The Trespasser (11 page)

‘Most of them don’t dress OK, but,’ Steve points out. ‘The gang lads. They dress like shite. Lot of them look like shite, too.’

‘So that’ll narrow it down. Then, after a few months, the thrill’s wearing off, Aislinn’s starting to notice that Mr Excitement is basically just a scumbag. And that’s when she meets Nice Guy Rory. She dumps the scumbag – or else she can’t get up the guts to do it, just starts seeing Rory on the QT. Either way, the scumbag’s not happy.’

Steve says, ‘You think Lucy knows a name?’

‘
If
there’s a name to know.’

‘If. You think?’

‘Probably just a first name, or a nickname. And she’s not gonna give it to us. If he’s out there, we’ll have to find him ourselves.’

‘I’ve got no one good in Organised Crime. Do you?’

‘Not really. Sort of.’ I can’t stay sitting any longer, not with this bouncing in front of me. I shove the last bite of breakfast roll into my mouth, ball up the wrapper and toss it over Steve into the bin. ‘Don’t worry about it yet. Right now, we’re just gonna have a nice friendly chat with Rory Fallon. Depending on what comes out of that, we can decide if it’s worth following up this other thing. Meanwhile—’

Something moves in the corner of my eye and I whip around fast, but it’s just the guy in the Tesco uniform, scurrying back to his shelf-stacking now he’s got his fix on board. He flinches and tries to glare, but I point a finger at him and he concentrates on scurrying. When I’m on a case, I get what O’Kelly would probably call jumpy and what I call alert. Not just me; a lot of Ds do. It’s an animal thing: when you’re tracking a top predator, even though you’re not his prey and he’ll probably shit himself when you come face to face, your alert level hits orange and stays there. I’ve been having trouble coming off orange alert lately, even when I’m not working.

I say, ‘Meanwhile, I vote we say fuck-all about this.’

‘To Breslin.’

‘To anyone.’ If this doesn’t pan out, we’re gonna be the squad joke: the idiots who went full-on gangbusters on their by-numbers lovers’ tiff. ‘It’s all hypothetical; no point throwing it out there till we’ve got something solid. For now, all anyone needs to know is Lucy told us about Aislinn’s background, said Rory seemed like a nice guy, end of.’

‘Works for me,’ Steve says, just a little too promptly.

‘No shit,’ I say, realising. ‘That’s why you wanted to keep her far away from work. You cunning little bastard.’

‘Like I said.’ Steve grins and crumples his napkin bib. ‘Not just a pretty face.’

The dinosaur kid has fallen off his scooter and is sitting on the path trying to work up a convincing wail. We dodge around him and we’re heading for the gate, me dialling the floaters to tell them to bring Fallon in, when I catch the plastic bag in the corner of my eye and realise what’s sticking out of it: a dead cat, fur plastered sleek against its skull, lips pulled back to show spiky teeth open wide in a frozen howl of fury.

Chapter 3

The squad room has come alive. The printer is going, someone’s phone is ringing, the blinds are open to try and drag in the half-arsed sunlight; the place smells of half a dozen different lunches, tea, shower gel, sweat, heat and action. O’Gorman is leaning back in his chair with his feet up on his desk, throwing crisps into his mouth and shouting to King about some match; King is reading a statement sheet and saying ‘Yeah’ whenever O’Gorman pauses for breath. Winters and Healy are arguing about some witness who Healy wants to shake up a little and Winters thinks is a waste of time. Quigley is working his way through one of the filing cabinets, wearing a put-out look on his flabby puss and slamming the drawers harder than he needs to; next to the filing cabinet, McCann is hunched over his desk, shuffling paper and flinching at every slam – he looks like he’s got a bastard of a hangover, but the permanent eyebags and five o’clock shadow mean he mostly looks like that anyway. O’Neill has his phone pressed to one ear and a finger stuck in the other. Beside Steve’s and my desks, two guys who have to be our floaters are leaning awkwardly on whatever they can find, trying to look at home and stay out of the way and laugh at one of Roche’s pointless stories, hoping he’ll remember next time he needs someone to do his scut work.

No Breslin, but his overcoat is hanging over the back of his chair. He’s probably still sorting out the incident room and bitching to himself about being ordered around by the likes of me. I’m not worried: Breslin’s been at this game too long to get snotty when it’s not useful to him.

A few people glance up when me and Steve come in, then go back to whatever they’re doing. No one says howya. Neither do we. We head for our desks and the floaters. When I’m in the squad room I stride, fast and hard, to smack down the instinct to tiptoe along in case someone sticks a foot in front of me. No one has yet, but it feels like a matter of time.

‘Hey,’ I say to the floaters, who’ve straightened up and put on their alert faces. They’re both around our age: a gym rat already starting to go bald in front, and a fat blond guy trying for a tache that isn’t working out. ‘Conway, and this is Moran. Got something for us?’

‘Stanton,’ says the gym rat, doing a fake salute.

‘Deasy,’ says the fat one. ‘Yeah: we brought in your man Rory Fallon a few minutes ago.’

‘Poor bastard,’ says Roche from his corner, which reeks of aftershave and sticky keyboard. Roche is a big no-necker who went into this gig because the only way he can get a stiffy is by bullying people into tears, but he’s no fool: he knows exactly when to keep that instinct chained up and when to let it out for a run, and he gets results. ‘Will I tell him to go ahead and cut off his own balls, save himself some time and hassle?’

‘It’s not my fault my solve rate’s higher than yours, Roche,’ I tell him. ‘It’s because you’re a retard. Learn to live with it.’

The floaters look startled and try to hide it. Roche shoots me a bull-stare that I don’t bother noticing. ‘What’s the story on Fallon?’ I ask, dumping my satchel on my chair.

‘Twenty-nine, owns a bookshop in Ranelagh,’ says the fat guy. ‘Lives above the shop.’

‘With anyone?’

‘Nah. On his ownio.’

Which is a pisser: a flatmate would have been not only a nice witness to have, but also an obvious candidate for the guy who called it in. Steve asks, ‘Anything happen that we should know about, while you were sitting on his house?’

They look at each other, shake their heads. ‘Not a lot,’ says the gym rat. ‘He opened the front curtains around ten, in his pyjamas. No other visible movement. By the time we picked him up, he’d got dressed, but no shoes, so it didn’t look like he was planning on heading out.’

‘He’d had breakfast,’ says the fat guy. ‘Coffee and a fry-up, by the smell.’

Steve catches my eye. A guy punches his girlfriend to death, goes home and snuggles into his pyjamas for a nice bit of kip, gets up in the morning and stuffs his face with egg and sausage. It could happen; Fallon could have been dazed into autopilot, or a psychopath, or setting up his defence. Or.

The room is hot, a dry edgy heat that pricks at the skin on my neck. I pull my coat off. ‘What’d you say to him?’

‘Like you told us,’ the fat one says. ‘Nothing. Just said we thought he might have some information that would help us out with an investigation, and asked him if he’d mind coming in for a chat.’

‘And he just said yeah? No hassle, no questions?’

The two of them shake their heads. ‘Accommodating guy,’ says the gym rat.

‘No shit,’ I say. Most people, if you ask them to come in to a cop shop and answer some questions, they want at least a little info before they ditch the day’s plans and toddle along after you. Either Rory Fallon is a natural pushover, or he really, really wants to look like a helpful guy with nothing to hide.

‘Did he say anything along the way?’ Steve asks.

‘Wanted to know what this was about, once we got in the car,’ says the fat guy. Which is also interesting. Obviously Rory might know exactly what this is about, but he doesn’t think we can prove he knows, which means Lucy wasn’t straight on the phone to him the minute we left. One point against the Lucy-and-Rory theory. ‘We said we didn’t know all the details; the investigating detectives would fill him in. After that he kept his mouth shut.’

‘We were nice,’ says the gym rat. ‘Made him a cup of tea, told him how great he was for helping us out, we’d be nowhere without responsible citizens like him and all that jazz. We figured you’d like him relaxed.’

‘Lovely,’ Steve says. ‘Where’d you put him?’

‘The interview room down the end.’

‘Is he the type who’ll start thinking about leaving if we keep him on ice for a few minutes?’

Both of them laugh. ‘Nah,’ says the gym rat. ‘Like I said: accommodating.’

‘He’s a
good
boy,’ says the fat guy. ‘Gone bad.’

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘We’re going to need a list of his associates. Can you get cracking on that? I’m specially interested in close male friends, brothers, father, close male cousins. Some guy called this in, and if it wasn’t Fallon, we need to know who it was.’ The gym rat is taking notes and making sure I notice. I say, ‘The incident room should be ready to work in by now. Case meeting at four. If that changes, I’ll let you know.’

The floaters head off at a snappy pace, carefully judged to make them look on the ball but not rushed. I remember that walk; I remember practising it, on my way in to make lists and photocopy statements for some Murder D, hoping I could walk myself into this squad room and never have to walk out again. For a weird second I feel something almost like sorry for Stanton and Deasy, until I realise that if they ever make it in here, they’re gonna get on just dandy.

Steve has turned on his computer and is clicking away. I say, ‘How come you want to keep Fallon on ice?’

‘Only for a minute.’ Steve is typing. ‘He heads home and goes to bed, gets up and makes himself a fry? Whatever way you look at it, that’s pretty cold for a good law-abiding citizen. Even if he’s just trying to look innocent. I want to run him through the system, see what pops up.’

‘Run her, too. I want to know where I remember her from.’ I dial my voicemail, tuck the phone under my jaw and start sorting through the statements from last night’s scumbagfest – we need to get the file to the prosecutors before our hold on the scumbags runs out. McCann is mumbling into his mobile, clearly taking job-related shite from his missus (‘I
know
that. Tonight I swear I’ll be home by— Yeah, I
know
about the reservations. Of course I’ll be—’), and Roche is miming whipcracks.

I have another voicemail from Breslin – I’m starting to get my hopes up that we can work this entire case without ever actually seeing each other. ‘Yeah, Conway. Hi.’ Still smooth, in case Hollywood is listening, but just a faint edge of displeasure: me and Steve have been bad little Ds. ‘Looks like we’re having some trouble liaising here. I’m back at base. I’ll go ahead and get that incident room sorted out for us; you ring me back ASAP. Talk soon.’ I delete it.

‘Rory Fallon isn’t in the system,’ Steve says.

‘At all?’

‘At all.’

‘Little Holy Mary,’ I say. Staying out of the system is rarer than you’d think; even a speeding ticket puts you on file. Rory has officially never done anything naughty in his life. ‘That doesn’t mean he was actually a virgin till last night. Just that he never got caught.’

‘I know. I’m only telling you.’

‘Did you run Aislinn yet?’

‘Doing it now, hang on . . .’

I ring Breslin’s voicemail and leave him a message to meet us in the observation room in ten minutes. Steve says, ‘Nah. Nothing there either. Between the two of them, they’d make you heave.’

‘Looks like they were perfect for each other,’ I say. ‘Shame it didn’t work out.’ I finish flipping through the last witness statement, and stop.

The last page is missing. Without that – the page with the signature – the whole thing is worthless.

I’ll never prove I didn’t drop it on my way back from the interview room. There’s even an outside chance that actually happened – it was late, I was tired and pissed off and hurrying to finish up by the end of my shift. I can check: wander back and forth like an idiot, peering hopefully under desks and into bins, while this roomful of tossbubbles hide behind their monitors holding back baboon-howls of laughter and waiting to see who explodes first. Or I can go on the rampage looking to string up the fucker who pinched my statement sheet, which is probably what someone is hoping I’ll do. Or I can glue my mouth shut, track down my scumbag witness and spend another couple of hours re-convincing him that talking to cops is cool and digging his statement out of him, one-syllable word by one-syllable word, all over again.

‘Hey,’ Steve says. ‘Here’s something.’

It takes me a second to remember what he’s on about – I’m so angry I want to bite chunks off my desk. Steve glances up. ‘You OK?’

‘Yeah. What’ve you got? Aislinn’s in the system?’

‘Not her, no. It’s probably nothing, but her address comes up. Twentieth of October last, one o’clock in the morning, her neighbour in Number 24 rang Stoneybatter station. He was out on his patio having a last smoke before bed, and he saw someone go over Aislinn’s back wall, from her patio out into the laneway. The description’s not great – there’s a streetlamp at the end of the laneway, but the neighbour only saw the intruder for a second, from the back. Male, medium build, dark coat, the neighbour thought he might be middle-aged from the way he climbed; he thought fair hair, but that could’ve been the way the light reflected. Stoneybatter sent a couple of lads round to have a look, but by then he was well gone. No signs of an attempted break-in, so they figured the neighbour had disturbed him before he got started. They counselled Aislinn on security measures and dropped the whole thing.’