‘You positive it was her?’ Steve asks, throwing me a triumphant look.
The barman is maybe seventy, baldy and bright-eyed, with shiny armbands on his starched shirt. ‘Ah, yeah. She ordered a peach schnapps and cranberry – said she was trying out all the mad drinks she could think of, see what she liked best. I told her if she was looking for excitement, she was in the wrong place. She settled for a rum and ginger ale.’ He tilts the photo to the light, what there is of it. ‘Yeah; it was her, all right. I had a good old stare for meself. Have to take my chances when I can; we don’t get the likes of her in here all that often.’
‘Am I not good-looking enough for you, no?’ demands an old fella on a barstool. ‘You can look all you like; I won’t charge you.’
‘The state of you. That’s why I was staring at that young one: I need something to clear the sight of you out of my head.’
‘When was she in?’ Steve asks.
The barman considers. ‘A few months back. August, maybe.’
‘On her own?’
‘Ah, no. A one like her, I wouldn’t say she does spend much time on her own.’ The old lad on the barstool lets out an appreciative cackle. The barman says, ‘She was with a fella.’
That gets me another Ha! look from Steve. ‘Do you remember what he looked like?’
‘I wasn’t concentrating on him, if you know what I mean. He was older than her, I remember that; forties, maybe fifty. Nothing special: not fat or skinny, or nothing. Tallish, maybe. He had all his hair, anyway, fair play to him.’
Which fits well enough with the guy climbing Aislinn’s wall. I think it before I can help it: fits the guy hanging around at the top of my road, too.
Steve says, ‘Would you recognise him if you saw him again?’
The barman shrugs. ‘I might or I might not. I won’t promise yous anything.’
I ask, ‘Would you say he was her fella? Any holding hands, any kissing? Or could he have been just a friend, an uncle, something like that?’
The barman makes a face and wavers his head. ‘Could’ve gone either way. No canoodling, nothing like that, but I remember thinking they were sitting awful close if they weren’t a couple. And that she could’ve done better for herself.’
‘Like you, wha’?’ the old lad wants to know.
‘What’s wrong with me? I’ve still got my figure.’
‘Maybe he was a millionaire,’ Steve says. ‘Did he look flush?’
‘Not that I noticed. Like I said: nothing special.’
‘What would a millionaire be doing in a kip like this?’ the old lad demands.
‘Looking for a proper pint,’ the barman says with dignity.
‘If he’d’ve found one, he’d’ve come back.’
‘Has he been?’ Steve asks.
‘No. Only saw either of them the once.’
I say, ‘What about me? Have I been in before?’
The barman narrows his eyes up at me and grins. ‘You have, yeah. Summer before last, was it? With a load of other ones and fellas, sitting over in that corner, having a laugh?’
‘Fair play,’ I say. I stand out a lot more than Aislinn, but it’s been longer since I was in. The barman isn’t talking shite to make us happy; he remembers her.
‘What do I win?’
‘Read that, and if it’s all correct, sign at the bottom,’ I say, holding out my notebook. ‘If you’re lucky, you win the chance to come into the station and tell us the same thing on tape.’
The old lad is craning his neck to get a look at Aislinn’s photo. He says, ‘Is she in hassle, yeah? She after doing something on someone?’
‘Leave it, Freddy,’ the barman says, without looking up from my notebook. ‘I don’t want to know.’ He signs his name with a trim tap of the pen at the end, passes the notebook back to me and picks up his glass-cloth. ‘Anything else, no?’
Outside, Steve slides the photo of Aislinn back into his jacket pocket. He’s thinking I told you so loud enough that he doesn’t need to bother coming out with it. ‘So,’ he says instead.
‘So,’ I say. The thought of the incident room left to its own devices, or Breslin’s, is making me antsy. ‘That’s all the locals. Can we get back to the squad now, yeah?’
‘Yeah. No problem.’
We head back down the potholed laneway, towards the road. That rain is kicking in, nasty spitty flecks edging towards sleet – I hope Meehan was brisk enough to get done in time. A bubble of low-grade trouble is building up on the corner – kids who can’t go home because they’re mitching off school – but apart from them the street’s empty. A marker-graffiti creature, all bared teeth and bug-eyes, stares us out of it from the shutter on an abandoned shop, between a missing-cat poster and some leftover summer-fair thing, dancing kites and ice creams grinning manically from their faded paper.
Steve’s self-control runs out. ‘The secret boyfriend’s looking good.’
He is. I say, ‘Or else that was some guy from Aislinn’s work—’
‘She worked way out in Clondalkin. Why would they go for pints in Stoneybatter, unless they were buzzing off each other and didn’t want to get spotted?’
‘—or a pal from her wine-tasting class, or whatever she was at in August.’ The car is parked half a dozen pubs back. I pick up the pace. ‘Those fancy clubs she liked, those are full of good-looking, rich young guys; Aislinn could’ve had any of them. Why would she be buzzing off some middle-aged fella who was nothing special?’
Steve shrugs. ‘There’s women who prefer older guys.’
‘Rory’s her same age, give or take.’
‘She could’ve had a daddy complex before him. Remember what Lucy said: Aislinn’s da leaving, that messed up her life. Maybe she went looking for a father figure. When that didn’t turn out the way she was hoping, she switched to guys her own—’
‘Jesus.’ I nearly walk into a lamppost, slam a hand against it at the last second. ‘That’s where I knew her from. That’s where I fucking saw her.’
‘What? Where?’
‘Jesus Christ.’ My palm is throbbing; the glossy paint of the lamppost feels slimy against it. I can hear the street-corner kids laughing at me, somewhere behind us. ‘Her.’
Missing Persons, two and a half years back. I was on the front desk one lunchtime, a sunny day near the end of my time on the squad; the breeze floating in through the open window smelled like country air, like the summer had thrown off all the layers of city to come cartwheeling in clean and sweet. I was listening to bouncy nineties pop trailing out of a sunroof, eating a turkey sandwich, thinking about that morning’s happy ending – ten-year-old disappeared after a fight with his parents, we found him playing Nintendo in his best mate’s bedroom – and about Murder waiting for me just a couple of weeks away. It felt like we were on the same side that day, me and the world; it felt good.