The Trespasser

“The slit-open eyes give her face a sly look, like a kid cheating at hide-and-seek.” 

Conway’s first impression of Aislinn is prophetic. Aislinn is playing a “sly” game: To get at McCann, she cheats by manipulating perceptions of who she is. 

“Murder isn’t like other squads. When it’s working right, it would take your breath away: it’s precision-cut and savage, lithe and momentous, it’s a big cat leaping full-stretch.”

Conway frequently uses a hunting analogy to describe the work she does. She also views herself as a top predator hunting other predators lower down on the food chain. 

“Forget coffee; this job, when it’s right, this job is the hit that speed freaks throw their lives away hunting.” 

This is another example of Conway’s fascination with her work. She craves the adrenaline rush it provides. 

“But Breslin the bent cop: he’s a dare, a bad poison dare that no one with sense should take, and I’ve always had a thing for dares.” 

Conway makes this comment when she still believes Breslin is a dirty cop. She would derive the same adrenaline rush from bringing him down as she would from nabbing a murderer. 

“I live inside my own skin. Anything that happens outside it doesn’t change who I am […] as far as I’m concerned, it’s a bare minimum baseline requirement for calling yourself an adult human being.” 

In this quote, Conway demonstrates her contempt for people like Aislinn. Conway believes that people who depend upon others to derive a sense of identity don’t qualify as fully functioning human beings. 

“‘My da split before I was even born. Do I look to you like I’m mooning about, dreaming up ways to find him and throw myself into his arms?’” 

Conway shares this comment with Steve as he tries to plead special indulgence for Aislinn and her troubled past. He doesn’t realize that Conway was also abandoned. 

“The reason I don’t tell people about my father, apart from the fact that it’s none of their business, is that they hear the story and move me in their minds, either to the box marked AHHH POOR PET or to the box marked SKANGER.” 

Conway betrays her defensiveness about her own abandonment. She doesn’t want people to know because she doesn’t want to relive the issue emotionally.

“I’m loving this chase, every second of it. I don’t give a damn whether that means I’m a bad person. But I know if we actually catch what we’re hunting, it’s probably gonna rip our faces off.”

Again, Conway uses a predator analogy to describe the hunt for Aislinn’s killer. She also betrays her own concern about the dangerous implications for her future career on the Murder Squad.

“I don’t feel like giving Aislinn credit for anything, or like giving a fuck about her except in terms of basic professional pride, but just for that moment everything about her seems dense enough with sadness to drop you like a sandbag.” 

Conway grudgingly feels a moment of empathy for Aislinn when she gazes at a happy family photo before the girl’s father left. The detective’s anger at Aislinn is an attempt to distance herself from her own loss. 

“‘In real life, all she did was get pushed around by other people’s decisions. The one place where she had any power, the one place where she got to make the calls, was her imagination.’” 

Steve is trying to explain the value of Aislinn’s imagination to Conway. Conway expresses nothing but contempt for people who live inside their own heads, not realizing she’s doing this herself. 

“‘Because you’re so set on going down in flames, you’d make it happen even if the entire force loved you to bits. You’ll light your own bloody self on fire if you have to.’” 

Steve is pointing out Conway’s fixation on her own fantasies. She’s so tangled in her own paranoia that she can’t recognize that her colleagues aren’t persecuting her. 

“I don’t get rescued. I’ll take help, no problem […] Rescue—where you’re sinking for the third time, you’ve tried everything you’ve got and none of it’s enough—rescue is different. If someone rescues you, they own you.” 

Conway doesn’t want to be like Aislinn, who was waiting for her father to rescue her. This comment appears to be a rationalization to excuse Conway’s rejection of her own vulnerability. 

“If I let him give me the answers, he’ll own me. Everything in my life, past and future, will be his: what he decides to make it into.”

Conway doesn’t trust her father. Subconsciously, she probably fears he will abandon her again. This comment is another rationalization to disavow her own potential vulnerability. 

“We sit there, drinking, while the stuff we should probably be saying out loud gets itself done in the silence.” 

Conway and Steve have built such good rapport as partners that they don’t need to apologize for past mistakes. They merely sit together in silence and tacitly apologize. 

“McCann—same as every Murder D; same as me—he’s the one who writes the scripts. He wouldn’t have liked opening his eyes one day and finding himself in the middle of someone else’s play.” 

Conway understands the dangerous nature of Aislinn’s plan to dump McCann. Finding himself trapped in her fantasy would have caused a violent reaction because McCann always wants to remain in control. 

“She had to have completely lost hold of everything she knew about how people work. She was so obsessed with the story in her head, the fact that there were actual people involved wasn’t even a factor any more.” 

Lucy realizes that Aislinn’s plan for revenge is madness, but she can’t pull her friend away from it. The story itself has become too compelling to its creator. 

“Aislinn had got good at tangling people in her stories, building the relentless current that drew them in deeper and deeper […] She had got too good: in the end she tangled herself.”

Conway feels less animosity toward Aislinn because at least Aislinn was trying to move beyond her tragic past. Unfortunately, Aislinn could no longer distinguish a fantasy from reality and got caught up in her own trap. 

“Every story is battering against the thin walls of the person’s skull, drilling and gnawing for its chance to escape and attack someone else, bore its way in and feed off that mind too.” 

Conway views people’s personal stories as a kind of virus. These stories become dangerous once they’re liberated from a person’s private inner world and incorporated into someone else’s. 

“‘Every time she woke up wondering whether Des would walk in the door today, every time she leaped when the phone rang, every night she dreamed he was dead, she belonged to you.’” 

Conway is projecting her fear of someone else “owning” her. She accuses McCann of trying to own Aislinn’s mother when, in reality, he was simply trying to spare her additional grief. 

“This is it. There’s nothing left of McCann; between us and Aislinn, we’ve taken the lot.” 

During interrogation, Conway and Steve have managed to destroy McCann’s illusion that Aislinn loved him. In some sense, Aislinn has managed to achieve her revenge after all. 

“You can knock down a genuine belief, if you load up with enough facts that contradict it; but a belief that’s built on nothing except who the person wants to be, nothing can crumble that.”

Conway is drawing a distinction between belief based on evidence and the stories people tell in their imaginations. Breslin needs to believe he’s a good guy no matter how much his actions contradict that belief. 

“It’s not just Breslin. All of us Ds know, certain sure, we’re the good guys. Without that to stand on, there isn’t a way through the parts of this job that are dark dripping hell.” 

Conway explains the psychology behind the “good guy” myth that everyone in the squad shares. Their job would be impossible to perform without that benign fiction. 

“I was doing exactly the same thing as Aislinn: getting lost so deep inside the story in my head, I couldn’t see past its walls to the outside world.” 

Conway’s epiphany comes late in the story. She has spent much of her time proving how unlike Aislinn she is. The admission of their similarity allows Conway to adjust her perspective with a reality check.