“No. I mean, a little bit, but not really.” Jenny reached for the glass of water on the bedside table, took a long drink. I could see her fighting to speed up her mind. “The holes just happened, you know? Those houses … there’s something wrong with the foundations. Holes just, like, appear. Pat was going to fix them, but he wanted to work on something first—the wiring, maybe? I don’t remember. I don’t understand that stuff.” She threw me a self-deprecating glance, all helpless little woman. I kept my face wooden. “And he wondered if maybe the stoat, or whatever, might come down into the walls and we could catch it that way. That’s all.”

“And that didn’t bother you? The delay in mending the walls, the possibility of vermin in the house?”

“Not really. To be honest, I didn’t believe for a second it was actually a stoat or anything big, or I wouldn’t have let it near the kids. I thought maybe a bird, or a squirrel—the kids would’ve loved to see a squirrel. I mean, obviously it would’ve been nice if Pat had decided to build a garden shed or something, instead of messing about in the walls”—that laugh again, such hard work that it hurt to hear—“but he needed something to keep him occupied, didn’t he? So I thought, OK, whatever, there are worse hobbies.”

It could have been true, could have been just a refracted version of the same story Pat had poured out onto the internet; I couldn’t read her, through all the things getting in the way. Richie moved in his chair. He said, picking the words, “We’ve got information that says Pat was pretty upset about the squirrel, or the fox, or whatever it was. Could you tell us about that?”

That zap of some vivid emotion shot across Jenny’s face again, too quick to catch. “What information? From who?”

“We can’t go into details,” I said smoothly.

“Well, sorry, but your information is wrong. If this is Fiona again, then this time she’s not just being a drama queen, she’s making the whole thing up. Pat wasn’t even sure there was anything getting in—or it could’ve been just mice. A grown man doesn’t get upset about mice. I mean, come on, would you?”

“Nah,” Richie admitted, with a touch of a smile. “Just checking. Another thing I was meaning to ask: you said Pat needed something to keep him occupied. What did he do all day, after he was made redundant? Apart from the DIY?”

Jenny shrugged. “Looked for a new job. Played with the kids. He went running a lot—not so much since the weather turned, but this summer; there’s some lovely scenery out at Ocean View. He’d been working like mad ever since we left college; it was nice for him to have a little time off.”

It came out just a touch too smoothly, like she had recited it before. “You said earlier he was stressed about it,” Richie said. “How stressed?”