Broken Harbour

15

I slept on the sofa, to make sure that even the quietest turn of a key in the lock would wake me. Four or five times that night I found Dina: curled asleep on my father’s doorstep, shrieking with laughter at a party while someone danced barefoot to wild drums; wide-eyed and slack-jawed under a glassy film of bathwater, fan of hair swaying. Every time I woke up already on my feet and halfway to the door.

Dina and I had fought before, when she was on a bad one. Never like this, but every now and then something I thought was innocuous had sent her whirling out in a fury, usually throwing something at me on her way out the door. I had always gone after her. Mostly I caught her within seconds, dawdling outside for me. Even the few times when she had given me the slip, or fought me and screamed till I backed off before someone called the police and she landed in a locked ward, I had followed and searched and phoned and texted till I got hold of her and coaxed her back to my place or Geri’s. That was all she wanted, deep down: to be found and brought home.

I got up early, showered, shaved, made some breakfast and a lot of coffee. I didn’t ring Dina. Four times I had a text half typed, but I deleted them all. On my way to work I didn’t detour past her flat, or risk crashing the car while I craned my neck at every slim dark-haired girl I passed: if she wanted me, she knew how to find me. My own daring left me breathless. My hands felt shaky, but when I looked at them on the wheel they were steady and strong.

Richie was already at his desk, with his phone clamped to his ear, swinging his chair back and forth and listening to perky hold music loud enough that I could hear it too. “Pest-control companies,” he said, nodding at a printout in front of him. “Tried all the numbers Pat got off the discussion board: no joy. This here, this is every exterminator in Leinster, so we’ll see what shows up.”

I sat down and picked up my phone. “If you get nothing, we can’t assume that means there’s nothing to get. A lot of people out there are working off the books these days. If someone didn’t declare a job to the Revenue, you think he’s going to declare it to us?”

Richie started to say something, but then the hold music cut out and he swung around to his desk. “Good morning, this is Detective Garda Richard Curran, I’m looking for some information…”

No message from Dina-not that I had expected one, she didn’t even have my work number, but a part of me had been hoping anyway. One from Dr. Dolittle and his dreadlocks, saying he had checked out the home-and-garden board and, whoa, some mad shit there or what? According to him, the lined-up skeletons sounded like something a mink would be into, but the idea of an abandoned exotic pet was also way cool, and there were totally guys out there who would smuggle in a wolverine and worry about the pet-care angle later. He was planning to have a wander around Brianstown over the weekend and see if he could find any signs of “something fun.” And a message from Kieran, who at eight on a Friday morning had already started pumping his world full of drum and bass, telling me to call him.

Richie hung up, shook his head at me and started dialing again. I rang Kieran back.

“Kemosabe! Hang on there.” A pause, while the music went down to a volume that meant he barely even had to shout. “I checked out your guy Pat-the-lad’s account on that home-and-garden board: no private messages, in or out. He could have deleted them, but to check that out, we’d need a subpoena to the site owners. Basically, that’s what I called to tell you: we’re running out of road here. The recovery software’s finished doing its thing, and we’ve checked out everything it gave us. No more posts about weasels or whatever, anywhere that’s in the computer history. Literally the most interesting thing we’ve got is some idiot forwarding Jenny Spain an e-mail about non-nationals kidnapping a kid in a shopping center and cutting its hair in the jacks, which is only interesting because it’s like the world’s oldest urban legend and I can’t believe people actually still fall for it? If you really want to know what was living in your guy’s attic, and you figure he told the net, then your next step is to put in a request to the vics’ service provider and keep your fingers crossed they hold info on visited sites.”

Richie hung up again; he kept one hand on the phone, but instead of redialing he watched me, waiting. “We don’t have time for that,” I said. “We’ve got less than two days to charge Conor Brennan or release him. Anything on his computer that I should know about?”

“Not so far. No links to the vics-none of the same websites, no e-mails to or from. And I’m not seeing any deletions over the last few days, so it’s not like he wiped the good stuff when he knew we were coming-unless he wiped it so well I can’t even see that, and excuse me if this sounds arrogant but I don’t think so? Basically, he’s barely even touched his machine in the last six months. Occasionally he checked his e-mail, he did some design upkeep on a couple of websites, and he watched a bunch of National Geographic animal documentaries online, but that’s about it. Real thrill seeker, this guy.”

“Right,” I said. “Keep looking through the Spains’ computer. And keep me posted.”

I could hear the shrug in Kieran’s voice. “Sure, Kemosabe. One needle in a haystack coming up. Catch you later.”

For a treacherous second I thought of leaving it. Whatever else Pat had said about his vermin problem, out there in cyberspace, what difference did it make? All it would do was give people yet another excuse to write him off as some nutter. But Richie was watching me, hopeful as a puppy watching his leash, and I had promised. “Stay on that,” I said, nodding at the pest-control list. “I’ve got an idea.”

Even under stress, Pat had been an organized guy, efficient. In his place, I wouldn’t have bothered to re-type my whole saga when I switched discussion boards. Pat might not have been a computer genius, by Kieran’s standards, but I was willing to bet he had known how to copy and paste.

I pulled up his original posts, the Wildwatcher one and the home-and-garden one, and started pasting sentences into Google. It only took four tries before a post by Pat-the-lad came up.

“Richie,” I said. He was already scooting his chair over to my desk.

The website was an American one, a forum for hunters. Pat had shown up there on the last of July, almost two weeks after he flamed out on the home-and-garden site: he had spent a while licking his wounds, or searching for the right place, or it had just taken that long for his need for help to reach a pitch he couldn’t ignore.

Not much had changed. I hear it most days but no real pattern-sometimes could be 4/5 times in a day/night, sometimes nothing for 24 hours. Have had a video baby monitor rigged up in the attic for a while now but no joy-am wondering if maybe the animal’s actually in the space between the attic floor/the ceiling underneath-tried to check w torch but can’t see anything. So I’m planning to leave the attic hatch open and point another video monitor at the opening, see if this thing gets ballsy + decides to go exploring. (I’ll put chicken wire over the hatch so it doesn’t show up on one of my kids pillow, don’t worry, I’m not totally mental… yet anyway!)

“Hang on,” Richie said. “Back on that home-and-garden site, Pat went apeshit about how he didn’t want Jenny knowing any of this; he didn’t want her scared. Remember? Now, but, he’s putting up that monitor on the landing. How was he planning on hiding that from her?”

“Maybe he wasn’t. Married couples do talk occasionally, old son. Maybe Pat and Jenny had a good heart-to-heart somewhere along the way, and she knew all about the thing in the attic.”

“Yeah,” Richie said. One of his knees had started jiggling. “Maybe.”

But since the first monitor hasn’t been a big success I was wondering if anyone has any other ideas? Like species it could be or bait it might go for? PLEASE for Christ’s sake don’t tell me to use poison or get an exterminator or any of that shit because those are out, end of story. Apart from that any ideas welcome!!!

The hunters gave him the usual list of suspects, this time with a heavy slant towards mink-they agreed with Dr. Dolittle about the lined-up skeletons. When it came to solutions, though, they were a lot more hard-core than the other boards. Within a few hours, one guy had told Pat: OK so fuck this mousetrap bullshit. Time to grow a pair and break out the serious weaponry. What you need here is a real trap. Check this out.

The link went to a site like a trapper’s candy store, pages and pages of traps aimed at everything from mice to bear and everyone from animal lovers to full-on sadists, each one described in loving, semi-comprehensible jargon. Three choices. 1. You can go for a live trap, the ones that look like wire cages. Won’t hurt your target. 2. Go for a foothold trap, the one you probly picture from the movies. Will hold your target till you get back to it. Watch out though. Depending what you’ve got, the animal could make a lot of noise. If that would bug your wife or kids then maybe forget it. 3. Go for a Conibear trap. Breaks the target’s neck, kills it pretty much right away. Whatever you pick you want like a four inch jaw spread. Good luck. Watch your fingers.

Pat came back sounding a lot happier: again, the prospect of a plan had made all the difference. Man thanks a mil, you’re saving my arse here, I owe you big time. Think I’m going to go w the foothold-sounds weird but I don’t want to kill this thing, at least not till I’ve had a good look at it, I’ve got a right to come face to face with it after all this. At the same time though after all the hassle it’s given me, I don’t feel like going all out to make sure I don’t hurt a hair on its precious little head! To be honest I’m like fuck it, I’ve spent long enough taking shit from this thing, now its my turn to give it some shit for a change and I’m not going to waste my chance right?

Richie’s eyebrows were up. He said, “Lovely.”

I almost wished I had given in to temptation and left this whole thing to Kieran. I said, “Trappers use leghold traps all the time. It doesn’t make them psycho sadists.”

“You remember what Tom said, yeah? You can get ones that do less damage, don’t hurt the animal as much, but Pat didn’t go for one of those. Tom said they cost a couple of quid extra; I figured it was that. Now…” Richie sucked on his teeth and shook his head. “I’m thinking I was wrong, man. It wasn’t the money. Pat wanted to do damage.”

I scrolled down. Someone else wasn’t convinced: Foothold is a dumb idea for indoors. Think it through OK. What are you gonna do with your catch?? Fine you want to look at it or whatever but then what?? You can’t just pick it up and take it outside or it’s gonna take your hand off. Out in the woods you just shoot it but I don’t recommend that in your attic. Doesn’t matter how great your old lady is… women don’t like bullet holes in their pretty ceilings.

That didn’t faze Pat. Have to be honest you’re right, hadn’t even thought about what I’m gonna do with it once I’ve caught it! Just been focusing on how it’ll feel when I go up there and see it in the trap-I swear I can’t remember the last time I was looking forward to something this much, its like being a little kid waiting for Santa!! Not sure what I’ll do after that. If I decide to kill it I could just hit it on the head with something hard I guess?

“‘Hit it on the head with something hard,’” Richie said. “Like someone did to Jenny.”

I kept reading. Otherwise if I decide to let it go, I could leave it in the trap till it gets too worn out to attack me, then wrap a blanket or something around it + take it out into the hills + release it there right? How long would it take for it to wear itself out enough to be harmless? Like a few hours or like a few days? My spine twitched. I felt Richie’s eyes on me-Pat, the pillar of society, daydreaming about something dying a three-day death above his family’s heads. I didn’t look up.

The guy who had doubts about the foothold trap still wasn’t convinced: No way to tell. Way too many varaibles. Depends what the catch is, when it last ate/drank, how much damage the trap does, whether it tries to chew off its paw to escape. And even if it looks safe it could come round one last time when you try to release it and take a chunk out of you. Seriously bro… I’ve been doing this a long time and I’m telling you this is a shit idea. Get something else. Not a foothold.

It was a couple of days before Pat came back to answer that. Too late, already ordered it! Went for something a little bigger than you guys recommended, I figure what the hell, better safe than sorry am I right? Little faces, laughing and rolling. I’ll just have to wait till I catch the animal + figure out what to do with it then. Probably just watch it for a while + see if inspiration strikes.

This time Richie didn’t look up. The same skeptic pointed out that this wasn’t meant to be a spectator sport: Look a trap isn’t for torturing. Any decent trapper picks up his catch as soon as he can. Sorry bro but this is fucked up. Whatever’s in your walls, you got way bigger problems.

Pat didn’t care. Yeah no shit, but this is the one I’m working on now OK? Who knows, maybe when I see the animal in there I’ll feel sorry for it. Seriously doubt it though. My son is three, he’s heard it a few times, he’s a gutsy little fella doesn’t scare easy but he was terrified. Today he said to me You can go kill it with a gun Daddy, right? What was I supposed to say to him, No, sorry son, I can’t even get a look at the little fucker? I said Yeah course I will. So yeah I’m kind of having a hard time picturing me getting up much pity for whatever this is. I never deliberately hurt anything in my life (well, my little brother when we were kids, but hey who hasn’t) but this is different. If you don’t get that then tough.

The trap took a while to arrive, and the wait got to Pat. On the twenty-fifth of August he was back: OK I kind of have a problem (well, more of a problem). This thing has got out of the attic. Its going down inside the walls. Started hearing it in the sitting room, always in one specific spot by the sofa, so I made a hole in the wall right there + set up a monitor. Nothing, just the thing moved to the hallway wall-when I set up another monitor there it moved to the kitchen-etc etc etc. I swear its like its deliberately messing with my head for a laugh-I know it cant be but thats how it feels. Either way its definitely getting braver. In some ways I kind of think thats good, cos if it comes out of the walls into the open I’m more likely to get a look at it, but should I be worried that its going to attack us??

The guy who had suggested the trap website was impressed. Jesus! Holes in the walls? Your old lady is out of this world. If I told my girl I wanted to bust up the walls, my sh!t would be out on the street.

Pat was pleased-a row of grinning green faces. Yeah man, she’s a total gem all right. One in a million. Shes not too pleased, specially since she STILL hasn’t heard any of the really serious noises, just the odd bit of scraping that could be a mouse or a magpie or anything. But she’s like OK, if thats what you need to do then go for it. Now you see why I HAVE to catch this thing yeah? She deserves it. Actually she deserves a mink coat not a half dead mink/whatever, but if thats the best I can get her then shes bloody well getting it!

“Look at the times,” Richie said quietly. His fingertip hovered by the screen, moved down the time stamps beside the posts. “Pat’s up awful late, isn’t he?” The board was set to American West Coast time. I did the maths: Pat was posting at four in the morning.

The skeptic wanted to know, What’s all this shit with baby monitors? Believe me I’m not some expert on those but they don’t record right? So the animal could like dance a polka in your attic but if you’ve gone to take a leak and your not actually there to see it then tough shit. Why don’t you get video cameras and get some actual footage??

Pat didn’t like that. Because I don;t WANT “actual footage.” OK? I want to actually catch the actual animal actually in my actual house. I want to actually show it to my actual wife. Anyone can get footage of some animal, YouTube is full of it. I need THE ANIMAL. Anyway I didnt ask you for advice on my technology OK? Just on what to do about this thing being in the walls. If you dont feel like helping me out thwn fine that’s your perogative, I’m sure there are plenty of other threads that could use your genius.

The trap guy tried to soothe him down. Hey man, don’t worry about it getting into the walls. Just fix up the holes and forget the whole thing till you get your trap. Till then anything you can do is just pissing into the wind. Just chill and wait.

Pat didn’t sound convinced. Yeah maybe. I’ll keep you updated. Thanks.

Richie said, “He didn’t fix up the holes, though, did he? If he’d had chicken wire or something over them, we’d have seen the marks. He left them open.” He left the rest unsaid: somewhere along the way, Pat’s priorities had shifted.

I said, “Maybe he moved furniture in front of them.” Richie didn’t answer.

On the last of August, Pat’s trap finally arrived. Got it today!!!! Its a beauty. I actually went for one of the old-style ones with the teeth-hey, what’s the point of getting a trap if you can’t get the kind you saw in movies when you were a kid? I want to just sit here stroking it like some James Bond baddy-more laughing faces-but I better get it set up before my wife gets home. She’s a bit dodgy about the idea already + it looks pretty lethal which I think is a good thing but she might not feel the same way! Any advice?

A couple of people told him not to get caught with that thing: apparently they were illegal in most of the civilized world. I wondered how it had made it through Customs. Probably the seller had marked it “antique ornament” and kept his fingers crossed.

Pat didn’t seem worried. Yeah well, I’ll take my chances-its still my house (up until the bank comes and takes it back) and Im protecting it, I can put out any trap I want. I’ll let you know how it goes down. Can’t WAIT for this. I was so tired that my senses were getting their wires crossed. The words leapt off the screen like a voice in my ears, young, intent, overexcited. I caught myself leaning closer, listening.

He came back a week later, but this time he was sounding a lot more subdued. OK tried raw mince for bait, no dice. Even tried raw steak cos its bloodier so I thought maybe that might help but no. Left it there for three days so it would smell good + rank, nothing. Kind of starting to get worried-not sure what the hell Im going to do if this doesnt pan out. Going to try live bait next. Seriously guys please keep your fingers crossed that it works OK?

OK heres the other weird thing. This morn when I went up to take the steak away (before it could get rank enough that my wife smelled it, that wouldn’t go down well) there was this little pile of stuff in a corner of the attic. Six pebbles, smooth ones like they came off the beach, and three seashells, old white dried out ones. I’m 110% sure they were never there before. What the fuck?!

Nobody on the board seemed to care. Their general opinion was that Pat was putting way too much time and thought into this and who cared how a few rocks had got into his attic? The skeptic wanted to know why the whole saga was still going on: Seriously dude why are you making this into some big soap opera? You need to put down some damn poison go for a couple beers and forget the whole thing. You could have done that like months ago. Is there some huge secret reason why you don’t just do it?

At two the next morning, Pat came back and blew his top. OK you want to know why I wont use poison, heres why. My wife thinks Im insane. OK? She keeps saying Oh no I dont you’re just stressed you’ll be fine, but I know her + I can tell. She doesnt get it, she tries but she thinks I’m inagining this whole thing. I need to show her this animal, just hearing the noises isn]t going to be good enough at this stage, she has to SEE it in the actual flesh so she knows I’m not a) hallucinating the whole thing or b) exagerating something stupid like mice or whatever. Otherwise shes goign to leave me and take the kids with her. NO WAY AM I LETTING THAT AHPPEN. Her + those kids are everything Ive got. If I put down poison then the animal could go off somewhere to die + my wife will never know it actually existed, she’ll just think I was crazy + then I got better + she]ll always be watching for the next time I go off the rails. Before you say anything YES Ive thought of boarding up the hole before I put down poison, but then what if I shut it out instead of in and it fucks off for good???? So since you ask I’m not using poison because I love my family. Now FUCK OFF.

A tiny hiss of breath from Richie, leaning in close beside me, but neither of us looked up. The skeptic posted a smiley rolling its eyes; someone else posted one tapping its temple; someone else told Pat to take the blue ones before the red ones. Trap Guy told them all to back off: You guys, quit it. I want to know what he’s got. If you piss him off so bad he never comes back then what? Pat-the-lad, ignore these dumb shits. Their mamas never taught them manners. You get yourself some live bait and give that a try. Mink like killing. If it’s a mink it won’t be able to pass that up. Then come back and tell us what you got.

Pat was gone. Over the next few days there was some banter about Trap Guy going over to Ireland to catch this thing himself, some semi-sympathetic speculation about the state of Pat’s mind and his marriage (This type shit is why I stay single), and then everyone moved on. The exhaustion was making things sideslip inside my mind: for a jumbled split second I worried about Pat not posting, wondered if we should go out to Broken Harbor and check on him. I found my water bottle and pressed its cold side against my neck.

Two weeks later, on the twenty-second of September, Pat was back and he was in much worse shape. PLEASE READ!!! Had some trouble getting live bait-finally got to a pet shop + got a mouse. Stuck it down on one of those glue baords + put it in the trap. Poor little bastard was squeaking like crazy, felt like shit about it but hey a guy’s gotta do what a guys gotta do right?? I watched the monitor practically EVERY SINGLE SECOND ALL BLOODY NIGHT-swear on my mothers grave I only closed my eyes for like twnety minutes around 5 am, didn’t mean to but I was shattered + just nodded off. When I woke up IT WAS GONE. Mouse + glue trap GONE. Foothold trap WAS NOT TRIGGGERED it was STILL WIDE OPEN. Soon as my wqife took the kids out this morning for school I went up there to chekc + yeah trap is open + mouse/glue board are NOWHERE IN THE ATTIC. Like what the fuck??!!? How the hell could ANYTHING do that??? And what thje fuck do I do now??? I cant tell my wife this, she doesnt understnad-if I tell her shes gonna think I’m a lunatic. WHAT DO I DO????

I had a sudden wild flood of nostalgia for just three days earlier, that first walk-through of the house, when I had thought Pat was some loser stashing drugs in his walls and Dina was safely making sandwiches for suits. 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.

Dr. Dolittle and Kieran the techie were having a wonderful time-insanity always seems like a great big adventure when all you have to do is dabble a fingertip here and there, gawk at the mess, wash off the residue in your nice safe sane home and then go to the pub and tell your friends the cool story. I was having a lot less fun than they were. It slid into my mind, with a quick pinch of unease, that Dina might have had something almost like a point about this case, even if it wasn’t in the way she thought.

Most of the hunters had given up on Pat and his saga-more head-tapping smileys, someone wanting to know whether it was a full moon over in Ireland. A few of them started taking the piss: Oh shit man I think u have 1 of these!!!! Whatever u do don’t let it near water!!! The link went to a picture of a snarling gremlin.

Trap Guy was still trying to be reassuring. Hang in there, Pat-the-lad. You just think about the upside. At least now you know what kind of bait it goes for. Next time just stick it down harder. You’re getting there.

One more thing to think about. I’m not accusing anyone of anything, just thinking here-how old are your kids? Are they old enough to think that messing with their daddy could be a funny joke?

At 4:45 the next morning Pat said, Never mind. Thanks man I know youre’ trying to help but this trap thing isnt working. Got no clue what to try next. Basically I’m fucked.

And that was the end of that. The regulars played “What’s in Pat-the-lad’s attic?” for a while-pictures of Sasquatch, leprechauns, Ashton Kutcher, the inevitable Rickroll. When they got bored, the thread sank.

Richie leaned back from the computer, rubbing a crick out of his neck, and glanced at me sideways. I said, “So.”

“Yeah.”

“What do you make of that?”

He chewed his knuckle and stared at the screen, but he wasn’t reading; he was thinking hard. After a moment he took a long breath. “What I make of that,” he said, “is that Pat had lost it. Doesn’t even matter any more whether there actually was something in his gaff or not. Either way, he was well off the rails.”

His voice was simple and grave, almost sad. I said, “He was under a lot of stress. That’s not necessarily the same thing.”

I was playing devil’s advocate; underneath, I knew. Richie shook his head. “No, man. No. That there”-he flicked the edge of my monitor with a fingernail-“that’s not the same guy from this summer. Back in July, on that home-and-garden board, Pat’s all about protecting Jenny and the kids. By the time he gets to this stuff here, he doesn’t give a damn if Jenny’s scared, doesn’t give a damn if this yoke can get at the kids, as long as he gets his hands on it. And then he’s going to leave it in a trap-a trap he picked specifically to hurt it as much as possible-and he’s going to watch it take its time dying. I don’t know what the doctors would call it, but he’s not OK, man. He’s not.”

The words rang like an echo in my head. It took me a moment to remember why: I had said them to Richie, just two nights before, about Conor Brennan. My eyes wouldn’t focus; the monitor looked off-kilter, like a dense lump of dead weight sending the case rocking at dangerous angles. “No,” I said. “I know.” I took a swig of water; the cold helped, but it left a foul, rusty aftertaste on my tongue. “You need to bear in mind, though, that that doesn’t necessarily make him a murderer. There’s nothing in there about hurting his wife or children, and plenty about how much he loves them. That’s why he’s so set on getting his hands on the animal: he thinks that’s the only way to save his family.”

Richie said, “‘It’s my job to take care of her.’ That’s what he said, on that home-and-garden board. If he felt like he couldn’t do that any more…”

“‘What the fuck do I do now?’” I knew what came next. The thought rolled through my stomach with a dull heave, as if the water had been tainted. I closed my browser and watched the screen flash to a bland, innocuous blue. “Finish your phone calls later. We need to talk to Jenny Spain.”

She was alone. The room felt almost summery: the day was bright, and someone had opened the window a crack, so that a breeze toyed with the blinds and the fug of disinfectant had dissipated to a faint clean tang. Jenny was propped up on pillows, staring at the shifting pattern of sun and shadow on the wall, hands loose and unmoving on the blue blanket. With no makeup she looked younger and plainer than she had in the wedding photos, and somehow less nondescript, now that the little quirks showed-a beauty spot on the unbandaged cheek, an irregular top lip that made her look ready to smile. It wasn’t a remarkable face in any way, but it had a clean-lined sweetness that brought up summer barbecues, golden retrievers, soccer games on new-mown grass, and I have always been caught by the pull of the unremarkable, by the easily missed, infinitely nourishing beauty of the mundane.

“Mrs. Spain,” I said. “I don’t know if you remember us: Detective Michael Kennedy and Detective Richard Curran. Would it be all right if we came in for a few minutes?”

“Oh…” Jenny’s eyes, red-rimmed and puffy, moved over our faces. I managed not to flinch. “Yeah. I remember. I guess… yeah. Come in.”

“No one’s here with you today?”

“Fiona’s at work. My mum had an appointment about her blood pressure. She’ll be back in a while. I’m fine.”

Her voice was still hoarse and thick, but she had looked up quickly when we came in: her head was starting to clear, God help her. She seemed calm, but I couldn’t tell whether it was the stupefaction of shock or the brittle glaze of exhaustion. I asked, “How are you feeling?”

There was no answer to that. Jenny’s shoulders moved in something like a shrug. “My head hurts, and my face. They’re giving me painkillers. I guess they help. Did you find out anything about… what happened?”

Fiona had kept her mouth shut, which was good, but interesting. I shot Richie a warning glance-I didn’t want to bring up Conor, not while Jenny was so slowed and clouded that her reaction would be worthless-but he was focusing on the sun coming through the blinds, and there was a tense set to his jaw. “We’re following a definite line of inquiry,” I said.

“A line. What line?”

“We’ll keep you posted.” There were two chairs by the bed, cushions squashed into their angles where Fiona and Mrs. Rafferty had tried to sleep. I took the one closest to Jenny and pushed the other towards Richie. “Can you tell us anything more about Monday night? Even the smallest thing?”

Jenny shook her head. “I can’t remember. I’ve been trying, I’m trying all the time… but half the time I just can’t think, because of the drugs, and the other half my head hurts too much. I think probably once I’m off the painkillers and they let me out of here-once I’m home… Do you know when…?”

The thought of her walking into that house made me wince. We were going to have to talk to Fiona about hiring a cleaning team, or having Jenny stay at her flat, or both. “I’m sorry,” I said. “We don’t know anything about that. What about before Monday night? Can you think of anything out of the ordinary that happened recently-anything that worried you?”

Another shake of Jenny’s head. Only fragments of her face showed, behind the bandage; it made her hard to read. “The last time we spoke,” I said, “we started discussing the break-ins you had over the past few months.”

Jenny’s face turned towards me, and I caught a spark of wariness: she knew something was off-she had only told Fiona about one-but she couldn’t find what. “That? Why does that matter?”

I said, “We have to examine the possibility that they could be connected to the attack.”

Jenny’s eyebrows pulled together. She could have been drifting, but some immobility said she was struggling hard to think, through that fog. After a long minute she said, almost dismissively, “I told you. It wasn’t a big deal. To be honest, I’m not sure there even were any break-ins. It was probably just the kids moving things.”

I said, “Could you give us the details? Dates, times, things you noticed missing?” Richie found his notebook.

Her head moved restlessly on the pillow. “God, I don’t remember. Back in, I don’t know, maybe July? I was tidying up, and there was a pen and some ham slices missing. Or I thought there might be, anyway. We’d all been out that day, so I just got a bit nervous in case I’d forgotten something unlocked and someone had come in-there’s squatters living in some of the empty houses, and sometimes they come poking around. That’s all.”

“Fiona said you accused her of using her keys to get in.”

Jenny’s eyes went to the ceiling. “I told you before: Fiona turns everything into a big deal. I didn’t accuse her of anything. I asked if she’d been in our house, because she’s the only one who had the keys. She said no. End of story. It wasn’t, like, some big drama.”

“You didn’t ring the local police?”

Jenny shrugged. “And say what? Like, ‘I can’t find my pen, and someone’s eaten some ham slices out of the fridge’? They’d have laughed. Anyone would’ve laughed.”

“Did you change the locks?”

“I changed the alarm code, just in case. I wasn’t going to get all the locks done when I didn’t even know if anything had happened.”

I said, “But even after you changed the alarm code, there were other incidents.”

She managed a little laugh, brittle enough to shatter against the air. “Oh my God, incidents? This wasn’t a war zone. You make it sound like someone was, like, bombing our sitting room.”

“I might have the details wrong,” I said smoothly. “What exactly did happen?”

“I don’t even remember. Nothing big. Could this wait? My head’s killing me.”

“We just need a few more minutes, Mrs. Spain. Could you set me straight on the details?”

Jenny put her fingertips gingerly to the back of her head, winced. I felt Richie shift his feet and glance at me, ready to leave, but I didn’t move. It’s a strange sensation, being played by the victim; it goes against the grain to look at the wounded creature we’re supposed to be helping, and see an adversary we need to outwit. I welcome it. Give me a challenge any day, over a mass of flayed pain.

After a moment Jenny let her hand fall back into her lap. She said, “Just the same kind of thing. Smaller, even. Like a couple of times the curtains in the sitting room were pulled back all wrong-I straighten them out when I hook them behind the holdback, so they’ll fall right, but a couple of times I found them all twisted up. See what I mean? It was probably the kids playing hide-and-seek in them, or-”

The mention of the children made her catch her breath. I said quickly, “Anything else?”

Jenny let her breath out slowly, got herself back. “Just… stuff like that. I keep candles out, so the house always smells nice-I’ve got a bunch of them in one of the kitchen cupboards, all different smells, and I change them every few days. Once in the summer, maybe August, I went to get the apple one and it was gone-and I knew I’d had it just the week before, I remembered seeing it. But Emma always loved that one, the apple one; she could have taken it to play with in the garden or somewhere, and forgotten it.”

“Did you ask her?”

“I don’t remember. It was months ago. It wasn’t a big deal.”

I said, “Actually, it sounds quite disturbing. You weren’t frightened?”

“No. I wasn’t. I mean, even if we did have some weird burglar, he was only after, like, candles and ham; that’s not exactly terrifying, is it? I thought if there was someone, it was probably just one of the children from the estate-some of them run completely wild; they’re like apes, screaming and throwing stuff at your car when you drive past. I thought maybe one of them, on a dare. But probably not even that. Things go missing, in houses. Do you ring the police every time one of your socks disappears in the wash?”

“So even when the incidents kept happening, you still didn’t change the locks.”

“No. I didn’t. If there was anyone coming in, just if, then I wanted to catch them. I didn’t want them heading off to bother someone else; I wanted them stopped.” The memory brought Jenny’s chin up, gave a tough set to her jaw and a cool, fight-ready intentness to her eyes; it swept away that nondescript quality, turned her vivid and strong. She and Pat had been a good match: fighters. “After a while, sometimes when we went out I didn’t even set the alarm, on purpose-so if someone did get in, they might stay till I came back and caught them. See? I wasn’t frightened.”

“I understand,” I said. “At what point did you tell Pat about this?”

Jenny shrugged. “I didn’t.”

I waited. After a moment she said, “I just didn’t. I didn’t want to bother him.”

I said gently, “I’m not second-guessing you, Mrs. Spain, but that seems like an odd decision. Wouldn’t you have felt safer if Pat had known? Wouldn’t he have been safer, in fact, if he had known?”

A shrug that made her wince. “He had enough on his mind.”

“For example?”

“He’d been made redundant. He was doing his best to get another job, but it wasn’t happening. We were… we didn’t have a load of money. Pat was a bit stressed.”

“Anything else?”

Another shrug. “That’s not enough?”

I waited again, but this time she wasn’t budging. I said, “We found a trap in your attic. An animal trap.”

“Oh my God. That.” That laugh again, but I had caught the zap of something bright-terror, maybe, or fury-that brought her face alive for an instant. “Pat thought we might have a stoat or a fox or something coming in and out. He was dying to have a look at it. We’re city kids; even the rabbits down in the sand dunes had us all excited, when we first moved in. Catching a real live fox would’ve been, like, the coolest thing ever.”

“And did he catch anything?”

“Oh, God, no. He didn’t even know what kind of bait to use. Like I said, city kids.”

Her voice was cocktail-party light, but her fingers were clawed into the blanket. I asked, “And the holes in the walls? A DIY project, you said. Was it anything to do with this stoat?”

“No. I mean, a little bit, but not really.” Jenny reached for the glass of water on the bedside table, took a long drink. I could see her fighting to speed up her mind. “The holes just happened, you know? Those houses… there’s something wrong with the foundations. Holes just, like, appear. Pat was going to fix them, but he wanted to work on something first-the wiring, maybe? I don’t remember. I don’t understand that stuff.” She threw me a self-deprecating glance, all helpless little woman. I kept my face wooden. “And he wondered if maybe the stoat, or whatever, might come down into the walls and we could catch it that way. That’s all.”

“And that didn’t bother you? The delay in mending the walls, the possibility of vermin in the house?”

“Not really. To be honest, I didn’t believe for a second it was actually a stoat or anything big, or I wouldn’t have let it near the kids. I thought maybe a bird, or a squirrel-the kids would’ve loved to see a squirrel. I mean, obviously it would’ve been nice if Pat had decided to build a garden shed or something, instead of messing about in the walls”-that laugh again, such hard work that it hurt to hear-“but he needed something to keep him occupied, didn’t he? So I thought, OK, whatever, there are worse hobbies.”

It could have been true, could have been just a refracted version of the same story Pat had poured out onto the internet; I couldn’t read her, through all the things getting in the way. Richie moved in his chair. He said, picking the words, “We’ve got information that says Pat was pretty upset about the squirrel, or the fox, or whatever it was. Could you tell us about that?”

That zap of some vivid emotion shot across Jenny’s face again, too quick to catch. “What information? From who?”

“We can’t go into details,” I said smoothly.

“Well, sorry, but your information is wrong. If this is Fiona again, then this time she’s not just being a drama queen, she’s making the whole thing up. Pat wasn’t even sure there was anything getting in-or it could’ve been just mice. A grown man doesn’t get upset about mice. I mean, come on, would you?”

“Nah,” Richie admitted, with a touch of a smile. “Just checking. Another thing I was meaning to ask: you said Pat needed something to keep him occupied. What did he do all day, after he was made redundant? Apart from the DIY?”

Jenny shrugged. “Looked for a new job. Played with the kids. He went running a lot-not so much since the weather turned, but this summer; there’s some lovely scenery out at Ocean View. He’d been working like mad ever since we left college; it was nice for him to have a little time off.”

It came out just a touch too smoothly, like she had recited it before. “You said earlier he was stressed about it,” Richie said. “How stressed?”

“He didn’t like being out of work-obviously; I mean, I know there are people who do, but Pat’s not like that. He would’ve been happier if he’d known when he’d get a new job, but he made the best of it. We believe in positive mental attitude. PMA all the way.”

“Yeah? There’s a lot of fellas these days that are out of work and having a tough time adjusting; no shame in that. Some of them get depressed, or get irritable; maybe they drink that bit too much, or lose their tempers that bit easier. It’s natural enough, sure. Doesn’t make them weak, or mental. Did Pat have any of that stuff, yeah?”

He was struggling for the easy intimacy that had got him under Conor’s guard and the Gogans’, but it wasn’t working: his rhythm was off and his voice had a forced note, and instead of relaxing Jenny had managed to haul herself upright, her eyes blazing a furious blue. “Oh my God, no. He wasn’t, like, having a nervous breakdown or whatever. Whoever’s been saying-”

Richie raised his hands. “It’d be fair enough if he was, is all I’m saying. It could happen to the best of us.”

“Pat was fine. He needed a new job. He wasn’t crazy. OK, Detective? Is that OK with you?”

“I’m not saying he was crazy. I’m only asking: were you ever worried about him? That he’d hurt himself, like? Maybe even hurt you? With the stress-”

“No! Pat would never. Not in a million years. He-Pat was… What are you doing? Are you trying to…” Jenny had fallen back onto the pillows, breathing in shallow gasps. She said, “Could we just… leave this till some other time? Please?”

Her face was gray and fallen-in, all of a sudden, and her hands had gone limp on the blanket: she wasn’t putting it on this time. I glanced at Richie, but he had his head down over his notebook and didn’t look up.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Spain. Please accept our sympathies, again. I hope you’re not in too much pain.”

She didn’t answer. Her eyes had dulled; she was nowhere near us any more. We eased out of the chairs and out of the room as quietly as we could. As I closed the door behind us, I heard Jenny starting to cry.

Outside, the sky was patchy, just enough sunshine to trick you into thinking you were warm; the hills were dappled with moving splotches of light and shade. I said, “What happened there?”

Richie was tucking his notebook back into his pocket. He said, “I made a bollix of it.”

“Why?”

“Her. The state of her. Put me off my game.”

“You were fine with her on Wednesday.”

He twitched a shoulder. “Yeah. Maybe. It was one thing when we thought this was some stranger, you know? But if we’re gonna have to tell her that her own husband did that to her, to their kids… I guess I was hoping she already knew.”

“If he did it. Let’s worry about one step at a time.”

“I know. I just… I fucked up. Sorry.”

He was still messing with his notebook. He looked pale and shrunken, like he was expecting a bollocking. A day earlier he would probably have got one, but that morning I couldn’t remember why I should put in the energy. “No real harm done,” I said. “Anything she says now won’t hold up anyway; she’s on enough painkillers that any statement would get thrown out in a heartbeat. That was a good moment to leave.”

I thought that would reassure him, but his face stayed tight. “When do we give her another go?”

“When the doctors take down her dosage. From what Fiona said, it shouldn’t be long. We’ll check in tomorrow.”

“Could be a good while before she’s in decent enough shape to talk. You saw her: she was practically unconscious there.”

I said, “She’s in better shape than she’s trying to make out. At the end, yeah, she faded fast, but up until then… She’s foggy and in pain, all right, but she’s come a long way since the other day.”

Richie said, “She looked like shite to me.”

He was heading for the car. “Hang on,” I said. He needed a few breaths of fresh air, and so did I; I was much too tired to have this conversation and drive safely at the same time. “Let’s take five.”

I headed for the wall where we had sat the morning of the post-mortems-that felt like a decade ago. The illusion of summer didn’t hold up: the sunlight was thin and tremulous, and the air had an edge that cut through my overcoat. Richie sat beside me, running the zip of his jacket up and down.

I said, “She’s hiding something.”

“Maybe. Hard to be sure, through all the drugs.”

“I’m sure. She’s trying much too hard to act like life was perfect up until Monday night. The break-ins were no big deal, Pat’s animal was no big deal, everything was just fine. She was chatting away like we’d all met up for a nice coffee.”

“Some people, that’s how they operate. Everything’s always fine. Doesn’t matter what’s wrong, you never admit it; just grit your teeth, keep saying it’s all grand, and hope it comes true.”

His eyes were on me. I couldn’t hold back a wry grin. “True enough. Habits die hard. And you’re right, that sounds like Jenny. But at a time like this, you’d think she’d be spilling everything she’s got. Unless she’s got a bloody good reason not to.”

Richie said, after a second, “The obvious one is that she remembers Monday night. If it’s that, then it says Pat. For her husband, she might keep her mouth shut. For someone she hadn’t even seen in years, no way.”

“Then why is she playing down the break-ins? If she genuinely wasn’t frightened, then why not? Any woman in the world, if she suspects someone’s got access to the house where she and her babies are living, she does something about it. Unless she knows perfectly well who’s coming in and out, and she doesn’t have a problem with it.”

Richie bit at a cuticle and thought that over, squinting into the weak sunlight. A little color was coming back to his cheeks, but his spine was still curled with tension. “Then why’d she say anything to Fiona?”

“Because she didn’t know at first. But you heard her: she was trying to catch the guy. What if she did? Or what if Conor got ballsy and decided to leave Jenny a note, somewhere along the way? There’s history there, remember. Fiona thinks there was never anything romantic between the two of them-or that’s what she says she thinks, anyway-but I doubt she’d know if there had been. At the very least, they were friends; close friends, for a long time. If Jenny found out Conor was hanging around, she might have decided to rekindle the friendship.”

“Without telling Pat?”

“Maybe she was afraid he’d fly off the handle and beat the shite out of Conor-he had a history of jealousy, remember. And maybe Jenny knew he had something to be jealous about.” Saying it out loud sent a shot of electricity through me, a charge that almost lifted me off the wall. 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.

Richie said, “Pat and Jenny were mad about each other. If there’s one thing everyone agrees on, it’s that.”

“You’re the one saying he tried to kill her.”

“Not the same thing. People kill people they’re mad about; happens all the time. They don’t cheat on someone they’re mad about.”

“Human nature is human nature. Jenny’s stuck in the middle of nowhere, no friends around, no job to go to, up to her ears in money worries, Pat’s obsessing over some animal in the attic; and all of a sudden, just when she needs him most, Conor shows up. Someone who knew her back when she was the golden girl with the perfect life; someone who’s adored her for half their lives. You’d have to be a saint not to be tempted.”

“Maybe,” Richie said. He was still ripping at that cuticle. “But say you’re right, yeah? That doesn’t take us any closer to a motive for Conor.”

“Jenny decided to break off the affair.”

“That’d be a motive to kill her, just. Or maybe just Pat, if Conor thought it’d make Jenny come back to him. Not the whole family.”

The sun was gone; the hills were fading into gray, and the wind punched fallen leaves in dizzy circles before slapping them back to the damp ground. I said, “Depends how much he wanted to punish her.”

“OK,” Richie said. He took his nail away from his mouth and shoved his hands into his pockets, pulled his jacket closer around him. “Maybe. But then how come Jenny’s saying nothing?”

“Because she doesn’t remember.”

“Doesn’t remember Monday night, maybe. But the last few months: she remembers those just grand. If she’d been having an affair with Conor, or even just hanging out with him, she’d remember that. If she’d been planning on dumping him, she’d know.”

“And you think she’d want that splashed across the headlines? MURDERED CHILDREN’S MOTHER HAD AFFAIR WITH ACCUSED, COURT TOLD. You think she’s going to volunteer to be the media’s Whore of the Week?”

“Yeah, I do. You’re saying he killed her kids, man. No way would she cover for that.”

I said, “She might if she felt guilty enough. An affair would make it her fault Conor was in their lives, which would make it her fault he did what he did. A lot of people would have a pretty tough time getting their own heads around that, never mind telling it to the police. Never underestimate the power of guilt.”

Richie shook his head. “Even if you’re right about an affair, man, it doesn’t say Conor. It says Pat. He was already losing the plot-you said that yourself. Then he finds out his wife’s having it off with his old best mate, and he snaps. He takes Jenny out as punishment, takes the kids along so they won’t have to live without their parents, finishes off with himself because he’s got nothing left to live for. You saw what he said on that board: Her and those kids are everything I’ve got.”

A couple of med students who should have known better had brought their eye bags and stubble outside for a cigarette. I felt a sudden rush of impatience, so violent that it smashed the fatigue away, with everything around me: the pointless reek of their smoke, the tactful little dance steps of our interview with Jenny, the image of Dina tugging insistently at the corner of my mind, Richie and his stubborn, tangled mess of objections and hypotheticals. “Well,” I said. I stood up and dusted off my coat. “Let’s start by finding out whether I’m right about the affair, shall we?”

“Conor?”

“No,” I said. I wanted Conor so badly I could almost smell him, the sharp resiny tang of him, but this is where control comes in useful. “We’re saving him for later. I’m not going near Conor Brennan till I can go in with a full clip of ammo. We’re going to talk to the Gogans again. And this time I’ll do the talking.”

Ocean View looked worse every time. On Tuesday it had looked like a battered castaway waiting for its savior, like all it needed was some property developer with plenty of cash and plenty of get-up-and-go to stride in and kick it into all the bright shapes it was meant to be. Now it looked like the end of the world. I half-expected feral dogs to slink up around the car when I stopped, last survivors to come staggering and moaning out of skeleton houses. I thought of Pat jogging circles around waste ground, trying to run those scrabbling noises out of his mind; of Jenny listening to the wind whistle around her windows, reading pink-covered books to keep up her PMA and wondering where her happy ending had gone.

Sinéad Gogan was home, of course. “What d’yous want?” she demanded, in the doorway. She was wearing the same gray leggings from Tuesday. I recognized a grease stain on one wobbly thigh.

“We’d like a few words with you and your husband.”

“He’s out.”

Which was a pisser. Gogan was what passed for the brains of this outfit; I had been relying on him to figure out that they needed to talk to us. “That’s all right,” I said. “We can come back and talk to him later, if we need to. For now, we’ll see how much you can help us.”

“Jayden’s already told you-”

“Yeah, he has,” I said, brushing past her and heading for the sitting room, with Richie in my wake. “It’s not Jayden we’re interested in, this time. It’s you.”

“Why?”

Jayden was sitting on the floor again, shooting zombies. He said promptly, “I’m off sick.”

“Switch that off,” I told him, making myself comfortable in one of the armchairs. Richie took the other one. Jayden made a disgusted face, but when I pointed at the controller and snapped my fingers, he did as he was told. “Your mother’s got something to tell us.”

Sinéad stayed in the doorway. “I don’t.”

“Sure you do. You’ve been keeping something back ever since we first walked in here. Today is when you come clean. What was it, Mrs. Gogan? Something you saw? Heard? What?”

“I don’t know anything about that fella. I never even seen him.”

“That’s not what I asked you. I don’t care if it’s got nothing to do with that fella, or any fella; I want to hear it anyway. Sit down.”

I saw Sinéad consider going into a don’t-give-me-orders-in-my-own-house routine, but I gave her a stare that said this would be a very bad idea. In the end she rolled her eyes and plumped down on the sofa, which groaned. “I’ve to get Baby up in a minute. And I don’t know anything that’s got to do with anything. OK?”

“You don’t get to decide that. The way it works is, you tell us what you know; we figure out how it’s relevant. That’s why we’re the ones with the badges. So let’s go.”

She sighed noisily. “I. Don’t. Know. Anything. What am I supposed to say?”

I said, “Just how stupid are you?”

Sinéad’s face turned uglier and she opened her mouth to hit me with some stale drivel about respect, but I kept slamming the words at her till she shut it again. “You make me want to puke. What the hell do you think we’re investigating? Shoplifting? Littering? This is a murder case. Multiple murder. How has that not sunk into your thick head?”

“Don’t you call me-”

“Tell me something, Mrs. Gogan. I’m curious. What kind of scum lets a kid-killer walk away because she doesn’t like cops? Just how far below human do you have to be, to think that’s OK?”

Sinéad snapped, “Are you going to let him talk to me like that?”

She was talking to Richie. He spread his hands. “We’re under a load of pressure here, Mrs. Gogan. You’ve seen the papers, yeah? The whole country’s looking for us to get this sorted. We’ve got to do whatever it takes.”

“No shit,” I said. “Why did you think we kept coming back? Because we can’t stay away from your pretty face? We’re here because we’ve got a guy in custody, and we need the evidence to keep him there. Think hard, if you’re able. What do you figure is going to happen if he gets out?”

Sinéad had her arms folded across her flab and her lips pinched into a tight, outraged knot. I didn’t wait. “The first thing is that I’m going to be very bloody pissed off, and even you have to know that pissing off a cop is a bad idea. Does your husband ever do the odd job for cash, Mrs. Gogan? Do you know how long he could get for welfare fraud? Jayden doesn’t look sick to me; how often does he skip school? If I put in the effort-and believe me, I will-just how much trouble do you think I could make for you?”

“We’re a decent family-”

“Save it. Even if I believed you, I’m not your biggest problem. The second thing that’s going to happen, if you keep messing us around, is that this guy is going to get out. God knows I don’t expect you to give a damn about justice or the good of society, but I thought at least you had the brains to look after your own family. This man knows that Jayden could tell us about the key. Do you think he doesn’t know where Jayden lives? If I tell him that someone’s got the goods on him and they could talk any minute, who do you think is going to spring to his mind?”

“Ma,” Jayden said, in a small voice. He had bum-shuffled back against the sofa and was staring at me. I could feel Richie’s head turned towards me, too, but he had the sense to keep his mouth shut.

“Is all of this clear enough for you? Do you need me to explain it in smaller words? Because unless you’re literally too stupid to live, the next thing out of your mouth is going to be whatever you’ve been keeping back.”

Sinéad was pressed back into the sofa, mouth hanging open. Jayden was holding on to the hem of her leggings. The fear on their faces brought back last night’s giddy, tilting rush, sent it speeding through my blood like a drug with no name.

I don’t talk to witnesses this way. My bedside manner may not be the finest, I may have a rep for being cold or brusque or whatever people want to call it, but I had never in my career done anything like this. It wasn’t because I hadn’t wanted to. Don’t fool yourself: we all have a cruel streak. We keep it under lock and key either because we’re afraid of getting punished or because we believe this will somehow make a difference, make the world a better place. No one punishes a detective for giving a witness a little scare. I’ve heard plenty of the lads do worse, and nothing ever happened.

I said, “Talk.”

“Ma.”

Sinéad said, “It was that yoke there.” She nodded at the baby monitor, lying on its side on the coffee table.

“What was?”

“Sometimes they get their wires crossed, or whatever you call it.”

“Frequencies,” Jayden said. He looked a lot happier, now that his mother was talking. “Not wires.”

“You shut up. This is all your fault, you and your bleeding tenner.” Jayden shoved himself away from her, along the floor, and slumped into a sulk. “Whatever you call them, they get crossed. Sometimes-not all the time; maybe every couple of weeks, like-that yoke picked up their monitor, instead of ours. So we could hear what was going on in there. It wasn’t on purpose or nothing, I don’t be listening in on people”-Sinéad managed a self-righteous look that didn’t suit her-“but we couldn’t help hearing.”

“Right,” I said. “And what did you hear?”

“I told you, I don’t be earwigging on other people’s conversations. I paid no notice. Just switched the monitor off and then on again, to reset it. I only ever heard a few seconds, like.”

“You listened for ages,” said Jayden. “You made me turn down my game so you could hear better.”

Sinéad shot him a glare that said he was in deep shit as soon as we left. For this, she had been ready to let a murderer walk free: so she could look like a good respectable housewife, to herself if not to us, instead of a nosy, petty, furtive little bitch. I’d seen it a hundred times, but it made me want to slap the fourth-hand look of virtue right off her ugly face. I said, “I don’t give a damn if you spent your days under the Spains’ window with an ear trumpet. I just want to know what you heard.”

Richie said matter-of-factly, “Anyone would’ve listened, sure. Human nature. At first you’d no choice, anyway: you needed to figure out what was going on with your monitor.” His voice had that ease again: he was back on form.

Sinéad nodded vigorously. “Yeah. Exactly. The first time it happened, I nearly had a heart attack. Middle of the night, all of a sudden there’s a kid calling, ‘Mummy, Mummy, come here,’ right in my ear. First I thought it was Jayden, only it sounded way too young, and he doesn’t call me Mummy anyway; and Baby was only born. Scared the life out of me.”

“She screamed,” Jayden told us, smirking. He had apparently recovered. “She thought it was a ghost.”

“I did, yeah. So? My husband woke up then, and he figured it out, but anyone would’ve been freaking. So what?”

“She was going to get a psychic out. Or one of those ghost hunters.”

“You shut up.”

I said, “When was this?”

“Baby’s ten months now, so January, February.”

“And after that you heard it every couple of weeks, for a total of about twenty times. What did you hear?”

Sinéad was still furious enough to glass me, but a gossip about the uppity neighbors was impossible to resist. “Mostly just boring sh- stuff. The first few times, it was himself reading some story to put one of the kids to sleep, or it was the young fella jumping on his bed, or the young one talking to her dollies. Around the end of summer, but, they must’ve moved the monitors downstairs or something, ’cause we started hearing other stuff. Like them watching the telly, or her showing the young one how to make chocolate chip cookies-wouldn’t just buy them from the shop like the rest of us, she was too good for that. And once-middle of the night again-I heard her say, ‘Just come to bed. Please,’ like she was begging, and him saying, ‘In a minute.’ Didn’t blame him; it’d be like shagging a bag of potatoes.” Sinéad tried to catch Richie’s eye for a shared smirk, but he stayed blank. “Like I said. Boring.”

I said, “And the ones that weren’t boring?”

“There was only the once.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“It was one afternoon. She was just after getting in, I guess from picking up the young one from school. We were in here, Baby was having his nap so I’d the monitor out, and all of a sudden there’s your woman, yapping away. I almost switched it off, ’cause I swear she’d make you sick, but…”

Sinéad gave a defiant little shrug. I said, “What was Jennifer Spain saying?”

“Talking her head off. She’s like, ‘Now let’s get ready! Your daddy’s going to be home from his walk any minute, and when he gets in, we’re going to be happy. Very very happy.’ She’s all perky”-Sinéad’s lip curled-“like some American cheerleader. Don’t know what she had to be perky about. She’s, like, arranging the kids, telling the little girl to sit right here and have a dolly picnic, and the young fella to sit over here and not be throwing his Lego, ask nicely if he wants a hand. She goes, ‘Everything’s going to be lovely. When your daddy gets in, he’s going to be sooo happy. That’s what you want, isn’t it? You don’t want Daddy to be unhappy, do you?’”

“‘Mummy and Daddy,’” said Jayden, under his breath, and snorted.

“She was going on like that for ages, till the monitor cut out. See what I mean about her? She was like your woman off Desperate Housewives, the one that has to have everything perfect or she loses the head. It was like, Jaysus, relax. My husband goes, ‘D’you know what that one needs? She needs a good-’”

Sinéad remembered who she was talking to and cut herself off, with a stare to show she wasn’t afraid of us. Jayden sniggered.

“To be honest with you,” she said, “she sounded bleeding mental.”

I asked, “When was this?”

“A month back, maybe. Middle of September. See what I mean? Nothing to do with anything.”

Not like anyone off Desperate Housewives; like a victim. Like every battered woman and man I had dealt with, back in Domestic Violence. Every one of them had been sure that their partners would be happy and everything in the garden would be rosy, if they could just get it right. Every one of them had been terrified, to a point somewhere between hysteria and paralysis, of getting it wrong and making Daddy unhappy.

Richie had gone still, no more foot-jiggling: he had spotted it too. He said, “That’s why the first thing you thought, when you saw our lot outside, was that Pat Spain had killed his wife.”

“Yeah. I thought maybe if she didn’t have the house clean, or if the kids were bold, he gave her the slaps. Just goes to show you, doesn’t it? There she was, all up herself, with her fancy gear and her posh accent, and all the time he’s beating the bollix out of her.” Sinéad couldn’t keep the smirk off the corners of her mouth. She had liked the idea. “So when yous showed up, I figured it had to be that. She burned the dinner or something, and he went ballistic.”

Richie asked, “Anything else that made you think he could be hurting her? Anything you heard, anything you saw?”

“Those monitors being downstairs. That’s weird, know what I mean? At first I couldn’t think of any reason why they’d be anywhere but the kids’ bedrooms. When I heard her going on like that, though, I thought maybe he put them all around, so he could keep tabs on her. Like if he went upstairs or out in the garden, he could bring the receivers with him, so he’d hear everything she did.” Satisfied little nod: she was delighted with her own investigative genius. “Creepy or what?”

“Nothing else, no?”

Shrug. “No bruises or nothing. No yelling, that I heard. She did have a face on her, but, whenever I saw her outside. She used to be all cheerful-even when the kids were acting up or whatever, she’d this big fake smile on her. That went out the window, the last while: she looked down in the dumps the whole time. Spacy, like-I thought maybe she was on the Valium. I figured it was ’cause of him being out of work: she wasn’t happy about having to live like the rest of us, no more SUV and no more designer gear. If he was battering her, though, could’ve been that.”

I asked, “Did you ever hear anyone else in the house, other than the four Spains? Visitors, family, tradesmen?”

That lit up Sinéad’s whole pasty face. “Jesus! Was your woman playing away, yeah? Getting some fella in while her husband was out? No wonder he was keeping tabs. The cheek of her, acting like we were something she’d scrape off her shoe, when she was-”

I said, “Did you hear or see anything that would indicate that?”

She thought that over. “Nah,” she said, regretfully. “Only ever heard the four of them.”

Jayden was messing about with his controller, flicking at buttons, but he didn’t quite have the nerve to switch it back on. “The whistling,” he said.

“That was some other house.”

“Wasn’t. They’re too far away.”

I said, “We’d like to hear about it, either way.”

Sinéad shifted on the sofa. “It was only the one time. August, maybe; could’ve been before. Early morning. We heard someone whistling-not a song or nothing, just like when a fella whistles to himself while he’s doing something else.” Jayden demonstrated, a low, tuneless, absent sound. Sinéad shoved his shoulder. “Stop that. You’re giving me a headache. Them in Number Nine, they were all gone out-her too, so it couldn’t have been her bit on the side. I thought it had to be from one of them houses down at the end of the road; there’s two families down there, and they’ve both got kids, so they’d have the monitors.”

“No you didn’t,” Jayden said. “You thought it was a ghost. Again.”

Sinéad snapped, to me or Richie or both, “I’m entitled to think what I like. Yous can go ahead and look at me like I’m thick; yous don’t have to live out here. Try it for a while, then come back to me.”

Her voice was belligerent, but there was real fear in her eyes. “We’ll bring our own Ghostbusters,” I said. “Monday night, did you hear anything on the monitors? Anything at all?”

“Nah. Like I said, it only happened every few weeks.”

“You’d better be sure.”

“I am. Positive.”

“What about your husband?”

“Him neither. He’d have said.”

I said, “Is that the lot? Nothing else we might want to hear about?”

Sinéad shook her head. “That’s it.”

“How do I know that?”

“’Cause. I don’t want yous coming back here again, calling me names in front of my son. I’ve told you everything. So you can eff off and leave us alone. OK?”

“My pleasure,” I said, getting up. “Believe me.” The arm of the chair left something sticky on my hand; I didn’t bother hiding the look of distaste.

As we left, Sinéad planted herself in the doorway behind us, doing something that was meant to be an imposing stare but came off looking like an electrocuted pug dog. When we were a safe distance down the drive, she shouted after us, “You can’t talk to me like that! I’ll be putting in a complaint!”

I pulled my card out of my pocket without breaking stride, waved it above my head and dropped it on the drive for her to pick up. “See you then,” I called back over my shoulder. “I can’t wait.”

I was expecting Richie to say something about my new interview technique-calling a witness a scumbag moron isn’t anywhere in the rule book-but he had sunk back somewhere in his mind; he trudged back to the car with his hands deep in his pockets, head bent into the wind. My mobile had three missed calls and a text, all from Geri-the text started, Sorry mick but any news abt… I deleted them all.

When we got onto the motorway, Richie resurfaced far enough to say-carefully, to the windscreen-“If Pat was hitting Jenny…”

“If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle. The Gogan cow doesn’t know everything about the Spains, no matter what she’d like to think. Luckily for us, there’s one guy who does, and we know exactly where to find him.”

Richie didn’t answer. I took one hand off the wheel to give him a clap on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, my friend. We’ll get the goods out of Conor. Who knows, it might even be fun.”

I caught his sideways glance: I shouldn’t have been this upbeat, not after what Sinéad Gogan had given us. I didn’t know how to tell him that it wasn’t good humor, not the way he thought; it was that wild rush still careening around my veins, it was the fear on Sinéad’s face and Conor waiting for me at the end of this drive. I got my foot on the pedal and kept it there, watching the needle creep up. The Beemer handled better than ever, flew straight and hard as a hawk diving on prey, like this speed was what it had been aching for all along.