Tana French - The Trespasser

I shake my head.

‘Let’s all thank God for small mercies,’ Breslin says. He brings the videotape down on his palm with a flat rattle. ‘So. The last hour or so never happened. You’ll get rid of those photo arrays and take a nice appropriate statement from Lucy – I’m sure you can figure out a way to do that. I’ll explain to the gaffer that you’ve been doing a fine job, but we’re not getting enough for a charge that’ll hold up, so we’ve decided to back-burner Rory Fallon for now, keep working the forensics and electronics, and hope something pops up down the road.’ Or, more like, reassure the gaffer that he’s got me and Steve under control, like he promised to all along. I can hardly stand to look at his face. ‘The gaffer’ll hold off the media till they find something else to gnaw on. We’ll keep an eye on Rory, make sure his near miss keeps him scared straight. And we’ll all live happily ever after.’ Breslin brings the tape down on his palm again. ‘Does that sound like a plan?’

After a moment I say, ‘Yeah.’

‘Moran?’

Steve takes a breath. ‘Yeah.’

‘It’s not going to run into any glitches along the way. Am I right?’

I say, ‘No glitches.’

‘Good.’ Breslin tucks the tape inside his jacket and heads for the door. With his hand on the handle, he turns for an exit line.

‘It might be a while before you get this,’ he says, ‘but you two owe me big-time. I’m sure it doesn’t feel like it right now. But a few years down the road, when Rory Fallon gets locked and spills his guts to his new girlfriend, and you’re still here to make the collar, you’re going to realise I’m the best thing that ever happened to you. I’ll take my thank-yous then. If they come with a nice bottle of bourbon thrown in, it won’t go to waste.’

Before either of us can come up with a sensible response to that steaming heap, he gives us a nod and he’s gone, bang of the door and fast firm strides down the corridor, off to tell McCann that everything’s gonna be just fine.

After a few moments Steve bends to pick up the Murray family photo. He says, ‘I thought we had him there. McCann. When we brought this out. I really thought…’

‘Yeah, I did too. It was good, that. It should’ve worked.’ I let myself have five seconds to think about just how good that interview was; how good we were together, me and Steve. How it felt like we could read each other’s mind. I give myself those five seconds to understand what I’m losing.

‘“No comment,” ’ Steve says. He tucks the photo back into his jacket pocket, carefully, like it might matter again sometime.

I say, ‘We should have seen it.’

Way back at the very beginning, when Lucy turned squirrelly about Aislinn’s secret boyfriend, we should have seen it. Us running around chasing imaginary gangsters, whipping up drama about bent cops and shushing each other about complicated suspicions, when the obvious was jumping up and down in front of us, waving its arms for attention.

‘I’m a fucking eejit for leaving that search on my computer,’ Steve says. ‘No sleep, the gaffer called us in, I got rattled-’

‘No worse than me, trying to pump Breslin and making a balls of it. Don’t worry about it.’

‘If I hadn’t started us down the whole gang road-’

I say, ‘Even if you hadn’t. I don’t think we would’ve seen it.’

Steve said it days ago: Breslin is used to being the good guy, any story that gets room in his head has to grow out of that beginning. It’s not just Breslin. All of us Ds know, certain sure, we’re the good guys. Without that to stand on, there isn’t a way through the parts of this job that are dark dripping hell. Breslin the bent cop, McCann the bent cop, those we could picture. There are cops who’ll go that way, always have been; hazard of the job. But a killer cop, one of our own transformed into the thing we spend our lives trying to bring down, that’s different. That wrenches the world inside out. Even me, and I’ve got years’ worth of reasons to know that the police aren’t always good guys: when it was there in front of my face, my eyes weren’t able to see it.

Breslin and McCann at the top of the stairs, muttering about how urgently they needed this case nailed shut: a kid could have seen why. It never came near my mind.

Maybe Breslin really did believe McCann, when he rang out of the night with a story that was just barely plausible, and not just because he needed to be the noble white knight. Maybe he believed it because when the other possibility came into his mind, the only thing his mind could do was spit it out and leap away.

‘Maybe not.’ Steve is staring blankly at the place where Breslin was. ‘Even if we had, it would’ve probably made no difference. It’s not like there’s extra evidence we could’ve got our hands on. We’d be banjaxed anyway.’

It would have made a difference, but. All the ways it would have made all the difference hang in my head, weaving together into one thick dark curtain. I haven’t got a way to put it into words: what might be gone for good behind its slow sway; what these few days might have changed, if only we’d seen.

I say, ‘I’m not done.’ I get my phone out and I start skimming through my contacts.

Steve’s eyes move to me, dark and doubtful. ‘We’re not going to get him. What Breslin said, it sucks but he’s right.’

‘I know.’

He starts to say something else, but I lift a finger: the phone’s ringing. ‘Louis Crowley,’ says Creepy Crowley suspiciously. The background noise sounds like he’s in a pub.

‘Howya,’ I say. ‘Antoinette Conway, Murder squad. I need to talk to you. Like, now. Where are you?’

I throw in a good pinch of suppressed desperation, to get him drooling, and it works. ‘Hmm,’ Crowley says. ‘I’m not sure I have the time.’

‘Come on. You won’t regret it.’

The little prick thinks he knows exactly what’s going on here, and he’s gonna wring every last drop out of it. ‘Well,’ he says, on a sigh, loving this. ‘I suppose… I’m in Grogan’s. I’ll be here for another half-hour. If you get here before I leave, I can give you a few minutes.’

‘Great,’ I say, letting the rush of gratitude slip through. ‘I- Great. I’ll be there.’ And I hang up.

‘Was that Crowley?’ Steve asks. His eyebrows are up.

‘I need to shut him down, remember? And I’ve got an idea.’ I shove the phone in my pocket, stand up and tug the creases out of my suit. ‘Come with me? I could do with backup.’

All of a sudden there’s a twitch tugging at the corner of Steve’s mouth. He says, ‘Would this idea count as a glitch in the Plan?’

‘I fucking well hope so. You coming or not?’

Steve shoves back his chair and stands up, grinning. ‘Wouldn’t miss it.’

No one is in the corridors; when we get our coats, no one’s in the locker room. The familiar run of sound comes through the squad-room door, keyboards, phone calls, bitching, the printer; in the middle of it all is that smooth power-voice of Breslin’s, raised in some punchline that gets a big laugh. Up in Incident Room C, the floaters are working away, busy little bees piling up paper that’ll go straight down to the basement. Even reception is empty; Bernadette’s on break or in the jacks. We walk out of the Murder building and no one even knows we’re gone.

Crowley’s on his own at a corner table in Grogan’s, sipping a pint of Smithwick’s and reading a bet-up paperback with SARTRE on the cover in massive letters, so everyone will get that he’s on a higher plane. He pretends he doesn’t notice us till we’re practically on top of his table. ‘Crowley,’ I say.

He does a bad fake startle and puts the book down. Steve is a surprise, but Crowley covers OK: ‘Ah,’ he says, holding out his hand and giving Steve a gracious smile, ignoring me, to put me in my place. ‘Detective Moran.’