by Tana French
“So you do know her?”
“Yeah. I know her. What’s happened?”
Quigley stretched it out, arching his eyebrows and trying to look enigmatic, till the precise second before I would have slammed him against the wall. “She came waltzing in here first thing this morning. Wanted to see Mikey Kennedy right away, if you don’t mind; wouldn’t take no for an answer. Mikey, is it? I would’ve bet you’d like them cleaner, more respectable, but there’s no accounting for tastes.”
He smirked at me. I couldn’t answer. The relief felt like it had sucked out my insides.
“Bernadette told her you weren’t in and she should take a seat and wait, but that wasn’t good enough for Little Miss Emergency. She was giving terrible hassle, raising her voice and all. Shocking carry-on. I suppose some people like the drama queens, but this is a Garda building, not a nightclub.”
I said, “Where is she?”
“Your girlfriends aren’t my responsibility, Detective Kennedy. I just happened to be on my way in, and I saw the ruckus she was causing. I thought I’d give you a helping hand, show the young woman that she can’t be coming in here like the Queen of Sheba demanding this, that and the other. So I let her know that I was a friend of yours, and anything she wanted to say to you, she could say to me.”
I had my hands stuffed in my coat pockets to hide my clenched fists. I said, “You mean you bullied her into talking to you.”
Quigley’s lips vanished. “You don’t want to take that tone with me, Detective. I didn’t bully her into anything. I brought her into an interview room and we had a wee chat. She took a bit of convincing, but in the end she realized that you’re always better off following garda orders.”
I said, keeping my voice level, “You threatened to arrest her.” The thought of being locked up would have sent Dina into an animal panic; I could almost hear the wild jabber surging up inside her mind. I kept my fists where they were and focused on the thought of filing every complaint in the book on Quigley’s flabby arse. I didn’t give a damn if he had the chief commissioner in his pocket and I ended up investigating sheep rustlers in Leitrim for the rest of my life, as long as I took this lump of shit down with me.
Quigley said virtuously, “She was holding stolen police property. I couldn’t ignore that, could I, now? If she refused to hand it over, it was my duty to place her under arrest.”
“What are you talking about? What stolen police property?” I tried to think what I could have brought home, a file, a photo, what on earth I wouldn’t have missed by now. Quigley gave me a nauseating little smile and held up the evidence bag.
I tilted it towards the weak, pearly light from the landing window—he didn’t let go. For a second I didn’t understand what I was seeing. It was a woman’s fingernail, neatly filed and manicured, painted a smooth pinkish-beige. It had been ripped off at the quick. Caught in a crack was a wisp of rose-pink wool.
Quigley was saying something, somewhere, but I couldn’t hear him. The air had turned dense and savage, pounding at my skull, gibbering in a thousand mindless voices. I needed to turn my face away, shove Quigley to the floor and run. I couldn’t move. My eyes felt like they had been pinned wide open.
The handwriting on the evidence-bag label was familiar, firm and forward-slanting, not Quigley’s semi-literate scrawl. Collected sitting room, residence of Conor Brennan . . . Cold air, smell of apples, Richie’s drawn face.
When I could hear again, Quigley was still talking. The stairwell turned his voice sibilant and disembodied. “At first I thought, well, holy God, the great Scorcher Kennedy leaving evidence lying around for his bit of fluff to pick up on her way out: who would’ve thought it?” He gave a snigger. I could almost feel it, dripping down my face like stale grease. “But then, while I was waiting for you to honor us, I had a wee read of your case file—I’d never intrude, but you can see why I needed to know where this yoke here might fit in, so I could decide on the right thing to do. And didn’t I spot something interesting? That handwriting there: it’s not yours—sure, I know yours, after all this time—but it shows up an awful lot, in the file.” He tapped his temple. “They don’t call me a detective for nothing, amn’t I right?”
I wanted to crush the bag in my hand till it crumbled to dust and vanished, till even the image of it was squashed out of my mind. Quigley said, “I knew you’d got thick as thieves, yourself and young Curran, but I never guessed you were sharing that much.” The snigger again. “So I’m wondering, now: did the young lady get this off you, or off Curran?”
Somewhere far inside my mind, one corner was moving again, methodically as a machine. Twenty-five years’ worth of working my arse off to learn control. Friends have slagged me for it, newbies have rolled their eyes when I gave them the speech. Fuck them all. It was worth it, for that conversation on a drafty landing when I held it together. When this case sets its claws scrabbling circles around the inside of my skull, the only thing I have left to tell myself is that it could have been worse.
Quigley was loving this, every second, and I could use that. I heard myself say, cool as ice, “Don’t tell me you forgot to ask her.”
I had been right: he couldn’t resist. “Holy God, the drama. Wouldn’t give me her name, wouldn’t give me any information on where and how she came into possession of this here—when I put the pressure on, just gently, like, she went only hysterical. I’m not joking you: she pulled out a great clump of her hair by the roots, screamed at me that she was going to tell you I’d done it. Now, I wasn’t worried about that—any sensible man would take the word of an officer over the say-so of some young one—but the girl’s mad as a bag of cats. I could have got her talking easily enough, but there was no point: I couldn’t rely on a word she said. I’m telling you, it doesn’t matter how tasty she is, that one belongs in a straitjacket.”
I said, “Shame you didn’t have one handy.”
“I’d have been doing you a favor, so I would.”
The squad-room door slammed open above us and three of the lads headed down the corridor towards the canteen, bitching colorfully about some witness who had suddenly developed amnesia. Quigley and I pressed back against the wall, like conspirators, until their voices faded. I said, “What did you do with her instead?”
“I told her she needed to get a hold of herself and she was free to go, and off she flounced. Gave Bernadette the finger on the way out. Lovely.” With his arms folded and his chins tucked in sourly, he looked like a fat old woman bitching about wanton modern youth. That icy, detached corner of me almost wanted to smile. Dina had scared the shit out of Quigley. Every now and then, the crazy comes in useful. “Your girlfriend, is she? Or a little treat you bought for yourself? How much do you think she’d have wanted for this yoke, if she’d found you this morning?”
I wagged a finger at him. “Be nice, chum. She’s a lovely girl.”
“She’s a very lucky girl that I didn’t place her under arrest for the theft. Just as a favor to you, that was. I think you owe me a nice polite thank-you.”
“Sounds like she brightened up a boring morning. Maybe you’re the one who should be thanking me.”
This conversation wasn’t going the way Quigley had planned. “So,” he said, trying to get it back. He held up the evidence bag and gave the top a little squeeze between those fat white fingers. “Tell us, Detective. This yoke here. How bad do you need it?”
He hadn’t worked it out. The relief rushed over me like a breaker. I brushed rain off my sleeve and shrugged. “Who knows? Thanks for getting it off the young woman, and all that, but I can’t see it being exactly make-or-break stuff.”
“You’d want to be sure, wouldn’t you? Because as soon as the story goes on the record, it’s no good to you any more.”
We forget to hand in evidence, every once in a while. It’s not supposed to happen, but it does: you’re taking off
your suit at night and find a bulge in your pocket where you shoved an envelope when a witness asked for a word, or you open your car boot and there’s the bag you meant to hand in the night before. As long as no one else has had access to your pockets or keys to your car, it’s not the end of the world. But Dina had had this in her possession, for hours or days. If we ever tried to bring it into court, a defense lawyer would argue that she could have done anything from breathing on the evidence to exchanging it for something completely different.
Evidence doesn’t always come to us pristine from the crime scene: witnesses hand it in weeks later, it lies in a field getting rained on for months until a dog noses it out. We work with what we’ve got and find ways to head off the defense arguments. This was different. We had tainted this ourselves, and so it tainted everything else we had touched. If we tried to bring it in, then every move we had made in this investigation would be up for grabs: that could have been planted, he could have been bullied, we could have invented that to suit ourselves. We had broken the rules once. Why should anyone believe that had been the only time?
I gave the bag a dismissive flick with one finger—touching it made my spine leap. “It might’ve been fun to have, if it turned out to link our suspect to the crime scene. But we’ve got plenty of stuff that does that anyway. I think we’ll survive.”
Quigley’s sharp little eyes crawled over my face, checking. “Either way,” he said, in the end. He was trying to hide a pissed-off note. I had convinced him. “Even if this doesn’t turn your case to shite, it could have done. The Super’ll hit the roof when he hears one of his dream team’s been handing out evidence like sweeties—and on this case, out of all the ones in the world. Those poor little kiddies.” He shook his head, clicked his tongue reproachfully. “You’re fond of young Curran, aren’t you? You wouldn’t want to see him reverted to uniform before he even gets off the starting blocks. All that promise, all that great working relationship the two of you have, all wasted. Wouldn’t that be a shame?”
“Curran’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”
“A-ha,” Quigley said smugly, pointing at me, like I had slipped up and revealed some big secret. “Will I take that to mean he’s the bold lad, after all?”
“Take it whatever way you like it, chum. And if you like it, take it again.”
“It doesn’t matter, sure. Even if it was Curran that did it, he’s only on probation; you’re the one that’s meant to be minding him. If anyone were to find out about this . . . Wouldn’t that be dreadful timing, and you just on your way back up?” Quigley had edged close enough that I could see the wet glisten of his lips, the sheen of dirt and grease grained into his jacket collar. “No one wants that to happen. I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.”
For an instant I thought he meant money. For an even briefer, disgraceful splinter of time I thought of saying yes. I have savings, in case something were to happen to me and Dina needed looking after; not a lot, but enough to shut Quigley’s mouth, save Richie, save myself, set the ricocheting world back in its orbit and let us all keep going as if nothing had happened.
Then I understood: it was me he wanted, and there was no way back to safe. He wanted to work with me on the good cases, take credit for anything I came up with, and offload the no-hopers onto me; he wanted to bask while I sang his praises to O’Kelly, warn me with a meaningful eyebrow-lift when something wasn’t good enough, soak up the sight of Scorcher Kennedy at his mercy. It would never end.
I want to believe that that wasn’t the reason I turned Quigley down. I know how many people would take it for granted that it was just that simple, that my ego wouldn’t let me spend the rest of my career coming running to his whistle and making sure I got his coffee just right. I still pray to believe that I said no because it was the right thing to do.
I said, “I wouldn’t come to an arrangement with you if you had a bomb strapped to my chest.”
That pushed Quigley back a step, out of my face, but he wasn’t going to give up that easily. His prize was so close he was practically drooling. “Don’t be saying anything you’ll regret, Detective Kennedy. No one needs to know where this was last night. You can sort your bit of fluff; she won’t say a word. Neither will Curran, if he’s got any sense in his head. This can go straight to the evidence room, like nothing ever happened.” He shook the bag; I heard the dry rattle of the fingernail on paper. “It’ll be our wee secret. You have a think about that, before you go disrespecting me.”
“There’s nothing to think about.”
After a moment, Quigley leaned back against the railing. “I’ll tell you something for nothing, Kennedy,” he said. His tone had changed; all the creamy fake-buddy coating had fallen away. “I knew you were going to fuck this case up. The second you came back from seeing the Super, Tuesday, I knew. You always thought you were something special, didn’t you? Mr. Perfect, never put a toe out of line. And look at you now.” That smirk again, this time halfway to a snarl, alive with malice that he wasn’t bothering to hide any more. “I’d only love to know: what was it made you cross the line on this one? Was it just that you’ve been a saint so long, you figured you could get away with anything you like, no one would ever suspect the great Scorcher Kennedy?”
Not paperwork after all, not the chance to borrow one of my floaters. Quigley had come in to work on a Saturday morning because God forbid he should miss the moment when I went arse over tip. I said, “I wanted to make your day, old son. Looks like I succeeded.”
“You always took me for a fool. Let’s all take the piss out of Quigley, the great thick eejit, sure he won’t even notice. Go on and tell me: if you’re the hero and I’m the fool, then how come you’re the one that’s deep in the shit, and I’m the one that saw it coming all along?”
He was wrong. I had never underestimated him. I had always known about Quigley’s one skill: his hyena nose, the instinct that pulls him snuffling and salivating towards shaky suspects, frightened witnesses, wobbly-legged newbies, anything that flashes soft spots or smells of blood. Where I had gone wrong was in believing that didn’t mean me. All those years of endless excruciating therapy sessions, of staying vigilant over every move and word and thought; I had been sure I was mended, all the breaks healed, all the blood washed away. I knew I had earned my way to safety. I had believed, beyond any doubt, that that meant I was safe.
The moment I said Broken Harbor to O’Kelly, every faded scar in my mind had lit up like a beacon. I had walked the glittering lines of those scars, obedient as a farm animal, from that moment straight to this one. I had moved through this case shining like Conor Brennan had shone on that dark road, a blazing signal for predators and scavengers far and wide.
I said, “You’re not a fool, Quigley. You’re a disgrace. I could fuck up every hour on the hour, from now till I retire, and still be a better cop than you’ll ever be. I’m ashamed to be on the same squad as you.”
“You’re in luck, then, aren’t you? You might not have to put up with me much longer. Not once the Super sees this.”
I said, “I’ll take it from here.”
I held out a hand for the bag, but Quigley whipped it out of reach. He prissed up his mouth and deliberated, swinging the bag between finger and thumb. “I’m not sure I can give you this, now. How do I know where it’ll end up?”
When I got my breath back, I said, “You make me sick.”
Quigley’s face curdled, but he saw something in mine that shut him up. He dropped the bag into my hand like it was filthy. “I’ll be submitting a full report,” he informed me. “As soon as possible.”
I said, “You do that. Just stay out of my way.” I shoved the evidence bag into my pocket and left him there.
* * *
* * *
I went up to the top floor, shut myself in a cubicle in the gents’ and leaned my forehead against the clammy plastic of the door. My
mind had turned slippery and treacherous as black ice, I couldn’t get purchase; every thought seemed to send me lurching through into freezing water, grabbing for solid ground and finding nothing. When my hands finally stopped shaking, I opened the door and went downstairs to the incident room.
It was overheated and buzzing, floaters taking calls, updating the whiteboard, drinking coffee and laughing at a dirty joke and having some kind of debate about blood-spatter patterns. All the energy made me dizzy. I picked my way through it feeling like my legs might go at any second.
Richie was at his desk, shirtsleeves rolled up, messing around with report sheets and not seeing them. I threw my sodden coat over the back of my chair, leaned over to him and said quietly, “We’re going to collect a few pieces of paper each and leave the room, like we’re in a hurry, but without making a big deal of it. Let’s go.”
He stared for a second. His eyes were bloodshot; he looked like shit. Then he nodded, picked up a handful of reports and pushed back his chair.
There’s an interview room, down at the far end of the top-floor corridor, that we never use unless we have to. The heating doesn’t work—even in the heart of summer the room feels chilled, subterranean—and something wrong with the wiring means that the strip lights give off a raw, eye-splitting blaze and burn out every week or two. We went there.
Richie closed the door behind us. He stayed beside it, sheaf of pointless paper hanging forgotten from one hand, eyes skittery as a corner boy’s. That was what he looked like: some malnourished scumbag hunched against a graffitied wall, standing lookout for small-time dealers in exchange for a fix. I had been beginning to think of this man as my partner. His skinny shoulder braced against mine had begun to feel like something that belonged. The feeling had been a good one, a warm one. Both of us made me sick.