Steve shakes his head, eyebrows pulling together: And?
‘If I was Aislinn,’ I say. My heart is banging. ‘If I was someone like her. I wouldn’t go off chasing some half-baked gang fantasy for no good reason. I’d go after someone who I knew could give me actual info. I’d go looking for one of those Ds.’
There’s a silence. Faint wind struggles in the chimney.
Steve says, ‘How would you find them?’
‘I’ll bet you anything Gary named names. “I know Feeney and McCann, they’re great detectives, I’m sure they did everything they could . . .” ’
Steve says, like he’s not breathing right, ‘McCann.’
Another silence, and the wind.
I say, ‘Aislinn rings up Missing Persons and asks for Feeney or McCann. The admin tells her Feeney’s retired and McCann’s moved to Murder. She’s got no way to chase Feeney down, but it’s easy as pie to find out where Murder’s based and wait outside at the shift changes. She wouldn’t even have needed to ask around to pinpoint her guy; the amount of time she’d spent thinking about this, she’d have recognised him. Even after fifteen years.’
‘And then what? Say she tracked him down; then what?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know.’
Steve runs a hand over his head, trying automatically to smooth down his hair. ‘Are you figuring he was the secret boyfriend?’
‘I thought of that, but I can’t see any reason she’d want him. We’re back to the same old question: a girl like that, why would she go for some middle-aged cop starting a beer gut? Flirt with him to get the story on her dad: sure. But be his bit on the side for six months? Why?’
‘She’s trying to get closer to her dad, McCann’s the only link she’s got—’
‘Jaysus.’ I make a face. ‘Now that’s fucked up. I don’t see it, but. Gary was a link to her dad, too, and she didn’t pull anything like that on him. He would’ve said.’
‘Maybe she was a badge bunny.’ Steve is still running his hand over his hair, again and again. ‘She comes in to talk to you and Gary, gets a look around, decides she likes the vibe . . .’
They’re out there. Women, mostly, but I’ve run into a few guys along the way. You could have a face like a warthog and they wouldn’t give a damn; they barely see you. What they’re chasing is the buzz of second-hand adrenaline, second-hand power, the story that doesn’t end with And then he worked in the call centre ever after: tell me who you arrested today, keep the uniform on in the bedroom and get your handcuffs out. They’re easy enough to spot, but there are cops out there who love it; makes them feel like rock stars. And it lets them punch above their weight.
McCann would have been punching farther above than most, though. ‘If that was all she was after,’ I say, ‘she could’ve gone down to Copper Face Jack’s and had her pick of good-looking young fellas. Why him?’
‘Because she didn’t want some uniform who spent his day giving people hassle for not having their car tax up to date. Like we said before: after the life she’d had, she wanted thrills. She wanted a Murder D.’
I can see it. Murder are the big-game hunters; we spend our days going after the top predators. For these people, that makes us the top prey.
If that’s what Aislinn was after, Steve has a point: she didn’t have a lot of options. Murder is small: two dozen of us, give or take. Half are McCann’s age, or older. No one’s a supermodel.
All the same, I don’t believe she’d have picked out McCann. Going by Rory and the exes, rough and silent wasn’t her style. She would have skimmed straight over McCann and kept looking, gone for someone smoother around the edges, someone with a bit of chat to draw her in; someone like—
Someone like Breslin.
Breslin, with his lovely little wifey and three lovely little kiddies. Breslin, with plenty to lose if the badge bunny turned bunny-boiler. Breslin, pushing us to charge Rory Fallon and close the case.
I say, ‘Oh, Jesus.’
‘The only thing is the timing,’ Steve says. ‘If you’re right and Aislinn got McCann’s name off Gary, that was two and a half years ago. According to Lucy, she only picked up the secret boyfriend six months back. Why the gap?’
‘Try this,’ I say. ‘Aislinn goes to McCann looking for info, he gives her the brush-off. She doesn’t give up; every few months she’s back, hassling him for more. Then one day she turns up at the squad, he doesn’t feel like dealing with her, he sends his partner out to get rid of her for him. And Aislinn likes what she sees.’
Steve’s face has gone immobile. It changes him, strips away the studenty perkiness so that for once I can get a good look at what’s underneath. He’s turned adult, sharp, not someone to mess with.
I say, ‘Remember the neighbour who called in a guy going over Aislinn’s patio wall? Male, medium build, dark coat, probably middle-aged; and probably fair hair.’
Steve says, ‘Breslin the Monk. Having a full-on affair. You think?’
‘Everyone says Aislinn was something special, when it came to sucking people into her fantasies. The woman had talent, and she had practice. And Breslin, he overestimates himself and underestimates other people. Those are the ones who get tripped up. If she decided she wanted him . . .’
‘Yeah, but getting into something that risky? Breslin’s very careful of himself.’
‘He was careful. No calls, no texts, no e-mails, nothing. And remember how someone ran Aislinn through the system? Last September, right after she picked up her secret boyfriend? He was making sure she’d never been reported for stalking, harassment, blackmail, anything that said she might be a psycho.’
Something hard flashes in Steve’s face. He says, ‘Remember how you told Breslin to take the recordings of Rory’s male KAs down to Stoneybatter? To see if the uniform could ID the guy who called it in?’
‘Yeah. The pompous bastard palmed it off on Gaffney—’ And I stop there.
Steve says, ‘I thought he was too important for scut work.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Me too.’
‘That’s what he wanted us thinking. It was nothing to do with that. He couldn’t risk the uniform hearing his voice.’
That movie-trailer voice. In a world . . . Even the thickest uniform would remember that voice. Unless, maybe, someone made sure he was bombarded with possibles till his memory smeared beyond recovering.
Breslin called this in. My mind jams on that like a needle stuck on a record, hitting it over and over. This isn’t just us playing imagination games. This happened. Breslin called it in.
I say, ‘No wonder the call didn’t come in to 999. He couldn’t have a recording floating around.’
‘And no wonder the secret boyfriend’s invisible. Breslin wouldn’t go leaving love notes, or sending Facebook messages. Unless there’s something solid in that computer folder, we’ve got nothing.’
‘We’ve got Lucy. She could confirm the relationship. Whether she’ll do it is a whole other question.’