O’Kelly holds up a thumb. ‘The photos of your notes. It’s a safe bet Aislinn was going to take those to your wife, but all that says is she wanted you for herself. Nothing to say why.’
Thumb and finger. ‘That fairy tale yoke she left for her mate. That just says she felt trapped – and I don’t blame her; you’re a fucking eejit, putting the girl in that situation, like she wanted to spend the rest of her life being your bit on the side – and she was angry with you, wanted to turn the tables so you couldn’t get away from her.’
A quick double blink from McCann. This is reaching him. Any second now, he’ll be jumping on board with whatever O’Kelly’s got planned.
Another finger. ‘Rory Fallon. Aislinn could’ve been trying to get you out of her head. She had enough sense to know the two of ye were a bad idea all round.’
McCann’s looking at him now. The drowning-man hope struggling on his face is terrible.
‘Maybe this is just me doing my own wishful thinking. I don’t want to believe you’d make a mess like this one, drag the whole squad into it, just for the sake of a ride. For you to fuck up this badly, then you and Aislinn, that had to be the real thing.’
Shame, mixed in with the hope.
‘We can’t ask Aislinn what was going on in her head. You’re the only other person who was there; if anyone knows, it’s you. So you tell me, McCann. Was it the real thing? Or are we all sitting here because you fancied a fuck?’
The clench of anger in his voice pulls it out of McCann. ‘It was real. I’m not that bloody stupid.’
‘Real,’ the gaffer says. And waits for more.
‘Maybe Aislinn did go into it wanting to fuck me over. Probably. Maybe she ended the same way – that mate of hers persuaded her, or, I don’t know. But there was a while in there . . .’
McCann rubs his eyes. In the merciless light they look red and sore, like he’s got an infection starting. He says, ‘I couldn’t believe it was happening. To me. I thought I knew the rest of my life like it had already happened. All the decisions that make a difference, I’d made them before I was twenty-five – the job, the wife, the neighbourhood, having kids. All that was left was for me to sit there and watch them play out. No twists left; no surprises.’
He lifts his head to look over at me and Steve. ‘You won’t get it now, you two. You’re still young enough that anything could happen. But you’ll find out. It’s like being in a film, one of those third-rate ones where by halfway through you know exactly where it’s headed, every step; you can’t remember why you’re even bothering to watch the rest. Because it’s there, just; because there’s nothing else to do. And then . . .’
He blinks hard, like that might clear his eyes.
‘And all of a sudden someone lifts you right out of it and drops you into a different film. Different music, different colours. She was brighter. Always bright colours. And anything could happen.’
Steve says, ‘So what you told us about just liking her company, that was bollix. You knew from the start that this was something special.’
McCann shakes his head. ‘Nah. I didn’t think that way. Not at first. I just . . . I loved being with her. Nothing more than that; I never thought of doing more than that. Just seeing her listen to my stories like they mattered. It reminded me of how I used to feel about the job, way back when. The look on her face: when I pulled a good case, I used to feel like that. Like what I did changed things.’
I risk a glance at the gaffer. His face is steady; the shadows of wrinkles and eye sockets turn it unreadable.
‘OK,’ Steve says, keeping the scepticism level well below bitchy. ‘So how did that change?’
‘One night,’ McCann says. He brushes a hand over his cheek, like something fine and cobwebby is catching at him. ‘One night. August. Aislinn said some guy had chatted her up at her evening class. Just in passing, she mentioned it – she wasn’t into him, she’d turned him down. But that was when it hit me: a girl like that, of course she’s going to want a fella. Not just someone for picnics and talk; a man who loves her. A man in her bed. Hit me like a ton of bricks, because I knew once she got him, I’d be gone.’
She made him think it was his idea, Lucy said. She did a good job of it.
‘And then I thought: why not me? Why not? We were loving each other’s company, couldn’t get enough. There was chemistry there – even I could tell that. The way she looked at me, the way her breathing went when we accidentally got close— There was something.’
A sharp glance at me and Steve. That faint stinging red has come up on his cheekbones again. ‘Probably it sounds pathetic to you: just a middle-aged fool head over heels for some young one, oldest story in the world. You weren’t there.’
Every murderer says that to us, sooner or later. You weren’t there. You don’t understand. There’s a small dry chip of silence while no one points that out.
I say, ‘It was that easy? You said, “Hey, let’s give it a go,” and Aislinn said, “Sure, why not?” ’
McCann shakes his head heavily. ‘I don’t know how I made it happen. You two, you keep talking like she hunted me down, but it wasn’t— She didn’t want to be some homewrecker. It took me a while to convince her she was doing no harm that hadn’t been done years ago. When I finally, when we finally . . . that was when I realised: she honest to God cared about me. She . . . It . . .’ A quick involuntary catch of breath. ‘That blew me away. Just blew me away.’
The wonder in his voice. He sounds like a teenager, lifting with joy and amazement, he sounds so tender you could bruise him with one wrong touch. Time after time it’s left me gobsmacked, how people will tell you things they should keep locked inside for life; how ferociously they need the story to be out in the air, in the world, to exist somewhere outside their own heads.
He says, ‘It was real. All that shite you’ve got, that means nothing. One time I fell getting over her wall, scraped up my knee. Aislinn knelt down in front of me and washed it, so gentle. You think she’d’ve done that if she only hated my guts? Maybe she did, some of the time, but she loved me as well. People are complicated. She was more complicated than I realised.’
He’s giving me and Steve a stare that’s a challenge. No takers. The whole thing is pure double-dipped fantasy, but the last thing we want to do is take it apart. Me and Steve, scrabbling so hard to pull the true story out of the tangle, we forgot the false ones come with their own ferocious, double-edged power.
The gaffer nods. ‘I would’ve put money on that. Nice to know I’m not losing the bit I have.’ He resettles himself in his chair, adjusts his waistband over his belly. ‘Now we’ve got that cleared up,’ he says. ‘Let’s talk about Saturday night.’
McCann opens his mouth, but O’Kelly lifts a hand. ‘No. Hang on. That’s not what I’m asking you.’
McCann shuts up.