Fiona bit down on her bottom lip. The air stank of cigarette smoke and singed wool—she had dropped hot ash on her coat, somewhere in there—and there was a dank, bitter smell coming off her, spreading on her breath and seeping out of her pores. Interesting fact from the front lines: raw grief smells like ripped leaves and splintered branches, a jagged green shriek.

“It wasn’t anything,” she said, finally. “It was ages ago—months. I’d practically forgotten about it, till …”

I waited.

“It was just … She rang me one evening. She said someone had been in the house.”

I felt Richie snap to attention at my shoulder, like a terrier ready to dash off after his stick. “Did she report this?” I asked.

Fiona rubbed out her cigarette and dropped the butt into the cup. “It wasn’t like that. There was nothing to report. There wasn’t, like, a window broken or the lock smashed or whatever, and there wasn’t anything taken.”

“Then what made her think someone had been in the house?”

The shrug again, even tenser this time. Her head had gone down. “She just thought. I don’t know.”

I said, letting the firm start to edge out the gentle, “This could be important, Ms. Rafferty. What did she say, exactly?”

Fiona took a deep, shuddering breath and pushed hair behind her ear. “OK,” she said. “OK. OK. So Jenny rings me, right, and she’s like, ‘Did you make a copy of our keys?’ I had their keys for about two seconds last winter, Jenny and Pat took the kids to the Canaries for a week and they wanted to know someone could get in if there was a fire or whatever. So I say no, course not—”

“Did you?” Richie asked. “Make a copy?” He pulled it off—he managed to sound just plain interested, not the slightest bit accusing. Which was nice: it meant I wouldn’t have to give him shit, or at least not too big a helping of it, for talking out of turn.

“No! Why would I?”

She had shot upright. Richie shrugged, gave her a deprecating little smile. “Just checking. I’ve got to ask, you know?”

Fiona slumped back. “Yeah. I guess.”

“And no one else could have made copies, that week? You didn’t leave the keys where your flatmates could have taken them, or someone at work—nothing like that? Like I said, we have to ask.”

“I had them on my key ring. They weren’t in a safe or anything—when I’m in work I have my keys in my bag, and when I’m home they’re on a hook in the kitchen. But it’s not like anyone would’ve known what they were, even if they cared. I don’t think I even told anyone that I had them.”

Her flatmates and her workmates were going to be having in-depth chats all the same, not to mention background checks. “Let’s get back to the phone conversation,” I said. “You told Jenny you hadn’t copied her keys …”