“Right. And when was this?”

“Don’t remember. Sometime this summer, probably. Could’ve been later.”

“Interesting stuff,” I said, shoving my chair back from the table. “Hold that thought, fella. We’re going outside to talk about you for a while. Interview suspended; Detectives Kennedy and Curran leaving the room.”

Conor said, “Wait. How’s Jenny? Is she … ?” He couldn’t finish.

“Ah,” I said, swinging my jacket over my shoulder. “I was waiting for that. You did well, Conor old son: you hung in there a good long time before you just had to ask. I thought you’d be begging inside sixty seconds. I underestimated you.”

“I answered everything you asked.”

“You did, didn’t you? Give or take. Good boy.” I arched an inquiring eyebrow at Richie, who shrugged, sliding off the table. “Why not, I suppose. Jenny’s alive, chum. She’s out of danger. Another few days and she should be out of the hospital.”

I expected either relief or fear, maybe even anger. Instead he took that in with a quick hissing breath and a curt nod, and said nothing.

I said, “She’s given us some very interesting information.”

“What did she say?”

“Come on, fella. You know we can’t share that. Let’s just say, though, you’d want to be very careful about telling us any lies that Jenny Spain can contradict. You think about that, while we’re gone. Think good and hard.”

I caught a last look at Conor while I held the door open for Richie. He was staring at nothing and breathing through his teeth, and just like I had told him to, he was thinking hard.

*

In the corridor I said, “Did you hear that? There’s a motive in there somewhere. It’s there after all, thank Jesus. And I’m going to get at it, if I have to beat it out of that freak.”

My heart was hammering; I wanted to hug Richie, bang on the door to make Conor jump, I couldn’t tell what. Richie was running a fingernail back and forth across the battered green paint of the wall and watching the door. He said, “You figure, yeah?”

“I figure hell yeah. The second he made that slip about the animal, he started bullshitting us again. That conversation about traps and bait, that never happened. If there was a shouting match going on and Conor practically had his ear to the window, probably he could have heard a lot of it; but the Spains had double glazing, remember. Throw in the sound of the sea, and even from right up close, no way would he have been able to hear a normal conversation. Maybe he’s just lying about the tone—they were having a screaming row, and he doesn’t feel like telling us, for whatever reason. But if that’s not how he found out about the animal, then how?”

Richie said, “He found the computer up and running, one of the times he broke in. Had a read.”

“Could be. It makes more sense than this crap he’s feeding us. But why not say it straight out?”