Tana French - The Trespasser

They look at each other, shake their heads. ‘Not a lot,’ says the gym rat. ‘He opened the front curtains around ten, in his pyjamas. No other visible movement. By the time we picked him up, he’d got dressed, but no shoes, so it didn’t look like he was planning on heading out.’

‘He’d had breakfast,’ says the fat guy. ‘Coffee and a fry-up, by the smell.’

Steve catches my eye. A guy punches his girlfriend to death, goes home and snuggles into his pyjamas for a nice bit of kip, gets up in the morning and stuffs his face with egg and sausage. It could happen; Fallon could have been dazed into autopilot, or a psychopath, or setting up his defence. Or.

The room is hot, a dry edgy heat that pricks at the skin on my neck. I pull my coat off. ‘What’d you say to him?’

‘Like you told us,’ the fat one says. ‘Nothing. Just said we thought he might have some information that would help us out with an investigation, and asked him if he’d mind coming in for a chat.’

‘And he just said yeah? No hassle, no questions?’

The two of them shake their heads. ‘Accommodating guy,’ says the gym rat.

‘No shit,’ I say. Most people, if you ask them to come in to a cop shop and answer some questions, they want at least a little info before they ditch the day’s plans and toddle along after you. Either Rory Fallon is a natural pushover, or he really, really wants to look like a helpful guy with nothing to hide.

‘Did he say anything along the way?’ Steve asks.

‘Wanted to know what this was about, once we got in the car,’ says the fat guy. Which is also interesting. Obviously Rory might know exactly what this is about, but he doesn’t think we can prove he knows, which means Lucy wasn’t straight on the phone to him the minute we left. One point against the Lucy-and-Rory theory. ‘We said we didn’t know all the details; the investigating detectives would fill him in. After that he kept his mouth shut.’

‘We were nice,’ says the gym rat. ‘Made him a cup of tea, told him how great he was for helping us out, we’d be nowhere without responsible citizens like him and all that jazz. We figured you’d like him relaxed.’

‘Lovely,’ Steve says. ‘Where’d you put him?’

‘The interview room down the end.’

‘Is he the type who’ll start thinking about leaving if we keep him on ice for a few minutes?’

Both of them laugh. ‘Nah,’ says the gym rat. ‘Like I said: accommodating.’

‘He’s a good boy,’ says the fat guy. ‘Gone bad.’

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘We’re going to need a list of his associates. Can you get cracking on that? I’m specially interested in close male friends, brothers, father, close male cousins. Some guy called this in, and if it wasn’t Fallon, we need to know who it was.’ The gym rat is taking notes and making sure I notice. I say, ‘The incident room should be ready to work in by now. Case meeting at four. If that changes, I’ll let you know.’

The floaters head off at a snappy pace, carefully judged to make them look on the ball but not rushed. I remember that walk; I remember practising it, on my way in to make lists and photocopy statements for some Murder D, hoping I could walk myself into this squad room and never have to walk out again. For a weird second I feel something almost like sorry for Stanton and Deasy, until I realise that if they ever make it in here, they’re gonna get on just dandy.

Steve has turned on his computer and is clicking away. I say, ‘How come you want to keep Fallon on ice?’

‘Only for a minute.’ Steve is typing. ‘He heads home and goes to bed, gets up and makes himself a fry? Whatever way you look at it, that’s pretty cold for a good law-abiding citizen. Even if he’s just trying to look innocent. I want to run him through the system, see what pops up.’

‘Run her, too. I want to know where I remember her from.’ I dial my voicemail, tuck the phone under my jaw and start sorting through the statements from last night’s scumbagfest – we need to get the file to the prosecutors before our hold on the scumbags runs out. McCann is mumbling into his mobile, clearly taking job-related shite from his missus (‘I know that. Tonight I swear I’ll be home by- Yeah, I know about the reservations. Of course I’ll be-’), and Roche is miming whipcracks.

I have another voicemail from Breslin – I’m starting to get my hopes up that we can work this entire case without ever actually seeing each other. ‘Yeah, Conway. Hi.’ Still smooth, in case Hollywood is listening, but just a faint edge of displeasure: me and Steve have been bad little Ds. ‘Looks like we’re having some trouble liaising here. I’m back at base. I’ll go ahead and get that incident room sorted out for us; you ring me back ASAP. Talk soon.’ I delete it.

‘Rory Fallon isn’t in the system,’ Steve says.

‘At all?’

‘At all.’

‘Little Holy Mary,’ I say. Staying out of the system is rarer than you’d think; even a speeding ticket puts you on file. Rory has officially never done anything naughty in his life. ‘That doesn’t mean he was actually a virgin till last night. Just that he never got caught.’

‘I know. I’m only telling you.’

‘Did you run Aislinn yet?’

‘Doing it now, hang on…’

I ring Breslin’s voicemail and leave him a message to meet us in the observation room in ten minutes. Steve says, ‘Nah. Nothing there either. Between the two of them, they’d make you heave.’

‘Looks like they were perfect for each other,’ I say. ‘Shame it didn’t work out.’ I finish flipping through the last witness statement, and stop.

The last page is missing. Without that – the page with the signature – the whole thing is worthless.

I’ll never prove I didn’t drop it on my way back from the interview room. There’s even an outside chance that actually happened – it was late, I was tired and pissed off and hurrying to finish up by the end of my shift. I can check: wander back and forth like an idiot, peering hopefully under desks and into bins, while this roomful of tossbubbles hide behind their monitors holding back baboon-howls of laughter and waiting to see who explodes first. Or I can go on the rampage looking to string up the fucker who pinched my statement sheet, which is probably what someone is hoping I’ll do. Or I can glue my mouth shut, track down my scumbag witness and spend another couple of hours re-convincing him that talking to cops is cool and digging his statement out of him, one-syllable word by one-syllable word, all over again.

‘Hey,’ Steve says. ‘Here’s something.’

It takes me a second to remember what he’s on about – I’m so angry I want to bite chunks off my desk. Steve glances up. ‘You OK?’

‘Yeah. What’ve you got? Aislinn’s in the system?’

‘Not her, no. It’s probably nothing, but her address comes up. Twentieth of October last, one o’clock in the morning, her neighbour in Number 24 rang Stoneybatter station. He was out on his patio having a last smoke before bed, and he saw someone go over Aislinn’s back wall, from her patio out into the laneway. The description’s not great – there’s a streetlamp at the end of the laneway, but the neighbour only saw the intruder for a second, from the back. Male, medium build, dark coat, the neighbour thought he might be middle-aged from the way he climbed; he thought fair hair, but that could’ve been the way the light reflected. Stoneybatter sent a couple of lads round to have a look, but by then he was well gone. No signs of an attempted break-in, so they figured the neighbour had disturbed him before he got started. They counselled Aislinn on security measures and dropped the whole thing.’