The flare of aggression in his voice would have told me, all on its own, that he didn’t need to ask. I ignored it. “We’re on the hunt for info, and you’re the very man to give it to us. Because when you were picking a house for your bit of breaking and entering, you struck it lucky. As I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed, your little nest looks straight down into the kitchen of Number Nine Ocean View Rise. Like you had your very own reality-show channel, playing twenty-four-seven.”

“World’s most boring reality-show channel,” Richie said. “Would you not have found, like, a strip club? Or a bunch of girls that go around topless?”

I pointed a finger at him. “We don’t know it was boring, now do we? That’s what we’re here to find out. Conor, my man, you tell us. The people who live at Number Nine: boring?”

Conor turned the question over, testing for dangers. In the end he said, “A family. Man and woman. Little girl and little boy.”

“Well, no shit, Sherlock, pardon my French. That much we’ve worked out for ourselves; there’s a reason they call us detectives. What are they like? How do they spend their time? Do they get on? Is it snuggles or screaming matches down there?”

“Not screaming matches. They used to …” That grief stirring again, dark and massive, under his voice. “They’d play games.”

“What kind of games? Like Monopoly?”

“Now I see why you picked them,” Richie said, rolling his eyes. “The excitement, yeah?”

“Like once they built a fort in that kitchen, cardboard boxes and blankets. Played cowboys and Indians, all four of them; kids climbing all over him, her lipstick for war paint. Evenings, him and her used to sit out in the garden, after the kids were in bed. Bottle of wine. She’d rub his back. They’d laugh.”

Which was the longest speech we’d heard him make. He was dying to talk about the Spains, gagging for the chance. I nodded away, pulled out my notebook and my pen and made squiggles that could have been notes. “This is good stuff, Conor my man. This is exactly what we’re after. Keep it coming. You’d say they’re happy? It’s a good marriage?”

Conor said quietly, “I’d say it was a beautiful marriage. Beautiful.”

Was. “Never saw him do anything nasty to her?”

That snapped his head round towards me. His eyes were gray and cold as water, amid the swollen red. “Like what?”

“You tell me.”

“He used to bring her presents all the time: small stuff, fancy chocolate, books, candles—she liked candles. They’d kiss when they passed in the kitchen. All those years together, and they were still mad about each other. He’d have died sooner than hurt her. OK?”

“Hey, fair enough,” I said, raising my hands. “A man’s got to ask.”

“There’s your answer.” He hadn’t blinked. Under the stubble his skin had a rough, windburned look, like he had spent too much time in cold sea air.