Rory says quietly, ‘I gave up. It was gone half-eight, I was freezing, it was starting to rain – and whatever was going on, it wasn’t going to make any difference if I stood there all night. So I left.’
‘You must’ve been well pissed off,’ Breslin says. ‘Here’s you hauling your arse halfway across the city on a shitty winter night, legging it up to Tesco and back, and she can’t even be bothered letting you in? I’d be fuming.’
‘I wasn’t. I was more just . . . upset. I mean, I was a bit annoyed as well, but—’
‘Course you were. Did you do any banging on the door? Any yelling? Swearing? Kicking lampposts?’ And as Rory opens his mouth: ‘Remember, we’ll be checking with the neighbours.’
‘No. I didn’t do anything like that.’ Rory has his face turned away, like not kicking Aislinn’s door in makes him less of a man. ‘I just went home.’
‘Fair play,’ I say. ‘Some guys would’ve made tits of themselves in front of her whole road. Not the way to impress a girl. Did you catch the bus again?’
‘I walked. I didn’t feel like waiting for the bus, or having to see people. I just . . . I walked.’
Meaning no bus driver or passengers who could tell us if he was acting stunned or shaky, or if there was blood all over his gloves. I pull my eyebrows into a concerned shape. ‘Jesus, I wouldn’t fancy that walk. Right through town on a Saturday night, drunk eejits looking for trouble . . . No one gave you hassle?’
Rory’s shoulders twitch in some kind of shrug. He’s trying to vanish into his chest again. ‘I probably wouldn’t even have noticed if they’d tried. Some guy roared something right behind me, on Aungier Street, but I don’t know what it was – I don’t think it was in English – and I’m not sure he was talking to me. I was just . . .’ The twitch again. ‘I wasn’t really paying attention.’
‘Doesn’t sound like you missed much,’ I say. ‘What’d you do with the flowers?’
‘I threw them away.’ All of a sudden the evening surges up in Rory’s voice, turns it defeated and raw and horribly sad. Losing Aislinn has hit him hard, in one way or another. ‘At first I forgot I even had them, and when I realised, I just wanted to get rid of them. I thought I should find someone to give them to, instead of wasting them, but I didn’t have the energy. I shoved them in a bin. After all that.’
‘A bin where?’
‘On the quays. Yeah: I walked all that way basically wearing a sign that said “DUMPED”, before I remembered the flowers existed. Hilarious, right?’ That’s to Breslin.
‘I would’ve done the same,’ I say. I flick an eyebrow at the one-way glass: Steve needs to send a couple of floaters to go through the bins on the quays, before they get emptied. There could be blood on that shitty bouquet. ‘Only I would probably have stopped for a pint on my way home. You didn’t, no?’
‘No. I just wanted to get home.’ Rory rubs his hands down his face. The strain is starting to get to him. ‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’
I ask, ‘And you got home when?’
‘I’m not sure. A bit before half-nine, maybe. I didn’t look at my watch.’
Breslin says, ‘Who’d you ring?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When you got in. Who’d you ring to bitch about your big date going to shite? Your best mate? Your brother?’
‘No one.’
Breslin stares. ‘You’re not serious. Ah, Rory, tell me you had someone you could ring. Because plenty of people get the old heave-ho somewhere along the way – it happens – but if you genuinely got home from a night like that and you couldn’t think of a single bloke to ring for a good bitching session about women and the world . . . well, that’s just the saddest thing I’ve heard in weeks. Months.’
Rory says, ‘I didn’t ring anyone. I made myself a sandwich because for obvious reasons I hadn’t had any dinner, and I sat in my flat looking out my window and feeling like the world’s biggest fool, and imagining more and more ridiculous ways that everything might still be all right, and wishing I were the kind of person who could deal with this by going out and getting drunk off my face and getting into a fight or shagging some stranger.’
The savage humiliation in his voice bites at the air. It tastes good. If we get to him, it’ll be through that: humiliation.
If Aislinn got to him, it was the same way. Finding out she was shagging someone else would probably have done the job.
‘And at midnight, when Aislinn still hadn’t rung me or texted me, I went to bed. The last thing I wanted in the world was to ring up one of my mates and tell him this story. OK?’
Breslin keeps up the incredulous stare for another minute. Rory looks away and pulls at his shirt cuff, but he keeps his mouth shut.
So far, Rory’s been all about a nice checkable story, and he has to know we can check phone records. If he talked to anyone, it was in a way he figures we can’t trace. I wonder if any of his mates live near his route home.
I leave it. ‘Just so there’s no confusion,’ I say, ‘can you confirm that this is the woman you were seeing? The woman whose house you went to last night?’
I pull a photo of Aislinn out of my file and slide it across the table to Rory. He glances up, wide-eyed, forgetting all about the flash of bitterness. ‘Why do you have . . . ? You already— Did something – what—?’
‘Like Detective Breslin said,’ I tell him, nice but firm, ‘we need to do this in order. Is this the woman whose house you went to last night?’
For a moment I think Rory’s gonna grow a pair and demand some answers, but I don’t break the smile or the stare, and in the end he blinks. ‘Yeah. That’s her.’
‘Mr Fallon has identified a photo of Aislinn Murray,’ I tell the tape.
‘Let’s have a look.’ Breslin leans across to pick up the photo. His eyebrows shoot up and he gives a long, low whistle. ‘Oh, my. Respect to you, my friend: she’s a little corker.’
That takes Rory’s mind off his questions. He hits Breslin with a hot glare, which Breslin doesn’t notice – he’s still holding up the photo at arm’s length, nodding away appreciatively. ‘She’s beautiful. That isn’t what I like about her.’
Breslin throws him a disbelieving glance, over the photo. ‘Uh-huh. You’re there for her sparkling personality.’
‘Yeah. I am. She’s interesting, she’s intelligent, she’s warm, she’s got a wonderful imagination— It’s not about her looks. Physically, she’s not even my normal type.’
A snort explodes out of Breslin. ‘Oh, please. She’s everyone’s type. Are you telling me you prefer them ugly? Given the choice, you would’ve gone for some fat hairy troll with a face like a smashed doughnut, but somehow you got stuck with this instead? My heart bleeds for you.’
Rory flushes. ‘No. I’m just saying I’ve never ended up with a girl who’s so . . . well, so elegant. All my other girlfriends have been more the casual type.’
‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ Breslin says, eyeing Rory’s shirt. ‘So how’d you pull this one? No offence, but let’s face facts: you’re punching well above your weight there. It doesn’t bother you, does it? Me pointing that out?’