“Right,” I said. “If that knife shows up, let me know right away. Until then, we’ll get out of your hair. Thanks, lads.”

The flash went off again. This time it slapped Patrick Spain’s silhouette across my eyes: blazing white, arms flung wide like he was leaping into a tackle, or like he was falling.

*

“So,” Richie said, on our way down the drive. “Not an inside job, after all.”

“It’s not that simple, old son. Patrick Spain could have gone out into the back garden, maybe even over the wall—or he could have just opened a window and thrown that knife as far as he could. And remember, Patrick’s not the only suspect here. Don’t forget Jenny Spain. Cooper hasn’t checked her out yet: for all we know, she could have been well able to leave the house, stash the knife, come back inside and arrange herself neatly next to her husband. This could be a suicide pact, or she could have been shielding Patrick—she sounds like the type who might well put her last few minutes into protecting the family reputation. Or this could have been her gig, from start to finish.”

The yellow Fiat was gone: Fiona was headed for the hospital to try and see Jenny—hopefully the uniform was driving, so she wouldn’t wrap the car around a tree during a crying jag. Instead, we had a cluster of new cars, up at the end of the road by the morgue van. They could have been journalists, or residents who the uniforms were keeping away from the scene, but I was betting these were my floaters. I headed for them. “And think about this,” I said. “An outsider isn’t going to go in there unarmed and hope he gets a chance to go through the kitchen drawers and find something good. He’s going to bring his own weapon.”

“Maybe he did, and then he spotted those knives and figured he’d be better off with something that doesn’t trace back to him. Or maybe he wasn’t planning on killing anyone. Or maybe that knife isn’t the weapon at all: he nicked it to throw us off.”

“Maybe. That’s one reason why we need to find it fast: to make sure it doesn’t lead us down the wrong track. Want to give me another one?”

Richie said, “Before it’s got rid of.”

“Right. Say this is an outside job: our man—or woman—probably threw the weapon in the water last night, if he has any sense, but if by any chance he’s too thick to have thought of that off his own bat, all this activity’s bound to tip him off that it might be an idea not to have a bloody knife hanging around. If he ditched it somewhere on the estate, we want to pick him up coming back for it; if he took it home with him, we want to catch him dumping it. All this is assuming he’s in the area, obviously.”

Two seagulls exploded up from a heap of rubble, screaming at each other, and Richie’s head whipped around. He said, “He didn’t find the Spains by accident. This isn’t the kind of place where someone could be just passing by, just happen to spot a set of victims that pushed his buttons.”