8

I got a few hours’ kip in my car-I was way too polluted for any taxi driver to touch me, but nowhere near polluted enough to think that knocking on my ma’s door would be a good idea. I woke up with my mouth tasting like something had died nastily in there, to the kind of chilly, heavy morning where the damp soaks straight through your bones. It took me about twenty minutes to disentangle the crick in my neck.

The streets were shining wet and empty, bells ringing for early Mass and nobody much paying attention. I found a depressing café full of depressed Eastern Europeans and got myself a nutritious breakfast: soggy muffins, a handful of aspirin and a bucket of coffee. When I figured I was probably under the limit, I drove home, threw the clothes I’d been wearing since Friday morning into the washing machine, threw myself into a very hot shower and considered my next move.

This case was, as far as I was concerned, over with an O the size of O’Connell Statue. Scorcher could have it all to himself and welcome. He might be an annoying little gobshite at the best of times, but for once his obsession with winning was on my side: sooner or later he would get Rosie justice, if it was there to be got. He would even update me on any major developments-not necessarily for altruistic reasons, but I didn’t give a damn. In less than a day and a half, I had had enough of my family to last me another twenty-two years. That morning in the shower, I would have bet my soul to Satan that nothing in this world could drag me back into Faithful Place.

I had just a few loose ends to tidy up, before I could throw this mess back into whichever circle of hell it had come from. I believe that “closure” is a steaming load of middle-class horseshite invented to pay for shrinks’ Jags, but all the same: I needed to know for sure if that had in fact been Rosie in that basement, I needed to know how she had died, and I needed to know if Scorcher and his boys had picked up any hint about where she had been going, that night, before someone stopped her. I had spent my whole adult life growing around a scar shaped like Rosie Daly’s absence. The thought of that lump of scar tissue vanishing had sent me so light-headed and off balance that I ended up doing gobsmackingly moronic things like getting hammered with my siblings, a concept that just two days earlier would have sent me running screaming for the hills. I felt it would be a good idea to get my bearings back before I did something dumb enough to end in amputation.

I found clean clothes, went out to the balcony, lit a smoke and rang Scorcher. “Frank,” he said, with a level of politeness that was carefully calibrated to let me know he wasn’t happy to hear from me. “What can I do for you?”

I put a sheepish grin in my voice. “I know you’re a busy man, Scorcher, but I was hoping you might do me a favor here.”

“I’d love to, old son, but I’m a little-”

Old son? “So I’ll cut to the chase,” I said. “My lovely squad buddy Yeates-you know him?”

“We’ve met.”

“Fun, right? We had a few last night, I told him the story here, and he’s giving me flak about my girlfriend walking out on me. Long story short, and leaving aside how deeply wounded I am that my own colleague could doubt my sexual magnetism, I’ve put down a hundred quid that says Rosie didn’t dump my sorry ass after all. If you’ve got anything that’ll settle this for me, we can go halves on the winnings.” Yeates looks like he uses kittens as Pop Tarts, and he’s not the chummy type; Scorch wouldn’t follow up.

Scorch said stuffily, “All information relating to the investigation is confidential.”

“I wasn’t planning on selling it to the Daily Star. Last I checked, Yeates was a cop, just like you and me, only bigger and uglier.”

“A cop who’s not part of my team. Just like you.”

“Come on, Scorch. At least tell me whether that was Rosie in that basement. If it’s some Victorian body dump, I can pay Yeates his money and move on.”

“Frank, Frank, Frank,” Scorcher said, layering on the sympathy. “I know this isn’t easy on you, OK, mate? But do you remember what we talked about?”

“Vividly. What it boiled down to was that you wanted me out of your hair. So I’m offering you this one-time-only deal, Scorchie. Answer my tiny little question, and the next time you’ll hear from me will be when I take you out for a nice feed of pints to congratulate you on solving this case.”

Scorch let that lie for a second. “Frank,” he said, when he felt I had grasped just how deeply he disapproved, “this isn’t the Iveagh Market. I’m not about to make deals with you, or settle squad bets. This is a murder case, and my team and I need to work it without interference. I would have thought that would be enough to keep you out of my hair. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed in you.”

I had a sudden mental image of one evening, back in Templemore, when Scorch got smashed off his face and challenged me to see who could piss the highest up a wall on our way home. I wondered when he had turned into a pompous middle-aged twat, or whether he had always been one at heart and the adolescent testosterone rush had just masked it for a while. “You’re right,” I said, all penitent. “It just goes against the grain to have that big lump Yeates thinking he’s got one up on me, you know what I mean?”

“Mmm,” Scorcher said. “You know, Frank, the impulse to win is a valuable thing, right up until you let it make you into a loser.”

I was pretty sure this meant nothing at all, but his tone said he was sharing a profound insight. “A little over my head, mate,” I said, “but I’ll be sure and have a think about it. See you around.” I hung up.

I had another smoke and watched the Sunday-shopping brigade jostling up and down the quays. I love immigration; the range of babehood on display these days is several continents wider than it was twenty years ago, and while Irish women are busy turning themselves into scary orange lollipops, the lovely ladies from the rest of the world are busy making up for it. There were one or two who made me want to marry them on the spot and give Holly a dozen siblings who my mother would call half-castes.

The Bureau tech was no good to me: he wouldn’t give me the steam off his piss, after the way I’d ruined his lovely afternoon of cyberporn. Cooper, on the other hand, likes me, he works weekends, and unless he had a massive backlog he would have done the post-mortem by now. There was a good chance that those bones had told him at least some of what I needed to know.

Another hour wasn’t going to get Holly and Olivia any more pissed off than they already were. I threw my smoke away and got moving.

Cooper hates most people, and most people think he hates them at random. What they haven’t figured out is this: Cooper doesn’t like being bored, and he has a low threshold. Bore him once-and Scorch had obviously managed to do that, somewhere along the way-and you’re out forever. Keep him interested, and he’s all yours. I’ve been called many things, but I’ve never been called boring.

The City Morgue is a quick walk down the quays from my apartment, round the back of the bus station, in a beautiful piece of redbrick more than a hundred years old. I don’t often have occasion to go in there, but usually the thought of the place makes me happy, the same way it makes me happy that Murder works out of Dublin Castle: what we all do runs through the heart of this city like the river, we deserve the good parts of its history and its architecture. That day, though, not so much. Somewhere in there, with Cooper weighing and measuring and examining every remaining bit of her, was a girl who might be Rosie.

Cooper came to the reception desk when I asked for him, but, like most people that weekend, he wasn’t over the moon to see me. “Detective Kennedy,” he informed me, pronouncing the name delicately as if it tasted bad, “specifically informed me that you were not a part of his investigative team, and had no need for any information about the case.”