Dammit, stupid stupid stupid: the last thing I wanted her thinking about was this case. “Not really,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “It’s more that I’ve got Richie to keep an eye on—my partner, the rookie I told you about? It’s hard work.”

“Why? Is he thick?”

I picked myself up off the floor. Somewhere in the struggle I had whacked my knee, but letting Dina see that would be a bad idea. “Not thick at all, just new. He’s a good kid, he’s going to make a good detective, but he’s got a lot to learn. It’s my job to teach it to him. Throw in some eighteen-hour shifts, and it’s going to be a long week.”

“Eighteen-hour shifts in Broken Harbor. I think you should swap cases with someone else.”

I extracted myself from the mess, trying not to limp. There had to be a hundred torn-out pages in the heap, presumably each from a different book. I tried not to think about it. “It doesn’t work that way. I’m fine, sweetheart. Really.”

“Hmm.” Dina went back to her lace, tugging it tight with quick sharp jerks. “I worry about you,” she said. “Do you know that?”

“Don’t. If you want to help me out, the best thing you can do is humor me and spend a night or two at Geri’s. OK?”

Dina tied her lace in some kind of fancy double bow and pulled back to examine it. “OK,” she said, on a long-suffering sigh. “You have to give me a lift there, though. Buses are too scratchy. And hurry up and get those keys cut.”

*

I dropped Dina off at Geri’s and made excuses to avoid going in—Geri wanted me to stay for dinner, on the grounds that “you won’t catch it, sure Colm and Andrea haven’t, I thought Colm’s bowels were at him earlier on but he says he’s grand—Pookie, down!—I don’t know what he was doing in the toilet all that time, but that’s his business …” Dina threw me a silent-scream face over her shoulder and mouthed You owe me as Geri shepherded her into the house, still talking, with the dog bouncing and yapping around them.

I went home again, threw a few things into a holdall and grabbed a fast shower and an hour’s sleep. I got dressed like a kid on a first date, all thumbs and heartbeat, dressing just for him: shirt and tie in case I got a chance to interview him, two thick jumpers so I could wait for him through the cold, heavy dark coat to shield me from him till the right moment came. I imagined him, somewhere, dressing for me and thinking about Broken Harbor. I wondered if he still thought he was the stalker, or if he understood that he had turned to prey.

Richie was outside the back gate of Dublin Castle at a quarter to seven, carrying a sports bag and wearing a padded jacket, a woolly hat and, going by his shape, every fleece he owned. I rode the speed limit all the way to Broken Harbor, as the fields dimmed around us and the air turned sweet with turf smoke and plowed earth. It was getting dark when we parked in Ocean View Parade—across the estate from the Spains’, nothing but scaffolding, no one to spot an unfamiliar car—and started walking.