Broken Harbor (44 page)

“Oh . . .” Jenny’s eyes, red-rimmed and puffy, moved over our faces. I managed not to flinch. “Yeah. I remember. I guess . . . yeah. Come in.”

“No one’s here with you today?”

“Fiona’s at work. My mum had an appointment about her blood pressure. She’ll be back in a while. I’m fine.”

Her voice was still hoarse and thick, but she had looked up quickly when we came in: her head was starting to clear, God help her. She seemed calm, but I couldn’t tell whether it was the stupefaction of shock or the brittle glaze of exhaustion. I asked, “How are you feeling?”

There was no answer to that. Jenny’s shoulders moved in something like a shrug. “My head hurts, and my face. They’re giving me painkillers. I guess they help. Did you find out anything about . . . what happened?”

Fiona had kept her mouth shut, which was good, but interesting. I shot Richie a warning glance—I didn’t want to bring up Conor, not while Jenny was so slowed and clouded that her reaction would be worthless—but he was focusing on the sun coming through the blinds, and there was a tense set to his jaw. “We’re following a definite line of inquiry,” I said.

“A line. What line?”

“We’ll keep you posted.” There were two chairs by the bed, cushions squashed into their angles where Fiona and Mrs. Rafferty had tried to sleep. I took the one closest to Jenny and pushed the other towards Richie. “Can you tell us anything more about Monday night? Even the smallest thing?”

Jenny shook her head. “I can’t remember. I’ve been trying, I’m trying all the time . . . but half the time I just can’t think, because of the drugs, and the other half my head hurts too much. I think probably once I’m off the painkillers and they let me out of here—once I’m home . . . Do you know when . . . ?”

The thought of her walking into that house made me wince. We were going to have to talk to Fiona about hiring a cleaning team, or having Jenny stay at her flat, or both. “I’m sorry,” I said. “We don’t know anything about that. What about before Monday night? Can you think of anything out of the ordinary that happened recently—anything that worried you?”

Another shake of Jenny’s head. Only fragments of her face showed, behind the bandage; it made her hard to read. “The last time we spoke,” I said, “we started discussing the break-ins you had over the past few months.”

Jenny’s face turned towards me, and I caught a spark of wariness: she knew something was off—she had only told Fiona about one—but she couldn’t find what. “That? Why does that matter?”

I said, “We have to examine the possibility that they could be connected to the attack.”

Jenny’s eyebrows pulled together. She could have been drifting, but some immobility said she was struggling hard to think, through that fog. After a long minute she said, almost dismissively, “I told you. It wasn’t a big deal. To be honest, I’m not sure there even were any break-ins. It was probably just the kids moving things.”

I said, “Could you give us the details? Dates, times, things you noticed missing?” Richie found his notebook.

Her head moved restlessly on the pillow. “God, I don’t remember. Back in, I don’t know, maybe July? I was tidying up, and there was a pen and some ham slices missing. Or I thought there might be, anyway. We’d all been out that day, so I just got a bit nervous in case I’d forgotten something unlocked and someone had come in—there’s squatters living in some of the empty houses, and sometimes they come poking around. That’s all.”

“Fiona said you accused her of using her keys to get in.”

Jenny’s eyes went to the ceiling. “I told you before: Fiona turns everything into a big deal. I didn’t
accuse
her of anything. I
asked
if she’d been in our house, because she’s the only one who had the keys. She said no. End of story. It wasn’t, like, some big drama.”

“You didn’t ring the local police?”

Jenny shrugged. “And say what? Like, ‘I can’t find my pen, and someone’s eaten some ham slices out of the fridge’? They’d have laughed. Anyone would’ve laughed.”

“Did you change the locks?”

“I changed the alarm code, just in case. I wasn’t going to get all the locks done when I didn’t even know if anything had
happened
.”

I said, “But even after you changed the alarm code, there were other incidents.”

She managed a little laugh, brittle enough to shatter against the air. “Oh my God,
incidents
? This wasn’t a
war
zone. You make it sound like someone was, like, bombing our sitting room.”

“I might have the details wrong,” I said smoothly. “What exactly did happen?”

“I don’t even remember. Nothing big. Could this wait? My head’s killing me.”

“We just need a few more minutes, Mrs. Spain. Could you set me straight on the details?”

Jenny put her fingertips gingerly to the back of her head, winced. I felt Richie shift his feet and glance at me, ready to leave, but I didn’t move. It’s a strange sensation, being played by the victim; it goes against the grain to look at the wounded creature we’re supposed to be helping, and see an adversary we need to outwit. I welcome it. Give me a challenge any day, over a mass of flayed pain.

After a moment Jenny let her hand fall back into her lap. She said, “Just the same kind of thing. Smaller, even. Like a couple of times the curtains in the sitting room were pulled back all wrong—I straighten them out when I hook them behind the holdback, so they’ll fall right, but a couple of times I found them all twisted up. See what I mean? It was probably the kids playing hide-and-seek in them, or—”

The mention of the children made her catch her breath. I said quickly, “Anything else?”

Jenny let her breath out slowly, got herself back. “Just . . . stuff like that. I keep candles out, so the house always smells nice—I’ve got a bunch of them in one of the kitchen cupboards, all different smells, and I change them every few days. Once in the summer, maybe August, I went to get the apple one and it was gone—and I knew I’d had it just the week before, I remembered seeing it. But Emma always loved that one, the apple one; she could have taken it to play with in the garden or somewhere, and forgotten it.”

“Did you ask her?”

“I don’t remember. It was months ago. It wasn’t a big
deal
.”

I said, “Actually, it sounds quite disturbing. You weren’t frightened?”

“
No.
I wasn’t. I mean, even if we did have some weird burglar, he was only after, like, candles and ham; that’s not exactly terrifying, is it? I thought
if
there was someone, it was probably just one of the children from the estate—some of them run completely wild; they’re like apes, screaming and throwing stuff at your car when you drive past. I thought maybe one of them, on a dare. But probably not even that. Things go missing, in houses. Do you ring the police every time one of your socks disappears in the wash?”

“So even when the incidents kept happening, you still didn’t change the locks.”

“No. I didn’t. If there was anyone coming in, just
if
, then I wanted to catch them. I didn’t want them heading off to bother someone else; I wanted them stopped.” The memory brought Jenny’s chin up, gave a tough set to her jaw and a cool, fight-ready intentness to her eyes; it swept away that nondescript quality, turned her vivid and strong. She and Pat had been a good match: fighters. “After a while, sometimes when we went out I didn’t even set the alarm, on purpose—so if someone did get in, they might stay till I came back and caught them. See? I wasn’t
frightened
.”

“I understand,” I said. “At what point did you tell Pat about this?”

Jenny shrugged. “I didn’t.”

I waited. After a moment she said, “I just didn’t. I didn’t want to bother him.”

I said gently, “I’m not second-guessing you, Mrs. Spain, but that seems like an odd decision. Wouldn’t you have felt safer if Pat had known? Wouldn’t he have been safer, in fact, if he had known?”

A shrug that made her wince. “He had enough on his mind.”

“For example?”

“He’d been made redundant. He was doing his best to get another job, but it wasn’t happening. We were . . . we didn’t have a load of money. Pat was a bit stressed.”

“Anything else?”

Another shrug. “That’s not enough?”

I waited again, but this time she wasn’t budging. I said, “We found a trap in your attic. An animal trap.”

“Oh my God.
That.
” That laugh again, but I had caught the zap of something bright—terror, maybe, or fury—that brought her face alive for an instant. “Pat thought we might have a stoat or a fox or something coming in and out. He was dying to have a look at it. We’re city kids; even the rabbits down in the sand dunes had us all excited, when we first moved in. Catching a real live fox would’ve been, like, the coolest thing ever.”

“And did he catch anything?”

“Oh, God, no. He didn’t even know what kind of bait to use. Like I said, city kids.”

Her voice was cocktail-party light, but her fingers were clawed into the blanket. I asked, “And the holes in the walls? A DIY project, you said. Was it anything to do with this stoat?”

“No. I mean, a little bit, but not really.” Jenny reached for the glass of water on the bedside table, took a long drink. I could see her fighting to speed up her mind. “The holes just happened, you know? Those houses . . . there’s something wrong with the foundations. Holes just, like,
appear
. Pat was going to fix them, but he wanted to work on something first—the wiring, maybe? I don’t remember. I don’t understand that stuff.” She threw me a self-deprecating glance, all helpless little woman. I kept my face wooden. “And he wondered if maybe the stoat, or whatever, might come down into the walls and we could catch it that way. That’s all.”

“And that didn’t bother you? The delay in mending the walls, the possibility of vermin in the house?”

“Not really. To be honest, I didn’t believe for a second it was actually a stoat or anything big, or I wouldn’t have let it near the kids. I thought maybe a bird, or a squirrel—the kids would’ve loved to see a squirrel. I mean, obviously it would’ve been nice if Pat had decided to build a garden shed or something, instead of messing about in the walls”—that laugh again, such hard work that it hurt to hear—“but he needed something to keep him occupied, didn’t he? So I thought, OK, whatever, there are worse hobbies.”

It could have been true, could have been just a refracted version of the same story Pat had poured out onto the internet; I couldn’t read her, through all the things getting in the way. Richie moved in his chair. He said, picking the words, “We’ve got information that says Pat was pretty upset about the squirrel, or the fox, or whatever it was. Could you tell us about that?”

That zap of some vivid emotion shot across Jenny’s face again, too quick to catch. “What information? From who?”

“We can’t go into details,” I said smoothly.

“Well, sorry, but your
information
is wrong. If this is Fiona again, then this time she’s not just being a drama queen, she’s making the whole thing up. Pat wasn’t even sure there
was
anything getting in—or it could’ve been just mice. A grown man doesn’t get
upset
about mice. I mean, come on, would you?”

“Nah,” Richie admitted, with a touch of a smile. “Just checking. Another thing I was meaning to ask: you said Pat needed something to keep him occupied. What did he do all day, after he was made redundant? Apart from the DIY?”

Jenny shrugged. “Looked for a new job. Played with the kids. He went running a lot—not so much since the weather turned, but this summer; there’s some lovely scenery out at Ocean View. He’d been working like mad ever since we left college; it was nice for him to have a little time off.”

It came out just a touch too smoothly, like she had recited it before. “You said earlier he was stressed about it,” Richie said. “How stressed?”

“He didn’t like being out of work—
ob
viously; I mean, I know there are people who do, but Pat’s not like that. He would’ve been happier if he’d known when he’d get a new job, but he made the best of it. We believe in positive mental attitude. PMA all the way.”

“Yeah? There’s a lot of fellas these days that are out of work and having a tough time adjusting; no shame in that. Some of them get depressed, or get irritable; maybe they drink that bit too much, or lose their tempers that bit easier. It’s natural enough, sure. Doesn’t make them weak, or mental. Did Pat have any of that stuff, yeah?”

He was struggling for the easy intimacy that had got him under Conor’s guard and the Gogans’, but it wasn’t working: his rhythm was off and his voice had a forced note, and instead of relaxing Jenny had managed to haul herself upright, her eyes blazing a furious blue. “Oh my God,
no.
He wasn’t, like, having a nervous
break
down or whatever. Whoever’s been saying—”

Richie raised his hands. “It’d be fair enough if he was, is all I’m saying. It could happen to the best of us.”

“Pat was fine. He needed a new job. He wasn’t crazy. OK, Detective? Is that OK with you?”

“I’m not saying he was crazy. I’m only asking: were you ever worried about him? That he’d hurt himself, like? Maybe even hurt you? With the stress—”

“
No!
Pat would never. Not in a million years. He—Pat was . . . What are you doing? Are you trying to . . .” Jenny had fallen back onto the pillows, breathing in shallow gasps. She said, “Could we just . . . leave this till some other time? Please?”

Her face was gray and fallen-in, all of a sudden, and her hands had gone limp on the blanket: she wasn’t putting it on this time. I glanced at Richie, but he had his head down over his notebook and didn’t look up.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Spain. Please accept our sympathies, again. I hope you’re not in too much pain.”

She didn’t answer. Her eyes had dulled; she was nowhere near us any more. We eased out of the chairs and out of the room as quietly as we could. As I closed the door behind us, I heard Jenny starting to cry.

* * *

Outside, the sky was patchy, just enough sunshine to trick you into thinking you were warm; the hills were dappled with moving splotches of light and shade. I said, “What happened there?”