His eyes snap wide and he points a finger at me. ‘No no no, Conway. Don’t you try to turn this around on me. You’ve just proved that I was dead fucking right not to let you in. This interview . . .’ His mouth twists up in disgust; he takes a swig of water to wash it away. ‘Go ahead; tell me. What do you think you accomplished with this interview?’
I say, ‘We got enough for a warrant on McCann’s gaff.’
Breslin thinks that over, nodding. ‘A warrant. Nice. And what are you planning on finding in there?’
‘Those brown leather gloves McCann wears all winter? The ones I haven’t seen once this week? Either we’ll find Aislinn’s blood on them, or we won’t find them at all.’
‘Wow,’ Breslin says, raising his eyebrows. ‘Impressive. I’d say Mac would be shitting himself if he heard that. Shall I save you some hassle? Would you like to hear what actually happened?’
‘Love to,’ I say. ‘From McCann, but.’
Breslin clicks his tongue. ‘Not going to happen. Mac’s got more sense than to put it on the record – to be honest, after that little stunt you pulled, I’ll be amazed if he ever wants to talk to either of you again, on or off the record. But I figure it’ll simplify all our lives if you know the facts.’
Steve says, ‘And it’ll be unrecorded, unverifiable, inadmissible hearsay.’
‘Them’s the breaks. Do you want to hear this or not?’
Deep down, I don’t. When McCann left the room he took something with him, some dark savage charge sizzling the air. Without him at its heart, the room’s gone flat and sickly and stupid. I just want to walk out and keep walking, anywhere I don’t have to think about what comes next or look at Breslin’s self-righteous gob. I lean back in my chair and rub my hands over my face, trying to find some of that charge again.
‘OK,’ Steve says. ‘Let’s hear it.’
‘Don’t do me any favours.’
‘We’d like to know.’
‘Conway?’
‘Why not,’ I say. I take my hands off my face, but I don’t have the energy to straighten up.
Breslin doesn’t join us at the table. He tosses his water cup in the bin, sticks his hands in his pockets and starts pacing, a leisurely stroll, the cool professor explaining something to his enthralled students. ‘Saturday evening,’ he says. ‘Mac had dinner at home with his family, and then he decided to call in to Aislinn. He got there around quarter to eight, give or take – he didn’t check his watch. He went in the back door to the kitchen, same as usual. The lights were on and he could see Aislinn had been in the middle of cooking dinner, but she didn’t call out or come to meet him. Mac went into the sitting room and found her lying there with her head on the fireplace.’
‘Must’ve been a shock,’ Steve says. Breslin shoots him a sharp glance, but Steve’s face is blank.
‘It was, yeah. Obviously.’
‘Most people would’ve gone to bits.’
‘Most civilians would have. Mac was devastated, but he kept it together. That doesn’t make him a killer. It makes him a cop.’
‘He also found the table set for a romantic dinner,’ I say. ‘That must’ve been a shock, too. What’d he make of that?’
Breslin says, in a voice meant to tell me his patience isn’t going to last forever, ‘He didn’t make anything of it, Conway. To the extent that he even thought about it, what with his girlfriend’s body lying there on the floor in front of him, he took it for granted the dinner was meant for him, just in case he decided to turn up, which he sometimes did. He thought someone had gained entry to the house, maybe a perv, more likely a junkie – let’s be honest, it’s not the nicest area, is it? – and Aislinn had come off worst. Later, it occurred to him that Aislinn might have been seeing someone on the side and it could have gone wrong; but at the time, that didn’t even come into his head. As Moran just pointed out, he was in shock.’
Steve asks, ‘Was Aislinn alive?’
Breslin shakes his head. ‘Mac checked her pulse and her breathing straightaway – so yeah, he probably did get blood on his gloves, and he may even have got rid of them because of that. She was gone.’
Minutes or hours, Cooper said; probably progressed rapidly. It all plays, so far. It’s bollix, but a jury might go for it.
I say, ‘So he rang it straight in and got a team of Ds on the scene.’
He stares at me, those pale pop-eyes frozen too hard to blink. ‘Don’t be cute, Conway. Just don’t. This isn’t the moment. Maybe you genuinely believe that’s what you would have done in his place, but it’s bullshit. If Mac had called it in, he would have been at the centre of a murder investigation, meaning he would have been working a desk till this was sorted, however long that took. If the case didn’t get cleared, he would have been finished as a Murder D: there’s no way you can be an effective investigator when you’re under suspicion yourself. He would have lost his wife and kids. Quite possibly he would have ended up going on trial; there was a chance he could’ve ended up going to prison. For life. And for what? He hadn’t done anything; he didn’t have any info that could help the investigation. He would have been throwing himself on his sword, personally and professionally, for nothing. If you genuinely think you’re that much of a saint, I’m delighted for you. But I’m not convinced.’
The thing I’m not about to tell Breslin: I don’t have a clue what I would have done. I can picture it, clear as nightmare: standing there in the middle of someone else’s bloody wreckage, feeling it silt up fast and faster around my ankles, my calves, my knees, and thinking No.
I stare right back at him. ‘What I would do doesn’t matter. What did McCann do?’
‘He cleared the house, in case the assailant was still inside, which he wasn’t. When McCann was sure the guy was gone, he wiped the place down to get rid of his old fingerprints – honest to God, Conway, I’m going to need you to take off that superior disapproving face. I can’t concentrate while I have to look at that.’
There’s no expression on me at all; Breslin just wants me in the wrong. ‘If you don’t like my face,’ I say, ‘you can look at Moran. Or shut your eyes, for all I care.’
Breslin sighs, shakes his head and makes a big deal of turning his shoulder to me and focusing all his attention on Steve. ‘So McCann wiped for prints. He had a look around Aislinn’s bedroom to see if she’d kept any of his notes, which she hadn’t – at least, not in the obvious places. He considered sticking around in case the assailant came back, but he decided that was unlikely enough that it wasn’t worth the risk.’
Steve says, all puzzled furrowed brow, ‘Why’d he turn off the cooker? That’s been bothering me from the start.’
‘So that any evidence wouldn’t be destroyed—’ I snort. ‘Fingerprints aren’t everything, Conway. McCann knew the killer could have left behind DNA, hairs, fibres, valuable stuff; he wasn’t about to ruin that. And he didn’t want the place to catch on fire and burn Aislinn to death, if by some tiny chance he was wrong and she was still alive. And . . .’ Breslin smiles a little sad smile. ‘He didn’t say this to me, because Mac doesn’t like looking like a sap any more than you or I do, but I’m pretty sure he also couldn’t stand the idea of Aislinn’s body being burned. He was fond of her, you know.’
‘Aah,’ I say. I half expect Steve to move, signalling me to dial it back, but he doesn’t. Steve’s gone past wanting to be buddies with Breslin.
‘Conway. Just stop. I know you hate this squad and everyone in it, but think like a fucking detective for a second, instead of a teenage reject who’s finally got one up on the popular girls. If Mac had killed Aislinn, why would he turn off that cooker? He would have turned it up to full and hoped the place burned to the ground.’
I say, ‘What’d he do next?’
Breslin sighs through gritted teeth. ‘He went out the back door, locked it behind him and went home. Don’t bother checking the CCTV; you won’t find him. Not Saturday night, not any night. It’s easy enough to find out where the cameras are and p
lan your route around them. If it came to a divorce, Mac wasn’t about to give his wife anything a private dick could turn up to use against him.’
It plays; of course it plays. Just like McCann’s story does, and Rory’s, and Lucy’s. All these stories. They hum like fist-sized hornets in the corners of the ceiling, circling idly, saving their strength. I want to pull out my gun and blow them away, neatly, one by one, vaporise them into swirls of black grit drifting downwards and gone.
I ask, ‘When did he tell you all this?’
‘He phoned me as soon as his wife went to sleep. In fairness, Conway, it’s not exactly like he could have that conversation while he was walking through town on a Saturday night. Or on the sofa with his missus watching telly beside him. He took the first chance he got.’
I say, ‘And you believed him.’
That whips Breslin around to face me full-on. ‘Yes, Conway. Yes. I do believe him. Partly it’s because of a little thing called loyalty, which you apparently haven’t got the first clue about. He’s my partner; if I catch him with a dead body at his feet and a smoking gun in his hand, it’s my job to believe he’s been framed. But mostly it’s because I know Mac. I’ve known him for a long, long time. You’ll be lucky if you ever have a partner you know like I know Mac. And there’s no fucking way he did this.’
My eyes meet Steve’s for a second. I can’t tell whether Breslin believes that load, or whether he’s convinced himself he does because he needs to be that guy, the noble knight standing by his partner through thick and thin. Probably it’s the second one, which means it’s here to stay. You can knock down a genuine belief, if you load up with enough facts that contradict it; but a belief that’s built on nothing except who the person wants to be, nothing can crumble that. We could show Breslin video of McCann bashing Aislinn’s face in, and the noble knight would find a way around it.
‘Do you two get that? Is that going into your heads?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘And you called it in to Stoneybatter.’
‘I did, yeah. And just by the way, McCann knew I was doing it, and he agreed. As soon as the initial shock wore off, he started thinking like a cop again. Because that’s who he is. Not a killer. A cop.’
‘Uh-huh. So why’d you wait till five in the morning? If McCann called you as soon as his wife went asleep, we’re talking what, midnight? Why wait five hours?’
Breslin sighs and holds up his hands. ‘OK. You got me. Good for you. I wanted to be sure I’d be there when the case came in to the squad. Obviously McCann wasn’t going to come within a mile of the investigation, or the whole thing could collapse—’
‘Honourable,’ I say. ‘I’m impressed.’
Breslin throws me a filthy look, but he doesn’t bother answering. ‘—but we figured I should keep an eye on things. See if there was a moment when Mac needed to come forward, that kind of— Conway, why are you even bothering to listen to me, if you’re just going to sneer at everything I say? Would you be happier waiting outside while I have an actual conversation with Moran?’
‘See if there was a moment when you could send the investigating detectives off on a wild-goose chase, more like. This week must have been hilarious for you, was it? Watching me and Moran chase our tails—’
Breslin’s across the room so fast I almost flinch. ‘What are you accusing me of? No’ – with a finger in my face, when I start to answer – ‘you be careful. You be very fucking careful.’
I’m done with being very fucking careful. I slap his finger away, hard enough that I see the flare in his eyes when he thinks about hitting me, but no such luck. Steve’s half out of his chair, but he has the sense not to come in. ‘You’ve been obstructing my investigation. That’s not an accusation, that’s a fucking fact. You’ve been playing bent cop, so that if me and Moran found anything linking McCann to Aislinn, we’d have a beautiful dead end to chase till you could get Rory Fallon oven-ready. Waving fifties around, giving Gaffney the brush-off, inventing sketchy phone calls— Did Reilly hand you that too? Go running to you, squealing about how we were looking at gang members—’
Breslin laughs at the top of his lungs, right in my face. ‘You think I needed Reilly for that? The two of you told me yourselves. First you demand to know who ran Aislinn through the system and why. And then Sunday afternoon, Moran, when the gaffer called you in, you know what you left open on your computer? A search for Dublin-based males aged twenty to fifty with a history of gang activity. And Monday morning, Conway, along you came, pouring on the fake concern about whether I was stressed over money troubles. You seriously thought I was too thick to put two and two together?’
In the corner of my eye I can see Steve’s blazing redner. Mine probably matches it. Me poking every shadow with sticks, all ready for a poison nest of spies plotting to get me, and all that was in there was me not being subtle enough and Steve forgetting to hit Exit.
Breslin steps back and spreads his arms. ‘If you think I obstructed your investigation, go ahead and file a complaint. What are you going to put in it? Breslin paid for his sandwich the wrong way? Breslin didn’t want Gaffney hanging off him?’ He’s got a grin on him, a nasty one. ‘If you saw anything dodgy there, kids, it was in the eye of the beholder. If you went chasing after some wild hare, that was all on you. Not my problem.’
Neither of us answers that. I can still smell Breslin’s aftershave.
‘If you don’t have enough to file a complaint,’ Breslin says, ‘then I think you owe me an apology.’
I say, ‘Now we’re gonna tell you our story. And it’s a lot better than yours.’
His face pulls into a grimace of pure disbelief. ‘What are you talking about? This isn’t about who’s got the best story, Conway. This is about what actually happened on Saturday night. And I’ve already told you that.’
‘Humour me. Don’t worry, ours is shorter than yours, too.’
Breslin sighs, long and noisy, and makes a big thing of pushing mugs out of the way so he can settle his arse against the counter. ‘All right,’ he says, folding his arms. ‘Go for it. Blow me away.’
‘Saturday evening,’ I say. ‘McCann had dinner at home and then decided to call round to Aislinn. He hadn’t given her any notice, but that wasn’t supposed to matter: she was supposed to be available whenever he wanted her. He got there sometime after seven-forty, when Rory left the laneway to go to Tesco. McCann went over the wall and in the back door, same as usual.’
Breslin’s nodding away, giving me a wide-eyed stare of disbelief: isn’t this the same story he told us? ‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘This is where it gets good. He found Aislinn all dressed up and cooking dinner, and he didn’t get the welcome he was expecting: she obviously didn’t want him there. McCann went out into the sitting room to see what was going on, and he found the table all set for a romantic dinner that he knew bloody well didn’t involve him.’
‘By that point,’ Steve says, ‘his whole life was hanging on Aislinn Murray. He was getting ready to leave his wife, his kids—’
‘I’m guessing Breslin knew that already,’ I say. Breslin rolls his eyes to the ceiling.
‘McCann had ripped up what he thought was going to be the rest of his life,’ Steve says, ‘thrown it away, and rewritten it from scratch around Aislinn.’
‘Gobshite,’ I say, aside to Steve, and see the flash of anger in Breslin’s eye.
Steve says, ‘And she set it on fire.’
‘I wonder how much she told him,’ I say.
‘Not the whole story, anyway. Not the bit about her da. You saw his face when we brought that out. Genuine shock.’
‘Ah, yeah. She never got that far. But I’d say she made it pretty clear that her and McCann were done, and he needed to get the hell out, rapid, so she could bang her new fella in peace.’
‘Ouch,’ Steve says, wincing. ‘No wonder he lost the head.’
‘Anyone would. Anyone. I would.’
‘Most people would lose it a lot worse than that. One second out of cont
rol, one punch? That’s nothing. No way he could guess it would end like this.’
Breslin’s still leaning back with his arms folded, watching us under his eyelids, with a wry smile twisting one corner of his mouth. ‘It’s a cute story. So this was just a silly little manslaughter, no big deal, and Mac should own up and take his slap on the wrist like a good boy?’
I say, ‘What do you think he should do? Keep his mouth shut, go back to the squad and his missus like nothing ever happened?’
‘I do, actually. Because your cute story falls apart the second I start looking at it like an actual detective. Psychologically, it makes bugger-all sense, and while I don’t normally give too many fucks about the psychological stuff, in this case you’ve got literally nothing else, so I figure it’s worth a bit of attention. First off’ – he raises a finger – ‘why would Rory come as some big shock to Mac? Enough of a shock to make him punch a woman in the face, hard enough to kill her? Mac wasn’t in love with Aislinn. If you don’t believe that, there’s the fact that he had told Aislinn she was welcome to see other people – witness the fact that she invited Rory to her place, where she knew Mac might show up any time, rather than going over to his. If you don’t believe that, you’ve got Lucy’s evidence that Mac had access to Aislinn’s phone, specifically because he wanted to check her texts. That phone is packed with weeks’ worth of texts to and from Rory, including ones setting up that dinner date. And you’re telling me Rory would’ve shocked Mac right out of his mind?’
I say, ‘By the time Rory came on the scene, McCann wasn’t reading Aislinn’s texts any more. Too embarrassed, plus he hadn’t found anything worth reading.’
‘Yeah, I saw you humiliate him over that. You got him good there, guys. Well done.’ Breslin throws us a few slow claps. ‘But if Mac had cared that much about whether Aislinn had another guy on the side, I’m thinking he would have managed to overcome a bit of embarrassment and check her texts. Whether he felt like admitting it to you two or not.’