Broken Harbour

by Tana French

I’ve handled babies, drownings, rape-murders and a shotgun decapitation that left lumps of brain crusted all over the walls, and I sleep just fine, as long as the job gets done. Someone has to do it. If that’s me, then at least it’s getting done right.

I am bloody good at my job. I still believe that.

So far, you’ve only seen what bad luck can do to people. You’re about to take your first good look at what people can do to each other. Believe me: not the same thing.”

no emotions on scene.

doesn’t matter where you come from. There’s nothing you can do about it, so don’t waste your energy thinking about it. What matters is where you’re going. And that, mate, is something you can control.”

“And it’s my job to help you get further. One of the ways you take charge of where you’re going is by acting like you’re already there. Do

Only teenagers think boring is bad. Adults, grown men and women who’ve been around the block a few times, know that boring is a gift straight from God. Life has more than enough excitement up its sleeve, ready to hit you with as soon as you’re not looking, without you

adding to the drama.

But everyone has one place that they like to think is never going to change.

but all the good ones feel it somewhere. It gets me in the skull bones. Call it what you want—social deviance, psychological disturbance, the animal within, evil if you believe in that: it’s the thing we spend our lives chasing. All the training in the world won’t give you that warning when it comes close. You get it or you don’t.

It takes a while to wrap your head around a scene like that, the first time. Your inner world snaps itself away from the outside one, for protection: your eyes are wide open, but all that reaches your mind is streaks of red and an error message.

Anyone can hoover. Not everyone gets murdered.”

Here’s the part you never saw in interviews or documentaries, because we keep it to ourselves. Most victims went looking for exactly what they got.”

I don’t feel sorry for anyone I run across via work. Pity is fun, it lets you have a great wank about what a wonderful guy you are, but it does bugger-all good to the people you’re feeling sorry for. The

Nothing can trip you up like compassion.

you do not go with the flow in this job. You make the flow go with you.

smokers are like any other addicts, the best way to get them on side is with their own currency.

Money: the only thing that kills more people than love.

people work fast, when the stakes are that high—but catch him straight after the mushroom cloud unfurls and he’ll spill anything

you take someone down a peg, always give him a way to climb back up.

stick with the nice boring solution that requires the least imagination, and you’ll do fine.”

Some people get hit by a tidal wave, dig in their nails and hold on; they stay focused on the positive, keep visualizing the way through till it opens up in front of them. Some lose hold. Broke can lead people to places they would never have imagined.

Everything that stops us being animals is eroding, washing away like sand, going and gone.

The final step into feral is murder.

There are rules here. There are limits. There are boundari...

everyone lies,

Only, somewhere far inside my spine and deep in the palms of my hands, something hummed; like a sound too low to hear, like a warning, like a cello string when a tuning fork strikes the perfect tone to call it awake.

Various therapists and psychiatrists have diagnosed various things along the way, but what it comes down to is that Dina is no good at life. It takes a knack that she’s never quite got hold of.

It was a bad week to have to trust in either luck or humanity, but if I’m backed into that corner, I’ll go with luck every time.

Post-mortems are brutal things. This is the part that always catches rookies off guard: they expect delicacy, tiny scalpels and precision cuts, and instead they get bread knives sawing fast careless gashes, skin ripped back like sticky paper.

The victims didn’t get to choose whether or not to endure what was done to them. I’m spoiled enough, next to them, without claiming to be too delicate even to endure looking.