by Tana French
If I got into it with him over the motive, he would win, and you don’t let them win. I said, “How did you get into the house?”
“Key.”
“To which door?”
A splinter of a pause. “Back.”
“Where’d you get that?”
That splinter again, bigger this time. He was being careful. “Found it.”
“When?”
“A while back. Few months, maybe more.”
“Where?”
“Street outside. Pat dropped it.”
I could feel it on my skin, the sideslipping twist to his voice that said Lie, but I couldn’t put my finger on where or why. Richie said, from the corner behind Conor’s shoulder, “You couldn’t see the street from your hide. How’d you know he’d dropped the key?”
Conor thought that over. “Saw him come in from work in the evening. Later that night, I went for a wander around, spotted the key, figured he had to be the one that lost it.”
Richie wandered over to the table, pulled out a chair facing Conor. “No you didn’t, man. There’s no street lighting. What are you, Superman? See in the dark?”
“It was summer. Bright till late.”
“You were prowling round their gaff while it was still bright? While they were still awake? Come on, man. What were you, looking to get arrested?”
“So maybe it was dawn. I found the key, I got it copied, I got in. End of story.”
I said, “How many times?”
That tiny pause again, while he tested answers in his head. I said crisply, “Don’t waste your time, old son. There’s no point in bullshitting me. We’re well past that. How many times were you in the Spains’ house?”
Conor was rubbing at his forehead with the back of his wrist, trying to hold it together. That sheetrock wall of stubbornness was starting to waver. Adrenaline can only keep you going for so long; any minute now, he was going to be too exhausted to sit up straight. “A few. A dozen, maybe. What’s it matter? I was there night before last. I’ve told you.”
It mattered because he knew his way around the house: even in darkness, he would have been able to find his way up the stairs, into the children’s rooms, to their beds. Richie asked, “Ever take anything away with you?”
I saw Conor dig for the energy to say no, and give up. “Little things, only. I’m not a thief.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“A mug. Handful of rubber bands. A pen. Nothing worth anything.”
I said, “And the knife. Let’s not forget the knife. What did you do with it?”
That should have been one of the tough questions, but Conor turned towards me like he was grateful for it. “Into the sea. The tide was up.”
“Where’d you throw it from?”
“The rocks. South end of the beach.”
We were never getting that knife back. It was halfway to Cornwall by now on some long cold current, rocking fathoms deep among seaweed and soft blind creatures. “And the other weapon? The one you used to hit Jenny?”
“Same.”
“What was it?”
Conor’s head fell back and his lips parted. The grief that had been looming under his voice, all night long, had made its way to the surface. It was that grief, not fatigue, that was leaching the willpower out of him, scouring his concentration away. It had eaten him alive, from the inside out; it was all that was left.
He said, “It was a vase. Metal one, silver, with a heavy base on it. Simple thing, it was; beautiful. She used to put a couple of roses in it, have it on the table when she made fancy dinners for the two of them…”
He made a small sound between a swallow and a gasp, the sound of someone sliding underwater. I said, “Let’s rewind a little, shall we? Start from the point when you entered the house. What time was it?”
Conor said, “I want to sleep.”
“As soon as you’ve talked us through it. Was anyone awake?”
“I want to sleep.”
We needed the full story, blow by blow and packed with details that only the killer would know, but it was heading for six o’clock and he was heading for the level of fatigue that a defense attorney could use. I said gently, “OK. You’re nearly there, son. I’ll tell you what: we’ll just get what you’ve told us in writing, and then we’ll take you somewhere you can get a bit of kip. Fair enough?”
He nodded, a lopsided jerk, like his head had suddenly turned too heavy for his neck. “Yeah. I’ll write it down. Just leave me alone while I do it. Can you do that?”
He was at the end of his strength, way past trying to get smart with his statement. “Sure,” I said. “If that’s what works for you, not a problem. We’ll need to know your real name, though. For the statement sheet.”
For a second I thought he was going to stonewall us again, but all the fight was gone. “Brennan,” he said, dully. “Conor Brennan.”
I said, “Well done.” Richie moved quietly to the corner table and passed me a statement sheet. I found my pen and filled in the header, in strong block capitals: CONOR BRENNAN.
I put him under arrest, cautioned him again, went through the rights sheet again. Conor didn’t even look up. I put the statement sheet and my pen into his hands, and we left him there.
* * *
“Well well well,” I said, tossing my notebook onto the table in the observation room. Every cell in my body was fizzing like champagne with pure triumph; I felt like throwing a Tom Cruise, jumping up on the table shouting I love this job! “Now that was a whole lot easier than I was expecting. Here’s to us, Richie my friend. Do you know what we are? We’re a bloody great team.”
I gave him a pumping handshake and a clap on the shoulder. He was grinning. “Felt like that, all right.”
“No two ways about it. I’ve had a lot of partners in my time, and I can tell you, hand on heart: that was the real thing. There are guys who partner for years and still don’t work together that smoothly.”
“It’s good, yeah. It’s good stuff.”
“By the time the Super gets in, we’ll have that statement signed, sealed and delivered to his desk. I don’t need to tell you what this is going to do for your career, do I? Let’s see that prick Quigley give you hassle now. Two weeks on the squad, and you’re part of the biggest solve of the year. How does it feel?”
Richie’s hand slid out of mine too fast. He still had the grin, but there was something unsure in it. I said, “What?”
He nodded at the one-way glass. “Look at him.”
“He’ll write it up just fine. Don’t you worry about that. He’ll have second thoughts, of course he will, but they won’t kick in till tomorrow: emotional hangover. By then, we’ll have our file half ready to send to the DPP.”
“It’s not that. The state of that kitchen… You heard Larry: the struggle was full-on. Why isn’t he more beat up?”
“Because he isn’t. Because this is real life, and sometimes it doesn’t go exactly the way you’d expect it to.”
“I just…” The grin was gone. Richie was digging his hands into his pockets, staring at the glass. “I have to ask, man. You’re positive he’s our guy?”
The fizz started to fade out of my veins. I said, “That’s not the first time you’ve asked me that.”
“I know, yeah.”
“So let’s hear it. What’s got up your arse?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. You’ve been awful sure all along, is all.”
The anger shot through me like a muscle spasm. “Richie,” I said, very carefully keeping my voice under control. “Let’s review for a second, shall we? We’ve got the sniper’s nest that Conor Brennan set up to stalk the Spains. We’ve got his own admission that he broke into their house multiple times. And now, Richie, now we’ve got a fucking confession. Go ahead and tell me, old son: what the fuck else do you want? What the fuck would it take to make you sure?”
Richie was shaking his head. “We’ve got plenty. I’m not arguing there. But even back when we had nothing
, only that hide, you were positive.”
“So what? I was right. Did you miss that part? You’re getting your knickers in a knot because I got there ahead of you?”
“Makes me nervous, being too sure too early. It’s dangerous.”
The jolt hit me again, hard enough to clench my jaw. “You’d rather keep an open mind. Is that it?”
“Yeah. I would.”
“Right. Good idea. For how long? Months? Years? Till God sends choirs of angels to sing you the guy’s name in four-part harmony? Do you want us to be standing here in ten years’ time, telling each other, ‘Well, it could be Conor Brennan, but then again, it could be the Russian Mafia, we might want to explore that possibility a little more thoroughly before we make any rash decisions’?”
“No. I’m only saying—”
“You have to get sure, Richie. You have to. There is no other option. Sooner or later, you shit or you get off the pot.”
“I know that. I’m not talking about any ten years.”
The heat was the kind you get in a cell in a bad August: thick, motionless, clogging your lungs like wet cement. “Then what the hell are you talking about? What’ll it take? In a few hours’ time, when we get our hands on Conor Brennan’s car, Larry and his boys are going to find the Spains’ blood all over it. Around the same time, they’re going to match his fingerprints to the prints they found all over that hide. And a few hours after that, assuming that please God we get hold of the runners and the gloves, they’re going to prove that that bloody shoeprint and those bloody handprints were made by Conor Brennan. I’d bet a month’s salary on it. Will that make you sure?”
Richie rubbed at the back of his neck and grimaced. I said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Right. Let’s hear it. I guaran-damn-tee you, by the end of today, we’ll have physical proof he was in that house when that family got killed. How are you planning to explain that away?”
Conor was writing, head bent low over the statement sheet, arm curved protectively around it. Richie watched him. He said, “This guy loved the Spains. Like you said. Say, let’s just say, he’s up in his hide the other night—maybe Jenny’s on the computer, he’s watching her. Then Pat comes downstairs and goes for her. Conor freaks out, goes to break up the fight: legs it down from his hide and over the wall, lets himself in through their back door. But by then it’s too late. Pat’s dead or dying, Conor thinks Jenny is too—probably he doesn’t check too carefully, not with all the blood and the panic. Maybe he’s the one that brought her over to Pat, so they could be together.”
“Touching. How do you explain the wiped computer? The missing weapons? What’s all that about?”
“Same again: he cares about the Spains. He doesn’t want Pat taking the rap. He wipes the computer ’cause he thinks maybe whatever Jenny was doing on there could be what triggered Pat—or he knows for definite that it was. Then he takes the weapons and dumps them, so it’ll look like an intruder.”
I took a second and a breath, to make sure I wouldn’t bite his head off. “Well, it’s a pretty little fairy story, old son. Poignant, is that the word I’m looking for? And that’s all it is. It’s fine as far as it goes, but you’re skipping right past this: why the holy hell did Conor confess?”
“Because. What happened in there.” Richie nodded at the glass. “Man, you practically told him you were going to put Jenny Spain in a straitjacket if he didn’t give you what you were after.”
I said, and my voice was cold enough to warn a much stupider man than Richie, “Do you have a problem with the way I’m doing my job, Detective?”
His hands went up. “I’m not picking holes. I’m only saying: that’s why he confessed.”
“No, Detective. No, it bloody well isn’t. He confessed because he did it. All that crap I gave him about loving Jenny, all that did was pick the lock; it didn’t put anything behind the door that wasn’t already fucking there. Maybe your experience has been different from mine, maybe you’re just better at this job, but I have a hard enough time getting my suspects to confess to what they did. I can safely say I’ve never, in all my career, managed to get one of them to confess to something he didn’t do. If Conor Brennan says he’s our man, then it’s because he is.”
“He’s not like most of them, though, is he? You said it yourself, we’ve both been saying: he’s different. There’s something weird going on there.”
“He’s weird, yeah. He’s not Jesus. He’s not here to give his life for Pat Spain’s sins.”
Richie said, “It’s not just him that’s weird. What about the baby monitors? Those weren’t your man Conor’s doing. And the holes in the walls? There was something going on inside that house.”
I leaned back against the wall with a thump and folded my arms. It might have been just the fatigue, or the thin yellowy-gray dawn smearing the window, but that champagne fizz of victory was well and truly gone. “Tell me, old son: why the hate for Pat Spain? Is this some kind of chip on your shoulder, because he was a good solid pillar of the community? Because if it is, I’m warning you now: get rid of it, sharpish. You’re not always going to be able to find a nice middle-class boy to pin things on.”
Richie came at me fast, finger pointing; for a second I thought he was going to jab me in the chest, but he had enough sense left to stop himself. “It’s got nothing to do with class. Nothing. I’m a cop, man. Same as yourself. I’m not some thicko skanger you brought in as a favor because it’s Take A Knacker To Work Day.”
He was too close and much too angry. I said, “Then act like a cop. Step back, Detective. Get a grip on yourself.”
Richie stared me out of it for another second; then he wheeled away, flung himself back against the glass and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “You tell me, man: why are you so dead set that it isn’t Patrick Spain? Why the love?”
I had no obligation to explain myself to some jumped-up little newbie, but I wanted to; I wanted to say it, shove it deep into Richie’s head. “Because,” I said, “Pat Spain followed the rules. He did everything people are supposed to do. That’s not how killers live. I told you from the start: things like this don’t come out of nowhere. All that crap the families give the media—‘Oh, I can’t believe he would do this, he’s such a Boy Scout, never done anything bad in his life, they were the happiest couple in the world’—that’s garbage. Every time, Richie, every single time, it turns out that the guy was a Boy Scout except for a record as long as your arm, or he’d never done anything bad except for his little habit of terrorizing the shit out of his wife, or they were the happiest couple in the world except for the minor fact that he was banging her sister. There’s not one hint, anywhere, that any of that applied to Pat. You’re the one who said it: the Spains did their best. Pat was a trier. He was one of the good guys.”
Richie didn’t move. “Good guys break.”
“Seldom. Very, very seldom. And there’s a reason for that. It’s because the good guys have stuff to hold them in place, when the going gets tough. They’ve got jobs, families, responsibilities. They’ve got the rules they’ve been following their whole lives. I’m sure all that stuff sounds uncool to you, but here’s the fact: it works. Every day, it keeps people from crossing over the line.”
“So,” Richie said flatly, “because Pat was a nice middle-class boy. A pillar of the community. That’s why he couldn’t be a killer.”
I didn’t want to have this argument, not in an airless observation room at some ungodly hour of the morning with sweat sticking my shirt to my back. I said, “Because he had things to love. He had a home—OK, it was in the arsehole of nowhere, but one look at it should have told you that Pat and Jenny loved every inch of the place. He had the woman he’d been loving ever since they were sixteen; still mad about each other, that’s what Brennan said. He had two kids who climbed all over him. That’s what holds the good guys together, Richie. They’ve got places to put their hearts into. They’ve got people to take care of. People to love. That’s what stops them from g
oing over the edge, when a guy who wasn’t weighted down would be in free fall. And you’re trying to convince me that Pat just turned around one day and blew all that away, for no reason at all.”
“Not for no reason. You said yourself: he could’ve been about to lose the lot. The job was gone, the gaff was going; the wife and kids could’ve been about to go as well. It happens. All over this country, it’s been happening. The triers are the ones that snap, when trying doesn’t do any good.”
All of a sudden I was exhausted, two sleepless nights digging their claws in and dragging me down with all their weight. I said, “The one who snapped was Conor Brennan. Now there’s a man who’s got nothing left to lose: no work, no home, no family, not even his own mind. I’ll bet you any amount of money you want, when we start looking into his life we’re not going to find a close-knit circle of friends and loved ones. Nothing’s holding Brennan in place. He’s got nothing to love; nothing except the Spains. He’s spent the last year living like some kind of cross between a hermit and the Unabomber, all so he could stalk them. Even your own little theory hinges on the fact that Conor was a delusional freak show who was spying on them at three in the bloody morning. The guy’s not right, Richie. He’s not OK. There’s no way around that.”
Behind Richie, in the harsh white light of the interview room, Conor had put down the pen and was pressing his fingertips into his eyes, rubbing them in a grim, relentless rhythm. I wondered how long it had been since he had slept. “Remember what we talked about? The simplest solution? It’s sitting behind you. If you find evidence that Pat was a vicious sonofabitch who was beating the shit out of his family while he got ready to leave them for a Ukrainian lingerie model, then come back to me. Until then, I’m putting my money on the psycho stalker.”
Richie said, “You told me yourself: ‘psycho’ isn’t a motive. All that about being upset because the Spains weren’t happy, that’s nothing. They’d been in trouble for months. You’re telling me the other night he just decided out of the blue, so fast he didn’t even have time to clean out his hide: There’s nothing on the telly, I know what I’ll do, I’ll head on down to the Spains’ and kill the lot of them? Come on, man. Here’s you saying Pat Spain didn’t have a motive. What the hell was this fella’s motive? Why the hell would he want any of them dead?”
