He backed away, and I realized my tone had been a notch sharper than I wanted it to be. “Only asking.”

It took a second to sink in: he genuinely had been. Not prodding for weak spots, or trying to even things out after the post-mortem incident; just looking out for his partner. I said, more gently, “And I appreciate it. Sorry for snapping at you. How about you? Are you all right?”

“I’m grand, yeah.” He flexed his hand, wincing—I could see deep purple dents where Jenny’s nails had dug in—and glanced back over his shoulder. “The mother. Are we … when do we let her go in?”

I headed down the corridor, towards the exit stairs. “Whenever she wants, as long as she’s supervised. I’ll ring the uniform and let him know.”

“And Fiona?”

“Same goes for her: she’s more than welcome, once she doesn’t mind having company. Maybe they’ll be able to get Jenny to pull it together a bit, get more out of her than we could.”

Richie kept pace and said nothing, but I was starting to get the hang of his silences. I said, “You think I should be concentrating on how they can help Jenny, not how they can help us. And you think I should have let them go in yesterday.”

“She’s in hell. They’re family.”

I took the stairs fast. “Exactly, old son. E-fucking-xactly. They are family, which means we don’t have a hope of understanding the dynamics there, not yet anyway. I don’t know what a couple of hours with Mum and Sis would have done to Jenny’s story, and I didn’t want to find out. Maybe the mother’s a guilt-tripper, she makes Jenny feel even worse about ignoring the intruder, so when Jenny talks to us she skips over the fact that he broke in a few more times along the way. Maybe Fiona warns her that we were looking at Pat, and by the time we get to Jenny she won’t talk to us at all. And don’t forget: Fiona may not be top of our suspect list, but she’s not off it—not till we find out how our man picked the Spains—and she’s still the one who would have inherited if Jenny had died. I don’t care how badly the vic needs a hug, I’m not letting the heir talk to her before I do.”

“I guess,” Richie said. At the bottom of the stairs he moved aside to let a nurse go past, pushing a trolley of coiled plastic and glinting metal, and watched her bustle down the corridor. “Probably you’re right.”

I said, “You think I’m a cold bastard, don’t you?”

He shrugged. “Not for me to say.”

“Maybe I am. It depends on your definition. Because you see, Richie, to me, a cold bastard is someone who could look Jenny Spain in the eye and tell her, Sorry, ma’am, we won’t be catching the person who butchered your family, because I was too busy making sure everybody liked me, see you around, and then waltz off home for a nice dinner and a good night’s sleep. That’s something I can’t do. So if I have to do some minor cold shit along the way, to make sure that doesn’t happen, so be it.” The exit doors juddered open, and a wave of cool rain-drenched air rolled over us. I crammed as much of it into my lungs as I could.