The Trespasser (59 page)

Ds are all about preserving evidence, not destroying it. McCann was already thinking like something else. I wonder if he noticed.

‘Did it bother Aislinn?’ I ask.

‘Not really. I told her I didn’t like it, but she brushed it off. She thought Joe was just paranoid that she might go to his wife – which she figured was fair enough, specially considering he was right. But I thought it was more than that. Joe wanted to be the one calling the shots. His way meant Ash had no say in anything: if he dropped her a note saying “Seven on Wednesday”, she couldn’t text him going, “Hey, I’m busy Wednesday, how about Friday?” All she could do was ditch whatever she’d meant to do on Wednesday evening, put on a pretty frock and wait at home. And sometimes, right?’ Lucy’s head comes up so she can watch me. ‘Sometimes he didn’t even give her that much notice. He just showed up at her door and expected her to drop everything and spend the evening with him. Ash thought it was just because his schedule was unpredictable, but to me it sounded like he was checking up on her. He wanted to see what she was doing when he wasn’t looking.’

Her eyes are dark and speeding across my face, trying to catch hold of what I’m thinking. We both know what she’s saying. If McCann decided to check up on his girl, Saturday night, he would have found candlelight and wineglasses and her polished to a glow, and all for someone else.

I keep my face blank. ‘What happened if she wasn’t there when he told her to be?’

‘She always was. Like I told you before, she was ditching me all the time, the last few months. That was why.’

She ditched Rory, too, the first day they were supposed to have dinner at Pestle.
Really sorry, something’s come up tonight!
Rory thought she was looking after her sick ma; we thought she was playing hard to get. I say, ‘Did she ever do anything he didn’t want her to?’

Lucy makes a face. ‘Not really. I mean, her whole plan was based on being his dream woman.’

‘No arguments? No disagreements?’

‘I told you, he worshipped Ash. Going by what she said, they would’ve sounded like the perfect couple, if you didn’t know better. The only time they had any kind of disagreement was once, maybe at the end of September? Joe picked up Aislinn’s phone and started messing with it, and it was locked, like with a code. He wasn’t happy about that, at all. He wanted to know if she was texting people about him.’

‘What kind of not-happy are we talking about?’

One corner of Lucy’s mouth twists, around her cigarette. ‘Do you mean did he hit her?’

‘Did he?’

She thinks about lying, but after a second she shakes her head. ‘No. From what Aislinn told me, he never touched her, not like that. She never sounded like she was even worried that he might. And she would’ve told me – what was I going to do about it, call the cops?’ She leans forward to tap ash. ‘From what she said, Joe wasn’t even angry about the phone; more freaked out. He said it was because of his wife: it’s a small city, people gossip, you never know who might say something to the wrong person . . . But Aislinn said he acted more like he was terrified the phone was full of texts to her mates about how she’d pulled this middle-aged fool who was going to erase her penalty points. Aislinn thought he wasn’t totally convinced, at least not yet, that this was real.’

‘McCann’s a detective,’ I say. ‘Like you said. His instincts must’ve been telling him something was up. He just didn’t want to hear it.’

A small, humourless laugh out of Lucy. ‘No kidding. If only he’d had the sense to listen.’

‘What did Aislinn do?’

‘She begged for forgiveness like she’d run over Joe’s
dog
– obviously she didn’t put it that way, but I’m translating. She let him look through every text on her phone – which, yeah, I was delighted about: there was stuff in there that . . . I mean, nothing major, but just texts about nights out that I didn’t necessarily want a Guard to see.’ A quick glance at me. Seeing as I don’t care, I stay blank. ‘That didn’t even occur to Ash; all she cared about was getting Joe in deeper. And of course she started keeping her phone on swipe-lock. So he could see everything on there, any time he wanted.’

He had some willpower, not touching that phone on Saturday night. It hits me all over again how much of a fight me and Steve are in for. ‘She was OK with that?’ I ask.

Lucy lifts a shoulder. ‘She didn’t care. It was only for a few months, right? And Joe being obsessed was what she wanted; she wasn’t complaining. But I didn’t like it. A control freak like that . . .’

She lets it fall. I don’t pick it up. She’s right, obviously: this should have been yet another alarm bell waking Aislinn the hell up. This guy who couldn’t let a text or a Post-it go out of his control, how did she think he was gonna take it when she kicked him to the kerb? Her own floodwaters had risen so deep around her, they drowned it out. She underestimated herself too.

‘By the beginning of December,’ Lucy says, ‘Aislinn said she was nearly there with Joe. He told her he loved her all the time, he was constantly going on about the great stuff he’d do for her when they could be together; he was
this
close to offering to leave his wife. And Ash – Jesus. She was on a total high, all the time: talking a mile a minute and screaming laughing at nothing and never able to sit still, she was like someone on speed. Not from having a guy wrapped round her finger – Ash wasn’t like that; because her plan was
working
. She could hardly believe it. To her, it was like finding out that magic was real and she had it, she could turn pumpkins into carriages, she could turn princes into frogs and back again. Do you . . . Does that make any sense? Do you get it?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I totally get it.’ Out of nowhere I think of my first morning on Murder. Me in my new suit cut for victory, satchel swinging and shining, my heels on the footpath laying down a fast rhythm on the city swirl of buses and voices as I sliced straight through them heading for the Murder squad room waiting for me, finally, finally all my own. I could have done the walk to the door in ten-foot leaps. That morning I could have pointed at the Castle and made its roofs unfurl in great gold petals and trumpet blasts.

Lucy says, jamming out her cigarette, ‘And then Rory came along.’

I say, ‘Rory wasn’t in the plan, no?’

‘The Plan . . .’ She spreads her hands with a flourish. ‘I’d started thinking of it like that, in capital letters: THE PLAN, da-da-da-dum. No: Rory definitely wasn’t in the plan. Rory was my fault. I dragged Aislinn out to that book launch – and it took some dragging – because I was hoping if she had a night off from sitting at home obsessing over whether Joe would call round, if she went out and had a laugh and a chat about normal stuff with people our age, then she might get some perspective. Realise how mental this whole thing was.’

‘Meet a nice normal guy,’ I say.

‘It never
occurred
to me that she’d get that far. I was just hoping she’d have a non-insane evening. But one hour with Rory, and Ash was head over heels. She was totally freaked out by it – this was the last thing she was looking for, specially just when she was getting Joe where she wanted him. She couldn’t even believe she’d spent that long talking to Rory. She had this rule about not talking to a guy for too long, in case he thought he was in with a chance – Ash figured that wasn’t fair, when she wasn’t on for a relationship—’

‘You told us the reason she had that rule was because she liked to make guys work for it.’

Lucy shrugs. ‘That was the best I could come up with. I had to tell you she cut off her chat with Rory halfway through the evening, because other people might’ve noticed that; but I wasn’t about to tell you she wasn’t into relationships, or you wouldn’t have gone looking for her secret guy. And I couldn’t exactly go into the whole thing.’

‘Fair enough,’ I say. For someone who doesn’t like coming up with scripts, Lucy’s done a lot of it, the last while. Aislinn got good at sucking people in, all right. ‘So Aislinn didn’t know what to do about Rory?’

That smile on one side of Lucy’s mouth again, tender and bruised. ‘No, she knew exactly what to do about him: give him the brush-off. But she couldn’t do it. She thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. We went back to hers that night, after the launch, and she could not stop talking about him. She was all pink and giggly, like a kid, and she kept going, “What do I do? OhmyGod, Luce, what do I
do
?” ’

‘What did you say?’

The smile breaks up. ‘By this time I had
no
qualms about telling Ash what to do. I went, “You ring Joe tomorrow and cut him loose. Tell him you can’t live with yourself if you break up a marriage, some bullshit like that—” ’ Lucy’s hands go through her hair again. ‘I could hear myself sounding like her, making up stories . . . I just wanted her
out
of the whole Joe thing, before she pulled the pin and blew herself to bits. I told her, “And then when Rory rings you, which he will, you say yes I’d love to meet up thank you very much.” I told her, “
This
is how you get your revenge on Joe. By not letting him lose you a guy you actually really like. By not letting him run your life any more.” Right?’

‘Sounds dead right to me,’ I say. ‘Sounds like she should’ve had it tattooed on her arm. But no?’

Lucy shakes her head. ‘No way. Not a chance. And being honest, I could see why not. The amount Ash had put into this . . . All the planning, all the energy. All the starving herself.
Shagging
this guy she loathed, for
months
. And right when it was all about to pay off, when the explosions were about to go off and the big soundtrack number was about to kick in, I was telling her to ditch the whole thing?’

And she was telling Aislinn to give up the magic, just when she was about to start shooting fireballs out of her palms. ‘That wouldn’t be easy,’ I say. ‘I get that.’

‘And then of course two days later Rory texted Ash, wanting to meet up. If she said no, he’d take it as a brush-off, obviously – and she couldn’t exactly say, “Could you just give me a month or two while I finish shagging this guy into leaving his wife, then I’ll be all yours?” She stalled him a bit, as much as she could without him thinking she wasn’t into him, but in the end she said yes; yes, let’s meet. And they went for a pint, and they had an amazing time, and Aislinn was totally smitten.’

‘But she still didn’t break it off with Joe.’

‘No. She just started trying to nudge him along, hurry the whole thing up. She dropped hints about how much she missed him when he had to go home, and how she wanted to have babies and she wasn’t getting any younger . . . She had to be extra careful, because the last thing she wanted was him getting all noble and giving her up because she deserved better, or getting paranoid that she was sticking holes in the condoms. It was—’ Lucy’s hands go over her face and she laughs into her fingers, a laugh with a sob caught in it. ‘Jesus, it would’ve been hysterical, if it wasn’t so insane.’

‘How’d Joe react?’

‘I was
praying
he’d do the grand renunciation. I was trying to send him
thought
-waves. I’m not even joking.’ Another half-sob of laughter. ‘But nope: Joe just followed right along where Aislinn was taking him. Three weeks ago – just after New Year’s – he told her he was going to leave his wife.’

McCann, who used to brag to Aislinn’s mother about how he’d never leave his family. She’d fed all that into the shredder. I say, ‘I bet she was delighted with that.’

‘Oh yeah.’ Lucy wipes her hands down her face. This is taking a lot out of her. ‘Yeah, she was over the moon. Except Joe wanted to wait till summer. One of his kids is doing the Leaving Cert; Joe didn’t want him upset till that was over.’

‘Meaning Ash would have six more months of trying to juggle him and Rory.’

‘Yeah. She wasn’t happy about that, at all. She cried – not hard enough to be ugly, of course, just a cute little tear – and she told him she knew there would be something else after that, men never left their wives, it was so hard to watch him go home to another woman, blah blah blah. But Joe wouldn’t budge.’

‘So what did she do about it?’

‘God . . .’ Lucy grimaces, eyes closing. ‘Aislinn was so, so badly out of her depth. This was real stuff, you know? Twenty-five-year marriages, kids . . . There was no way she could keep up. Not a chance. All she could think of to do was keep Joe nervous, basically. She was still being Perfect Girlfriend, but every now and then she’d show him some Facebook picture of someone’s baby and sigh, or she’d let it slip that some client at work had flirted with her . . . She just kept poking him, nice and delicately, with the chance he could lose her if he didn’t get off his arse.’

I ask, ‘Did she ever tell him about Rory? Even a hint?’

‘You mean, to make the point that she had options?’ Lucy shakes her head. ‘No. I thought of that, too. I specifically asked Aislinn – warned her, more like – and she said no way. But I wondered if . . . I told you Joe wanted to be able to look through her phone. I wondered if maybe Ash was leaving a couple of texts from Rory on there. Just so, if Joe went looking . . .’

Which she was. Jesus Christ. I think about banging my head off the coffee table a few times. Naïve didn’t begin to describe this girl.