‘Ye’re acting like you don’t have a suspect. Flailing about, haring off in every direction after anything you see. That’s how Ds act who’ve got nothing.’ His eyes move from Steve to me. ‘But you’ve got a perfectly good suspect right in front of you. So what am I missing? What’s wrong with Rory Fallon?’
I say, ‘Everything we’ve got on Fallon is circumstantial. We’ve got nothing solid tying him to the actual killing: no blood on his gear, none of his blood or hair on the victim, no injuries to his knuckles. We can’t even put him inside her house. We’ve got no motive. We’re still working on all of that, and if the Bureau comes back to me saying they found fibres from Aislinn’s carpet all over Rory’s trousers, then yeah, I’ll be paying a lot less attention to other possibilities. But as long as it’s all circumstantial, I’m gonna keep chasing down other scenarios and ruling them out. I don’t want to get Fallon into court and have the defence whip out a witness who saw Aislinn having a massive fight with some guy who looks nothing like him.’
O’Kelly’s pulled a handful of stuff out of his pocket – paper clip, twisted tissue, a pebble – and he’s turning through it slowly, not looking at me. He asks, ‘Why didn’t you have him back in today?’
And it’s been a long time since any gaffer made me explain my decisions, in a case that wasn’t going off the rails or anywhere near it. If I was positive this was just O’Kelly giving me shite to try and nudge me out the door, I’d be raging; but I’m nothing like positive. I think of Breslin’s roll of fifties, and of O’Kelly at the roster saying Breslin’s due in. Have him. The air of the building feels like it’s changing into something different, something gathering speed and ready to switchback any second; something I know I should have more cop-on than to love.
I say, just bolshie enough, ‘Because I didn’t want to. When we get everything back from the Bureau, then we’ll haul him in and hit him hard. He’s the nervy type; letting him stew for a couple of days won’t do any harm.’
O’Kelly’s eyes hit my face for a second, needle-sharp, and then flick away again. He pulls a battered throat lozenge out of the pile in his hand and examines it with faint disgust. ‘I don’t know what you’re so happy about, Conway.’
Like I said: O’Kelly is a lot sharper than he likes pretending. I smash the expression off my face. ‘Gaffer?’
‘Never mind.’ He stretches out his hand over the bin and opens it. The rubbish falls in with a dry rattle. ‘Go on. I’ll see ye tomorrow. Try and get somewhere.’
Driving chills me out better than almost anything, but this evening it’s not working. The wind is pulling nasty tricks, dying down just long enough to let me relax, then slamming into the car like a shoulder-tackle, throwing gritty rain at the windows. It turns the traffic jumpy, everyone hitting their horns too fast and taking off from red lights too early, and throws off the pedestrians’ timing so they’re skittering between cars at all the wrong moments.
I get pulled over before I even get across the river. I’ve just gunned it through a yellow and at first I figure the uniform is having a twitchy day too, but the spit-take he does when I pull out my ID tells me there’s more going on. He spills straightaway: someone called in my car for dangerous driving, probably DUI. Some driver could have misread a reg number, in the rain and the traffic, except they described the car as well: black ’08 Audi TT. No one misread that.
The uniform wants to run for his life, but I make him breathalyse me and put the whole thing down in writing, before someone rings Creepy Crowley and tells him I used my badge to duck a DUI. I could try tracking down the number that rang the station, but I already know it’ll be unregistered – plenty of cops have burner phones, for one thing and another. I spend the rest of my nice relaxing drive looking over my shoulder for the next blue light. It doesn’t come, which means I get to look forward to meeting it in the morning instead.
At least there’s no one hanging around the top of my road this time, which is something. I unlock my door, switch on the light, drop my satchel, slam the door behind me, and as I turn back into the sitting room the three things hit me one after the other and all faster than a blink. Smell of coffee. Silence where my alarm system should be beeping. Movement, just a brush, in the dark kitchen.
I get my gun out – it feels zero-gravity slow, even though I know I’m going at top speed – and aim it at the kitchen door. I say, ‘Armed Garda. Drop any weapons, keep your hands where I can see them and come out slowly.’
For the first second all I see is a scrawny little bollix in the kitchen doorway, shiny blue tracksuit, hands up above his head, I think some dumbfuck junkie has picked the wrong house to rob and the trigger is a cool perfect fit to my finger and I can’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t pull it. Then he says, ‘You need a better alarm system.’
‘Fleas,’ I say. I laugh out loud; if I was the hugging type, I’d hug him. ‘You little fuck. You almost gave me a heart attack. You couldn’t have just emailed me back, no?’
‘This is safer. And anyway, too long no see.’ Fleas has a grin the size of a dinner plate on his face. I can feel the matching one on me.
‘How is this safer? I nearly shot you, you know that?’ I holster up. I’m light-headed with the adrenaline spike. ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘I wasn’t worried. I’ve got faith in you.’ Fleas heads back into the kitchen. ‘Will I make you a cup of coffee?’
‘Yeah. Go on.’ I follow him and give him a smack across the back of the head, not too hard. ‘Don’t you ever do that to me again. If I’m gonna kill someone, I don’t want it to be you.’
‘Ahh!’ Fleas rubs his head, looking injured. ‘I wasn’t trying to freak you out. I would’ve waited in the sitting room, only I thought you might bring some fella home with you.’
‘Yeah, right. Chance would be a fine thing.’ I still have that grin on; I can’t get rid of it. ‘You hungry?’
‘You’re out of everything. I looked.’
‘Cheeky bastard. There’s fish fingers in the freezer; you want a fish-finger sandwich?’
‘Deadly,’ Fleas says happily, and starts pushing buttons on the coffee machine. ‘Loving this yoke. I might get one of my own.’
‘If mine goes missing, I’m coming after you.’ I turn on the cooker and pull open the freezer. Fleas leans his elbows on the counter and watches the machine spew coffee like he’s fascinated by it.