Broken Harbour

He had enough on his plate. I thought that was probably why she wasn’t planning on changing the locks, too. She couldn’t do it without Pat knowing.”

“You didn’t think that was a little odd-even risky? If someone had broken into his home, didn’t he have the right to know?”

“Maybe, whatever, but I didn’t actually think anyone had been in there. I mean, what’s the simplest explanation? Pat took the pen and ate the bloody ham and one of the kids messed with the curtains, or they had a ghost burglar who could walk through walls and fancied a sandwich?”

Her voice was tightening up, getting defensive. I asked, “Did you say that to Jenny?”

“Yeah, more or less. It just made her worse. She went off on this whole thing about how the pen was from the hotel where they’d stayed on honeymoon and it was special and Pat knew not to move it, and she knew exactly how much ham had been in the packet-”

“Is she the type of person who would know that kind of thing?”

After a moment Fiona said, like it hurt, “Sort of, yeah. I guess. Jenny… she likes doing stuff right. So when she quit work, she got really serious about being a stay-at-home mum, you know? The place was spotless, she fed the kids on organic stuff that she made from scratch, she was doing these exercise DVDs every day so she’d get her figure back… Exactly what she had in her fridge-yeah, she might know.”

Richie asked, “What hotel was the pen from, do you know?”

“Golden Bay Resort, in the Maldives-” Her head came back up and she stared at him. “Do you seriously think…? You think someone actually took it? You think that’s the person who, who, you think they came back and-”

Her voice was starting to spiral dangerously. I asked, before she could lose hold, “When was this incident, Ms. Rafferty?”

She gave me a wild-eyed stare, squeezed hard on the lump of shredded tissue and pulled herself back. “Like three months ago?”

“July.”

“Or it could’ve been earlier, maybe. During the summer, anyway.”

I made a mental note: check Jenny’s phone records for evening calls to Fiona, and check the dates of any prowler reports from Ocean View. “And since then, they’ve had no more problems along those lines?”

Fiona caught a fast breath, and I heard the painful rasp where her throat was closing up. “It could have happened again. I wouldn’t know. Jenny wouldn’t have said anything to me, not after the first time.” Her voice had started to wobble. “I told her to get a grip on herself. Stop talking crap. I thought…”

She made a sound like a kicked puppy, clapped her hands over her mouth and started to cry hard again. It took me a while to figure out what she was saying, through the tissue and the snot. “I thought she was crazy,” she was gasping, over and over. “I thought she was losing it. Oh, God, I thought she was crazy.”

4

And that was about as much as we were going to get out of Fiona that day. Calming her down would have taken a lot more time than we had to spare. The extra uniform had arrived; I told him to get names and numbers- family, friends, workplaces, workmates, going right back to when Fiona and Jenny and Pat were in nappies-take Fiona to the hospital, and make sure she knew not to open her mouth around the media. Then we handed her over. She was still crying.

I had my mobile out and was dialing before we even turned away-radio would have been simpler, but too many journos and too many weirdos have scanners these days. I got Richie by the elbow and drew him down the road. The wind was still coming off the sea, wide and fresh, raking Richie’s hair into tufts; I tasted salt on my mouth. Where the footpaths should have been, there were thin dirt tracks in the uncut grass.

Bernadette got me through to the uniform who was at the hospital with Jenny Spain. He was about twelve, he was from some farm somewhere and he was the anal type, which was what I needed. I gave him his orders: once Jennifer Spain got out of surgery, if she made it that far, she needed a private room, and he needed to guard the door like a Rottweiler. No one was getting into that room without showing ID, no one was going in there unaccompanied, and the family wasn’t going in at all. “The victim’s sister is going to be heading down there any minute, and their mother will show up sooner or later. They don’t go into the room.” Richie was hovering and chewing on a thumbnail, head bent over the phone, but that made him glance up at me. “If they want an explanation, and they will, you don’t tell them these are my orders. You apologize, you say this is standard procedure and you’re not authorized to breach it, and you keep saying the same thing over and over till they back off. And get yourself a comfy chair, old son. You could be there for a while.” I hung up.

Richie squinted up at me, against the light. “You think that’s overkill?” I asked.

He shrugged. “If it’s true, what the sister was saying-about the break-in-it’s pretty creepy, all right.”

I said, “You figure that’s why I’m going high security? Because the sister’s story is creepy?”

He stepped back, hands going up, and I realized my voice had risen. “I just meant-”

“As far as I’m concerned, chum, there’s no such thing as creepy. Creepy is for kids on Halloween. I’m making sure all my bases are covered. How stupid do you think we’d look if someone waltzed into that hospital and finished the job? You want to explain that one to the media? Or, come to that, do you want to explain yourself to the Super if tomorrow’s front page is a close-up of Jenny Spain’s injuries?”

“No.”

“No. Neither do I. And if it takes a little overkill to avoid that, then so be it. Now let’s get you inside before the big bad wind freezes your itty-bitty bollix off, shall we?”

Richie kept his mouth shut till we were heading back up the Spains’ drive. Then he said, carefully, “The family.”

“What about them?”

“You don’t want them seeing her?”

“No, I don’t. Did you spot the one big piece of actual info Fiona gave us, in with all your creepy stuff?”

He said, unwillingly, “She had the keys.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She had the keys.”

“She’s in bits. Maybe I’m a sucker, but that looked genuine to me.”

“Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. All I know is, she had the keys.”

“‘They’re great, they love each other, they love the kids…’ She talked like they were still alive.”

“So? If she can fake the rest, she can fake that. And her relationship with her sister wasn’t as simple as she’s trying to make out. We’ll be spending a lot more time with Fiona Rafferty.”

“Right,” Richie said, but when I pushed the door open he hung back, fidgeting on the doormat and rubbing the back of his head. I asked, making sure the edge was gone out of my voice, “What’s up?”

“The other thing she said.”

“What’s that?”

“Bouncy castles aren’t cheap. My sister wanted to rent one for my niece’s Communion. Couple of hundred squid.”

“Your point?”

“Their financial situation. In February Patrick gets laid off, right? In April, they’re still flush enough that they’re getting Emma a bouncy castle for her birthday party. But by somewhere around July, they’re too skint to change the locks, even though Jenny thinks someone’s been in the gaff.”

“So? Patrick’s redundancy money was running out.”

“Yeah, probably. That’s what I mean. And running out faster than it should’ve done. A good few of my mates are after losing their jobs. All of them who’d been at the same place a few years, they got enough to keep them going for a good while, if they were careful.”

“What are you thinking? Gambling? Drugs? Blackmail?” In this country’s vice league, booze has all of those beat hands down, but booze doesn’t wipe out your bank account in a few months flat.

Richie shrugged. “Maybe, yeah. Or maybe they just kept spending like he was still earning. A couple of my