Broken Harbour

Sinead demanded, “What the fuck were you doing in there? I’ll bleeding clatter you-”

She saw Richie’s lifted finger and subsided, chin shoved out at an angle that said all of us were in big trouble. Richie asked, “How’d you get into Number Eleven?”

Jayden squirmed. His tracksuit made a farting noise on the fake leather and he snickered, but he stopped when no one joined in. Finally he said, “I was only messing. I had my keys, and… I was just messing, right? I just wanted to see if it worked.”

Richie said, “You tried your keys on other houses?”

Jayden shrugged. “Kind of.”

“Fair play to you. That’s dead clever, that is. We never even thought of that.” And we should have: it would have been right in character for these builders, to pick up a cut-price lot of one-key-fits-all dud locks. “Do they all work on any house, yeah?”

Jayden was sitting up straighter, starting to enjoy how smart he was. “Nah. The front door ones, they’re useless; ours didn’t work on anywhere else, and I tried loads. The back door one, though, right? It opens, like, half the-”

Gogan said, “That’s enough. Shut up.”

“Mr. Gogan,” Richie said. “I’m serious: he’s not in any trouble.”

“D’you think I’m thick? If he’d been in other houses-and he wasn’t-it’d be breaking and entering.”

“I’m not even thinking about that. No one else will, either. Do you know how much of a favor your Jayden is after doing us? He’s helping us put away a murderer. I’m over the moon that he was messing about with that key.”

Gogan stared him out of it. “You try coming back at him with something later on, he’ll take back every word.”

Richie didn’t blink. “I won’t. Believe me. I wouldn’t let anyone else, either. This is way too important.”

Gogan grunted and gave Jayden the nod. Jayden said, “Seriously? You guys never even thought of that?”

Richie shook his head. “Thick,” Jayden said, under his breath.

“This is what I’m talking about: we’re lucky we found you. What’s the story with the back door key?”

“It opens, like, half the back doors around. I mean, obviously I didn’t try anywhere there’s people living”-Jayden tried to look virtuous; no one fell for it-“but the empty houses, like down the road and all up Ocean View Promenade, I got into loads. Easy. I can’t even believe no one else thought of it.”

Richie said, “And it opens Number Eleven. That’s where you met this guy?”

“Yeah. I was in there, like just hanging out, and he knocked on the back door-I guess he came over the garden wall, or something.” He had come from his hide. He had spotted an opportunity. “So I went out to him. I mean, I was bored. There was nothing to do in there.”

Sinead snapped, “What’ve I told you about talking to strangers? Serve you right if he got you in a van and-”

Jayden rolled his eyes. “Duh, do I look stupid? If he’d tried to grab me, I would’ve run. I was only like two seconds from here.”

Richie asked, “What did yous talk about?”

Jayden shrugged. “Not much. He said what was I doing there. I said just hanging around. He said how did I get in. So I explained about the keys.”

He had been showing off to impress the stranger with his cleverness, the same way he was showing off to impress Richie. “And what did he say?” Richie asked.

“He said that was really smart. He said he wished he had a key like that. He lived down the other end of the estate, only his house was all flooded ’cause the pipes burst or something, so he was looking for an empty house where he could sleep till his got fixed.”

It was a good story. Conor had known enough about the estate to come up with something plausible-Jayden had every reason to believe in burst pipes and repairs that dragged on forever-and he had done it fast. Thinking on his feet, lying plausibly, taking advantage of what came to hand: the guy was good, when he wanted something badly enough.

“Only he said all the houses, either they didn’t have doors and windows or whatever, so they were freezing, or else they were locked up and he couldn’t get into them. He asked could he borrow my key and make a copy, so he could get into somewhere good. He said he’d give me a fiver. I said a tenner.”

Sinead burst out, “You gave some pervert our key? You fucking thick-”

“I’ll change the lock tomorrow,” Gogan said brusquely. “Shut up.”

Richie said easily, ignoring them both, “Makes sense. So he gave you a tenner and you lent him the key, yeah?”

Jayden kept one eye on his mother for trouble. “Yeah. So?”

“Then what happened?”

“Nothing. He said don’t tell anyone or he could get in trouble with the builders because they own the houses. I said OK.” Another smart call: the builders weren’t likely to be popular with anyone in Ocean View, even the kids. “He said he’d put the key under a rock-he showed me which one. Then he went away. He said thanks. I had to go home.”

“Did you see him again?”

“Nah.”

“Did he get the key back to you?”

“Yeah. The day after. Under the rock, like he said.”

“Do you know does your key fit the Spains’ door?”

Which was a tactful way of putting it. Jayden shrugged, too easily and not vehemently enough for a lie. “Never tried.”

In other words, he hadn’t wanted to risk getting caught by someone who knew where he lived. “Did your man get in by the back door?” Sinead wanted to know. Her eyes were wide.

“We’re exploring all the possibilities,” Richie said. “Jayden, what did this fella look like?”

Jayden shrugged again. “Thin.”

“Older than me? Younger?”

“I guess the same as you. Younger than him.” Me.

“Tall? Short?”

Shrug. “Normal. Maybe sort of tall, like him.” Me again.

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again, would you?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

I leaned over to my briefcase and found the photo array. One of the floaters had put it together for us that morning, and he had done a good job: six twenty-somethings, all lean, with close-cropped brown hair and plenty of chin. Jayden would need to come down to HQ for a formal lineup, but we could at least eliminate the possibility that he had given his key to some unrelated weirdo.

I passed the array to Richie, who held it out to Jayden. “Is he in here?”

Jayden milked it for all it was worth: tilting the sheet at different angles, holding it up to eye level and squinting at it. Finally he said, “Yeah. This guy.”

His finger was on the middle shot in the bottom row: Conor Brennan. Richie’s eyes met mine for a second.

“Jaysus Christ,” Sinead said. “He was talking to a murderer.” She sounded somewhere between awestruck and outraged. I could see her trying to work out who to sue.

Richie said, “You’re sure, Jayden?”

“Yeah. Number Five.” Richie reached to take back the array sheet, but Jayden was still staring at it. “Was he the guy that killed them all?”

I saw the quick flicker of Richie’s eyelids. “It’ll be up to the court and the jury to decide what he did.”

“If I hadn’t’ve given him the key, would he have killed me?”

His voice sounded fragile. The ghoulishness was gone; all of a sudden he just looked like a scared little kid. Richie said gently, “I don’t think so. I can’t swear to it, but I’d bet you were never in any danger, not even for a second. Your mammy’s right, though: you shouldn’t talk to strangers. Yeah?”

“Is he gonna come back?”

“No. He’s not coming back.”