Tana French - Broken Harbour

“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 mates did that, too.”

I said, “That’s your generation. Pat and Jenny’s generation. Never been broke, never seen this country broke, so you couldn’t imagine it, even when it started happening in front of your eyes. It’s a good way to be-a lot better than my generation: half of us could be rolling in the stuff and we’d still get paranoid about owning two pairs of shoes, in case we wound up on the side of the road. But it’s got its downside.”

Inside the house the techs were working away: someone called out something that ended in “… Got any extra?” and Larry shouted back cheerfully, “I do of course, check in my…”

Richie nodded. “Pat Spain wasn’t expecting to be broke,” he said, “or he wouldn’t’ve blown the dosh on the bouncy castle. Either he was positive he’d have a new job by the end of summer, or he was positive he’d have some other way of bringing in the cash. If it started hitting him that that wasn’t happening, and the money was running out…” He reached out to touch the broken edge of the door with one finger, drew his hand back in time. “That’s some serious pressure for a man, knowing he can’t look after his family.”

I said, “So your money’s still on Patrick.”

Richie said carefully, “My money’s nowhere till we see what Dr. Cooper thinks. I’m only saying.”

“Good. Patrick’s the favorite, all right, but we’ve got plenty of fences left; plenty of room for an outsider to come up and take it. So the next thing we want to do is see if we can get anyone to narrow the field. I suggest we start with a quick chat to Cooper, before he heads, then go see if the neighbors have anything good for us. By the time we’re done there, Larry and his merry men should be able to give us some kind of update, and they should have the upstairs clear enough that we can go rooting around, try and pick up a few hints about why the money might have been running out. How does that sound to you?”

He nodded. “Nice catch on the bouncy castle,” I said, giving him a pat on the shoulder. “Now let’s go see what Cooper can do to the odds.”

The house was a different place: that miles-deep silence had vanished, blown away like fog, and the air was lit up and buzzing with efficient, confident work. Two of Larry’s lot were working their way methodically through the blood spatter, one of them dropping swabs into test tubes while the other one took Polaroids to pinpoint where each swab had come from. A skinny girl with too much nose was moving around with a video camera. The print guy was peeling tape off a window handle; the mapper was whistling between his teeth while he sketched. Everyone was going at a steady pace that said they were in for a long haul.

Larry was in the kitchen, squatting over a cluster of yellow evidence markers. “What a mess ,” he said, with relish, when he saw us. “We’re going to be here for ever . Did you come into this kitchen, when you were here before?”

“We stopped at the door,” I said. “The uniforms were in here, though.”

“Of course they were. Don’t let them go off duty without giving us their shoe prints, for elimination.” He straightened up, pressing a hand to the small of his back. “Ow, bollix, I’m getting too old for this job. Cooper’s upstairs with the kids, if you want him.”

“We won’t interrupt him. Any sign of the weapon?”

Larry shook his head. “Nada.”

“How about a note?”

“Does ‘Eggs, tea, shower gel’ count? Because otherwise, no. If you’re thinking this fella here, though”-a nod at Patrick-“you know as well as I do, a lot of men don’t. Strong silent types to the end.”

Someone had turned Patrick onto his back. He was white and slack-jawed, but you get the knack of seeing past that: he had been a good-looking guy, square chin and straight eyebrows, the type girls go for. I said, “We don’t know what we’re thinking. Find anything unlocked? Back door, a window?”

“Not so far. The security wasn’t bad, you know. Strong locks on the windows, double glazing, proper lock on the back door-not the type you can get past with a credit card. I’m not trying to do your job for you, or anything, but I’m just saying: not the easiest house to break into, specially without leaving marks.”

Larry’s money was on Patrick too. “Speaking of keys,” I said, “let me know if you find any. We should have at least three sets of house keys. And keep an eye out for a pen that says Golden Bay Resort. Hang on-”

Cooper was picking his way down the hall like it was dirty, holding his thermometer in one hand and his case in the other. “Detective Kennedy,” he said, resignedly, like he had been hoping against hope that I would somehow vanish off the case. “And Detective Curran.”

“Dr. Cooper,” I said. “I hope we’re not interrupting.”

“I have just completed my preliminary examinations. The bodies may now be removed.”

“Can you provide us with any new information?” One of the things that pisses me off about Cooper is that when he’s around I end up talking like him.

Cooper held up his case and raised his eyebrows at Larry, who said cheerfully, “You can stick that by the kitchen door, nothing interesting going on over there.” He put the case down delicately and bent to put away his thermometer.

“Both children appear to have been smothered,” he said. I felt Richie’s fidgeting go up a gear, at my shoulder. “This is virtually impossible to diagnose definitively, but the absence of any obvious injuries or symptoms of poisoning inclines me towards oxygen deprivation as the cause of death, and they show no evidence of choking, no marks of ligature strangulation and none of the congestion and conjunctival hemorrhaging usually associated with manual strangulation. The Technical Bureau will need to examine the pillows for signs of saliva or mucus indicating that they were pressed over the victims’ faces”-Cooper glanced at Larry, who gave him the thumbs-up-“although, given that the pillows in question were on the victims’ beds, the presence of bodily fluids would hardly constitute a smoking gun, so to speak. On post-mortem examination-which will begin tomorrow morning at precisely six o’clock-I will attempt to further narrow down the possible mechanisms of death.”

I said, “Any sign of sexual assault?” Richie jerked like I was electric. Cooper’s eyes slid over my shoulder to him for a second, amused and disdainful.

“On preliminary examination,” he said, “there are no signs of sexual abuse, either recent or chronic. I will, of course, explore this possibility in more depth at the post-mortem.”

“Of course,” I said. “And this victim here? Can you give us anything?”

Cooper pulled a sheet of paper out of his case and waited, inspecting it, till Richie and I went over to him. The paper was printed with two outlines of a generic male body, front and back. The first one was speckled with a precise, terrible Morse code of red-pen dots and dashes.

Cooper said, “The adult male received four injuries to the chest from what appears to be a single-edged blade. One”-he tapped a horizontal red line halfway up the left side of the outline’s chest-“is a relatively shallow slash wound: the blade struck a rib near the midline and skidded outwards along the bone for approximately five inches, but does not appear to have penetrated farther. While this would have caused considerable bleeding, it would not have been fatal, even without medical treatment.”