Broken Harbour

felt a flick of empathy for the guy. The disgust that came with it almost shot me into the interview room to get to work on him.

Richie held up crossed index fingers. “Sooner you than me,” he said cheerfully.

“Wait.”

“I’m twenty-three. Long while to go before the biological clock kicks in.”

“Wait. Nightclubs, all the girls made up to look exactly like each other, everyone pissed off their heads so they can act like someone they’re not. After a while, it’ll make you sick.”

“Ah. Got burned, yeah? Brought home a babe and woke up with a hound?”

Richie was grinning. Conor said, “Maybe. Something like that.”

“Been there, man. The beer goggles are a bastard. So where do you go looking for chicks, if the clubs don’t do it for you?”

Shrug. “I don’t go out much.”

He was starting to turn his shoulder to Richie, block him out: time to change things up. I went for the interview room with a bang: sweeping the door open, spinning a chair over to face Conor-Richie slid off the table and into a chair next to me, fast-throwing myself back in it, shooting my cuffs. “Conor,” I said. “I don’t know about you, but I’d love to get this sorted out fast enough that we can all get some sleep tonight. What do you say?”

Before he could come up with an answer, I held up a hand. “Whoa, hang on there, Speedy Gonzalez. I’m sure you’ve got plenty to say, but you’ll get your turn. Let me share a few things with you first.” They need to be taught that you own them now; that from this moment on, you’re the one who decides when they talk, drink, smoke, sleep, piss. “I’m Detective Kennedy, this is Detective Curran, and you’re just here to answer some questions for us. You’re not under arrest, nothing like that, but we need a chat. I’m pretty sure you know what all this is about.”

Conor shook his head, one heavy shake. He was dropping back towards that weighted silence, but I was fine with that, for the moment anyway.

“Ah, man,” Richie said reproachfully. “Come on. What d’you think it’s about? The Great Train Robbery?”

No response. “Leave the man alone, Detective Curran. He’s only doing what he was told, aren’t you, Conor? Wait your turn, I said, and that’s what he’s doing. I like that. It’s good to have the ground rules clear.” I steepled my fingers on the table and examined them thoughtfully. “Now, Conor, I’m sure spending your night like this doesn’t make you a happy man. I can see your point there. But if you look at this properly, if you really look at it, this is your lucky night.”

He shot me a look of pure jagged incredulity.

“It’s true, my friend. You know and we know that you shouldn’t have been setting up camp in that house, because it’s not yours, now is it?”

Nothing. “Or maybe I’m wrong,” I said, with the corner of a grin. “Maybe if we check with the developers, they’ll tell us you put down a nice big chunk of deposit, will they? Do I owe you an apology, fella? Are you on that property ladder after all?”

“No.”

I clicked my tongue and wagged a finger at him. “I didn’t think so. Naughty, naughty: just because no one’s living there, son, that doesn’t mean you get to move in, bag and baggage. That’s still breaking and entering, you know. The law doesn’t take a day off just because you fancy a holiday home and no one else was using it.”

I was piling on the patronizing as thick as I could, and it was needling Conor out of his silence. “I didn’t break anything. Just walked in.”

“Why don’t we let the lawyers explain why that’s beside the point? If things go that far, of course, which”-I raised a finger-“they don’t need to. Because like I said, Conor, you’re a very lucky young man. Detective Curran and I aren’t actually that interested in a pissant B and E charge-not tonight. Let’s put it this way: when a couple of hunters go out for the night, they’re looking for big game. If a rabbit, say, is all they can find, they’ll take that; but if the rabbit puts them on the trail of a grizzly bear, they’re going to let the bunny hop along home while they go chasing the grizzly. Are you following me?”

That got me a disgusted glance. Plenty of people take me for a pompous git way too fond of the sound of his own voice, which is absolutely fine with me. Go ahead and dismiss me; go right ahead and drop your guard.

“What I’m saying, son, is that you are, metaphorically speaking, a bunny. If you can point us at something bigger, off you hop. Otherwise, your fuzzy little head’s going over our mantelpiece.”

“Point you at what?”

The flare of aggression in his voice would have told me, all on its own, that he didn’t need to ask. I ignored it. “We’re on the hunt for info, and you’re the very man to give it to us. Because when you were picking a house for your bit of breaking and entering, you struck it lucky. As I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed, your little nest looks straight down into the kitchen of Number Nine Ocean View Rise. Like you had your very own reality-show channel, playing twenty-four-seven.”

“World’s most boring reality-show channel,” Richie said. “Would you not have found, like, a strip club? Or a bunch of girls that go around topless?”

I pointed a finger at him. “We don’t know it was boring, now do we? That’s what we’re here to find out. Conor, my man, you tell us. The people who live at Number Nine: boring?”

Conor turned the question over, testing for dangers. In the end he said, “A family. Man and woman. Little girl and little boy.”

“Well, no shit, Sherlock, pardon my French. That much we’ve worked out for ourselves; there’s a reason they call us detectives. What are they like? How do they spend their time? Do they get on? Is it snuggles or screaming matches down there?”

“Not screaming matches. They used to…” That grief stirring again, dark and massive, under his voice. “They’d play games.”

“What kind of games? Like Monopoly?”

“Now I see why you picked them,” Richie said, rolling his eyes. “The excitement, yeah?”

“Like once they built a fort in that kitchen, cardboard boxes and blankets. Played cowboys and Indians, all four of them; kids climbing all over him, her lipstick for war paint. Evenings, him and her used to sit out in the garden, after the kids were in bed. Bottle of wine. She’d rub his back. They’d laugh.”

Which was the longest speech we’d heard him make. He was dying to talk about the Spains, gagging for the chance. I nodded away, pulled out my notebook and my pen and made squiggles that could have been notes. “This is good stuff, Conor my man. This is exactly what we’re after. Keep it coming. You’d say they’re happy? It’s a good marriage?”

Conor said quietly, “I’d say it was a beautiful marriage. Beautiful.”

Was. “Never saw him do anything nasty to her?”

That snapped his head round towards me. His eyes were gray and cold as water, amid the swollen red. “Like what?”

“You tell me.”

“He used to bring her presents all the time: small stuff, fancy chocolate, books, candles-she liked candles. They’d kiss when they passed in the kitchen. All those years together, and they were still mad about each other. He’d have died sooner than hurt her. OK?”

“Hey, fair enough,” I said, raising my hands. “A man’s got to ask.”

“There’s your answer.” He hadn’t blinked. Under the stubble his skin had a rough, windburned look, like he had spent too much time in cold sea air.

“And I appreciate it. That’s what we’re here for: to get the facts straight.” I made a careful note in my book. “The kids. What are they like?”

Conor said, “Her.” The grief surged in his voice, close to the surface. “Like a little doll, little girl in a book. Always in pink. She had wings she’d wear, fairy wings-”

“‘She’? Who’s ‘she’?”

“The little girl.”

“Oh, come on, fella, don’t play games. Of course you know their names. What, they never yelled to each other in the garden? The mum never called the kids in for dinner? Use their names, for God’s sake. I’m too old to keep all this him-her-she-he stuff straight.”

Conor said quietly, like he was being gentle with the name, “Emma.”