by Tana French
“No, Dina, I’m not. I was seeing someone until recently, we broke up, I’m not planning on getting back in the saddle for a while. OK?”
“I didn’t know,” Dina said, a lot more quietly. “Sorry.” She subsided onto one arm of the sofa. “Do you still talk to Laura?” she asked, after a moment.
“Sometimes.” Hearing Laura’s name filled up the room with her perfume, sharp and sweet. I took a big swallow of coffee to get it out of my nose.
“Are you guys going to get back together?”
“No. She’s seeing someone. A doctor. I’m expecting her to ring me any day to tell me that they’re engaged.”
“Ahhh,” Dina said, disappointed. “I like Laura.”
“So do I. That’s why I married her.”
“So why did you divorce her, then?”
“I didn’t divorce her. She divorced me.” Laura and I have always done the civilized thing and told people the breakup was mutual, nobody’s fault, we grew in different directions and all the usual meaningless rubbish, but I was too tired.
“Seriously? Why?”
“Because. I don’t have the energy tonight, Dina.”
“Whatever,” Dina said, rolling her eyes. She slid sinuously off the sofa and padded into the kitchen, where I heard her opening things. “Why don’t you have anything to eat? I’m starving.”
“There’s plenty to eat. The fridge is full. I can make you a stir-fry, or there’s lamb stew in the freezer, or if you want something lighter you can have porridge, or—”
“Ew, please. I don’t mean stuff like that. Fuck the five food groups and antioxidant blah blah blah. I want like ice cream, or one of those shitty burgers you stick in the microwave.” A cupboard door slammed and she came back into the living room holding out a granola bar at arm’s length. “Granola? What are you, a girl?”
“No one’s making you eat it.”
She shrugged, threw herself on the sofa again and started nibbling a corner of the bar, making a face like it might poison her. She said, “When you were with Laura you were happy. It was sort of weird, because you’re not one of those naturally happy people, so I wasn’t used to seeing you that way. It actually took me a while to figure out what was going on. But it was nice.”
I said, “Yes, it was.”
Laura is the same kind of sleek, highlighted, labor-intensive pretty as Jennifer Spain. She was on a diet every day I knew her, except birthdays and Christmases; she tops up her fake tan every three days, straightens her hair every morning of her life, and never goes out of the house without full makeup. I know some men like women to leave themselves the way nature intended, or at least to pretend they do, but the gallantry with which Laura fought nature hand to hand was one of the many things I loved about her. I used to get up fifteen or twenty minutes early in the mornings so I could spend that time just watching her get ready. Even on days when she was running late, dropping things and swearing to herself, for me it was the most restful thing life had to offer, like watching a cat put the world in order by washing itself. It always seemed to me that a girl like that, a girl who worked that hard at being what she was supposed to be, was likely to want what she was supposed to want: flowers, good jewelry, a nice house, holidays in the sun, and a man who would love her and put his heart into taking care of her for the rest of their lives. Girls like Fiona Rafferty are complete mysteries to me; I can’t imagine where you would start trying to figure them out, and that makes me nervous. With Laura, it seemed to me that I had a chance at making her happy. It was moronic of me to be taken by surprise when she, with whom I had felt safe for exactly that reason, turned out to want precisely what women are supposed to want.
Dina said, without looking at me, “Was it because of me? That Laura dumped you?”
“No,” I said, instantly. It was true. Laura found out about Dina early on, in much the way you would expect. She never once said or hinted, I believe she never once thought, that Dina wasn’t my responsibility, that I should keep her crazy out of our home. When I came to bed, late on nights when Dina was finally asleep in our spare room, Laura would stroke my hair. That was all.
Dina said, “Nobody wants to deal with this shit. I don’t want to deal with this shit.”
“Maybe some women wouldn’t. They’re not women I’d marry.”
She snorted. “I said I liked Laura. I didn’t say I thought she was a saint. How stupid do you think I am? I know she didn’t want some crazy bitch showing up on her doorstep, fucking up her whole week. That one time, candles, music, wineglasses, both of your hair all messed up? She must have hated my guts.”
“She didn’t. She never has.”
“You wouldn’t tell me if she did. Why else would she have dumped you? Laura was mad about you. And it’s not like it was your fault, like you hit her or called her a slag, I know how you treated her, like some kind of princess. You’d have brought her the moon. Her or me, did she say that? I want my life back, get that loony out of here?”
She was starting to wind tight, her back pressed against the arm of the sofa. There was a flare of fear in her eyes.
I said, “Laura left me because she wants children.”
Dina stopped in mid-breath and stared, open-mouthed. “Oh, shit, Mikey. Can you not have kids?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t try.”
“Then . . . ?”
“I don’t want to have children. I never have.”
Dina thought about that in silence, sucking her granola bar absently. After a while she said, “Laura would probably chill out a lot if she had kids.”
“Maybe. I hope she gets the chance to find out. But it was never going to be with me. Laura knew that when she married me. I made sure she did. I never misled her.”
“Why don’t you want kids?”
“Some people don’t. It doesn’t make me a freak.”
“I didn’t call you a freak. Did I call you a freak? I just asked why.”
I said, “I don’t believe in Murder Ds having kids. They turn you soft: you can’t take the heat any more, and you end up making a bollix of the job and probably the kids too. You can’t have both. I’ll take the job.”
“Oh my God, great big bullshit. Nobody doesn’t have kids because they don’t believe in it. You always blame everything on your job, it’s so boring, you have no idea. Why don’t you want kids?”
“I don’t blame things on my job. I take it seriously. If that’s boring, I apologize.”
Dina rolled her eyes and did a huge fake-patient sigh. “OK,” she said, slowing down so that the idiot could keep up. “I’d bet everything I’ve got, which is fuck-all but there you go, that your entire squad doesn’t get sterilized their first day on the job. You work with guys who have kids. They do the exact same job you do. They can’t be letting murderers go all the time, or they’d get fired. Right? Am I right?”
“Some of the guys have families. Yeah.”
“Then why don’t you want kids?”
The coffee was kicking in. The apartment felt small and ugly, harsh with artificial light; the urge to get out, start driving too fast back to Broken Harbor, nearly launched me right out of my chair. I said, “Because the risk is too big. It’s so enormous that just thinking about it makes me want to puke my guts. That’s why.”
“The risk,” Dina said, after a moment’s silence. She turned the wrapper of the granola bar inside out, carefully, and examined the shiny side. “Not from the job. You mean me. That they’d turn out like me.”
I said, “You’re not who I’m worried about.”
“Then who?”
“Me.”
Dina watched me, the lightbulb reflecting tiny twin will-o’-the-wisps in those inscrutable milky blue eyes. She said, “You’d make a good father.”
“I think I probably would. But probably�
��s not good enough. Because if we’re both wrong and I turned out to be a terrible father, what then? There would be absolutely nothing I could do. Once you find out, it’s too late: the kids are there, you can’t send them back. All you can do is keep on fucking them up, day after day, and watch while these perfect babies turn into wrecks in front of your eyes. I can’t do it, Dina. Either I’m not stupid enough or I’m not brave enough, but I can’t take that risk.”
“Geri’s doing OK.”
“Geri’s doing great,” I said. Geri is cheerful, easygoing, and a natural at motherhood. After each of her kids was born, I rang her every day for a year—stakeouts, interrogations, fights with Laura, everything else in the world got put on hold for that phone call—to make sure she was all right. Once she sounded hoarse and subdued enough that I made Phil leave work and check on her. She had a cold and obviously thought I should feel like an idiot, which I didn’t. Better safe, always.
“I want kids someday,” Dina said. She balled up the wrapper, threw it in the general direction of the bin and missed. “I bet you think that’s a really shit idea.”
The thought of her showing up pregnant next time made my scalp freeze. “You don’t need my permission.”
“But you think it anyway.”
I asked, “How’s Fabio?”
“His name’s Francesco. I don’t think it’s going to work out. I don’t know.”
“I think it would be a better idea to wait to have kids until you’re with someone you can rely on. Call me old-fashioned.”
“You mean, in case I lose it. In case I’m minding this little tiny three-week-old baby and my head starts to explode. Someone should be there to watch me.”
“That’s not what I said.”
Dina stretched out her legs on the sofa and inspected her toenail polish, which was pearly pale blue. She said, “I can tell when I’m going, you know. Do you want to know how?”
I don’t want to know anything, ever, about the inner workings of Dina’s mind. I said, “How?”
“Things start sounding all wrong.” A quick glance at me, under cover of her hair. “Like I take off my top at night and drop it on the floor, and it goes plop, like a rock falling into a pond. Or once I was walking home from work and my boots, every time my boots hit the ground they squealed, like a mouse in a trap. It was horrible. In the end I had to sit down on the footpath and take them off, to make sure there wasn’t a mouse stuck inside—I did know there wasn’t, I’m not stupid, but just to make sure. I figured it out then; what was happening, I mean. But I still had to take a taxi home. I couldn’t stand hearing that, all the way. It sounded like it was in agony.”
“Dina. You should go to someone about it. As soon as it happens.”
“I do go to someone. Today I was in work and I opened one of the big freezers to get more bagels, and it crackled; like a fire, like there was a forest fire in there. So I walked out and came to you.”
“Which is great. I’m delighted you did. But I’m talking about a professional.”
“Doctors,” Dina said, with her lip curling. “I’ve lost count. And how much use have they ever been?”
She was alive, which counted for a lot to me and which I felt should count for at least something to her, but before I could point that out, my mobile rang. As I went for it, I checked my watch: nine on the dot, good man Richie. “Kennedy,” I said, getting up and moving away from Dina.
“We’re in place,” Richie said, so softly I had to press my ear to the phone. “No movement.”
“Techs and floaters doing their thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Any problems? Run into anyone along the way? Anything I should know?”
“Nah. We’re good.”
“Then we’ll talk in an hour, or sooner if there’s any action. Good luck.”
I hung up. Dina was twisting the towel into a tight knot and watching me sharply, through that wing of glossy hair. “Who was that?”
“Work.” I pocketed the mobile, inside pocket. Dina’s mind has paranoid corners. I didn’t want her hiding my phone so that I couldn’t discuss her with imaginary hospitals, or, even better, answering it and telling Richie that she knew what he was up to and she hoped he died of cancer.
“I thought you were off.”
“I am. More or less.”
“What’s ‘more or less’ supposed to mean?”
Her hands were starting to tense up on the towel. I said, keeping my voice easy, “It means that sometimes people need to ask me something. There’s no such thing as ‘off ’ in Murder. That was my partner. He’ll probably ring a few more times tonight.”
“Why?”
I got my coffee mug and headed for the kitchen to top up. “You saw him. He’s a rookie. Before he makes any big decisions, he needs to check with me.”
“Big decisions about what?”
“Anything.”
Dina started using one thumbnail to pick at a scab on the back of her other hand, in short hard scrapes. “Someone was listening to the radio this afternoon,” she said. “In work.”
Oh, shit. “And?”
“And. It said there was a dead body, and police were treating the death as suspicious. It said Broken Harbor. They had some guy talking, some cop. It sounded like you.”
And then the freezer had started making forest-fire noises. I said carefully, taking a seat in my armchair again, “OK.”
The scraping picked up force. “Don’t do that. Don’t bloody do that.”
“Do what?”
“Put on that face, that stupid poker-up-your-arse cop face. Talk like I’m some idiot witness you can play little games with because I’m too intimidated to call you on it. You don’t intimidate me. Do you get that?”
There was no point in arguing. I said calmly, “Got it. I’m not going to try to intimidate you.”
“Then stop fucking about and tell me.”
“You know I can’t discuss work. It’s not personal.”
“Jesus, how the hell is this not personal? I’m your sister. How much more personal does it get?”
She was jammed tight into her corner of the sofa, feet braced like she was getting ready to come flying at me, which was unlikely but not impossible. I said, “True enough. I meant I’m not hiding anything from you personally. I have to be discreet with everyone.”
Dina chewed at the back of her forearm and watched me like I was her enemy, narrowed eyes alight with cold animal cunning. “OK,” she said. “So let’s just watch the news.”
I had been hoping that wouldn’t occur to her. “I thought you liked the peace and quiet.”
“If it’s public enough that the whole damn country can see it, surely to jumping Jesus it can’t be too confidential for me to watch. Right? Considering that it’s not personal.”
“For God’s sake, Dina. I’ve been in work all day. The last thing I want to do is come home and look at work on TV.”
“Then tell me what the fucking fuck is going on. Or I’m going to turn on the news and you’ll have to hold me down to stop me. Do you want to do that?”
“All right,” I said, hands going up. “OK. I’ll give you the story, if you’ll calm down for me. That means you need to stop biting your arm.”
“It’s my bloody arm. What do you care whose business is it?”
“I can’t concentrate while you’re doing that. And as long as I can’t concentrate, I can’t tell you what’s going on. It’s up to you.”
She shot me a defiant glare, bared small white teeth and bit down once more, hard, but when I didn’t react she wiped her arm on her T-shirt and sat on her hands. “There. Happy?”
I said, “It wasn’t just one body. It was a family of four. They were living out in Broken Harbor—it’s called Brianstown now. Someone broke into their
house last night.”
“How’d he kill them?”
“We won’t be sure till the post-mortem. It looks like he used a knife.”
Dina stared at nothing and didn’t move, didn’t even breathe, while she thought that over. “Brianstown,” she said finally, abstractedly. “What a stupid fucking cretin name. Whoever came up with that, someone should push his head underneath a lawn mower and hold it there. Are you positive?”
“About the name?”
“No! Je-sus. About the dead people.”
I rubbed at the hinge of my jaw, trying to work some of the tension out of it. “Yeah. I’m positive.”
The focus had come back into her eyes: they were on me, unblinking. “You’re positive because you’re working on it.”
I didn’t answer.
“You said you didn’t want to look at it on the news because you’d been working on it all day. That’s what you said.”
“Looking at a murder case is work. Any murder case. That’s what I do.”
“Blah blah blah whatever, this murder case is your work. Right?”
“What difference does that make?”
“It makes a difference because if you tell me, I’ll let you change the subject.”
I said, “Yeah. I’m on the case. Me and a bunch of other detectives.”
“Hmm,” Dina said. She threw the towel in the general direction of the bathroom door, slid off the sofa and started moving around the room again, forceful automatic circles. I could almost hear the hum of the thing that lives inside her starting to build, a thin mosquito whine.
I said, “And now we change the subject.”
“Yeah,” Dina said. She picked up a little soapstone elephant that Laura and I brought back from holiday in Kenya one year, squeezed it hard and examined the red dents it left in her palm with interest. “I was thinking, before. While I was waiting for you. I want to change my flat.”
“Good,” I said. “We can go look for something online right now.” Dina’s flat is a shit hole. She could afford a perfectly decent place, I help her with the rent, but she says purpose-built apartment blocks make her want to bang her head off the walls, so she always ends up in some decrepit Georgian house that was converted into bedsits in the sixties, sharing a bathroom with some hairy loser who calls himself a musician and needs regular reminders that she has a cop for a brother.