“I don’t know. I walked home, yesterday—I needed a chance to think.” A glance—a quick one, like it hurt—at the table. “I figure she must’ve been waiting outside here again, either for me or for you. She must’ve seen me come out, followed me home. I was only in the door five minutes when I heard the bell.”
“And you invited her in for a cup of tea and a nice chat? Is that what you normally do when strange women show up at your door?”
“She asked could she come in. She was freezing; I could see her shivering. And she wasn’t some randomer. I remembered her, from Tuesday night.” Of course he had. Men, in particular, don’t forget Dina in a hurry. “I wasn’t going to let a mate of yours freeze on my doorstep.”
“You’re a real saint. It didn’t occur to you to, I don’t know, ring me and tell me she was there?”
“It did occur to me. I was going to. But she was . . . she wasn’t in great shape, man. She was holding on to my arm and going, over and over, ‘Don’t tell Mikey I’m here, don’t you dare tell Mikey, he’ll freak out . . .’ I would’ve done it anyway, only she didn’t give me a chance. Even when I went to the jacks, she made me leave my phone with her—and my flatmates were down the pub, it wasn’t like I could drop them a hint or get her talking to one of them while I texted you. In the end I thought, no harm done, she’s somewhere safe for the night, you and me could talk in the morning.”
“‘No harm done,’” I said. “Is that what you call this?”
A short, twisting silence. I said, “What did she want?”
Richie said, “She was worried about you.”
I laughed loud enough to startle both of us. “Oh, she was, was she? That’s a fucking riot. I think you know Dina well enough at this stage to have spotted that, if anyone needs worrying about, it’s her. You’re a detective, chum. That means you’re supposed to notice the bleeding obvious. My sister is as mad as a hatter. She’s five beers short of a six-pack. She’s up the wall and swinging from the chandelier. Please don’t tell me you missed that.”
“She didn’t seem crazy to me. Upset, yeah, up to ninety, but that was because she was worried about you. Properly worried, like. Freaking-out worried.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. That is crazy. Worried about what?”
“This case. What it was doing to you. She said—”
“The only thing Dina knows about this case is that it exists. That’s it. And even that was enough to send her off the fucking deep end.” I never tell anyone that Dina is crazy. People have raised the possibility to me before, on occasion; none of them made that mistake twice. “Do you want to know how I spent Tuesday night? Listening to her rave about how she couldn’t sleep in her flat because her shower curtain was ticking like a grandfather clock. Want to know how I spent Wednesday evening? Trying to convince her not to set fire to the heap of paper that she had left of my books.”
Richie shifted, uneasily, against the door. “I don’t know about any of that. She wasn’t like that at my place.”
Something in my stomach clamped tight. “Of course she bloody well wasn’t. She knew you’d be on the phone to me in a heartbeat, and that didn’t suit her plans. She’s crazy, not stupid. And she’s got some serious willpower, when she feels like it.”
“She said she’d been over at yours the last few nights, talking to you, and the case had your head melted. She . . .” He glanced at me. He was picking his words carefully. “She said you weren’t OK. She said you’d always been good to her, never once been anything but gentle, even when she didn’t deserve it—that’s what she said—but the other night she startled you, when she showed up, and you pulled your gun. She said she left because you told her she should kill herself.”
“And you believed that.”
“I figured she was exaggerating. But still . . . She wasn’t making it up about you being stressed, man. She said you were coming apart, this case was taking you apart, and there was no way you’d put it down.”
I couldn’t tell, through all this dark snarled mess, whether this was Dina’s revenge for something real or imaginary that I had done to her, or whether she had seen something I had missed, something that had sent her banging on Richie’s door like a panicked bird beating against a window. I couldn’t tell, either, which one would be worse.
“She said to me, ‘You’re his partner, he trusts you. You have to look after him. He won’t let me, he won’t let his family, maybe he might let you.’”
I said, “Did you sleep with her?”
I had been trying not to ask. The fraction of silence, after Richie opened his mouth, told me everything I needed to know. I said, “Don’t bother answering that.”
“Listen, man, listen—you never said she was your sister. Neither did she. I swear to God, if I’d’ve known—”
I had come within a hairsbreadth of telling him. I had held back because, God help me, I thought it would make me vulnerable. “What did you think she was? My girlfriend? My ex? My daughter? How exactly would any of those have made it better?”
“She said she was an old mate of yours. She said she knew you from back when you were kids—your family and her family used to get caravans together at Broken Harbor, for the summer. That’s what she told me. Why would I think she was lying?”
“How about because she’s fucking nutso? She comes in babbling about a case she hasn’t got a clue about, drowning you in bullshit about me having a nervous breakdown. Ninety percent of what she says is gibberish. It doesn’t even occur to you that the other ten percent might not be on the level?”
“It wasn’t gibberish, but. She was dead right: this case, it’s been getting to you. I thought that from the start, almost.”
Every breath hurt on its way in. “That’s sweet. I’m touched. So you felt the appropriate response was to fuck my sister.”
Richie looked like he would happily saw his own arm off if it would make this conversation go away. “It wasn’t like that.”
“How in the name of sweet jumping Jesus was it not like that? Did she drug you? Handcuff you to the bedpost?”
“I didn’t go in there planning to . . . I don’t think she did either.”
“Are you seriously trying to tell me how my sister thinks? After one night?”
“No. I’m just saying—”
“Because I know her a lot better than you do, chum, and even I struggle for any clue about what goes on in her head. I think it’s more than possible that she went to your house planning on doing exactly what she did. I’m one hundred percent positive that this was her idea, not yours. That doesn’t mean you had to play along. What the holy hell were you thinking?”
“Honest to God, it was just one thing led to another. She was scared this case would mess you up, she was going in circles around my sitting room, crying—she couldn’t sit down, she was that upset. I gave her a hug, just to settle her—”
“And that’s where you shut up. I don’t need the graphic details.” I didn’t; I could see exactly how it had gone down. It’s so, so lethally easy to get dragged into Dina’s crazy. One minute you’re only going to dip your toes at the edge, just so you can grab her hand and pull her out; the next minute you’re full fathom five and flailing for air.
“I’m only telling you. It just happened.”
“Your partner’s sister,” I said. Suddenly I was exhausted, exhausted and sick to my stomach, something rising and burning in my throat. I leaned my head back against the wall and pressed my fingers into my eyes. “Your partner’s crazy sister. How could that seem OK?”
Richie said quietly, “It doesn’t.”
The dark behind my fingers was deep and restful. I didn’t want to open my eyes on that harsh, biting light. “And when you woke up this morning,” I said, “Dina was gone, and so was the evidence bag. Where had it been?”
A moment’s silence. “On my bedside table.”
“In plain view of anyone who happened to wander in. Flatmates, burglars, one-night stands. Brilliant, old son.”
“My bedroom door locks. And during the day I kept it on me. In my jacket pocket.”