Broken Harbour

his mouth and then shut it again, looking for the right question.

I said, “Why didn’t you tell me?” I heard the raw note of pain, but I didn’t care.

Richie’s eyes fell away from mine. He knelt on the floor and started picking up the papers he had dropped. He said, “Because I knew what you’d want to do.”

“What? Arrest Jenny? Not charge Conor with a triple murder he didn’t commit? What, Richie? What part of that is so fucking terrible that you just couldn’t let it happen?”

“Not terrible. Just… Arresting her: I don’t know, man. I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do here.”

“That’s what we do. We arrest murderers. If you have a problem with the job description, you should’ve got a different fucking job.”

That brought Richie up on his feet again. “That right there, that’s why I didn’t tell you. I knew that was what you’d say. I knew it. With you, man, everything’s black and white. No questions; just stick to the rules and go home. I needed to think about it because I knew the second I told you, it’d be too late.”

“Damn right it’s black and white. You slaughter your family, you go to prison. Where the fuck are you seeing shades of gray?”

“Jenny’s in hell. Every second of her life, she’s going to be in the kind of pain I don’t even want to think about. You think prison’s going to punish her any worse than her own head? There’s nothing she can do, or we can do, to fix what she did, and it’s not like we need to lock her up to stop her doing it again. What’s a life sentence going to do here?”

Here I had thought it was Richie’s knack, his special gift: coaxing witnesses and suspects into believing, absurd and impossible though it was, that he saw them as human beings. I had been so impressed by the way he convinced the Gogans they were more than random irritating scumbags to him, the way he convinced Conor Brennan he was more than just another wild animal we needed to get off the street. I should have known, that night in the hide when we became just two guys talking, I should have known then and I should have seen the danger: it wasn’t an act.

I said, “So that’s why you were all over Pat Spain. And here I thought it was all in the name of truth and justice. Silly me.”

Richie had the grace to flush. “It wasn’t like that. At first I honestly thought it must’ve been him-Conor didn’t work for me, it didn’t look like there was anyone else. And then, once I saw that yoke there, I thought…”

His voice trailed off. I said, “The idea of arresting Jenny offended your delicate sensibilities, but you figured it might just be a bad idea to slap Conor in prison for life for something he didn’t do. Sweet of you to care. So you decided to find a way to dump the whole mess on Pat. That lovely little performance with Conor, yesterday: that’s where you were trying to take him. He almost bit, too. It must have ruined your day when he decided not to take the bait.”

“Pat’s dead, man. It can’t hurt him. I know what you said about everyone thinking he was a murderer; but you remember what he said on that board, about just wanting to take care of Jenny. If he had the choice, what do you think he’d pick? Take the blame, or put her away for life? He’d be begging us to call him a killer, man. He’d beg us on his knees.”

“And that’s what you were doing with the Gogan bitch, too. And with Jenny. All that bullshit about whether Pat was losing his temper more, was he having a nervous breakdown, were you afraid he’d hurt you… You were trying to get Jenny to throw Pat under a bus. Only it turns out a triple murderer has more sense of honor than you do.”

Richie’s face flared brighter. He didn’t answer. I said, “Let’s just say for one second that we do it your way. Throw that thing in the shredder, shove the blame on Pat, close the file and let Jenny walk out of the hospital. What do you figure happens next? Whatever went down that night, she loved her kids. She loved her husband. What do you think she’s going to do, the second she’s strong enough?”

Richie put the reports on the table, a safe distance from the envelope, and squared off the edges of the pile. He said, “She’s going to finish the job.”

“Yes,” I said. The light was burning the air, turning the room into a white haze, a jumble of incandescent outlines hanging in midair. “That’s exactly what she’ll do. And this time she won’t fuck it up. If we let her out of that hospital, inside forty-eight hours she’ll be dead.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“How the hell are you OK with that?” One of his shoulders lifted in something like a shrug. “Is it revenge? She deserves to die, we don’t have the death penalty, what the hell, let her do it herself. Is that what you’re thinking?”

Richie’s eyes came up to meet mine. He said, “It’s the best thing left that could happen to her.”

I nearly came out of my chair and grabbed him by the shirt front. “You can’t say that. Jenny’s got how many years left, fifty, sixty? You think the best thing she can do with them is get in the bath and slice her wrists open?”

“Sixty years, yeah, maybe. Half of them in prison.”

“Which is the best place for her. The woman needs treatment. She needs therapy, drugs, I don’t know what, but there are doctors who do. If she’s inside, she’ll get all of that. She’ll pay her debt to society, get her head fixed, and come out with some kind of life in front of her.”

Richie was shaking his head, hard. “No, she won’t. She won’t. Are you crazy? There’s nothing in front of her. She killed her kids. She held them down till she felt them stop fighting. She stabbed her husband and then lay there with him while he bled out. Every doctor in the world couldn’t fix that. You saw the state of her. She’s already gone, man. Let her go. Have a bit of mercy.”

“You want to talk about mercy? Jenny Spain isn’t the only person in this story. Remember Fiona Rafferty? Remember their mother? Got any mercy for them? Think about what they’ve already lost. Then look at me and tell me they deserve to lose Jenny as well.”

“They didn’t deserve any of this. You think it’d be easier on them to know what she did? They lose her either way. At least this way it’ll be over and done with.”

“It won’t be over,” I said. Saying the words sucked my breath out, left me hollow, like my chest was folding in on itself. “It’s never going to be over for them.”

That shut Richie up. He sat down opposite me and watched his fingers square off the reports, again and again. After a while he said, “Her debt to society: I don’t know what that means. Tell me one person who’s better off if Jenny sits in prison for twenty-five years.”

I said, “Shut the hell up. You don’t even get to ask that question. The judge hands down sentences, not us. That’s what the whole bloody system is for: to stop arrogant little pricks like you from playing God, handing out death sentences whenever they feel like it. You just stick to the fucking rules, hand in the fucking evidence and let the fucking system do its job. You don’t get to throw Jenny Spain away.”

“It’s not about throwing her away. Making her spend years in this kind of pain… That’s torture, man. It’s wrong.”

“No. You think it’s wrong. Who knows why you think that? Because you’re right, or because this case breaks your heart, because you’re feeling guilty as hell, because Jenny reminds you of Miss Kelly who taught you when you were five? That’s why we have rules to begin with, Richie: because you can’t trust your mind to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. Not on something like this. The consequences if you make a mistake are too huge and too horrible even to think about, never mind live with. The rules say we put Jenny away. Everything else is bullshit.”

He was shaking his head. “It’s still wrong. I’ll trust my own mind on this one.”

I could have laughed, or howled. “Yeah? Just look where that’s got you. Rule Zero, Richie, the rule to end all rules: your mind is garbage. It’s a weak, broken, fucked-up mess that will let you down at every worst moment there is. Don’t you think my sister’s mind told her she was doing the right thing when she followed you home? Don’t you think Jenny believed she was doing the right thing, Monday night? If you trust your mind, you will fuck up and you will fuck up big. Every single thing I’ve done right in my life, it’s been because I don’t trust my mind.”

Richie lifted his head to look at me. It took an effort. He said, “Your sister told me about your mother.”

In that second I almost punched his face in. I saw him brace for it, saw the blast of fear or hope. By the time my fists would unclench and I could breathe again, the silence had got long.

I said, “What exactly did she tell you?”