Broken Harbour

“Listen, man, listen-you never said she was your sister. Neither did she. I swear to God, if I’d’ve known-”

I had come within a hairsbreadth of telling him. I had held back because, God help me, I thought it would make me vulnerable. “What did you think she was? My girlfriend? My ex? My daughter? How exactly would any of those have made it better?”

“She said she was an old mate of yours. She said she knew you from back when you were kids-your family and her family used to get caravans together at Broken Harbor, for the summer. That’s what she told me. Why would I think she was lying?”

“How about because she’s fucking nutso? She comes in babbling about a case she hasn’t got a clue about, drowning you in bullshit about me having a nervous breakdown. Ninety percent of what she says is gibberish. It doesn’t even occur to you that the other ten percent might not be on the level?”

“It wasn’t gibberish, but. She was dead right: this case, it’s been getting to you. I thought that from the start, almost.”

Every breath hurt on its way in. “That’s sweet. I’m touched. So you felt the appropriate response was to fuck my sister.”

Richie looked like he would happily saw his own arm off if it would make this conversation go away. “It wasn’t like that.”

“How in the name of sweet jumping Jesus was it not like that? Did she drug you? Handcuff you to the bedpost?”

“I didn’t go in there planning to… I don’t think she did either.”

“Are you seriously trying to tell me how my sister thinks? After one night?”

“No. I’m just saying-”

“Because I know her a lot better than you do, chum, and even I struggle for any clue about what goes on in her head. I think it’s more than possible that she went to your house planning on doing exactly what she did. I’m one hundred percent positive that this was her idea, not yours. That doesn’t mean you had to play along. What the holy hell were you thinking?”

“Honest to God, it was just one thing led to another. She was scared this case would mess you up, she was going in circles around my sitting room, crying-she couldn’t sit down, she was that upset. I gave her a hug, just to settle her-”

“And that’s where you shut up. I don’t need the graphic details.” I didn’t; I could see exactly how it had gone down. It’s so, so lethally easy to get dragged into Dina’s crazy. One minute you’re only going to dip your toes at the edge, just so you can grab her hand and pull her out; the next minute you’re full fathom five and flailing for air.

“I’m only telling you. It just happened.”

“Your partner’s sister,” I said. Suddenly I was exhausted, exhausted and sick to my stomach, something rising and burning in my throat. I leaned my head back against the wall and pressed my fingers into my eyes. “Your partner’s crazy sister. How could that seem OK?”

Richie said quietly, “It doesn’t.”

The dark behind my fingers was deep and restful. I didn’t want to open my eyes on that harsh, biting light. “And when you woke up this morning,” I said, “Dina was gone, and so was the evidence bag. Where had it been?”

A moment’s silence. “On my bedside table.”

“In plain view of anyone who happened to wander in. Flatmates, burglars, one-night stands. Brilliant, old son.”

“My bedroom door locks. And during the day I kept it on me. In my jacket pocket.”

All those arguments we’d had, Conor versus Pat, half-real animals, old love stories: Richie’s side had been bullshit. He had been holding the answer the whole time, close enough that I could have reached out and put my hand on it. I said, “And didn’t that work out well?”

“I never thought of her taking it. She-”

“You weren’t thinking at all. Not by the time she got into your bedroom.”

“She was your mate-or I thought she was. I didn’t think about her robbing stuff, specially not that. She cared about you, like a lot; that was obvious. Why would she want to fuck up your case?”

“Oh, no, no. She wasn’t the one who fucked up this case.” I took my hands away from my face. Richie was scarlet. “She swiped this envelope because she changed her mind about you, chum. And she’s not the only one. Once she spotted this, it struck her that you might not be the wonderful, trustworthy, stand-up guy she’d been picturing, which meant you might not in fact be the best person to take care of me. So she figured her only option was to do it herself, by bringing me the evidence that my partner had decided to run off with. Two for one: I get my case back, and I get to find out the truth about who I’m dealing with. Seems to me that, crazy or no, she was on to something.”

Richie, focusing on his shoes, said nothing. I asked, “Were you ever planning to tell me?”

That snapped him straight. “Yeah, I was. When I first found that yoke, I was, practically definitely. That’s why I bagged it and tagged it. If I hadn’t been planning on telling you, I could’ve just flushed it down the jacks.”

“Well, congratulations, old son. What do you want, a medal?” I nodded towards the evidence envelope. I couldn’t look at it; in the corner of my eye it seemed crammed tight with something alive and raging, a great insect thrumming against the thin paper and plastic, straining to split the seams and attack. “‘Collected in sitting-room, residence of Conor Brennan.’ While I was outside, on the phone to Larry. Is that right?”

Richie stared at the papers in his hand, blankly, like he couldn’t remember what they were. He opened his hand and let them scatter on the floor. “Yeah,” he said.

“Where was it?”

“Must’ve been on the carpet. I was putting back all that stuff that had been on the sofa, and this was hanging off the sleeve of a jumper. It wasn’t there when we took the clothes off the sofa-we gave them all a proper going- over, remember, in case any of them had blood on. The jumper must’ve picked it up off the floor.”

I asked, “What color jumper?” I already knew I would remember if Conor Brennan’s wardrobe had included rose-pink knitwear.

“Green. Khaki, like.”

And the carpet had been cream, with dirty green and yellow swirls. Larry’s lads could go over the flat with magnifying glasses, looking for a match to that wisp of pink, and find nothing. I had known, the moment I saw that fingernail, where the match was.

I asked, “And how did you interpret this find?”

There was a silence. Richie was looking at nothing. I said, “Detective Curran.”

He said, “The fingernail-the shape and the polish-it matches Jenny Spain’s. The wool that’s caught in it-” A corner of his mouth spasmed. “Looked to me like it matched the embroidery on the pillow that smothered Emma.”

The sodden thread that Cooper had fished out of her throat, while he held her frail jaw open between thumb and finger. “And what did you take that to mean?”

Richie said, evenly and very quietly, “I took it to mean that Jennifer Spain could be our woman.”

“Not could be. Is.”

His shoulders moved restlessly, against the door. “It’s not definite. She could’ve picked up the wool some other way. Earlier on, when she put Emma to bed-”

“Jenny keeps herself groomed. Not a hair out of place. You think she’d have left a broken nail to snag on things all evening, gone to bed with it still ragged? Left a piece of wool caught in it for hours?”

“Or it could’ve been a transfer off Pat. He gets the bit of wool on his pajama top when he’s using the pillow on Emma; then, when he’s struggling with Jenny, she breaks a nail, the wool catches in it…”

“That one specific fiber, out of the thousands and thousands in his pajamas, on his pajamas, in her own pajamas, all over the kitchen. What are the odds?”

“It could happen. We can’t just drop the whole thing on Jenny. Cooper was positive, remember? Her injuries weren’t self-inflicted.”

“I know that,” I said. “I’ll talk to her.” The thought of having to deal with the world outside this room felt like a baton to the back of the knees. I sat down heavily at the table; I couldn’t stand up any more.

Richie had caught that: I’ll talk to her, not We. He opened