‘I’m not the kind of person who stirs up trouble—’ That makes Steve snort. ‘Unless it’s morally necessary.’
‘It is, of course,’ Steve says cheerfully. ‘You spill, Conway sorts out whatever beef the lads have with her, everyone gets to concentrate on catching criminals, justice is served. Plus you don’t have to waste your time fighting charges; you can keep on fighting the good fight instead. It’s morally all tickety-boo.’
‘I’m not going to rat you out to your buddies,’ I say. ‘You can keep your cosy little relationships going. I just want to know who’s fucking me about.’
Crowley makes a face at hearing Language out of a girl, but he’s smart enough to keep his gob shut. He taps his lips with one fingertip and leaves another few seconds for his scruples to impress us. Then he sighs. ‘Detective Roche lets me know when he thinks I might take an interest in one of your cases.’
No surprise there. ‘Roche and who else?’
After a moment he says, reluctantly – hates to jeopardise his beautiful new friendship – ‘Detective Breslin rang me on Sunday morning. He mentioned the Aislinn Murray case.’
‘Yeah, we already knew that. Is he the one who gave you my home address? Or was that Roche?’
‘I got it from a contact.’
‘What kind of contact?’
‘You can’t make me reveal my sources. I know you people would love to turn this country into a totalitarian—’
Steve pumps his fist and goes ‘Yesss!’ at the phone. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘You were saying? Totalitarian something?’
I say, ‘This wasn’t a journalistic source, moron. This was someone helping you to help a criminal break into my house. You think that’s protected?’
‘It could be. You don’t know what else he told me.’
‘Crowley. You want me to ask them instead?’
He shrugs like a teenager in a sulk. ‘All right. Breslin.’
The little fucker. I should’ve punched him when I had the chance. ‘How’d you get it out of him?’
‘Oh, please. I didn’t put him on the rack. When he rang me about the Aislinn Murray case, he told me you had a terrible tendency to dither – I’m only quoting.’ Crowley holds up his hands and smirks at me. ‘He said you could take months to close the most blindingly obvious case. Normally that would be your problem, but this time Detective Breslin was stuck on the case with you, and he didn’t want his name associated with that nonsense. He needed pressure put on you to actually do your job – quoting again, Detective, only quoting! So I came up with a little bit of pressure.’
‘No better man,’ Steve says, to his phone. ‘We could hardly think straight, we were that pressurised. Amn’t I right, Conway?’
Crowley shoots him a suspicious look. ‘And then, when the man claiming to be your father rang me—’
I say, ‘That’s why you were falling over yourself to believe he was actually my da. Here I thought it was just because the idea of shoving your greasy fingers into my private life gave you such a hard-on, you couldn’t think straight. But you were figuring, if this guy was legit, then siccing him on me would turn up the pressure another notch. And you’d get a pat on the head and a nice treat from your handler. Am I right?’
Crowley prisses up his mouth. ‘The tone you’re taking is inappropriate and it’s deliberately inflammatory. I’m under no obligation to—’
‘You can stick my tone up your hole. You rang Breslin and drooled down the phone to him about how you could fuck up my personal life till my head was so wrecked, I’d sign off on anything; all you needed was my home address. And he couldn’t wait to hand it over. Am I missing anything out?’
He has his arms folded and he’s refusing to look at me, to show me that my behaviour is unacceptable. ‘If you already know everything, why ask me?’
‘Oh, but I don’t know everything, not yet. Roche’s been siccing you on my cases, Breslin did it the once. Who else?’
He shakes his head. ‘That’s all.’
‘Crowley,’ I say, warning. ‘You don’t get to buy your way out of this by throwing me two names. Spill, or the deal’s off.’
Crowley does what’s meant to be wounded nobility, but comes out looking like indigestion. ‘I actually know when transparency is important, Detective Conway – and there are plenty of Guards who can’t say that. Other detectives do contact me – there actually are some who care about the public’s right to know – but not about your cases.’
I can’t tell what sends up the sudden wild spurt of anger: the chance that he’s lying, or the chance that he’s telling the truth. I go in close across the table and I say, right into his face, ‘Don’t you fuck with me. Whoever you’re skipping, I will find out, d’you get me? And you’ll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder and wishing you’d gone for a career cleaning the jacks in Supermac’s.’
‘I’m not! I’m not skipping anyone. Detective Roche, and this time Detective Breslin. That’s it.’ It’s the fear on Crowley’s face that convinces me. He adds, bitchily, ‘I’m sure you think you’re interesting enough to deserve a mass conspiracy, but apparently not everyone agrees.’
My head feels strange, weightless. All this time I’ve been thinking the whole squad’s out for my blood, the squad room is a curtain swelling with the enemy army behind it, I’m the lone fighter lifting her sword and knowing she’s going down. Except every time I pull back the curtain, all I find is the same one wanker.
The lads throwing slaggings my way: I took it for granted the edges were sharpened deliberately and smeared with poison, carefully constructed to slice till I dropped. It never occurred to me that it was just slagging, with a bit of extra edge because I don’t get on with most of them and because – ever since that first arse-slap off Roche, half of them watching, none of them saying a word – I haven’t tried. Fleas, hinting to see whether I fancied coming back to Undercover: I assumed it was because he knew I was crashing and burning in Murder, I never once thought it could be just that we were good together and he misses me. Steve, spinning his what-ifs and watching them whirl, considering all their glinting angles: I thought, for a few hours in there I actually believed, he was using them to lure me over a cliff-edge so he could watch me go splat and wave bye-bye from the top. I’m glad my skin means him and Crowley won’t see the blush.
I was doing exactly the same thing as Aislinn: getting lost so deep inside the story in my head, I couldn’t see past its walls to the outside world. I feel those walls shift and start to waver, with a rumble that shakes my bones from the inside out. I feel my face naked to the ice-flavoured air that pours through the cracks and keeps coming. A great shiver is building in my back.
Crowley and Steve are both watching me, waiting to see if I’m gonna let Crowley off the hook. Steve’s game is yelping for attention.
‘OK,’ I say. I want to walk out, but I’m not done here. I shove everything else to the back of my mind. ‘OK. We’ll go with that.’