It was still raining. I found an uncompromisingly dingy little pub down a side-street-three guys at a corner table pegged me as a cop with one glance and shifted seamlessly to a new topic of conversation-ordered a hot whiskey and sat down. The barman thumped my drink in front of me and went back to the racing pages without volunteering my change. I took a long swallow, burning the roof of my mouth, leaned my head back and closed my eyes.
The dodgy guys in the corner had moved on to someone's ex-girlfriend. "So I says to her, there's nothing in the support order about dressing him like P. Fucking Diddy, if you want him to wear Nikes you can bleeding buy them yourself…" They were eating toasted sandwiches; the salty, chemical smell made me feel sick. Outside the window the rain bucketed down a gutter.
Strange though it may seem, I had only just understood, up there on the stand with the flare of panic in MacSharry's eyes, that I was falling apart. I had been aware that I was sleeping less than usual and drinking more, that I was snappy and distracted and possibly sort of seeing things, but no specific incident had seemed particularly ominous or alarming in itself. It was only now that the whole pattern rose up and swooped at me, violently, garishly clear, and it scared me to death.
All my instincts were shrieking at me to get off this horrible, treacherous case, get as far away from it as possible. I was owed quite a lot of holiday time, I could use some of my savings to rent a little apartment in Paris or Florence for a few weeks, walk on cobblestones and spend all day listening peacefully to a language I didn't understand and not come back until the whole thing was over. But I knew, with dreary certainty, that this was impossible. It was too late to pull out of the investigation; I could hardly tell O'Kelly that it had suddenly dawned on me, weeks into the case, that I was actually Adam Ryan, and any other excuse would imply that I'd lost my nerve and would basically end my career. I knew I needed to do something, before people started noticing that I was going to pieces and the little men in white coats rolled up to take me away, but I could not for the life of me think of one single thing that would do the slightest bit of good.
I finished my hot whiskey and ordered another. The barman turned on snooker on the TV; the commentator's low, genteel murmur blended soothingly with the rain. The three guys left, slamming the door behind them, and I heard a burst of raucous laughter from outside. Eventually the barman cleared away my glass sort of pointedly, and I realized that he wanted me to leave.
I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. In the greenish, dirt-flecked mirror I looked like something out of a zombie film-mouth open, huge dark bags under my eyes, hair standing up in spiky tufts. This is ridiculous, I thought, with a horrible rush of dizzy, detached amazement. How did this happen? How the hell did I end up here?
I went back to the courthouse parking lot and sat in the car, eating Mentos and watching people hurry by with their heads down and their coats pulled tight. It was dark as evening, rain slanting through dipped headlights, streetlamps already on. Finally my phone beeped. Cassie: Whatsastory? Where are you? I texted back, In car, and reached over to flip on the taillights so she could find me. When she saw me in the passenger seat, she did a little double take and ran round to the other side.
"Sheesh," she said, wriggling behind the wheel and shaking rain out of her hair. A drop had got caught in her eyelashes and a black mascara tear trickled to her cheekbone, making her look like a modish little Pierrette. "I'd forgotten what a pair of wankstains they are. They started snickering when I talked about them pissing on her bed; their lawyer was making faces at them to try and shut them up. What happened to you? Why am I driving?"
"I have a migraine," I said. Cassie was flipping down the sun visor to check her makeup, but her hand stopped short and her eyes, round and apprehensive, met mine in the mirror. "I think I fucked up, Cass."
She would have heard anyway. MacSharry would be on the phone to O'Kelly as soon as he got a chance, and by the end of the day it would be all round the squad. I was so tired I was almost dreaming; for a moment I allowed myself to wonder, wistfully, whether this might actually be some vodka-induced nightmare from which I would wake to my alarm and my appointment in court.
"How bad is it?" she asked.
"I'm pretty sure I made an utter balls of it. I couldn't even see straight, never mind think straight." This was, after all, true.
She slowly angled the mirror into place, licked her finger and rubbed away the Pierrette teardrop. "I meant the migraine. Do you need to go home?"
I thought longingly of my bed, hours of undisturbed sleep before Heather came home and wanted to know where her toilet bleach was, but the thought soured quickly: I would only end up lying there rigidly, hands clenched on the sheets, going over and over the courtroom in my head. "No. I took my tablets once I got out. It's not one of the bad ones."
"Should I find a pharmacy or have you got enough to last you?"
"I have plenty, but it's better already. Let's go." I was tempted to go into more detail about the horrors of my imaginary migraine, but the whole art of lying is knowing when to stop, and I've always had sort of a flair for this. I had no idea, and still don't, whether Cassie believed me. She reversed out of the parking space in a swift, dramatic curve, rain skidding off the windshield wipers, and nudged her way into the traffic.
"How did you get on?" I asked suddenly, as we inched down the quays.
"OK. I get the feeling their lawyer's trying to claim the confessions were coerced, but the jury'll never buy it."
"Good," I said. "That's good."
My phone leaped into hysterical life almost the instant we reached the incident room. O'Kelly, telling me to get into his office; MacSharry hadn't wasted much time. I gave him the migraine story. The one joy of migraines is that they make a perfect excuse: they're disabling, they're not your fault, they can last as long as you need them to and nobody can prove you don't have one. At least I really did look sick. O'Kelly made a few derisive comments about headaches being "womany shite," but I regained a little of his respect by bravely insisting on staying in work.
I went back to the incident room. Sam was just getting in from somewhere, soaked through, his tweed overcoat smelling faintly of wet dog. "How'd it go?" he asked. His tone was casual, but his eyes slid to me, over Cassie's shoulder, and then quickly away again: the grapevine had already been doing its thing.
"Fine. Migraine," Cassie said, tilting her head at me. By this stage I was starting to feel as if I really did have a migraine. I blinked, trying to focus.
"The old migraine's a terrible man," Sam said. "My mammy gets them. Sometimes she has to lie in a dark room for days, with ice on her head. Are you all right to be working?"
"I'm fine," I said. "What have you been up to?"
Sam glanced at Cassie. "He's OK," she said. "That trial would give anyone a headache. Where've you been?"
He peeled off his dripping coat, gave it a doubtful look and discarded it on a chair. "I went and had little chats with the Big Four."
"O'Kelly's going to love that," I said. I sat down and pressed my temples between finger and thumb. "I should warn you, he's not in the best of moods as it is."