I said, “You’re not who I’m worried about.”
“Then who?”
“Me.”
Dina watched me, the lightbulb reflecting tiny twin will-o’-the-wisps in those inscrutable milky blue eyes. She said, “You’d make a good father.”
“I think I probably would. But probably’s not good enough. Because if we’re both wrong and I turned out to be a terrible father, what then? There would be absolutely nothing I could do. Once you find out, it’s too late: the kids are there, you can’t send them back. All you can do is keep on fucking them up, day after day, and watch while these perfect babies turn into wrecks in front of your eyes. I can’t do it, Dina. Either I’m not stupid enough or I’m not brave enough, but I can’t take that risk.”
“Geri’s doing OK.”
“Geri’s doing great,” I said. Geri is cheerful, easygoing, and a natural at motherhood. After each of her kids was born, I rang her every day for a year—stakeouts, interrogations, fights with Laura, everything else in the world got put on hold for that phone call—to make sure she was all right. Once she sounded hoarse and subdued enough that I made Phil leave work and check on her. She had a cold and obviously thought I should feel like an idiot, which I didn’t. Better safe, always.
“I want kids someday,” Dina said. She balled up the wrapper, threw it in the general direction of the bin and missed. “I bet you think that’s a really shit idea.”
The thought of her showing up pregnant next time made my scalp freeze. “You don’t need my permission.”
“But you think it anyway.”
I asked, “How’s Fabio?”
“His name’s Francesco. I don’t think it’s going to work out. I don’t know.”
“I think it would be a better idea to wait to have kids until you’re with someone you can rely on. Call me old-fashioned.”
“You mean, in case I lose it. In case I’m minding this little tiny three-week-old baby and my head starts to explode. Someone should be there to watch me.”
“That’s not what I said.”
Dina stretched out her legs on the sofa and inspected her toenail polish, which was pearly pale blue. She said, “I can tell when I’m going, you know. Do you want to know how?”
I don’t want to know anything, ever, about the inner workings of Dina’s mind. I said, “How?”
“Things start sounding all wrong.” A quick glance at me, under cover of her hair. “Like I take off my top at night and drop it on the floor, and it goes plop, like a rock falling into a pond. Or once I was walking home from work and my boots, every time my boots hit the ground they squealed, like a mouse in a trap. It was horrible. In the end I had to sit down on the footpath and take them off, to make sure there wasn’t a mouse stuck inside—I did know there wasn’t, I’m not stupid, but just to make sure. I figured it out then; what was happening, I mean. But I still had to take a taxi home. I couldn’t stand hearing that, all the way. It sounded like it was in agony.”
“Dina. You should go to someone about it. As soon as it happens.”
“I do go to someone. Today I was in work and I opened one of the big freezers to get more bagels, and it crackled; like a fire, like there was a forest fire in there. So I walked out and came to you.”
“Which is great. I’m delighted you did. But I’m talking about a professional.”
“Doctors,” Dina said, with her lip curling. “I’ve lost count. And how much use have they ever been?”
She was alive, which counted for a lot to me and which I felt should count for at least something to her, but before I could point that out, my mobile rang. As I went for it, I checked my watch: nine on the dot, good man Richie. “Kennedy,” I said, getting up and moving away from Dina.
“We’re in place,” Richie said, so softly I had to press my ear to the phone. “No movement.”
“Techs and floaters doing their thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Any problems? Run into anyone along the way? Anything I should know?”
“Nah. We’re good.”
“Then we’ll talk in an hour, or sooner if there’s any action. Good luck.”
I hung up. Dina was twisting the towel into a tight knot and watching me sharply, through that wing of glossy hair. “Who was that?”
“Work.” I pocketed the mobile, inside pocket. Dina’s mind has paranoid corners. I didn’t want her hiding my phone so that I couldn’t discuss her with imaginary hospitals, or, even better, answering it and telling Richie that she knew what he was up to and she hoped he died of cancer.
“I thought you were off.”
“I am. More or less.”
“What’s ‘more or less’ supposed to mean?”
Her hands were starting to tense up on the towel. I said, keeping my voice easy, “It means that sometimes people need to ask me something. There’s no such thing as ‘off ’ in Murder. That was my partner. He’ll probably ring a few more times tonight.”
“Why?”
I got my coffee mug and headed for the kitchen to top up. “You saw him. He’s a rookie. Before he makes any big decisions, he needs to check with me.”
“Big decisions about what?”
“Anything.”
Dina started using one thumbnail to pick at a scab on the back of her other hand, in short hard scrapes. “Someone was listening to the radio this afternoon,” she said. “In work.”
Oh, shit. “And?”
“And. It said there was a dead body, and police were treating the death as suspicious. It said Broken Harbor. They had some guy talking, some cop. It sounded like you.”
And then the freezer had started making forest-fire noises. I said carefully, taking a seat in my armchair again, “OK.”
The scraping picked up force. “Don’t do that. Don’t bloody do that.”
“Do what?”
“Put on that face, that stupid poker-up-your-arse cop face. Talk like I’m some idiot witness you can play little games with because I’m too intimidated to call you on it. You don’t intimidate me. Do you get that?”
There was no point in arguing. I said calmly, “Got it. I’m not going to try to intimidate you.”
“Then stop fucking about and tell me.”
“You know I can’t discuss work. It’s not personal.”
“Jesus, how the hell is this not personal? I’m your sister. How much more personal does it get?”
She was jammed tight into her corner of the sofa, feet braced like she was getting ready to come flying at me, which was unlikely but not impossible. I said, “True enough. I meant I’m not hiding anything from you personally. I have to be discreet with everyone.”
Dina chewed at the back of her forearm and watched me like I was her enemy, narrowed eyes alight with cold animal cunning. “OK,” she said. “So let’s just watch the news.”