Gogan eyed him and kept up the steady scratching. Sinéad snapped, “I’m telling you now, if there’s a mad serial killer running around, you can forget about going to the pub, I’m not staying here on my own waiting for some lunatic to—”

Gogan glanced over at Jayden, who was slouching low on the sofa and watching with his mouth open, and jerked his head towards Richie. “Go on. Tell the man.”

“Tell him what?” Jayden wanted to know.

“Don’t act thick. Whatever he’s asking about.”

Jayden sank deeper into the sofa and watched his toes dig into the carpet. He said, “There was just this guy. Like, ages ago.”

Richie said, “Yeah? When?”

“Before summer. At the end of school.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Remembering the little things. I knew you were a smart one. June, yeah?”

Shrug. “Probably.”

“Where was he?”

Jayden’s eyes went to his father again. Richie said, “Man, you’re doing something good here. You’re not gonna get in trouble.”

Gogan said, “Tell him.”

“I was in Number Eleven. Like, the one that’s attached to the murder house? I was—”

Sinéad demanded, “What the fuck were you doing in there? I’ll bleeding clatter you—”

She saw Richie’s lifted finger and subsided, chin shoved out at an angle that said all of us were in big trouble. Richie asked, “How’d you get into Number Eleven?”

Jayden squirmed. His tracksuit made a farting noise on the fake leather and he snickered, but he stopped when no one joined in. Finally he said, “I was only messing. I had my keys, and … I was just messing, right? I just wanted to see if it worked.”

Richie said, “You tried your keys on other houses?”

Jayden shrugged. “Kind of.”

“Fair play to you. That’s dead clever, that is. We never even thought of that.” And we should have: it would have been right in character for these builders, to pick up a cut-price lot of one-key-fits-all dud locks. “Do they all work on any house, yeah?”

Jayden was sitting up straighter, starting to enjoy how smart he was. “Nah. The front door ones, they’re useless; ours didn’t work on anywhere else, and I tried loads. The back door one, though, right? It opens, like, half the—”

Gogan said, “That’s enough. Shut up.”

“Mr. Gogan,” Richie said. “I’m serious: he’s not in any trouble.”

“D’you think I’m thick? If he’d been in other houses—and he wasn’t—it’d be breaking and entering.”

“I’m not even thinking about that. No one else will, either. Do you know how much of a favor your Jayden is after doing us? He’s helping us put away a murderer. I’m over the moon that he was messing about with that key.”

Gogan stared him out of it. “You try coming back at him with something later on, he’ll take back every word.”

Richie didn’t blink. “I won’t. Believe me. I wouldn’t let anyone else, either. This is way too important.”

Gogan grunted and gave Jayden the nod. Jayden said, “Seriously? You guys never even thought of that?”