Broken Harbour

by Tana French

I’m a big believer in development—blame the property developers and their tame bankers and politicians for this recession if you want, but the fact is, if it wasn’t for them thinking big, we’d never have got out of the last one. I’d rather see an apartment block any day, all charged up with people who go out to work every morning and keep this country buzzing and then come home to the nice little places they’ve earned, than a field doing bugger-all good to anyone except a couple of cows.

I hope this entire book features this guy crashing and burning and his "partner" emerging victorious.

“Ms. Rafferty,” I said, in my best gentle-but-firm, “I’m pretty sure they’re not just hurt. We’ll let you know straightaway if anything changes, but right now I need you to stay with me. Every second counts, remember?”

I guess they didn't know much about trauma and memory. Or this guy doesn't anyway.

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.

“So would I. And he’s never been in the system before—his prints came up clean, remember. He probably doesn’t even know anyone who’s ever been in the system. He’s got to be disoriented and scared. That’s good stuff, but we want to save it for when we need it. We want to get him as relaxed as we can, see how far that takes us, then scare the living shite out of him when it comes to the big push. The good thing is, he won’t walk out on us before then. Middle-class guy, probably got respect for authority, doesn’t know the system . . . He’ll stay till we kick him out.”

This sounds naive, considering how calm and silent he's been since they caught him. That doesn't seem quite normal. I'm trying to think what I'd do. I guess ask why they were arresting me, ask for an attorney, etc.

Conor Brennan had tried so hard to deface him, weld a killer’s mask onto his wrecked flesh for all eternity.

No he didn't.

I said, “That must have been infuriating. Your oldest friends, your own sister, and they thought everything you wanted was worthless.”

Maybe I'm reading too slow right now, but this feels like a TERRIBLE interview. She keeps being totally reasonable, and Kennedy keeps saying some version of "but surely you must be unreasonable about this." I'm so tired of reading it.

a bunch of National Geographic animal documentaries online,

Which animal documentaries?

If you’re good at this job, and I am, then every step in a murder case moves you in one direction: towards order. We get thrown shards of senseless wreckage, and we piece them together until we can lift the picture out of the darkness and hold it up to the white light of day, solid, complete, clear. Under all the paperwork and the politics, this is the job; this is its cool shining heart that I love with every fiber of mine. This case was different. It was running backwards, dragging us with it on some ferocious ebb tide. Every step washed us deeper in black chaos, wrapped us tighter in tendrils of crazy and pulled us downwards.

Finally, and about bloody time, this case was starting to fit itself into one of the templates, the oldest and best-worn one of all.

He needs "templates" so badly. It's a blind spot. But I guess it's fine most of the time since he works in an institution that also likes templates better than truth.

Jenny didn’t stop. “You know what it was like? It was like being in a blizzard. You can’t see what’s right in front of your face, you can’t hear anything except this white-noise roar that never lets up, you don’t have a clue where you are or where you’re heading, and it keeps just coming at you from every direction, just coming and coming and coming. All you can do is keep on taking the next step—not because it’ll actually get you anywhere, just so that you don’t lie down and die. That was what it was like.”

I get it

Just about everything in this life is treacherous, ready to twist and shape-shift at any second; it seemed to me that the whole world would be a different place if you had someone you were certain of, certain to the bone, or if you could be that to someone else. I know husbands and wives who are that to each other. I know partners.

All year long, I had watched and worked so hard; I thought I deserved this. I had forgotten that God, or the world, or whatever carves the rules in stone, doesn’t give you time off for good behavior.

So what? It exploded out of me, took all my breath and left me panting. I wanted to punch her out of my way, out of my world. I’m so fucking sick of taking care of you! You’re the one who’s supposed to be taking care of me!

Deep down, I didn’t blame them for asking. It looked like plain salacious nosiness, but even then I understood that it was more. They needed to know. Like I told Richie, cause and effect isn’t a luxury. Take it away and we’re left paralyzed, clinging to some tiny raft lurching wild and random on endless black sea. If my mother could go into the water just because, then so could theirs, any night, any minute; so could they. When we can’t see a pattern, we fit pieces together until one takes shape, because we have to. I fought them because the pattern they were seeing was the wrong one, and I couldn’t make myself tell them any other way. I knew they were right about this much: things don’t happen for no reason. I was the only one in the world who knew that the reason was me.