“Oh, Conor,” I said, leaning back in my chair and shaking my head sadly. “Conor, Conor, Conor. And here I thought we were getting on so well, the other night.”
He watched me and kept his mouth shut.
“You weren’t being honest with us, fella.”
That sent a zip of fear across his face, too sharp to hide. “I was.”
“No you weren’t. Ever heard of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? You let us down on at least one of those. Now why would you go and do that?”
Conor said, “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” His mouth clamped shut in a hard line, but his eyes were still fixed on me. He was afraid.
Richie, lounging against the wall under the camera, clicked his tongue reproachfully. I said, “Let’s start with this: you gave us the impression that, up until Monday night, the closest you’d got to the Spains was through binoculars. You didn’t think it might be an idea to mention that you’d been best buddies since you were kids?”
A faint red sprang up on his cheekbones, but he didn’t blink: this wasn’t what he was afraid of. “None of your business.”
I sighed and wagged a finger at him. “Conor, you know better than that. You name it, it’s our business now.”
“And how much difference did it make?” Richie pointed out. “You had to know Pat and Jenny had photos, man. All you did was set us back a couple of hours and piss us off.”
“My colleague speaks the truth,” I said. “Can you remember that, next time you’re tempted to dick us around?”
Conor said, “How’s Jenny?”
I snorted. “What’s it to you? If you were so concerned about her health, you could have just, I don’t know, not stabbed the poor woman. Or are you hoping she’s finished the job for you?”
His jaw had tightened, but he held on to his cool. “I want to know how she’s doing.”
“And I don’t care what you want. Tell you what, though: we’ve got a few questions for you. If you answer them all like a nice boy, without any more messing, then maybe I’ll be in a better mood and I’ll feel like sharing. Does that sound fair enough?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with the easy stuff. Tell us about Pat and Jenny, back when you were all kiddies together. What was Pat like?”
Conor said, “He was my best mate, since we were fourteen. You probably know that already.” Neither of us answered. “He was sound. That’s all. The soundest bloke I’ve ever known. Liked rugby, liked having a laugh, liked hanging out with his mates; he liked most people, everyone liked him. A lot of popular blokes are wankers, when you’re that age, but I never saw Pat be a bastard to anyone. Maybe all that doesn’t sound like anything special to you. But it is.”
Richie was tossing a sugar sachet in the air and catching it. “You were close, yeah?”
Conor’s chin pointed from Richie to me. “You’re partners. That means you’ve got to be ready to trust each other with your lives, right?”
Richie caught his sachet and stayed still, letting me answer. I said, “Good partners do. Yeah.”
“Then you know what Pat and me were like. There’s some stuff I told him, I think I might’ve done myself in if anyone else had found out. I told him anyway.”
He had missed the irony, if it was there. The flash of unease almost sent me out of my chair and circling the room again. “What kind of stuff?”
“You must be joking. Family stuff.”
I glanced across at Richie—we could find out somewhere else, if we needed to—but his eyes were on Conor. I said, “Let’s talk about Jenny. What was she like, back then?”
Conor’s face softened. “Jenny,” he said gently. “She was something special.”
“Yeah, we’ve seen the photos. No awkward phase going on there.”
“That’s not what I mean. She came into a room and made things better. She always wanted everything lovely, everyone happy, and she always knew the right thing to do. She had this touch, I’ve never seen anything like it. Like once we were all at a disco, one of those underage things, and Mac—this guy we used to hang out with—he was hovering around some girl, kind of dancing around her and trying to get her to dance with him. And she made this face at him and said something, I don’t know what, but her and her mates all collapsed laughing. Mac came back to us scarlet. Devastated. The girls were still pointing and giggling; you could tell he just wanted to disappear. And Jenny turns around to Mac and holds out her hands and says, ‘I love this song, only Pat hates it. Would you dance with me? Please?’ And off they go, and next thing you know Mac’s smiling, Jenny’s laughing at something he said, they’re having a ball. That shut the girls up. Jenny was ten times prettier than your woman, any day.”
I said, “That didn’t bother Pat?”
“Jenny dancing with Mac?” He almost laughed. “Nah. Mac was a year younger. Fat kid with bad hair. And anyway, Pat knew what Jenny was doing. I’d say he just loved her more for doing it.”
That softness had seeped into his voice. It sounded like a lover’s, a voice for low light and drifting music, for only one listener. Fiona and Shona had been right.
I said, “Sounds like a good relationship.”
Conor said simply, “They were beautiful. Only word for it. You know when you’re a teenager, a lot of the time it feels like the whole world is shite? The two of them’d give you hope.”
“That’s lovely,” I said. “Really, it is.”
Richie had started playing with the sugar sachet again. “You went out with Jenny’s sister Fiona, yeah? When you were, what, eighteen?”
“Yeah. For a few months, only.”
“Why’d you break up?”
Conor shrugged. “It wasn’t working out.”
“Why not? She was a geebag? You had nothing in common? She wouldn’t do the do?”
“No. She was the one that broke it off. Fiona’s great. We got on great. It just wasn’t working out.”
“Yeah, well,” Richie said dryly, catching the sugar, “I can see where it wouldn’t. If you were in love with her sister.”
Conor went still. “Who said that?”
“Who cares?”
“I care. Because they’re full of shite.”
“Conor,” I said, warning. “Remember our deal?”
He looked like he wanted to kick both of our teeth in, but after a moment he said, “It wasn’t the way you make it sound.”
And if that wasn’t a motive then at least, at the very least, it was only one step away. I couldn’t stop myself from glancing over at Richie, but he had thrown the sugar too far and was lunging for it. “Yeah?” he wanted to know. “How do I make it sound?”
“Like I was some dirtbag trying to get between the two of them. I wasn’t. If I could’ve pushed a button and split them up, I would never have done it. Anything else, what I felt: that was my business.”
“Maybe,” I said. I was pleased with the sound of my voice, lazy, amused. “Up until Jenny found out, anyway. She did find out, didn’t she?”
Conor had reddened. After all these years, this should have healed over. “I never said a word to her.”
“You didn’t need to. Jenny guessed. Women do, old son. How did she feel about it?”
“Wouldn’t know.”
“Did she give you the old brush-off? Or did she enjoy the attention, lead you on? Ever have a little kiss and a cuddle, when Pat wasn’t looking?”
Conor’s fists were clenched on the table. “No. I told you, Pat was my best mate. I told you what the two of them were like together. You think either of us, me or Jenny, would ever have done that?”
I laughed out loud. “Oh, God, yeah. I’ve been a teenage bloke myself. I’d have sold my own mother downriver for a bit of tit.”
“Probably you would’ve. I wouldn’t.”
“Very honorable of you,” I said, with only a flicker of a smirk. “But Pat didn’t understand that you were just worshipping nobly from afar, did he? He
confronted you about Jenny. You want to tell us your version of what went down?”
Conor demanded, “What do you want? I’ve told you I killed them. All this, back when we were kids, this had nothing to do with it.”
His knuckles were white. I said coolly, “Remember what I told you? We like deciding for ourselves what’s relevant. So let’s hear what went down between you and Pat.”
His jaw moved, but he kept control. “Nothing went down. I’m at home one afternoon, a few days after Fiona broke up with me, and Pat calls round and says, ‘Let’s go for a walk.’ I knew something was up—he had this grim face on him, wouldn’t look at me. We went walking down the beach, and he asked me if Fiona dumped me because I was into Jenny.”
“Man,” said Richie, making a cringe face. “Awkward.”
“You think? He was really upset. So was I.”
I said, “Restrained kind of guy, Pat, wasn’t he? Me, I’d have knocked your teeth out.”
“I thought probably he would. I was OK with that. Figured I deserved it. But Pat—he wasn’t the type to lose his temper, ever. He just went, ‘I know loads of guys fancy her. I don’t blame them. Not a problem, as long as they keep their distance. But you… Jesus, man, I never even thought of worrying about you.’”
“And what did you tell him?”
“Same as I told you. That I’d die before I’d get between them. That I’d never let Jenny know. That all I wanted was to find some other girl, be like the two of them, forget I’d ever felt this way.”
The shadow of old passion in his voice said he had meant every word, for whatever that was worth. I raised an eyebrow. “And that was all it took? Seriously?”
“It took hours. Walking up and down that beach, talking. But that’s the bones of it.”
“And Pat believed you?”
“He knew me. I was telling the truth. He believed me.”
“And then?”
“Then we went to the pub. Got locked, ended up staggering home holding each other up. Saying all the shite that guys say on nights like that.”
I love you, man, not in a gay way, but I love you, you know that, I’d do anything for you, anything… That unease flared through me, fiercer this time. I said, “And everything in the garden was rosy again.”
Conor said, “Yeah. It bloody was. I was Pat’s best man, a few years later. I’m Emma’s godfather. Check the paperwork, if you don’t believe me. You think Pat would’ve picked me if he’d thought I was trying to be with his wife?”
“People do strange things, fella. If they didn’t, me and my partner here would be out of a job. But I’ll take your word for it: best buds again, brothers in arms, all that good stuff. And then, a few years ago, the friendship went tits-up. We’d like to hear your version of what happened there.”
“Who said it went tits-up?”
I grinned at him. “You’re getting predictable, fella. A: we ask the questions. B: we don’t reveal our sources. And C: you said, among other people. If you’d still been all matey with the Spains, you wouldn’t have needed to freeze your balls off on a building site to see how they were doing.”
After a moment Conor said, “It was that fucking place. Ocean View. I wish to Jesus they’d never heard of it.”
His voice had a new, savage undercurrent to it. “I knew straightaway. Right from the off. Maybe three years ago, not long after Jack was born, I went over to Pat and Jenny’s place for dinner one night—they were renting this little town house in Inchicore, back then; I was ten minutes down the road, I was over all the time. I get there, and the two of them, they’re over the moon. I’m barely in the door, they shove this brochure of houses at me: ‘Look! Look at this! We put down our deposit this morning, Jenny’s mum minded the kids so we could camp outside the estate agent’s overnight, we were tenth in the queue, we got the exact one we wanted!’ They’d been dying to buy somewhere ever since they got engaged, so I was all ready to be delighted for them, yeah? But then I look at the brochure and the estate’s in Brianstown. Never heard of it; sounds like one of those nowhere dives that the developer’s named after his kid or himself, playing little emperor. And it says something like ‘Just forty minutes from Dublin,’ only I take one look at the map and that’s if you’ve got a helicopter.”
I said, “Long way from Inchicore. No more calling round for dinner every few days.”
“That wasn’t a problem. They could’ve found somewhere in Galway and I’d’ve been happy for them, as long as it was going to make them happy.”
“Which they thought this place was.”
“There was no place. I look closer at this brochure, and those aren’t houses; they’re models. I say, ‘Is the estate even built?’ and Pat goes, ‘It will be when we move in.’”
Conor shook his head, a corner of his mouth twisting. Something had changed. Broken Harbor had slammed into this conversation like a battering gust of wind, turning all of us tense and intent. Richie had put the sugar sachet away. “Betting years of their lives on a field in the middle of nowhere.”
I said, “So they were optimists. That’s a good thing.”
“Yeah? There’s optimistic, and then there’s plain crazy.”
“You didn’t think they were old enough to make that decision for themselves?”
“Yeah. I did. So I kept my gob shut. Said congratulations, I’m delighted for you, can’t wait to see the place. Nodded and smiled whenever they talked about it, when Jenny showed me bits of curtain material, when Emma drew a picture of what her room was going to look like. I wanted it to be wonderful. I was praying it’d be everything they’d ever wanted.”
I said, “But it wasn’t.”
Conor said, “The two of them brought me down to see the place, when the house was ready. A Sunday: the day before they were signing the final contracts. Two years ago—bit more, because it was summer. It was hot, sticky-hot—cloudy, and the cloud pressing the air down on top of you. The place was…” A grim sound that could have been a laugh. “You’ve seen it. It was better then—the weeds hadn’t come up, and there was still loads of work going on, so at least it didn’t feel like a graveyard—but still: it wasn’t somewhere anyone would want to live. When we get out of the car, Jenny goes, ‘Look, you can see the sea! Isn’t it gorgeous?’ I go, ‘Yeah, great view,’ but it wasn’t. The water looked dirty, greasy; there should have been a breeze coming off of it, cool us down, but it was like the air had died. The house was pretty enough, if you like Stepford, but straight across the road was waste ground and a bulldozer. The whole place was fucking horrendous. Made me want to turn around and get out as fast as I could, drag Pat and Jenny with me.”
Richie said, “What about them? Were they happy enough?”
Conor shrugged. “Sounded like. Jenny goes, ‘They’ll be finished building across the road in just a couple of months’—didn’t look like that to me, but I kept my mouth shut. She goes, ‘It’s going to be so lovely. The mortgage people are giving us a hundred and ten percent, so we can furnish the place. I was thinking about a maritime theme for the kitchen, to go with the sea? Don’t you think a maritime theme would be nice?’
“I go, ‘Might be safer to take just the hundred percent, furnish as you go along.’ Jenny laughs—it sounded fake, but that could’ve been just the way the air flattened everything out—and she goes, ‘Oh, Conor, relax. We can afford it. So we won’t eat out as much; there’s nowhere nearby anyway. I want everything to be nice.’
“I go, ‘I’m just saying, it’d be safer. In case.’ Maybe I should’ve said nothing, but that place… It felt like a big dog watching you, starting to come closer, and you know right now is when you need to get the fuck out. Pat just laughs and goes, ‘Man, do you know how fast property prices are rising? We haven’t even moved in yet, and the gaff’s already worth more than we’re paying. Any time we decide to sell, we’ll come out with a profit.’”
I said, hearing the pompous note in my voice, “If they were crazy, then so was the rest of the c
ountry. Nobody saw the crash coming.”
Conor’s eyebrow flicked. “You think?”
“If anyone had, the country wouldn’t be in this mess.”
He shrugged. “I don’t have a clue about financial stuff. I’m just a web designer. But I knew nobody wanted thousands of houses out in the middle of nowhere. People only bought them because they got told that in five years’ time they could sell up for double what they’d paid, and move somewhere decent. Like I said, I’m just some idiot, but even I knew a pyramid scheme eventually runs out of suckers.”
“Well, look at Alan Greenspan here,” I said. Conor was starting to piss me off—because he had been right, and because Pat and Jenny had had every right to believe that he was wrong. “It’s easy to be right in hindsight, fella. It wouldn’t have killed you to be a little more positive for your friends.”
“You mean, give them a little more bullshit? They were getting plenty of that already. The banks, the developers, the government: Go on, buy, best investment of your lives—”
Richie balled up the sugar sachet and sank it in the bin with a sharp rustle. He said, “If I’d seen my best mates running towards that cliff, I’d’ve said something, too. Might not have stopped them, but it might’ve meant the fall came as less of a shock.”
The two of them were looking at me like they were the ones on the same side, like I was the outsider. Richie was only nudging Conor towards what the crash had done to Pat, but it grated just the same. I said, “Keep talking. What happened next?”
Conor’s jaw moved. The memory was winding him tighter and tighter. “Jenny—she always hated fights—Jenny goes, ‘You should see the size of the back garden! We’re thinking about getting a slide for the kids, and in the summer we’ll have barbecues—you can stay over afterwards, so you won’t have to worry about having a few cans—’ Only just then there’s this huge crash across the road, like a whole bale of slates falling off the top of the scaffolding, something like that. We all jump a mile. When our hearts start beating again, I say, ‘You’re positive about this. Yeah?’ Pat goes, ‘Yeah. We are. We’d better be: the deposit’s non-refundable.’”