‘Sucks to be you. Get in quicker next time.’
We watch Rory Fallon flick his head back and forth and fidget his feet under his chair while he tries to get a handle on the interview room. Interview rooms are designed so you can’t get a handle on them. The linoleum and the table and the chairs are all the plainest, most nondescript ones out there, and it’s not just because of budget cuts; it’s so your mind can’t read anything off them, and it starts reading stuff in. Long enough alone in an interview room and the place goes from nothing to sinister to pure horror film.
There’s a black overcoat neatly folded over the back of his chair, and a pair of grey nylon padded gloves lined up on the table. Rory’s hands are arranged the same way as the gloves, palms pressed down, thumbs just touching. His knuckles, as far as I can tell from this distance, are perfect: not a scratch.
Steve says, ‘See his hands?’
‘That doesn’t rule him out. Sophie said he probably wore gloves, remember?’
‘Ring her. See if they found prints in the end.’
I ring Sophie, hit speaker, keep one eye on the door for Breslin. ‘Sophie. Hey. It’s me and Moran.’
‘Hey. Update: we’ve basically finished processing the body and the sitting room—’ Her voice cuts out, comes back. ‘Fucking reception in here. Hang on a sec.’ A door slams. ‘Hi.’
‘How’re you doing on prints?’
‘It looks like we’re out of luck, basically.’ Wind whirls around Sophie’s voice; she’s out on the street. She does something, cups her hand around the phone, and the roar goes away. ‘We’ve got plenty on the dinner settings, the door handle, the wine bottle, wineglasses, but just offhand my guy says they’re all too small for a man and they all look like a match to the vic.’
‘We were right about the guy wearing gloves,’ I say. Steve makes a face.
‘We’ll keep looking, but I’m guessing yeah. Probably leather or Gore-Tex, something smooth like that. We didn’t find any fibres on the vic’s face where he punched her, and we should’ve, if the gloves were wool or anything knitted. Fibres would’ve stuck to the blood.’
I say, to Steve, ‘So thick gloves, probably. Meaning he might not have wrecked his hand, at least not enough to be visible.’
‘Meaning you’ve picked up your suspect,’ Sophie says. ‘And his hands are fine.’
‘Yeah. The dinner-date guy.’
‘Did you get whatever gloves he was wearing last night? Because if your killer wore gloves, he’s got the vic’s blood all over the right-hand one. Even if he cleaned it. That shit sticks around.’
‘Today he’s wearing grey nylon ones. They look clean, but we’ll get them down to you for testing, and if we get a search warrant we’ll send you any others out of his place, but I bet we’re out of luck there too. He probably dumped last night’s ones on his way home.’ I’ve got one eye on Fallon. He’s given up trying to get a handle on his surroundings and is sitting still, gazing down at his hands and taking deep breaths. He looks like he might be doing some kind of meditation thing. I give the glass a quick smack, put a stop to that shite. ‘Anything else we should know, before we start in on him?’
Sophie blows out an exasperated breath. ‘Not a lot. Most of this morning was a waste of our fucking time. The only solid thing we’ve got is three black wool fibres off the vic’s dress: two on the left side of the chest, one on the left side of the skirt. They don’t match anything she was wearing, obviously, and she doesn’t have a black coat, so it’s not like she popped out to the shops for something and got transfer from that. She could’ve thrown on a jumper to protect the dress while she was cooking, but we checked the bedroom and no black jumpers or cardigans.’ She’s keeping her voice down; someone is outside Aislinn’s place, maybe just the kids, maybe reporters. ‘So I’m thinking the fibres are transfer off your guy, from when he hugged her hello or grabbed her or whatever. Check if he owns a black wool coat.’
‘He came in wearing one.’ I glance at Steve, who shrugs: every other guy in Dublin owns a black wool overcoat. ‘We’ll send it over to you. Nice one, Sophie. Thanks.’
‘No problem. I’m going to head; there’s some baby reporter hanging over the tape trying to listen in. You want me to tell him we suspect ninja assassins?’
‘Go on, make his day. Talk soon.’
‘Hang on,’ Steve says, leaning in over the phone. ‘Hiya; it’s Moran. Can you process the bedroom? And the bathroom?’
‘Wow, brilliant idea. What did you think we were going to do with them? Spray-paint them?’
‘I mean places that probably wouldn’t have been touched last night, but might have been last time the vic had a fella staying over. The headboard, inside the bedside table, the underside of the toilet seat. And can you do the mattress for body fluids?’
‘Huh,’ Sophie says. ‘You looking at exes?’
‘Something like that. Thanks. Give the baby reporter our best.’
‘I’m going to tell him you’ll arrest him for not being in school. I swear to God, he’s about twelve, I’m getting old—’ and Sophie’s gone.
Fallon is giving his meditation thing a second try. Breslin is either building the incident room from the ground up or else punishing us for keeping him waiting. While I’ve got my phone out: ‘One sec,’ I say, swiping the screen and moving away from Steve.
The afternoon edition of the Courier is out. Creepy Crowley has gone to town.
The front page yells, ‘POLICE BAFFLED BY BRUTAL MURDER’. Underneath are two photos. Aislinn, the recent version, wearing a tight orange dress and sparkly eyeshadow and laughing – looks like a Christmas-party shot that Crowley pulled off someone’s Facebook. The other one is me, ducking out from under the crime-scene tape, looking my finest: eyebags, hair coming down, fists coming up, and my mouth opening in a snarl that would scare a Rottweiler.
My jaw is clamped so tight it hurts. I scroll down, but the text is just titillation, glurge and outrage – stunning young woman, prime of life, details of her injuries not yet released; quote from a local about how Aislinn went to the shops for him when the footpaths were icy, quote from a local who isn’t going to feel safe in her own home until we do our jobs and get this b****** off the streets; a snide little dig about ‘Detective Antoinette Conway, who led the investigation into the still-unsolved murder of Michael Murnane in Ballymun last September’, to make it clear that I’m incompetent and/or don’t give a shite about working-class victims. Down the sidebar: Parents Panic over Playground Pervert, plus a splatter of snottiness at the County Council, who should apparently do something about the shite weather, and some celebrity gushing about quinoa and what a normal life her kids lead.
‘What?’ Steve asks.
I manage to unclamp my jaw. ‘Nothing.’
‘No. What?’