Tana French: The Trespasser

‘I have contacts who would be furious. I’m not going to sabotage my career.’

‘Everyone on Murder already hates you, man,’ Steve points out, going back to his game. ‘Except Roche and Breslin, and just to ease your mind, it’s not them. So it’s not like you’re going to burn any bridges.’

‘You’ll be a hero,’ I say. ‘Ireland’s bravest investigative journalist, daring to take on The Man and strike a blow for truth and transparency, never even thinking about the risk to himself. It’s gonna be great.’

‘Think how much hoop you’ll get,’ Steve says. Crowley throws him a look of disdain.

I say, ‘The story runs tomorrow. A married detective, not involved in investigating Aislinn Murray’s murder but in a position very close to that investigation, was having an affair with her. If we need you to throw anything else in there at some stage, we’ll let you know.’

And the brass will have no choice: there’ll be an internal investigation. It won’t find enough for charges, any more than we did, but at least McCann won’t be prancing back to his marriage and his lifetime Murder billet like none of this ever happened. Aislinn’s getting the job done in the end. I wonder if some part of her realised, in dark glints during the long nights when she couldn’t sleep for planning, that this was the only way it could go down.

I ask, ‘Is that all clear?’

Crowley’s shaking his head, but it’s at us and our crudeness and our general inferiority as human beings; we all know he’s gonna do it. ‘Great,’ I say. I shove my stool back and stand up; Steve kills his game. ‘See you round.’ And we leave Crowley and SARTRE to get to work on his brand-new scoop.

Outside, the air is mild enough to trick you into turning your face to it, looking for warmth. It’s only five o’clock, but it’s dark and the streets are starting to shift into their evening buzz, clumps of smokers laughing outside the pubs, girls hurrying home swinging shopping bags to get ready for the night out. ‘I want to ask you something,’ I say to Steve. ‘Do you know who pissed in my locker, that time?’

I never told him about that, but he doesn’t pretend it’s news. He watches me steadily, hands in his overcoat pockets. ‘Not for definite. No one’s going to talk about that around me.’

‘Breslin said-’ Breslin said of course Steve would’ve heard the stories, of course Steve would’ve told me if he’d been on my side. Breslin said a load of stuff. I shut my trap.

Steve hears the rest anyway. He says matter-of-factly, ‘Everyone knows I got here because you put in a word for me. They see us working together. No one’s going to try messing with that. They’re not thick.’

It catches me with a warmth that almost hurts. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘No.’

Steve says, ‘From what I’ve walked in on, but, the locker was Roche.’

‘How about the poster with my head Photoshopped onto the gash pic?’

‘Yeah. Roche.’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘OK.’ I turn in a circle, looking up at the city lights painting the clouds a tricky grey-gold. ‘All the other shite? Not the small stuff. The real shite.’

‘Like I said: I wouldn’t know. But I’ve never heard anything to say anyone else was in on it.’

I say, ‘You never told me.’

That gets a flick of one corner of his mouth. ‘’Cause you would’ve listened, yeah?’

Steve hanging on to his precious gangster story for dear life, building it bigger and fancier and twirlier, waving his arms for me to look. Here I thought he was trying to cheer me up so I wouldn’t get him in the lads’ bad books. All along he was hoping, if he could just come up with a good enough alternative, maybe he could snap me out of convincing myself the whole case – the whole squad – was one great big conspiracy to shaft me. I can’t decide which of us is the bigger spa.

‘Huh,’ I say. The air smells tasty and restless, all those places you could spend your evening, all the things waiting to happen inside those beckoning open doors. ‘Would you look at that.’

‘What?’

‘I just wish I’d copped earlier. Is all.’

Steve waits.

I say, ‘We need to talk to the gaffer.’

Me and Steve, back in the gaffer’s office. It’s down the end of a corridor; with the click of the door, the silence closes around us and we’re a thousand miles from the rest of the squad. The layers of tat and clutter close in, too: spider plant, golf trophies, framed crap, stacks of pointless old files, and there’s a brand-new snow globe holding down a heap of paper on the desk, souvenir of some grandkid’s holiday. In the middle of it all, O’Kelly, taking off his reading glasses to look at us.

He says, ‘Breslin was in. He says you’ve hit a wall with the Aislinn Murray case; time to take a step back, hope ye catch a break somewhere down the road.’

He gets it bang on, gruff and not exactly delighted with us, but holding back from the bollocking because Breslin told him we’ve done a good job. For a second there I could almost believe it’s real, and all the rest is our imagination. The rush of fury pulls a sharp breath into me.

The gaffer watches us.

I say, ‘McCann killed Aislinn Murray.’

Not one muscle of O’Kelly changes. He says, ‘Sit down.’

We turn the spare chairs towards his desk and sit. The crisp whirl and click of Steve placing his chair is full up tight with that same fury.

‘Let’s hear it.’

We tell him what happened, while the darkness thickens at the window. We keep it very clear and very cold, no commentary, just fact stacked neatly on top of fact, the way the gaffer likes his reports. He picks up the shitty snow globe and turns it from angle to angle between his fingers, watching the shavings of plastic snow tumble, and listens.

When we’re done he says, still inspecting the snow globe, ‘How much of that can you prove?’

‘Not enough to put him away,’ Steve says. He’s barely holding down the savage edge of sarcasm: Don’t be worrying, it’s all grand . ‘Not even enough for a charge.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

‘McCann’s connection to the old case is on file,’ I say. The anger’s slicing through my voice, too, and I’m not even trying to hide it. ‘Gary O’Rourke and I can both confirm that Aislinn was trying to track down the story on her father. The affair’s solid: we’ve got forensics and the best mate’s statement, plus McCann admitted it. And we’ve got the best mate’s evidence that Aislinn was only stringing him along. When it comes to Saturday evening, we’ve got nothing but Rory Fallon’s statement about seeing McCann, which is worth bugger-all. McCann’s saying nothing. Breslin says McCann found her dead, but no one’s going to confirm that on record.’

O’Kelly’s eyes flick up to me. ‘Breslin said that.’

‘An hour ago.’

He swivels his chair, with a long low creak, to the window. He could be staring out over the courtyard, at the slope of cobblestones and the proud high-windowed rise of the building opposite, the old solid shapes he has to know by heart; only for the darkness.

Steve says, like it’s punched its way out of him, ‘He rang you Sunday morning. Before you gave us the case.’

One flicker of the gaffer’s eyelids. Except for that, we could think he didn’t hear.

‘We were a gift,’ I say. ‘The perfect stooges. Moran’s a newbie, Conway’s fighting a bad rep. Easy to point them in the wrong direction; if they come up with something you don’t like, easy to twist their arms, make them back off and shut their gobs. Worst comes to worst, easy to smear them bad enough that no one’ll listen to a word they say.’