by Tana French
I asked, “When was this?”
“A month back, maybe. Middle of September. See what I mean? Nothing to do with anything.”
Not like anyone off Desperate Housewives; like a victim. Like every battered woman and man I had dealt with, back in Domestic Violence. Every one of them had been sure that their partners would be happy and everything in the garden would be rosy, if they could just get it right. Every one of them had been terrified, to a point somewhere between hysteria and paralysis, of getting it wrong and making Daddy unhappy.
Richie had gone still, no more foot-jiggling: he had spotted it too. He said, “That’s why the first thing you thought, when you saw our lot outside, was that Pat Spain had killed his wife.”
“Yeah. I thought maybe if she didn’t have the house clean, or if the kids were bold, he gave her the slaps. Just goes to show you, doesn’t it? There she was, all up herself, with her fancy gear and her posh accent, and all the time he’s beating the bollix out of her.” Sinéad couldn’t keep the smirk off the corners of her mouth. She had liked the idea. “So when yous showed up, I figured it had to be that. She burned the dinner or something, and he went ballistic.”
Richie asked, “Anything else that made you think he could be hurting her? Anything you heard, anything you saw?”
“Those monitors being downstairs. That’s weird, know what I mean? At first I couldn’t think of any reason why they’d be anywhere but the kids’ bedrooms. When I heard her going on like that, though, I thought maybe he put them all around, so he could keep tabs on her. Like if he went upstairs or out in the garden, he could bring the receivers with him, so he’d hear everything she did.” Satisfied little nod: she was delighted with her own investigative genius. “Creepy or what?”
“Nothing else, no?”
Shrug. “No bruises or nothing. No yelling, that I heard. She did have a face on her, but, whenever I saw her outside. She used to be all cheerful—even when the kids were acting up or whatever, she’d this big fake smile on her. That went out the window, the last while: she looked down in the dumps the whole time. Spacy, like—I thought maybe she was on the Valium. I figured it was ’cause of him being out of work: she wasn’t happy about having to live like the rest of us, no more SUV and no more designer gear. If he was battering her, though, could’ve been that.”
I asked, “Did you ever hear anyone else in the house, other than the four Spains? Visitors, family, tradesmen?”
That lit up Sinéad’s whole pasty face. “Jesus! Was your woman playing away, yeah? Getting some fella in while her husband was out? No wonder he was keeping tabs. The cheek of her, acting like we were something she’d scrape off her shoe, when she was—”
I said, “Did you hear or see anything that would indicate that?”
She thought that over. “Nah,” she said, regretfully. “Only ever heard the four of them.”
Jayden was messing about with his controller, flicking at buttons, but he didn’t quite have the nerve to switch it back on. “The whistling,” he said.
“That was some other house.”
“Wasn’t. They’re too far away.”
I said, “We’d like to hear about it, either way.”
Sinéad shifted on the sofa. “It was only the one time. August, maybe; could’ve been before. Early morning. We heard someone whistling—not a song or nothing, just like when a fella whistles to himself while he’s doing something else.” Jayden demonstrated, a low, tuneless, absent sound. Sinéad shoved his shoulder. “Stop that. You’re giving me a headache. Them in Number Nine, they were all gone out—her too, so it couldn’t have been her bit on the side. I thought it had to be from one of them houses down at the end of the road; there’s two families down there, and they’ve both got kids, so they’d have the monitors.”
“No you didn’t,” Jayden said. “You thought it was a ghost. Again.”
Sinéad snapped, to me or Richie or both, “I’m entitled to think what I like. Yous can go ahead and look at me like I’m thick; yous don’t have to live out here. Try it for a while, then come back to me.”
Her voice was belligerent, but there was real fear in her eyes. “We’ll bring our own Ghostbusters,” I said. “Monday night, did you hear anything on the monitors? Anything at all?”
“Nah. Like I said, it only happened every few weeks.”
“You’d better be sure.”
“I am. Positive.”
“What about your husband?”
“Him neither. He’d have said.”
I said, “Is that the lot? Nothing else we might want to hear about?”
Sinéad shook her head. “That’s it.”
“How do I know that?”
“’Cause. I don’t want yous coming back here again, calling me names in front of my son. I’ve told you everything. So you can eff off and leave us alone. OK?”
“My pleasure,” I said, getting up. “Believe me.” The arm of the chair left something sticky on my hand; I didn’t bother hiding the look of distaste.
As we left, Sinéad planted herself in the doorway behind us, doing something that was meant to be an imposing stare but came off looking like an electrocuted pug dog. When we were a safe distance down the drive, she shouted after us, “You can’t talk to me like that! I’ll be putting in a complaint!”
I pulled my card out of my pocket without breaking stride, waved it above my head and dropped it on the drive for her to pick up. “See you then,” I called back over my shoulder. “I can’t wait.”
I was expecting Richie to say something about my new interview technique—calling a witness a scumbag moron isn’t anywhere in the rule book—but he had sunk back somewhere in his mind; he trudged back to the car with his hands deep in his pockets, head bent into the wind. My mobile had three missed calls and a text, all from Geri—the text started, Sorry mick but any news abt . . . I deleted them all.
When we got onto the motorway, Richie resurfaced far enough to say—carefully, to the windscreen—“If Pat was hitting Jenny . . .”
“If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle. The Gogan cow doesn’t know everything about the Spains, no matter what she’d like to think. Luckily for us, there’s one guy who does, and we know exactly where to find him.”
Richie didn’t answer. I took one hand off the wheel to give him a clap on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, my friend. We’ll get the goods out of Conor. Who knows, it might even be fun.”
I caught his sideways glance: I shouldn’t have been this upbeat, not after what Sinéad Gogan had given us. I didn’t know how to tell him that it wasn’t good humor, not the way he thought; it was that wild rush still careening around my veins, it was the fear on Sinéad’s face and Conor waiting for me at the end of this drive. I got my foot on the pedal and kept it there, watching the needle creep up. The Beemer handled better than ever, flew straight and hard as a hawk diving on prey, like this speed was what it had been aching for all along.
16
Before we had Conor brought over to us, we skimmed through everything the tide had washed up in the squad room: reports, phone messages, statements, tips, the lot. Most of it was a whole lot of nothing—the floaters looking for Conor’s friends and family had turned up no one but a couple of cousins, the tip line had attracted the usual swarm of freaks who wanted to talk about the Book of Revelations and complicated maths and immodest women—but there were a couple of gems in there. Fiona’s old pal Shona was in Dubai this week and would sue us all personally if anyone printed her name in connection with this mess, but she did share her opinion that Conor had been mad about Jenny when they were kids and that nothing had changed since, otherwise why had he never had a relationship longer than six months? And Larry’s boys had found a rolled-up overcoat, a jumper, a pair of jeans, a pair of leather gloves and a pair of runners, size ten, shoved in the bin of an apartment blo
ck a mile from Conor’s flat. They were all covered in blood. The blood types matched Pat and Jenny Spain. The left runner was consistent with the print in Conor’s car, and a perfect match to the one on the Spains’ kitchen floor.
We waited in the interview room, one of the tiny cramped ones with no observation room and barely enough space to move, for the uniforms to bring Conor up. Someone had been using it: there were sandwich wrappers and foam cups scattered on the table, a faint smell of citrus aftershave and sweat and onion in the air. I couldn’t stay still. I moved around the room, balling up rubbish and tossing it into the bin.
Richie said, “He should be well nervous by now. A day and a half sitting in there, wondering what we’re waiting for . . .”
I said, “We need to be very clear on what we’re after. I want a motive.”
Richie stuffed empty sugar sachets into a foam cup. “We might not get one.”
“Yeah. I know.” Saying it hit me with another wave of that lightheadedness; for a second I thought I would have to lean on the table till my balance steadied. “There might not be one. You were right: sometimes shit just happens. But that’s not going to stop me giving it my best shot.”
Richie thought about that, examining a plastic wrapper he had picked off the floor. “If we might not get a motive,” he said. “What else are we after?”
“Answers. What Conor and the Spains fought about, a few years back. His relationship with Jenny. Why he wiped that computer.” The room was as clean as it was going to get. I made myself lean against the wall and stay put. “I want us to be sure. When you and I leave this room, I want both of us on the same page and both of us sure who we’re chasing. That’s all. If we can just get that far, the rest will fall into place.”
Richie watched me. His face was unreadable. He said, “I thought you were sure.”
My eyes were gritty with fatigue. I wished I had got an extra coffee, when we stopped for lunch. I said, “I was.”
He nodded. He tossed the cup into the bin and came to lean against the wall next to me. After a while he dug a packet of mints out of his pocket and held it out. I took one and we stayed there, sucking mints, shoulder to shoulder, until the interview-room door opened and the uniform brought Conor in.
* * *
He looked bad. Maybe it was just because he wasn’t wearing the duffle coat this time, but he seemed even thinner, thin enough that I wondered if we should get him checked out by a doctor, bones jutting painfully through the reddish stubble. He had been crying again.
He sat hunched over the table, staring at his fists planted in front of him, not moving even when the central heating kicked on with a clang. In a way, that reassured me. The innocent ones fidget and jitter and almost leap out of their seats at the slightest noise; they’re itching to talk to you and get the whole thing straightened out. The guilty ones are concentrating, marshaling all their forces tight around the inner stronghold and bracing themselves for battle.
Richie stretched up to switch on the video camera and told it, “Detective Kennedy and Detective Curran interviewing Conor Brennan. Interview commenced at four forty-three P.M.” I ran through the rights sheet; Conor signed without looking, sat back and folded his arms. As far as he was concerned, we were done.
“Oh, Conor,” I said, leaning back in my chair and shaking my head sadly. “Conor, Conor, Conor. And here I thought we were getting on so well, the other night.”
He watched me and kept his mouth shut.
“You weren’t being honest with us, fella.”
That sent a zip of fear across his face, too sharp to hide. “I was.”
“No you weren’t. Ever heard of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? You let us down on at least one of those. Now why would you go and do that?”
Conor said, “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” His mouth clamped shut in a hard line, but his eyes were still fixed on me. He was afraid.
Richie, lounging against the wall under the camera, clicked his tongue reproachfully. I said, “Let’s start with this: you gave us the impression that, up until Monday night, the closest you’d got to the Spains was through binoculars. You didn’t think it might be an idea to mention that you’d been best buddies since you were kids?”
A faint red sprang up on his cheekbones, but he didn’t blink: this wasn’t what he was afraid of. “None of your business.”
I sighed and wagged a finger at him. “Conor, you know better than that. You name it, it’s our business now.”
“And how much difference did it make?” Richie pointed out. “You had to know Pat and Jenny had photos, man. All you did was set us back a couple of hours and piss us off.”
“My colleague speaks the truth,” I said. “Can you remember that, next time you’re tempted to dick us around?”
Conor said, “How’s Jenny?”
I snorted. “What’s it to you? If you were so concerned about her health, you could have just, I don’t know, not stabbed the poor woman. Or are you hoping she’s finished the job for you?”
His jaw had tightened, but he held on to his cool. “I want to know how she’s doing.”
“And I don’t care what you want. Tell you what, though: we’ve got a few questions for you. If you answer them all like a nice boy, without any more messing, then maybe I’ll be in a better mood and I’ll feel like sharing. Does that sound fair enough?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with the easy stuff. Tell us about Pat and Jenny, back when you were all kiddies together. What was Pat like?”
Conor said, “He was my best mate, since we were fourteen. You probably know that already.” Neither of us answered. “He was sound. That’s all. The soundest bloke I’ve ever known. Liked rugby, liked having a laugh, liked hanging out with his mates; he liked most people, everyone liked him. A lot of popular blokes are wankers, when you’re that age, but I never saw Pat be a bastard to anyone. Maybe all that doesn’t sound like anything special to you. But it is.”
Richie was tossing a sugar sachet in the air and catching it. “You were close, yeah?”
Conor’s chin pointed from Richie to me. “You’re partners. That means you’ve got to be ready to trust each other with your lives, right?”
Richie caught his sachet and stayed still, letting me answer. I said, “Good partners do. Yeah.”
“Then you know what Pat and me were like. There’s some stuff I told him, I think I might’ve done myself in if anyone else had found out. I told him anyway.”
He had missed the irony, if it was there. The flash of unease almost sent me out of my chair and circling the room again. “What kind of stuff?”
“You must be joking. Family stuff.”
I glanced across at Richie—we could find out somewhere else, if we needed to—but his eyes were on Conor. I said, “Let’s talk about Jenny. What was she like, back then?”
Conor’s face softened. “Jenny,” he said gently. “She was something special.”
“Yeah, we’ve seen the photos. No awkward phase going on there.”
“That’s not what I mean. She came into a room and made things better. She always wanted everything lovely, everyone happy, and she always knew the right thing to do. She had this touch, I’ve never seen anything like it. Like once we were all at a disco, one of those underage things, and Mac—this guy we used to hang out with—he was hovering around some girl, kind of dancing around her and trying to get her to dance with him. And she made this face at him and said something, I don’t know what, but her and her mates all collapsed laughing. Mac came back to us scarlet. Devastated. The girls were still pointing and giggling; you could tell he just wanted to disappear. And Jenny turns around to Mac and holds out her hands and says, ‘I love this song, only Pat hates it. Would you dance with me? Please?’ And off they go, and next thing yo
u know Mac’s smiling, Jenny’s laughing at something he said, they’re having a ball. That shut the girls up. Jenny was ten times prettier than your woman, any day.”
I said, “That didn’t bother Pat?”
“Jenny dancing with Mac?” He almost laughed. “Nah. Mac was a year younger. Fat kid with bad hair. And anyway, Pat knew what Jenny was doing. I’d say he just loved her more for doing it.”
That softness had seeped into his voice. It sounded like a lover’s, a voice for low light and drifting music, for only one listener. Fiona and Shona had been right.
I said, “Sounds like a good relationship.”
Conor said simply, “They were beautiful. Only word for it. You know when you’re a teenager, a lot of the time it feels like the whole world is shite? The two of them’d give you hope.”
“That’s lovely,” I said. “Really, it is.”
Richie had started playing with the sugar sachet again. “You went out with Jenny’s sister Fiona, yeah? When you were, what, eighteen?”
“Yeah. For a few months, only.”
“Why’d you break up?”
Conor shrugged. “It wasn’t working out.”
“Why not? She was a geebag? You had nothing in common? She wouldn’t do the do?”
“No. She was the one that broke it off. Fiona’s great. We got on great. It just wasn’t working out.”
“Yeah, well,” Richie said dryly, catching the sugar, “I can see where it wouldn’t. If you were in love with her sister.”
Conor went still. “Who said that?”
“Who cares?”
“I care. Because they’re full of shite.”
“Conor,” I said, warning. “Remember our deal?”
He looked like he wanted to kick both of our teeth in, but after a moment he said, “It wasn’t the way you make it sound.”
And if that wasn’t a motive then at least, at the very least, it was only one step away. I couldn’t stop myself from glancing over at Richie, but he had thrown the sugar too far and was lunging for it. “Yeah?” he wanted to know. “How do I make it sound?”
