The Trespasser (38 page)

I make it home at a jog – some part of my head tells me that if I drop to a walk, I’m screwed in ways I can’t put my finger on. By the time I get back to my road, my legs have stopped shaking. The first layers of dark are starting to peel away, and windows are lighting up. There’s still no one there.

I told Fleas I’d get my locks and my alarm system looked at. I meant it at the time, but somewhere since then I’ve changed my mind. The guy casing my gaff is the only thing left in my week that has potential. If he sees locksmiths and alarm techs swarming over my house, he’ll know he’s been burned; he’ll find someone else to stalk, or get himself another hobby, or back off and wait a few weeks or months before he comes looking for me again. I need him now.

I take my shower, throw some cereal into me and head out for work. There’s still no one outside.

I make it to work without getting pulled over – even wankers take a while to gear up in the morning. Outside our building, in the strange unfocused mix of early light and thick halogens, McCann is leaning against the wall and having a smoke.

‘Howya,’ I say, without stopping. McCann lifts his chin, but he doesn’t bother talking, not that I expected him to.

He looks like shite. McCann isn’t slick to start with, not like Breslin; he’s one of those guys who always look like they’re fighting back their natural state of scruffiness – five o’clock shadow by noon, greying dark curls that won’t lie flat. Normally he wins the battle, because he obviously used to be good-looking not too long ago, before the jowls and the belly started loosening, and because everything he wears is always immaculate and ironed so smooth you could skate on it. This morning, though, he’s losing. The five o’clock shadow has turned into full-on stubble; his shirt is creased, there’s something brown and sticky on his jacket sleeve, and his eyebags are moving towards black eyes.

While me and Steve were sculpting our fancy twirly conspiracy theories, like a pair of mouth-breathers in an internet sinkhole, Breslin was telling the truth all along: McCann is in the missus’s bad books. He’s sleeping on the sofa and doing his own ironing. I could laugh, if the great big joke wasn’t on me.

I have my hand on the door when he says, ‘Conway.’

I stop in spite of myself. I want to hear, just for confirmation, what I already know he’s going to say. McCann is gonna drop me a nice juicy hint that him and Breslin are on the take.

‘Yeah,’ I say.

McCann has his head back against the wall, looking out at the winter-scrawny gardens, not at me. He says, ‘How’re you getting on with Breslin?’

‘Fine.’

‘He says good things about you.’

He does in his arse. ‘Nice to hear,’ I say.

‘He’s a good D, Breslin is. The best. Good to work with, too: he’ll look after you, whatever it takes. As long as you don’t fuck him about.’

‘McCann,’ I say. ‘I’m just doing my job. I’m not planning on fucking your pal about. OK?’

That gets one humourless twitch of his mouth. ‘You’d better not. He’s got enough on his mind already.’

And there it is. Took him all of twenty seconds. ‘Yeah? Like what?’

McCann shakes his head, one brief jerk. ‘Forget it. You don’t want to know.’

Yesterday I’d have been drooling down my suit. Now all I can feel is a small, bitter flare of anger, too exhausted to last. Whatever Breslin’s playing at, he’s decided his approach isn’t doing the job; so, just like he would with some slack-jawed suspect, he’s sent McCann in to try a different angle. The scatter of cigarette butts at McCann’s feet says he’s been waiting out here for God knows how long, just to feed me a few lines out of a B-movie. ‘Whatever,’ I say. ‘I’ll have him back to you in one piece, fast as I can. Believe me.’

I’m turning away when McCann says, through his cigarette, ‘Hang on.’

I say, ‘What.’

He watches ash scud away across the cobblestones. He says, ‘Roche nicked your statement sheet.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Your street fight from Saturday night. The last page of a witness statement went missing on you.’

I say, ‘I don’t remember telling you about that.’

‘You didn’t. Roche was having a laugh about it in the squad room, yesterday.’ McCann reaches a hand into his jacket pocket, pulls out a folded sheet of paper and passes it to me. I unfold it: my statement page. ‘With Roche’s apologies. More or less.’

I hold out the sheet. ‘I got the witness to redo it.’

McCann doesn’t take it. ‘I know you did. This’ – he flicks the paper – ‘isn’t the point. Shred it, stuff it up Roche’s hole, I don’t care.’

‘Then what is the point?’

‘The point is, not everyone on the squad is Roche. Me and Bres, we’ve got nothing against you. You’re not a waste of space like some of that lot; you’ve got the makings of a good D. We’d be happy to see you do well for yourself.’

‘Great,’ I say. It sounds so much like truth, matter-of-fact with just the faintest fleck of warmth, the gruff old dog who isn’t about to get sappy but wants the best for the young learner who’s earned his respect. If I hadn’t seen McCann do his shtick in a dozen interrogations, and if I didn’t know a million times better, I might even fall for it. ‘Thanks.’

‘So if Breslin tells you to do something, it’s for your own good. Even if you can’t see how; even if you think he’s wrong. If you’ve got sense, you’ll listen to him. D’you get me?’

McCann’s eyes are on me now, bloodshot from wind and fatigue. His voice has condensed, concentrated. This is the important part; this is what kept him waiting in the cold for me to walk out of the blurry, layered light, to the place where he wants me.

‘I get you just fine,’ I say. ‘I’m missing nothing.’ I crumple the statement sheet in my fist and shove it into my coat pocket. ‘See you ’round.’

‘Yeah,’ McCann says. ‘See you.’ He turns away again, dark sagging profile against the growing light. The dirty reek of his cigarette follows me into the building.

Me and McCann are both early. The cleaner is still hoovering the corridor; when I pass the squad-room door, the only sounds inside are patchy two-man chat and the perky squawking of drivetime radio. Incident Room C is empty except for Steve, sprawled at our desk, looking rumpled and hugging a cup of coffee.

‘You’re in early,’ I say.

‘Couldn’t sleep.’

‘Me neither. Any sign of Breslin?’

‘Nope.’

‘Good.’ I’m not in the humour for Breslin. There’s a stack of little plastic photo albums on Steve’s desk: mug books. I nod at them. ‘What’re those for?’

‘Gang lads,’ Steve says, through a yawn. ‘Lanigan’s lot, mostly. I want to run them past the barman in Ganly’s. Then I’ll show them to Aislinn’s neighbours, see if anyone recognises—’

I say, ‘The gang theory’s dead.’ It feels like punching a bruise.

Steve’s face looks slapped blank. He says, ‘Wait. What?’

‘Gone. Out the window. I never want to hear about it again. Is that clear enough?’

‘Hang on,’ Steve says. He’s lifted his hands and forgotten them in mid-air, trying to get his head together. ‘Hang on. No. Then what was Breslin playing at yesterday, ditching Gaffney? Don’t tell me you actually believe he stopped off for a shag.’

I toss my satchel on the floor and throw myself into my chair. It feels good, watching this hit Steve. ‘Maybe he was getting his nails done. Maybe he didn’t go anywhere special; he just wanted to show us he wasn’t going to take orders from the likes of us. I don’t care either way.’

‘And you saw him give Gaffney the cash for his sandwich, yeah? The roll of fifties? What was he doing with those?’

‘Did you not hear me? I
don’t care
. I don’t care if he wants to carry around his entire savings fund in his pocket so the Illuminati can’t get their hands on it. His problem. Not ours.’

‘OK,’ Steve says carefully. He’s looking at me like I might have rabies. ‘OK. What the hell happened last night?’

‘Last night,’ I say, ‘I had a chat with a guy I know. He knows the gang scene inside out, and he says we can rule out that angle. Aislinn had fuck-all to do with gangs. End of story. On the
tiny
off-chance he finds anything to contradict that, he’ll let us know, but we shouldn’t hold our breath. And we should be very bloody grateful that we found this out before we made twats of ourselves in front of the entire squad.’

Steve looks like a lorry splattered his hamster. He says, ‘How well do you know this guy?’

‘Well enough. We go back.’

‘Are you sure you can trust him?’

The face on him; like this can’t be happening, not to his very own special pet idea. ‘If I didn’t fucking trust him, would I have fucking asked him for his opinion?’

‘No. I’m only—’

‘No. And do I look fucking brain-damaged?’

‘No—’

‘No. So when I say we can trust him, it probably means we can trust him.’

‘Fair enough,’ Steve says. His face has turned neutral; he’s drawn back inside himself, which is what he does when he’s pissed off. ‘Let’s do that.’

I leave him to sulk it off and go back to work, or try to. It’s not clicking; I have to read every sentence three times before it sinks in. Normally I can concentrate through anything – squad rooms teach you that, specially the kind of squad room I’ve been working in – but what Steve said is pinching at me.

Fleas knows an awful lot about me and my career, for someone who’s been deep under for years. I thought that was nice, him bothering to keep up. Which it might well have been; or it might not.

All of a sudden I’m second-guessing every step of our lovely cosy conversation, looking for cracks where the hidden agenda might have shown through: Fleas getting me to back off in case I jeopardise a drugs op, or just because he doesn’t need my cooties all over whatever he’s doing; Fleas brushing me off because he’s gone rogue and he’s protecting his new boss. I’m second-guessing myself, too, wondering if I actually needed to talk to Fleas for investigative purposes or if deep down I was just looking for an excuse to have a sandwich and a chat with someone who doesn’t know I’m untouchable. I don’t believe in second-guessing and I don’t believe in introspective crap, and I’m not happy about catching myself doing both. I wish I’d given Steve more hassle while I was at it. I hope he’s feeling like shite.

I have a skim through my messages, the ones that have made it as far as my desk or my inbox. If someone’s swiped the good stuff, he’s been thorough. Cooper’s revised post-mortem report; a couple of tips that will need following up – someone saw a woman who might have been Aislinn in a nightclub, a few weeks back, having a drunken argument with a guy who looked like a rugby player; someone else saw three teenage guys hanging around the top of Viking Gardens on Saturday afternoon, looking suspicious, whatever that means. Bureau reports: the stains on Aislinn’s mattress aren’t semen, meaning they’re probably sweat. The techs are trying for DNA, but they’re not promising anything: Aislinn kept her place hot, mattresses aren’t sterile, warmth and bacterial action could have degraded the DNA till it’s useless. I have a hard time believing it’ll make a lot of difference, either way.

A massive stack of paper that turns out to be a year’s worth of Aislinn’s e-mail records, to cross-check against her account in case anything’s been deleted. That should keep someone busy until his brain – or hers – blows up. This kind of crap is why God created floaters, but if there’s one tiny worthwhile thing to find in this case, Aislinn’s electronics is probably where to find it. I split the stack in two and slide one half over to Steve, who says ‘Thanks,’ without looking up and shoves it to one side. I consider kicking the sulky little bollix under the table. Instead I spread out Aislinn’s e-mail records and the printouts of her mailboxes on my desk and start going back and forth between them, working backwards, making sure every e-mail is accounted for. 3.18 a.m. on Sunday, sale notice from some makeup website, still in the inbox. 3.02 a.m. on Sunday, spam from an imaginary Russian babe looking for company, still in the inbox. I want to put my head down on the paper and sleep.

The floaters show up one by one, snap out of their morning fog when they see me and Steve, and get stuck into the jobs they picked up at yesterday’s case meeting. I give Cooper’s report to Gaffney to type up – I’m still pissed off with him for not getting a voice ID off the Stoneybatter uniform. Breslin sweeps in singing to himself, throws the room a cheerful ‘Hi-diddly-hi, camperinos!’ and tells me and Steve, ‘Two of Rory’s lucky exes down, yesterday evening; two to go. Who’s the man?’

‘You’re the man,’ Steve says automatically, turning over a page. ‘Did you get anything good?’

‘No surprises. Rory’s a predictable little bastard. We’ll see if the other two have anything nice for me.’ Breslin leans against our desk and tries to read what I’m doing, upside down. ‘What’s all this, then?’

‘Aislinn’s e-mail records,’ I say.

‘Huh,’ Breslin says. ‘And?’

‘And if you want seventy per cent off a fabulous goddess gown, I can tell you where to go.’

‘Sounds like you’re having a blast.’ Breslin gives me his best movie-star grin, picks up Aislinn’s sent e-mails and has a flick through them. ‘Jesus, I see what you mean. This could get old. You want me to take over? You can have Rory’s exes.’