“We don’t know. Which of them would have been more likely to keep it?”

“I’m not sure. I would’ve said neither of them, actually. Jenny doesn’t like clutter, and Pat doesn’t really get sentimental like that. He’s more practical. He’ll do stuff, like the ice creams, but he wouldn’t keep the badge just for the sake of it. Maybe he could’ve forgotten it in with a bunch of other things … Where was it?”

“In the house,” I said. I reached out a hand for the bag, but Fiona held on to it, fingers pressed on the badge through the thick plastic.

“What … why do you need it? Does it have something to do with … ?”

I said, “In the early stages, we have to go on the assumption that anything could be relevant.”

Richie asked, before she could press harder, “Did the campaign work? Yous got the landlord off JoJo’s back?”

Fiona shook her head. “God, no. He lived in Howth or somewhere; he didn’t care if the whole of Monkstown was sticking pins in his voodoo doll. And even if we’d all eaten ice cream till we dropped dead of heart attacks, JoJo wouldn’t have been able to pay what the guy was looking for. I think we sort of knew that all along, that he was going to lose. We just wanted …” She turned the bag in her hands. “That was the summer before Pat and Jenny and Conor were going to college. We knew that, too, deep down: that everything was going to start changing when they went. I think Pat and Conor started the whole thing because they wanted to make that summer special. It was the last one. I think they wanted us all to have something good to look back on. Silly stories to tell, years down the line. Stuff so we could say, ‘Do you remember … ?’”

She would never say it about that summer again. I asked, “Do you still have your JoJo’s badge?”

“I don’t know. Maybe somewhere. I’ve got a bunch of stuff in boxes in my mum’s attic—I hate throwing stuff away. I haven’t seen it in years, though. Forever.” She smoothed the plastic over the badge for a moment, then held it out to me. “When you’re done with it, if Jenny doesn’t want it, could I have it?”

“I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Thanks,” Fiona said. “I’d like that.” She took a breath, pulling herself out of someplace wrapped in warm sunlight and helpless laughter, and checked her watch. “I should go. Is that … ? Was there anything else?”

Richie’s eyes met mine, with a question in them.

We would need to talk to Fiona again: we needed Richie to stay the good guy, the safe one who didn’t hit her on every bruise. “Ms. Rafferty,” I said quietly, leaning forward on my elbows, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

She froze. The look in her eyes was terrible: Oh God, not more. “The man we’ve got under arrest,” I said. “It’s Conor Brennan.”