I said, “So let’s find the pest-control guy. Get one of the floaters on to tracking him down. Have him start with the numbers Pat got from the board; if none of those pan out, then he needs to check every company in a hundred-mile radius.” The thought of a floater coming in on this angle, another cool pair of eyes reading through those posts and another face slowly taking on the same look Richie had worn, tightened my neck again. “Or, better yet, we’ll do it ourselves. First thing tomorrow morning.”

Richie tipped my mouse with one finger and watched Pat’s posts flick back to life. He said, “Should be easy enough to find out.”

“Find out what?”

“Whether the animal exists. Couple of video cameras—”

“Because that worked so well for Pat?”

“He didn’t have cameras. The baby monitors, they don’t record; he could only catch what was happening in real time, when he had a chance to keep an eye out. Get a camera, set it up to record that attic round the clock … Inside a few days, if there’s anything there, we ought to get a look at it.”

For some reason the idea made me want to bite his head off. I said, “That’s going to look just great on the request form, isn’t it? ‘We’d like to request a valuable piece of department equipment and a massively overworked technician, on the off chance that we might possibly catch a glimpse of some animal that, whether it exists or not, has absolutely sweet fuck-all to do with our case.’”

“O’Kelly said, anything we need—”

“I know he did. The request would be approved. That’s not the point. You and me, we’ve got a certain amount of brownie points with the Super right now, and personally I’d rather not blow the lot on having a look at a mink. Go to the fucking zoo.”

Richie shoved his chair back and started circling the incident room restlessly. “I’ll fill out the form. That way it’s only me blowing my brownie points.”

“No you bloody won’t. You’ll make it sound like Pat was some kind of gibbering maniac seeing pink gorillas in his kitchen. We had a deal: no pointing the finger at Pat until and unless you’ve got evidence.”

Richie whirled on me, both hands slamming down on someone’s desk, sending papers flying. “How am I supposed to get evidence? If you put the brakes on, any time I start off on something that could go somewhere—”

“Calm down, Detective. And lower your voice. You want Quigley popping in to find out what’s going on?”

“The deal was we investigate Pat. Not I mention investigating Pat once in a while and you shoot me down. If the evidence is out there, how the fuck am I supposed to get to it? Come on, man. Tell me. How?”

I pointed at my monitor. “What does this look like we’re doing? Investigating Pat bloody Spain. No, we’re not calling him a suspect to the world. That was the deal. If you feel like it’s not fair on you—”