Tana French - The Trespasser

We find a bench that doesn’t smell like anyone’s pissed on it recently. I turn up my coat collar and get half my coffee down me in one swig. ‘You were right. Talking to Lucy, that was worth doing.’

‘I think so, yeah. It could still be Rory Fallon-’

I give Steve the eyeball. ‘It is. Almost definitely, it is.’

Steve wavers his head noncommittally. He’s unfolding paper napkins to spread over the front of his overcoat – these are attack sandwiches, and Steve takes his work clothes very seriously. ‘Maybe. But the rest of that stuff’s worth knowing, either way.’

I’m feeling better already; the coffee zapped my eyelids open like something out of a cartoon. ‘At least we know why Aislinn’s gaff looked like Working Girl Barbie Playhouse. And why Aislinn looked like Dream Date Barbie. The woman hadn’t got a clue; she was putting together who she was meant to be out of magazines.’

Steve says, ‘Someone like that, she’s vulnerable. Really vulnerable.’

‘No shit. Rory could be a full-on psychopath with more red flags than the Chinese embassy, and as long as he wore the right labels and helped her put her coat on, she’d still have invited him over for dinner on Date Three. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do.’

‘Lucy’s not clueless,’ Steve points out. ‘If he was covered in red flags, she’d’ve spotted them.’

‘Speaking of,’ I say. The breakfast roll is good stuff, proper thick rashers, grease and egg yolk going everywhere; I can feel my energy creeping back up. ‘What’d you think of Lucy?’

‘Smart. Scared.’ Steve has finished arranging his bib. He props his coffee cup on the bench and starts peeling back his sandwich wrapper. ‘She’s keeping something back.’

‘She’s keeping back plenty. And that doesn’t make sense. Forget all that hair-splitting crap about old-mates-not-best-mates-no-not-that-kind-of-mates; she cared about Aislinn, a lot. So what the hell? Does she not want the guy caught?’

‘You think she knows more about Aislinn’s married fella than she’s letting on?’

‘I think we’ve only got Lucy’s word for it that this married fella even exists.’ We’re keeping our voices down; Tesco guy and buggy mammy look like they’ve barely noticed we’re here, but you never know. ‘She was dead careful not to give us anything we could disprove, you notice that? No name, no description, no dates, no place where they might’ve met, nothing.’

Steve has his roll opened up across his lap and is carefully decorating it with brown sauce. ‘You figure she made him up on the spot? Why, but?’

I say, ‘She cares way too much whether Rory’s our prime suspect. It’s not just that she wants to know who did this to her mate; she wants to know whether we’re looking at Rory, specifically.’

‘Yeah.’ Steve squirts the last of the brown sauce into his mouth and tosses the packet into a bin by the bench. ‘I couldn’t figure out whether she was hoping it was yes or no, though. She was straight in there giving us Rory’s name, telling us he was due at Aislinn’s last night; but after that…’

‘Right. Giving us his name and the appointment was no big deal: she had to know we had that already, or would any minute. And after that, it was all about what a good guy he was, how she never got any kind of threat vibe off him, how happy Aislinn was with him. Could be all true; she could be trying to steer us away from him because she genuinely doesn’t think it’s him, doesn’t want us wasting our time while the real guy gets away. But I’m wondering if her feelings for Rory were as nonexistent as she’s claiming.’

Steve’s eyebrows go up. ‘“I thought he was kind of boring, but Ash was obviously seeing something I missed…” ’

‘Yeah, we’ve only got Lucy’s word for that, too. For all we know, she was just as into Rory as Aislinn was. For all we know, she was actually seeing him behind Aislinn’s back.’

‘We just said: she cared about Aislinn. A lot.’

‘And for some reason, she’s not happy admitting that. Could be guilt.’ I get more coffee into me. ‘Like she said herself, that love-triangle shite can go way wrong.’

‘She’s got an alibi,’ Steve points out.

‘Yeah, plus the shock was genuine. Lucy’s not our woman. But her alibi means she can’t give Rory an alibi. So if she wants him off the hook, for whatever reason, the only thing she can do is come up with some mysterious other guy for us to chase.’

Steve chews and thinks. ‘We’ll cross-check Lucy’s and Rory’s numbers, Facebook accounts, e-mails, see if they’ve been in touch. Not that it proves anything if they haven’t; Lucy could still be into him.’

‘Yeah.’ The dinosaur kid is hovering, balancing on his scooter and eyeing our rolls. I give him a hairy look till he backs off. ‘And we need to go through Aislinn’s stuff ASAP, see if we find any evidence that this other fella existed. If he did, there’s gonna be something. Texts, calls, e-mails.’

Steve examines his breakfast roll, picking an angle. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘Maybe.’

‘What’re you on about, “maybe”? There’s no such thing as invisible, not any more. If he didn’t leave tracks, it’s because he wasn’t there.’

‘Tell you what I was thinking,’ Steve says. ‘Just an idea, now. But I was wondering: what if Aislinn’s other fella was a crim? A gangster, like?’

Fried egg nearly goes down my nose. ‘Jesus, Moran. How desperate are you to make this one interesting? Shame they got Whitey Bulger, or you could’ve told yourself it was him.’

‘Yeah yeah yeah. Think about it. It explains why Lucy doesn’t want us going after Rory: she’s positive it’s the other guy, doesn’t want us heading the wrong way. It explains why she figured straightaway we were there about Aislinn. It explains why she texted her to be careful, last night: if Aislinn was two-timing a crim, she’d want to be bloody careful about inviting some new fella around for dinner-’

I still have my mouth open to slag strips off him when it sinks in: Little Mr Optimist is right. It would fit.

‘Jesus,’ I say. That pulse is hammering right through me, practically lifting me off the bench. Forget coffee; this job, when it’s right, this job is the hit that speed freaks throw their lives away hunting. ‘And it’d explain why Lucy’s keeping stuff back. She wants us to get him, but the last thing she wants is to be up on the stand with some gangster watching her explain how she’s the one who dobbed him in. So she throws the idea out there for us to chase down, but she makes a big deal about how she doesn’t know the other guy’s name, doesn’t know anything about him, can’t even swear he exists, her and Aislinn weren’t actually that close. Fair play to you, Steo. It works.’

‘Not just a pretty face,’ Steve says, through roll, giving me a thumbs-up. When he’s swallowed: ‘And if it was a gangster, he might’ve been careful not to leave a trail. No texts, calls, none of that.’

‘Specially if he was a married gangster. Half of them are married to each other’s sisters, cousins, whatever. Playing offside could get you kneecapped.’ I’ve got my second wind now, all right. If this pans out, the gaffer is gonna shit a hedgehog; this is about as far from routine as a lovers’ tiff can get. ‘Jesus. It actually plays.’

‘It’d explain why the call came in to Stoneybatter station, too. Most civilians, if they want an ambulance, they’ll just ring 999-’

‘But a crim, or a crim’s mate, he’s gonna know that 999 calls are recorded. And he’s not gonna want his voice on tape, where we can identify it – specially if he’s already known to us. So he rings the local station instead.’