I was watching that straight back move away down the corridor, social worker duckfooting along beside her trying for a chat, when I copped: she’d never answered my question. Swerved out of the way, neat as a rollerblader, and kept right on moving.
‘Holly.’
She turned, hauling her bag strap up her shoulder. Wary.
‘What I asked you earlier. Why’d you bring this to me?’
Holly considered me. Unsettling, that look, like the follow-you stare off a painting.
‘Back before,’ she said. ‘The whole year, everyone was tiptoeing. Like if they said one single wrong word, I’d have a nervous breakdown and get taken away in a straitjacket, foaming. Even Dad – he pretended to be totally not bothered, but I could see him worrying, all the time. It was just, ahhh!’ A gritted noise of pure fury, hands starfished rigid. ‘You were the only one who didn’t act like I was about to start thinking I was a chicken. You were just like, OK, this sucks, but big deal, worse stuff happens to people all the time and they survive. Now let’s get it done.’
It’s very very important to show sensitivity to juvenile witnesses. We get workshops and all; PowerPoint presentations, if our luck’s really in. Me, I remember what it was like, being a kid. People forget that. A little dab of sensitive: lovely. A dab more, grand. A dab more, you’re daydreaming throat-punches.
I said, ‘Being a witness does suck. For anyone. You were better able for it than most.’
No sarcasm in the smile, this time. Other stuff, plenty, but not sarcasm. ‘Can you explain to them at school that I don’t think I’m a chicken?’ Holly asked the social worker, who was plastering on extra sensitive to hide the baffled. ‘Not even a little?’ And left.
One thing about me: I’ve got plans.
First thing I did, once I’d waved bye-bye to Holly and the social worker, I looked up the Harper case on the system.
Lead detective: Antoinette Conway.
A woman working Murder shouldn’t rate scandal, shouldn’t even rate a mention. But a lot of the old boys are old-school; a lot of the young ones, too. Equality is paper-deep, peel it away with a fingernail. The grapevine says Conway got the gig by shagging someone, says she got it by ticking the token boxes – something extra in there, something that’s not pasty potato-face Irish: sallow skin, strong sweeps to her nose and her cheekbones, blue-black shine on her hair. Shame she’s not in a wheelchair, the grapevine says, or she’d be commissioner by now.
I knew Conway, to see anyway, before she was famous. Back in training college, she was two years behind me. Tall girl, hair scraped back hard. Built like a runner, long limbs, long muscles. Chin always high, shoulders always back. A lot of guys buzzed round Conway, her first week: just trying to help her settle in, nice to be friendly, nice to be nice, just coincidence that the girls who didn’t look the same didn’t get the same. Whatever she said to the boys, after the first week they stopped giving her come-ons. They gave her shite instead.
Two years behind me, in training. Got out of uniform one year behind. Made Murder the same time I made Cold Cases.
Cold Cases is good. Very bleeding good for a guy like me: working-class Dub, first in my family to go for a Leaving Cert instead of an apprenticeship. I was out of uniform by twenty-six, out of the General Detective Unit and into Vice by twenty-eight – Holly’s da put in a word for me there. Into Cold Cases the week I turned thirty, hoping there was no word put in, scared there was. I’m thirty-two now. Time to keep moving on up.
Cold Cases is good. Murder is better.
Holly’s da can’t put in a word for me there, even if I wanted one. The Murder gaffer hates his guts. He’s not fond of mine, either.
That case when Holly was my witness: I took the collar. I gave the caution, I clicked the handcuffs, I signed my name on the arrest report. I was just a floater, should have handed over anything worthwhile that came my way; should have been back in the incident room, like a good boy, typing seen-nothing statements. I took the collar anyway. I had earned it.
Another thing about me: I know my shot when I see it.
That collar, along with the nudge off Frank Mackey, got me out of the General Unit. That collar got me my chance at Cold Cases. That collar locked me out of Murder.
I heard the click, with the click of the handcuffs. You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, and I knew that was me on Murder’s shit list for the foreseeable. But handing over the collar would have put me on the dead-end list, staring down the barrel of decades typing up other people’s seen-nothing statements. Anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence. Click.
You see your shot, you take it. I was sure that lock would open again, somewhere down the line.
Seven years on, and the truth was starting to hit.
Murder is the thoroughbred stable. Murder is a shine and a dazzle, a smooth ripple like honed muscle, take your breath away. Murder is a brand on your arm, like an elite army unit’s, like a gladiator’s, saying for all your life: One of us. The finest.
I want Murder.
I could have sent the card and Holly’s statement over to Antoinette Conway with a note, end of story. Even better behaved, I could have rung her the second Holly pulled out that card, handed the both of them over.
Not a chance. This was my shot. This was my one and only.
The second name on the Harper case: Thomas Costello. Murder’s old workhorse. A couple of hundred years on the squad, a couple of months into retirement. When a spot opens on the Murder squad, I know. Antoinette Conway hadn’t picked up a new partner yet. She was still flying solo.
I went and found my gaffer. He didn’t miss what I was at, but he liked what it would do for us, being involved in a high-profile solve. Liked what it would do for next year’s budget. Liked me, too, but not enough to miss me. He had no problem with me heading over to Murder to give Conway her Happy Wednesday card in person. No need to hurry back, said the gaffer. If Murder wanted me on this, they could have me.
Conway wasn’t going to want me. She was getting me anyway.