‘Yeah,’ Kellegher says, leaning back from his monitor. Kellegher is long, freckly, laid-back, and useful enough that he’s going to end up on the squad sooner or later. ‘The bad news is, there’s no cameras between the 39A stop and Viking Gardens, or between Viking Gardens and the Tesco – so we can’t verify Fallon’s route, or the timing. But we’ve got him buying the flowers in Tesco. He paid at 7.51, which matches his story.’
‘No surprise there,’ I say. ‘He had to know Tesco would have him on camera; he wouldn’t lie about that. We need to widen the area of Stoneybatter where we’re pulling CCTV. Whatever Rory was doing in that missing time, it could have taken him off the route he gave us. Reilly, you can get on that.’ Meehan reaches for the book of jobs.
Reilly glances out the window – it’s getting ready to rain – and back at his monitor. ‘I’m not done watching what we’ve got.’
Reilly was a year behind me in training college. He’s a lot less useful than Kellegher, but I’m guessing he’ll make the squad sooner, just going by how beautifully he’d fit in with this shower. ‘Kellegher can finish that up,’ I say. ‘With twenty minutes to spare, Fallon could have got, say, half a mile off the route he gave us. Do a half-mile radius, to start with. See you later.’
Reilly’s chin moves and he gives me a piggy stare, but he heaves himself out of his chair and starts disentangling his coat. ‘Kellegher,’ I say. ‘Tell me you’ve got some good news to go with that.’
‘Some, yeah. We’ve picked up Fallon in four locations between Stoneybatter and Ranelagh, on his way home. I’ve mapped them up there.’ Kellegher nods at a new map on the whiteboard, complete with X’s and arrows and a halo of grainy time-stamped photos. ‘They’re consistent with his statement.’
I take a look. The slight guy in the black overcoat has his head down, against the rain and his bad evening, but it’s Rory, all right. In the earliest shot, on the northside quays, there’s a smashed-looking bunch of flowers sticking out of his armpit; by the time he gets across the river into Temple Bar, it’s gone.
‘Do we ever get a look at his hands?’ I ask.
‘Nah. In his pockets.’
‘Meehan,’ I say. ‘I need you to time Fallon’s route home. I want to see if he could have taken a detour anywhere along the way – gone off to ditch his gloves, or called in to a mate. Kellegher: what pace is he going on the CCTV?’
‘Brisk, I’d call it,’ Kellegher says, considering the Temple Bar shot, where Rory’s been shouldered off the pavement by a howling stag do wearing fake tits and waving beer cans. ‘Not jogging or anything, but he wanted to get home, all right. Yeah: brisk.’
‘You heard the man,’ I tell Meehan. ‘Viking Gardens to the Wayward Bookshop, nice and brisk, and record the times when you hit the places where the CCTV caught Rory.’
‘I’m going to get fit on this one,’ Meehan says, pushing his chair back.
‘Make it brisk enough and you might beat the rain,’ I say. ‘Thanks. Kellegher, how much of that footage have you got left to watch?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘When you’re done, go have chats with the people who were at the book launch where Aislinn and Rory met. See how it looked: whether one of them was doing the chasing, whether either of them said anything interesting about the other, anything you can pick up. Yeah?’
Meehan scribbles that in the book on his way out. Kellegher gives me the thumbs-up and hits fast-forward on the CCTV – little dark figures spin and bobble down the street like wind-up toys. I go back to our desk and have a look over Steve’s shoulder.
‘These are Aislinn’s phone logs,’ he says, tapping a pile of paper, ‘and this is the stuff Sophie e-mailed us, what was on the actual phone. I want to cross-check, see if anyone deleted anything along the way.’
‘Great minds,’ I say. ‘I was going to say that to you.’ Lower: ‘We need a chat. Not here.’ Having to take my chats out of my own incident room is fucked up, but there’s no way to know which of the floaters belong to Breslin.
Steve nods. ‘We need to search Aislinn’s gaff anyway.’
‘That’ll work. Let’s go.’
He bins his Kit Kat wrappers, because he was brought up right. ‘While we’re in Stoneybatter, fancy showing me round your locals?’
‘Why?’
‘Maybe they went for the odd pint.’
The floaters look like they’re absorbed in their jobs, but I keep my voice down anyway. It’s getting to be a habit. ‘Who? Aislinn and her fella? A guy having a secret affair, you think he’s going to be snogging the girlfriend down the pub?’
‘They were seeing each other for around six months, according to Lucy. You can’t spend six months just staying in and shagging.’ Steve digs around the desk, finds a photo of Aislinn and sticks it in his coat pocket. ‘The pubs’ll be opening soon. Come on.’
I stay put. ‘Even if he exists, they wouldn’t have gone to one of my locals. Lucy said Aislinn was all about the fancy club scene; a pub in Stoneybatter wouldn’t have been her thing. To put it mildly.’
‘So less chance of being spotted. And if he’s married, then they were doing their shagging at Aislinn’s place; if they got stir-crazy and snuck out for a quick pint, it’d be somewhere around there.’ Steve throws his coat on, glancing at the window. ‘The fresh air’ll do us good.’
‘We don’t have fresh air in Stoneybatter. We’re too cool for that culchie crap. And you think a barman’s going to remember some chick who looked exactly like half the twenty-something women in Dublin?’
‘You remembered her. And barmen have good memories for faces.’ Steve pulls my coat off the back of my chair and holds it up, valet-style. ‘Humour me.’
‘Give me that,’ I say, whipping the coat off him, but I put it on. ‘And sort those.’ I jerk my chin at Steve’s printouts and flick him a warning look. He starts organising the paper into a stack.
Gaffney is looking over. I say, ‘Gaffney, spread the word: case meeting at half-five. And go find Breslin. You’re supposed to be shadowing him, remember? What are you even doing here?’
‘But he said—’ Gaffney looks petrified; the poor bastard is seeing his career going splat all over the carpet. ‘I did shadow Detective Breslin, like, all yesterday evening, and this morning – I was taking notes for him, and he was explaining to me how ye work, and all . . . It was only when he was heading out – he said I was grand to work on my own now, and you’d probably be needing me here more than he needed me out there, so, I mean . . .’
Breslin was right, obviously: Gaffney is well able to pull financials and make phone calls without someone holding his hand, or he wouldn’t be in the floater pool to begin with. But he’s also well able to take notes during interviews, and Breslin isn’t the type to turn down the obedient PA that he deserves; not unless he wants the freedom to nudge witnesses his way, with no one else there to notice.
Gaffney has run down and is staring at me pathetically. There’s no point sending him after Breslin; Breslin will find some excuse to slither out of it, or he just won’t answer his phone. ‘You’re grand,’ I say. ‘Don’t worry about it. You’ve got plenty of jobs to keep you going.’
Gaffney starts trying to come up with something grateful, but I’m already headed for the door. Behind me, I hear the click of Steve’s desk drawer locking, for whatever that’s worth.
Chapter 7
Me and Steve head for the car pool and our shitty Kadett. The web of laneways behind Dublin Castle is hopping: students dragging their hangovers towards Trinity College, business types talking too loud into too-big phones so we can all be blown away by their Bulgarian property deals, yummy mummies out for shopping sprees and skangers out for pickings. It feels good getting out onto the street, where any danger coming our way won’t be personal, and I hate that.
‘So,’ I say, once we’re a safe distance into the flow of people. ‘Breslin doesn’t want company today. He wants to be all on his ownio for those interviews.’
‘For the interviews,’ Steve says, sidestepping a couple having complicated relationship problems in Russian, ‘or for whatever else he’s doing. Not long before you got in, right? Breslin’s mobile rang. He had a look and got this face on him—’ Steve does a clamped jaw and flared nostrils: Breslin, pissed off and trying to cover it. ‘He took the call outside. But before he got all the way out the door, he said, “Don’t ring this phone.” ’
He’s right: maybe not the interviews. Maybe there’s something else Breslin has to do, or someone else he has to meet, along the way; something, or someone, that doesn’t need Gaffney. My adrenaline kicks.
‘You want to know what he did yesterday evening?’ I say. ‘He went schmoozing Sophie for the scene reports and Aislinn’s electronics.’
Steve’s eyebrows go up. I say, ‘It could mean nothing. I had a word with him: he says he was bored, went looking for something to do – and obviously he’s going to go after the thing that could turn him into the big hero here. But . . .’
‘But he wanted that stuff.’
‘Yeah. Badly enough to go behind our backs, even though he had to figure we’d find out.’
‘Did he get anything out of Sophie?’
‘Nah. There’s not a lot to get. Stains on Aislinn’s mattress, but even if we get DNA and it’s not hers, it could be years old; no way to know. It didn’t get there on Saturday night, anyway, or it’d be on the sheets as well, and they’re clean.’ The adrenaline is moving me at a clip that sends even the big-phone types dodging out of our way. ‘The only thing is, the places you asked Sophie to check, the bed frame and the jacks seat? They’re too clean. No prints, just smudges. Sophie says our guy could’ve wiped the place down—’
‘Ah, score!’ Steve does a fist-pump. ‘No reason why Rory would be wiping down the bed frame, when that was his first time in the house—’
‘Yeah yeah yeah, you’re a genius. Or Aislinn could’ve just been a clean freak. Sophie says it plays either way.’
Steve still looks pleased with himself. ‘Anything else?’
‘You mean that says Aislinn’s other fella was real?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Not so far. No sign of him on Facebook, not on her mobile, not on her e-mail.’ A junkie has cornered two lost-looking backpacker types and is hassling them for cash; I snap my fingers in his face and point off down the road, without bothering to break stride or find my ID, and he takes one look at us and bobbles off obediently. ‘If he exists, they must’ve made their appointments by ESP.’
‘Or Aislinn deleted all their messages,’ Steve points out. ‘Or he did. I’ve only started cross-checking the phone records, and I’m still waiting on the e-mails.’
‘Couple of interesting things on the laptop, though,’ I say. ‘Don’t get too overexcited, but Aislinn read up on a couple of gang cases. Francie Hannon and the guy with the tongue.’
Steve’s face has whipped round to me. ‘They were Cueball Lanigan’s boys. Both of them.’ I feel him get caught up by the same roller-coaster surge that’s speeding me along the footpath, feel the buzzing of the thing in our minds build higher. ‘And they were both Breslin’s cases. If he ended up in Lanigan’s pocket, right, and if Aislinn was seeing one of the gang and it went wrong, the first thing Lanigan would do—’
‘I told you not to get overexcited. I’ve put out feelers. If Aislinn was seeing someone from Lanigan’s crew, I’ll know soon enough.’ Steve looks a little wounded that I’m not opening up, but he’ll have to live with that. ‘The other good thing on her laptop: there’s a password-protected folder of pictures that she created in September. It’s labelled “Mortgage—” ’ Steve laughs out loud, and I can’t help a grin. ‘Yeah, that’s obviously bullshit. Sophie and her lot are still trying to crack the password; she’ll keep us updated.’
‘Did she tell Breslin about it?’
‘Nah. Neither did I. And I’m not planning to.’
Steve says, ‘So since September, Aislinn’s been worried about someone going through her laptop. That’s not Rory. She only met him in December, and he’d never been over to her place before.’
‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘Or else the folder’s full of naked selfies, and Aislinn wasn’t worried about anyone specific: she just didn’t want some junkie robbing her laptop and uploading her full-frontals.’
‘Naked selfies for who?’
‘For kicks, for a little extra income, left over from one of the exes, for someday when she’s old and wrinkly and wants to remember what a babe she was. How would I know?’
‘Or,’ Steve says, ‘it’s photos of her with her secret fella. And she really, really didn’t want anyone – including him – knowing she had them. Yet, anyway.’
I’ve been thinking the same thing. ‘Blackmail.’
‘Or insurance. If she was with a gangster, maybe she had just enough sense to know this could turn dangerous.’
‘“If,” ’ I say. ‘From now on, every time you say “if” about this case, you owe me a quid. I’ll be rich by the weekend.’
‘I thought you liked a challenge,’ Steve says, grinning. ‘Admit it: you hope I’m right.’
‘I do, yeah. That’d make a nice change.’
‘You do.’
We’ve slowed down behind a pair of gabbing old ones. I say, ‘I’d only love this to come through.’
I’ve been trying not to say it out loud because I don’t want to jinx it. Like a dumb kid; like one of those moaners who believe the universe has it in for them and everything is just looking for an excuse to turn to shite. I’ve never been that. This is new, it’s stupid, it comes from the squad training me to look for booby traps everywhere – last week I left my coffee in the squad room while I went for a piss, came back and nearly had it to my mouth before I saw the floating gob of spit – and no way in hell am I gonna blab it to Steve. I don’t fucking like being what anyone trains me to be; I don’t like it at all. I keep walking and count tall guys in dark overcoats.
Steve says, ‘But?’
‘But nothing. I don’t want to get too attached to the idea till we’ve got some actual evidence, is all.’
He starts to say something, but I’m done with that. ‘Here’s the other thing,’ I say, dodging around the old ones and picking up the pace again. ‘Remember I said I had a word with Breslin about ringing Sophie?’
‘Oh, Jaysus. Will he live?’
‘Ah, yeah. His makeup’ll cover the bruises.’
‘You were nice to him, right? Tell me you were nice to him.’
‘Relax the kacks,’ I say. ‘Everything’s grand. That’s the interesting part. I wasn’t nice to him – I was busting his balls on purpose – but he just kept on being nice to me.’
‘So maybe he wasn’t bullshitting us, last night.’ Steve is trying on the idea for size and stretching hard to make it fit. ‘Maybe he genuinely does think we’re all right.’
‘You think? I called him a cheeky little bollix who was getting above himself, and I said while he’s on my investigation he needs to do what I tell him.’ Steve lets out a snort of horrified laughter. ‘Yeah, well, I wanted to see what he would do. I expected him to take my head off. But you know what he did? He sighed and said OK, grand, from now on he’ll run things past me.’
Steve has stopped laughing. I say, ‘Does that sound like Breslin to you?’
After a moment he says, ‘It sounds like Breslin really wants to stay on speaking terms with us. Like, badly.’
‘Exactly. And that’s so he can keep track of what we’re at; it’s not because he’s got faith in us to turn into lovely little team players, or whatever it was. When I found him, right? He was having a chat with McCann, and they shut up sharp when they saw me. Breslin gave me some crap about McCann’s marriage problems, but I’m pretty sure they were discussing the quickest way to get rid of me.’
Steve shoots me a look I can’t read. ‘You figure? What did they say?’
I lift one shoulder. ‘I didn’t give enough of a shit to memor
ise it. McCann wasn’t happy, Breslin was reassuring him that he’d have some woman sorted in no time and everything would go back to normal, McCann wanted him to hurry it up. That was the gist of it.’
‘And you’re positive it couldn’t actually have been about McCann’s wife?’
‘It could’ve been. But it wasn’t.’
Some wanker with a logo jacket and a clipboard bounds up to us, opens his mouth, takes a second look and backs off. I’m getting my mojo back. Two days ago he would probably have followed me down the street, badgering me for money to end Third World psoriasis and telling me to smile.
‘OK,’ Steve says. ‘We’ve been wondering if Breslin could be bent—’ Even this far from the job, both of us automatically glance over our shoulders. ‘What if it’s McCann?’
I didn’t even think of that. For a second I feel like a fool – letting paranoia distract me from the real stuff – but that blows away on the rising rush of excitement: that bad dare, growing bigger.
‘That could work.’ I’m skimming through what I know about McCann. From Drogheda. A wife and four teenage kids. Not from money, not like Breslin – I remember him saying something sour, once, about cutting the crime rate to zero by making all the spoilt brats with their smartphones go into apprenticeships at fourteen, the way his da did. No Bank of Mum and Dad to fall back on if the car dies, the house needs re-roofing, the kids need college fees and a D’s salary isn’t cutting it. A gang boss looking for a pet would like McCann a lot. ‘Or both of them.’
‘No wonder Breslin took everything you could dish out,’ Steve says. ‘He can’t afford to have us telling the gaffer we want rid of him.’
‘If,’ I say. ‘If any of this is real.’
‘If,’ Steve says. ‘How did you leave things with Breslin?’
‘I apologised. Told him I was too intimidated by his awesomeness to think straight. He liked that.’