11

The phone dragged me up from the deep-sea bottom of sleep. I came up gasping and flailing—for a second I thought the shrieking noise was a fire alarm, telling me Dina was locked in my flat with flames swelling. “Kennedy,” I said, when my mind found its footing.

“This could have nothing to do with your case, but you did say to ring if we picked up any other forums. You know what a private message is, right?”

Whatshisname, the computer tech: Kieran. “More or less,” I said. My bedroom was dark; it could have been any hour of the day or night. I rolled over and fumbled for the bedside lamp. The sudden flare of light jabbed me in the eyes.

“OK, on some boards, you can set your preferences so that, if you get a private message, a copy of it comes to your e-mail. Pat Spain—well, it could be Jennifer, but I’m assuming it’s Pat, you’ll see what I mean—he had that setting activated, on one board at least. Our software recovered a PM that came through a forum called Wildwatcher—that’s the ‘WW’ in the password file, gotta be, not World of Warcraft.” Kieran apparently worked to the soothing rhythm of cranked-up house music. My head was already pounding. “It’s from some dude called Martin, sent the thirteenth of June, and it says, quote, ‘Not looking to get in any arguments but seriously if it’s a mink I would def lay down poison esp if you have kids those bastards are vicious’—spelled wrong—‘would attack a kid no problem.’ Unquote. Any mink in the case?”

My alarm clock said ten past ten. Assuming it was still Thursday morning, I had been asleep for less than three hours. “Have you checked out this Wildwatcher site?”

“No, I decided to get a pedicure instead. Yeah, I’ve checked it out. It’s a site where people can talk about wild animals they’ve spotted—I mean, not that wild, it’s a UK-based site so we’re mostly talking, like, urban foxes?—or ask what’s that darling little brown birdie nesting in their wisteria. So I ran a search for ‘mink,’ right, and it turned up a thread started by a user called Pat-the-lad on the morning of June twelfth. He was a new user; looks like he registered specifically to post this. Want me to read it to you?”

“I’m in the middle of something,” I said. My eyes felt like someone had rubbed sand into them; so did my mouth. “Can you e-mail me the link?”

“No problemo. What do you want me to do with Wildwatcher? Check it out fast, or in depth?”

“Fast. If no one gave Pat-the-lad any hassle, you can probably move on, for now anyway. That family didn’t get killed over a mink.”

“Sounds good to me. See you around, Kemosabe.” In the second before Kieran hung up, I heard him turn up his music to a volume that could pulverize bone.

I took a fast shower, turning the water colder and colder till my eyes were focusing again. My face in the mirror irritated me: I looked grim and intent, like a man with his eyes on the prize, not a man whose prize was safe and sound in his display cabinet. I got my laptop, a pint glass of water and a few pieces of fruit—Dina had taken a bite out of a pear, changed her mind and put it back in the fridge—and sat on the sofa to check out Wildwatcher.