The next second I got my grip back and it turned my stomach, the thought of splaying my private family business in front of him and begging him to give me a pat on the head and tell me it would all be OK. This wasn’t some ten-year best buddy, some blood brother; this was a near stranger who couldn’t even be arsed sharing whatever had struck him in Conor Brennan’s flat. “No need,” I said crisply. I thought, briefly, of asking Richie to interview Fiona on his own, or asking him to type up the day’s report and postponing Fiona till morning—Conor wasn’t going anywhere—but both of those felt disgustingly pathetic. “The offer’s appreciated, but I’ve got everything under control. Let’s go see what Fiona has to tell us.”

13

Fiona was waiting for us outside HQ, drooping against a lamppost. In the circle of smoky yellow light, with the hood of her red duffle coat pulled up against the cold, she looked like some small lost creature out of fireside stories. I ran a hand over my hair and locked Dina down in the back of my mind. “Remember,” I said to Richie, “she’s still on the radar.”

Richie caught a deep breath, like the exhaustion had blindsided him all of a sudden. He said, “She didn’t give Conor the keys.”

“I know. But she knew him. There’s history there. We need to know a lot more about that history before we can rule her out.”

Fiona straightened up as we came closer. She had lost weight in the last two days; her cheekbones poked out sharply, through skin that had faded to a papery gray. I could smell the hospital off her, disinfected and polluting.

“Ms. Rafferty,” I said. “Thank you for coming in.”

“Could we just … Would it be OK if we made this quick? I want to get back to Jenny.”

“I understand,” I said, stretching out an arm to guide her towards the door. “We’ll be as fast as we can.”

Fiona didn’t move. Her hair straggled around her face in limp brown waves; it looked like she had washed it in a sink with hospital soap. “You said you got the man. The man who did this.”

She was talking to Richie. He said, “We’ve got someone in custody in connection with the crimes. Yeah.”

“I want to see him.”

Richie hadn’t spotted that coming. I said smoothly, “I’m afraid he’s not here. We’ve got him in jail at the moment.”

“I need to see him. I need …” Fiona lost her train of thought, shook her head and shoved back hair. “Can we go there? To the jail?”

“It doesn’t really work that way, Ms. Rafferty. It’s out of hours, we’d have to fill in the paperwork, then it could take a few hours to bring him over here, depending on the available security … If you want to get back to your sister, we’ll need to leave that for another time.”