Broken Harbor

by Tana French

  “I want you on this. Can you take it?”

  “I’d be honored.”

  “If you can’t drop everything else, tell me now and I’ll put Flaherty on this one. This takes priority.”

  Flaherty is the guy with the slam dunks and the top solve rate. I said, “That won’t be necessary, sir. I can take it.”

  “Good,” O’Kelly said, but he didn’t hand over the call sheet. He tilted it to the light, inspecting it and rubbing a thumb along his jawline. “Curran,” he said. “Is he able for this?”

  Young Richie had been on the squad all of two weeks. A lot of the lads don’t like training in the new boys, so I do it. If you know your job, you have a responsibility to pass the knowledge on. “He will be,” I said.

  “I can stick him somewhere else for a while, give you someone who knows what he’s at.”

  “If Curran can’t take the heat, we might as well find out now.” I didn’t want someone who knew what he was at. The bonus of newbie wrangling is that it saves you a load of hassle: all of us who’ve been around a while have our own ways of doing things, and too many cooks etcetera. A rookie, if you know how to handle him, slows you down a lot less than another old hand. I couldn’t afford to waste time playing after-you-no-after-you, not on this one.

  “You’d be the lead man, either way.”

  “Trust me, sir. Curran can handle it.”

  “It’s a risk.”

  Rookies spend their first year or so on probation. It’s not official, but that doesn’t make it any less serious. If Richie made a mistake straight out of the gate, in a spotlight this bright, he might as well start clearing out his desk. I said, “He’ll do fine. I’ll make sure he does.”

  O’Kelly said, “Not just for Curran. How long since you had a big one?”

  His eyes were on me, small and sharp. My last high-profile one went wrong. Not my fault—I got played by someone I thought was a friend, dropped in the shit and left there—but still, people remember. I said, “Almost two years.”

  “That’s right. Clear this one, and you’re back on track.”

  He left the other half unspoken, something dense and heavy on the desk between us. I said, “I’ll clear it.”

  O’Kelly nodded. “That’s what I thought. Keep me posted.” He leaned forward, across the desk, and passed me the call sheet.

  “Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down.”

  “Cooper and the Tech Bureau are on their way.” Cooper is the pathologist. “You’ll need manpower; I’ll have the General Unit send you out a bunch of floaters. Six do you, for now?”

  “Six sounds good. If I need more, I’ll call in.”

  O’Kelly added, as I was leaving, “And for Jesus’ sake do something about Curran’s gear.”

  “I had a word last week.”

  “Have another. Was that a bloody hoodie he had on him yesterday?”

  “I’ve got him out of runners. One step at a time.”

  “If he wants to stay on this case, he’d better manage a few giant steps before you hit the scene. The media’ll be all over this like flies on shite. At least make him keep his coat on, cover up his tracksuit or whatever he’s honored us with today.”

  “I’ve got a spare tie in my desk. He’ll be fine.” O’Kelly muttered something sour about a pig in a tuxedo.

  On my way back to the squad room I skimmed the call sheet: just what O’Kelly had already told me. The victims were Patrick Spain, his wife, Jennifer, and their kids, Emma and Jack. The sister who had called it in was Fiona Rafferty. Under her name the dispatcher had added, in warning capitals, NB: OFFICER ADVISES CALLER IS HYSTERICAL.

  * * *

  * * *

  Richie was up out of his seat, bobbing from foot to foot like he had springs in his knees. “What . . . ?”

  “Get your gear. We’re going out.”

  “I told you,” Quigley said to Richie.

  Richie gave him the wide-eyed innocents. “Did you, yeah? Sorry, man, wasn’t paying attention. Other stuff on my mind, know what I mean?”

  “I’m trying to do you a favor here, Curran. You can take it or leave it.” Quigley’s wounded look was still on.

  I threw my coat on and started checking my briefcase. “Sounds like a fascinating chat you two were having. Care to share?”

  “Nothing,” Richie said promptly. “Shooting the breeze.”

  “I was just letting young Richie know,” Quigley told me, self-righteously. “Not a good sign, the Super calling you in on your own. Giving you the info behind our Richie’s back. What does that say about where he stands on the squad? I thought he might want to have a little think about that.”

  Quigley loves playing Haze the Newbie, just like he loves leaning on suspects one notch too hard; we’ve all done it, but he gets more out of it than most of us do. Usually, though, he has the brains to leave my boys alone. Richie had pissed him off somehow. I said, “He’s going to have plenty to think about, over the next while. He can’t afford to get distracted by pointless crap. Detective Curran, are we good to go?”

  “Well,” Quigley said, tucking his chins into each other. “Don’t mind me.”

  “I never do, chum.” I slid the tie out of my drawer and into my coat pocket under cover of the desk: no need to give Quigley ammo. “Ready, Detective Curran? Let’s roll.”

  “See you ’round,” Quigley said to Richie, not pleasantly, on our way out. Richie blew him a kiss, but I wasn’t supposed to see it, so I didn’t.

  It was October, a thick, cold, gray Tuesday morning, sulky and tantrumy as March. I got my favorite silver Beemer out of the car pool—officially it’s first come first served, but in practice no Domestic Violence kid is going to go near a Murder D’s best ride, so the seat stays where I like it and no one throws burger wrappers on the floor. I would have bet I could still navigate to Broken Harbor in my sleep, but this wasn’t the day to find out I was wrong, so I set the GPS. It didn’t know where Broken Harbor was. It wanted to go to Brianstown.

  Richie had spent his first two weeks on the squad helping me work up the file on the Mullen case and re-interview the odd witness; this was the first real Murder action he’d seen, and he was practically shooting out of his shoes with excitement. He managed to hold it in till we got moving. Then he burst out with, “Are we on a case?”

  “We are.”

  “What kind of case?”

  “A murder case.” I stopped at a red, pulled out the tie and passed it over. We were in luck: he was wearing a shirt, even if it was a cheapo white thing so thin I could see where his chest hair should have been, and a pair of gray trousers that would have been almost OK if they hadn’t been a full size too big. “Put that on.”

  He looked at it like he had never seen one before. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  For a moment I thought I was going to have to pull over and do it for him—the last time he had worn one had probably been for his confirmation—but he managed it in the end, give or take. He tilted the sun-visor mirror to check himself out. “Looking sharp, yeah?”

  “Better,” I said. O’Kelly had a point: the tie made bugger-all difference. It was a nice one, maroon silk with a subtle stripe in the weave, but some people can wear the good stuff and some just can’t. Richie is five foot nine on his best day, all elbows and skinny legs and narrow shoulders—he looks about fourteen, although his file says he’s thirty-one—and call me prejudiced, but after one glance I could have told you exactly what kind of neighborhood he comes from. It’s all there: that too-short no-color hair, those sharp features, that springy, restless walk like he’s got one eye out for trouble and the other one out for anything unlocked. On him, the tie just looked nicked.

  He gave it an experimental rub with one finger. “’S nice. I’ll get it back to you.”

  “Hang on
to it. And pick up a few of your own, when you get a chance.”

  He glanced across at me and for a second I thought he was going to say something, but he stopped himself. “Thanks,” he said, instead.

  We had hit the quays and were heading towards the M1. The wind was blasting up the Liffey from the sea, making the pedestrians lean into it heads first. When the traffic jammed up—some wanker in a 4x4 who hadn’t noticed, or cared, that he wouldn’t make it through the intersection—I found my BlackBerry and texted my sister Geraldine. Geri, URGENT favor. Can you go get Dina from work ASAP? If she gives out about losing her hours, tell her I’ll cover the money. Don’t worry, she’s fine as far as I know, but she should stay with you for a couple of days. Will ring you later. Thanks. The Super was right: I had maybe a couple of hours before the media were all over Broken Harbor, and vice versa. Dina is the baby; Geri and I still look out for her. When she heard this story, she needed to be somewhere safe.

  Richie ignored the texting, which was good, and watched the GPS instead. He said, “Out of town, yeah?”

  “Brianstown. Heard of it?”

  He shook his head. “Name like that, it’s got to be one of those new estates.”

  “Right. Up the coast. It used to be a village called Broken Harbor, but it sounds like someone’s developed it since.” The wanker in the 4x4 had managed to get out of everyone’s way, and the traffic was moving again. One of the upsides of the recession: now that half the cars are off the roads, those of us who still have somewhere to go can actually get there. “Tell me something. What’s the worst thing you’ve seen on the job?”

  Richie shrugged. “I worked traffic for ages, before Motor Vehicles. I saw some pretty bad stuff. Accidents.”

  All of them think that. I’m sure I thought it too, once upon a time. “No, old son. You didn’t. That tells me just how innocent you are. It’s no fun seeing a kid with his head split open because some moron took a bend too fast, but it’s nothing compared to seeing a kid with his head split open because some prick deliberately smacked him off a wall till he stopped breathing. So far, you’ve only seen what bad luck can do to people. You’re about to take your first good look at what people can do to each other. Believe me: not the same thing.”

  Richie asked, “Is this a kid? That we’re going to?”

  “It’s a family. Father, mother and two kids. The wife might make it. The rest are gone.”

  His hands had gone motionless on his knees. It was the first time I’d seen him absolutely still. “Ah, sweet Jaysus. What age kids?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “It looks like they were stabbed. In their home, probably sometime last night.”

  “That’s rotten, that is. That’s only bloody rotten.” Richie’s face was pulled into a grimace.

  “Yeah,” I said, “it is. And by the time we get to the scene, you need to be over that. Rule Number One, and you can write this down: no emotions on scene. Count to ten, say the rosary, make sick jokes, do whatever you need to do. If you need a few tips on coping, ask me now.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “You’d better be. The wife’s sister is out there, and she’s not interested in how much you care. She just needs to know you’re on top of this.”

  “I am on top of it.”

  “Good. Have a read.”

  I passed him the call sheet and gave him thirty seconds to skim it. His face changed when he concentrated: he looked older, and smarter. “When we get out there,” I said, once his time was up, “what’s the first question you’re going to want to ask the uniforms?”

  “The weapon. Has it been found at the scene?”

  “Why not ‘Any signs of forced entry?’”

  “Someone could fake those.”

  I said, “Let’s not beat around the bush. By ‘someone,’ you mean Patrick or Jennifer Spain.”

  The wince was small enough that I could have missed it, if I hadn’t been watching for it. “Anyone who had access. A relative, or a mate. Anyone they’d let in.”

  “That’s not what you had in mind, though, was it? You were thinking of the Spains.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “It happens, old son. No point pretending it doesn’t. The fact that Jennifer Spain survived puts her front and center. On the other hand, when it plays out like this, it’s usually the father: a woman just takes out the kids and herself, a man goes for the whole family. Either way, though, they don’t normally bother to fake forced entry. They’re way past caring about that.”

  “Still. I figure we can decide that for ourselves, once the Bureau gets there; we won’t be taking the uniforms’ word for it. The weapon, though: I’d want to know about that straightaway.”

  “Good man. That’s top of the list for the uniforms, all right. And what’s the first thing you’ll want to ask the sister?”

  “Whether anyone had anything against Jennifer Spain. Or Patrick Spain.”

  “Well, sure, but that’s something we’re going to ask everyone we can find. What do you want to ask Fiona Rafferty, specifically?”

  He shook his head.

  “No? Personally, I’d be very interested to hear what she’s doing there.”

  “It says—” Richie held up the call sheet. “The two of them talked every day. She couldn’t get through.”

  “So? Think about the timing, Richie. Let’s say they normally talk at, what, nine o’clock, once the hubbies are off to work and the kids are off to school—”

  “Or once they’re in work themselves, the women. They could have jobs.”

  “Jennifer Spain didn’t, or the sister’s problem would have been ‘She’s not in work,’ not ‘I couldn’t get through.’ So Fiona rings Jennifer at nine-ish, maybe half past eight at the earliest—up until then, they’d still be busy getting their day underway. And at ten thirty-six”—I tapped the call sheet—“she’s in Brianstown calling the uniforms. I don’t know where Fiona Rafferty lives, or where she works, but I do know Brianstown is a good hour’s drive away from just about anything. In other words, when Jennifer’s an hour late for their morning chat—and that’s an hour maximum, it could be a lot less—Fiona gets panicked enough to drop everything and haul her arse out to the back of beyond. That sounds a lot like overreacting to me. I don’t know about you, my man, but I’d love to know what had her knickers in such a twist.”

  “She mightn’t be an hour away. Maybe she lives next door, just called round to see what the story was.”

  “Then why drive? If she’s too far away to walk, then she’s far enough away that her going over there is odd. And here’s Rule Number Two: when someone’s behavior is odd, that’s a little present just for you, and you don’t let go of it till you’ve got it unwrapped. This isn’t Motor Vehicles, Richie. In this gig, you don’t get to say, ‘Ah, sure, it’s probably not important, she was just in a funny mood that day, let’s forget it.’ Ever.”

  There was the kind of silence that meant the conversation wasn’t over. Finally Richie said, “I’m a good detective.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re going to be an excellent detective, someday. But right now, you’ve still got just about everything left to learn.”

  “Whether I wear ties or not.”

  I said, “You’re not fifteen, chum. Dressing like a mugger doesn’t make you a big daring threat to the Establishment; it just makes you a prat.”

  Richie fingered the thin cloth of his shirt front. He said, picking his words carefully, “I know the Murder lads aren’t usually from where I’m from. Everyone else comes from farmers, yeah? Or from teachers. I’m not what anyone expects. I understand that.”

  His eyes, when I glanced across, were green and level. I said, “It doesn’t matter where you come from. There’s nothing you can do about
it, so don’t waste your energy thinking about it. What matters is where you’re going. And that, mate, is something you can control.”

  “I know that. I’m here, amn’t I?”

  “And it’s my job to help you get further. One of the ways you take charge of where you’re going is by acting like you’re already there. Do you follow me?”

  He looked blank.

  “Put it this way. Why do you think we’re driving a Beemer?”

  Richie shrugged. “Figured you liked the car.”

  I took a hand off the wheel to point a finger at him. “You figured my ego liked the car, you mean. Don’t fool yourself: it’s not that simple. These aren’t shoplifters we’re going after, Richie. Murderers are the big fish in this pond. What they do is a big deal. If we tool up to the scene in a beat-up ’95 Toyota, it looks disrespectful; like we don’t think the victims deserve our best. That puts people’s backs up. Is that how you want to start off?”

  “No.”

  “No, it’s not. And, on top of that, a beat-up old Toyota would make us look like a pair of losers. That matters, my man. Not just to my ego. If the bad guys see a pair of losers, they feel like their balls are bigger than ours, and that makes it harder to break them down. If the good guys see a pair of losers, they figure we’ll never solve this case, so why should they bother trying to help us? And if we see a pair of losers every time we look in the mirror, what do you think happens to our odds of winning?”

  “They go down. I guess.”

  “Bingo. If you want to come out a success, Richie, you cannot go in smelling of failure. Do you get what I’m saying here?”

  He touched the knot in his new tie. “Dress better. Basically.”

  “Except that it’s not basic, old son. There’s nothing basic about it. The rules are there for a reason. Before you go breaking them, you might want to have a think about what that reason might be.”

  I hit the M1 and opened up wide, letting the Beemer do her thing. Richie glanced at the speedometer, but I knew without looking that I was bang on the limit, not a single mile over, and he kept his mouth shut. Probably he was thinking what a boring bollix I was. Plenty of people think the same thing. All of them are teenagers, mentally if not physically. Only teenagers think boring is bad. Adults, grown men and women who’ve been around the block a few times, know that boring is a gift straight from God. Life has more than enough excitement up its sleeve, ready to hit you with as soon as you’re not looking, without you adding to the drama. If Richie didn’t know that already, he was about to find out.