Tana French - Broken Harbour

“Right,” I said. “If that knife shows up, let me know right away. Until then, we’ll get out of your hair. Thanks, lads.”

The flash went off again. This time it slapped Patrick Spain’s silhouette across my eyes: blazing white, arms flung wide like he was leaping into a tackle, or like he was falling.

“So,” Richie said, on our way down the drive. “Not an inside job, after all.”

“It’s not that simple, old son. Patrick Spain could have gone out into the back garden, maybe even over the wall-or he could have just opened a window and thrown that knife as far as he could. And remember, Patrick’s not the only suspect here. Don’t forget Jenny Spain. Cooper hasn’t checked her out yet: for all we know, she could have been well able to leave the house, stash the knife, come back inside and arrange herself neatly next to her husband. This could be a suicide pact, or she could have been shielding Patrick-she sounds like the type who might well put her last few minutes into protecting the family reputation. Or this could have been her gig, from start to finish.”

The yellow Fiat was gone: Fiona was headed for the hospital to try and see Jenny-hopefully the uniform was driving, so she wouldn’t wrap the car around a tree during a crying jag. Instead, we had a cluster of new cars, up at the end of the road by the morgue van. They could have been journalists, or residents who the uniforms were keeping away from the scene, but I was betting these were my floaters. I headed for them. “And think about this,” I said. “An outsider isn’t going to go in there unarmed and hope he gets a chance to go through the kitchen drawers and find something good. He’s going to bring his own weapon.”

“Maybe he did, and then he spotted those knives and figured he’d be better off with something that doesn’t trace back to him. Or maybe he wasn’t planning on killing anyone. Or maybe that knife isn’t the weapon at all: he nicked it to throw us off.”

“Maybe. That’s one reason why we need to find it fast: to make sure it doesn’t lead us down the wrong track. Want to give me another one?”

Richie said, “Before it’s got rid of.”

“Right. Say this is an outside job: our man-or woman-probably threw the weapon in the water last night, if he has any sense, but if by any chance he’s too thick to have thought of that off his own bat, all this activity’s bound to tip him off that it might be an idea not to have a bloody knife hanging around. If he ditched it somewhere on the estate, we want to pick him up coming back for it; if he took it home with him, we want to catch him dumping it. All this is assuming he’s in the area, obviously.”

Two seagulls exploded up from a heap of rubble, screaming at each other, and Richie’s head whipped around. He said, “He didn’t find the Spains by accident. This isn’t the kind of place where someone could be just passing by, just happen to spot a set of victims that pushed his buttons.”

“No,” I said. “Not that kind of place at all. If he’s not dead or local, then he came in here looking.”

The floaters were seven guys and a girl, all somewhere in their late twenties, hanging around their cars trying to look sharp and businesslike and ready for anything. When they saw us coming their way they straightened up, tugged jackets down, the biggest guy threw his cigarette away. I pointed to the butt and asked, “What’s your plan there?”

He looked blank. I said, “You were going to leave it there, weren’t you? On the ground, for the Bureau to find and file and send away for DNA testing. Which one were you hoping for? That you’d wind up at the top of our suspect list, or at the top of our time-waster list?”

He whipped up the butt and fumbled it back into his packet, and just that fast, all eight of them were on notice: as long as you’re on my investigation, you do not drop the ball. Marlboro Man was scarlet, but someone had to take one for the good of the team.

I said, “Much better. I’m Detective Kennedy, and this is Detective Curran.” I didn’t ask for their names; no time for handshakes and chitchat, and I would only forget anyway. I don’t keep track of my floaters’ favorite sandwiches and their kids’ birthdays, I keep track of what they’re doing and whether they’re doing it well. “You’ll get a full briefing later on, but for now, this is all you need to know: we’re looking for a Cuisine Bleu-brand knife, curved six-inch blade, black plastic handle, part of a matching set, a lot like this but slightly larger.” I held up the plastic evidence bag. “All of you got camera phones? Take a picture, so you’ve got a reminder of exactly what you’re looking for. Delete the photo before you leave the scene tonight. Don’t forget.”

They whipped out phones and passed the evidence bag around, handling it like it was made of soap bubbles. I said, “The knife I’ve described is a good bet for the murder weapon, but we don’t get guarantees in this game, so if you come across another blade hanging around in the undergrowth, for God’s sake don’t skip on your merry way just because it doesn’t fit the description. We’re also keeping an eye out for bloody clothing, footprints, keys and anything else that looks remotely out of place. If you find something that’s got potential, what do you do?”

I nodded at Marlboro Man-if you take someone down a peg, always give him a way to climb back up. He said, “Don’t touch it. Don’t leave it unattended. Call the Bureau lads to photograph it and bag it.”

“Exactly. And call me, too. Anything you find, I want to see. Detective Curran and I will be interviewing the neighbors, so you’ll need our mobile numbers, and vice versa-we’ll be keeping this off the radio for now. The reception out here is shit, so if a call doesn’t get through, text. Don’t leave any voice-mail messages. Everyone got that?” Down the road, our first reporter had set herself up against some picturesque scaffolding and was doing a piece to camera, trying to keep her coattails down against the wind. Within an hour or two there would be a few dozen like her. Plenty of them wouldn’t think twice about hacking into a detective’s voice mail.

We did the number swap all round. “There’ll be more searchers joining us soon,” I said, “and when they take over I’ll have other jobs for you, but we need to get moving now. We’re going to start from the back of the house. Start at the garden wall, work your way outwards, make sure you don’t leave any gaps between your search areas, you know the drill. Go.”

The semi-d that shared a wall with the Spains’ house was empty-permanently empty, nothing in the front room except a screwed-up ball of newspaper and an architectural-level spiderweb-which was a bastard. The nearest signs of human life were two doors down on the other side, in Number 5: the lawn was dead, but there were lace curtains in the windows and a kid’s bike lying on its side in the drive.

Movement behind the lace, as we came up the path. Someone had been watching us.

The woman who answered the door was heavy, with a flat suspicious face and dark hair scraped back in a thin ponytail. She was wearing an oversized pink hoodie, undersized gray leggings that were a bad call, and a lot of fake tan that somehow didn’t stop her looking pasty. “Yeah?”

“Police,” I said, showing her my ID. “Can we come in and have a word?”

She looked at the ID like my photo wasn’t up to her high standards. “I went out earlier, asked those Guards what was going on. They told me to go back inside. I’ve got a right to be on my own road. Yous can’t tell me not to.”

This was going to be a real walk in the park. “I understand,” I said. “If you’d like to leave the premises at any point, they won’t stop you.”