by Tana French
“Has she said anything?”
“You know about the facial injury, don’t you? She has a hard time talking. She told one of the nurses she was thirsty. She asked me who I was. And she said, ‘It hurts,’ two or three times, before we upped the painkillers. That’s it.”
The uniform should have been in there with her, in case that changed, but I had told him to guard the door, and by God he was guarding it. I could have kicked myself for not using an actual detective with a functioning brain, instead of some pubescent drone. Richie asked, “Does she know? About her family?”
The doctor shook his head. “Not as far as I can tell. I’m guessing there’s a certain amount of retrograde amnesia. It’s common enough after a head injury; usually transient, but again, no guarantees.”
“And you didn’t tell her, no?”
“I thought you might want to do that yourselves. And she hasn’t asked. She . . . well, you’ll see what I mean. She’s not in great shape.”
He had been keeping his voice low, and on that his eyes slid over my shoulder. I had missed her, up until then: a woman, asleep in a hard plastic chair up against the corridor wall, with a big flowered purse clutched on her lap and her head canted back at a painful angle. She didn’t look twelve. She looked at least a hundred—white hair falling out of its bun, face swollen and discolored from crying and exhaustion—but she couldn’t have been over about seventy. I recognized her from the Spains’ photo albums: Jenny’s mother.
The floaters had taken a statement from her the day before. We would have to come back to her sooner or later, but at that moment there was more than enough agony waiting for us inside Jenny’s room, without stocking up in the corridor. “Thanks,” I said, a lot more quietly. “If anything changes, let us know.”
We gave our IDs to the drone, who examined them from every angle for about a week. Mrs. Rafferty shifted her feet and moaned in her sleep, and I almost shouldered the uniform out of our way, but luckily he picked that moment to decide we were legit. “Sir,” he said smartly, handing back the IDs and stepping away from the door, and then we were inside Jenny Spain’s room.
No one would ever have known her for the platinum girl shining in those wedding photos. Her eyes were closed, eyelids puffy and purple. Her hair, straggling on the pillow from under a wide white bandage, was stringy and darkened to mouse-brown by days without washing; someone had tried to get the blood out of it, but there were still matted clumps, strands sharpened into hard points. A pad of gauze, stuck down with sloppy strips of tape, covered her right cheek. Her hands, small and fine like Fiona’s, were slack on the bobbled pale-blue blanket, a thin tube running into a great mottled bruise; her nails were perfect, filed to delicate arcs and painted a soft pinkish-beige, except the two or three that had been ripped away down to the quick. More tubing ran from her nose up around her ears, snaked down her chest. All around her machines beeped, clear bags dripped, light flashed off metal.
Richie closed the door behind us, and her eyes opened.
She stared, dazed and dull-eyed, trying to figure out whether we were real. She was fathoms deep in the painkillers. “Mrs. Spain,” I said, gently, but she still flinched, hands jerking up to defend herself. “I’m Detective Michael Kennedy, and this is Detective Richard Curran. Would you be able to talk to us for a few minutes?”
Slowly Jenny’s eyes focused on mine. She whispered—it came out thick and clotted, through the damage and the bandage—“Something happened.”
“Yes. I’m afraid so.” I turned a chair to the side of the bed and sat down. Across from me, Richie did the same.
“What happened?”
I said, “You were attacked, in your home, two nights ago. You were seriously wounded, but the doctors have been taking good care of you, and they say you’re going to be fine. Can you remember anything about the attack?”
“Attack.” She was struggling to swim to the surface, through the vast weight of drugs bearing down on her mind. “No. How . . . what . . .” Then her eyes came alive, flaring incandescent blue with pure terror. “The babies. Pat.”
Every muscle in my body wanted to fling me out the door. I said, “I’m so sorry.”
“No. Are they—where—”
She was fighting to sit up. She was much too weak to do it, but not too weak to rip stitches trying. “I’m so sorry,” I said again. I cupped a hand around her shoulder and pressed down, as gently as I could. “There was nothing we could do.”
The moment after those words has a million shapes. I’ve seen people howl till their voices were scraped away, or freeze like they were hoping it would pass them over, prowl on to rip out someone else’s rib cage, if they just stayed still enough. I’ve held them back from smashing their faces off walls, trying to knock out the pain. Jenny Spain was beyond any of that. She had done all her defending two nights before; she had none left for this. She dropped back on the worn pillowcase and cried, steadily and silently, on and on.
Her face was red and contorted, but she didn’t move to cover it. Richie leaned over and put a hand on hers, the one without the IV line, and she gripped it till her knuckles whitened. Behind her a machine beeped, faintly and steadily. I focused on counting the beeps and wished to God I had brought water, gum, mints, anything that would let me swallow.
After a long time, the crying wore itself away and Jenny lay still, cloudy red eyes staring at the flaking paint on the wall. I said, “Mrs. Spain, we’re going to do everything we can.”
She didn’t look at me. That thick, ragged whisper: “Are you sure? Did you . . . see them yourself?”
“I’m afraid we’re sure.”
Richie said gently, “Your babies didn’t suffer, Mrs. Spain. They never knew what was happening.”
Her mouth started to convulse. I said quickly, before she could get lost in it again, “Mrs. Spain, can you tell us what you remember about that night?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“That’s OK. We understand. Could you take a moment and think back, see if anything comes to you?”
“I don’t . . . There’s nothing. I can’t . . . ”
She was tensing up, her hand tightening on Richie’s again. I said, “That’s fine. What’s the last thing you do remember?”
Jenny gazed at nothing and for a moment I thought she had drifted away, but then she whispered, “The babies’ bath. Emma washed Jack’s hair. Got shampoo in his eyes. He was going to cry. Pat . . . his hands in the sleeves of Emma’s dress, like it was dancing, to make Jack laugh . . .”
“That’s good,” I said, and Richie gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. “That’s great. Any little thing could help us. And after the children’s bath . . . ?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. The next thing was here, that doctor—”
“OK. It might come back to you. Meanwhile, can you tell me whether there’s anyone who’s bothered you, over the past few months? Anyone who worried you? Maybe someone you knew was acting a bit odd, or you saw someone around who made you nervous?”
“No one. Nothing. Everything’s been fine.”
“Your sister Fiona mentioned that you had a break-in during the summer. Can you tell us about that?”
Jenny’s head stirred on the pillow, like something hurt. “That was nothing. Not a big deal.”
“Fiona sounded like it was a pretty big deal at the time.”
“Fiona exaggerates. I was just stressed that day. I got worried about nothing.”
Richie’s eyes met mine, across the bed. Somehow, Jenny was managing to lie.
I said, “There are a number of holes in the walls of your home. Do those have anything to do with the break-in?”
“No. Those are . . . They’re nothing. They’re just DIY stuff.”
“Mrs. Spain,” Richie said. “Are you sure?”
&
nbsp; “Yeah. I’m positive.”
Through all the fog of drugs and damage, something in her face glinted dense and hard as steel. I remembered what Fiona had said: Jenny isn’t a wimp.
I asked, “What kind of DIY stuff?”
We waited, but Jenny’s eyes had clouded over again. Her breathing was so shallow that I could barely see her chest rise and fall. She whispered, “Tired.”
I thought about Kieran and his ID hunt, but there was no way she would be able to find those in the wreckage of her mind. I said gently, “Just a few more questions, and we’ll let you rest. A woman called Aisling Rooney—her son Karl was a friend of Jack’s from preschool—she mentioned that she tried to get in touch over the summer, but you stopped returning her calls. Do you remember that?”
“Aisling. Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you ring her back?”
A shrug; barely a twitch, but it made her wince. “I just didn’t.”
“Had you had problems with her? With any of that family?”
“No. They’re fine. I just forgot to ring her.”
That flash of steel again. I pretended I hadn’t seen it, moved on. “Did you tell your sister Fiona that Jack had brought home a friend from preschool last week?”
After a long moment, Jenny nodded. Her chin had started to tremble.
“Had he?”
She shook her head. Her eyes and lips were squeezed tight. I said, “Can you tell me why you told Fiona he had?”
Tears leaked onto Jenny’s cheeks. She managed, “. . . Should have—” before a sob jackknifed her like a punch. “So tired . . . please . . .”
She pushed Richie’s hand away and covered her face with her arm. He said, “We’ll let you get some rest. We’re going to send someone from Victim Support to talk to you, OK?”
Jenny shook her head, gasping for breath. Blood had dried in the creases of her knuckles. “No. Please . . . no . . . just . . . by myself.”
“I promise, they’re good. I know nothing’s going to make this better, but they can help you get through it. They’ve helped out a load of people who’ve had this happen. Would you give them a shot?”
“I don’t . . .” She managed to catch her breath, in a deep, shaky heave. After a moment she asked, dazed, “What?” The painkillers were closing over her head again.
“Never mind,” Richie said gently. “Is there anything we can get you?”
“I don’t . . .”
Her eyes were closing. She was slipping into sleep, which was the best place for her. I said, “We’ll be back when you’re feeling stronger. For now, we’re going to leave our cards here with you. If you remember anything, anything at all, please call either one of us.”
Jenny made a sound between a moan and a sob. She was asleep, tears still sliding down her face. We put our cards on her bedside table and left.
Out in the corridor, everything was the same: the uniform was still standing to attention, and Jenny’s mother was still asleep in her chair. Her head had dropped to one side and her fingers had loosened on her purse, twitching against the worn handle. I sent the uniform into the room as quietly as I could and got us around the corner, walking fast, before I stopped to put away my notebook.
Richie said, “That was interesting, yeah?” He sounded subdued, but not shaken up: the live ones didn’t get to him. Once that empathy had somewhere to go, he was fine. If I had been in the market for a long-term partner, we would have been perfect for each other. “A lot of lies, for just a few minutes.”
“So you noticed that. They might or might not be relevant—like I told you, everyone lies—but we’ll need to find out. We’ll come back to Jenny.” It took me three tries to get my notebook into my coat pocket. I turned my shoulder to Richie to hide it.
He hovered, squinting up at me. “You all right?”
“I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
“You look a bit . . .” He wavered one hand. “That was rough enough, in there. I thought maybe . . .”
I said, “Why don’t you go ahead and assume that anything you can take, I can take. That wasn’t rough. That was just another day on the job—as you’ll know, once you get a little experience under your belt. And even if it had been rough as all hell, I’d be fine. That chat we had earlier, Richie, about control: did that not go in?”
He backed away, and I realized my tone had been a notch sharper than I wanted it to be. “Only asking.”
It took a second to sink in: he genuinely had been. Not prodding for weak spots, or trying to even things out after the post-mortem incident; just looking out for his partner. I said, more gently, “And I appreciate it. Sorry for snapping at you. How about you? Are you all right?”
“I’m grand, yeah.” He flexed his hand, wincing—I could see deep purple dents where Jenny’s nails had dug in—and glanced back over his shoulder. “The mother. Are we . . . when do we let her go in?”
I headed down the corridor, towards the exit stairs. “Whenever she wants, as long as she’s supervised. I’ll ring the uniform and let him know.”
“And Fiona?”
“Same goes for her: she’s more than welcome, once she doesn’t mind having company. Maybe they’ll be able to get Jenny to pull it together a bit, get more out of her than we could.”
Richie kept pace and said nothing, but I was starting to get the hang of his silences. I said, “You think I should be concentrating on how they can help Jenny, not how they can help us. And you think I should have let them go in yesterday.”
“She’s in hell. They’re family.”
I took the stairs fast. “Exactly, old son. E-fucking-xactly. They are family, which means we don’t have a hope of understanding the dynamics there, not yet anyway. I don’t know what a couple of hours with Mum and Sis would have done to Jenny’s story, and I didn’t want to find out. Maybe the mother’s a guilt-tripper, she makes Jenny feel even worse about ignoring the intruder, so when Jenny talks to us she skips over the fact that he broke in a few more times along the way. Maybe Fiona warns her that we were looking at Pat, and by the time we get to Jenny she won’t talk to us at all. And don’t forget: Fiona may not be top of our suspect list, but she’s not off it—not till we find out how our man picked the Spains—and she’s still the one who would have inherited if Jenny had died. I don’t care how badly the vic needs a hug, I’m not letting the heir talk to her before I do.”
“I guess,” Richie said. At the bottom of the stairs he moved aside to let a nurse go past, pushing a trolley of coiled plastic and glinting metal, and watched her bustle down the corridor. “Probably you’re right.”
I said, “You think I’m a cold bastard, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “Not for me to say.”
“Maybe I am. It depends on your definition. Because you see, Richie, to me, a cold bastard is someone who could look Jenny Spain in the eye and tell her, Sorry, ma’am, we won’t be catching the person who butchered your family, because I was too busy making sure everybody liked me, see you around, and then waltz off home for a nice dinner and a good night’s sleep. That’s something I can’t do. So if I have to do some minor cold shit along the way, to make sure that doesn’t happen, so be it.” The exit doors juddered open, and a wave of cool rain-drenched air rolled over us. I crammed as much of it into my lungs as I could.
Richie said, “Let’s talk to the uniform now. Before the ma wakes up.”
In the heavy gray light he looked terrible, eyes bloodshot, face flat and haggard; if it hadn’t been for the half-decent clothes, Security would have taken him for a junkie. The kid was exhausted. It was heading for three o’clock. Our night shift started in five hours.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Give him a bell.” Richie’s face told me I looked as bad as he did. Every breath I took was still clotted with disinfectant and blood, like the hospital
air had closed around me and soaked into my pores. I almost wished I smoked. “And then we can get away from this place. Time to go home.”
9
I dropped Richie outside his place, a beige terraced house in Crumlin—the tattered paintwork said it was rented, the bikes chained to the railings said he was sharing with a couple of mates. “Get some sleep,” I said. “And remember what I said: no booze. We need to be on the ball for tonight. I’ll see you outside HQ at a quarter to seven.” As he put his key in the door, I saw his head drop forward like he had nothing left to hold it up.
Dina hadn’t rung me. I had been trying to take that as a sign that she was peacefully reading or watching telly, or maybe still asleep, but I knew she wouldn’t ring even if she was bouncing off the walls. When Dina’s doing well, she’ll answer texts and the occasional call; when she’s not, she doesn’t trust her mobile enough to touch it. The closer I got to home, the more that silence seemed to turn dense and volatile, an acrid fog I had to fight through to reach my door.
Dina was sitting cross-legged on my living-room floor, with my books strewn around her like a hurricane had flung them off the shelves, ripping a page out of Moby Dick. She stared me in the eye, tossed the page on a pile in front of her, threw the Melville against the opposite wall with a bang, and reached for another book.
“What the fuck—” I dropped my briefcase and grabbed the book out of her hand; she kicked out at my shin, but I leapt back. “What the hell, Dina?”
“You, you fuckety bastarding prick, you locked me, what was I supposed going to do, sit here good girl like your dog? You don’t own you can’t make me!”
She made a dive for another book; I dropped on my knees and caught her wrists. “Dina. Listen to me. Listen. I couldn’t leave you the keys. I don’t have a spare set.”
Dina laughed, a high yelp that bared her teeth. “Yeah yeah yeah right, you don’t, Mr. Anal with your books are alphabetized but no spare keys? You know what I was going to? Put this on fire.” She jerked her chin fiercely at the heap of torn pages in front of her. “Then let’s see if someone doesn’t let me out, smoke alarm going good and loud, all your snobby yuppie neighbors wouldn’t be happy then, would they, ooh darlings the noise, in a residential area—”