Richie asked, “What hotel was the pen from, do you know?”

“Golden Bay Resort, in the Maldives—” Her head came back up and she stared at him. “Do you seriously think … ? You think someone actually took it? You think that’s the person who, who, you think they came back and—”

Her voice was starting to spiral dangerously. I asked, before she could lose hold, “When was this incident, Ms. Rafferty?”

She gave me a wild-eyed stare, squeezed hard on the lump of shredded tissue and pulled herself back. “Like three months ago?”

“July.”

“Or it could’ve been earlier, maybe. During the summer, anyway.”

I made a mental note: check Jenny’s phone records for evening calls to Fiona, and check the dates of any prowler reports from Ocean View. “And since then, they’ve had no more problems along those lines?”

Fiona caught a fast breath, and I heard the painful rasp where her throat was closing up. “It could have happened again. I wouldn’t know. Jenny wouldn’t have said anything to me, not after the first time.” Her voice had started to wobble. “I told her to get a grip on herself. Stop talking crap. I thought …”

She made a sound like a kicked puppy, clapped her hands over her mouth and started to cry hard again. It took me a while to figure out what she was saying, through the tissue and the snot. “I thought she was crazy,” she was gasping, over and over. “I thought she was losing it. Oh, God, I thought she was crazy.”

4

And that was about as much as we were going to get out of Fiona that day. Calming her down would have taken a lot more time than we had to spare. The extra uniform had arrived; I told him to get names and numbers—family, friends, workplaces, workmates, going right back to when Fiona and Jenny and Pat were in nappies—take Fiona to the hospital, and make sure she knew not to open her mouth around the media. Then we handed her over. She was still crying.

I had my mobile out and was dialing before we even turned away—radio would have been simpler, but too many journos and too many weirdos have scanners these days. I got Richie by the elbow and drew him down the road. The wind was still coming off the sea, wide and fresh, raking Richie’s hair into tufts; I tasted salt on my mouth. Where the footpaths should have been, there were thin dirt tracks in the uncut grass.

Bernadette got me through to the uniform who was at the hospital with Jenny Spain. He was about twelve, he was from some farm somewhere and he was the anal type, which was what I needed. I gave him his orders: once Jennifer Spain got out of surgery, if she made it that far, she needed a private room, and he needed to guard the door like a Rottweiler. No one was getting into that room without showing ID, no one was going in there unaccompanied, and the family wasn’t going in at all. “The victim’s sister is going to be heading down there any minute, and their mother will show up sooner or later. They don’t go into the room.” Richie was hovering and chewing on a thumbnail, head bent over the phone, but that made him glance up at me. “If they want an explanation, and they will, you don’t tell them these are my orders. You apologize, you say this is standard procedure and you’re not authorized to breach it, and you keep saying the same thing over and over till they back off. And get yourself a comfy chair, old son. You could be there for a while.” I hung up.