Tana French: The Trespasser

‘Ah, shite,’ I say, swinging out of the garage and turning up the heat in the car. ‘I can’t ring Breslin now. Gotta drive.’

That gets Steve grinning. ‘Hate that. And I’ve got to read the call sheet. No point us arriving on the scene without a clue.’

I floor it through a yellow light, pull the call sheet out of my pocket and toss it to him. ‘Go on. Let’s hear the good news.’

He scans. ‘Call came in to Stoneybatter station at six minutes past five. Caller was a male, wouldn’t give his name. Private number.’ Meaning an amateur, if he thinks that’ll do him any good. The network will have that number for us within hours. ‘He said there was a woman injured at Number 26 Viking Gardens. The station officer asked what kind of injury, he said she’d fallen and hit her head. The station officer asked was she breathing; he said he didn’t know, but she looked bad. The uniform started telling him how to check her vitals, but he said, “Get an ambulance down there, fast,” and hung up.’

‘Can’t wait to meet him,’ I say. ‘Bet he was gone before anyone showed up, yeah?’

‘Oh yeah. When the ambulance got there, the door was locked, no one answering. Uniforms arrived and broke it in, found a woman in the sitting room. Head injuries. Paramedics confirmed she was dead. No one else home, no sign of forced entry, no sign of burglary.’

‘If the guy wanted an ambulance, why’d he ring Stoneybatter station? Why not 999?’

‘Maybe he thought 999 would be able to track down his phone number, but a cop shop wouldn’t have the technology.’

‘So he’s a bloody idiot,’ I say. ‘Great.’ O’Kelly was right about the quays: the Department for Digging Up Random Shit is going at one lane with a jackhammer, the other one’s turned into a snarl that makes me wish for a vaporiser gun. ‘Let’s have the lights.’

Steve scoops the blue flasher out from under his seat, leans out the window and slaps it on the roof. I hit the siren. Not a lot happens. People helpfully edge over an inch or two, which is as far as they can go.

‘Jesus Christ ,’ I say. I’m in no humour for this. ‘So how come the uniforms think it’s a domestic? Anyone else live there? Husband, partner?’

Steve scans again. ‘Doesn’t say.’ Hopeful sideways glance at me: ‘Maybe they got it wrong, yeah? Could be something good after all.’

‘No, it’s fucking not. It’s another fucking domestic, or else it’s not even murder, she died from a fucking fall just like the caller said, because if there was a snowball’s chance in hell that it was anything halfway decent, O’Kelly would’ve waited till the morning shift got in and given it to Breslin and McCann or some other pair of smarmy little- Jesus! ’ I slam my fist down on my horn. ‘Do I have to go out there and arrest someone?’ Some idiot up at the front of the traffic jam suddenly notices he’s in a car and starts moving; the rest get out of my way and I floor it, round onto the bridge and across the Liffey to the north side.

The sudden semi-quiet, away from the quays and the workmen, feels huge. The long runs of tall red-brick buildings and shop signs shrink and split into clusters of houses, give the light room to widen across the sky, turning the low layer of clouds grey and pale yellow. I kill the siren; Steve reaches out the window and gets the flasher back in. He keeps it in his hands: scrapes a smear of muck off the glass, tilts it to make sure it’s clean. Doesn’t go back to reading.

Me and Steve have known each other eight months, been partnered up for four. We met working another case, back when he was on Cold Cases. At first I didn’t like him – everyone else did, and I don’t trust people who everyone likes, plus he smiled too much – but that changed fast. By the time we got the solve, I liked him enough to use my five minutes in O’Kelly’s good books putting in a word for Steve. It was good timing – I wouldn’t have been in the market for a partner off my own bat, I liked going it alone, but O’Kelly had been getting louder about how clueless newbies didn’t fly solo on his squad – and I don’t regret it, even if Steve is a chirpy little bollix. He feels right, across from me when I glance up in the squad room, shoulder to shoulder with me at crime scenes, next to me at the interview table. Our solve rate is up there, whatever O’Kelly says, and more often than not we go for that pint to celebrate. Steve feels like a friend, or something on the edge of it. But we’re still getting the hang of each other; we still have no guarantees.

I have the hang of him enough to know when he wants to say something, anyway. I say, ‘What.’

‘Don’t let the gaffer get to you.’

I glance across: Steve is watching me, steady-eyed. ‘You telling me I’m being oversensitive? Seriously?’

‘It’s not the end of the world if he thinks we need to get better with witnesses.’

I whip down a side street at double the speed limit, but Steve knows my driving well enough that he doesn’t tense up. I’m the one gritting my teeth. ‘Yeah, it bloody well is. Oversensitive would be if I cared what Breslin or whoever thinks of our witness technique, which I don’t give a damn about. But if O’Kelly thinks we can’t handle ourselves, then we’re going to keep getting these bullshit nothing cases, and we’re going to keep having some tosser looking over our shoulders. You don’t have a problem with that?’

Steve shrugs. ‘Breslin’s just backup. It’s still our case.’

‘We don’t need backup. We need to be left the fuck alone to do our job.’

‘We will be. Sooner or later.’

‘Yeah? When?’

Steve doesn’t answer that, obviously. I slow down – the Kadett handles like a shopping trolley. Stoneybatter is getting its Sunday morning underway: runners pounding along the footpaths, pissed-off teenagers dragging dogs and brooding over the unfairness of it all, a girl in clubbing gear wandering home with goosebumps on her legs and her shoes in her hand.

I say, ‘I’m not gonna take this much longer.’

Burnout happens. It happens more in the squads like Vice and Drugs, where the same vile shite keeps coming at you every day and nothing you do makes any difference: you burst your bollix making your case and the same girls keep on getting pimped out, just by a new scumbag; the same junkies keep on buying the same gear, just from a new drug lord. You plug one hole, the shite bursts through in a new place and just keeps on pouring. That gets to people. In Murder, if you put someone away, anyone else he would’ve killed stays alive. You’re fighting one killer at a time, instead of the whole worst side of human nature, and you can beat one killer. People last, in Murder. Last their whole careers.

In any squad, people last a lot longer than two years.

My two years have been special. The cases aren’t a problem – I could take back-to-back cannibals and kid-killers, never miss a wink of sleep. Like I said, you can beat one killer. Beating your own squad is a whole other thing.

Steve has the hang of me enough to know when I’m not just blowing off steam. After a second he asks, ‘What would you do instead? Transfer back to Missing Persons?’

‘Nah. Fuck that.’ I don’t go backwards. ‘One of my mates from school, he’s a partner in a security agency. The big stuff, bodyguards for high flyers, international; not nabbing shoplifters at Penney’s. He says, any time I want a job…’

I’m not looking at Steve, but I can feel him motionless and watching me. I can’t tell what’s in his head. Steve’s a good guy, but he’s a people-pleaser. With me gone, he could fit right into the squad, if he felt like it. One of the lads, working the decent cases and having a laugh, easy as that.