8
Richie was waiting outside the hospital at a quarter to six. Normally I would have sent one of the uniforms—officially, all we were there for was to identify the bodies, and I have more productive ways to spend my time—but this was Richie’s first case, and he needed to watch the PM. If he didn’t, word would get around. As a bonus, Cooper likes you to watch, and if Richie managed to get on his good side, we would have a shot at the fast track if we needed it.
It was still night, just that cold pre-dawn thinning of the darkness that leaches the last strength out of your bones, and the air had a bite to it. The light of the hospital entrance was a warmthless, stuttering white. Richie was leaning against the railing, with an industrial-size paper cup in each hand, kicking a crumple of tinfoil back and forth between his feet. He looked pale and baggy-eyed, but he was awake and wearing a clean shirt—it was just as cheap as the one before, but I gave him points for having thought of it at all. He even had my tie on over it.
“Howya,” he said, handing me one of the cups. “Thought you might want this. Tastes like washing-up liquid, though. Hospital canteen.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I think.” It was coffee, give or take. “How was last night?”
He shrugged. “Would’ve been better if our fella’d shown up.”
“Patience, old son. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Another shrug, down at the tinfoil that he was kicking harder. I realized that he had wanted to have our guy ready to present to me first thing this morning, all trussed up and oven-ready, the kill to prove that he was a man. He said, “The techs say they got a load done, anyway.”
“Good.” I leaned against the railings next to him and tried to get the coffee into me: one hint of a yawn and Cooper would boot me out the door. “How did the patrol floaters do?”
“Grand, I think. They picked up a few cars coming into the estate, but all the plates checked out to Ocean View addresses: just people heading home. A bunch of teenagers met up in one of the houses down the other end from us, brought a couple of bottles with them, played their music loud. Around half past two there was a car going around and around, slow, but it was a woman driving and she had a baby crying in the back, so the lads figured she was trying to get it to sleep. That was the lot.”
“You’re satisfied that if someone dodgy had been prowling around, they’d have spotted him?”
“Unless he was really lucky, yeah. I’d say so.”
“No more media?”
Richie shook his head. “I thought they’d be going after the neighbors, but nah.”
“Probably off looking for loved ones to hassle; juicier stuff there. It looks like the press office has them under control, for now anyway. I had a quick skim of the early editions: nothing we didn’t already know, and nothing about Jenny Spain being alive. We won’t be able to keep that to ourselves much longer, though. We need to get our hands on this guy fast.” Every front page had run with a howl-sized headline and an angelic blond shot of Emma and Jack. We had a week, two at the outside, to get this guy before we turned into worthless incompetents and the Super turned into a very unhappy camper.
Richie started to answer, but a yawn cut him off. “Get any sleep?” I asked.
“Nah. We talked about doing shifts, but the countryside’s bleeding noisy, did you know that? Everyone gives it loads about the peace and quiet, but that’s a load of bollix. The sea, and there were like a hundred bats throwing a party, and mice or something running around, all through the houses. And something went for a wander down the road; sounded like a tank, charging through all those plants. I tried checking it out with the goggles, but it headed down between the houses before I could get it. Something big, anyway.”
“Too creepy for you?”
Richie gave me a wry sideways grin. “I managed not to crap my kacks. Even if it’d been quiet, I wanted to be awake. In case.”
“I’d have been the same. How are you doing?”
“All right. A bit wrecked, like, but I’m not gonna crash out halfway through the post-mortem or anything.”
“If we get you a couple of hours’ kip somewhere along the way, can you take another night?”
“Little more of this”—he tilted the coffee cup—“and yeah, sure I can. Same as last night, yeah?”
“No,” I said. “One of the definitions of insanity, my friend, is doing the same thing again and again and hoping for different results. If our man could resist the bait last night, he can resist it tonight. We need better bait.”
Richie’s head turned towards me. “Yeah? I thought ours was pretty decent. Another night or two and I’d say we’ll have him.”
I raised my cup to him. “Vote of confidence appreciated. But the fact is, I misjudged our boy. He’s not interested in us. Some of them can’t stay away from the cops: they insert themselves into the investigation every way they can find, you can’t turn around without tripping over Mr. Helpful. Our guy isn’t like that, or we’d have him by now. He doesn’t give a damn what we do, or what the Bureau lads do. But you know what he’s very interested in, don’t you?”
“The Spains?”
“Ten points for you. The Spains.”
“We haven’t got the Spains, but. I mean, Jenny, yeah, but—”
“But even if Jenny was able to help us out, I want to keep her under wraps for as long as I can. True enough. What we do have, though, is Whatshername, that floater—what is her name?”
“Oates. Detective Janine Oates.”
“Her. You may not have noticed this, but from a distance, in the right context, Detective Oates could quite probably pass for Fiona Rafferty. Same height, same build, same hair—Detective Oates’s is a lot neater, luckily, but I’m sure she could mess it up if we asked her to. Get her a red duffle coat and Bob’s your uncle. It’s not that they’re actually anything alike, but to spot that you’d have to get a proper look, and for that, you’d need a decent vantage point and your binoculars.”
Richie said, “We clear out at six again, she drives up—have we got a yellow Fiat in the pool, yeah?”
“I’m not sure, but if we don’t, we can just have a marked car drop her off. She goes into the house and spends the night doing whatever she thinks Fiona Rafferty would do, as obviously as possible—wandering around looking distraught with the curtains open, having a read of Pat and Jenny’s papers, that kind of thing. And we wait.”
Richie drank his coffee, with an unconscious grimace on each sip, and considered that. “You think he knows who Fiona is?”
“I think there’s a damn good chance he does, yeah. Remember, we don’t know where he came into contact with the Spains; it could have been somewhere that involved Fiona too. Even if it wasn’t, she may not have been out here in a few months, but for all we know he’s been watching them for a lot longer than that.”
On the horizon the outline of low hills was starting to take shape, darker against darkness. Somewhere beyond them, the first light was moving up the sand in Broken Harbor, seeping into all those empty houses, into the emptiest one of all. It was five to six. I said, “Have you ever been to a post-mortem?”
Richie shook his head. He said, “There’s a first time for everyone.”
“There is, yeah, but it’s not usually like this. This is going to be bad. You should be there, but if you’re seriously not on for it, this is when you need to speak up. We can say you’re getting some kip after the stakeout.”
He crushed his paper cup into a wad and tossed it at the bin with a hard downward snap of his wrist. “Let’s go,” he said.