by Tana French
“Conor went, ‘Why? Jenny, Christ, what happened?’”
Jenny made a painful scraping sound that could have been some kind of laugh. “If we’d had a month or two, then maybe . . . I just went, ‘No ambulance. Please.’ Conor went, ‘Wait. Hang on. Hang on,’ and he laid me down and crawled over to Pat. He turned Pat’s head and he did something, I don’t know what, tried to open his eyes or something—he didn’t say anything but I saw his face, I saw the look on his face, so I knew. I was glad about that, at least.”
I wondered how many times Conor had re-run those few minutes in his head, staring at the ceiling of his cell, changing a different tiny thing each time: If I hadn’t fallen asleep. If I had got up the second I heard noises. If I had run faster. If I hadn’t fumbled getting the key in the door. If he had made it into that kitchen just a few minutes earlier, he would have been in time to save Pat, at least.
Jenny said, “But then Conor—he started trying to stand up. He was trying to pull himself up on the computer desk—he kept falling back, like he was slipping on the blood or maybe he was dizzy, but I could tell he was aiming for the kitchen door. He was trying to go upstairs. I got hold of him, the leg of his trousers, and I went, ‘No. Don’t go up there. They’re dead too. I had to get them out.’ Conor—he just went down on his hands and knees. He said—he had his head down, but I heard him anyway—he said, ‘Ah, Jesus Christ.’”
Up until then he must have thought it was a domestic fight turned terrible, love transformed under all those tons of pressure into something diamond-hard that sliced flesh and bone. Maybe he had even thought it was self-defense, that Pat’s mind had boiled over at last and he had gone for Jenny. Once she told him about the children, there had been no place left for answers, for comfort, for ambulances or doctors or tomorrows.
“I went, ‘I need to be with the babies. I need to be with Pat. Please, Conor, please, get me out of here.’
“Conor made this coughing noise, like he was going to get sick. He said, ‘I can’t.’ He sounded like he was hoping this was all some kind of nightmare, like he was trying to find some way to wake up and make it all go away. I managed to get over closer to him—I had to drag myself, my legs had gone all numb and shaky. I got hold of his wrist and I went, ‘Conor, you have to. I can’t stay here. Please hurry. Please.’”
Jenny’s voice was fading, barely more than a hoarse flicker of sound; she was at the end of her strength. “He sat down beside me, and he turned my head so my face was against his chest again. He said, ‘It’s OK. It’s OK. Close your eyes.’ He was stroking my hair. I said, ‘Thank you,’ and I shut my eyes.”
Jenny spread her hands, palms up, on the blanket. She said simply, “That’s all.”
Conor had believed it was the last thing he would ever do for Jenny. And before he left, he had done two last things for Pat: wiped the computer, and taken the weapons. No wonder the delete job had been fast and messy; every second Conor stayed in that house had been shredding his mind. But he had known that if we read the flood of madness on that computer, and if there was no evidence that anyone else had been in the house, we would never look beyond Pat.
He must have known, too, that if he shoved it all onto Pat he would walk away safe, or at least safer. But Conor had believed the same thing I believed: you can’t do that. He had missed his chance to save the life that Pat should have had. Instead, he had put himself on the line to save those twenty-nine years from being branded with a lie.
When we came to get him, he had trusted in silence, in his gloves, in the hope that we couldn’t prove anything. Then I had told him that Jenny was alive; and he had done one more thing for her, before I could force the truth out of her. Probably a part of him had welcomed the chance.
Jenny said, “See? Conor only did what I wanted him to do.”
Her hand was struggling across the blanket again, reaching for me, and there was a flare of urgency in her voice. I said, “He assaulted you. By both of your accounts, he was trying to kill you. That’s a crime. Consent isn’t a defense to attempted murder.”
“I made him do it. You can’t put him in jail for that.”
I said, “That depends. If you testify to all of this in court, then yes, there’s an excellent chance Conor will walk away. Juries are only human; sometimes they bend the rules and go with their own consciences instead. Even if you give me an official statement, I can probably do something with that. But as it stands, all we’ve got to go on is the evidence and Conor’s confession. Those make him a triple murderer.”
“But he didn’t kill anyone! I told you what happened. You said, if I told you—”
“You told me your version. Conor told me his. The evidence doesn’t rule out either one, and Conor’s the one who’s willing to go on the record. That means his version carries a lot more weight than yours.”
“But you believe me. Right? If you believe me—”
Her hand had reached mine. She clutched my fingers like a child. Hers were so thin I could feel the bones moving, and terribly cold.
I said, “Even if I do, there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not a layperson on a jury; I don’t have the luxury of acting on my conscience. My job is to follow the evidence. If you don’t want Conor going to jail, Mrs. Spain, then you need to be in court to save him. After what he did for you, I think you owe him that much.”
I heard myself: pompous, self-righteous, vapid, the kind of puffed-up little prick who spends his school days lecturing his classmates on the evils of alcohol and getting his head slammed into locker doors. If I believed in curses, I would believe that this is mine: when it matters most, in the moments when I know with the greatest clarity exactly what needs to be done, everything I say comes out wrong.
Jenny said—to the machines and the walls and the air, as much as to me—“He’ll be all right.”
She was planning her note again. “Mrs. Spain,” I said. “I understand a little of what you’re going through. I know you probably don’t believe me, but I swear on everything that’s holy, it’s the truth. I understand what you want to do. But there are still people who need you. There are still things you need to do. You can’t just let go of those. They’re yours.”
Just for a second, I thought Jenny had heard me. Her eyes met mine, startled and clear, as if in that instant she had caught a glimpse of the world still turning, outside this sealed room: children outgrowing their clothes and old people forgetting old hurts, lovers coming together and coming apart, tides wearing rock away to sand, leaves falling to cover seeds germinating deep in the cold earth. For a second I thought that, by some miracle, I had found the right words.
Then her eyes fell away and she twisted her hand out of mine—I hadn’t realized, until then, that I was squeezing it tight enough to hurt. She said, “I don’t even know what Conor was doing there. When I woke up in here, when I started remembering what happened, I thought probably he was never there at all; probably I’d imagined him. Right up until you said it today, I thought that. What was he . . . ? How did he get there?”
I said, “He had been spending a bit of time in Brianstown. When he saw that you and Pat were in trouble, he came to help.”
I saw the pieces start falling into place, slowly and painfully. “The pin,” Jenny said. “The JoJo’s pin. Was that . . . ? Was that Conor?”
I had too little mind left to figure out which answer was the most likely to hold her, or the least cruel. The second of silence told her. “Oh, God. And I thought . . .” A quick, high gasp, like a hurt child’s. “The break-ins, too?”
“I can’t go into that.”
Jenny nodded. That surge of fight had used up the last of her strength; she looked almost past moving. After a while she said quietly, “Poor Conor.”
“Yes,” I said. “I suppose so.”
We sat there for a long time. Jenny didn’t speak, didn’t
look at me; she was done. She leaned her head back on the pillows and watched her fingers tracing the creases in the sheet, slowly, steadily, over and over. After a while her eyes closed.
In the corridor two women passed by talking and laughing, shoes clicking briskly on the tiled floor. My throat hurt from the dry air. Outside the window, the light had moved on; I didn’t remember hearing rain, but the leaves looked dark and drenched, shivering against a mottled, sulky sky. Jenny’s head fell to one side. Small ragged shudders caught at her chest, until gradually the ebb and flow of her breath smoothed them away.
I still don’t know why I stayed there. Maybe my legs wouldn’t move, or maybe I was afraid to leave Jenny alone; or maybe some part of me was still hoping that she would turn in her sleep and murmur the secret password, the thing that would unlock the code, magic the gibbering mess of shadows to black and white, and show me how all of this made sense.
19
Fiona was in the corridor, hunched in one of the plastic chairs that were scattered along the wall, wrapping a ratty striped scarf around her wrists. Beyond her, the waxy green shine of the floor stretched on for what seemed like miles.
Her head snapped up when I clicked the door shut behind me. “How’s Jenny? Is she OK?”
“She’s asleep.” I pulled up another chair and sat down next to her. The red duffle coat smelled of cold air and smoke: she had been outside for a cigarette.
“I should go in. She gets freaked out if no one’s there when she wakes up.”
I said, “How long have you known?”
Instantly Fiona’s face went blank. “Known what?”
There were a thousand clever ways I could have done it. I had nothing left for any of them. “Your sister just confessed to the murders of her family. I’m pretty sure this isn’t a big surprise to you.”
The blank look didn’t budge. “She’s off her head on painkillers. She hasn’t got a clue what she’s talking about.”
“Believe me, Ms. Rafferty, she knew exactly what she was saying. All the details of her story match the evidence.”
“You bullied her into it. The state she’s in, you could make her say anything. I could report you.”
She was as exhausted as I was; she couldn’t even manage to put a tough edge on it. “Ms. Rafferty,” I said. “Please, let’s not do this. Anything you say to me here is off-the-record; I can’t even prove we ever had this conversation. The same goes for your sister’s confession: legally, it doesn’t exist. I’m just trying to find a way to end this mess before any more damage gets done.”
Fiona scanned my face, tired red eyes trying to focus. The harsh lights turned her skin grayish and pitted; she looked older and sicker than Jenny. Down the corridor a child was crying, immense bereft sobs, like the world had shattered around him.
Something, I don’t know what, told Fiona I meant it. Unusual, I had thought when we interviewed her, perceptive; back then I hadn’t been pleased, but it worked for me in the end. The fight went out of her body, and her head fell back against the wall. She said, “Why did she . . . ? She loved them so much. What the hell . . . ? Why?”
“I can’t tell you that. When did you know?”
After a moment Fiona said, “When you told me Conor said he’d done it. I knew he hadn’t. No matter what had happened to him since I saw him, no matter if he had another fight with Pat and Jenny, even if he’d completely lost his mind: he wouldn’t do that.”
There was no doubt in her voice, not a thread. For a strange, exhausted moment I envied them both, her and Conor Brennan. Just about everything in this life is treacherous, ready to twist and shape-shift at any second; it seemed to me that the whole world would be a different place if you had someone you were certain of, certain to the bone, or if you could be that to someone else. I know husbands and wives who are that to each other. I know partners.
Fiona said, “At first I thought you were making it up, but I’m mostly pretty good at telling when people are lying. So I tried to think why Conor would say that. Probably he’d have done it to protect Pat, to keep him out of jail; but Pat was dead. That left Jenny.”
I heard the small, painful sound of her swallowing. “So,” she said, “I knew.”
“That’s why you didn’t tell Jenny that Conor had been arrested.”
“Yeah. I didn’t know what she’d do—if she’d try to own up, if she’d freak out and have a relapse or something . . .”
I said, “You were sure she was guilty, straightaway. You were positive Conor would never do this, but you didn’t feel the same way about your own sister.”
“You think I should have.”
“I don’t know what you should have thought,” I said. Rule Number Something: suspects and witnesses need to believe you’re omniscient; you never let them see you being anything other than sure. I couldn’t remember, any more, why it mattered. “I’m just wondering what made the difference.”
She twisted the scarf around her hand, trying to find the words. After a moment she said, “Jenny does everything right, and everything goes right for her. That’s how her life’s always worked. When something finally went wrong, when Pat was out of work . . . She didn’t know how to handle it. That’s why I was scared that she was going crazy, back when she said that about someone breaking in. I’d been worried ever since Pat lost his job. And I was right: she was going to pieces. Is that . . . ? Was that why she . . . ?”
I didn’t answer. Fiona said, low and fierce, pulling the scarf tighter, “I should have known. She did a good job of hiding it, after that, but if I’d been paying more attention, if I’d been out there more . . .”
There was nothing she could have done. I didn’t tell her that; I needed her guilt. Instead I said, “Have you brought this up with Jenny?”
“No. Jesus, no. Either she’d tell me to fuck off and never come back, or she’d tell me . . .” A flinch. “You think I want to hear her talk about it?”
“How about with anyone else?”
“No. Like who? This isn’t exactly something you tell your flatmates. And I don’t want my mum to know. Ever.”
“Do you have any proof that you’re right? Anything Jenny’s said, anything you’ve seen? Or is it just instinct?”
“No. No proof. If I’m wrong, I’ll be—God, I’d be so happy.”
I said, “I don’t think you’re wrong. But here’s the problem: I don’t have proof either. Jenny’s confession to me can’t be used in court. The evidence we’ve got isn’t enough to arrest her, never mind convict her. Unless I can get something more, she’s going to walk out of here a free woman.”
“Good.” Fiona caught something in my face, or thought she did, and shrugged wearily. “What do you expect? I know probably she should go to prison, but I don’t care. She’s my sister; I love her. And if she got arrested, my mum would find out. I know I’m not supposed to hope someone gets away with this, but I do. There you go.”
“And what about Conor? You told me you still care about him. Are you seriously going to let him spend the rest of his life in prison? Not that it’ll be long. Do you know what other criminals think of child-killers? Do you want to know what they do to them?”
Her eyes had widened. “Hang on. You’re not going to send Conor to jail. You know he didn’t do this.”
“Not me, Ms. Rafferty. The system. I can’t just ignore the fact that I’ve got more than enough evidence to charge him; whether he’s convicted or not is up to the lawyers, the judge and the jury. I just work with what I’ve got. If I’ve got nothing on Jenny, then I’ll have to go with Conor.”
Fiona shook her head. “You won’t do it,” she said.
That certainty rang in her voice again, clear as struck bronze. It felt like a strange gift, warm as a tiny flame, in this cold place where I would never have expected to find it. This woman I shouldn’t even have be
en talking to, this woman I didn’t even like: for her, of all people, I was certainty.
“No,” I said. I couldn’t make myself lie to her. “I won’t.”
She nodded. “Good,” she said, on a small tired sigh.
I said, “Conor isn’t the one you should be worrying about. Your sister’s planning to kill herself, first chance she gets.”
I made it as brutal as I could. I expected shock maybe, panic, but Fiona didn’t even look around; she kept staring off down the corridor, at the dingy posters proclaiming the saving power of hand sanitizer. She said, “As long as she’s in the hospital, she won’t do anything.”
She already knew. It hit me that she could actually want it to happen—as a mercy, like Richie had, or as punishment, or out of some ferocious sister-tangle of emotions that not even she would ever understand. I said, “So what are you planning to do when they let her out?”
“Watch her.”
“Just you? Twenty-four-seven?”
“Me and my mum. She doesn’t know, but she figures after what happened, Jenny might . . .” Fiona’s head jerked, and she focused harder on the posters. She said again, “We’ll watch her.”
I said, “For how long? A year, two, ten? And what about when you need to go to work, and your mother needs to have a shower or get some sleep?”
“You can get nurses. Carers.”
“If you’ve won the Lotto, you can. Have you checked how much they cost?”
“We’ll find the money if we have to.”
“From Pat’s life insurance?” That silenced her. “And what happens when Jenny fires the nurse? She’s a free adult: if she doesn’t want someone looking after her, and we both know she won’t, there’s not a bloody thing you can do about it. Rock and a hard place, Ms. Rafferty: you can’t keep her safe unless you get her locked up.”
“Prison isn’t exactly safe. We’ll look after her.”
The sharp edge to her voice said I was getting to her. I said, “You probably will, for a while. You might manage weeks, or even months. But sooner or later, you’re going to take your eye off the ball. Maybe your boyfriend will ring you up wanting to chat, or your friends will be on at you to come out for a drink and a laugh, and you’ll think: Just this once. Just this once, life will let me off the hook; it won’t punish me for wanting to be a normal human being, just for an hour or two. I’ve earned it. Maybe you’ll only leave Jenny for a minute. A minute is all it takes to find the disinfectant or the razor blades. If someone’s serious enough about killing herself, she will find a way to do it. And if it happens on your watch, you’ll spend the rest of your life ripping yourself to shreds.”
