The Trespasser

Gary is ten years older than me and perfect for his job. A big chunk of Missing Persons is getting people who stay far from cops to talk to you – street hookers to tell you about the new girl who matches that teenager on the news, homeless addicts to drop by and mention the guy who tried to sleep on their patch last night and looked a lot like that

The vic’s home is your shot at getting a handle on this person you’re never going to meet. Even for their friends, people filter and spin, and then the friends filter all over again: they don’t want to speak ill of the dead, or they’re feeling maudlin about their poor lost pal, or they don’t want you to misunderstand that little quirk of his. But b

‘Did you meet Rory again after that?’ ‘No, that was it. Aislinn’s only seen him a few times. She was taking it slow.’ Lucy’s head ducks to her cigarette, a long pull. We’ve just brushed past whatever she’s hiding. We leave a silence, but this time she drops nothing into it.

You don’t make the Murder squad without having a world-class gift for finding creative ways to get under someone’s skin and wriggle around in there till they’d rip themselves open to get rid of you; without being ready and happy to do it, even if the witness you’re working on is a devastated kid sobbing her heart out for her da. I’m not the excepti

One of the reasons I don’t trust O’Kelly is because of his office. It’s full of naff crap – a framed crayon drawing that says world’s best granddad, pissant local golf trophies, a shiny executive toy in case he gets the urge to make clicky noises with swingy balls – and stacks of dusty files that never move. The whole room says he’s some outdated t

Steve shrugs. ‘Fair enough. Maybe not.’ This isn’t him diving into a sulk, the way a lot of Ds would if their partner contradicted them, specially in front of someone who looks like Sophie; he means it. It’s not that Steve has no ego – all Ds do – just that his isn’t tied to being Mr Big Balls all the time. It’s tied to getting stuff done, which is

I can’t tell whether Breslin believes that load, or whether he’s convinced himself he does because he needs to be that guy, the noble knight standing by his partner through thick and thin. Probably it’s the second one, which means it’s here to stay. You can knock down a genuine belief, if you load up with enough facts that contradict it; but a beli

I slam the interview-room door and we head for the squad room to get our stuff together. The corridor still feels like it’s twitching with covered pits and pointed sticks, but that doesn’t feel like such a bad thing, not any more.

Every investigation nets you plenty of nothing. You need that – it’s the only way you can narrow down your focus – and normally it feels good, slashing the dead ends off your whiteboard, leaving the live stuff to leap out at you big and bold. This time, though, there’s no slashing going on, just little bits of useless nothing splatting onto my desk