince, at the corner of McCann’s mouth – ‘and then, as she got to know you, it turned real.’
I snort. ‘Hey,’ Steve says, ‘stranger things have happened. Is that what you’re wondering, too?’
McCann lifts his head to look at Steve for a second. The flash of hope is terrible.
I pick up my phone again and swipe, methodically, feeling McCann fighting not to look, till I get to Aislinn’s little fairy tale that she left for Lucy. ‘Have a read of this,’ I say, and pass it to McCann.
His eyes close once, for a second, as he reads. When he finishes, he reaches out and puts the phone on the table in slow motion, like a drunk. He doesn’t look at us.
‘Recognise the handwriting?’ I ask.
Nod.
‘Whose is it?’