Steve has wandered over to the water cooler and is filling a plastic cup, watching us. Breslin lifts a hand. ‘Whoa whoa whoa. Let’s just stall the ball here. Are you saying you’ve got doubts?’
‘I’m saying I’d like your opinion. If that’s a problem, though, I can live without it.’ I’m right back to wanting to throat-punch the bollix. The fine thread of alliance that built up between the two of us in the interview room lasted all of thirty seconds outside it.
‘Talk to me, Conway. Are you trying to be super-careful, yeah? Make sure you’ve got all your bases covered? Is that what’s going on?’
It’s not a bad technique – make the other person explain herself, you’ve got her on the back foot right there – but this is what I mean about Breslin not being as smart as he thinks: I just saw him use it on Rory, plus it should have occurred to him that, what with me being a detective, I might just know the same tricks he does. I lean a shoulder against the one-way glass, where I can keep one eye on Rory, and stick my hands in my pockets. ‘Do you think we should be?’
Breslin sighs. ‘Well. I guess we’ve got to face it: one of the last things your rep needs is a ding for jumping the gun. But the other last thing you need is a rep for being so indecisive that you’ll let your guy walk rather than put your balls on the line. Are you getting me?’
Steve says, doing mildly bewildered, ‘Hang on a sec. You’re saying you deffo think he did it, yeah?’
Breslin sighs exasperatedly and runs his hands over what’s left of his hair, carefully so he won’t bother it. ‘Well, yeah, Moran. I kind of do. This guy was the victim’s boyfriend, so that’s Strike One. He was actually at the crime scene at the relevant time, he’s not even trying to deny it, so that’s Strike Two. He was wearing non-fibre gloves, same as our killer: Strike Three. He was wearing a black wool overcoat, and we’ve got black wool fibres on the body: Strike Four. And he basically admits that he was getting impatient for his ride, after all the time and money he’d put into this girl, and she wasn’t showing any signs of giving up the goods. That’s a great big Strike Five. I’m not a baseball aficionado, but I’m pretty sure it takes less than that to put a guy well and truly out.’
Steve is sipping his water and nodding through Breslin’s list. ‘I’d say it does, all right,’ he says agreeably. His accent has got stronger. I put on the Thicko Skanger act too, now and then, but I do it for suspects, not for my own squad. Sometimes Steve makes me want to puke. ‘I think I’ll keep an open mind a little longer, but.’
Breslin lets the exasperation go up a notch. ‘Open about what? There’s nothing else here, Moran. There’s our boy Fallon, there’s a shitload of circumstantial evidence all pointing straight at him, and that’s it. What are you being open-minded about? Aliens? The CIA?’
Steve pulls his arse up onto the rickety table, getting comfortable for the chats. I leave him to it. ‘Here’s the only thing,’ he says. ‘How’d the actual killing play out?’
‘What are you talking about? He punched her. She hit her head. She died. That’s how it played out.’
Steve thinks that over, brow furrowed – bit slow on the uptake, us skangers. ‘Why, but?’ he asks.
Breslin’s head goes back and he bares his teeth at the ceiling, halfway between a smile and a grimace. ‘Moran. Moran. Do I look like Poirot to you?’
‘Huh? . . . Not a lot.’
‘No. Because this isn’t Saturday evening in front of the telly with a nice cup of tea and a digestive biscuit, and so I don’t care about motive. I don’t. And neither should you. You ought to know that by now.’
Steve scratches at his nose. ‘You’re probably right, man. I’d say you are. It’s just I’m not seeing it. I like being able to see things in my head, know what I mean? Picture them, like.’ He frames his hands in front of his eyes, to make sure Breslin gets the concept of picturing something.
Breslin takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly, so we can see how much he’s putting into keeping his temper with us. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘OK. Let’s go ahead and spend some time picturing it.’
‘Thanks,’ Steve says, giving him a humble smile. ‘I appreciate that.’
‘Rory shows up with his shitty Tesco bouquet. Aislinn, who clearly wasn’t the shitty Tesco type, isn’t happy. She gets snotty. Rory’s not having that – he’s been blowing his budget and rearranging his schedule and racing around Stoneybatter in the rain to make her happy, but that’s not good enough for Princess Special? He pulls out a Jane Austen quote about high-maintenance bitches, or prick-teases, or whatever literary types call girls like that. Aislinn slaps him down hard: she tells him exactly why he’s not good enough for her, including why she hasn’t let him into her knickers and why after this she never will. She goes one put-down too far, and bam.’ Breslin mimes a little punch, not bothering to put much into it. ‘And here we all are. Can you picture that OK? Yeah?’
‘That’d work, all right.’ Steve nods, picturing away. ‘Only you’d think the bouquet would get a bit messed up, like, in all the action. He’d drop it, or something. We didn’t find any petals on the floor.’
‘So no petals happened to come off. Or Rory’s got the brains to pick them up. We’re not talking about a massive struggle; we’re talking a bit of that’ – Breslin makes a yappy-mouth sign – ‘one punch and a few seconds of oh-shit. A couple of petals would have been great, but in this job you can’t get too demanding. You need to work with what you’ve got, instead of fussing about what you haven’t.’ Breslin’s giving Steve the beginnings of a smile, all ready to kiss and make up. ‘Am I right or am I right?’
Steve says cheerfully, ‘You’re dead right, man. I’d just like to shake a few more trees and see if anything falls out, is all.’ When Breslin rears away, rolling his jaw: ‘I’m new, you know? I’ve got loads to learn. Might as well get in the practice while I can.’
‘You’re not that fucking new. You’ve both been on the job long enough that you should be able to handle your own cases without a babysitter. This kind of shit right here is why the gaffer decided you need one.’
‘And we appreciate you taking on the job, man. Seriously. But I’ve gotta get there in my own time, know what I mean? Otherwise I’ll never learn. Sure, what harm?’
‘Moran. Come on. The harm is that you two are about to embarrass yourselves – and let’s be honest here, it’s not like you can afford to do that. If you actually let this guy walk out of here while you go shaking trees or whatever it was, you look weak as fuck. You look unsure. And not just to the rest of us. The longer you leave it, the more the defence is going to make of it: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, even the cops weren’t positive my client was guilty, how can you not share their reasonable doubt? Doesn’t that bother you at all?’
In the interview room, Rory lifts his head and wipes his face with the heels of his hands. He’s red and blotchy; the tears are there, for whatever that’s worth.