Broken Harbour

12

Richie made a big effort, on the drive to Broken Harbor: keeping the chat going, telling me some long rueful story about when he was a uniform and had to deal with two ancient brothers beating the shite out of each other for some reason to do with sheep-the brothers were both deaf, their mountainy accents were too thick for Richie, no one had a clue what was going on and the story ended with them joining forces against the city boy and Richie leaving their house with a walking stick jabbing him in the arse. He was clowning it up, trying to keep the conversation on safe ground. I played along: minor uniform fuckups of my own, things a friend and I shouldn’t have got up to in training college, stuff with punch lines. It would have been a good drive, a good laugh, except for the slim shadow lying between us, dimming the windscreen, thickening whenever we left a silence.

The sub-aqua team had found a fishing boat that had been at the bottom of the harbor for a long time, and they made it clear that that was the most interesting thing they were expecting to find. They were faceless and sleek in their dive suits, turning the harbor military and sinister. We thanked them, shook their slick gloved hands and told them to go home. The searchers, who had been working their way across the estate, were dirty, tired and pissed off: they had found eight knives of varying shapes and sizes, all of which had clearly been planted overnight by teenagers who thought they were hilarious geniuses sticking it to the man, and all of which would have to be checked out. I told the team to move the search up to the hill where Conor had hidden his car. According to his story, the weapons had gone into the water, but Richie was right about this much: Conor was playing games with us. Until we knew exactly what games and why, everything he said needed checking.

A rangy guy with blond dreadlocks and a dusty parka was sitting on the Spains’ garden wall, smoking a rollie and looking dodgy. I said, “Can we help you?”

“Howya,” he said, mashing out his smoke on the sole of his shoe. “Detectives, yeah? Tom. Larry said you wanted me to hang on for you.”

What with lab coats and crime-scene overalls and not dealing with the public, the Bureau has lower sartorial standards than we do, but this guy was still something special. I said, “Detective Kennedy and Detective Curran. You’re here about the animal in the attic?”

“Yeah. Want to come inside, see what’s up?”

He looked like he was stoned off his tits, but Larry is ferociously picky about who he works with, so I tried not to write the kid off yet. “Let’s do that,” I said. “Your boys found a dead robin in the back garden. Did you take a look?”

Tom stashed his cigarette butt in his tobacco pouch, ducked under the tape and shambled up the drive. “Yeah, sure, but not a lot there to see. Lar said you wanted to know was it an animal kill or a human one, but all the insect activity wrecked the wound. All I can tell you is it was kind of ragged, yeah? Like, it wasn’t done by a sharp blade. It could’ve been a serrated blade, probably a dull one, or it could’ve been teeth. No way to tell.”

Richie said, “What kind of teeth?”

Tom grinned. “Not human. What, you were thinking your guy was, like, Ozzy?”

Richie grinned back. “Right. Happy Halloween, I’m too old for bats, here’s a robin.”

“That’s so fucked up,” Tom said cheerfully. Someone had mended the Spains’ door-roughly, with a few screws and a padlock-to keep out ghouls and journalists; he dug into his pocket for the key. “Nah. Animal teeth. We could be looking at a rat, or a fox, except both of those would’ve probably eaten the guts and stuff, not just the head. If it was an animal, I’m gonna say probably a mustelid. Like stoats and mink, right? One of that family. They’re into surplus killing.”

I said, “That was Detective Curran’s guess, too. Would a mustelid fit with whatever was going on in the attic?”

The padlock clicked, and Tom pushed the door open. The house was cold-someone had switched the heat off-and the faint tang of lemon in the air had faded: instead it smelled of sweat, the plasticky chemical scent of crime-scene overalls, and old blood. Cleaning up crime scenes isn’t in our job description. We leave the debris behind, the killer’s and our own, until the survivors either call in a professional crew or do it themselves.

Tom headed for the stairs. “Yeah, I read your vic’s Wildwatcher thread. He’s probably right about ruling out mice and rats and squirrels-they’d have been all over the peanut butter. First thing I thought: hey, any of the neighbors got a cat? A couple of things don’t fit, though. A cat wouldn’t just take the head off that robin, and a cat wouldn’t spend a lot of time hanging around the attic without giving itself away-meowing to get down through the attic hatch, or something. They’re not careful about humans the way wild animals are. Plus, your vic said he smelled something musky, yeah? Musky or smoky? Doesn’t sound like cat spray to me. Most of the mustelids, though: yeah, they’ll let off a musky smell.”

He had dug up a stepladder somewhere and put it on the landing, under the hatch. I found my torch. The bedroom doors were still half open; I caught a glimpse of Jack’s stripped bed.

“Careful,” Tom said, swinging himself up through the hatch. Above us, his torch came on. “Pull left, yeah? Don’t want to hit this.”

The trap was on the attic floor, just a few inches to the right of the hatch. I had only seen it in pictures. Solid, it was more powerful and more obscene, wicked teeth splayed wide, torchlight sliding in smooth arcs along the jaws. One look and you heard it, the savage whisk of air, the bone-crunching thud. None of us moved closer.

A long chain straggled across the floor, anchoring the trap to a metal pipe in a low corner, among dusty candlesticks and outgrown plastic toys. Tom nudged the chain with one toe, keeping his distance. “That,” he said, “that’s a leghold trap. Nasty bastards. A couple of extra quid gets you one with padding or offset jaws, so it’ll do less damage, but this one’s old-style, none of your fancy stuff. The animal goes in after the bait, puts pressure on the pan, the jaws bite down and they don’t let go. After a while the animal bleeds out or dies of stress and exhaustion, unless you come back and get it. It could maybe gnaw its own leg off, but it’d probably bleed to death first. This trap’s got a seven-inch jaw spread: it could handle anything up to, like, a wolf. Your vic wasn’t sure what he was chasing, but he was bloody serious about getting it.”

“What about you?” I said. I wished Pat had had the sense to install a light in his attic. I didn’t want to take my torch beam off that trap-it felt like it might slide closer, in the blackness, till someone misjudged a step-but neither was I crazy about all those invisible corners. I could hear the sea, loud through the thin membrane of roof tiles and insulation. “What do you think he was chasing?”

“OK. First question, right, is access. No problems there.” Tom tilted his chin upwards. At the top of the back wall-above Jack’s bedroom, as far as I could figure-was a patch of weak gray light.

I saw what the building inspector had meant: the hole was a ragged gap that looked like the wall had simply ripped away from the roof. Richie let out a mirthless little breath of something like laughter. “Look at that,” he said. “No wonder the builders won’t take the Gogans’ phone calls. Give me enough Lego and I’d build a better estate myself.”

Tom said, “Most of the mustelids, they’re agile little buggers. They could get over the garden wall and up there, no problem, if they were attracted by escaping heat or cooking smells. Doesn’t look to me like an animal actually made the hole, but an animal could’ve expanded it, maybe. See that?” The top edge of the hole, jagged and crumbling; the nibbled insulation. “Teeth and claws could’ve done that, or it could just be weather wear. No way to know for sure. We’ve got the same kind of thing going on over here, too.”

The bar of torchlight swung down and back, over my shoulder. I almost leaped around, but he was only picking out a roof beam in the far corner. He said, “Cool or what?”

The wood was crisscrossed with a frenzy of deep score-marks, in parallel sets of three or four. Some of them were a foot long. The beam looked like it had been attacked by a jaguar. Tom said, “Those could come from claws, come from some kind of machine, come from a knife or like a piece of wood with nails stuck in it. Take your pick.”

The kid was pissing me off-the whoa-dude-chillax attitude to something that I personally wasn’t taking lightly, or maybe just the fact that everyone assigned to this case appeared to be fourteen and I had missed the memo that said we were recruiting at skateboard parks. I said, “You’re the expert here, old son. You’re the one who’s here to tell us what you think. Why don’t you take your pick.”

Tom shrugged. “If I had to bet, I’d go with an animal. No way I can tell you whether it was ever actually up here, though. The marks could’ve been made back when this was a building site and the beam was exposed, or lying around on the ground outside. That might make more sense, seeing as it’s just the one beam, yeah? If something made them up here, though: whoa. See the spaces between the marks?”

He tilted the torch beam to the gouges again. “They’re like an inch apart. That’s not a stoat or a mink. Something with fuck-off big paws did that. If that’s what your vic was hunting, then the trap size wasn’t overkill after all.”

The conversation was getting to me more than it should have. The hidden corners of the attic felt crammed, seething with near-inaudible ticking noises and pinpoint red eyes; all my instincts were prickle-backed and bare-toothed, coiled to fight. I said, “Is there anything else we need to see up here? Or can we finish this chat somewhere that won’t double my dry-cleaning bill every sixty seconds?”

Tom looked faintly surprised. He examined the front of his parka, which looked like he had been wrestling dust balls. “Oh,” he said. “Right. Nah, that’s all the good stuff: I had a look for scat, hairs, any signs of nesting activity, but no dice. We’ll head downstairs, yeah?”

I went down last, keeping my torch focused on the trap. Richie and I both leaned away from it, involuntarily, on our way through the hatch.

“So,” I said, on the landing, getting out a tissue and starting work on my coat-the dust was nasty stuff, brown and sticky, like some kind of toxic industrial by-product. “Tell me what we’re dealing with.”

Tom got comfortable with his arse propped on the stepladder, held up a hand and started ticking off fingers. “OK, so we’re going with the mustelids, yeah? There’s no weasels in Ireland. We’ve got stoats, but they’re tiny, like half a pound: I’m not sure they could make the kind of noise your guy talked about. Pine martens are heavier, and they’re big-time climbers, but there’s no woodland nearer than that hill down at the end of the bay, so he’d be kind of off his patch, and I couldn’t find any marten sightings around here anyway. A mink, though: a mink could work. They like living near water, so”-he tilted his chin towards the sea-“happy days, yeah? They’re surplus killers, they’re climbers, they’re not scared of anything including humans, and they stink.”

I said, “And they’re vicious little bastards. They’d attack a kid, no problem. If you had one in your house, you’d be bloody serious about getting rid of it. Am I right?”

Tom did something noncommittal with his head. “I guess, yeah. They’re crazy aggressive-I’ve heard of mink going for a fifty-pound lamb, eating straight through the eye socket into the brain, moving on to the next one, taking out a couple of dozen in one night. And when they’re cornered, they’ll take on anything. So yeah, you wouldn’t be too happy about one moving in. I’m not totally convinced that’s what we’ve got, though. They’re maybe the size of a big house cat, tops. No reason why they’d need to enlarge the entry hole, no way they could leave those claw marks, and no reason you’d need a trap that size to catch them.”

I said, “Those aren’t deal breakers. According to you, we can’t assume the animal in the attic was responsible for either the hole or the beam. As for the trap, our vic didn’t know what he was hunting, so he erred on the side of caution. A mink’s still in the running.”

Tom examined me with mild surprise, and I realized there had been a bite to my voice. “Well, yeah. I mean, I can’t even swear anything was ever in here, so nothing’s a deal breaker; it’s all hypothetical, yeah? I’m just saying which pieces could fit where.”

“Great. And plenty of them fit with a mink. Any other possibilities?”

“Your other maybe is an otter. The sea’s right there, and they’ve got massive territories, so one of them could live down on the beach and count this house as part of his range. They’re big buggers, too, like two or three feet long, maybe twenty pounds: an otter could’ve left those marks on the beam, and he might’ve needed to enlarge that access hole. And they can get kind of playful, so those rolling noises would make sense-if it found, like, one of those candleholders or those kiddie toys or something, and it was batting it around the attic floor…”

“Three feet, twenty pounds,” I said, to Richie. “Running around your home, right above your kids. That sounds like something that could get a reasonable, sane guy fairly worried. Am I right?”

“Whoa,” Tom said placidly, holding up his hands. “Slow down. It’s not, like, a perfect fit. Otters scent-mark, all right, but they do it with droppings, and your guy didn’t find any. I had a nose around, and I can’t see any either. None in the attic, none under the attic floor, none in the garden.”

Even outside the attic, the house felt restless, infested. The wall at my back, the thought of how thin the plaster was, made me itch. I said, “And I didn’t smell anything, either. Did you?” Richie and Tom shook their heads. “So maybe it wasn’t droppings that Pat smelled: it was the otter itself, and now it hasn’t been around in a while, so the scent’s faded.”

“Could be. They smell, all right. But… I don’t know, man.” Tom squinted off into the distance, working one finger in between the dreadlocks to scratch his scalp. “It’s not just the scent thing. This whole deal, this isn’t otter behavior. End of story. They’re seriously not climbers-I mean, I’ve heard of otters climbing, but that’s like headline news, you know what I mean? Even if it did, something that size going up and down the side of a house, you’ve gotta figure it’ll get seen. And they’re wild. They’re not like rats or foxes, the urbanized stuff that’s OK with living right up against humans. Otters stay away from us. If you’ve got an otter here, he’s a fucking weirdo. He’s the one that the other otters tell their cubs to stay out of his garden.”

Richie tilted his chin at the hole above the skirting board. “You’ve seen these, yeah?”

Tom nodded. “Freaky or what? The vics had the whole place this fancy, all their shit matched, but they were OK with massive holes in their walls? People are weird.”

“Could an otter have made those? Or a mink?”

Tom squatted on his haunches and examined the hole, cocking his head at different angles, like he had all week. “Maybe,” he said, in the end. “It’d help if we had some debris left, so we could at least tell whether these were made from inside the walls or outside, but your vics were serious about cleanup. Someone’s even sanded down the edges-see there?-so if there were claw marks or tooth marks, they’re gone. Like I said: weird.”

I said, “I’ll ask our next vics to be sure and live in a hovel. Meanwhile, work with what we’ve got.”

“No hassle,” Tom said cheerfully. “Mink, I’ve gotta say they couldn’t do it. They’re not really into digging, unless they have to, and with those little paws…” He waved his hands. “The plaster’s pretty thin, but still, it’d take them ages to get that kind of damage done. Otters dig, and they’re strong, so yeah, an otter could’ve done it, easy. Except somewhere along the way he’d get stuck inside the wall, or he’d chew on an electrical wire and bzzt, otter barbecue. So maybe yeah, but probably no. Does that help?”

“You’ve been a great help,” I said. “Thanks. We’ll let you know if any more info comes in.”

“Oh yeah,” Tom said, straightening and giving me a double thumbs-up and a big grin. “This is some mad shit, yeah? Love to see more.”

I said, “I’m delighted we could make your day. I’ll take that key, if you don’t have plans for it.”

I held out my hand. Tom pulled a tangle of crap out of his pocket, picked out the padlock key and dropped it into my palm. “Pleasure’s all mine,” he said cheerfully, and bounced off down the stairs, dreadlocks flapping.

At the gate, Richie said, “I’d say the uniforms left copies of that key at HQ for us, no?”

We were watching Tom slouch off to his car, which inevitably was a green VW camper van in urgent need of a coat of paint. “They probably did,” I said. “I didn’t want that little tosser bringing his mink-spotting mates on a tour of the scene. ‘Like, dude, how totally cool is that?’ This isn’t bloody entertainment.”

“Techs,” Richie said absently. “You know what they’re like. Larry’s the same, sure.”

“That’s different. A teenager is what this guy’s like. He needs to cop himself on and grow up. Or maybe I’m just not down with the kids these days.”

“So,” Richie said, digging his hands deep into his pockets. He wasn’t looking at me. “The holes, yeah? Not subsidence. And not any animal that your man can put his finger on.”

“That’s not what he said.”

“Just about.”

“‘Just about’ doesn’t count in this game. According to Dr. Dolittle over there, mink and otter are both still in.”

Richie said, “Do you think one of those did the job? Honest to God, like. Do you?”

The air held the first whiff of winter; in the half-houses across the road, the kids trying to get themselves killed were wearing padded jackets and woolly hats. “I don’t know,” I said. “And honest to God, I don’t really care, because even if Pat made the holes, I don’t see how that makes him a homicidal maniac. Like I asked you inside: let’s say you had twenty pounds’ worth of mystery animal running around your attic. Or let’s say you had one of the most crazy aggressive predators in Ireland hanging out right above your son’s bed. Would you be willing to bash a couple of holes in your walls, if you thought that was your best shot at getting rid of this thing? Would that mean there was something wrong with your mind?”

“That wouldn’t be your best shot, but. Poison-”

“Say you’d tried poison, and the animal was too smart to take it. Or, even more likely: say the poison worked just fine, but the animal died somewhere down inside your walls, you couldn’t work out exactly where. Then would you get out the hammer? Would that mean you were fucked-up enough to slaughter your own family?”

Tom started up his van, which belched out a cloud of non-wildlife-friendly fumes, and waved out the window to us as he headed off. Richie waved back automatically, and I saw those skinny shoulders rise and fall in a deep breath. He checked his watch and said, “Have we got time for that word with the Gogans, yeah?”

The Gogans’ front window had sprouted a bunch of plastic bats and, with the level of taste I would have expected, a life-sized plastic skeleton. The door opened fast: someone had been watching us.

Gogan was a big guy, with a wobbly belly hanging over his navy tracksuit bottoms and a preemptive head shave, and he was where Jayden had got that flat-eyed stare. He said, “What?”

I said, “I’m Detective Kennedy, and this is Detective Curran. Mr…?”

“Mr. Gogan. What d’you want?”

Mr. Gogan was Niall Gogan, he was thirty-two, he had an eight-year-old conviction for chucking a bottle through the window of his local, he had driven a forklift in a warehouse off and on for most of his adult life and he was currently out of work, officially anyway. I said, “We’re investigating the deaths next door. Could we come in for a few minutes?”

“You can talk to me here.”

Richie said, “I promised Mrs. Gogan we’d keep her up to speed. She was worried, yeah? We’ve got a bit of news.”

After a moment Gogan stepped back from the doorway. He said, “Make it quick. We’re busy.”

This time we got the whole family. They had been watching some soap opera and eating something involving hard-boiled eggs and ketchup, going by the plates on the coffee table and by the smell. Jayden was sprawled on one sofa; Sinéad was on the other, with the baby propped up in a corner, sucking on a bottle. The kid was living proof of Sinéad’s virtue: the spit of its dad, bald head and pale stare and all.

I moved to one side and let Richie have center stage. “Mrs. Gogan,” he said, leaning over to shake hands. “Ah, no, don’t get up. Sorry to interrupt your evening, but I promised to keep you updated, didn’t I?”

Sinéad was practically falling off the sofa with eagerness. “Have you got the fella, have you?”

I moved to a corner armchair and got out my notebook-taking notes turns you invisible, if you do it right. Richie went for the other armchair, leaving Gogan to shove Jayden’s legs out of the way on the sofa. He said, “We’ve got a suspect in custody.”

“Jaysus,” Sinéad breathed. That avid look was brightening her eyes. “Is he a psychopath?”

Richie shook his head. “I can’t tell you a lot about him. The investigation’s still going on.”

Sinéad stared at him with her mouth open, disgusted. The look on her face said, You made me mute the telly for this?

Richie said, “I figured yous have a right to know this fella’s off the street. As soon as I can give you more, I will. Right now, though, we’re still trying to make sure we can keep him where he is, so we have to play it close to the chest.”

Gogan said, “Thanks. Was that it, yeah?”

Richie made a face and rubbed at the back of his head, looking like a bashful teenager. “Look… OK, here’s the story. I haven’t been doing this long, yeah? But I know one thing for definite: the best witness you can get is a smart young kid. They get everywhere, see everything. Kids don’t overlook stuff, the way adults do: anything that goes on, they spot it. So when I met your Jayden, I was only delighted.”

Sinéad pointed a finger at him and started, “Jayden didn’t see-” but Richie raised his hands to cut her off.

“Give us a sec, yeah? Just so I don’t lose my train of thought. See, I know Jayden thought he saw nothing, or he’d’ve told us last time we were here. But I figured, maybe he was thinking back, over the last couple of days. That’s the other thing about a smart kid: it all stays up here.” He tapped his temple. “I thought maybe, if I was lucky, something might’ve come back to him.”

Everyone looked at Jayden. He said, “What?”

“Did you remember anything that could help us out?”

Jayden took just a second too long to shrug. Richie had been right: he knew something.

“There’s your answer,” Gogan said.

“Jayden,” Richie said. “I’ve got a load of little brothers. I know when a young fella’s keeping something to himself.”

Jayden’s eyes slid sideways and up, to his father, asking.

“There a reward?” Gogan wanted to know.

This wasn’t the moment for the speech about the rewards of helping the community. Richie said, “Nothing so far, but I’ll let yous know if one gets offered. I know you don’t want your young fella mixed up in this-I wouldn’t either. All I can tell you is, the man who did this was going solo: he doesn’t have any pals who might go after witnesses, nothing like that. As long as he’s off the street, your family’s safe.”

Gogan scratched the stubble under his chins and took that in, the unspoken part as well. “He mental, yeah?”

That knack of Richie’s again: little by little, this was easing over the boundary between an interview and a conversation. Richie spread his hands. “Can’t talk about him, man. I’m only saying: you’ve gotta go out of the house sometimes, yeah? Work, interviews, meetings… It was me, I’d be happier leaving my family if I knew this guy was well out of the way.”

Gogan eyed him and kept up the steady scratching. Sinéad snapped, “I’m telling you now, if there’s a mad serial killer running around, you can forget about going to the pub, I’m not staying here on my own waiting for some lunatic to-”

Gogan glanced over at Jayden, who was slouching low on the sofa and watching with his mouth open, and jerked his head towards Richie. “Go on. Tell the man.”

“Tell him what?” Jayden wanted to know.

“Don’t act thick. Whatever he’s asking about.”

Jayden sank deeper into the sofa and watched his toes dig into the carpet. He said, “There was just this guy. Like, ages ago.”

Richie said, “Yeah? When?”

“Before summer. At the end of school.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Remembering the little things. I knew you were a smart one. June, yeah?”

Shrug. “Probably.”

“Where was he?”

Jayden’s eyes went to his father again. Richie said, “Man, you’re doing something good here. You’re not gonna get in trouble.”

Gogan said, “Tell him.”

“I was in Number Eleven. Like, the one that’s attached to the murder house? I was-”

Sinéad demanded, “What the fuck were you doing in there? I’ll bleeding clatter you-”

She saw Richie’s lifted finger and subsided, chin shoved out at an angle that said all of us were in big trouble. Richie asked, “How’d you get into Number Eleven?”

Jayden squirmed. His tracksuit made a farting noise on the fake leather and he snickered, but he stopped when no one joined in. Finally he said, “I was only messing. I had my keys, and… I was just messing, right? I just wanted to see if it worked.”

Richie said, “You tried your keys on other houses?”

Jayden shrugged. “Kind of.”

“Fair play to you. That’s dead clever, that is. We never even thought of that.” And we should have: it would have been right in character for these builders, to pick up a cut-price lot of one-key-fits-all dud locks. “Do they all work on any house, yeah?”

Jayden was sitting up straighter, starting to enjoy how smart he was. “Nah. The front door ones, they’re useless; ours didn’t work on anywhere else, and I tried loads. The back door one, though, right? It opens, like, half the-”

Gogan said, “That’s enough. Shut up.”

“Mr. Gogan,” Richie said. “I’m serious: he’s not in any trouble.”

“D’you think I’m thick? If he’d been in other houses-and he wasn’t-it’d be breaking and entering.”

“I’m not even thinking about that. No one else will, either. Do you know how much of a favor your Jayden is after doing us? He’s helping us put away a murderer. I’m over the moon that he was messing about with that key.”

Gogan stared him out of it. “You try coming back at him with something later on, he’ll take back every word.”

Richie didn’t blink. “I won’t. Believe me. I wouldn’t let anyone else, either. This is way too important.”

Gogan grunted and gave Jayden the nod. Jayden said, “Seriously? You guys never even thought of that?”

Richie shook his head. “Thick,” Jayden said, under his breath.

“This is what I’m talking about: we’re lucky we found you. What’s the story with the back door key?”

“It opens, like, half the back doors around. I mean, obviously I didn’t try anywhere there’s people living”-Jayden tried to look virtuous; no one fell for it-“but the empty houses, like down the road and all up Ocean View Promenade, I got into loads. Easy. I can’t even believe no one else thought of it.”

Richie said, “And it opens Number Eleven. That’s where you met this guy?”

“Yeah. I was in there, like just hanging out, and he knocked on the back door-I guess he came over the garden wall, or something.” He had come from his hide. He had spotted an opportunity. “So I went out to him. I mean, I was bored. There was nothing to do in there.”

Sinéad snapped, “What’ve I told you about talking to strangers? Serve you right if he got you in a van and-”

Jayden rolled his eyes. “Duh, do I look stupid? If he’d tried to grab me, I would’ve run. I was only like two seconds from here.”

Richie asked, “What did yous talk about?”

Jayden shrugged. “Not much. He said what was I doing there. I said just hanging around. He said how did I get in. So I explained about the keys.”

He had been showing off to impress the stranger with his cleverness, the same way he was showing off to impress Richie. “And what did he say?” Richie asked.

“He said that was really smart. He said he wished he had a key like that. He lived down the other end of the estate, only his house was all flooded ’cause the pipes burst or something, so he was looking for an empty house where he could sleep till his got fixed.”

It was a good story. Conor had known enough about the estate to come up with something plausible-Jayden had every reason to believe in burst pipes and repairs that dragged on forever-and he had done it fast. Thinking on his feet, lying plausibly, taking advantage of what came to hand: the guy was good, when he wanted something badly enough.

“Only he said all the houses, either they didn’t have doors and windows or whatever, so they were freezing, or else they were locked up and he couldn’t get into them. He asked could he borrow my key and make a copy, so he could get into somewhere good. He said he’d give me a fiver. I said a tenner.”

Sinéad burst out, “You gave some pervert our key? You fucking thick-”

“I’ll change the lock tomorrow,” Gogan said brusquely. “Shut up.”

Richie said easily, ignoring them both, “Makes sense. So he gave you a tenner and you lent him the key, yeah?”

Jayden kept one eye on his mother for trouble. “Yeah. So?”

“Then what happened?”

“Nothing. He said don’t tell anyone or he could get in trouble with the builders because they own the houses. I said OK.” Another smart call: the builders weren’t likely to be popular with anyone in Ocean View, even the kids. “He said he’d put the key under a rock-he showed me which one. Then he went away. He said thanks. I had to go home.”

“Did you see him again?”

“Nah.”

“Did he get the key back to you?”

“Yeah. The day after. Under the rock, like he said.”

“Do you know does your key fit the Spains’ door?”

Which was a tactful way of putting it. Jayden shrugged, too easily and not vehemently enough for a lie. “Never tried.”

In other words, he hadn’t wanted to risk getting caught by someone who knew where he lived. “Did your man get in by the back door?” Sinéad wanted to know. Her eyes were wide.

“We’re exploring all the possibilities,” Richie said. “Jayden, what did this fella look like?”

Jayden shrugged again. “Thin.”

“Older than me? Younger?”

“I guess the same as you. Younger than him.” Me.

“Tall? Short?”

Shrug. “Normal. Maybe sort of tall, like him.” Me again.

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again, would you?”

“Yeah. Probably.”

I leaned over to my briefcase and found the photo array. One of the floaters had put it together for us that morning, and he had done a good job: six twenty-somethings, all lean, with close-cropped brown hair and plenty of chin. Jayden would need to come down to HQ for a formal lineup, but we could at least eliminate the possibility that he had given his key to some unrelated weirdo.

I passed the array to Richie, who held it out to Jayden. “Is he in here?”

Jayden milked it for all it was worth: tilting the sheet at different angles, holding it up to eye level and squinting at it. Finally he said, “Yeah. This guy.”

His finger was on the middle shot in the bottom row: Conor Brennan. Richie’s eyes met mine for a second.

“Jaysus Christ,” Sinéad said. “He was talking to a murderer.” She sounded somewhere between awestruck and outraged. I could see her trying to work out who to sue.

Richie said, “You’re sure, Jayden?”

“Yeah. Number Five.” Richie reached to take back the array sheet, but Jayden was still staring at it. “Was he the guy that killed them all?”

I saw the quick flicker of Richie’s eyelids. “It’ll be up to the court and the jury to decide what he did.”

“If I hadn’t’ve given him the key, would he have killed me?”

His voice sounded fragile. The ghoulishness was gone; all of a sudden he just looked like a scared little kid. Richie said gently, “I don’t think so. I can’t swear to it, but I’d bet you were never in any danger, not even for a second. Your mammy’s right, though: you shouldn’t talk to strangers. Yeah?”

“Is he gonna come back?”

“No. He’s not coming back.”

Richie’s first slip: you don’t make that promise, at least not when you still need leverage. “That’s what we’re trying to make sure of,” I said smoothly, stretching out a hand for the sheet. “Jayden, you’ve been a great help, and it’ll make a big difference. But we need all the help we can get, to keep this guy where he is. Mr. Gogan, Mrs. Gogan: you’ve also had a couple of days to think back and see whether you know something that might help us. Does anything come to mind? Anything you’ve seen, heard, anything out of place? Anything at all?”

There was a silence. The baby started to make small complaining snuffles; Sinéad reached out a hand, without looking, and jiggled its cushion till it stopped. Neither she nor Gogan was looking at anyone.

In the end Sinéad said, “Can’t think of anything.” Gogan shook his head.

We let the silence grow. The baby wriggled and set up a high, protesting whine; Sinéad picked it up and bounced it. Her eyes across its head were cold, flat as her husband’s, defiant.

Finally Richie nodded. “If you think of anything, yous have my card. Meanwhile, do us a favor, yeah? There’s a few newspapers out there that might be interested in Jayden’s story. Keep it to yourselves for a few weeks, OK?”

Sinéad went lipless with outrage; obviously she had already been planning her shopping spree and deciding where to get her makeup done for the photo shoot. “We can talk to whoever we like. You can’t stop us.”

Richie said calmly, “The papers’ll still be there in a couple of weeks’ time. When we have this fella sorted, I’ll give you the go-ahead and you can give them a ring. Until then, I’m asking you to do us a favor and not impede our investigation.”

Gogan got the threat, even if she didn’t. He said, “Jayden’ll talk to no one. Is that all, yeah?”

He stood up. “One last thing,” Richie said, “and we’ll be out of your way. Can we borrow your back door key for a minute?”

It opened the Spains’ back door like it had been oiled. The lock clicked open and the last link in that chain clicked into place, a taut glinting thread running from Conor’s hide straight into the violated kitchen. I almost raised a hand to high-five Richie, but he was looking out over the garden wall, at the empty window-holes of the hide, not at me.

“And that’s how the blood smears got on the paving stones,” I said. “He went out the same way he came in.”

Richie’s fidgets had come back; his fingertips were drumming a fast tattoo on the side of his thigh. Whatever was bothering him, the Gogans hadn’t fixed it. He said, “Pat and Jenny. How’d they end up here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Three in the morning, both of them in their pajamas. If they were in bed and Conor came after them, how’d they end up struggling down here? Why not in the bedroom?”

“They caught him on the way out.”

“That’d mean he was only after the kids. Doesn’t fit with the confession: he was all about Pat and Jenny. And wouldn’t they have checked on the kids first thing when they heard noise, stayed trying to help them? Would you care about an intruder getting away, if your kids were in trouble?”

I said, “There’s still plenty about this case that needs explaining. I’m not denying that. But remember, this wasn’t just any intruder. This was their best mate-or their ex-best mate. That could have made a difference to the way things went down. Let’s wait and see what Fiona has to tell us.”

“Yeah,” Richie said. He pushed the door open and cold air swept into the kitchen, stripping away the stagnant layer of blood and chemicals, turning the room, for a breath, fresh and stirring as morning. “Wait and see.”

I found my phone and rang the uniforms-they needed to send down whoever was handy with the padlocks, before the Gogans decided to set up a nice little sideline selling souvenirs. While I waited for someone to pick up, I said to Richie, “That was a good interrogation.”

“Thanks.” He sounded nowhere near as pleased with himself as he should have. “We know why Conor made up that story about finding Pat’s key, anyway. Keep Jayden out of trouble.”

“Sweet of him. Plenty of killers feed stray puppies, too.”

Richie was looking out at the garden, which had already started to take on an abandoned feel-weeds pushing up above the grass, a blue plastic bag left to flap from the bush where it had blown. “Yeah,” he said. “Probably they do.” He slammed the back door-the final rush of cold air fluttered the stray papers left to drift on the floor-and turned the key again.

Gogan was waiting at his front door to get his key back. Jayden was behind him, hanging off the door handle. When Richie handed over the key, Jayden squirmed out, under his father’s arm. “Mister,” he said, to Richie.

“Yeah?”

“If I hadn’t have given your man the key. Would they not have got kilt?”

He was staring up at Richie with real, sharp horror in those pale eyes. Richie said, gently but very firmly, “This wasn’t your fault, Jayden. It’s the fault of the person who did the job. End of story.”

Jayden twisted. “But how would he have got in if he didn’t have the key?”

“He would’ve found a way. Some stuff is gonna find a way to happen; once it’s got started, you can’t stop it, no matter what you do. This whole thing got started a long time before you ever met this fella. Yeah?”

The words slid down my skull, dug in at the back of my neck. I shifted, trying to get Richie moving, but he was focused on Jayden. The kid looked about half convinced. After a moment, he said, “I guess.” He slipped back under his father’s arm and vanished into the dim hall. In the moment before Gogan shut the door, he caught Richie’s eye and gave him a small, reluctant nod.

The two sets of neighbors at the bottom of the road were in, this time. They were the Spains, three days back: young couples, little kids, clean floors and saved-for fashionable touches, houses ready and welcoming for visitors who wouldn’t come. None of them had seen or heard anything. We were discreet about telling them to get their back door locks changed: just a precaution, a possible manufacturing fault we had stumbled on in the course of the investigation, nothing to do with the crime.

One of each couple had a job, long hours and long commutes; the other man had been made redundant a week ago, the other woman back in July. She had tried to make friends with Jenny Spain-“We were both stuck out here all day, I thought it’d be less lonely if we had someone to talk to…” Jenny had been polite, but she had kept her distance: a cup of tea always sounded lovely, but she was never free and never sure when she would be. “I thought maybe she was shy, or she didn’t want me to think we were best friends and start dropping in every day, or maybe she was annoyed because I never tried before-I never had a chance, I was barely even home… But if she was worried about… I mean, was it…? Can I ask?”

She had taken it for granted that it was Pat, just like I had told Richie everyone would. I said, “We have someone in custody in connection with the crime.”

“Oh, God.” Her hand went to her husband’s, on the kitchen table. She was pretty, slim and blond and nicely put together, but she had been crying before we arrived. “Then it wasn’t… It was just… some guy? Like a burglar?”

“The person in custody isn’t a resident of the house.”

That made the tears start leaking out again. “Then… Oh, God…” Her eyes went over my shoulder, to the far end of the kitchen. Their daughter was about four, cross-legged on the floor with her smooth fair head bent over a plush tiger, murmuring away. “Then it could’ve been us. There was nothing to stop it being us. You want to say, ‘There but for the grace of God,’ only you can’t, can you? Because that’s like saying God wanted them to be… It wasn’t God. It was just an accident; just luck. Only for luck…”

Her hand was white-knuckled on her husband’s and she was working hard to hold in a sob. It hurt my jaw, how much I wanted to be able to tell her that she was wrong: that the Spains had sent out some call on the sea wind and Conor had answered, that she and hers had made a life that was safe.

I said, “The suspect is in custody. He’ll be staying that way for a long time.”

She nodded, not looking at me. Her face said I didn’t get it.

The husband said, “We were wanting to get out anyway. We’d have been gone months ago, only who’d buy this? Now…”

The wife said, “We’re not staying here. We’re not.”

The sob broke through. Her voice and her husband’s eyes held the same splinter of helplessness. They both knew they were going nowhere.

On our way back to the car, my phone buzzed to tell me I had a message. Geri had rung me just after five.

“Mick… God, I hate to bother you, I know you’re only up to your ears, but I thought you’d want to know-maybe you already do, sure, but… Dina’s after walking out on us. Mick, I’m so sorry, I know we were supposed to be looking after her-and we were, I only left her with Sheila for fifteen minutes while I went down to the shops… Is she after coming to you? I know you’re probably annoyed with me, I wouldn’t blame you, but Mick, if she’s with you, please, could you ring me and let me know? I’m really sorry, honestly, I am…”

“Shit,” I said. Dina had been missing for an hour, minimum. There was nothing I could do about it for at least another couple of hours, until Richie and I were done with Fiona. The thought of what could happen to Dina in that amount of time made me feel like my heart was trying to beat against thick mud. “Shitfucking fuck.”

I didn’t realize I had stopped moving till I saw Richie, a couple of steps ahead, turned around to watch me. He said, “Everything OK, yeah?”

“Everything’s fine,” I said. “It’s not work-related. I just need a minute to clear things up.” Richie opened his mouth to say something else, but before he could get it out I had turned my back on him and was heading back down the footpath, at a pace that told him not to follow.

Geri picked up on the first ring. “Mick? Is she with you?”

“No. What time did she leave?”

“Oh, God. I was hoping-”

“Don’t panic. She could be at my place, or at my work-I’ve been out in the field all afternoon. What time did she leave?”

“Half past four, about. Sheila’s mobile rang and it was Barry, that’s her boyfriend, so she went up to her room just for privacy, and when she came down Dina was gone. She wrote, ‘Thanks, bye!’ on the fridge with her eyeliner, and this outline of her hand underneath, waving, like. She took Sheila’s wallet, it had sixty euros in it, so she’s got money, anyway… As soon as I got home and Sheila told me, I drove all round the neighborhood, looking for her-I swear I looked everywhere, I was going into shops and looking into people’s gardens and all-but she was gone. I didn’t know where else to look. I’ve rung her a dozen times, but her phone’s off.”

“How did she seem, this afternoon? Was she getting pissed off with you, or with Sheila?” If Dina had got bored… I tried to remember whether she had mentioned Jezzer’s surname.

“No, she was better! Much better. Not angry, not scared, not getting wound up-she was even making sense, most of the time. She seemed a bit distracted, like, not really paying attention when you talked to her; like she had something on her mind. That was all.” Geri’s voice was spiraling higher. “She was practically grand, Mick, honest to God she was, I was positive she was on her way up or I’d never have left her with Sheila, never…”

“I know you wouldn’t. I’m sure she’s fine.”

“She’s not fine, Mick. She’s not. Fine is the last thing she is.”

I glanced over my shoulder: Richie was leaning against the car door with his hands in his pockets, facing up into the building sites to give me privacy. “You know what I mean. I’m sure she just got bored and headed to a friend’s house. She’ll turn up tomorrow morning, with croissants to show you she’s sorry-”

“That doesn’t make her fine. Someone who’s fine doesn’t steal her niece’s babysitting money. Someone who’s fine wouldn’t need all of us to walk on eggshells all the-”

“I know, Geri. But that’s not something we can deal with tonight. Let’s just focus on one day at a time. OK?”

Over the estate wall the sea was darkening, rocking steadily towards night; the small birds were out again, scavenging at the water’s edge. Geri caught her breath, exhaled with a shake in it. “I’m so bloody sick of this.”

I had heard that note a million times before, in her voice and in my own: exhaustion, frustration and annoyance, cut with pure terror. No matter how many dozen times you go through the same rigmarole, you never forget that this could be the time when, finally, it ends differently: not with a scribbled apology card and a bunch of stolen flowers on your doorstep, but with a late-night phone call, a rookie uniform practicing his notification skills, an ID visit to Cooper’s morgue.

“Geri,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ve got one more interview to get through before I can leave, but then I’ll sort this out. If I find her waiting for me at work, I’ll let you know. You keep trying her mobile; if you get through, tell her to meet me at work, and give me a text so I know she’s coming. Otherwise, I’ll track her down the second I finish up. OK?”

“Yeah. OK.” Geri didn’t ask how. She needed to believe it would be that simple. So did I. “Sure, she’ll be fine on her own for another hour or two.”

“Get some sleep. I’ll keep Dina at mine tonight, but I might have to bring her over to you again tomorrow.”

“Do, of course. Everyone’s grand, Colm and Andrea haven’t caught it, thank God… And I won’t leave her out of my sight this time. I promise. Mick, I’m really sorry about this.”

“I mean it: don’t worry. Tell Sheila and Phil I hope they’re feeling better. I’ll be in touch.”

Richie was still leaning against the car door, gazing up at the sharp crisscross of walls and scaffolding against a cold turquoise sky. When I beeped the car unlocked, he straightened up and turned. “Howya.”

“Sorted,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I opened my door, but he didn’t move. In the fading light his face looked pale and wise, much older than thirty-one. He said, “Anything I can do?”

In the second before I could open my mouth, it surged up inside me, sudden and powerful as floodwaters and just as dangerous: the thought of telling him. I thought of those ten-year partners who knew each other by heart, what any of them would have said: That girl the other night, remember her? That’s my sister, her mind’s fucked, I don’t know how to save her… I saw the pub, the partner getting the pints in and tossing out sports arguments, dirty jokes, half-true anecdotes, till the tension fell out of your shoulders and you forgot your mind was shorting out; sending you home at the end of the night with a hangover in the making and the feeling of him solid as a rock face at your back. The picture was so clear I could have warmed my hands at it.

The next second I got my grip back and it turned my stomach, the thought of splaying my private family business in front of him and begging him to give me a pat on the head and tell me it would all be OK. This wasn’t some ten-year best buddy, some blood brother; this was a near stranger who couldn’t even be arsed sharing whatever had struck him in Conor Brennan’s flat. “No need,” I said crisply. I thought, briefly, of asking Richie to interview Fiona on his own, or asking him to type up the day’s report and postponing Fiona till morning-Conor wasn’t going anywhere-but both of those felt disgustingly pathetic. “The offer’s appreciated, but I’ve got everything under control. Let’s go see what Fiona has to tell us.”