In the interview room Conor was still and taut, hands spread flat on the table. There was no way he could have heard us, but I lowered my voice all the same. “Overconfidence. He thinks he covered his tracks, figures we’ve got nothing on him unless he talks.”

“Maybe, yeah. But he has to know we’ve got a full team going over that house with a fine-tooth comb, looking for anything he left behind. That should be worrying him.”

“They’re arrogant bastards, a lot of them. Think they’re smarter than we are. Don’t let that bother you; it’ll work for us, in the long run. Those are the ones that go to pieces when you whip out something they can’t ignore.”

“What if …” Richie said diffidently, and stopped. He was twirling the bag back and forth, looking at it, not at me. “Never mind.”

“What if what?”

“I was only going to say. If he’s got a solid alibi, something like that, and he knows sooner or later we’ll run up against it …”

I said, “You mean, what if he’s feeling safe because he’s innocent.”

“Yeah. Basically.”

“Not a chance, chum. If he had an alibi, why not just tell us and go home? You think he’s pulling our chains for kicks?”

“Could be. He’s not mad about us.”

“Even if he were innocent as a baby—and he’s not—he shouldn’t be this cool. The innocent ones get just as frightened as the guilty ones—more, a lot of the time, because they’re not arrogant pricks. They shouldn’t, obviously, but there’s no telling them that.”

Richie glanced up and lifted a noncommittal eyebrow. I said, “If they’ve done nothing wrong, then the fact is, they’ve got nothing to be afraid of. But the facts aren’t always the point.”

“I guess. Yeah.” He was rubbing at the side of his jaw, where stubble should have been by this stage. “Another thing, but. Why isn’t he pointing us at Pat? We’ve given him a dozen openings. It’d be easy as pie: ‘Yeah, Detective, now that you mention it, your man Pat went loopy after he lost his job, used to smack his wife around, beat the shite out of his kids, saw him threaten them with a knife just last week …’ He’s not thick; he must’ve seen his chance. Why didn’t he grab it?”

I said, “Why do you think I’ve been giving him those openings?”

Richie shrugged, a complicated, embarrassed squirm. “I dunno.”

“You thought I was being sloppy, and I just got lucky that this guy didn’t take advantage. Wrong, old son. I told you before we went in there: our man Conor thinks he has some connection to the Spains. We needed to know what kind of connection. Did Pat Spain cut him off on the motorway and now he thinks all his troubles are Pat’s fault and his luck won’t turn till Pat’s dead and gone, or did he chat to Jenny at some party and decide the stars wanted them to be together?”