‘Like I said.’ Steve grins and crumples his napkin bib. ‘Not just a pretty face.’
The dinosaur kid has fallen off his scooter and is sitting on the path trying to work up a convincing wail. We dodge around him and we’re heading for the gate, me dialling the floaters to tell them to bring Fallon in, when I catch the plastic bag in the corner of my eye and realise what’s sticking out of it: a dead cat, fur plastered sleek against its skull, lips pulled back to show spiky teeth open wide in a frozen howl of fury.
Chapter 3
The squad room has come alive. The printer is going, someone’s phone is ringing, the blinds are open to try and drag in the half-arsed sunlight; the place smells of half a dozen different lunches, tea, shower gel, sweat, heat and action. O’Gorman is leaning back in his chair with his feet up on his desk, throwing crisps into his mouth and shouting to King about some match; King is reading a statement sheet and saying ‘Yeah’ whenever O’Gorman pauses for breath. Winters and Healy are arguing about some witness who Healy wants to shake up a little and Winters thinks is a waste of time. Quigley is working his way through one of the filing cabinets, wearing a put-out look on his flabby puss and slamming the drawers harder than he needs to; next to the filing cabinet, McCann is hunched over his desk, shuffling paper and flinching at every slam – he looks like he’s got a bastard of a hangover, but the permanent eyebags and five o’clock shadow mean he mostly looks like that anyway. O’Neill has his phone pressed to one ear and a finger stuck in the other. Beside Steve’s and my desks, two guys who have to be our floaters are leaning awkwardly on whatever they can find, trying to look at home and stay out of the way and laugh at one of Roche’s pointless stories, hoping he’ll remember next time he needs someone to do his scut work.
No Breslin, but his overcoat is hanging over the back of his chair. He’s probably still sorting out the incident room and bitching to himself about being ordered around by the likes of me. I’m not worried: Breslin’s been at this game too long to get snotty when it’s not useful to him.
A few people glance up when me and Steve come in, then go back to whatever they’re doing. No one says howya. Neither do we. We head for our desks and the floaters. When I’m in the squad room I stride, fast and hard, to smack down the instinct to tiptoe along in case someone sticks a foot in front of me. No one has yet, but it feels like a matter of time.
‘Hey,’ I say to the floaters, who’ve straightened up and put on their alert faces. They’re both around our age: a gym rat already starting to go bald in front, and a fat blond guy trying for a tache that isn’t working out. ‘Conway, and this is Moran. Got something for us?’
‘Stanton,’ says the gym rat, doing a fake salute.
‘Deasy,’ says the fat one. ‘Yeah: we brought in your man Rory Fallon a few minutes ago.’
‘Poor bastard,’ says Roche from his corner, which reeks of aftershave and sticky keyboard. Roche is a big no-necker who went into this gig because the only way he can get a stiffy is by bullying people into tears, but he’s no fool: he knows exactly when to keep that instinct chained up and when to let it out for a run, and he gets results. ‘Will I tell him to go ahead and cut off his own balls, save himself some time and hassle?’
‘It’s not my fault my solve rate’s higher than yours, Roche,’ I tell him. ‘It’s because you’re a retard. Learn to live with it.’
The floaters look startled and try to hide it. Roche shoots me a bull-stare that I don’t bother noticing. ‘What’s the story on Fallon?’ I ask, dumping my satchel on my chair.
‘Twenty-nine, owns a bookshop in Ranelagh,’ says the fat guy. ‘Lives above the shop.’
‘With anyone?’
‘Nah. On his ownio.’
Which is a pisser: a flatmate would have been not only a nice witness to have, but also an obvious candidate for the guy who called it in. Steve asks, ‘Anything happen that we should know about, while you were sitting on his house?’
They look at each other, shake their heads. ‘Not a lot,’ says the gym rat. ‘He opened the front curtains around ten, in his pyjamas. No other visible movement. By the time we picked him up, he’d got dressed, but no shoes, so it didn’t look like he was planning on heading out.’
‘He’d had breakfast,’ says the fat guy. ‘Coffee and a fry-up, by the smell.’
Steve catches my eye. A guy punches his girlfriend to death, goes home and snuggles into his pyjamas for a nice bit of kip, gets up in the morning and stuffs his face with egg and sausage. It could happen; Fallon could have been dazed into autopilot, or a psychopath, or setting up his defence. Or.
The room is hot, a dry edgy heat that pricks at the skin on my neck. I pull my coat off. ‘What’d you say to him?’
‘Like you told us,’ the fat one says. ‘Nothing. Just said we thought he might have some information that would help us out with an investigation, and asked him if he’d mind coming in for a chat.’
‘And he just said yeah? No hassle, no questions?’
The two of them shake their heads. ‘Accommodating guy,’ says the gym rat.
‘No shit,’ I say. Most people, if you ask them to come in to a cop shop and answer some questions, they want at least a little info before they ditch the day’s plans and toddle along after you. Either Rory Fallon is a natural pushover, or he really, really wants to look like a helpful guy with nothing to hide.
‘Did he say anything along the way?’ Steve asks.
‘Wanted to know what this was about, once we got in the car,’ says the fat guy. Which is also interesting. Obviously Rory might know exactly what this is about, but he doesn’t think we can prove he knows, which means Lucy wasn’t straight on the phone to him the minute we left. One point against the Lucy-and-Rory theory. ‘We said we didn’t know all the details; the investigating detectives would fill him in. After that he kept his mouth shut.’
‘We were nice,’ says the gym rat. ‘Made him a cup of tea, told him how great he was for helping us out, we’d be nowhere without responsible citizens like him and all that jazz. We figured you’d like him relaxed.’
‘Lovely,’ Steve says. ‘Where’d you put him?’
‘The interview room down the end.’
‘Is he the type who’ll start thinking about leaving if we keep him on ice for a few minutes?’
Both of them laugh. ‘Nah,’ says the gym rat. ‘Like I said: accommodating.’
‘He’s a good boy,’ says the fat guy. ‘Gone bad.’