The Trespasser

by Tana French

I’ve got no time for women who play games, or for men who play along. That shite is for teenagers, not for grown adults. And when it goes wrong, it goes way wrong. The first few games, you have a blast, get your guy panting along after you like a puppy chasing his chew toy. Then you play one game too many, and you’ve got a houseful of Murder Ds.

It was about the same thing as everything else humans have done to each other since before history began: power. It was about deciding who would be the alpha dogs and who would be at the bottom of the pile.

I love nicotine. It puts witnesses back in their comfort zone when things get tricky, it keeps the vic’s friends and family from going to pieces, it means we can make suspects as antsy as we want and then throw them an instant chill pill when we want them calm again. Non-smokers are double the hassle; you have to find other ways to adjust their dials. If it was my call, everyone involved in murders would be on a pack a day.

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

What-if-maybe crap is for weak people. It belongs to the ones who don’t have the strength to make actual situations go their way, so they have to hide away in daydreams where they can play at controlling what comes next. And that makes them even weaker. Every what-if is a gift to anyone who’s looking for a hold on you, and that means us. If a guy’s whole head is in reality, then reality is the only route we can take to get to him. If he’s letting his mind prance off down dozens of twisty hypothetical fairy tales, every one of those is a crack we can use to prize him open.

Rory is fun when he’s pissed off: like a fluffy little attack gerbil.

Danger doesn’t bother me; I’ll eat danger with a spoon.

The truth is, if you don’t exist without someone else, you don’t exist at all.

I was in on a medium-disgusting running joke involving one of the lads and a squeaky rubber hamster;

“Don’t worry,” Steve says, going back to his paperwork. “In my fantasy life I’m the super-detective who never misses a solve.”

If someone rescues you, they own you. Not because you owe them—you can sort that, with enough good favors or bottles of booze dressed up in ribbons. They own you because you’re not the lead in your story any more. You’re the poor struggling loser/helpless damsel/plucky sidekick who was saved from danger/dishonor/humiliation by the brilliant brave compassionate hero/heroine, and they get to decide which, because you’re not the one running this story, not any more.

That feeling, it’s not some bullshit figure of speech. It lives inside you somewhere deeper and older and more real than anything else except sex, and when it comes rising it takes your whole body for its own. It’s a smell of blood raging at the back of your nose, it’s your arm muscle throbbing to let go the bowstring, it’s drums speeding in your ears and a victory roar building at the bottom of your gut. I let myself love that feeling, one last time. I let myself drink it down, cram every second of it deep into me, lay away my store of it to last me the rest of my life.

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.