Tana French - The Trespasser

‘Maybe he genuinely did,’ Steve says, examining McCann critically. ‘Hormones, man. Scramble the brain.’

‘Ah, he wondered,’ I say. ‘He wondered all the time. He hated himself for doing it, tried to stop – didn’t you, McCann? But he couldn’t. You know what I think? I think, deep down, he knew.’

McCann’s lip lifts. ‘You think I don’t know what you’re at? You’ve got some nerve, trying this shite on me. Go play with Rory Fallon some more. Get Bres to show you how it’s done. See if you can learn something.’ He shoves his chair back from the table. ‘I’m done here.’

Steve takes the Des Murray family pic out of his suit pocket and lays it on the table. ‘Do you recognise any of these people?’ he asks.

McCann leans over and whips it up, ready to toss it back at Steve after one glance, but the photo catches him. He holds it between his fingertips and we watch his face, held to stillness with all his will, as he recognises Evelyn, then Des, and fumbles for what the hell they have to do with this. As that chubby little girl and her tentative smile start to ring a bell. We watch the tremor run through his mind, coming from deep inside the foundations, as he finally begins to understand.

Steve puts a finger on Desmond Murray. He says, ‘Can you identify this man?’

McCann doesn’t hear him.

I lean in and tap the photo. ‘McCann. Who’s this?’

McCann blinks. He says thickly, like his mind’s too taken up to work his mouth right, ‘Name’s Desmond Murray.’

‘How do you know him?’

‘You already know.’

‘We want to hear it from you.’

‘He went missing. A long time back. I worked the case.’

‘And this?’ I move my finger to Evelyn Murray. ‘Who’s this?’

‘The wife. Evelyn.’

‘And this?’

My finger’s on Aislinn. Steve’s leaning across the table beside me, the two of us close in McCann’s face, watching every twitch. There’s a long silence before McCann says, ‘That’s the daughter.’

‘Her name.’

One breath. ‘Aislinn.’

A second of silence, while that falls through the air.

‘You seriously didn’t remember her?’ Steve asks, incredulous. ‘I know she’d grown up and all, but her face didn’t even ring a bell? Her name? Nothing?’

After a moment McCann’s head moves, side to side.

I say, ‘She remembered you.’

He can’t stop shaking his head.

‘That’s why she picked you out in Horgan’s,’ I say. ‘Not because she was a badge bunny and you were a D. Because she wanted to know what happened to her da.’

‘I wondered if maybe it started out as curiosity,’ Steve says, ‘or some fucked-up way of getting closer to her da’ – that gets one sharp flicker of a wince, at the corner of McCann’s mouth – ‘and then, as she got to know you, it turned real.’

I snort. ‘Hey,’ Steve says, ‘stranger things have happened. Is that what you’re wondering, too?’

McCann lifts his head to look at Steve for a second. The flash of hope is terrible.

I pick up my phone again and swipe, methodically, feeling McCann fighting not to look, till I get to Aislinn’s little fairy tale that she left for Lucy. ‘Have a read of this,’ I say, and pass it to McCann.

His eyes close once, for a second, as he reads. When he finishes, he reaches out and puts the phone on the table in slow motion, like a drunk. He doesn’t look at us.

‘Recognise the handwriting?’ I ask.

Nod.

‘Whose is it?’

After a second: ‘Aislinn.’

‘Yeah. And the bad guy in the story? The one who fucked up her life, and now she’s planning on fucking up his? You know who that is, right?’

McCann says nothing. I can hear his breath, heavy puffs through his nose, in the thick overheated air.

When we know he’s not going to answer, I say, ‘That’s you, McCann. Do you get that?’

Nothing. His hands are over the photo, covering it, so he doesn’t have to see.

I lean in closer, tap the table in front of him. ‘Pay attention to this part. I want you to be very clear on exactly why all this happened.’

One flicker of his eyelids. He’s got blurry inklings, but not enough. He’s desperate to hear the rest.

‘Remember talking to Aislinn about her da’s case?’

McCann says, ‘I never named names.’

I laugh out loud. Out of all the things he could be worrying about, he picks that; God forbid we should think he was unprofessional. ‘You didn’t need to. She knew exactly who you were talking about; she’s the one who steered the conversation there to begin with. Do you remember what you told her?’

He shakes his head, trying to think. ‘How we tracked him all the way to England. How we found him with the bit on the… Aislinn never, she never said a word. Never batted an eyelid. Just kept listening, nodding…’

‘Aislinn was good,’ I say. ‘Aislinn was a whole lot better at this than you realised. Do you remember telling her how you talked to her da? How he asked you to tell Aislinn and her ma he was OK, and you decided to say nothing?’

McCann’s eyes have come up to me. ‘You didn’t meet Evelyn Murray. Delicate little thing, the shyest, sweetest – like someone out of an old book, the one who’d die at the end of consumption or one of them things, just because the world was too much for her. Made of glass, Evelyn was.’ To the spreading grin on my face: ‘Fuck you. I wasn’t shagging her. Never laid a finger on her, never would’ve.’

‘Whatever,’ I say. ‘If you cared that much about her, why not pass on the message?’

‘Because finding out her man had run off with a younger model, that would’ve killed her. Smashed her to bits. I wasn’t going to do that to her.’

I say, ‘But you had no problem taking over the rest of her life. Everything she ever did after you walked in her door, every thought that ever went through her head, it had your fingerprints all over it. And you knew it would.’

I’m leaning in, across the table that’s specially chosen to be narrow enough that I can get close, see every coarse hair of this fucker’s stubble, I can smell the tea on his breath and the stale smoke on his clothes and the acrid reek of rage and terror in his sweat, I’m close enough to draw blood a dozen ways. ‘Be honest with yourself, McCann: that’s why you kept your mouth shut. Isn’t it? You couldn’t have Evelyn, but you loved the thought that you owned the rest of her life. Every time she woke up wondering whether Des would walk in the door today, every time she leaped when the phone rang, every night she dreamed he was dead, she belonged to you. Did you think about that sometimes, when your wife was a bitch and you were lying beside her daydreaming about sweet little Evelyn? Did it turn you on, knowing that whatever she was doing at that second, whatever she was thinking, you’d made her do it?’

McCann’s staring at me, those bloodshot blue eyes. I’ve never seen hate like this before, not coming my way. I’ve only ever seen hate this intimate between couples, families. I’ve put my finger right between his ribs, onto his deepest hidden places. I’ve got him.

He says, low and clenched and right into my face, ‘Fuck you to hell. It was for her own sake. You know what her man said about her? For his excuse? Said she’d been suffocating the life out of him for ten years. Said he was going mental, another few months in that house would’ve sent him off his chomp. You think I should’ve told her that? Let that own the rest of her life, instead? She wasn’t the kind who could throw that off, move on. It would’ve wrecked her. At least my way let her keep some self-respect, remember her marriage the way she thought it had been. Gave her a chance.’