by Tana French
He stared at the air, narrow-eyed and intent. The silence stretched. I hummed to myself, adding a beat with my fingertips on the table, and Richie perched on the edge of the table jiggling his knee and cracking his knuckles with real dedication, but Conor had gone past that. He barely knew we were there.
Finally Richie did an ostentatious stretch-groan-yawn routine and checked his watch. “Here, man, are we going to be doing this all night?” he wanted to know. “’Cause if we are, I need coffee to keep up with the pace. Thrill a minute, this.”
I said, “He’s not going to answer you, Detective. We’re getting the silent treatment.”
“Can we get it while we’re in the canteen, yeah? I swear, I’m gonna fall asleep right here if I don’t get some coffee into me.”
“No reason why not. This little shit is making me sick to my stomach anyway.” I clicked my pen shut. “Conor, if you need to get your sulk out of the way before you can talk to us like an adult human being, be our guest, but we’re not going to sit around and watch you do it. Believe it or not, you’re not the center of the universe. We’ve got plenty of more urgent things to do than watch a grown man act like a spoiled kid.”
Not a blink. I clipped my pen to my notebook, tucked them back in my pocket and gave it a pat. “We’ll be back when we get a moment. If you need to go to the jacks, you can give the door a bang and hope someone hears. See you around.”
On the way out Richie whipped Conor’s cup off the table, catching the bottom delicately between thumb and fingertip. I pointed at it and told Conor, “Two of our favorite things: prints and DNA. Thanks, fella. You saved us a load of time and hassle, right there.” Then I gave him a wink and a thumbs-up, and slammed the door behind us.
* * *
In the observation room, Richie asked, “Was that all right, me getting us out of there? I just thought . . . I mean, we’d hit a wall, like. And I figured it was easier for me to pull the plug without losing face, yeah?”
He was rubbing one foot off the opposite ankle and looking apprehensive. I pulled an evidence bag out of the cabinet and tossed it to him. “You did fine. You’re right: time to regroup. Any thoughts?”
He dropped the cup into the evidence bag and looked around for a pen; I passed him mine. “Yeah. Know something? He’s ringing a bell. The face.”
“You’ve been looking at him for a long time, it’s late, you’re shattered. Sure your mind’s not playing tricks?”
Richie squatted beside the table to label the bag. “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ve seen him before. I’m wondering was it back when I was in Vice, maybe.”
The observation room is on the same thermostat as the interview room. I tugged my tie looser. “He’s not in the system.”
“I know. I’d remember if I’d arrested him. But you know yourself: some guy catches your eye and you can tell he’s up to something, but there’s nothing you can pin on him, so you just hang on to that face and wait till it shows up again. I’m wondering . . .” He shook his head, dissatisfied.
“Put it on the back burner. It’ll come to you. When it does, let me know; we need to ID this guy, and soon. Anything else?”
Richie initialed the bag, ready to hand in to the evidence room, and gave my pen back. “Yeah. Winding him up won’t get us anywhere, not with this fella. We had him pissed off there, all right, but the angrier he gets, the quieter he gets. We need another angle.”
I said, “We do. The distraction stuff was good—nicely done there—but it’s taken us as far as it can. And intimidation won’t work, either. I was wrong about one thing: he’s not afraid of us.”
Richie shook his head. “Nah. He’s on guard, all right, big time, but scared . . . Nah. And the thing is, he should be. I’d still say he’s a virgin; he’s not acting like he knows the drill. This whole thing should have him crapping his kacks by now. Why doesn’t it?”
In the interview room Conor was still and taut, hands spread flat on the table. There was no way he could have heard us, but I lowered my voice all the same. “Overconfidence. He thinks he covered his tracks, figures we’ve got nothing on him unless he talks.”
“Maybe, yeah. But he has to know we’ve got a full team going over that house with a fine-tooth comb, looking for anything he left behind. That should be worrying him.”
“They’re arrogant bastards, a lot of them. Think they’re smarter than we are. Don’t let that bother you; it’ll work for us, in the long run. Those are the ones that go to pieces when you whip out something they can’t ignore.”
“What if . . .” Richie said diffidently, and stopped. He was twirling the bag back and forth, looking at it, not at me. “Never mind.”
“What if what?”
“I was only going to say. If he’s got a solid alibi, something like that, and he knows sooner or later we’ll run up against it . . .”
I said, “You mean, what if he’s feeling safe because he’s innocent.”
“Yeah. Basically.”
“Not a chance, chum. If he had an alibi, why not just tell us and go home? You think he’s pulling our chains for kicks?”
“Could be. He’s not mad about us.”
“Even if he were innocent as a baby—and he’s not—he shouldn’t be this cool. The innocent ones get just as frightened as the guilty ones—more, a lot of the time, because they’re not arrogant pricks. They shouldn’t, obviously, but there’s no telling them that.”
Richie glanced up and lifted a noncommittal eyebrow. I said, “If they’ve done nothing wrong, then the fact is, they’ve got nothing to be afraid of. But the facts aren’t always the point.”
“I guess. Yeah.” He was rubbing at the side of his jaw, where stubble should have been by this stage. “Another thing, but. Why isn’t he pointing us at Pat? We’ve given him a dozen openings. It’d be easy as pie: ‘Yeah, Detective, now that you mention it, your man Pat went loopy after he lost his job, used to smack his wife around, beat the shite out of his kids, saw him threaten them with a knife just last week . . .’ He’s not thick; he must’ve seen his chance. Why didn’t he grab it?”
I said, “Why do you think I’ve been giving him those openings?”
Richie shrugged, a complicated, embarrassed squirm. “I dunno.”
“You thought I was being sloppy, and I just got lucky that this guy didn’t take advantage. Wrong, old son. I told you before we went in there: our man Conor thinks he has some connection to the Spains. We needed to know what kind of connection. Did Pat Spain cut him off on the motorway and now he thinks all his troubles are Pat’s fault and his luck won’t turn till Pat’s dead and gone, or did he chat to Jenny at some party and decide the stars wanted them to be together?”
Conor hadn’t moved. The white strip-lighting caught the sheen of sweat on his face; it turned him waxy and alien, something shipwrecked from another planet, light-years more lost than we could imagine.
I said, “And we got our answer: in his own fucked way, Conor Whatever cares about the Spains. All four of them. He didn’t point us at Pat because, even to save himself, he wouldn’t drop Pat in the shit. He believes he loved them. And that’s how we’re going to take him down.”
* * *
We left him there for an hour. Richie took the cup down to the evidence room and picked up faded coffee on his way back—the canteen coffee works mainly by the power of suggestion, but it’s better than nothing. I checked in with the patrol floaters: they were working their way out from the estate, they had spotted about a dozen parked cars, all of which came back with legit reasons for being in the area, and they were starting to sound tired. I told them to keep looking. Then Richie and I stayed in the observation room, with our sleeves pushed up and the door wide open, and we watched our man.
It was almost five o’clock. Down the corridor the two lads on night duty were tossing a basketball back and forth and slagging each
other’s aim, to keep themselves awake. Conor sat still in his chair, hands cupping his knees. For a while his lips moved, like he was reciting something under his breath, in a regular, steadying rhythm. “Praying?” Richie asked softly, beside me.
“We’ll hope not. If God’s telling him to keep his mouth shut, we’re in for a rough ride.”
In the squad room the ball knocked something off a desk with a crash, one of the lads said something creative and the other one started to laugh. Conor sighed, a deep wave of breath that lifted and dropped his whole body. He had stopped whispering; he looked like he was slipping into some kind of trance. I said, “Let’s go.”
We went in loud and cheerful, fanning ourselves with statement sheets and bitching about the heat, handing him a cup of lukewarm coffee and warning him that it tasted like piss: bygones are bygones, all friends again now. We rewound to the safe ground before we’d lost him, spent a while poking around the edges of stuff we’d already covered—did you ever see Pat and Jenny arguing, ever see either of them shouting, ever see either of them smack the kids . . . The chance to talk about the Spains lured Conor out of his silent zone, but as far as he was concerned, they had made the Brady Bunch look like something off Jerry Springer. When we moved on to his schedule—what time do you usually get to Brianstown, what time do you fall asleep—his memory went glitchy again. He was starting to feel safe, starting to think he knew how this worked. It was time to move things forward.
I said, “When was the last time you can confirm that you were in Ocean View?”
“Don’t remember. Could be last—”
“Whoa,” I said, sitting up fast and raising a hand to cut Conor off. “Hang on.”
I went for my BlackBerry, hit a button to make the screen light up, pulled it out of my pocket and whistled. “Hospital,” I said to Richie in a quick undertone, and saw in the corner of my eye Conor’s head snapping up like he had been kicked in the back. “This could be what we’ve been waiting for. Suspend the interview till I get back.” And, on my way out the door: “Hello, Doctor?”
I kept one eye on my watch and the other on the one-way glass. Five minutes had never lasted so long, but they were lasting even longer for Conor. That taut control had exploded into pieces: he was shifting his arse like the seat was heating up, drumming his feet, biting his cuticles bloody. Richie watched him with interest and said nothing. Finally Conor demanded, “Who was that?”
Richie shrugged. “How would I know?”
“What you’ve been waiting for, he said.”
“We’ve been waiting for a lot of things.”
“Hospital. What hospital?”
Richie rubbed at the back of his neck. “Man,” he said, halfway between amused and embarrassed, “don’t know if you’ve missed this, but we’re working on a case here, yeah? We don’t go around telling people what we’re at.”
Conor forgot Richie existed. He propped his elbows on the table, folded his fingers across his mouth and stared at the door.
I gave him another minute. Then I came in fast, slammed the door and told Richie, “We’re in business.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah? Beautiful.”
I swung a chair around to Conor’s side of the table and sat down, my knees practically touching his. “Conor,” I said, slapping the phone down in front of him. “Tell me who you think that was.”
He shook his head. He was staring at the phone. I could feel his mind speeding, caroming at wild angles like a race car gone out of control.
“Listen carefully, fella: as of now, you do not have time to dick me around. You may not know it yet, but all of a sudden you are in a big, big hurry. So tell me: who do you think that was?”
After a moment Conor said, low, into his fingers, “Hospital.”
“What?”
A breath. He made himself straighten up. “You said. A hospital.”
“That’s better. And why do you think a hospital would be ringing me?”
Another head-shake.
I slapped the table, just hard enough to make him jump. “Did you hear what I just said about dicking me around? Wake up and pay attention. It’s five in the bloody A.M., there’s nothing in my world except the Spain case, and I just got a call from a hospital. Now why the fuck do you think that might be, Conor?”
“One of them. One of them’s in that hospital.”
“That’s right. You fucked up, son. You left one of the Spains alive.”
The muscles in his throat were clenched so tight that his voice came out a hoarse rasp. “Which one?”
“You tell me, fella. Who would you like it to be? Go on. If you had to choose, which one of them would it be?”
He would have answered anything to make me go on. After a moment he said, “Emma.”
I leaned back in my chair and laughed out loud. “That’s adorable. Really, it is. That sweet little girl: you figure maybe she deserved a shot at life? Too late, Conor. The time to think about that was two nights ago. Emma’s in a morgue drawer right now. Her brain’s in a jar.”
“Then who—”
“Were you out at Brianstown night before last?”
He was half out of his chair, clutching the edge of the table, crouched and wild-eyed. “Who—”
“I asked you a question. Night before last. Were you out there, Conor?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I was there. Who—which—”
“Say please, fella.”
“Please.”
“That’s better. The one you missed was Jenny. Jenny’s alive.”
Conor stared at me. His mouth opened wide, but all that came out was a great rush of breath, like he had been punched in the stomach.
“She’s alive and kicking, and that was her doctor on the phone, telling me she’s awake and wants to talk to us. And we all know what she’s going to say, don’t we?”
He barely heard me. He gasped for air, again and again.
I shoved him down into his seat; he went like his knees had turned liquid. “Conor. Listen to me. I told you that you’ve got no time to waste, and I wasn’t joking. In just a couple of minutes, we’re going to head over to the hospital to talk to Jenny Spain. And as soon as that happens, I will never again in my life give a damn about anything you have to say. This is it: your last chance.”
That reached him. He stared, slack-jawed and wild.
I pulled my chair even nearer, leaned in till our heads were almost touching. Richie slid around and sat on the table, close enough that his thigh pressed against Conor’s arm. “Let me explain something to you,” I said, quiet and even, straight into his ear. I could smell him, sweat and a wild tang like split wood. “I happen to believe that basically, deep down, you’re a decent guy. Everyone else you meet from here on in, every single person, is going to believe you’re a sick, sadistic, psychopathic bastard who should be skinned alive and hung out to dry. I may be losing the bit I have, and I may end up regretting this, but I don’t agree. I think you’re a good guy who somehow ended up in a shit situation.”
His eyes were blind, but that got a tiny twitch of his eyebrows: he was hearing me. “Because of that, and because I know nobody else is going to give you a break, I’m willing to make you a deal. You prove me right, tell me what happened, and I’ll tell the prosecutors you helped us out: you did the right thing, because you felt remorse. When it comes time for your sentencing, that’s going to matter. In a courtroom, Conor, remorse equals concurrent sentences. But if you show me that I’m wrong about you, if you keep on dicking me around, that’s what I’m going to tell the prosecutors, and the whole lot of us are going to go for broke. I don’t like being wrong about people, Conor; it pisses me off. We’ll charge you with everything we can think of, and we’ll go for consecutive sentences. Do you know what that means?”
He shook his head: clearing it or sayi
ng no, I couldn’t tell which. I get no say in the sentencing and not a lot in the charges, and any judge who would give out concurrent sentences on dead children needs a straitjacket and a punch in the gob, but none of that mattered. “That means three life sentences in a row, Conor, plus a few years on top for the attempted murder and the burglaries and the destruction of property and whatever else we can whip out. We’re talking about sixty years, minimum. How old are you, Conor? What are your odds of seeing a release date that’s sixty years away?”
“Ah, he might see it,” Richie objected, leaning in to examine him critically. “They look after you, in prison: don’t want you getting out early, even if it’s in a coffin. I’ve gotta warn you, man, the company’s gonna be shite—you won’t be let into the general population ’cause you’d last about two days, you’ll be in the secure unit with all the pedos, so the conversation’s gonna be pretty fucked-up—but at least you’ll have loads of time to make friends.”
That twitch of his eyebrows again: that had got through. “Or,” I said, “you could save yourself a lot of hell, right here. With concurrent sentences, do you know how many years we’re talking about? Around fifteen. That’s bugger-all. How old will you be in fifteen years?”
“My maths isn’t great,” Richie said, giving him another interested once-over, “but I’d say maybe forty-four, forty-five? And I don’t have to be Einstein to figure out there’s a massive difference between getting out at forty-five and getting out at ninety.”
“My partner the human calculator is spot on, Conor. Forty-whatever is still young enough to have a career, get married, have half a dozen kids. Have a life. I don’t know if you realize this, old son, but that’s what I’m putting on the table here: your life. But this is a one-time-only offer, and it expires in five minutes. If your life’s worth anything to you, son, anything at all, better start talking.”
Conor’s head fell back, exposing the long line of his throat, the soft spot at its base where the blood beats just below the skin. “My life,” he said, and his lip curled in something that could have been a snarl or a terrible smile. “Do whatever you want to me. I don’t give a damn.”