Lucy sits down on the other sofa and tries to look at both of us at once. ‘No. It’s just me. Why . . . ?’
Your basic witness-face is a mix of eager to help, dying to know the story and oh-God-I-hope-I’m-not-in-trouble. Your standard variation, in neighbourhoods where we’re not popular, is a sullen teen-style slouch-stare, including from people who are decades too old to pull off that shite. Lucy isn’t wearing either of those. She’s sitting up straight, feet planted like she’s ready to leap into action, and her eyes are too wide open. Lucy is scared, and she’s wary, and whatever she’s wary about is taking all her focus. There’s a green glass ashtray on the coffee table that she should have emptied before she let cops in. Me and Steve pretend we don’t see it.
‘I’ll just confirm a couple of things,’ Steve says, easily, giving her his best nonthreatening smile. ‘You’re Lucy Riordan, born the twelfth of April ’88, and you work at the Torch Theatre. That’s all correct, yeah?’
Lucy’s back is stiffening up. Nobody likes us knowing stuff they haven’t told us, but she’s liking it even less than most. ‘Yeah. I’m the technical manager.’
‘And you’re friends with Aislinn Murray. Close friends.’
‘We’ve known each other since we were kids. What’s happened?’
I say, ‘Aislinn’s dead.’
Which isn’t me being tactless. After the way she opened the door, I want her reaction neat.
Lucy stares at me. So many expressions collide on her face that I can’t read any of them. She’s not breathing.
I say, not bitchily, ‘Sorry to start your day off like this.’
Lucy grabs for a pack of Marlboro Lights on the coffee table and reefs one out without asking permission. Even her hands look active: strong wrists, short nails, scrapes and calluses. For a second the lighter flame jumps and wavers; then she gets it under control and draws hard on the smoke.
She asks, ‘How?’
Her head is down, that white-blond streak hiding her face. I say, ‘We don’t have any definitive answers yet, but we’re treating the death as suspicious.’
‘That means someone killed her. Right?’
‘Looks like it. Yeah.’
‘Shit,’ Lucy says, low – I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know she’s saying it. ‘Ah, shit. Ah, shit.’
Steve says, ‘Why did you assume we were here about Aislinn?’
Lucy’s head comes up. She’s not crying, which is a relief, but her face is a nasty white; her eyes look like she’s having trouble seeing, or trouble not getting sick. She says, ‘What?’
‘When you came to the door, you said, “Is it Aislinn?” Why would you think that?’
The cigarette’s shaking. Lucy stares at it, curls her fingers tighter to keep it still. ‘I don’t know. I just did.’
‘Think back. There has to have been a reason.’
‘I don’t remember. That’s just what came into my head.’
We wait. In the walls, pipes hoot and groan; upstairs a guy yells something about hot water and someone gallops across the floor, making the postcard curtains tremble. Next to Lucy on the sofa is a Homer Simpson stuffed toy with a Rizla that says princess buttercup stuck to its forehead. Last night was a good one. Next time Lucy sees that toy, she’s gonna shove it to the bottom of her bin.
After a long minute, the line of Lucy’s spine resets. She’s not gonna cry or puke, not now anyway; she’s got other things to do. I’m pretty sure she’s just decided to lie to us.
She taps ash without even clocking the spliff butts in the ashtray. She says – carefully, feeling her way – ‘Aislinn just started seeing this guy Rory. Last night she was cooking him dinner. It was his first time in her house; they’d only met in public places before. So when you said you were Guards, that’s the only thing I could think of: something went wrong there. I mean, I couldn’t think of any other reason you’d want to talk to me.’
Bullshit. Just off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen reasons – the hash, noise complaint from the neighbours, street fight outside and we need witnesses, domestic in another flat ditto, I could keep going – and Lucy’s well able to do the same. Here it is: the lie.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘About that. Yesterday evening, you and Aislinn were texting about her dinner date.’ The wariness goes up a notch, as Lucy tries to remember what she said. ‘You told Aislinn to’ – I pretend to check my notebook – ‘“be careful, OK?” Why was that?’
‘Like I said. She hadn’t known him that long, and she was going to be on her own in the house with him.’
Steve is doing puzzled. ‘Is that not a bit paranoid, no?’
Lucy’s eyebrows shoot up and she stares at Steve like he’s the enemy. ‘You think? I wasn’t telling her to have a loaded gun in her bra. Just to mind herself with a strange guy in her house. That’s paranoid?’
‘Sounds like basic good sense to me,’ I say. Lucy turns to me gratefully, relaxing back off the attack. ‘I’d tell my mate the same thing. Had you met Rory?’
‘Yeah. I was actually there when the two of them met. This guy I know from work, Lar, he published a book about the history of Dublin theatres, and the launch was at the bookshop Rory runs – the Wayward Bookshop, in Ranelagh? A bunch of us went from the Torch, and I talked Aislinn into coming along. I thought she needed a night out.’
Which is more info than I asked for. It’s the oldest technique in the book – get the witness pissed off with one of you, she’ll give the other one extra – and me and Steve do it a lot, but mostly we do it the other way round. I let Steve take the notes while I enjoy the feeling of being the good cop for the first time in a long time. ‘And Aislinn and Rory clicked,’ I say.
‘Big-time. Lar had read a bit out of the book and he was signing copies, and the rest of us were hanging around drinking the free wine, and Aislinn and Rory got talking. They basically vanished into a corner together – not snogging or anything, just talking and having a laugh. I think Rory would’ve stayed there all night, but Ash has this rule about not talking to a guy for too long—’
Lucy cuts off, blinking. It’s that filter – God forbid we should think bad things about poor sweet Ash – but I know what she’s on about: The Rules. ‘In case the guy guesses she’s into him,’ I say, nodding like this makes total sense.
‘Yeah. Exactly. I don’t know, that’s a bad thing for some reason.’ A twist of Lucy’s shoulder and her mouth, but it’s affectionate, not bitchy. ‘So after maybe an hour Ash came dashing over to me, and she was all, “OhmyGod, he’s so sweet and so funny and so interesting and so lovely, that was sooo much fun . . .” She said she’d given him her number and now she had to find someone else to talk to, so she stuck with me and the gang from work, but she spent the whole rest of the night going, “Is he looking over? What’s he doing now, is he looking at me?” Which he always was. They were both totally smitten.’
‘Lar who?’ I say. ‘And when was the book launch?’
‘Lar Flannery – Laurence. It was at the beginning of December, I don’t remember the exact date. A Sunday night, so theatre people could come.’