Tana French - The Trespasser

‘No better man,’ Steve says, to his phone. ‘We could hardly think straight, we were that pressurised. Amn’t I right, Conway?’

Crowley shoots him a suspicious look. ‘And then, when the man claiming to be your father rang me-’

I say, ‘That’s why you were falling over yourself to believe he was actually my da. Here I thought it was just because the idea of shoving your greasy fingers into my private life gave you such a hard-on, you couldn’t think straight. But you were figuring, if this guy was legit, then siccing him on me would turn up the pressure another notch. And you’d get a pat on the head and a nice treat from your handler. Am I right?’

Crowley prisses up his mouth. ‘The tone you’re taking is inappropriate and it’s deliberately inflammatory. I’m under no obligation to-’

‘You can stick my tone up your hole. You rang Breslin and drooled down the phone to him about how you could fuck up my personal life till my head was so wrecked, I’d sign off on anything; all you needed was my home address. And he couldn’t wait to hand it over. Am I missing anything out?’

He has his arms folded and he’s refusing to look at me, to show me that my behaviour is unacceptable. ‘If you already know everything, why ask me?’

‘Oh, but I don’t know everything, not yet. Roche’s been siccing you on my cases, Breslin did it the once. Who else?’

He shakes his head. ‘That’s all.’

‘Crowley,’ I say, warning. ‘You don’t get to buy your way out of this by throwing me two names. Spill, or the deal’s off.’

Crowley does what’s meant to be wounded nobility, but comes out looking like indigestion. ‘I actually know when transparency is important, Detective Conway – and there are plenty of Guards who can’t say that. Other detectives do contact me – there actually are some who care about the public’s right to know – but not about your cases.’

I can’t tell what sends up the sudden wild spurt of anger: the chance that he’s lying, or the chance that he’s telling the truth. I go in close across the table and I say, right into his face, ‘Don’t you fuck with me. Whoever you’re skipping, I will find out, d’you get me? And you’ll spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder and wishing you’d gone for a career cleaning the jacks in Supermac’s.’

‘I’m not! I’m not skipping anyone. Detective Roche, and this time Detective Breslin. That’s it.’ It’s the fear on Crowley’s face that convinces me. He adds, bitchily, ‘I’m sure you think you’re interesting enough to deserve a mass conspiracy, but apparently not everyone agrees.’

My head feels strange, weightless. All this time I’ve been thinking the whole squad’s out for my blood, the squad room is a curtain swelling with the enemy army behind it, I’m the lone fighter lifting her sword and knowing she’s going down. Except every time I pull back the curtain, all I find is the same one wanker.

The lads throwing slaggings my way: I took it for granted the edges were sharpened deliberately and smeared with poison, carefully constructed to slice till I dropped. It never occurred to me that it was just slagging, with a bit of extra edge because I don’t get on with most of them and because – ever since that first arse-slap off Roche, half of them watching, none of them saying a word – I haven’t tried. Fleas, hinting to see whether I fancied coming back to Undercover: I assumed it was because he knew I was crashing and burning in Murder, I never once thought it could be just that we were good together and he misses me. Steve, spinning his what-ifs and watching them whirl, considering all their glinting angles: I thought, for a few hours in there I actually believed, he was using them to lure me over a cliff-edge so he could watch me go splat and wave bye-bye from the top. I’m glad my skin means him and Crowley won’t see the blush.

I was doing exactly the same thing as Aislinn: getting lost so deep inside the story in my head, I couldn’t see past its walls to the outside world. I feel those walls shift and start to waver, with a rumble that shakes my bones from the inside out. I feel my face naked to the ice-flavoured air that pours through the cracks and keeps coming. A great shiver is building in my back.

Crowley and Steve are both watching me, waiting to see if I’m gonna let Crowley off the hook. Steve’s game is yelping for attention.

‘OK,’ I say. I want to walk out, but I’m not done here. I shove everything else to the back of my mind. ‘OK. We’ll go with that.’

Crowley says – the fear’s vanished; he’s straight back into hyena mode – ‘You mentioned having a bit of news for me.’

‘Oh yeah,’ I say. My focus is back; this is gonna be fun. ‘Have I got a scoop for you. You’re gonna love this.’

Crowley whips out his voice recorder, but I shake my head. ‘Nah. This is non-attributable. It comes from sources close to the investigation. Got it?’ ‘Sources close to the investigation’ means cops. I don’t want McCann and Breslin thinking Lucy’s been talking.

He gets pouty, but I sit back and have a watch of Steve jabbing manically at his phone screen. In the end Crowley sighs and puts the recorder away. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Good man,’ I say, sitting up again. ‘Get a load of this. Aislinn Murray, right?’ Crowley nods, filling up with drool, hoping I’m about to tell him she was raped in creative ways. ‘She was having an affair. With a married guy.’

Crowley’s only delighted to settle for that. He does a man-of-the-world head-shake. ‘I knew she was too good to be true. Knew it. Girls who look like that, my God, they think they can get away with anything. Sometimes – oops, so sorry, Your Highness! – it doesn’t work out like that.’

He’s already rewriting the story in his head, whizzing through his best euphemisms for ‘homewrecking nympho who got what she deserved’. Steve says, ‘It gets better. Guess what her fella does for a living.’

‘Hmmm.’ Crowley pinches his chin and thinks. ‘Well. Obviously a girl like that would have liked money. But I’d hazard a guess that she was even more aroused by power. Would I be right?’

Me and Steve are well impressed. ‘How come you’re not doing our job?’ Steve wants to know. ‘We could do with that kind of smarts on the squad.’

‘Ah, well, not everyone’s the type who can work for The Man, Detective Moran. I think we must be talking about a politician. Let me see…’ Crowley steeples his fingers against his lips. He’s got the whole story rolling out in his head, ready for ink. ‘Aislinn’s job wouldn’t have taken her into those circles, so they must have met socially, meaning he’s young enough to be out and about-’

‘Even better than that,’ I say. I have a quick glance around the pub, lean across the table and head-beckon Crowley in. When him and his patchouli reek get close enough for a whisper: ‘He’s a cop.’

‘Even better,’ Steve says, ditching his phone and leaning in beside me. ‘He’s a detective.’

‘Even better,’ I say. ‘He’s a Murder detective.’

‘Not me,’ Steve adds. ‘I’m single. Thank Jaysus.’

We both sit back and smile big wide smiles at Crowley.

He stares at us, sticky little mind racing while he tries to work out our angle and whether we’re bullshitting him. ‘I can’t run that,’ he says.

I say, ‘You’re going to run it.’

‘I can’t. I’ll be sued. The Courier will be sued.’

‘Not if you don’t name names,’ Steve reassures him. ‘There’s two dozen of us on the squad, all guys except Conway here, and most of them are married. That’s, what, sixteen or seventeen people it could be? You’re safe as houses.’