Broken Harbour: Dublin Murder Squad: 4. Winner of the LA Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction Book of the Year - Couverture souple

French, Tana

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0340977647 ISBN 13 : 9780340977644

Editeur : Hodder & Stoughton, 2012

Synopsis

In Broken Harbour, a ghost estate outside Dublin - half-built, half-inhabited, half-abandoned - two children and their father are dead. The mother is on her way to intensive care. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case because he is the Murder squad's star detective. At first he and his rookie partner, Richie, think this is a simple one: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, tried to kill his wife Jenny, and finished off with himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once. Scorcher's personal life is tugging for his attention. Seeing the case on the news has sent his sister Dina off the rails again, and she's resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family, one summer at Broken Harbour, back when they were children. The neat compartments of his life are breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk ...

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Let’s get one thing straight: I was the perfect man for this case. You’d be amazed how many of the lads would have run a mile, given the choice—and I had a choice, at least at the start. A couple of them said it to my face: Sooner you than me, man. It didn’t bother me, not for a second. All I felt was sorry for them.
 
Some of them aren’t wild about the high-profile gigs, the high-stakes ones—too much media crap, they say, and too much fallout if you don’t get a solve. I don’t do that kind of negativity. If you put your energy into thinking about how much the fall would hurt, you’re already halfway down. I focus on the positive, and there’s plenty of positive there: you can pretend you’re above this stuff, but everyone knows the big cases are the ones that bring the big promotions. Give me the headline-grabbers and you can keep your drug-dealer stabbings. If you can’t take the heat, stay in uniform.
 
Some of the lads can’t handle kids, which would be fair enough except that, forgive me for asking, if you can’t cope with nasty murders then what the hell are you doing on the Murder Squad? I bet Intellectual Property Rights would love to have your sensitive arse onboard. 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.
 
Because let’s get another thing clear, while we’re at it: I am bloody good at my job. I still believe that. I’ve been on the Murder Squad for ten years, and for seven of those, ever since I found my feet, I’ve had the highest solve rate in the place. This year I’m down to second, but the top guy got a run of slam dunks, domestics where the suspect practically slapped the cuffs on his own wrists and served himself up on a plate with applesauce. I pulled the tough ones, the nobody-seen-nothing junkie-on-junkie drudgery, and I still scored. If our superintendent had had one doubt, one single doubt, he could have pulled me off the case any time he wanted. He never did.
 
Here’s what I’m trying to tell you: this case should have gone like clockwork. It should have ended up in the textbooks as a shining example of how to get everything right. By every rule in the book, this should have been the dream case.
 
* * *
 
The second it hit the floor, I knew from the sound that it was a big one. All of us did. Your basic murder comes straight to the squad room and goes to whoever’s next in the rota, or, if he’s out, to whoever happens to be around; only the big ones, the sensitive ones that need the right pair of hands, go through the Super so he can pick his man. So when Superintendent O’Kelly stuck his head around the door of the squad room, pointed at me, snapped, “Kennedy, my office,” and vanished, we knew.
 
I flipped my jacket off the back of my chair and pulled it on. My heartbeat had picked up. It had been a long time, too long, since one of these had come my way. “Don’t go anywhere,” I said to Richie, my partner.
 
“Oooo,” Quigley called from his desk, mock horrified, shaking a pudgy hand. “Is Scorcher in the shit again? I never thought we’d see the day.”
 
“Feast your eyes, old son.” I made sure my tie was straight. Quigley was being a little bitch because he was next up in the rota. If he hadn’t been a waste of space, O’Kelly might have let the case go to him.
 
“What’ve you done?”
 
“Shagged your sister. I brought my own paper bags.”
 
The lads snickered, which made Quigley purse up his lips like an old woman. “That’s not funny.”
 
“Too close to the bone?”
 
Richie was openmouthed and practically hopping off his chair with curiosity. I flipped my comb out of my pocket and gave it a quick run through my hair. “Am I good?”
 
“Lick-arse,” Quigley said, through his sulk. I ignored him.
 
“Yeah,” Richie said. “You’re grand. What . . . ?”
 
“Don’t go anywhere,” I repeated, and went after O’Kelly.
 
My second hint: he was up behind his desk, with his hands in his trouser pockets, rolling up and down on the balls of his feet. This case had pumped up his adrenaline enough that he wouldn’t fit in his chair. “You took your time.”
 
“Sorry, sir.”
 
He stayed where he was, sucking his teeth and rereading the call sheet on his desk. “How’s the Mullen file coming along?”
 
I had spent the last few weeks putting together a file for the Director of Public Prosecutions on one of those tricky drug dealer messes, making sure the little bastard didn’t have a single crack to slime through. Some detectives think their job’s done the second the charges are filed, but I take it personally when one of my catches wriggles off the hook, which they seldom do. “Good to go. Give or take.”
 
“Could someone else finish it up?”
 
“Not a problem.”
 
He nodded and kept reading. O’Kelly likes you to ask—it shows you know who’s boss—and since he is in fact my boss, I have no problem rolling over like a good little doggie when it makes things run more smoothly. “Did something come in, sir?”
 
“Do you know Brianstown?”
 
“Haven’t heard of it.”
 
“Neither had I. It’s one of those new places; up the coast, past Balbriggan. Used to be called Broken Bay, something.”
 
“Broken Harbor,” I said. “Yeah. I know Broken Harbor.”
 
“It’s Brianstown now. And by tonight the whole country’ll have heard of it.”
 
I said, “This is a bad one.”
 
O’Kelly laid one heavy palm on the call sheet, like he was holding it down. He said, “Husband, wife and two kids, stabbed in their own home. The wife’s headed for hospital; it’s touch and go. The rest are dead.”
 
We left that for a moment, listening to the small tremors it sent through the air. I said, “How did it come in?”
 
“The wife’s sister. They talk every morning, but today she couldn’t get through. That got her het up enough that she got in her car and headed out to Brianstown. Car’s in the driveway, lights are on in broad daylight, no one’s answering the door, she rings the uniforms. They break the door down and surprise, surprise.”
 
“Who’s on scene?”
 
“Just the uniforms. They took one look and figured they were out of their depth, called it straight in.”
 
“Beautiful,” I said. There are plenty of morons out there who would have spent hours playing detective and churning the whole case to shit, before they admitted defeat and called in the real thing. It looked like we had lucked into a pair with functioning brains.
 
“I want you on this. Can you take it?”
 
“I’d be honored.”
 
“If you can’t drop everything else, tell me now and I’ll put Flaherty on this one. This takes priority.”
 
Flaherty is the guy with the slam dunks and the top solve rate. I said, “That won’t be necessary, sir. I can take it.”
 
“Good,” O’Kelly said, but he didn’t hand over the call sheet. He tilted it to the light, inspecting it and rubbing a thumb along his jawline. “Curran,” he said. “Is he able for this?”
 
Young Richie had been on the squad all of two weeks. A lot of the lads don’t like training in the new boys, so I do it. If you know your job, you have a responsibility to pass the knowledge on. “He will be,” I said.
 
“I can stick him somewhere else for a while, give you someone who knows what he’s at.”
 
“If Curran can’t take the heat, we might as well find out now.” I didn’t want someone who knew what he was at. The bonus of newbie wrangling is that it saves you a load of hassle: all of us who’ve been around a while have our own ways of doing things, and too many cooks etcetera. A rookie, if you know how to handle him, slows you down a lot less than another old hand. I couldn’t afford to waste time playing after-you-no-after-you, not on this one.
 
“You’d be the lead man, either way.”
 
“Trust me, sir. Curran can handle it.”
 
“It’s a risk.”
 
Rookies spend their first year or so on probation. It’s not official, but that doesn’t make it any less serious. If Richie made a mistake straight out of the gate, in a spotlight this bright, he might as well start clearing out his desk. I said, “He’ll do fine. I’ll make sure he does.”
 
O’Kelly said, “Not just for Curran. How long since you had a big one?”
 
His eyes were on me, small and sharp. My last high-profile one went wrong. Not my fault—I got played by someone I thought was a friend, dropped in the shit and left there—but still, people remember. I said, “Almost two years.”
 
“That’s right. Clear this one, and you’re back on track.”
 
He left the other half unspoken, something dense and heavy on the desk between us. I said, “I’ll clear it.”
 
O’Kelly nodded. “That’s what I thought. Keep me posted.” He leaned forward, across the desk, and passed me the call sheet.
 
“Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down.”
 
“Cooper and the Tech Bureau are on their way.” Cooper is the pathologist. “You’ll need manpower; I’ll have the General Unit send you out a bunch of floaters. Six do you, for now?”
 
“Six sounds good. If I need more, I’ll call in.”
 
O’Kelly added, as I was leaving, “And for Jesus’ sake do something about Curran’s gear.”
 
“I had a word last week.”
 
“Have another. Was that a bloody hoodie he had on him yesterday?”
 
“I’ve got him out of runners. One step at a time.”
 
“If he wants to stay on this case, he’d better manage a few giant steps before you hit the scene. The media’ll be all over this like flies on shite. At least make him keep his coat on, cover up his tracksuit or whatever he’s honored us with today.”
 
“I’ve got a spare tie in my desk. He’ll be fine.” O’Kelly muttered something sour about a pig in a tuxedo.
 
On my way back to the squad room I skimmed the call sheet: just what O’Kelly had already told me. The victims were Patrick Spain, his wife, Jennifer, and their kids, Emma and Jack. The sister who had called it in was Fiona Rafferty. Under her name the dispatcher had added, in warning capitals, NB: OFFICER ADVISES CALLER IS HYSTERICAL.
 
* * *
 
Richie was up out of his seat, bobbing from foot to foot like he had springs in his knees. “What . . . ?”
 
“Get your gear. We’re going out.”
 
“I told you,” Quigley said to Richie.
 
Richie gave him the wide-eyed innocents. “Did you, yeah? Sorry, man, wasn’t paying attention. Other stuff on my mind, know what I mean?”
 
“I’m trying to do you a favor here, Curran. You can take it or leave it.” Quigley’s wounded look was still on.
 
I threw my coat on and started checking my briefcase. “Sounds like a fascinating chat you two were having. Care to share?”
 
“Nothing,” Richie said promptly. “Shooting the breeze.”
 
“I was just letting young Richie know,” Quigley told me, self-righteously. “Not a good sign, the Super calling you in on your own. Giving you the info behind our Richie’s back. What does that say about where he stands on the squad? I thought he might want to have a little think about that.”
 
Quigley loves playing Haze the Newbie, just like he loves leaning on suspects one notch too hard; we’ve all done it, but he gets more out of it than most of us do. Usually, though, he has the brains to leave my boys alone. Richie had pissed him off somehow. I said, “He’s going to have plenty to think about, over the next while. He can’t afford to get distracted by pointless crap. Detective Curran, are we good to go?”
 
“Well,” Quigley said, tucking his chins into each other. “Don’t mind me.”
 
“I never do, chum.” I slid the tie out of my drawer and into my coat pocket under cover of the desk: no need to give Quigley ammo. “Ready, Detective Curran? Let’s roll.”
 
“See you ’round,” Quigley said to Richie, not pleasantly, on our way out. Richie blew him a kiss, but I wasn’t supposed to see it, so I didn’t.
 
It was October, a thick, cold, gray Tuesday morning, sulky and tantrumy as March. I got my favorite silver Beemer out of the car pool—officially it’s first come first served, but in practice no Domestic Violence kid is going to go near a Murder D’s best ride, so the seat stays where I like it and no one throws burger wrappers on the floor. I would have bet I could still navigate to Broken Harbor in my sleep, but this wasn’t the day to find out I was wrong, so I set the GPS. It didn’t know where Broken Harbor was. It wanted to go to Brianstown.
 
Richie had spent his first two weeks on the squad helping me work up the file on the Mullen case and re-interview the odd witness; this was the first real Murder action he’d seen, and he was practically shooting out of his shoes with excitement. He managed to hold it in till we got moving. Then he burst out with, “Are we on a case?”
 
“We are.”
 
“What kind of case?”
 
“A murder case.” I stopped at a red, pulled out the tie and passed it over. We were in luck: he was wearing a shirt, even if it was a cheapo white thing so thin I could see where his chest hair should have been, and a pair of gray trousers that would have been almost OK if they hadn’t been a full size too big. “Put that on.”
 
He looked at it like he had never seen one before. “Yeah?”
 
“Yeah.”
 
For a moment I thought I was going to have to pull over and do it for him—the last time he had worn one had probably been for his confirmation—but he managed it in the end, give or take. He tilted the sun-visor mirror to check himself out. “Looking sharp, yeah?”
 
“Better,” I said. O’Kelly had a point: the tie made bugger-all difference. It was a nice one, maroon silk with a subtle stripe in the weave, but some people can wear the good stuff and some just can’t. Richie is five foot nine on his best day, all elbows and skinny legs and narrow shoulders—he looks about fourteen, although his file says he’s thirty-one—and call me prejudiced, but after one glance I could have told you exactly what kind of neighborhood he comes from. It’s all there: that too-short no-color hair, those sharp features, that springy, restless walk like he’s got one eye out for trouble and the other one out for anything unlocked. On him, the tie just looked nicked.

Revue de presse :

I've been enthusiastically telling everyone who will listen to read Tana French. She is, without a doubt, my favorite new mystery writer. Her novels are poignant, compelling, beautifully written and wonderfully atmospheric. Just start reading the first page. You'll see what I mean. (Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author of STAY CLOSE)

Broken Harbour is a complex, well crafted psychological thriller as well as an exemplary dissection of the plight of the disappointed and desperate human wreckage washed up in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. As always, French's carefully wrought but seemingly effortless prose is a delight. A hugely impressive and intelligent book, with writing to savour. It confirms French as the First Lady of Irish Crime. (Irish Independent)

Observer Thriller of the Month: 'Enticing, threatening, atmospheric prose' . . . Broken Harbour is a tale about the different facets of obsession and insanity, and it winds up to a finale that is almost too distressing. The best yet of French's four excellent thrillers, it leaves its readers - just like the Spains - "throat-deep in terror"' (Observer)

With Broken Harbour, Tana French should cement her name not only as the queen of Irish crime fiction but the queen of Irish fiction. Broken Harbour sucks you into its murky depths that any good novel - crime or otherwise - should . . . the breadth of character is also astonishing . . . This is a writer working at the height of her powers . . . humour, pathos, well-observed social commentary, but above all a cracking story that keeps you guessing until the end . . . A great Irish novel. (Sunday Independent Dublin)

A gripping story in an atmospheric setting by an author who knows how to grab a reader's interest and never let it go . . . not a word of this densely written, long novel was superfluous - I would have been happy for it to be longer still. (Literary Review)

Gradually, an emotionally jolting story of love, obsession and madness is played out to incredible effect in this searing, intense, complex and intelligent thriller by a new master of the art. (Daily Mail)

A thoroughly mesmerising story. After four novels, French is fast becoming one of the best crime writers around . . . a briliantly twisted tale (Heat)

Finely written psychological crime thriller . . . the characters are subtly drawn and the writer reveals a sense of time and place. (Choice)

Tana French is one of those rare novelists who combine a gift for dialogue and characterisation, with suspense, intrigue and fabulous plotting. And she's a beautiful writer, to boot. A real treat. (Kate Mosse)

A beautifully crafted thriller that exposes the bleak repercussions of destroyed hope in recession-riddled Dublin. The setting for Tana French's stunning thriller is an eerie ghost estate on the outskirts of Dublin, where half-finished houses and abandoned buildings provide a chilling backdrop. (Marie Claire)

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Hodder & Stoughton
• Date d'édition: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0340977647
• ISBN 13: 9780340977644
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 544