“This is how you make her happy?” I slapped his hand away and sent the evidence bag skidding across the table, out of reach. “Not with a card in the post, not with an e-mail that says, Hey, thinking of you: by breaking into her house and leaving her some rusty piece of shit that she’s probably completely forgotten. No wonder you’re single, sonny.”

Conor said, with absolute certainty, “She hadn’t forgotten. That summer, in that photo: we were happy. All of us. I think it was the happiest I’ve ever been. You don’t forget that. This was to remind Jenny of being happy.”

Richie said, from his corner, “Why, man?”

“What d’you mean, why?”

“Why did she need reminding? Why did she need telling that someone cared about her? She had Pat. Didn’t she?”

“He was a bit down. I told you.”

“You told us he’d been a bit down for months, but you weren’t into getting in touch in case it made things worse. What changed?”

Conor had tightened up. He was where we wanted him: dancing, second-guessing each step for booby traps. “Nothing. I just changed my mind.”

I leaned across him, whipped the evidence bag off the table and started circling the room again, tossing the bag from hand to hand. “You didn’t happen to notice an awful lot of baby monitors set up around the place, did you? While you were having your tea and sandwiches.”

“That’s what those were?” Conor’s face was a careful blank again: he had prepared for this one, too. “I thought they were walkie-talkies or something. Some game Pat and Jack were having, maybe.”

“They weren’t. Can you tell me why you think Pat and Jenny might have had half a dozen baby monitors spread around the house?”

Shrug. “Wouldn’t know.”

“Right. What about the holes in the walls? Did you notice those?”

“Yeah. Saw those. I knew all along that gaff was made of shite. They should’ve sued the scumbag that built it, only he’s probably declared bankruptcy and retired to the Costa del Sol to spend more time with his offshore accounts.”

“You can’t blame this one on the builders, sonny. Pat smashed those holes in his own walls, because he was going off the deep end trying to catch this mink or whatever it was. He covered the place with video monitors because he was obsessed with getting a look at this thing that was tap-dancing over his head. You’re trying to tell us, in all your hours of spying, you somehow failed to notice that?”

“I knew about the animal. I told you that.”

“Too bloody right, you knew. But you skipped the part where Pat was losing his fucking mind.” I dropped the bag, scooped it up with a toe and kicked it up to my hand again. “Oops.”

Richie pulled out a chair and sat down, across the table from Conor. “Man, we’ve recovered all the info off the computer. We know what state he was in. ‘Depressed’ doesn’t begin to cover it.”