The Trespasser (57 page)

‘And then,’ Lucy says. ‘The fourth time we went to Horgan’s. I was sitting there pretending to be depressed and wondering how soon we could leave, and all of a sudden I felt Aislinn freeze. The breath went out of her; her drink went down on the table, bang, like her muscles were gone. I turned around to see if she was OK, and she said – barely even a whisper, I almost didn’t hear her – “
That’s him.
”

‘He’d just come in the door. I recognised him too: his hair was a bit greyer, but it was the guy off the video, all right. He must have felt us looking, because he turned around. And Aislinn, straightaway, she did this’ – Lucy drops her eyelashes, glances up from under them with a tiny smile, ducks her head away to sip her coffee. ‘As quick as that. She was right on it.’

I say, ‘And it worked.’

That rough laugh again. ‘Jesus, yeah. It worked all right. Detective McCann did an actual double take, he was so stunned that this gorgeous woman was looking at him like that. And Ash giggled across at him, this idiotic giggle she’d been practising on all the other guys who tried it on. And when he went to the bar, she knocked back what was left of her drink and dashed up there, right beside him, to order another. And next thing you know, Detective McCann had paid for our drinks and he was bringing them over to our table.’

The fucking fool. ‘When was this?’

‘The end of July. We left after that drink – I didn’t have to fake wanting to get out of there; it was probably the weirdest conversation I’d ever had. Ash gazing up at this guy and laughing her head off at everything he said, and him swelling up, thinking he had her wrapped around his finger, and all the time . . . But before we left, Ash gave Detective McCann –
Joe
– her phone number. He rang her the next day.’

‘She was good, all right,’ I say.

‘Yeah,’ Lucy says. ‘She was. That was what really freaked me out. Watching her pull him in, so easily, like she’d been doing it all her life; and I realised that she had. Deep down, it was the same as when we were kids and she’d come up with stories to make things better. Just that this time, it was real. And I didn’t like it. It felt— This sounds melodramatic, I know that, but it felt dangerous.’

No shit. I ask, ‘Dangerous to her? To Joe? To you?’

Lucy says, ‘Aislinn wouldn’t hurt anyone. She— Ash was gentle.’

I’m not convinced. Gentle to start with, maybe, but someone who’s been as hard on herself as Aislinn had been for a solid year and a half, she’s not gonna go easy on anyone else. I let that go. ‘That doesn’t answer the question.’

‘Dangerous to her. Maybe to Detective McCann, too, but I wasn’t thinking about him; just about Ash. She didn’t realise this was real. She didn’t get the difference.’

That one is probably true. ‘So then Detective McCann contacted her,’ I say. ‘And they met up again?’

Lucy asks, ‘Is it OK if I smoke?’

‘Go for it.’

She doesn’t look at me while she disentangles her legs from the striped blankets, puts her coffee cup down, opens the smoke packet and finds a cigarette and shakes the lighter. She’s still got time to play it safe:
I don’t know the rest of the story, Aislinn wouldn’t tell me, once she actually got her hands on Joe she got cagey . . .

There’s nothing I can say that I haven’t said already. I keep still and wait.

In the end Lucy blows a long stream of smoke away from me and says, ‘They met regularly. At least once a week, usually twice or three times.’

‘Were you ever there for the meetings?’

‘Not after that first time. I wanted to go, but Ash said I’d only cramp her style. Everything had to be about
Joe
.’

‘What’d they do?’

‘They weren’t sleeping together. Not then. Nothing like that. They just talked. He’d pick her up – never at her place, in case the neighbours saw him; always down on the quays – and they’d go for a drive, up the mountains or somewhere. I didn’t like that. I mean, you guys are always finding bodies up the mountains, right? He’s picked up this girl, he’s made sure no one saw him, he’s taking her to the middle of nowhere . . . How serial-killer can you get?’

I ask, ‘Did you have any reason to think he might be dangerous?’

Lucy shakes her head, reluctantly. ‘No. Ash said he was always nice to her – a total gentleman, was the way she put it. She didn’t exactly
like
him; she said he was way too intense about everything, even when he tried to make her laugh he was intense about it – but his stories were interesting, and he was an OK guy. He really cared about his work, and that reassured her: it meant he’d probably done a good job on her dad’s case, so there would be something to find out, right?’ A humourless little breath of smoke that could be a laugh. ‘Jesus. No shit.’

I say, ‘And he was OK with just talking? He wasn’t trying to move the relationship into something sexual?’

‘No. Ash was right about him not being the affair type: he never tried it on with her, not even a kiss. He was a romantic, she said; he liked being into her from afar. But he was into her, all right. Aislinn felt bad about it, what with him being married—’

‘On Sunday you told us she’d have no problem shagging a married man,’ I say. ‘Never mind going for drives with one.’

Lucy doesn’t bother with embarrassment. ‘Yeah, I lied. I needed you to know that she’d be on for going out with a married guy, and I couldn’t exactly explain why it was only this one particular married guy.’

Even when grief had just punched Lucy straight in the face, her mind was going ninety. She was well scared. ‘Fair enough,’ I say. ‘So Joe wasn’t coming on to Aislinn, but he was into her.’

‘Oh yeah. He kept telling her how great she was, how gorgeous, how intelligent – what he meant was she acted like everything that came out of his mouth was pure gold, which of
course
she did – and how he and his wife didn’t get on. He said the two of them had drifted into getting married when they were way too young, and they should never have done it, because his wife was too thick to understand his job and too selfish to get that he was doing something that mattered; all she cared about was that he wasn’t around to help with the kids’ homework or eat the dinner she’d cooked.’ A wry twist to Lucy’s mouth, around her cigarette. ‘Yeah. So Aislinn took her cue from that. She piled it on thick about what an amazing job Joe had, how amazing it was to know someone who was doing something so important, and please would he tell her another story about how he had been amazing and solved an amazing case? And of course he did.’

Of course he did. Like Aislinn said: McCann is a romantic, at heart. He wanted to see himself riding down the green hill with light flashing off his spear, doing battle to save the world from itself. No way the job was letting him tell himself that story, not after this many years. His wife wasn’t doing it either. Aislinn let him tell it to her instead.

‘And then,’ Lucy says, ‘at the end of August, Aislinn decided it was time to go for it. She and Joe went for a picnic somewhere, and she started asking him what Missing Persons had been like, because it sounded so incredibly
mysterious
– she had it all planned; she’d written out her questions and learned them off by heart, she made me run lines with her the way actors do. She let Joe tell her a couple of stories while she gasped in the right places. She waited for him to come up with a bad one – some teenager who OD’d – and then she said ohmyGod, the family must’ve been totally in bits! How did he deal with it when the families were really upset? Because
she’d
never be able to deal with families who were going through something like that, she’d just totally go to
pieces
, but she was sure Joe was just
amazing
at getting people through the absolute worst time of their lives, right? And once he’d told her some story about that, Ash said she betted that sometimes, when they didn’t find the missing person, Joe stuck around for the family even after the case was officially over, because she knew he wouldn’t just leave them to pick up the pieces themselves, right? And next thing you know . . .’

Lucy grinds out her smoke. Her voice has changed; she’s wrung it dry, making sure nothing seeps in there that might break out of control. She says, ‘It was that easy. They hadn’t even finished their sandwiches, and Joe was telling her all about this poor woman whose husband ran off on her, left her with a little girl. The woman was the delicate type, Joe said – Aislinn could see him getting all misty, remembering – she wasn’t able for a nasty shock like that. He went all out, trying to get the poor woman some answers, and he finally tracked down the husband. In England, living with some younger woman.’

I say, ‘That had to hurt.’

‘Yeah. It wasn’t exactly what Ash had been hoping to hear.’ A twitch of Lucy’s mouth, like a flinch. ‘But she could have handled it. She was ready for something like that; not as ready as she thought she was, but she would’ve dealt with it . . . Only Joe kept talking. He said he rang the guy up, gave him a bit of hassle about shirking his responsibilities, asked what they were supposed to tell the wife. And the guy said something along the lines of, “Just tell her I’m OK. Tell her I’m so sorry. And I’ll get in touch when things settle down a bit.” Which Joe knew he wouldn’t; apparently the ones who do a runner without even leaving a note, they’re the ones who never find the exact right moment to get back in touch.’

‘
Huh,’ I say. Gary said – I’m pretty sure Gary believed – that Des Murray told the cops to say nothing, not one word, to his wife. ‘Only Joe didn’t pass on the message to Mrs Murray.’

‘No,’ Lucy says. ‘What Joe did was, Joe decided it wouldn’t be
good for her
to hear that. The poor helpless little woman wasn’t able for that kind of news, don’t you know; she would have been destroyed. He decided she’d be better off knowing nothing at all.’ That tic at the corner of her mouth again. ‘So that’s what he told her: nothing. He was very proud of himself, for taking the whole thing off her shoulders.’

I just bet he was. At least when I palmed Aislinn off on Gary, I had the basic honesty not to do it for her own good. I did it because I felt like it, and fuck her. ‘What did Aislinn do when she heard that?’

‘She told me she almost smashed her glass and put the sharp end in Joe’s throat, only her hands felt too weak to do it. So instead she said to him – all wide-eyed, all thrilled to hear such an amazing story – she said he had been so right, that had been so brave of him, so wise, that woman had been so lucky he was on the case. And then she told him she was getting a headache, and would he mind terribly if she went home and had a sleep? And he drove her back home and told her to take a Nurofen, and they both waved goodbye.’

‘And she rang you straightaway,’ I say. ‘Yeah?’

‘No. She came here. She was . . .’ Lucy catches a hiss of breath, remembering. ‘I’ve never seen her like that. I’ve never seen
anyone
like that. She was so furious she was screaming into the sofa cushions – all dolled up in this pink flowery dress, screaming, “How
dare
he, how
dare
he, who the fuck does he think he is” – mascara all over her face from crying, and her hair coming down out of this fancy twist, and she was beating the cushions with her fists, she was
biting
at them . . . Do you get that at all? I mean, do you get why she was raging?’

She’s staring at me. ‘Yeah, I do,’ I say. ‘I get it, one hundred per cent. He had no right to make that call.’

She keeps up the stare, eyes flicking back and forth across my face. I say, ‘It would’ve been one thing if Aislinn’s da had been dead from the time he went missing. McCann wouldn’t have been taking anything away from her by keeping his mouth shut. But her da was alive. She could’ve got in touch with him any time. Her ma might not have lost the plot, if she’d known what was going on.’

Lucy says, ‘More than that.’ And waits, to see if I get it.

I do. I say – and I hear my voice saying it, into the small cluttered room that’s getting colder – ‘Aislinn had been thinking McCann kept his mouth shut for his own sake. Because a cop car hit her da, or because finding him would fuck up some big investigation. She could handle that; people do selfish shit, other people get caught in the crossfire, that’s life. But then she found out McCann had done it
because
of her and her ma. Because he’d decided their lives should play out this way. Her and her ma, they weren’t just collateral damage. They were the target.’

The light through the window is hitting me in the face, relentless, stripping me bare. I manage not to blink or move away.

Lucy nods: I’ve passed. ‘Right. Fuck whether they might actually have an opinion, right? What they might want? He was the cop, he had the right to decide that for them. They weren’t even people; they were just extras in his hero film. That was what had Aislinn losing her mind. That.’

Her voice has filled out again, ripe and pulsing with Aislinn’s anger and her own. She’ll tell me anything.

All that rubbish from the gaffer about me not being good enough with witnesses. This witness, who’s got every reason to shut down on me, she trusts me enough to give me everything she’s got. I wish that could still make me, even the smallest part of me, feel anything other than sad.