I switch off the patio lights and check my gun. Then I slam my back door open, lunge across the patio, get a toehold on the wall and throw myself up onto the top.
I’m all ready to come face to face with anything from a junkie to Freddy Kruger. Instead I get the narrow laneway, dim in the faint yellow light from the streetlamp out on the road, and empty. Shadows and crisp packets banked along the edges, some kid’s fourth-rate tag scrawled in blue on the wall. I listen: what could be fast footsteps, somewhere out on the road, or could be just the wind bouncing rubbish.
The kick of anger is half letdown – I was starving for that fight – and half at myself for being a moron. Even if this case magically turns out to be some serial killer’s warm-up, tonight he’s at home having some hard-earned R&R, not out looking for high-grade action. The bobbing head in the laneway was either fatigue warping my vision or some drunk having a piss; my motion sensor got tripped by the wind messing with rubbish, or the local half-wild cat on the scrounge.
I go back to my laptop. I sit there with my finger on the button for a long time, listening to the wind move outside my house and keeping one eye on the kitchen for the patio lights, before I hit Send.
Chapter 6
First thing Monday morning, I get to track down my witness from the scumbagfest, haul him out of bed and coax him into coming in to the squad to give his statement all over again, this time with narky jabs about how he pays my wages – via the dole, somehow – and how I should have more respect than to go wasting his time like this. We both know that if I tell him to shut his face, he’ll develop a bad case of amnesia about Saturday night. Even this little fucker can smell weakness off me. A couple of slaps would sort out his attitude, but I make myself save them for someone who matters.
Only half my mind is on him anyway. The day started off strange. It was still dark when I was leaving my gaff, thick cold fog filling the road, rolling it back to its secretive Victorian self: cars faded to smudges, lit windows and streetlamps hanging in the middle of nothing. And a guy at the top of the road, just standing there, on a morning when no sane person would be just standing. He was too far away for me to catch much; just a tall guy, facing my way, with a dark overcoat and a dark trilby and a set to his shoulders that said he wasn’t young. Last night’s adrenaline shot hit me again. I thought of the report on the guy climbing over Aislinn’s wall: medium build, dark coat, the neighbour thought he might be middle-aged . . . By the time I manoeuvred my car out of the parking space and gunned it up the road, he was gone.
What sent something extra through me, what leaves me edgy and watching cars in my rear-view mirror all the way to the car pool and to the scumbag’s place and back to work with him whining in the back seat, was the overcoat. Steve was right, there are a lot of guys who wear dark overcoats. They include just about every D I know.
There are a few reasons why a D could be staking out my road. Some of them are a lot more fun than others.
Just to brighten my day, Creepy Crowley is still trying to pump Aislinn into the story of the year. He’s dug up a couple more photos of her – all post-makeover; Crowley and his readers don’t get into a panting lather over dumpy brunettes in polyester skirt-suits – and a flood of hot-button clichés to pour over them, and he’s got the front page of the Courier all to himself. A fair bit of it is hints about the cops, specifically me, not taking this seriously because we’re too busy protecting the politicians and the elite to care about decent working people. Crowley has somehow got hold of a blurry shot of me back in uniform, policing a protest; the protest was a couple of hundred people rightfully pissed off about an emergency room closing and there was zero aggro, but there I am with a stab vest and a baton, which is all Crowley needs to prove his point. Unless we make the collar soon, the brass are gonna start feeling the pressure, they’re gonna kick the gaffer, and the gaffer is gonna kick me.
I walk the scumbag witness out – he’s still bitching about his ruined lie-in – and watch him light a smoke and slope off. It’s headed for ten o’clock; the day is as strong as it’s going to get, all feeble grey light choked with cloud. I lean against the wall outside, ignoring the cold biting through my suit jacket, and ring Sophie while I’ve got some privacy. I figure a drug lord’s fat fingerprint in Aislinn’s bedroom, or even a nice bloodstain on one of Rory’s gloves, would do a lot to put my day on the right track.
‘Hey,’ Sophie says. ‘OK if I put you on speaker? This vase needs to make it back to Galway in one piece for the O’Flaherty case, and I swear the idiots on evidence transport use this stuff for football practice, so I’m packing it myself. In a year’s supply of bubble wrap. I’m in my office, so no one’s going to hear us.’
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘You got the stuff from our suspect, yeah?’
‘Yeah. The grey nylon gloves and black wool coat he was wearing, and navy-blue trousers, two white linen shirts, a pale blue pullover, red wool gloves, wool Fair Isle gloves – seriously – and black wool scarf from his flat. Plus fingerprints.’ Sophie does something that sounds like ripping off a piece of gaffer tape. ‘Just so you know: Breslin rang me yesterday evening. He was looking for all the scene reports, plus Aislinn’s electronics.’
The rough stone prods at my back through my jacket. ‘What’d you give him?’
‘What do you think I am? I gave him fuck-all. He came on like a headhunter, telling me how delighted he was that I was working this case, how none of the other techs are up to my standard – what kind of idiot thinks bitching about my mates is going to get on my good side?’ Tape ripping again. ‘I told him none of our reports were ready, what with this case not being the only one in the whole world, and the computer guys hadn’t even started on the electronics. Which was true, or near enough. Breslin wasn’t pleased, but he kept right on schmoozing. I swear, by the end of it I thought he was going to send me flowers.’
‘I’m gonna have a nice chat with Breslin,’ I say. I could kiss Sophie. ‘How far have you actually got?’
‘Reports are ready whenever you want them. I got my guys to work late. I figured if you’re trying to keep this stuff away from that arselick – and I don’t need to know why, I’m just saying – it might be useful if you were a couple of steps ahead of where he’d expect.’
‘It is,’ I say, lifting a mental finger at Breslin. ‘You’re a gem. Find anything good?’