There was a silence. The baby started to make small complaining snuffles; Sinéad reached out a hand, without looking, and jiggled its cushion till it stopped. Neither she nor Gogan was looking at anyone.

In the end Sinéad said, “Can’t think of anything.” Gogan shook his head.

We let the silence grow. The baby wriggled and set up a high, protesting whine; Sinéad picked it up and bounced it. Her eyes across its head were cold, flat as her husband’s, defiant.

Finally Richie nodded. “If you think of anything, yous have my card. Meanwhile, do us a favor, yeah? There’s a few newspapers out there that might be interested in Jayden’s story. Keep it to yourselves for a few weeks, OK?”

Sinéad went lipless with outrage; obviously she had already been planning her shopping spree and deciding where to get her makeup done for the photo shoot. “We can talk to whoever we like. You can’t stop us.”

Richie said calmly, “The papers’ll still be there in a couple of weeks’ time. When we have this fella sorted, I’ll give you the go-ahead and you can give them a ring. Until then, I’m asking you to do us a favor and not impede our investigation.”

Gogan got the threat, even if she didn’t. He said, “Jayden’ll talk to no one. Is that all, yeah?”

He stood up. “One last thing,” Richie said, “and we’ll be out of your way. Can we borrow your back door key for a minute?”

It opened the Spains’ back door like it had been oiled. The lock clicked open and the last link in that chain clicked into place, a taut glinting thread running from Conor’s hide straight into the violated kitchen. I almost raised a hand to high-five Richie, but he was looking out over the garden wall, at the empty window-holes of the hide, not at me.

“And that’s how the blood smears got on the paving stones,” I said. “He went out the same way he came in.”

Richie’s fidgets had come back; his fingertips were drumming a fast tattoo on the side of his thigh. Whatever was bothering him, the Gogans hadn’t fixed it. He said, “Pat and Jenny. How’d they end up here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Three in the morning, both of them in their pajamas. If they were in bed and Conor came after them, how’d they end up struggling down here? Why not in the bedroom?”

“They caught him on the way out.”

“That’d mean he was only after the kids. Doesn’t fit with the confession: he was all about Pat and Jenny. And wouldn’t they have checked on the kids first thing when they heard noise, stayed trying to help them? Would you care about an intruder getting away, if your kids were in trouble?”

I said, “There’s still plenty about this case that needs explaining. I’m not denying that. But remember, this wasn’t just any intruder. This was their best mate—or their ex–best mate. That could have made a difference to the way things went down. Let’s wait and see what Fiona has to tell us.”