by Tana French
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 been 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.”
Fiona shoved her hands deep into the opposite sleeves of her coat. She said, “What do you want?”
I said, “I need Conor Brennan to come clean about what happened that night. I want you to explain to him exactly what he’s doing. He’s not just perverting the course of justice, he’s kicking it in the teeth: he’s letting Pat and Emma and Jack go into the ground while the person who murdered them walks away scot-free. And he’s leaving Jenny to die.” It’s one thing to do what Conor had done in a nightmare moment of howling panic and horror, Jenny clutching him with her bloody hands and begging; it’s another to stand by, in the cold light of day, and let someone you love walk in front of a bus. “If it comes from me, he’ll think I’m just trying to mess with his head. From you, he’ll take it onboard.”
The corner of Fiona’s mouth twitched in what was almost a bitter little smile. She said, “You don’t really get Conor, do you?”
I could have laughed. “I’m pretty sure I don’t, no.”
“He doesn’t give a damn about the course of justice, or Jenny’s debt to society, or any of that stuff. He just cares about Jenny. He has to know what she wants to do. If he confessed to you guys, that’s why: so she can get the chance.” That twitch again. “Probably he’d think I’m being selfish, trying to save her just because I want her here. Maybe I am. I don’t care.”
Trying to save her. She was on my side, if I could just find a way to use that. “Then tell him Jenny’s already dead. He knows she’ll be out of hospital any day: tell him they let her out, and she took the first chance she got. If she’s not there to be protected any more, he might as well go ahead and save his own arse.”
Fiona was already shaking her head. “He’d know I was lying. He knows Jenny. There’s no way she’d… She wouldn’t go without leaving a note to get him out. No way.”
We had lowered our voices, like conspirators. I said, “Then do you think you could convince Jenny to make an official statement? Beg her, guilt-trip her, talk about the children, about Pat, about Conor; say whatever you need to say. I’ve had no luck, but coming from you—”
She was still shaking her head. “She’s not going to listen to me. Would you, if you were her?”
Both our eyes went to that closed door. “I don’t know,” I said. I would have been boiling over with frustration—for a second I thought of Dina, gnawing at her arm—if I had had anything left. “I haven’t got a clue.”
“I don’t want her to die.”
All of a sudden Fiona’s voice was thick and wobbling. She was about to cry. I said, “Then we need evidence.”
“You said you don’t have any.”
“I don’t. And at this point, we’re not going to get any.”
“Then what do we do?” She pressed her fingers to her cheeks, swiped away tears.
When I took a breath, it felt like it was made of something more volatile and violent than air, something that burned its way through membranes into my blood. I said, “There’s only one possible solution that I can think of.”
“Then do it. Please.”
“It’s not a good solution, Ms. Rafferty. But very occasionally, desperate times can call for desperate measures.”
“Like what?”
“Rarely, and I’m talking very rarely, a crucial piece of evidence shows up through the back door. Through channels that you could call less than one hundred percent legit.”
Fiona was staring at me. Her cheeks were still wet, but she had forgotten about crying. She said, “You mean you could—” She stopped, started again more carefully. “OK. What do you mean?”
It happens. Not often, nowhere near as often as you probably think, but it happens. It happens because a uniform lets some little smart-arse get under his skin; it happens because a lazy prick like Quigley gets jealous of the real detectives and our solve rates; it happens because a detective knows for a fact that this guy is about to put his wife in hospital or pimp a twelve-year-old. It happens because someone decides to trust his own mind over the rules we’ve sworn to follow.
I had never done it. I had always believed that if you can’t get your solve the straight way, you don’t deserve to get it at all. I had never even been the guy who looks the other way while the bloodstained tissue moves to the right place, or the wrap of coke gets dropped, or the witness gets coached. No one had ever asked me, probably in case I turned them in to Internal Affairs, and I had been grateful to them for not making me do it. But I knew.
I said, “If you were to bring me a piece of evidence that linked Jenny to the crime, soon—say, this afternoon—then I could place her under arrest before she’s released from the hospital. From that mo
ment on, she’d be under suicide watch.” All that silent time watching Jenny sleep, I had been thinking about this.
I saw the fast blink as it went in. After a long moment Fiona said, “Me?”
“If I could come up with a way to do this without your help, I wouldn’t be talking to you.”
Her face was tight, watchful. “How do I know you’re not setting me up?”
“What for? If I just wanted a solve and I was looking for someone to take the fall, I wouldn’t need you: I’ve got Conor Brennan, all packaged up and good to go.” A porter shoved a clanging trolley past the end of the corridor, and we both jumped. I said, even more quietly, “And I’m taking at least as much of a risk as you are. If you ever decide to tell anyone about this—tomorrow, or next month, or ten years down the line—then I’m facing an Internal Affairs investigation at the very least, and at the worst I’m looking at a review of every case I’ve ever touched and criminal charges of my own. I’m putting everything I’ve got in your hands, Ms. Rafferty.”
Fiona said, “Why?”
There were too many answers. Because of that moment, still flickering small and searingly bright inside me, when she had told me she was certain of me. Because of Richie. Because of Dina, her lips stained dark with red wine, telling me There isn’t any why. In the end I gave her the only one I could stand to share. “We had one piece of evidence that might have been enough, but it got destroyed. It was my fault.”
After a moment Fiona said, “What’ll they do to her? If she gets arrested. How long… ?”
“She’ll be sent to a psychiatric hospital, at least at first. If she’s found fit to stand trial, her defense will plead either not guilty or insanity. If the jury finds she was insane, then she’ll go back to the hospital until the doctors decide she’s no longer a danger to herself or others. If she’s found guilty, then she’ll probably be in prison for ten or fifteen years.” Fiona winced. “I know it sounds like a long time, but we can make sure she gets the treatment she needs, and by the time she’s my age she’ll be out. She can start over, with you and Conor there to help her.”
The PA squealed into life, ordered Dr. Something to Accident and Emergency please; Fiona didn’t move. Finally she nodded. Every muscle in her was still stretched taut, but that wariness had gone out of her face. “OK,” she said. “I’m on.”
“I need you to be sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“Then here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. The words felt heavy as stones, sinking me. “You’re going to mention to me that you’re heading out to Ocean View, to pick up supplies for your sister—her dressing gown, toiletries, her iPod, books, whatever you think she might need. I’m going to tell you that the house is still sealed and you can’t go in there. Instead, I’ll offer to drive out myself, go into the house and pick up whatever Jenny needs—I’ll bring you along, so that you can make sure I get the right things. You can make me a list on the way. Write it out, so I’ve got it to show anyone who asks.”
Fiona nodded. She was watching me like a floater at a briefing, alert and attentive, memorizing every word.
“Seeing the house again is going to jog your memory. All of a sudden you’ll remember that, on the morning when you and the uniformed officers found the bodies, when you followed the officers into the house, you picked up something that was lying at the bottom of the stairs. You did it automatically: the house was always so tidy that anything on the floor seemed out of place, so you tucked it in your coat pocket without even realizing what you were doing—your mind was on other things, after all. Does this all hang together for you?”
“The thing I picked up. What is it?”
“Jenny’s got a handful of bracelets in her jewelry box. Is there one she wears a lot? Not one of those solid things, what do you call them, bangles; we need a chain. A strong one.”
Fiona thought. “She’s got a charm bracelet. It’s a gold chain, a thick one; it looks pretty strong. Pat gave it to Jenny for her twenty-first, and after that he gave her charms when anything important happened—like a heart when they got married, and initials when the kids were born, and a little house when they bought the house. Jenny wears it a lot.”
“Perfect. That’s the other reason why you picked it up: you knew it meant a lot to Jenny, she wouldn’t want it lying around on the floor. When you saw what had happened, that blew the bracelet right out of your mind. Naturally enough, you haven’t thought of it since. But while you’re waiting for me to come out of the house, it’ll come back to you. You’ll go through your coat pockets and find it. When I get back to the car, you’ll hand it over to me, on the off chance that it might come in useful.”
Fiona said, “How’s that going to help?”
I said, “If everything had happened exactly the way I’m describing, then you wouldn’t have any way of knowing how the bracelet would fit into our investigation. So it’s better you don’t know it now. Less chance of you slipping up. You’re going to have to trust me.”
She said, “You’re sure, too, right? This will work. It’s not going to go all wrong. You’re sure.”
“It isn’t perfect. Some people, possibly including the prosecutor, are going to think that you knew all along and deliberately held back. And some people are going to wonder if the whole thing is just a little too convenient to be true—department politics; you don’t need to know the details. I can make sure you don’t get into any actual trouble—you won’t be arrested for concealing evidence or obstruction of justice, nothing like that—but I can’t make sure you won’t get a tough time from the prosecutor, or the defender if it gets that far. They may even try to imply that you should be a suspect, given that you’d have been the beneficiary if Jenny had died.”
Fiona’s eyes snapped wide. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I promise, there’s no way that could go anywhere. You’re not going to get in trouble. I’m just telling you in advance: this isn’t perfect. But it’s the best I can do.”
“OK,” Fiona said, on a deep breath. She pulled herself upright in the chair and pushed hair off her face with both hands, ready for action. “What comes now?”
“We need to do it, conversations and all. If we go through every step, then you’ll remember the details when you give your statement, or when you’re cross-examined. You’ll sound truthful, because you’ll be telling the truth.”
She nodded. “So,” I said. “Where are you off to, Ms. Rafferty?”
“If Jenny’s asleep, I should drive down to Brianstown. She needs some things from the house.”
Her voice was wooden and empty, nothing left in it but a sediment of sadness. I said, “I’m afraid you can’t go into the house. It’s still a crime scene. If it would help, I can take you down there and get out whatever you need.”
“That’d be good. Thanks.”
I said, “Let’s go.”
I stood up, bracing myself against the wall like an old man. Fiona buttoned her coat, wrapped the scarf around her neck and tugged it tight. The child had stopped crying. We stood there in the corridor for a moment, listening by Jenny’s door for a call, a movement, anything that would keep us there, but nothing came.
* * *
For the rest of my life I will remember that journey. It was the last moment when I could have turned back: picked up Jenny’s bits and pieces, told Fiona I had spotted a flaw in my grand plan, dropped her back at the hospital and said good-bye. On the way to Broken Harbor that day, I was what I had given all my adult life to becoming: a murder detective, the finest on the squad, the one who got the solves and got them on the straight and narrow. By the time I left, I was something else.
Fiona huddled against the passenger door, staring out the window. When we got onto the motorway I took one hand off the wheel, found my notebook and pen and passed them to her. She balanced the notebook on her knee and I kept my speed steady while she wrote. When she was done she passed them back to me. I took a quick glance at the page: her handwriting was clear and rounded,
with fast little flourishes on the tails. Moisturizer (whatever’s on bedside table or in bathroom). Jeans. Top. Jumper. Bra. Socks. Shoes (runners). Coat. Scarf.
Fiona said, “She’ll need clothes to leave the hospital in. Wherever she’s going next.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
You’re doing the right thing. It almost came out automatically. Instead I said, “You’re saving your sister’s life.”
“I’m putting her in prison.”
“You’re doing the best you can. That’s all any of us can do.”
She said suddenly, as if the words had forced their way out, “When we were kids I used to pray that Jenny would do something awful. I was always in trouble—nothing major, I wasn’t some delinquent, just little stuff like giving my mum cheek or talking in class. Jenny never did anything bad, ever. She wasn’t a goody-goody; it just came natural to her. I used to pray she’d do something really terrible, just once. Then I would tell and she’d get in trouble, and everyone would be like, ‘Well done, Fiona. You did the right thing. Good girl.’”
She had her hands clasped together in her lap, tightly, like a child at confession. I said, “Don’t tell that story again, Ms. Rafferty.”
My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. Fiona went back to staring out the window. “I wouldn’t.”
After that we didn’t talk. As I turned into Ocean View a man swung out from a side road, running hard; I slammed on the brakes, but it was a jogger, eyes staring and unseeing, nostrils flaring like a runaway horse’s. For a second I thought I heard the great gasps of his breath, through the glass; then he was gone. He was the only person we saw. The wind coming off the sea shook the chain-link fences, held the tall weeds in the gardens at a steep slant, shoved at the car windows.
Fiona said, “I read in the paper they’re talking about bulldozing these places, the ghost estates. Just smash them down to the ground, walk away and pretend it never happened.”