Never Coming Back Read Online Free PDF Page A

the wind and rain carved in across the bay. Healy watched from the sea wall with the others, until eventually a plainclothes detective came up the beach toward him, flanked by a second. Both were dressed in gray suits and police-issue raincoats.
    â€œCan I have a word, Mr. Healy?” the older one said, a guy in his forties with prematurely silver hair and a salt and pepper beard. It was the type of question that wasn’t really a question. The other one, skinny and tall and in his thirties, said nothing, just followed behind.
    The inside of the village hall was small and cramped, wet footprints crisscrossing at the entrance. A trail of rubber mats had been laid out, branching off in one direction to a forensics setup, where techs had placed evidence bags under the watchful eye of a uniform; and in the other direction to a room beyond a serving hatch that had a table and four chairs in it. Everything smelled musty, of disrepair and age, and beyond the serving hatch it was worse: boiled food and furniture polish.Healy sat down at the table and the younger detective—without even being asked—disappeared back into the hall to get them all a cup of tea.
    â€œYou’ve got him well trained,” Healy said.
    The detective looked up, a wry smile on his face, and leaned back in his seat. “DCI Colin Rocastle,” he said, placing a hand on his chest. “That’s DC Stuart McInnes.”
    â€œColm Healy.”
    â€œI’m told you used to work for the Met.”
    â€œTwenty-six years.”
    â€œThat’s a long time.”
    â€œThe Met would probably say too long.”
    Rocastle smiled. “You don’t look retirement age.”
    But Healy understood:
So, why did you leave?
    â€œI’d just had enough.”
    Rocastle nodded and looked down at his pad, dotted with rain, ink running, notes smudged. He didn’t seem convinced, but he didn’t say anything else. In the silence that followed, Healy almost started talking again, almost started weaving a supplementary lie, but then stopped: these were tactics he knew so well, had used every day of his life for a quarter of a century, but which—five months after he’d been fired from the police force—he’d almost become entrapped by. The long pause. The uncomfortable silence. The need of the witness, or the suspect, to fill gaps in conversation. It was Interviewing 101, part of every manual ever written on police interrogation. What bothered him wasn’t the quiet between them. What bothered him was that he’d been so close to walking into the trap.
    This place is making you soft.
    Rocastle looked up at him, as if sensing he was turning something over, but Healy just stared him out. The lies, the half-truths, they weren’t coming as easily anymore. He was out of shape and he was losing his edge.
    â€œ. . . cross the body?”
    Rocastle was talking. Healy looked at him. “What?”
    â€œHow did you come across the body?”
    Healy started to recount, in detail, how he’d been approached by the man in the pub, then led down to the cove, along with the boy and his father.
    â€œThe guy in the pub’s a fisherman, right?” Rocastle said.
    â€œI don’t know what he does. But he had been down to the cove once already, before he came to get me. He said the boy’s mother had come into the village, and he’d happened to be the first person she found.”
    â€œYou don’t believe him?”
    Healy shrugged. “He wasn’t surprised by what we found there, as if he’d already had the time to process it. How quickly does a person go from shock to acceptance?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI mean, his face didn’t show anything when he got down there a second time. How do you think someone would react the second time they saw a corpse?”
    â€œPeople process things differently.”
    â€œIt was a dead body.”
    â€œSo