‘So it’s doubts.’
In the dark outside the window, the wind is picking up. It sounds like wide country wind, barrelling down long straight miles with nothing to stand in its way, like the squad is standing high in the middle of empty nowhere. I say, ‘We’ll make the arrest when we’re ready.’
O’Kelly says, ‘Doubts about whether you’ve got enough to make it stick? Or about whether the boyfriend’s guilty at all?’
He’s looking at me, not at Steve. I say, ‘Doubts about whether we’re ready to arrest him.’
‘That doesn’t answer my question.’
There’s a silence. O’Kelly’s one eye, metallic in the lamplight, doesn’t blink.
I say, ‘I think he’s probably our guy. There’s no way I’m gonna arrest him based on nothing but my gut feeling. If that’s a problem, take the case off us and give it to Breslin. He’s welcome to it.’
O’Kelly eyeballs me for another minute; I stare back. Then he says, ‘Keep me updated. I want a full report on my desk every evening. Anything big shows up, you don’t save it for the report; you let me know straightaway. Is that clear?’
‘Clear,’ I say. Steve nods.
‘Good,’ O’Kelly says. He spins his chair away from the desk, to one of the stacks of files, and starts flipping paper. Dust swirls up into the light of his desk lamp. ‘Go get some kip. Ye look even worse than this morning.’
Steve and I wait till we’re back in the incident room, with the door shut, before we look at each other. He says, ‘What was that all about?’
I flick my coat off the back of my chair and swing it on. The floaters upped their rhythm when we came in; the room is all clicking keys and rustling paper. ‘That was the gaffer getting all up in our grille. What bit did you miss?’
‘Yeah, but why? He’s never given a damn about any of our cases before, unless we weren’t doing the business and he wanted to give us a bollocking.’
I throw my scarf around my neck and tuck the ends in tight: the dark at the window has a condensed look that says it’s cold out there. O’Kelly’s taken the shine off our bright new idea; gangsters and bent cops feel like a gymnast-level stretch, compared to just more people trying to screw me over. ‘Right. And even after the bollockings, I’m still here. Maybe the gaffer figures he needs to up his game.’
‘Or,’ Steve says, quieter. He hasn’t started packing up yet; he’s standing by his desk, one finger tapping an absent tattoo on the edge. ‘If he’s been wondering the same stuff we’ve been wondering, maybe for a while now, but he doesn’t want to say anything till he’s sure . . .’
I say, ‘I’m going home.’
From the outside, my gaff looks a lot like Aislinn Murray’s: a one-storey Victorian terraced cottage, thick-walled and low-ceilinged. It fits me just about right; when I let someone stay over – which isn’t often – I’m twitchy by morning, starting to feel the two of us barging up against the walls. The 1901 census says back then a couple were raising eight kids in it.
Get inside and my place has fuck-all in common with Aislinn’s. I have the original floorboards – sanded them and polished them myself, when I first bought the gaff – and the original fireplace, none of this gas fire and laminate shite; the walls are scraped back to bare brick – I did that myself, too – and whitewashed. The mortgage and my car payments eat enough of my paycheque that my furniture comes from Oxfam and the low end of Ikea, but at least nothing is gingham.
I throw my satchel on the sofa, turn off the alarm and switch on the coffee machine. I’ve got a text from my mate Lisa: We’re in pub get down here! I text her back Pulled a double shift, gonna crash. This is true enough – I’ve been up for more than twenty-four hours, and my eyes aren’t focusing right – but I could still have done with a pint and a laugh with a bunch of people who don’t think I’m poison. Except that’s the reason I’m staying in. You spend long enough being treated like you’re wearing a shit on me sign, you start to worry that the sign’s developing a reality of its own and now anyone you talk to can see it. In my mates’ heads I’m Antoinette the top cop, smart kickass successful Antoinette, nobody fucks with Antoinette. I want to keep it that way. I’ve turned down a lot of pints, the last few months.
Plus, odds are the gang in the pub includes my mate with the security firm. I don’t want him offering me the job again. I’m not gonna take it – not tonight, anyway, not with that dare still flashing at me – but I’m not ready for him to take it off the table.
I should throw some dinner into me and crash out, but I hate wasting time on sleep even worse than I hate wasting it on food. I stick some pasta ready-meal thing in the microwave; while it heats up, I ring my ma, which I do every night, I’m not sure why. My ma isn’t the type to bitch about her back problems or update me on which of her friends’ kids are up the pole and what she found while she was emptying some middle manager’s bin, which doesn’t leave her a lot to talk about. Me, when I’m in a good mood, I tell her the basic outline of my day. When I’m not, I give her the details: what the wounds looked like, what the parents said while they sobbed. Sometimes I catch myself at the scene filing away the bad stuff, thinking this is gonna be the one that finally gets to her, gets even just a sharp breath or a snap at me to leave it. So far nothing ever has.
‘Howya,’ my ma says. Click of a lighter. She has a smoke while we talk; when she puts it out, we hang up.
I hit the button for an espresso. ‘Howya.’
‘Any news?’
‘Me and Moran pulled a street fight. Couple of drunk fellas jumped another one, danced on his head. His eyeball was out on the footpath.’
‘Huh,’ my ma says, and inhales. ‘Anything else strange?’
I don’t feel like talking about Aislinn. Too much shite swirling around it, too much stuff I don’t have a handle on; I don’t tell my ma about anything I haven’t got well sussed. ‘Nah. Lisa texted me to go for a pint with the lads, but I’m shattered. Gonna crash.’
My ma lets that lie for a beat, just long enough to let me know I’m not getting away with it, before she says, ‘Marie Lane said you’re in the newspaper.’
Of course she bleeding did. ‘Did she, yeah?’
‘Not about any street fight. About some young one that got killed in her own house. The paper made you out to be a right gobshite.’
I swap out the coffee pod and hit the espresso button again: I’m gonna need a double. ‘It’s just a bog-standard murder. It made the paper because your woman was a blonde who wore a shit-ton of makeup. The journalist doesn’t like me. End of story.’
A lot of people’s mas would get a taste of the weakness, burrow in and suck out every last drop. Not mine. My ma just wanted to make it clear who’s the boss of this conversation, and who needs to up her game if she wants to bullshit a pro. Now that she’s made her point, she drops it. ‘Lenny asked me again can he move in.’