Broken Harbour

by Tana French

  “And you believed that.”

  “I figured she was exaggerating. But still… She wasn’t making it up about you being stressed, man. She said you were coming apart, this case was taking you apart, and there was no way you’d put it down.”

  I couldn’t tell, through all this dark snarled mess, whether this was Dina’s revenge for something real or imaginary that I had done to her, or whether she had seen something I had missed, something that had sent her banging on Richie’s door like a panicked bird beating against a window. I couldn’t tell, either, which one would be worse.

  “She said to me, ‘You’re his partner, he trusts you. You have to look after him. He won’t let me, he won’t let his family, maybe he might let you.’”

  I said, “Did you sleep with her?”

  I had been trying not to ask. The fraction of silence, after Richie opened his mouth, told me everything I needed to know. I said, “Don’t bother answering that.”

  “Listen, man, listen—you never said she was your sister. Neither did she. I swear to God, if I’d’ve known—”

  I had come within a hairsbreadth of telling him. I had held back because, God help me, I thought it would make me vulnerable. “What did you think she was? My girlfriend? My ex? My daughter? How exactly would any of those have made it better?”

  “She said she was an old mate of yours. She said she knew you from back when you were kids—your family and her family used to get caravans together at Broken Harbor, for the summer. That’s what she told me. Why would I think she was lying?”

  “How about because she’s fucking nutso? She comes in babbling about a case she hasn’t got a clue about, drowning you in bullshit about me having a nervous breakdown. Ninety percent of what she says is gibberish. It doesn’t even occur to you that the other ten percent might not be on the level?”

  “It wasn’t gibberish, but. She was dead right: this case, it’s been getting to you. I thought that from the start, almost.”

  Every breath hurt on its way in. “That’s sweet. I’m touched. So you felt the appropriate response was to fuck my sister.”

  Richie looked like he would happily saw his own arm off if it would make this conversation go away. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “How in the name of sweet jumping Jesus was it not like that? Did she drug you? Handcuff you to the bedpost?”

  “I didn’t go in there planning to… I don’t think she did either.”

  “Are you seriously trying to tell me how my sister thinks? After one night?”

  “No. I’m just saying—”

  “Because I know her a lot better than you do, chum, and even I struggle for any clue about what goes on in her head. I think it’s more than possible that she went to your house planning on doing exactly what she did. I’m one hundred percent positive that this was her idea, not yours. That doesn’t mean you had to play along. What the holy hell were you thinking?”

  “Honest to God, it was just one thing led to another. She was scared this case would mess you up, she was going in circles around my sitting room, crying—she couldn’t sit down, she was that upset. I gave her a hug, just to settle her—”

  “And that’s where you shut up. I don’t need the graphic details.” I didn’t; I could see exactly how it had gone down. It’s so, so lethally easy to get dragged into Dina’s crazy. One minute you’re only going to dip your toes at the edge, just so you can grab her hand and pull her out; the next minute you’re full fathom five and flailing for air.

  “I’m only telling you. It just happened.”

  “Your partner’s sister,” I said. Suddenly I was exhausted, exhausted and sick to my stomach, something rising and burning in my throat. I leaned my head back against the wall and pressed my fingers into my eyes. “Your partner’s crazy sister. How could that seem OK?”

  Richie said quietly, “It doesn’t.”

  The dark behind my fingers was deep and restful. I didn’t want to open my eyes on that harsh, biting light. “And when you woke up this morning,” I said, “Dina was gone, and so was the evidence bag. Where had it been?”

  A moment’s silence. “On my bedside table.”

  “In plain view of anyone who happened to wander in. Flatmates, burglars, one-night stands. Brilliant, old son.”

  “My bedroom door locks. And during the day I kept it on me. In my jacket pocket.”

  All those arguments we’d had, Conor versus Pat, half-real animals, old love stories: Richie’s side had been bullshit. He had been holding the answer the whole time, close enough that I could have reached out and put my hand on it. I said, “And didn’t that work out well?”

  “I never thought of her taking it. She—”

  “You weren’t thinking at all. Not by the time she got into your bedroom.”

  “She was your mate—or I thought she was. I didn’t think about her robbing stuff, specially not that. She cared about you, like a lot; that was obvious. Why would she want to fuck up your case?”

  “Oh, no, no. She wasn’t the one who fucked up this case.” I took my hands away from my face. Richie was scarlet. “She swiped this envelope because she changed her mind about you, chum. And she’s not the only one. Once she spotted this, it struck her that you might not be the wonderful, trustworthy, stand-up guy she’d been picturing, which meant you might not in fact be the best person to take care of me. So she figured her only option was to do it herself, by bringing me the evidence that my partner had decided to run off with. Two for one: I get my case back, and I get to find out the truth about who I’m dealing with. Seems to me that, crazy or no, she was on to something.”

  Richie, focusing on his shoes, said nothing. I asked, “Were you ever planning to tell me?”

  That snapped him straight. “Yeah, I was. When I first found that yoke, I was, practically definitely. That’s why I bagged it and tagged it. If I hadn’t been planning on telling you, I could’ve just flushed it down the jacks.”

  “Well, congratulations, old son. What do you want, a medal?” I nodded towards the evidence envelope. I couldn’t look at it; in the corner of my eye it seemed crammed tight with something alive and raging, a great insect thrumming against the thin paper and plastic, straining to split the seams and attack. “‘Collected in sitting-room, residence of Conor Brennan.’ While I was outside, on the phone to Larry. Is that right?”

  Richie stared at the papers in his hand, blankly, like he couldn’t remember what they were. He opened his hand and let them scatter on the floor. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Where was it?”

  “Must’ve been on the carpet. I was putting back all that stuff that had been on the sofa, and this was hanging off the sleeve of a jumper. It wasn’t there when we took the clothes off the sofa—we gave them all a proper going-over, remember, in case any of them had blood on. The jumper must’ve picked it up off the floor.”

  I asked, “What color jumper?” I already knew I would remember if Conor Brennan’s wardrobe had included rose-pink knitwear.

  “Green. Khaki, like.”

  And the carpet had been cream, with dirty green and yellow swirls. Larry’s lads could go over the flat with magnifying glasses, looking for a match to that wisp of pink, and find nothing. I had known, the moment I saw that fingernail, where the match was.

  I asked, “And how did you interpret this find?”

  There was a silence. Richie was looking at nothing. I said, “Detective Curran.”

  He said, “The fingernail—the shape and the polish—it matches Jenny Spain’s. The wool that’s caught in it—” A corner of his mouth spasmed. “Looked to me like it matched the embroidery on the pillow that smothered Emma.”

  The sodden thread that Cooper had fished out of her throat, while he held her frail jaw open between thumb and finger. “And what did you take that to mean?”

  Richie said, evenly and very quietly, “I took it to mean that Jennifer Spain could be our woman.”

  “Not could be. Is.”

  H
is shoulders moved restlessly, against the door. “It’s not definite. She could’ve picked up the wool some other way. Earlier on, when she put Emma to bed—”

  “Jenny keeps herself groomed. Not a hair out of place. You think she’d have left a broken nail to snag on things all evening, gone to bed with it still ragged? Left a piece of wool caught in it for hours?”

  “Or it could’ve been a transfer off Pat. He gets the bit of wool on his pajama top when he’s using the pillow on Emma; then, when he’s struggling with Jenny, she breaks a nail, the wool catches in it…”

  “That one specific fiber, out of the thousands and thousands in his pajamas, on his pajamas, in her own pajamas, all over the kitchen. What are the odds?”

  “It could happen. We can’t just drop the whole thing on Jenny. Cooper was positive, remember? Her injuries weren’t self-inflicted.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I’ll talk to her.” The thought of having to deal with the world outside this room felt like a baton to the back of the knees. I sat down heavily at the table; I couldn’t stand up any more.

  Richie had caught that: I’ll talk to her, not We. He opened his mouth and then shut it again, looking for the right question.

  I said, “Why didn’t you tell me?” I heard the raw note of pain, but I didn’t care.

  Richie’s eyes fell away from mine. He knelt on the floor and started picking up the papers he had dropped. He said, “Because I knew what you’d want to do.”

  “What? Arrest Jenny? Not charge Conor with a triple murder he didn’t commit? What, Richie? What part of that is so fucking terrible that you just couldn’t let it happen?”

  “Not terrible. Just… Arresting her: I don’t know, man. I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do here.”

  “That’s what we do. We arrest murderers. If you have a problem with the job description, you should’ve got a different fucking job.”

  That brought Richie up on his feet again. “That right there, that’s why I didn’t tell you. I knew that was what you’d say. I knew it. With you, man, everything’s black and white. No questions; just stick to the rules and go home. I needed to think about it because I knew the second I told you, it’d be too late.”

  “Damn right it’s black and white. You slaughter your family, you go to prison. Where the fuck are you seeing shades of gray?”

  “Jenny’s in hell. Every second of her life, she’s going to be in the kind of pain I don’t even want to think about. You think prison’s going to punish her any worse than her own head? There’s nothing she can do, or we can do, to fix what she did, and it’s not like we need to lock her up to stop her doing it again. What’s a life sentence going to do here?”

  Here I had thought it was Richie’s knack, his special gift: coaxing witnesses and suspects into believing, absurd and impossible though it was, that he saw them as human beings. I had been so impressed by the way he convinced the Gogans they were more than random irritating scumbags to him, the way he convinced Conor Brennan he was more than just another wild animal we needed to get off the street. I should have known, that night in the hide when we became just two guys talking, I should have known then and I should have seen the danger: it wasn’t an act.

  I said, “So that’s why you were all over Pat Spain. And here I thought it was all in the name of truth and justice. Silly me.”

  Richie had the grace to flush. “It wasn’t like that. At first I honestly thought it must’ve been him—Conor didn’t work for me, it didn’t look like there was anyone else. And then, once I saw that yoke there, I thought…”

  His voice trailed off. I said, “The idea of arresting Jenny offended your delicate sensibilities, but you figured it might just be a bad idea to slap Conor in prison for life for something he didn’t do. Sweet of you to care. So you decided to find a way to dump the whole mess on Pat. That lovely little performance with Conor, yesterday: that’s where you were trying to take him. He almost bit, too. It must have ruined your day when he decided not to take the bait.”

  “Pat’s dead, man. It can’t hurt him. I know what you said about everyone thinking he was a murderer; but you remember what he said on that board, about just wanting to take care of Jenny. If he had the choice, what do you think he’d pick? Take the blame, or put her away for life? He’d be begging us to call him a killer, man. He’d beg us on his knees.”

  “And that’s what you were doing with the Gogan bitch, too. And with Jenny. All that bullshit about whether Pat was losing his temper more, was he having a nervous breakdown, were you afraid he’d hurt you… You were trying to get Jenny to throw Pat under a bus. Only it turns out a triple murderer has more sense of honor than you do.”

  Richie’s face flared brighter. He didn’t answer. I said, “Let’s just say for one second that we do it your way. Throw that thing in the shredder, shove the blame on Pat, close the file and let Jenny walk out of the hospital. What do you figure happens next? Whatever went down that night, she loved her kids. She loved her husband. What do you think she’s going to do, the second she’s strong enough?”

  Richie put the reports on the table, a safe distance from the envelope, and squared off the edges of the pile. He said, “She’s going to finish the job.”

  “Yes,” I said. The light was burning the air, turning the room into a white haze, a jumble of incandescent outlines hanging in midair. “That’s exactly what she’ll do. And this time she won’t fuck it up. If we let her out of that hospital, inside forty-eight hours she’ll be dead.”

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  “How the hell are you OK with that?” One of his shoulders lifted in something like a shrug. “Is it revenge? She deserves to die, we don’t have the death penalty, what the hell, let her do it herself. Is that what you’re thinking?”

  Richie’s eyes came up to meet mine. He said, “It’s the best thing left that could happen to her.”

  I nearly came out of my chair and grabbed him by the shirt front. “You can’t say that. Jenny’s got how many years left, fifty, sixty? You think the best thing she can do with them is get in the bath and slice her wrists open?”

  “Sixty years, yeah, maybe. Half of them in prison.”

  “Which is the best place for her. The woman needs treatment. She needs therapy, drugs, I don’t know what, but there are doctors who do. If she’s inside, she’ll get all of that. She’ll pay her debt to society, get her head fixed, and come out with some kind of life in front of her.”

  Richie was shaking his head, hard. “No, she won’t. She won’t. Are you crazy? There’s nothing in front of her. She killed her kids. She held them down till she felt them stop fighting. She stabbed her husband and then lay there with him while he bled out. Every doctor in the world couldn’t fix that. You saw the state of her. She’s already gone, man. Let her go. Have a bit of mercy.”

  “You want to talk about mercy? Jenny Spain isn’t the only person in this story. Remember Fiona Rafferty? Remember their mother? Got any mercy for them? Think about what they’ve already lost. Then look at me and tell me they deserve to lose Jenny as well.”

  “They didn’t deserve any of this. You think it’d be easier on them to know what she did? They lose her either way. At least this way it’ll be over and done with.”

  “It won’t be over,” I said. Saying the words sucked my breath out, left me hollow, like my chest was folding in on itself. “It’s never going to be over for them.”

  That shut Richie up. He sat down opposite me and watched his fingers square off the reports, again and again. After a while he said, “Her debt to society: I don’t know what that means. Tell me one person who’s better off if Jenny sits in prison for twenty-five years.”

  I said, “Shut the hell up. You don’t even get to ask that question. The judge hands down sentences, not us. That’s what the whole bloody system is for: to stop arrogant little pricks like you from playing God, handing out death sentences whenever they feel like it. You just stick to the fucking rules, hand in the fu
cking evidence and let the fucking system do its job. You don’t get to throw Jenny Spain away.”

  “It’s not about throwing her away. Making her spend years in this kind of pain… That’s torture, man. It’s wrong.”

  “No. You think it’s wrong. Who knows why you think that? Because you’re right, or because this case breaks your heart, because you’re feeling guilty as hell, because Jenny reminds you of Miss Kelly who taught you when you were five? That’s why we have rules to begin with, Richie: because you can’t trust your mind to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. Not on something like this. The consequences if you make a mistake are too huge and too horrible even to think about, never mind live with. The rules say we put Jenny away. Everything else is bullshit.”

  He was shaking his head. “It’s still wrong. I’ll trust my own mind on this one.”

  I could have laughed, or howled. “Yeah? Just look where that’s got you. Rule Zero, Richie, the rule to end all rules: your mind is garbage. It’s a weak, broken, fucked-up mess that will let you down at every worst moment there is. Don’t you think my sister’s mind told her she was doing the right thing when she followed you home? Don’t you think Jenny believed she was doing the right thing, Monday night? If you trust your mind, you will fuck up and you will fuck up big. Every single thing I’ve done right in my life, it’s been because I don’t trust my mind.”

  Richie lifted his head to look at me. It took an effort. He said, “Your sister told me about your mother.”

  In that second I almost punched his face in. I saw him brace for it, saw the blast of fear or hope. By the time my fists would unclench and I could breathe again, the silence had got long.

  I said, “What exactly did she tell you?”

  “That your mam drowned, the summer you were fifteen. When yous were down at Broken Harbor.”

  “Did she happen to mention the manner of death?”

  He wasn’t looking at me any more. “Yeah. She said your mam went into the water herself. On purpose, like.”