Broken Harbor

by Tana French

  “The builders?” I suggested.

  She gave me that flat stare again, like she was considering punching me for being such a thick. “Um, yeah, we did actually think of that. Can’t find them. They started hanging up on us; now they’ve changed their number. We went to yous lot, even. Yous said our toilet wasn’t a police matter.”

  Richie lifted the brochure to get her attention back. “What about all this stuff, the childcare and that?”

  “That,” Sinéad said. Her mouth squashed up in disgust. It made her even uglier. “In there’s the only place you’ll ever see that. We complained about the childcare place a load of times—that was one of the reasons we bought here, and then hello, nothing? It opened, in the end. Closed after a month ’cause there was only five kids going. Where the playground was supposed to be, that’s like something out of Baghdad; kids’d take their life in their hands playing there. The leisure center never even got built. We complained about that too, they put an exercise bike in an empty house and said there you go. Bike got robbed.”

  “How about the shop?”

  A humorless sniff of laughter. “Yeah, right. I’ve to go five miles to buy milk, to the petrol station on the motorway. We haven’t got streetlights. I’m afraid for my life to go out on me own after dark, there could be rapists or anything—there’s a load of non-nationals renting a house over in Ocean View Close. And if something happened to me, would yous lot come out and do anything about it? My husband rang yous a few months back, when there was a bunch of knackers having a party in one of them houses across the road. Yous didn’t show up till the morning. We could’ve been burnt out of it for all you’d care.”

  In other words, getting anything out of Sinéad was always going to be this much fun. I said, “Do you know if the Spains had been having any similar problems—with the development company, with the partiers across the road, with anyone?”

  Shrug. “Wouldn’t know. Like I said, we weren’t friendly, know what I mean? What happened to them, anyway? Are they dead, or what?”

  Before long, the morgue boys were going to be bringing out the bodies. I said, “Maybe Jayden should wait in another room.”

  Sinéad eyed him. “No point. He’ll only listen at the door.” Jayden nodded.

  I said, “There’s been a violent attack. I’m not in a position to give you details, but the crime in question is murder.”

  “Jaysus,” Sinéad breathed, swaying forward. Her mouth stayed open, wet and avid. “Who’s been kilt?”

  “We can’t give you that information.”

  “Did he go for her, did he?”

  Jayden had forgotten about his game. On the screen a zombie was frozen splayed in mid-fall, with scraps of its head mushrooming everywhere. I asked, “Do you have any reason to think he might go for her?”

  That wary flick of her eyelids. She slumped back in the chair and folded her arms again. “I was only asking.”

  “If you do, Mrs. Gogan, you need to tell us.”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

  Bullshit, but I know that thick, lumpy stubborn: the harder I pushed, the more solid it would get. “Right,” I said. “In the last few months, have you seen anyone around the estate who you didn’t recognize?”

  Jayden let out a high, sharp snicker. Sinéad said, “Never see anyone, hardly. And I wouldn’t recognize most of them anyway. We’re not, like, all buddy-buddy out here. I’ve friends of my own; I don’t need to be hanging off the neighbors.”

  Translated, you couldn’t have paid the neighbors enough to hang out with the Gogans. They were probably all just jealous. “Then have you seen anyone who looked out of place? Anyone who worried you for any reason?”

  “Only the non-nationals in the Close. There’s dozens of them in that house. I’d say the lot of them are illegal. You’re not going to check that out either, though, are you?”

  “We’ll pass it on to the appropriate department. Has anyone called to the door? Selling something, maybe? Asking to check the pipes or the wiring?”

  “Yeah, right. Like anyone cares about our wiring—Jaysus!” Sinéad shot upright. “Was it, like, some psycho that broke in? Like on that show on the telly, like a serial killer?”

  All of a sudden she looked alive. Fear had knocked the blankness off her face. I said, “We can’t give details of—”

  “’Cause if it’s that, you better tell me now, right? I’m not staying here waiting for some sick bastard to come in and torture us, yous lot would stand there and watch him go at it before you’d do a bleeding thing—”

  It was the first actual emotion we’d seen out of her. The ghost-blue children next door: nothing but gossip fodder, no more real than some TV show, right up until the danger might be personal. I said, “I can promise you we won’t stand there and watch.”

  “Don’t you disrespect me! I’ll get onto the radio, I will, I’ll ring the Joe Duffy Show—”

  And we would spend the rest of this investigation battling our way through a media cyclone of cops-don’t-care-about-the-little-guy hysteria. I’ve been there. It feels like someone’s using a tennis ball machine to fire starving pug dogs at you. Before I could come up with something soothing, Richie leaned forward and said earnestly, “Mrs. Gogan, you’ve got every right to be worrying. Sure, you’re a mammy.”

  “Exactly. I’ve got my kids to think about. I’m not gonna—”

  “Was it a pedophile?” Jayden wanted to know. “What’d he do to them?”

  I was starting to see why Sinéad ignored him. “Now, you know there’s a load we can’t be telling you,” Richie said, “but I can’t leave a mammy to worry, so I’m trusting you not to pass this on. Can I do that, yeah?”

  I almost cut him off right there, but he had been working this interview well, so far. And Sinéad was calming down, that avid look creeping back up under the fear. “Yeah. All right.”

  “I’m gonna put it like this,” Richie said. He leaned closer. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of. If anyone dangerous is out there, and I’m only saying if, we’re doing everything that needs doing about it.” He left an impressive pause and did something meaningful with his eyebrows. “Do you get me, yeah?”

  Confused silence. “Yeah,” Sinéad said, in the end. “Course.”

  “You do, of course. Now remember: not a word.”

  She said primly, “I wouldn’t.” She would tell everyone she knew, obviously, but she had shag-all to tell them: she would have to stick to a smug look and vague hints about secret info she couldn’t share. It was a cute little trick. Richie went up a rung on my ladder.

  “And you’re not worried any more, sure you’re not? Now that you know.”

  “Ah, no. I’m grand.”

  The baby monitor let out a furious shriek. “For fuck’s sake,” said Jayden, hitting Play and turning up the zombie volume.

  “Baby’s awake,” Sinéad said, without moving. “I’ve to go.”

  I said, “Is there anything else you can tell us about the Spains? Anything at all?”

  Another shrug. That flat face didn’t change, but something flickered in her eyes. We would be coming back to the Gogans.

  On our way down the drive I said to Richie, “You want to talk about creepy? Take a look at that kid.”

  “Yeah,” Richie said. He fingered his ear and glanced over his shoulder at the Gogans’. “Something he’s not telling us.”

  “Him? The mother, sure. But the kid?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Right. When we come back to them, you can take a crack at him.”

  “Yeah? Me?”

  “You did a good job in there. Have a think about how you’re going to go about it.” I tucked my notebook into my pocket. “Meanwhile, who else do you want to ask about the Spains?”

  Richie turned back
to face me. “D’you know something?” he said. “I haven’t got a clue. Normally I’d say let’s talk to the families, the neighbors, the victims’ friends, the people they work with, the lads down the pub where he drinks, the people who saw them last. But they were both out of work. There’s no pub for him to go to. Nobody calls round, not even their families, not when it means coming all this way. It could’ve been weeks since anyone even saw them, except maybe at the school gates. And that’s the neighbors.”

  He jerked his head backwards. Jayden was pressed up against the sitting-room window, controller in one hand, mouth still hanging open. He saw me catch him looking, but he didn’t even blink.

  “The poor bastards,” Richie said softly. “They’d no one.”

  5

  The two sets of neighbors at the other end of the road were out, at work or wherever. Cooper was gone, presumably off to the hospital to have a look at whatever was left of Jenny Spain. The morgue van was gone: the bodies would be headed for the same hospital to wait their turn for Cooper’s attention, only a floor or two away from Jenny, if she had made it this far.

  The Bureau team were still working hard. Larry flapped a hand at me from the kitchen. “Come here, you, young fella. Have a look at this.”

  “This” was the baby-monitor viewers, five of them, neatly laid out in clear evidence bags on the counter, all covered in black print dust. “Found the fifth one in that corner over there, under a bunch of kiddie books,” Larry said triumphantly. “His Lordship wants video cameras, His Lordship gets video cameras. And they’re good ones, too. I’m no expert on the baby gear, but I’d say these are high-end. They pan, they zoom, they do color during the daytime and black and white on automatic infrared in the dark, they probably make you poached eggs in the morning . . .” He walked two fingers along the line of monitors, clicking his tongue happily to himself, picked one and pressed the power button through the bag. “Guess what that is. Go on, have a guess.”

  The screen lit up in black and white: gray cylinders and rectangles crowding in at each side, floating white dust motes, a shapeless patch of darkness hovering in the middle. I said, “The Blob?”

  “That’s what I was thinking myself. But then Declan—that’s Declan, over there; wave hello to the nice men, Declan—he noticed that this cupboard here was just a teeny crack open, so he took a look inside. And guess what he found?”

  Larry flung open the cupboard with a flourish. “Lookie, lookie.”

  A ring of sullen red lights stared up at us for a second, then faded and vanished. The camera was stuck to the inside of the cupboard door with what looked like a full roll of duct tape. The cereal boxes and tins of peas had been pushed to the sides of the shelves. Behind them, someone had bashed a plate-sized hole in the wall.

  “What the hell,” I said.

  “Hold your horses right there. Before you say anything, take a look at this.”

  Another monitor. The same fuzzy shades of monochrome: slanting beams, paint tins, some spiky mechanical tangle I couldn’t make out. I said, “The attic?”

  “The very spot. And that thing on the floor? It’s a trap. An animal trap. And not a sweet little mousey-catchey thingy, either. I’m not some kind of expert wilderness man, I wouldn’t know, but that thing looks like it could take down a puma.”

  Richie asked, “Is there bait in it?”

  “I like him,” Larry said, to me. “Smart young fella; goes straight to the heart of things. He’ll go far. No, Detective Curran, unfortunately no bait, so no way to guess what on earth they were trying to catch. There’s a hole under the eaves where something could have got in—now don’t get excited, Scorcher, we’re not looking at a person here. Maybe a fox on a diet could just about have squeezed through, but nothing that would need a bear trap. We checked the attic for paw prints and droppings, see if we could get a hint that way, but there’s nothing bigger than a spider’s poo. If your vics had vermin, they’re very, very discreet vermin.”

  I said, “Have we got prints?”

  “Oh God yes, prints by the dozen. Fingerprints all over the cameras and the trap, and on that arrangement over the attic hatch. But young Gerry says don’t quote him on this, but at a very preliminary glance there’s no reason to think they’re not consistent with your vic—this vic here, obviously, not the kiddies. Same for the footprints up in the attic: adult male, shoe size matches this boyo.”

  “What about the holes in the walls—anything around there?”

  “Again, bucket loads of prints—you weren’t joking about keeping us busy, were you? A lot of them, going by the size, they’re the kiddies exploring. Most of the rest, Gerry says same again: no reason to think they’re not your victim, he’ll need to get them into the lab to confirm. Offhand, I’d say the vics made the holes themselves, nothing to do with last night.”

  I said, “Look at this place, Larry. I’m a tidy kind of guy, but my gaff hasn’t been in this good shape since the day I moved in. These people were beyond houseproud. They lined up their shampoo bottles. I’ll give you fifty quid if you can find me one speck of dust. Why go to all that hassle keeping your house in perfect nick, and then bash holes in the walls? And if you have to bash holes, why not fix them? Or at least cover them up?”

  “People are mad,” Larry said. He was losing interest; he cares about what happened, not why. “All of them. You should know that, Scorch. I’m just saying, if someone from outside made those holes, it looks like either the walls have been cleaned since, or else he wore gloves.”

  “Anything else around the holes? Blood, drug residue, anything?”

  Larry shook his head. “No blood, inside the holes or around them, except where they got in the way of spatter from this mess. No drug residue that we’ve found, but if you think we could be missing it, I’ll get a drug dog in.”

  “Hold off on that for now, unless something comes up pointing that way. What about in here, in the blood? No prints that couldn’t have come from our vics?”

  “Have you seen this place? How long do you think we’ve been here? Ask me again in a week. You can see for yourself, there’s enough bloody footprints for Dracula’s marching band, but I bet you most of them are the uniforms and the paramedics and their great big clumsy feet. We’ll just have to hope that a few prints from the actual crime had dried enough to stay in shape even with that lot wandering back and forth all over them. Same for the bloody handprints: we’ve got loads, but whether there’s any good ones left is anyone’s guess.”

  He was in his element: Larry loves complications and he loves grousing. “And if anyone can salvage them, Lar, it’s you. Any sign of the vics’ phones?”

  “Your wish is my command. Her mobile was on her bedside table, his was on the hall table, and we’ve bagged the landline just for funsies. Got the computer, too.”

  “Beautiful,” I said. “Send it all down to Computer Crime. What about keys?”

  “A full set in her purse, on the hall table: two front door keys, back door key, car key. Another full set in his coat pocket. A set of spares for the house in the drawer of the hall table. No Golden Bay Resort pen, not so far, but we’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks, Larry. We’ll go have a root around upstairs, if that’s OK.”

  “And here I was worried this would be just another boring overdose,” Larry said happily, as we were leaving. “Thank you, Scorcher. I owe you one.”

  * * *

  * * *

  * * *

  * * *

  The Spains’ bedroom was glowing a cozy, fuzzy gold—curtains stayed closed, against salivating neighbors and journalists with zoom lenses, but Larry’s lot had left the lights on for us when they were done printing the switches. The air had that indefinable intimate smell of a lived-in place: the faintest tint of shampoo, aftershave, skin.

  There was a fitted wardrobe along one wall and two cream-colored ch
ests of drawers in the corners, the curly-edged kind that someone’s gone at with sandpaper to make them look old and interesting. On top of the chest on Jenny’s side were three framed eight-by-tens. Two were squashy red babies; the one in the middle was a wedding shot taken on the stairway of some fancy country house hotel. Patrick in a tux with a pink tie and a pink rose in his buttonhole, Jenny in a fitted dress with a train that spread out over the stairs below them, bouquet of pink roses, lots of dark wood, lances of sunlight through the ornate landing window. Jenny was pretty, or had been. Average height, nice slim figure, with long hair that she had turned straight and blond and twisted into some complicated thing on top of her head. Patrick had been in better shape then, broad-chested and flat-stomached. He had an arm around Jenny, and both of them were smiling from ear to ear.

  I said, “Let’s start with the chests of drawers,” and headed for Jenny’s. If one of this pair had secrets stashed away, it was her. The world would be a different place, a lot more difficult for us and a lot more ignorantly blissful for husbands, if women would just throw things away.

  The top drawer was mainly makeup, plus a pill packet—Monday’s pill was gone, she had been up-to-date—and a blue velvet jewelry box. She was into jewelry, everything from cheap bling through some nice tasteful pieces that looked pretty upmarket to me—my ex-wife liked her rocks, I know my way around carats. The emerald ring Fiona had mentioned was still there, in a battered black presentation box, waiting for Emma to grow up. I said, “Look at this.”

  Richie glanced across from Patrick’s underwear drawer—he was working fast and neatly, giving each pair of boxers a quick shake and tossing it on a pile on the floor. He said, “So, not robbery.”

  “Probably not. Nothing professional, anyway. If things went wrong, an amateur might get spooked and run for it, but a professional—or a debt collector—wouldn’t go without getting what he came for.”