He tilted the torch beam to the gouges again. “They’re like an inch apart. That’s not a stoat or a mink. Something with fuck-off big paws did that. If that’s what your vic was hunting, then the trap size wasn’t overkill after all.”

The conversation was getting to me more than it should have. The hidden corners of the attic felt crammed, seething with near-inaudible ticking noises and pinpoint red eyes; all my instincts were prickle-backed and bare-toothed, coiled to fight. I said, “Is there anything else we need to see up here? Or can we finish this chat somewhere that won’t double my dry-cleaning bill every sixty seconds?”

Tom looked faintly surprised. He examined the front of his parka, which looked like he had been wrestling dust balls. “Oh,” he said. “Right. Nah, that’s all the good stuff: I had a look for scat, hairs, any signs of nesting activity, but no dice. We’ll head downstairs, yeah?”

I went down last, keeping my torch focused on the trap. Richie and I both leaned away from it, involuntarily, on our way through the hatch.

“So,” I said, on the landing, getting out a tissue and starting work on my coat—the dust was nasty stuff, brown and sticky, like some kind of toxic industrial by-product. “Tell me what we’re dealing with.”

Tom got comfortable with his arse propped on the stepladder, held up a hand and started ticking off fingers. “OK, so we’re going with the mustelids, yeah? There’s no weasels in Ireland. We’ve got stoats, but they’re tiny, like half a pound: I’m not sure they could make the kind of noise your guy talked about. Pine martens are heavier, and they’re big-time climbers, but there’s no woodland nearer than that hill down at the end of the bay, so he’d be kind of off his patch, and I couldn’t find any marten sightings around here anyway. A mink, though: a mink could work. They like living near water, so”—he tilted his chin towards the sea—“happy days, yeah? They’re surplus killers, they’re climbers, they’re not scared of anything including humans, and they stink.”

I said, “And they’re vicious little bastards. They’d attack a kid, no problem. If you had one in your house, you’d be bloody serious about getting rid of it. Am I right?”

Tom did something noncommittal with his head. “I guess, yeah. They’re crazy aggressive—I’ve heard of mink going for a fifty-pound lamb, eating straight through the eye socket into the brain, moving on to the next one, taking out a couple of dozen in one night. And when they’re cornered, they’ll take on anything. So yeah, you wouldn’t be too happy about one moving in. I’m not totally convinced that’s what we’ve got, though. They’re maybe the size of a big house cat, tops. No reason why they’d need to enlarge the entry hole, no way they could leave those claw marks, and no reason you’d need a trap that size to catch them.”

I said, “Those aren’t deal breakers. According to you, we can’t assume the animal in the attic was responsible for either the hole or the beam. As for the trap, our vic didn’t know what he was hunting, so he erred on the side of caution. A mink’s still in the running.”