57 pages • 1-hour read
Broken Harbour
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Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness, child death, death by suicide, and death.
Chapter 5 Summary
Scorcher and Richie go back to the house and speak to Larry. He has found all the baby monitors, and the cameras are pointed toward some of the holes in the walls to look inside a cupboard and the attic. In the attic, the team also found a large trap that looked “like it could take down a puma” (84).
Scorcher and Richie search Pat and Jenny’s room, discussing the potential suspects. Richie suggests that Pat had a mental illness, but Scorcher says derisively that more likely it was either one of the Spains or someone who targeted them specifically for a reason. They find a small pin-badge that says, “I go to JoJo’s!” hidden in Jenny’s drawer (91).
Cooper calls to update them on Jenny’s injuries, which include stab wounds on her back, small cuts to the face and neck, and an injury from a blunt object on the back of her head. The injuries eliminate Jenny as a suspect because they could not have been self-inflicted. They look at the financial records and find that the Spains were completely broke, with overdue mortgage payments and bills.
One of the floaters calls and tells Scorcher that there’s something he has to see. In the next street over, they have found a “private lair” in one of the abandoned houses, where someone has stashed a sleeping bag, basic toiletries, and binoculars.
Chapter 6 Summary
Scorcher is furious about the fact that it does look like someone with a mental illness targeted the Spains for no reason. He suspects this person will come back, so he sets up a stakeout and orders a dog to get the suspect’s scent. Someone from the computer crime unit calls and tells them the email and browser buster were manually deleted at four o’clock in the morning by someone other than the Spains. He says that he’ll work to recover as many of the files as possible, mentioning that the password was “EmmaJack,” meaning whoever accessed it knew the children’s names.
Larry and his crew have almost finished with the scene and have found several gloved handprints and a shoe print belonging to the suspect. They discuss the violent struggle the blood spatter indicates, and the fact that there are no footprints or indications that anyone attempted to get to the phone in the hallway to call for help. This may mean there were “two separate struggles” (119), indicating that the children were killed first, before one of the parents woke up. They consider the possibility that the children were the actual targets. A decapitated robin was also found outside, and while they speculate about the possibility of a pine marten or mink, Scorcher immediately thinks a human is more likely as they “kill for the sake of it, all the time” (121).
Chapter 7 Summary
Scorcher and Richie arrive at headquarters where Scorcher’s sister, Dina, is waiting for him. Dina is in therapy after having been diagnosed with a mental illness, and she has a pattern of arriving on his or his other sister Geri’s doorstep when things fall apart. Dina is distraught, begging Scorcher to take her away. He tells Richie that he may not be able to make the stakeout and provides instructions.
Scorcher gets Dina back to his apartment then calls Geri, who can’t step in because her husband and children have the stomach flu. Dina calms down after her shower, and she and Scorcher talk. She mentions his ex-wife, Laura, and speculates that the divorce is her fault for needing so much of Scorcher’s attention.
He tells her that Laura left him because she wanted children and he didn’t. She asks why, and he tells her it’s because he sees it as a choice between having kids and doing his job well. She presses him, and he says he can’t take the risk of being a bad father, hinting at their own upbringing. (The narrative later reveals that their mother died by suicide by walking into the ocean at Broken Harbour when Scorcher was 15 and Dina was 6).
Dina says that she heard about the Spains’ murder on the radio and thought she heard his voice. He reluctantly gives her a vague overview of the case. She eventually falls asleep on the sofa. He’s torn about what to do, but he eventually decides to leave her locked inside the apartment while he goes to meet Richie at the postmortems.
Chapter 8 Summary
They attend the postmortems, and Cooper confirms his initial findings: One of the stab wounds killed Patrick, and the children were both smothered with pillows. Richie leaves after becoming overwhelmed during Emma’s postmortem. Scorcher goes outside to speak to him encouragingly, and they return for Jack’s. They field a call from the cybercrime staff member, who is still working on the Spains’ computer. He says he found evidence of participation in some parent online forums.
They then get a call saying that Jenny Spain is awake. They go and inform her about the deaths of her husband and children. She is distraught and confused, but she still seems to be lying when they ask about the holes in the walls.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
This section of the novel develops the relationship between Scorcher and Richie further. Much of the plot action in this section of the novel takes place in conversations between them, during which their differing perspectives on possible motives for the crime and the culpability of the victims come into play. Details about the case and speculations about what might have happened tend to come out through interactions between the two detectives. At the same time, their relationship dynamic develops, further characterizing both individuals. Scorcher is known as a loner, and part of his character trajectory throughout the novel is the gradual realization that he is envious of those who can work closely with a partner. As his relationship with Richie develops, he entertains the idea of working with him long-term.
The dynamic between Scorcher and Richie is, at first, that of mentor and trainee. Scorcher is invested in training Richie, describing a list of “rules” for investigations as they come up. There is also subtle conflict between them when they disagree on elements of the case, raising the theme of The Question of Agency Versus Randomness. Such disagreements characterize both individuals’ worldview and begin to suggest the nuances of the investigation. Richie initially thinks the situation points to an outsider, whereas Scorcher insists that the most obvious answer (in this case, Pat Spain) is usually the correct one. Richie questions Scorcher about the possibility of an outsider, and the latter replies, “When I said outsider, I was talking about the guy who lent Patrick Spain gambling money. They guy Jenny was shagging on the side. Fiona Rafferty. I wasn’t talking about Freddy bloody Krueger” (90). With these comments, Scorcher reveals his underlying assumption that the victims are somehow culpable for their murders. He continues, “The most likely solution here is [… ] your bog-standard murder-suicide” (90), but Richie pushes back against this idea, pointing out that the holes in the walls are not “bog-standard.” The interaction is important because it highlights the case’s ambiguities and develops Scorcher and Richie’s differing attitudes. It therefore sets up the twist that it was someone in the house—but Jenny, not Pat—despite the evidence of Pat’s declining mental state with the holes in the walls. The passage is also significant because it provides detail about Scorcher and Richie’s relationship dynamic. Richie is respectful of Scorcher and wants to learn from him, but he isn’t afraid to question or argue when he disagrees.
This section of the novel is key in developing the theme of The Essential Animal Nature of Humans. As Scorcher thinks about the possibility that the murderer was not known to the family, he reflects on the change of human behavior and the increasing murder rate during his lifetime. He connects his work as a murder detective with a primal impulse to protect humans from their own natures:
On nights when I wonder whether there was any point to my day, I think about this: the first thing we did, when we started turning into humans, was draw a line across the cave door and say: Wild stays out. What I do is what the first men did […] They fought the wolves for the hearth fire (102).
The statement aligns with Scorcher’s original worldview: Murder is usually invited in, and if people work hard to build a good life and protect their family, things usually work out well. The narrative establishes this initial perspective, connecting humans to their earliest separation from the animal world, to establish Scorcher’s belief in cause and effect, which, as the novel continues, will be tested.
The narrative continues to make this connection between human and animal natures through the developing investigation. After they find Conor’s hide and start to try to discern how he is connected to the family, Scorcher notes that they are “looking for the bright lure that had hooked something clawed and simian, brought it following them home” (108). The passage describes the murderer as an amorphous and ominous animal, but this idea, that the murderer was completely unknown to the family and was acting on animal instincts, begins to chip away at Scorcher’s understanding of the victims’ culpability. He conceptualizes the unknown murderer as an undefined animal entity, one that is both threatening to Scorcher as a concept and indicative of the animality of the type of person who would commit a random murder like this one.
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