Broken Harbor

by Tana French

  We did the search right: undersides of drawers, backs of bookshelves, inside the boxes of out-of-date processed crap in the freezer—we even used Conor’s charger to plug Richie’s phone into every socket in the place, to make sure none of them was a dud hiding a cache spot. The paperwork box was going back to HQ with us, in case Conor had used an ATM two minutes after Jenny or kept a receipt for designing Pat’s company’s website, but we took a quick look just for kicks. His bank statements followed the same general depressing pattern as Pat and Jenny’s: a decent income and solid savings, then a smaller income and shrinking savings, then broke. Since Conor was self-employed, he had tanked less dramatically than Pat Spain—gradually the checks got smaller, the gaps between them got larger—but he had done it earlier. The slide had started in late 2007; by the middle of 2008, he had been dipping into his savings. It had been months since anything went into his account.

  By half past two we were finishing up, putting stuff back where it belonged, which in this case meant rearranging it from our focused mess to Conor’s unfocused one. It had looked better our way.

  I said, “You know what strikes me about this place?”

  Richie was shoving books back onto the bookshelf by the handful, setting little eddies of dust swirling. “Yeah?”

  “There’s no trace of anyone else in here. No girlfriend’s toothbrush, no photos of Conor with his mates, no birthday cards, no ‘Ring Dad’ or ‘8pm, meet Joe at the pub’ on the calendar: nothing that says Conor’s ever met another human being in his life.” I slid DVDs onto their rack. “Remember what I said about him having nothing to love?”

  “Could be all digital. Loads of people our age, they keep everything on their phones, or on the computer—photos, appointments—” A book went down on the shelf with a flat bang and Richie whirled round to me, his mouth open, his hands going up to clasp the back of his head. “Shit,” he said. “Photos.”

  “Is there a rest of that sentence, old son?”

  “Shit. I knew I’d seen him. No bleeding wonder he cared about them—”

  “Richie.”

  Richie rubbed his hands over his cheeks, caught a deep breath and blew it out again. “Remember last night, yeah, you asked Conor which one of the Spains did he hope had made it? And he said Emma? No bleeding wonder, man. He’s her godfather.”

  The framed photo on Emma’s bookshelf: a featureless baby in white lace, Fiona all dressed up, a floppy-haired guy at her shoulder. I remembered him boyish, smiling; I couldn’t see his face. I said, “Are you sure?”

  “I am, yeah. I’m sure. That picture in her room, remember? He was younger, he’s lost a load of weight since, got his hair cut short, but I swear to God, it’s him.”

  The photo had gone to HQ, along with everything else identifying anyone who had known the Spains. “Let’s double-check,” I said. Richie was already pulling out his phone. We almost ran up the steps.

  Inside five minutes, the floater on tip-line duty had dug out the picture, taken a photo of it on his phone and e-mailed it to Richie’s. It was small and starting to pixelate, and Conor looked happier and better rested than I could ever have pictured him, but it was him, all right: solid in his grown-up suit, holding Emma like she was made of crystal, with Fiona reaching across him to put a finger into one tiny hand.

  “Fucking hell,” Richie said softly, staring down at the phone.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That about sums it up.”

  “No wonder he knew all about Pat and Jenny’s relationship.”

  “Right. The little prick: he was sitting back laughing at us, the whole time.”

  A corner of Richie’s mouth twitched. “Didn’t look like he was laughing to me.”

  “He won’t be when he sees that picture, anyway. But he’s not going to see it till we’re good and ready. I want all our ducks in a row before we go anywhere near Conor again. You wanted a motive? I’d bet a lot of money that trail starts right here.”

  “It could go back a long way.” Richie tapped the screen. “That there, that’s six years ago. If Conor and the Spains were best buds back then, they’d already known each other for a while. We’re talking college at least, probably school. The motive could be anywhere along the way. Something happens, everyone forgets all about it, then Conor’s life goes to shite and all of a sudden something from fifteen years ago feels like a huge big deal again . . .”

  He was talking like he believed, at last, that Conor was our boy. I bent closer over the phone, to hide a smile. “Or it could be a lot more recent. Sometime in the last six years, the relationship went so far south that the only way Conor could see his goddaughter was through binoculars. I’d love to know what happened there.”

  “We’ll find out. Talk to Fiona, talk to all their old mates—”

  “Yeah, we will. We’ve got the little bastard now.” I wanted to grab Richie in a headlock, like we were a pair of idiot teenagers bonding by giving each other dead arms. “Richie, my friend, you just earned your whole year’s salary.”

  Richie grinned, reddening. “Ah, no. We’d have worked it out sooner or later.”

  “We would, yeah. But sooner is an awful lot better. We can take half a dozen floaters off trying to work out if Conor and Jenny bought petrol at the same station in 2008, and that gives us half a dozen extra chances at finding those clothes before a bin lorry takes them away . . . You’re the Man of the Match, my friend. Give yourself a big pat on the back.”

  He shrugged, rubbing his nose to cover the blush. “’S just luck.”

  “Bollix. There’s no such thing. Luck only comes in useful on the back of good solid detective work, and that’s exactly what you had there. You tell me: what do you want to do next?”

  “Fiona Rafferty. Fast as we can.”

  “Hell yes. You ring her; she liked you better than me.” Admitting it didn’t even sting. “See how soon you can get her to come in to HQ. Get her down there inside two hours, and lunch is on me.”

  Fiona was at the hospital—in the background, that machine was steadily beeping away—and even her “Hello?” sounded exhausted to breaking point.

  Richie said, “Ms. Rafferty, it’s Detective Curran. Have you got a minute?”

  A second’s silence. “Hang on,” Fiona said. Muffled, through a hand over the phone: “I’ve got to take this. I’ll only be outside, OK? Call me if you want me.” The click of a door, and the beeping vanished. “Hello?”

  Richie said, “Sorry to take you away from your sister. How’s she getting on?”

  A moment’s silence. “Not great. Same as yesterday. That’s when you talked to her, right? Before we were even allowed in.”

  There was an edge to Fiona’s voice. Richie said, calmly, “For a few minutes, yeah, we did. We didn’t want to tire her out too much.”

  “Are you going to come back and keep asking her questions? Because don’t. She hasn’t got anything to tell you. She doesn’t remember anything. Mostly she can’t even talk. She just cries. All of us just cry.” Fiona’s voice was shaking. “Can you just . . . leave her alone? Please?”

  Richie was learning: he didn’t answer that. He said, “I rang because we’ve got some news for you. It’ll be on the telly later, but we figured you’d rather hear this from us. We’re after arresting someone.”

  Silence. Then: “It wasn’t Pat. I told you. I told you.”

  Richie’s eyes met mine for a second. “Yeah, you did.”

  “Who— Oh, God. Who is he? Why did he? Why?”

  “We’re still working on that. We figured maybe you could give us a hand. Can you come into Dublin Castle, have a talk about it? We’ll give you the details there.”

  Another second of dead air, while Fiona tried to get hold of all this. “Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Just, can I, can it wait a while? My mum went home, she’s getting some sleep, I don’t wan
t to leave Jenny by herself—Mum’s coming back at six, I could be down to you by like seven. Would that be too late?”

  Richie raised his eyebrows at me; I nodded. “That’s perfect,” he said. “And listen, Ms. Rafferty: do us a favor and don’t say it to your sister yet. Make sure your mother doesn’t, either. OK? Once the suspect’s been charged and all, we can tell her, but it’s still early days; we don’t want to be upsetting her if anything goes wrong. Will you promise me that?”

  “Yeah. I won’t say anything.” A quick catch of breath. “This guy. Please. Who is he?”

  Richie said gently, “We’ll talk later. Take care of your sister, yeah? And of yourself. See you soon.” He hung up before Fiona could keep asking.

  I checked my watch. It was coming up to three o’clock: four hours to wait. “No free lunch for you, sunshine.”

  Richie tucked his phone away and gave me a quick grin. “And here I was going to order the lobster.”

  “Would you settle for tuna salad? I’d like to head up to Brianstown, check in with the search teams and give you another shot at the Gogan kid, but we should pick up something to eat on the way. It looks bad for me if you drop dead from starvation.”

  “Tuna salad’s good. Wouldn’t want to wreck your rep.”

  He was still grinning. Modesty or no, Richie was a happy man. “I appreciate your concern,” I said. “You finish up inside. I’ll give Larry a bell, tell him to bring his boys down here, and then we can get moving.”

  Richie went bouncing back down the stairs two at a time. “Scorcher,” Larry said delightedly. “Have I told you lately that I love you?”

  “It never gets old. What’ve I done now?”

  “That car. Everything a man could want, and it’s not even my birthday.”

  “Fill me in. If I’m sending you pressies, I deserve to know what’s in them.”

  “Well, the first bit wasn’t in the car, exactly. When the boys went to tow it, a key ring fell out of the wheel well. We’ve got the car keys, we’ve got what looks like a pair of house keys—one Chubb, one Yale—and, drum roll please, we’ve got a key to the Spains’ back door.”

  “Now that,” I said, “is sweet.” The alarm code, and now this: all we needed was where Conor had got the key—and one obvious answer was coming in for a chat in a few hours’ time—and the whole tangled question of access would be neatly tied up in a bow. Pat and Jenny’s nice solid house had been as secure as a tent on the open strand.

  “I thought you’d like it. And once we actually got into the car, oh my. How I love cars. I’ve seen guys who practically took baths in pure bleach after they finished doing their business, but did they bother to clean their cars? No, they did not. This one’s an absolute nest of hairs and fibers and dirt and all things nice, and if I were a betting man, I’d bet you plenty that we’ll get at least one match between the car and the crime scene. We’ve also got a muddy shoe print on the driver’s floor mat: we’ll have to work it up to see how much detail we can get, but it’s from a man’s runner, size ten or eleven.”

  “Even sweeter.”

  “And then, of course,” Larry said demurely, “there’s the blood.”

  By that stage I wasn’t even surprised. Every once in a while this job gives you a day like that, a day when all the dice roll your way, when you just have to stretch out your hand and a plump juicy piece of evidence drops into it. “How much?”

  “Smears everywhere. Only a couple of smudges on the door handle and the steering wheel, he’d taken his gloves off by the time he got back to the car, but the driver’s seat is covered—we’ll send it all off for DNA, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess it might just match up to your vics. Tell me I make you happy.”

  “Happiest man in the world,” I said. “And in exchange, I’ve got another pressie for you. Richie and I are at the suspect’s flat, having a quick look around. Whenever you’ve got a moment, we’d love you to come down here and give it a proper going-over. No blood as far as we can see—sorry about that—but we’ve got another computer and another phone, to keep young Kieran busy, and I’m sure you’ll find something to interest you too.”

  “My cup runneth over. I’ll be down as fast as I can skip. Will you and your new friend still be around?”

  “Probably not. We’re heading back to the crime scene. Is your badger-tracking guy out there?”

  “He is indeed. I’ll tell him to hang on for you. And I’ll save your great big hug for later. Ciao ciao.” Larry hung up.

  The case was coming together. I could feel it, an actual physical sensation, as if it were my own vertebrae slipping into alignment with small confident clicks, letting me straighten and take a belly-deep breath for the first time in days. Killester is near the sea, and for a second I thought I caught a whiff of salt air, vivid and wild, slicing straight through all the city smells to find me. As I pocketed my phone and started down the stairs, I caught myself smiling, up at the gray sky and the turning birds.

  Richie was piling crap back onto the sofa. I said, “Larry’s having a blast with Conor’s car. Hairs, fibers, a footprint, and—get this—a key to the Spains’ back door. Richie, my friend, this is our lucky day.”

  “Great. That’s great, yeah.” Richie didn’t look up.

  I said, “What is it?”

  He turned around like he was dragging himself up from a sucking dream. “Nothing. I’m grand.”

  His face was pinched and focused, turned inwards on itself. Something had happened.

  I said, “Richie.”

  “I just need that sandwich. Felt a bit crap all of a sudden, you know that way? Low blood sugar, probably. And the air in here, and all—”

  “Richie. If something’s up, you need to tell me.”

  Richie’s eyes came up to meet mine. He looked young and wildly lost, and when his lips parted I knew it was to ask for help. Then something in his face clicked shut and he said, “Nothing’s up. Seriously. Will we go, yeah?”

  When I think about the Spain case, from deep inside endless nights, this is the moment I remember. Everything else, every other slip and stumble along the way, could have been redeemed. This is the one I clench tight because of how sharp it slices. Cold still air, a weak ray of sun glowing on the wall outside the window, smell of stale bread and apples.

  I knew Richie was lying to me. He had seen something, heard something, fitted a piece into place and caught a glimpse of some brand-new picture. It was my job to keep pushing until he came clean. I understand that; I understood it then, in that low-ceilinged flat with the dust prickling my hands and clogging the air. I understood—or I would have, if I had pulled myself together, through the fatigue and all the other things that are no excuse—that Richie was my responsibility.

  I thought he had twigged something that proved once and for all that Conor was our man, and he wanted to nurse the sting to his pride in private for a little while. I thought something had pointed him towards a motive and he wanted to move a few steps further down that road, till he was sure, before he brought me with him. I thought of the other partners on the squad, the ones going strong after longer than most marriages: the deft balance with which they moved around each other; the trust as solid and practical as a coat or a mug, something never talked about because it was always in use.

  I said, “Yeah. You could probably do with some more coffee, too; I know I could. Let’s get out of here.”

  Richie tossed the last of Conor’s crap onto the sofa, picked up the big evidence bag that held the orange crate and brushed past me, pulling off a glove with his teeth. I heard him heaving the crate up the steps.

  Before I switched off the light I took one last look around, scanning every inch for the mysterious thing that had blazed up at him out of nowhere. The flat was silent, sullen, already closing back in on itself and turning deserted again. There was n
othing there.

  12

  Richie made a big effort, on the drive to Broken Harbor: keeping the chat going, telling me some long rueful story about when he was a uniform and had to deal with two ancient brothers beating the shite out of each other for some reason to do with sheep—the brothers were both deaf, their mountainy accents were too thick for Richie, no one had a clue what was going on and the story ended with them joining forces against the city boy and Richie leaving their house with a walking stick jabbing him in the arse. He was clowning it up, trying to keep the conversation on safe ground. I played along: minor uniform fuckups of my own, things a friend and I shouldn’t have got up to in training college, stuff with punch lines. It would have been a good drive, a good laugh, except for the slim shadow lying between us, dimming the windscreen, thickening whenever we left a silence.

  The sub-aqua team had found a fishing boat that had been at the bottom of the harbor for a long time, and they made it clear that that was the most interesting thing they were expecting to find. They were faceless and sleek in their dive suits, turning the harbor military and sinister. We thanked them, shook their slick gloved hands and told them to go home. The searchers, who had been working their way across the estate, were dirty, tired and pissed off: they had found eight knives of varying shapes and sizes, all of which had clearly been planted overnight by teenagers who thought they were hilarious geniuses sticking it to the man, and all of which would have to be checked out. I told the team to move the search up to the hill where Conor had hidden his car. According to his story, the weapons had gone into the water, but Richie was right about this much: Conor was playing games with us. Until we knew exactly what games and why, everything he said needed checking.

  A rangy guy with blond dreadlocks and a dusty parka was sitting on the Spains’ garden wall, smoking a rollie and looking dodgy. I said, “Can we help you?”

  “Howya,” he said, mashing out his smoke on the sole of his shoe. “Detectives, yeah? Tom. Larry said you wanted me to hang on for you.”