38 pages • 1 hour read
Tana FrenchThe Trespasser
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 14-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary
The following morning, Conway and Steve visit Rory at his bookshop. He tells them he saw a man lurking around Aislinn’s house on the night of the murder and for weeks before. He was afraid to admit this fact during interrogation because the man is a detective. Steve shows him a picture array, and Rory immediately identifies McCann: “And there it is: a solid link. […] It shakes the air as it thuds down between me and Steve, dense and tarnish-black and too heavy to move” (323).
Sophie calls Conway to say that she’s sending the decrypted files on Aislinn’s computer. Most of them turn out to be photos of post-it notes with dates and times. The detectives conclude that this is how Breslin made his assignations with Aislinn. The files also include a fairy tale that Aislinn wrote for Lucy. It tells of a maiden held prisoner by an evil wizard, but she has a plan to break his spell. Conway and Steve go back to the car and discuss the implications of what they’ve discovered. They give each other the chance to back out of this tricky, controversial case. Conway decides that letting McCann and Breslin walk would corrupt her soul: “I owe this case. […] I need to shoot it right between the eyes, skin it and stuff it and mount it on my wall, for when my grandkids ask me to tell them stories about way back a million years ago when I used to be a D” (332). Steve agrees to see it through as well. They plan their next move. Steve will go back to the office and keep Breslin occupied while Conway has a chat with Lucy. Perhaps she’ll be willing to identify Breslin now.
Chapter 15 Summary
Conway shows up at Lucy’s home for another round of questioning. Lucy is wary, but Conway begins by saying that someone on the police force might be responsible for Aislinn’s death. When she shows Lucy a picture array including Breslin’s photo, Lucy draws a blank. Taking a chance, Conway shows her an array including McCann’s photo. Lucy identifies him immediately as the man Aislinn was dating. Lucy explains that Aislinn targeted McCann ever since she realized he’d been an investigator on her father’s Missing Persons case. Her original motive was to find out what happened to her father. Aislinn radically changed her appearance so McCann wouldn’t recognize her. She lost weight, dyed her hair, applied makeup, bought new clothes, and even altered her accent. Then, she staked out the pub where the older detectives went to drink after work. It didn’t take long to attract McCann’s notice. They began seeing each other, though they weren’t lovers. Eventually, Aislinn gets McCann to reveal that her father left her mother for another woman. Aislinn is furious. By withholding this information from the family, McCann had decided how her life and her mother’s should play out.
Aislinn wanted something more than answers—she wanted revenge: “And there it is, the one piece me and Steve couldn’t find: why Aislinn wanted McCann” (354). Aislinn concocted a wild scheme to seduce McCann into leaving his wife, then she planned to dump him. Conway observes that this scenario isn’t likely to end well, and Lucy agrees: “Aislinn had got good at tangling people in her stories […] She had got too good: in the end she tangled herself” (356). When McCann became suspicious, he checked up on Aislinn to make sure she wasn’t talking about their relationship or seeing anyone else. During that time, Aislinn met Rory and genuinely fell for him. Lucy tried to get Aislinn to forget about her vendetta and concentrate on Rory, but Aislinn didn’t listen. McCann probably caught her making dinner for Rory and killed her in a jealous rage. Conway gets Lucy to sign a written statement and leaves to mentally process what she’s going to do with all this information.
Chapter 16 Summary
Conway meets with Steve at the office. The two detectives discuss the anonymous tipster who reported Aislinn’s death. They believe Breslin made the call and had a chat with O’Kelly that morning to make sure the case got assigned to Conway and Steve. They now fear O’Kelly is also implicated in the cover-up. Conway and Steve ask McCann to join them in an interrogation room. They want to force a confession, but McCann knows all the same tricks they do:
We have so many weapons […] By the time you make Murder, you have an arsenal that could pulverize cities […] All our weapons are useless this time. McCann’s known the feel of them by heart […] We’re going in bare (375-76).
The three detectives verbally fence with one another for several minutes. McCann finally admits that he knew Aislinn and was having a casual affair with her. He denies declaring his love for her and the plan to leave his wife. McCann feels he has the upper hand and is on the point of ending the interview when the two detectives drop a bombshell. They tell McCann that Aislinn is Evelyn Murray’s daughter from his Missing Persons investigation. McCann was infatuated with Evelyn and withheld information about her missing husband.
Conway moves in for the kill: “Be honest with yourself, McCann: that’s why you kept your mouth shut. Isn’t it? You couldn’t have Evelyn, but you loved the thought that you owned the rest of her life” (403). Conway and Steve reveal that Aislinn loathed McCann and wanted to ruin his life the same way he had ruined hers and her mother’s: “McCann’s mouth opens. We watch the moment when something spired and shining explodes with a tremendous roar inside his mind, jagged shards rocketing everywhere, burrowing deep into every tender spot” (404). The two detectives know they’ve crushed their opponent. He answers every succeeding question with a catatonic “No comment.” Before they can wrap up their interrogation, Breslin abruptly steps in and ends the interview.
Chapters 14-16 Analysis
These chapters demonstrate a radical reshuffling of the facts in everyone’s version of their stories. Although in their own minds, Steve and Conway had pinned the murder on Breslin, McCann emerges as the culprit based on eyewitness identification from both Rory and Lucy. Lucy’s testimony changes the detectives’ perception of Aislinn. They no longer view her as a passive bimbo. Aislinn becomes an active agent in her own narrative the moment she decides to pursue McCann. This segment also illustrates the difference between a story based on fact and a fairy tale. Aislinn’s plan fails because she’s gotten immersed in her revenge fantasy. She has lost all perspective on how a person in the real world might react to her scheme. In understanding Aislinn’s mindset, Conway finally recognizes the degree to which she, herself, has fallen victim to the paranoid fantasy in her own head about her coworkers.
This segment once more emphasizes the theme of ownership of the narrative. Until now, Conway has been the only character who stresses the importance of owning one’s story. Now, Aislinn does the same. Aislinn didn’t become angry until she discovered that McCann withheld information about her father’s life after he left; McCann hijacked Aislinn’s family story. Aislinn wasn’t the only person to have seen this connection. Conway points this same fact out to McCann when he is being interrogated. Conway accuses McCann of wanting to own Aislinn’s mother, Evelyn: McCann decided how Evelyn’s life would turn out by withholding facts about Evelyn’s husband’s disappearance. Aislinn’s plan to turn the tables on McCann backfires because she doesn’t understand how violently McCann would react to losing ownership of his own life story.
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