I said, “I need Conor Brennan to come clean about what happened that night. I want you to explain to him exactly what he’s doing. He’s not just perverting the course of justice, he’s kicking it in the teeth: he’s letting Pat and Emma and Jack go into the ground while the person who murdered them walks away scot-free. And he’s leaving Jenny to die.” It’s one thing to do what Conor had done in a nightmare moment of howling panic and horror, Jenny clutching him with her bloody hands and begging; it’s another to stand by, in the cold light of day, and let someone you love walk in front of a bus. “If it comes from me, he’ll think I’m just trying to mess with his head. From you, he’ll take it onboard.”
The corner of Fiona’s mouth twitched in what was almost a bitter little smile. She said, “You don’t really get Conor, do you?”
I could have laughed. “I’m pretty sure I don’t, no.”
“He doesn’t give a damn about the course of justice, or Jenny’s debt to society, or any of that stuff. He just cares about Jenny. He has to know what she wants to do. If he confessed to you guys, that’s why: so she can get the chance.” That twitch again. “Probably he’d think I’m being selfish, trying to save her just because I want her here. Maybe I am. I don’t care.”
Trying to save her. She was on my side, if I could just find a way to use that. “Then tell him Jenny’s already dead. He knows she’ll be out of hospital any day: tell him they let her out, and she took the first chance she got. If she’s not there to be protected any more, he might as well go ahead and save his own arse.”
Fiona was already shaking her head. “He’d know I was lying. He knows Jenny. There’s no way she’d . . . She wouldn’t go without leaving a note to get him out. No way.”
We had lowered our voices, like conspirators. I said, “Then do you think you could convince Jenny to make an official statement? Beg her, guilt-trip her, talk about the children, about Pat, about Conor; say whatever you need to say. I’ve had no luck, but coming from you—”
She was still shaking her head. “She’s not going to listen to me. Would you, if you were her?”
Both our eyes went to that closed door. “I don’t know,” I said. I would have been boiling over with frustration—for a second I thought of Dina, gnawing at her arm—if I had had anything left. “I haven’t got a clue.”
“I don’t want her to die.”
All of a sudden Fiona’s voice was thick and wobbling. She was about to cry. I said, “Then we need evidence.”
“You said you don’t have any.”
“I don’t. And at this point, we’re not going to get any.”
“Then what do we do?” She pressed her fingers to her cheeks, swiped away tears.
When I took a breath, it felt like it was made of something more volatile and violent than air, something that burned its way through membranes into my blood. I said, “There’s only one possible solution that I can think of.”
“Then do it. Please.”
“It’s not a good solution, Ms. Rafferty. But very occasionally, desperate times can call for desperate measures.”
“Like what?”
“Rarely, and I’m talking very rarely, a crucial piece of evidence shows up through the back door. Through channels that you could call less than one hundred percent legit.”
Fiona was staring at me. Her cheeks were still wet, but she had forgotten about crying. She said, “You mean you could—” She stopped, started again more carefully. “OK. What do you mean?”
It happens. Not often, nowhere near as often as you probably think, but it happens. It happens because a uniform lets some little smart-arse get under his skin; it happens because a lazy prick like Quigley gets jealous of the real detectives and our solve rates; it happens because a detective knows for a fact that this guy is about to put his wife in hospital or pimp a twelve-year-old. It happens because someone decides to trust his own mind over the rules we’ve sworn to follow.
I had never done it. I had always believed that if you can’t get your solve the straight way, you don’t deserve to get it at all. I had never even been the guy who looks the other way while the bloodstained tissue moves to the right place, or the wrap of coke gets dropped, or the witness gets coached. No one had ever asked me, probably in case I turned them in to Internal Affairs, and I had been grateful to them for not making me do it. But I knew.
I said, “If you were to bring me a piece of evidence that linked Jenny to the crime, soon—say, this afternoon—then I could place her under arrest before she’s released from the hospital. From that moment on, she’d be under suicide watch.” All that silent time watching Jenny sleep, I had been thinking about this.
I saw the fast blink as it went in. After a long moment Fiona said, “Me?”
“If I could come up with a way to do this without your help, I wouldn’t be talking to you.”
Her face was tight, watchful. “How do I know you’re not setting me up?”
“What for? If I just wanted a solve and I was looking for someone to take the fall, I wouldn’t need you: I’ve got Conor Brennan, all packaged up and good to go.” A porter shoved a clanging trolley past the end of the corridor, and we both jumped. I said, even more quietly, “And I’m taking at least as much of a risk as you are. If you ever decide to tell anyone about this—tomorrow, or next month, or ten years down the line—then I’m facing an Internal Affairs investigation at the very least, and at the worst I’m looking at a review of every case I’ve ever touched and criminal charges of my own. I’m putting everything I’ve got in your hands, Ms. Rafferty.”
Fiona said, “Why?”
There were too many answers. Because of that moment, still flickering small and searingly bright inside me, when she had told me she was certain of me. Because of Richie. Because of Dina, her lips stained dark with red wine, telling me There isn’t any why. In the end I gave her the only one I could stand to share. “We had one piece of evidence that might have been enough, but it got destroyed. It was my fault.”
After a moment Fiona said, “What’ll they do to her? If she gets arrested. How long . . . ?”
“She’ll be sent to a psychiatric hospital, at least at first. If she’s found fit to stand trial, her defense will plead either not guilty or insanity. If the jury finds she was insane, then she’ll go back to the hospital until the doctors decide she’s no longer a danger to herself or others. If she’s found guilty, then she’ll probably be in prison for ten or fifteen years.” Fiona winced. “I know it sounds like a long time, but we can make sure she gets the treatment she needs, and by the time she’s my age she’ll be out. She can start over, with you and Conor there to help her.”
The PA squealed into life, ordered Dr. Something to Accident and Emergency please; Fiona didn’t move. Finally she nodded. Every muscle in her was still stretched taut, but that wariness had gone out of her face. “OK,” she said. “I’m on.”
“I need you to be sure.”
“I’m sure.”