‘Mmm,’ Cooper says. Steve is scribbling something in his notebook. ‘Either is possible. The killer could certainly have lifted her head to check for signs of life, or she could have attempted to get up but been unable to do more than raise her head. I would expect the initial injury to cause unconsciousness – there was some intraparenchymal bleeding, which generally has immediate neurological consequences – but it is plausible that she briefly regained consciousness before death.’
Steve passes me his notebook. Steve is about the only cop I know who has legible writing – nice writing, full of definite, old-fashioned loops and dashes; I think he practises in his spare time. The page says, Or: first a push – then the punch when she’s down?
I ask, ‘Could the injuries have come the other way round? The killer initially pushed our victim, rather than punching her; she went over backwards, hit her head on the fireplace, but not hard. Then when she was down and stunned, he went after her and punched her in the face?’
‘Ah,’ Cooper says, enjoying that. ‘Ah-ha. Interesting. And possible; certainly possible. Impressive, Detective Conway.’
‘That’s why they pay me the big bucks,’ I say. Steve mouths Hey! and points at his chest. I turn up my palm and grin at him: Nothing I can do, man, hate that.
‘Hmm,’ Cooper says, and I hear pages flicking. ‘In light of this new theory, I must revise my estimate of the killer’s strength. If the punch occurred when the victim’s head was already lying on the stone surround – rather than when she was free-standing, so to speak – it would have required considerably less force to inflict these injuries. Some strength would still be needed, but any healthy adult of normal muscular development could have done it.’
I’m giving Steve the eyebrows right back: that does sound like Rory Fallon. ‘Sorry to make you rewrite your report,’ I say. Cooper handwrites; none of us have the nads to invite him into the twenty-first century, so we get floaters to type up his reports.
‘I would forgive worse sins for the pleasure of hearing an alternative theory that fits the facts so neatly,’ Cooper says. ‘The rewritten report will be with you as soon as possible. I wish you the best of luck in finding hard evidence,’ and he hangs up.
Me and Steve look at each other.
‘That’s not manslaughter,’ he says.
‘Nope. Not if that’s how it went down.’ People get knocked down all the time, get up and hit back; no one expects that to kill. But if you punch someone in the face while the back of her head is up against a sharp stone edge, it takes some cojones to claim you thought she’d get up and walk away.
‘And Breslin likes it being manslaughter.’
His voice has dipped low. He’s right: Breslin jumped straight on the manslaughter scenario. Maybe because that’s a better fit with Rory Fallon, and Breslin wants this to be Rory, just to make everyone’s life simpler; maybe because he knows well that it isn’t, but he thinks we’re more likely to bite on the manslaughter story. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Let’s see what he thinks of the murder version.’
‘Do you see Rory Fallon doing that?’ Steve asks. ‘One wild swing, yeah. But going after her like that?’
‘Whoever did this was raging,’ I say. ‘He snapped. We already knew that. And we’re not looking for King Kong. Rory could’ve done it, no problem.’
‘Could’ve. But we still don’t have a good reason why he would’ve snapped, and as far as we can find, he’s got no experience with violence. Something as vicious as that punch, it’s not easy; not for someone who hasn’t touched another person since he was nine and gave his brother a dig. It’d come more naturally to someone who was in practice.’
‘Nah nah nah.’ I give my chair a shove back to my end of the desk – even the wheels on the Incident Room C chairs work better. ‘You heard Rory. All the most intense shit in that guy’s life goes on inside his head. People like that, you can’t go by what you see. We don’t know what he’s been practising in there; for all we know, he’s spent years rolling out a whole alternative life where he’s a cage fighter. When the pressure was on, it came popping out, and bang.’
The thought of that punch, bone crunching against stone, flashes through both our heads. Steve is right, it’s hard to see Rory on the end of that, but that could be because neither of us wants to. ‘This is why I keep telling you to quit the “if” crap,’ I say. ‘Hazardous to your health.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Steve says, going back to his paperwork. ‘In my fantasy life I’m the super-detective who never misses a solve.’
‘Deadly. Now all we have to do is get you under enough pressure that he pops out.’
Steve glances over, and the abrupt, wry snap of the look startles me. For a moment I think he’s going to say something, but then he shakes his head and starts running his Biro down a line of phone numbers.
Just to be clear: I know, and what with Steve not being a certified moron I assume he knows too, that we should be on our knees praying Rory Fallon is all there is to this case. If we find any evidence that Breslin is bent, we’re in deep shite.
If you catch another cop breaking the rules, or the law, or both, your first-line option is to keep your mouth shut. This is what practically everyone does about the pissant stuff like squaring traffic tickets and running private background checks: you look the other way, because it’s not worth the hassle and because sooner or later you could be the one who needs someone to blink. But even if we want to go that route – which I’m nowhere near sure I do – it’s not gonna be that easy this time, not if whatever we find is tangled up with our murder case.
Your second option, the one you’re supposed to take, is a visit to Internal Affairs. I’ve never tried it. I hear sometimes it gets the job done. Maybe once in a while it even gets the job done without word getting around and turning you into radioactive waste, and without you spending the rest of your life feeling like a rat.
Your third option is to have a chat with the guy, tell him he needs to knock it off, for the sake of his conscience or his career or his family or whatever. Maybe this one sometimes works, too. I can just see the look on Breslin’s face if I go finger-wagging at him about what a bold boy he’s been. If I don’t drown in the spill of self-righteous outrage, I’ll spend what’s left of my career trying to look over both shoulders at once.
Your fourth option is to go to your gaffer, who’ll presumably give you wise fatherly pats on the shoulder, tell you you did the right thing, and do either Option 2 or Option 3 for you. Seeing what my relationship with O’Kelly is like, and what his relationship with Breslin is like, I’m gonna go ahead and figure that – even if I wanted to go running to Big Daddy for help – this one is off the table.
Your fifth option is to drop a couple of hints and get in on the action. Maybe you actually want to join in the fun; maybe you just want a little off the top of the other guy’s kickback, in exchange for keeping your mouth shut. I don’t like money enough to sell myself for it, and I don’t like anything enough to tie my life to some scumbag who’s already proven he can’t be trusted.