‘It’s not the end of the world if he thinks we need to get better with witnesses.’
I whip down a side street at double the speed limit, but Steve knows my driving well enough that he doesn’t tense up. I’m the one gritting my teeth. ‘Yeah, it bloody well is. Oversensitive would be if I cared what Breslin or whoever thinks of our witness technique, which I don’t give a damn about. But if O’Kelly thinks we can’t handle ourselves, then we’re going to keep getting these bullshit nothing cases, and we’re going to keep having some tosser looking over our shoulders. You don’t have a problem with that?’
Steve shrugs. ‘Breslin’s just backup. It’s still our case.’
‘We don’t need backup. We need to be left the fuck alone to do our job.’
‘We will be. Sooner or later.’
‘Yeah? When?’
Steve doesn’t answer that, obviously. I slow down – the Kadett handles like a shopping trolley. Stoneybatter is getting its Sunday morning underway: runners pounding along the footpaths, pissed-off teenagers dragging dogs and brooding over the unfairness of it all, a girl in clubbing gear wandering home with goosebumps on her legs and her shoes in her hand.
I say, ‘I’m not gonna take this much longer.’
Burnout happens. It happens more in the squads like Vice and Drugs, where the same vile shite keeps coming at you every day and nothing you do makes any difference: you burst your bollix making your case and the same girls keep on getting pimped out, just by a new scumbag; the same junkies keep on buying the same gear, just from a new drug lord. You plug one hole, the shite bursts through in a new place and just keeps on pouring. That gets to people. In Murder, if you put someone away, anyone else he would’ve killed stays alive. You’re fighting one killer at a time, instead of the whole worst side of human nature, and you can beat one killer. People last, in Murder. Last their whole careers.
In any squad, people last a lot longer than two years.
My two years have been special. The cases aren’t a problem – I could take back-to-back cannibals and kid-killers, never miss a wink of sleep. Like I said, you can beat one killer. Beating your own squad is a whole other thing.
Steve has the hang of me enough to know when I’m not just blowing off steam. After a second he asks, ‘What would you do instead? Transfer back to Missing Persons?’
‘Nah. Fuck that.’ I don’t go backwards. ‘One of my mates from school, he’s a partner in a security agency. The big stuff, bodyguards for high flyers, international; not nabbing shoplifters at Penney’s. He says, any time I want a job . . .’
I’m not looking at Steve, but I can feel him motionless and watching me. I can’t tell what’s in his head. Steve’s a good guy, but he’s a people-pleaser. With me gone, he could fit right into the squad, if he felt like it. One of the lads, working the decent cases and having a laugh, easy as that.
‘The money’s great,’ I say. ‘And in there, being a woman would actually be a plus. That’s what a lot of these guys want for their wives, daughters: women bodyguards. For themselves, too. Less obvious.’
Steve says, ‘Are you gonna ring him?’
I pull up at the top of Viking Gardens. The cloud’s broken up enough that light leaks through, a thin skin of it coating the slate roofs, the leaning lamppost. It’s the most sunlight we’ve seen all week.
I say, ‘I don’t know.’
I already know Viking Gardens. I live a ten-minute walk away – because I like Stoneybatter, not because I can’t afford anything fancier – and one of the routes I use for my run goes past the top of the road. It’s less exciting than it sounds: a scruffy cul-de-sac, lined with Victorian terraced cottages fronting straight onto patched-up pavements. Low slate roofs, net curtains, bright-painted doors. The street is narrow enough that the parked cars all have two tyres on the kerb.
This is about as long as we can get away with not ringing Breslin, before he shows up at work and the gaffer wants to know what he’s doing there. Before we get out of the car, I ring his voicemail – which may or may not buy us a few extra minutes, but at least it saves me making chitchat – and leave a message. I make the case sound boring as shite, which doesn’t take much, but I know that won’t slow him down. Breslin likes thinking he’s Mr Indispensable; he’ll show up just as fast for a shitty domestic as he would for a skin-stripping serial killer, because he knows the poor victim is bollixed until he gets there to save the day. ‘Let’s move,’ I say, swinging my satchel over my shoulder.
Number 26 is the one down the far end of the road, with the crime-scene tape and the marked car and the white Technical Bureau van. A cluster of kids hanging about by the tape scatter when they see us coming (‘Ahhh! Run!’ ‘Here, missus, get him, he robs Toffypops out of the shop—’ ‘Shut the fuck up, you!’) but we still get watched all the way down the road. Behind the net curtains, the windows are popping questions like popcorn.
‘I want to wave,’ Steve says, under his breath. ‘Can I wave, yeah?’
‘Act your age, you.’ But the shot of adrenaline is hitting me, too, no matter how I fight it. Even when you know trained chimps could do your job that day, the walk to the scene gets you: turns you into a gladiator walking towards the arena, a few heartbeats away from a fight that’ll make emperors chant your name. Then you take a look at the scene, your arena and your emperor go up in smoke, and you feel shittier than ever.
The uniform at the door is just a kid, long wobbly-looking neck and big ears holding up a too-big hat. ‘Detectives,’ he says, snapping upright and trying to work out whether to salute. ‘Garda JP Dooley.’ Or something. His accent needs subtitles.
‘Detective Conway,’ I say, finding gloves and shoe covers in my bag. ‘And that’s Detective Moran. Seen anyone hanging around who shouldn’t be?’
‘Just them kids, like.’ The kids will need talking to, and so will their parents. The thing about old neighbourhoods: people still mind each other’s business. It doesn’t suit everyone, but it suits us. ‘We didn’t do any door-to-door yet; we thought ye might want it done your own way, like.’
‘Good call,’ Steve says, pulling on his gloves. ‘We’ll get someone onto it. What was that like when you got here?’
He nods at the cottage door, which is a harmless shade of blue, splintered where the uniforms bashed it in. ‘Closed,’ the uniform says promptly.
‘Well, yeah, I got that,’ Steve says, but with a grin that makes it a shared joke, not the smackdown I would have pulled out. ‘Closed how? Bolted, double-locked, on the latch?’
‘Oh, right, sorry, I—’ The uniform’s gone red. ‘There’s a Chubb lock and a Yale. ’Twasn’t double-locked, but. On the latch, only.’
Meaning if the killer left this way, he just pulled the door closed behind him; he didn’t need a key. ‘Alarm going off?’