‘Yes and no. All of them say Rory was a perfect little gentleman: never hit them, never yelled at them, no controlling behaviour, no jealous rages, no turning nasty when he didn’t get his way, none of that.’ He turns down the corridor and cracks the door of Incident Room E, the shitty ex-locker-room. Empty. ‘In here.’
He holds the door for me. I get the message: in here, where I would be already if it wasn’t for Breslin helping me out. The place is hot and still stinks of sweaty gym gear; the tiny whiteboard is stained where someone used the wrong kind of marker, and all the chairs look sticky. I don’t sit down.
‘But here’s the interesting part,’ Breslin says, closing the door behind us. ‘Two of the exes, including the most recent one, say they dumped Rory because he was too intense. One girl’s exact words were “too full-on”; the other one said he was “taking things way too quickly”. I thought she was being coy, but it turned out she wasn’t talking about sex: she had no problem shagging his brains out on the second date, God bless her. The young people nowadays don’t know how good they’ve got it.’
‘So what was she talking about?’
‘Basically, by the time they’d been seeing each other for a few months, Rory was starting to think this was some great epic romance, while the girl was still deciding whether she even wanted a serious relationship. She says she really liked him, but she was only twenty-four; she was just looking for a few laughs and some intellectual conversation – she’s doing a PhD in Russian literature – with plenty of sex thrown in. She wasn’t ready for someone who kept talking about how amazing it would be to go around the world together.’ Breslin examines the wall by the door, flicks away a speck of something and leans against it. ‘So she dumped him. The other girl said the same thing, give or take. I keep hearing how women are dying for a guy who’s not scared of commitment, but it looks like Rory might be a little too much of a good thing.’
According to Aislinn’s second ex, when the relationship started getting real, she was out of there – although she blamed that on the sick ma. ‘So when Rory told us him and Aislinn fell madly in love at first sight,’ I say, ‘that doesn’t mean Aislinn felt the same way.’
‘Exactly. Remember what he said about their date at Pestle? Every time he thought they were getting on like a house on fire, she’d go quiet on him and he’d have to kick-start the conversation again? That sounds to me like the other side of the story – if only we could hear it – would go, “He kept getting way too intense, but hey, he’s a nice guy, so I tried to give him every chance . . .” ’
‘The only thing is,’ I say, ‘that doesn’t fit with what the best mate told us. She was positive that Aislinn was head over heels. And those texts on Aislinn’s phone, about how excited she was, getting ready for Rory to come over? There’s no hint anywhere that she was backing away. If Rory was full-on, Aislinn was fine with that.’
Breslin pulls out his phone, which is the size of his head and in a flashy stainless-steel case, and spins it in his hand. He says, ‘I’ve got to admit something here. I’ve been going back and forth all morning on whether to share this with you or not.’
Yesterday, I might have bitten. Instead I keep my mouth shut and wait.
When he realises I’m not gonna beg, he sighs, spinning the phone again. Light flashes off it in oily grey streaks. ‘I’m a team player, basically. People have this idea of me as some high achiever, but I’m actually a big believer in teamwork. But that only flies if the other people on your team are working the same way. Do you get where I’m going here, Conway?’
I say, ‘I’m thick. Go ahead and spell it out for me.’
Breslin pretends to think that over. The heat and the stench are inflating into a solid thing pressing in on us. ‘You’re sure you want to hear this?’
‘You’re the one who says you’ve got something to tell me. Yeah, I’m positive I want you to just spit it out, instead of wiggling around it dropping hints.’
Breslin sighs again. ‘OK,’ he says, as a big favour. ‘Here you go: you go into every interaction treating the other person like your enemy. Now we both know in some cases you’ve got decent reasons for that, but even when you’ve got no reason at all, you’re straight into attack mode. That creates an atmosphere where even the most dedicated team player is going to think twice before he shares anything with you.’
In other words, it’s my fault he’s been concealing evidence from the lead D. Even if there was still a reason to play along, I’ve got nothing left to do it with. ‘Spit it or don’t,’ I say. ‘If you’re not going to, then tell me, so I can go type up my notes.’
He stares me out of it. I can’t even be arsed giving him a stare back. He’s gonna tell me; he’s only dying to. He’s just seeing what he can wring out of me in exchange.
‘Conway,’ he says, putting in all the ferocious patience he can fit. ‘Do you take my point here? At least tell me you get my point.’
‘Yeah. I’m a bitch. I knew that already.’ I move to go.
‘All right,’ Breslin says, smooth but fast. ‘I guess I’ve got to know you well enough, this week, that I can take the rest as read.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Our boy Reilly. Remember how he was pulling CCTV footage for Stoneybatter?’
After a moment I take a step back, away from the door.
‘Well,’ Breslin says, with a touch of a smile to show we’re buddies again. ‘Reilly’s turned out to be a bit of a bright spark. While he was at it, he pulled the last four weeks – or as much as he could get; some places had taped over it. And he stayed in till five this morning with his finger on the fast-forward button.’
The slithery fuck. I say, ‘He better have a very good reason why I’m hearing this from you, not from him.’
‘Ah, well. I’m going to ask you to cut the kid some slack there. I get the feeling he wanted to impress me.’ Breslin almost manages to hold back the fat, self-satisfied smirk. ‘No harm in that. Get in a few more years on the squad and you’ll have newbies flexing their guns for you, too.’
I get the message: If you last another few years. I say, ‘What’d he get?’
‘Here’s a taster,’ Breslin says. ‘This is just a quick clip I shot off the monitor; there’s more where it came from.’
He swipes, taps, and holds out the phone to me. I take it.
Fuzzy colour footage, but I’m in the shop often enough that I recognise it straightaway: Tesco on Prussia Street. And I recognise the skinny guy taking a bottle of Lucozade out of the fridge and bringing it over to the self-checkout. The delicate profile, the angle of the head, the slight hunch to the shoulders, the drifting way his hands move: I spent hours focusing on every detail of him, just two days ago.
I say, ‘That’s Rory Fallon.’
‘Him or his clone. And have a look at this.’
Breslin leans in, pinches the screen bigger and homes in on the time stamp. 9.08 p.m., 14/01/2015. Two weeks back.