I slap my stack of paper onto the boss desk, the double-length one at the head of the room. ‘Gentlemen,’ I say, loud. ‘Let’s get started. Who owns this?’ I whip a coffee mug off the desk and hold it up.
Breslin is leaning against the whiteboard, holding court for Deasy and Stanton, the floaters who brought Rory in, and the pair we put on the door-to-door – a slight, fidgety dark guy called Meehan, who I’ve worked with before and like, and a prissy-faced newbie called Gaffney, who I’ve seen around and who’s holding himself so straight that his suit looks like a prefect’s uniform. Breslin, or more likely someone he was bossing around, has made a start on the whiteboard – shots of Aislinn, the crime scene, Rory, a map of Stoneybatter – and set out a heavy hardback notebook for the book of jobs, where we keep a list of what needs doing and who’s supposed to be doing it. We even have an electric kettle.
‘That’s mine,’ Gaffney says, bobbing forward to grab the mug and retreating fast, scarlet. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Meehan.’ I toss him the notebook. ‘Book of jobs, yeah?’ He catches it and nods. Steve dumps his stuff beside mine and starts handing out photocopies: the initial call sheet, the uniforms’ report, Rory’s statement. I head for the whiteboard and sketch out a fast timeline of last night. The floaters pick desks and settle fast: chitchat’s over.
‘The vic,’ I say, tapping the photo of Aislinn with my marker. ‘Aislinn Murray, twenty-six, lived alone in Stoneybatter, worked as a receptionist at a firm selling bathroom supplies to businesses. No criminal record, no calls to us. Assaulted yesterday evening in her home: Cooper’s preliminary exam says she took a punch to the face and hit her head on the fireplace surround. Texts on her phone narrow down the time to between 7.13 and 8.09.’ I move to Rory’s photo. ‘This guy here, Rory Fallon, he’s been seeing her for a couple of months. He was due at her house for dinner at eight o’clock.’
‘Stupid bastard,’ says Deasy, grinning. ‘A looker like her, he should’ve at least waited to kill her till after he’d got his hole.’
Snickers. Breslin clears his throat, with an indulgent smirk and a tilt of his head towards me. The snickers fade.
I say, ‘You can make it up to him, Deasy, seeing as it matters so much to you. Next time we bring him in, you go ahead and give him a blowjob in the jacks.’
Deasy pinches at his tache and makes a sour face. The snickers rise up again, prickly and equivocal.
I say, ‘Me and Moran and Breslin, we’ve just had a chat with Fallon. His story is that he was at Aislinn’s door at eight, but she didn’t answer, so he figured he’d been dumped and flounced off home to cry on his pillow.’
‘Amazingly enough,’ Breslin drawls, twirling his pen, ‘we don’t believe him.’
‘Our working theory,’ I say, ‘is that Fallon arrived at the vic’s place around half-seven, things went bad somehow, and he punched her. We’re guessing he thought she was just knocked out; he legged it home and hoped she wouldn’t call the cops on him, or wouldn’t remember what happened.’
That has Breslin nodding along approvingly, giving the newbies’ little theory his blessing. ‘More like manslaughter than murder,’ he says, ‘but that’s not our problem.’
‘By early this morning,’ I say, ‘either Fallon’s conscience got to him, or else he’d talked to a mate who wanted to do the right thing. An anonymous male caller reported to Stoneybatter station that there was a woman with head injuries at 26 Viking Gardens, and requested an ambulance.’
‘My money’s on Fallon doing it himself,’ Breslin says. ‘He’s exactly the type who’d bottle it after a few hours, start trying to put things right just when it’s too late.’
‘The phone number came up private,’ Steve says. ‘Who wants to get on it?’
All their hands shoot up. ‘Easy there, boys,’ Breslin says, grinning. ‘There’s plenty to go round.’
‘Gaffney, you take the phone number,’ I say – I need to give the kid a pat, settle him after the mug thing. Meehan writes that down. ‘Stanton, Deasy: you were working on a list of Fallon’s KAs. How’s that going?’
‘Nothing surprising,’ Stanton says. ‘Mother, father, two older brothers, no sisters; handful of mates from school and college, a few ex-flatmates, long list of work colleagues and friends – mostly history teachers, librarians, that kind of thing. I’ll e-mail it on to you.’
‘Do that. Detective Breslin, you’ve already started talking to the KAs, am I right?’
‘Both Fallon’s brothers sounded appropriately shocked,’ Breslin says. ‘According to them, they knew about Rory’s big date, but that’s as far as they’d got; they were waiting to hear all the dirty details. They claim they didn’t ring Stoneybatter station this morning, or ever, but then they would, wouldn’t they? I’ve got them both coming in for separate chats after this.’
Breslin’s planning on working a long shift, for a bog-standard case. ‘If they don’t pan out, keep working your way down the list,’ I say. ‘Start with anyone who lives near Rory’s route home, where he could’ve got a surprise visit last night. And while you’re at it, get the brothers and the best mates on tape. We need to run their voices and Fallon’s past the guy at Stoneybatter who took the call, see if he recognises any of them. Can you follow that up?’
For a second I think Breslin’s gonna tell me to stick my scut work, but he says, ‘Why not,’ although there’s a twist to his mouth. ‘Great,’ I say. ‘We need someone to go through CCTV – we’ll put Kellegher and Reilly down for that; they’re pulling all the local footage they can get, they might as well watch it.’
Meehan nods, writing.
‘And someone needs to pull footage from the northbound 39A bus route yesterday evening: find the buses that stopped on Morehampton Road around seven, see if you can pick out Rory Fallon getting on, confirm what time he boarded and what time he got off in Stoneybatter.’ The gym rat has a finger up. That whipcrack rhythm, the one I used to love: even though I know better, it still hits me like a triple espresso. ‘Stanton’s on that. And we need someone to head out to Stoneybatter and time the route Rory says he took from the bus stop: down Astrid Road to the top of Viking Gardens, then up to Tesco on Prussia Street, buy a bunch of flowers and head back down to Viking Gardens. Meehan, you’re around the same build and age as Fallon; can you do that? Time it twice: once at your normal pace, once as fast as you can go.’
Meehan nods. Steve says, glancing back and forth between him and Gaffney, ‘Did Rory’s flowers show up in the bins on the quays?’
‘I looked,’ Meehan says. ‘Gaffney kept going with the door-to-door. The bins hadn’t been emptied since last night, by the state of them, but no irises anywhere. Some lad probably robbed them to give to his bird.’