The Broken Ones (2 page)

“Doing my face,” Oscar replied. “I like to look good when I meet real cops.”

Neve grimaced at his rusty stubble and stepped from cover, arms tight about herself.

“Cold?” he asked.

“Need to pee.”

At a sheet-metal gate stood a uniformed constable in a clean blue slick, watching them approach from under his visor. From behind him came the loud barking of the dogs.

“You could have gone in without me,” Oscar said.

Neve’s cheeks, already pink, reddened a little more. “You’re the ranking officer.”

Oscar said nothing. He knew very well why she didn’t go in alone. There wasn’t much pride in announcing their unit. Over the past three years, Oscar’s original small team of officers and public servants had dwindled, each quietly transferring away and rarely replaced. He’d become so used to the regular hemorrhage of faces that when Neve joined his unit over a year ago he’d treated her with frosty detachment, expecting her any day to realize her error and leave. For some reason, she hadn’t. Now it was just him and her.

They showed their identifications to the constable, who didn’t bother suppressing a smirk. The metal gate squealed as Oscar pushed it open, and the dogs redoubled their barking.

The tiny yard was all mud. Puddles of dark water reflected the glum light from the townhouse’s kitchen window. Two dogs were frenzied shadows in the corner of the yard, straining in savage arcs against their heavy chains. Rain and evening had made their coats black, but their teeth shone a striking white. Their loud, brutal barks sent primal shock waves into Oscar’s gut. The air was dense with the reek of dog shit.

Up a short rise of concrete stairs, the back door was open; within was a huddle of crisp blue uniforms. Silent lightning flashed behind them. Oscar coughed. The detective in the doorway turned; she had a scarred chin and unblinking eyes. Oscar tried to recall her name. She regarded him and Neve coolly, then said loudly, “Barelies.”

Oscar’s lips tightened. The nickname still rankled. Three years ago, when the Nine-Ten Investigation Unit was created, some wag thought “Nine-Ten” sounded enough like “Nineteen” that everyone soon began calling his unit the Barely Legals, an epithet thought doubly amusing because it also connoted a lack of law-enforcement power, which, like all good jokes, was at least half true.

The kitchen was so small that a man could touch opposite walls
with outstretched arms—but not now in the crush of pressed blue trousers, shining blue raincoats, and gray wool suits. Oscar instinctively pushed through first, making room for Neve. She shrugged off his help. The ceiling was high and stained by decades of smoke and hot grease. The fridge was the yellow of an old tooth. A single bare bulb glowed feebly from the end of a perished rubber cord. The furniture looked salvaged. A figure lay on the floor, obscured by the forest of blue and gray torsos and legs. Flash: another photograph.

“Detectives Mariani and de Rossa.”

A hush fell, and the ranks parted to let a tall officer stride into the kitchen. Haig’s iron-gray mustache was neatly trimmed, and his visor was the polished black of a cavalry horse’s hoof. On each shoulder epaulette was bright “birdshit”—three silver diamonds and a gold crest.

“Inspector Haig,” Oscar said, glancing around the room at the blue uniforms crowded around the single body. “Outnumbered?”

Haig’s smile was like a split in ice. “This one’s homicide. Clean and clear. Save yourself and”—he nodded at Neve—“the young lady trouble.”

Oscar shrugged and waited.

Haig’s wide jaw tightened. “Ian?”

“Done,” said the police photographer, scurrying aside.

The dead man lay in a puddle of blood that was seeping away through the join between two curled sheets of old linoleum. His once white dressing gown was stained in a dozen places with vibrant red rosettes of blood. He lay in a flamboyant pose, legs akimbo, an arm above his head, his surprised face turned half to the light above. One eye was a blank stare, the other a collapsed, leaking sac. The hem of his robe had ridden up a fat thigh to reveal pale flesh so streaked with veins it looked like a side of marbled beef. One stubbled cheek gaped open in a strange new mouth, a slit rimmed with blood. His neck, hands, arms, and buttocks had all been stabbed. Some of the wounds still leaked. In the blood sat two upturned dog bowls forever out of the dead man’s reach, their ground-meat contents turning rufous as they absorbed his liquid.

“Darryl Ambrocio Tambassis.” Haig hardly had to raise his voice to be heard above the dogs outside. “Forty-one, unemployed. Still warm. Around thirty stab wounds.”

Oscar looked at the dead man’s hands; the nearest lay curled like a pale crab, and there were three clear stab wounds in its puffy flesh.

“Did you find the weapons?” asked Oscar.

“The knife is already en route for testing,” Haig said. He hesitated. “Weapons?”

“The wounds on his hands are two different profiles,” Oscar said. “One type has two sharp edges, the other only one. Two knives.”

Oscar felt every eye in the room on him. The air seemed statically charged.

Haig’s smile turned even colder. “Shouldn’t you be interviewing your suspect, Detective? You’ve only got”—Haig checked his watch—“eleven minutes.”

“Thirty,” corrected Oscar. The deeply flawed legislation allowed him thirty minutes at the scene with the suspect.

Haig shook his head and pointed his large, well-manicured thumb at Neve. “She’s been here twenty already.”

“I was outside!” Neve protested.

“Neve,” Oscar said quietly.

Neve returned a glare, but bit down on her words. Oscar looked at Haig. “Suspect?”

“Wife,” Haig replied. He motioned for his officers and the others to allow Oscar and Neve deeper into the house. “Ten minutes,” he said, and turned away.

Oscar stepped into the gloomy hallway. As he glanced back he was pleased to see uniformed cops grumbling as they dropped to hands and knees, looking for the second knife.

The rest of the townhouse was as narrow and murky as the kitchen. Its ceilings were disproportionately high, there were too few lights, and the lack of furniture let footsteps echo dolefully. Yet another uniformed officer leaned against the hallway wall. When he saw Oscar and Neve, he wordlessly pushed himself off the wall and led the detectives through a door into a small sitting room. It was piled high with urban detritus: a rusted walking machine; cardboard cartons overflowing with shabby Christmas decorations and moth-eaten clothes; magazines on dog breeding, dog nutrition, dog fighting. The single
window was a small rectangle of cobweb gray, unwashed in years and hunched on a sill dusted with the husks of dead flies. Rain pattered on the glass. A single bulb hung by a rubber cord the color of dirty bone, its glow hardly stronger than a few candles would make. Junk had been pushed aside to make space for a card table at which sat a young detective constable in a trim single-breasted suit, trying to read a newspaper by the weak light. Opposite him sat a string-thin, middle-aged woman whose hands were knitting themselves in worried knots. Another door was set in the far wall.

“Barelies,” said the officer in the doorway.

The seated detective looked up from his newspaper. “Seriously? You’re still bothering?”

Oscar waited.

The uniformed officer left. The young detective sighed and held out his hand for their IDs.

“Oh, come on,” Neve said.

Oscar squeezed her shoulder. She made a disgusted sound and handed over her badge. Oscar passed across his. The young detective made a show of inspecting them and handed them back. Oscar noticed the lad was already developing a paunch.

“Bazley, isn’t it?” Oscar asked. “Haig teaching you manners?”

Bazley ignored him and turned to the thin woman. “Mrs. Tambassis?” She seemed to flinch at the mention of her name. “Detective Sergeant Marina and Detective Constable de Rossi here—”

“Mariani,” Neve corrected, “and de Rossa.”

“—are with the Nine-Ten Investigation Unit. Due to the nature of your statements to arresting officers, these detectives have been summoned.” His voice slid down into the monotone of rote learning. “They are vested with full rights and powers to interview you, and anything you say to them can be used as evidence at trial. Should you wish not to answer their questions here, you have the right to a formal interview in a state police facility, courthouse, or location nominated by a justice of the peace with or without representation by a practicing solicitor. Do you understand?”

Oscar watched the thin woman’s eyes dart about nervously. They fixed for a moment on a blank patch of wall near the other door, then slid off it as if they’d met something oily and unpleasant. She nodded once.

Bazley looked at Oscar and glanced meaningfully at his watch.

“We know,” Oscar said.

Bazley picked up his paper and sauntered from the room.

Oscar removed his wet hat and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Mrs. Tambassis? May we sit?”

Seen closer, Mrs. Tambassis was not middle-aged but a hard-worn thirty or thirty-two. She licked her lips, then nodded again. Oscar and Neve sat. Oscar placed a small digital recorder on the tabletop and slid it toward the woman; she stared at it as if it were a new and dangerous breed of insect. He switched the recorder on and a red light, small as a pinprick of blood, glowed on its side. The woman’s eyes followed a worried triangular path—recorder, Oscar, Neve, recorder, Oscar, Neve—then dropped to watch her own nervously weaving fingers. The room was silent except for the muffled barking of the dogs.

“Aren’t you going to ask me anything?” she said.

Oscar gave Neve an almost imperceptible nod.

“Mrs. Tambassis,” Neve began, “you killed your husband this evening. You took two knives from your kitchen and while he was carrying bowls of food for your dogs you stabbed him. Many, many times.”

Mrs. Tambassis watched her hands. “
His
dogs,” she said quietly.

“You called the police?” Neve asked.

The woman nodded. “My phone’s out of credit, but the cops are a free call.”

“And when they came and asked you what happened, what did you tell them?”

The woman looked up. Her skin seemed as thin as wax paper; the bags under her eyes were puffy and gray. “You know. You’re here.”

Oscar could see that the front of the woman’s dress was flecked with blood; a long spittle of red was crusting dry on her neck.

“Mrs. Tambassis,” Neve continued, “can you tell us why you killed your husband?”

The woman’s eyes darted from the tape recorder to the empty wall, then back to the little red light.

“I didn’t think it was him I was stabbing,” she said. “I thought I was stabbing him.” She jabbed her finger at the blank wall.

“Who, Mrs. Tambassis?”

“
Him
. My uncle. Uncle Robert.” She spat the name like a sour thing and stared at the empty wall with scared, angry eyes.

The small room fell silent for a long moment. Even the dogs were momentarily quiet, and the only sound was the sad whisper of rain.

Oscar spoke: “We don’t see anyone where you’re pointing, Mrs. Tambassis.”

“Of course you don’t.” She looked at Oscar as if he were a fool. “He’s dead.”

Oscar could see that the woman was very pale. Her pulse thumped in the artery on the side of her neck. Shock’s setting in, he thought. The hammering knowledge that she’d taken another person’s life would soon shut down her thought processes, and they’d get nothing from her.

“Mrs. Tambassis,” Oscar said carefully. “If it was your uncle’s ghost that you attacked, why is your husband dead?”

The woman glared at him. “He must have stood in front of Darryl just as I went for him, didn’t he?”

“And you’ve seen him before today?” he asked. “Your dead uncle?”

Her eyes narrowed, wary of a trick question. “I’ve seen him since we all started seeing them.”

“Which was?” Neve asked.

“You know very well.”

“Tell us anyway.”

“You know this!” the woman cried. “Years! Since Gray Wednesday. Jesus …”

Neve glanced at Oscar. Time was running out.

“Why did you attack your uncle?”

The woman stared at the table for so long that Oscar thought the stunning curtain of shock had closed already. Then she spoke again. “Because he’s always here. You know what they’re like. Always standing there, staring. Wherever I am, there he is, watching me. Yes!” she accused the empty wall, lips curled in disgust. “He’s there when I sleep, there when I wake up. When I eat, when I shop, when I p-piss. My fucking filthy shadow …” She looked at Oscar, tears welling in her eyes. Her voice dropped to a dry whisper. “You know what they’re like. The dead bastard has stolen my life.”

Oscar felt the back of his neck turn cold.

“Let me get this straight, Mrs. Tambassis,” he said. “Your dead uncle has been tormenting you—”

“Yes,” the woman nodded. “Tormenting, yes.”

“Driving you mad.”

“Mad.” She nodded quicker, eyes bright.

“Making your life unlivable.”

“A living hell, exactly!”

“For years.”

“Years! Three years!”

“Then why did you wait until this evening to attack him?”

The woman blinked like someone who’d just missed a step on a staircase, surprised and suddenly afraid of a fall. Oscar knew this was the critical point, the terminator moment that separated truth from lie, or a well-planned lie from a spontaneous one.

“Had you attacked this vision of your uncle before?”

The woman’s eyes flicked between Oscar and Neve.

“Yes,” she decided.

“How?” Oscar asked. “Fists? Threw something?”

“Threw something,” she agreed. “A glass.”

“And what happened?”

“Well, it broke, didn’t it? On the wall.”

“It went through him?”

“Some detective.”

He kept his voice low and reasonable. “Then why did you attack him this evening with knives?”

The woman’s tongue emerged again, a cautious snake from its hole, testing the air and finding it fraught. Her eyes found the red light of the recorder; she forced herself to look at a spot on the floor and said nothing.