Tana French - The Trespasser

‘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 plan 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.