“That wouldn’t be your best shot, but. Poison—”

“Say you’d tried poison, and the animal was too smart to take it. Or, even more likely: say the poison worked just fine, but the animal died somewhere down inside your walls, you couldn’t work out exactly where. Then would you get out the hammer? Would that mean you were fucked-up enough to slaughter your own family?”

Tom started up his van, which belched out a cloud of non-wildlife-friendly fumes, and waved out the window to us as he headed off. Richie waved back automatically, and I saw those skinny shoulders rise and fall in a deep breath. He checked his watch and said, “Have we got time for that word with the Gogans, yeah?”

*

The Gogans’ front window had sprouted a bunch of plastic bats and, with the level of taste I would have expected, a life-sized plastic skeleton. The door opened fast: someone had been watching us.

Gogan was a big guy, with a wobbly belly hanging over his navy tracksuit bottoms and a preemptive head shave, and he was where Jayden had got that flat-eyed stare. He said, “What?”

I said, “I’m Detective Kennedy, and this is Detective Curran. Mr… . ?”

“Mr. Gogan. What d’you want?”

Mr. Gogan was Niall Gogan, he was thirty-two, he had an eight-year-old conviction for chucking a bottle through the window of his local, he had driven a forklift in a warehouse off and on for most of his adult life and he was currently out of work, officially anyway. I said, “We’re investigating the deaths next door. Could we come in for a few minutes?”

“You can talk to me here.”

Richie said, “I promised Mrs. Gogan we’d keep her up to speed. She was worried, yeah? We’ve got a bit of news.”

After a moment Gogan stepped back from the doorway. He said, “Make it quick. We’re busy.”

This time we got the whole family. They had been watching some soap opera and eating something involving hard-boiled eggs and ketchup, going by the plates on the coffee table and by the smell. Jayden was sprawled on one sofa; Sinéad was on the other, with the baby propped up in a corner, sucking on a bottle. The kid was living proof of Sinéad’s virtue: the spit of its dad, bald head and pale stare and all.

I moved to one side and let Richie have center stage. “Mrs. Gogan,” he said, leaning over to shake hands. “Ah, no, don’t get up. Sorry to interrupt your evening, but I promised to keep you updated, didn’t I?”

Sinéad was practically falling off the sofa with eagerness. “Have you got the fella, have you?”

I moved to a corner armchair and got out my notebook—taking notes turns you invisible, if you do it right. Richie went for the other armchair, leaving Gogan to shove Jayden’s legs out of the way on the sofa. He said, “We’ve got a suspect in custody.”

“Jaysus,” Sinéad breathed. That avid look was brightening her eyes. “Is he a psychopath?”