Tana French - The Trespasser

O’Kelly ought to reef me out of it, for talking to my gaffer like that. He doesn’t even turn. The desk lamp slides gold light down the brass desk plaque saying DET. SUPT. G. O’KELLY.

After a long time he says, ‘Breslin said it was a mate of his.’

Neither of us answers.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out delicately, the way you do when you’re dying of a cough, afraid if you do it wrong you might explode. ‘Five in the morning, he rang me. He said his friend, one of his best friends, he had called round to his girlfriend that night. Found her in her sitting room unconscious, bet up. Pretty sure another boyfriend did it. I said, “What are you dragging me out of my bed for? Call it in, get the uniforms and the paramedics over there, see you in the morning.” Breslin said he was going to call it in as soon as we hung up. But then he said to me, “My friend’s got a wife and kids. He can’t be linked to this, gaffer. It’ll wreck his life. We need to keep him out of it.” ’

O’Kelly lets out a small, humourless snort of laughter. ‘I said don’t be giving me that shite about my friend ; we all know what that means. But Breslin said no. He swore up and down: it’s not me, gaffer. You know me, I don’t step out on my missus. I’ll put you on to her, she can tell you I’ve been with her and the kids all weekend… A lie that size, from a fella I know the way I know Breslin, I wouldn’t have missed it. I believed him.’

He moves; the chair creaks sharply. ‘I said, “Your mate says he didn’t put a finger on her, just walked in and found the damage done. Do you believe him?” And Breslin said he did, yeah. Hundred per cent. Two hundred. A thousand. He wasn’t lying then, either. And Breslin’s no eejit. He’s had plenty of practice spotting bullshit stories.’

There’s a second of silence, while we all let that lie there.

‘I asked him, “Then what are you getting into hysterics about? If your friend did nothing and saw nothing, there’s no reason his name should ever come into this. The bird’ll wake up and tell the uniforms who gave her the slaps, they’ll pull the fella in, she’ll refuse to press charges, everyone’ll go home; rinse and repeat a month or two down the line. Your mate’s grand. I hope it scared him shitless enough that he’ll keep it in his trousers from now on.” ’

The cough breaks through. We wait while O’Kelly pulls a tissue out of his pocket and presses it to his mouth, makes ferocious revving noises to clear his throat.

He says, ‘But Breslin was worried. He said his mate hadn’t checked to see was the girl breathing. Too shaken up, too afraid of being snared; he’d just legged it out of there and rung Breslin. They had no way of knowing how long she’d been lying there. If she was dead, then his mate was fucked. He’d be dragged in, dragged through the muck, lose everything. All because he’d stuck his mickey in the wrong hole.’

The prickle of alert lifts Steve’s head at the same moment as mine. Breslin told us McCann checked and Aislinn was dead, meaning he would have done no good by calling it in, so he wasn’t a bad guy for leaving her bleeding on the floor. Both versions are bullshit anyway, but I’d love to know why he served O’Kelly a different flavour from us.

O’Kelly either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t want to. ‘I said, “You want something. What is it?” Breslin said, “If she’s dead, I need to be on the case. I’m not asking to be in charge. I just want to be around, so I can see what’s going on, make sure my mate doesn’t get dragged in if there’s no need. If it’s all cut and dried, there’s no reason to ruin his life. If he’s needed, I’ll make sure he comes forward. I swear.” He said, “I’ve got thirteen years of credit, gaffer. I’m calling it in now.” ’

The corner of O’Kelly’s mouth twists as he remembers. ‘Breslin’s not the genius he thinks he is, but he’s a good man. He’s never let me down. Never asked me for a favour bigger than a plum slot for his holidays. If he wanted to cash in his chips on this one…’ His shoulders lift, fall again heavily. ‘In the end I said all right. I told him to watch himself, and watch his mate: I was going to be all over this one, and if I got any hints that anything was off, then he was gone and his pal was coming in for the chats. He said no problem. No problem at all. He told me how much he appreciated it, and how much he owed me, and a bit more arse-licking that I didn’t take much notice of. And then he went off to call it in.’

Another story. None of the rest were true straight through, not one. Victims, witnesses, killers, Ds, all frantically spinning stories to keep the world the way they want it, dragging them over our heads, stuffing them down our throats; and now our gaffer.

I say – I haven’t talked in so long that my voice comes out rough and patchy, dried out by the heating – ‘You knew who the mate was.’

O’Kelly’s eyes move to my face. They stay there like I make him too tired to look away. ‘You tell me, Conway. When you started smelling something rotten, did you straightaway think, “Ah, I know, must’ve been one of my own squad”?’

The weight of his voice – my own squad – falls on me like the swaying weight of deep water. Twenty-eight years, O’Kelly’s been on Murder; since me and Steve were sticky-faced kids pointing finger-guns at our pals. When he says my own squad , it means things I used to dream I’d understand someday.

I say, ‘No.’

‘And when you should’ve known. Did you think it then?’

‘No.’

‘No.’ His head turns back to the window. ‘Nor did I. But I wondered. I didn’t like that; I thought less of myself for it, still do. But there it was. That’s why I gave you the case: I needed to know. And ye were the only ones who wouldn’t drop it like a hot potato if Breslin wanted you to.’

And we waded right in and did his dirty work for him. Maybe he expects us to be grateful for the vote of confidence. I say, ‘Now you know.’

‘You’re positive. You’d bet your lives on it.’

Steve says, ‘He did it.’

O’Kelly nods a few times. ‘Right,’ he says quietly, to himself, not to us. ‘Right.’

I wait for it. Just for kicks, I try to guess which he’ll whip out first: the fatherly wisdom, the squad loyalty, the man-to-man chat, the guilt trip, the bribes, the threats. I hope Steve’s got no plans for this evening, because it could take a while before it sinks into the gaffer’s head that he’s getting nowhere. While I’m at it, I try to decide whether we should tell him it’s already too late, so we can enjoy the look on the bollix’s face, or whether we should play it safe and let him find out in the morning, along with everyone else, when the Courier comes out.

He swivels his chair to his desk and picks up the phone. His finger on the buttons is clumsier than it should be; his knuckles are swollen stiff. When someone answers, he says, ‘McCann. I need you in my office.’ And hangs up.

His eyes fall on us for a moment, in passing. ‘Ye can stay,’ he says. ‘As long as you act like adults. You get bitchy, you’re out.’ Then he goes back to looking out the window, at whatever it is he sees out there.

Me and Steve glance at each other just once. Steve’s face is quick and wary, all the angles sharpened. He doesn’t have a handle on where this is going either, and he doesn’t like that any more than I do. We swap a tiny nod: Stay steady. Then we sit still, listening to the faint singing hiss of the radiators and the slow rasp of O’Kelly’s breathing, and we wait for McCann to come.

The knock at the door snaps the silence. ‘Come,’ O’Kelly says, turning his chair, and there’s McCann in the doorway, jacket sagging, eyes sunk deep.