‘We don’t need a confession, Conway. We’ve got enough circumstantial stuff to bury him alive.’
Which is probably true. I don’t care. My last murder case: this one isn’t gonna be tacked down with circumstantial this and reasonable inference that. I’m gonna hammer a stake right through its heart and leave it dead as dirt.
‘I want one,’ I say. ‘We can afford to leave Rory till tomorrow.’
‘Unless he jumps in the Liffey.’
‘He won’t. He still thinks I might wind up believing him. He wants that.’
Breslin watches me. ‘Is he right?’
‘No,’ I say. The adrenaline buzz is ebbing fast; I can feel the post-interrogation crash getting ready to hit. It leaves a sucking empty spot that, if you’re not careful, can feel like loss. I need caffeine, sugar, a dirty great burger. ‘He’s our man, all right.’
‘He is. And I hope you know that cooker doesn’t actually turn it into manslaughter, either. There’s no chance that little pussy-boy was thinking straight enough, after killing someone, to worry about burning the house down. His brain was juice. He probably turned the cooker off because the food was starting to burn and the smell bothered him. Cooper’s report still stands: could be manslaughter, if Rory managed to get up the strength for a serious punch, or he could’ve deliberately smashed her skull in when she was down. And the more I look at those pathetic excuses for muscles . . .’
‘Not my problem,’ I say. ‘The lawyers and the jury can figure that one out. All I want is a watertight case that he killed her.’
‘Well,’ Breslin says, heartily enough that for a second there I think he’s going to clap me on the back, ‘that shouldn’t be a problem to us. We’ll get every warm body out there looking for backup evidence, we’ll throw the lot at Rory, and he’ll fold like a cheap lawn chair. And if he doesn’t, hey, we’ll have enough circumstantial stuff to make our case watertight anyway. Right?’
‘Right,’ I say. Rory is gone, around the corner towards the gate. The splatter of yellow light on the empty cobblestones makes them look slick from hard rain, dangerous.
Wheels turning in Breslin’s mind, so heavy I can practically hear them. I keep my eyes on the place where Rory was until, finally, I feel Breslin move away and hear the door close behind him.
I ring Lucy from the women’s jacks. This time she answers, but her voice is barely above a whisper and she sounds hassled; someone in the background is calling orders and there’s a sudden blast of country music, cut off by an annoyed shout. The theatre has a new show opening that evening, they’re having technical problems and Lucy really has to go (in the background: ‘Luce! Any word on those parcans?’). She swears she’ll be home all tomorrow, but I can’t tell whether it’s true or whether she’s just saying whatever will get rid of me.
I’m gonna be banging on her door tomorrow morning before she’s anywhere near hauling her hangover out of bed. I hope she tells me she made up Aislinn’s secret boyfriend to make sure the investigation was good and thorough. I hope that, as I step out of Lucy’s flat, Sophie rings me to tell me that Aislinn’s password-protected computer folder turned out to be full of pictures of Daddy, scanned to make them handier for sobbing over.
Me, praying my most interesting leads will crash and burn. It feels against nature, like some parasite has slid into my head and is eating bits of my brain. But Lucy, and that folder: they’re the last two stubborn unruly strands stopping me from tying everything into a neat bow, leaving it outside the door of O’Kelly’s office with my badge on top, and walking away.
Steve is at our desk, checking e-mails. I sit down next to him and start flicking through the piles of paper that materialised while I was away. The floaters try not to let me catch them glancing over, wondering when the mad bitch is gonna lose it again.
The thick sheet of silence between me and Steve is growing edges like ripped tin. I say, ‘So you saw Rory in there.’
‘A fair bit of it,’ Steve says, without looking up. ‘Good interview.’
It doesn’t sound like a compliment. ‘Thanks,’ I say. I catch Breslin’s knowing eye on us: You were never right for each other. ‘Where were you?’
‘I ran the mug books past the barman and Aislinn’s neighbours. No hits.’ He waits for me to say I told you so. When I don’t: ‘Then I went and had chats with a few of the lads who worked the Des Murray disappearance – don’t worry, I was subtle about it.’
‘I’m not worried.’
Steve throws me a quick sideways glance, trying to work out how I mean that. ‘Anyway,’ he says, after a second. The tone to his voice, neutral, precise, arm’s-length; I’ve heard it before, but to defence solicitors and slippery journalists, never to me. ‘According to them, McCann had a bit of a thing for Evelyn Murray, all right. He was the one who pushed to keep the investigation going; he got very eloquent about this poor fragile woman with her life in ruins – and McCann isn’t the eloquent type, so the lads remembered it. He even found her someone to buy Des’s taxi plate, and made sure she got top dollar for it, so she and Aislinn weren’t stuck for cash. But the lads are all positive it never went as far as an affair. Even back then, McCann was getting called Holy Joe; not a chance he was riding a subject’s missus. They laughed at me for even thinking it.’
Another gap for my I told you so. I can’t take any longer sitting there next to him, being polite to each other under Breslin’s amused eye. I say, ‘Did you find a reason to think any of this has anything to do with our case?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Then let’s get this meeting done.’
I stand up. Even before I reach the front of the desk, the floaters have dropped their work and are sitting up straight, managing to be all attention without God forbid making eye contact with the rabid animal.
‘OK,’ I say, ‘good news. It’s looking pretty definite that Rory Fallon is our boy. He and the CCTV both say he’s been stalking Aislinn for at least a month. That’s how he spent the missing time before their date on Saturday night – or part of it, anyway: peeping in her windows.’
‘Little perv,’ Stanton says, grinning. ‘Better swab her walls for DNA.’
A quick edgy smatter of laughs. ‘Do it,’ I say. Rory’s leftovers might not prove murder, but they’ll up our chances at trial; juries hate a wanker. ‘He says he was hanging out in the laneway behind her patio, so get the techs to give that wall a good going-over – and try the wall under her kitchen window, too, just in case he got up the guts for a little close-range action.’
Stanton nods; Meehan puts it in the book of jobs. I say, ‘Our new working theory is that, when Rory arrived in Aislinn’s house, she somehow found out about the stalking. She told him to get out, and he lost the head.’