“Jaysus,” Richie said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, Jaysus. Our downstairs toilet’s banjaxed, but the plumber who put it in won’t come and fix it ’cause he was never paid. Everyone does be saying we should go to court and get compensation, but who’d we bring?”

“The builders?” I suggested.

She gave me that flat stare again, like she was considering punching me for being such a thick. “Um, yeah, we did actually think of that. Can’t find them. They started hanging up on us; now they’ve changed their number. We went to yous lot, even. Yous said our toilet wasn’t a police matter.”

Richie lifted the brochure to get her attention back. “What about all this stuff, the childcare and that?”

“That,” Sinéad said. Her mouth squashed up in disgust. It made her even uglier. “In there’s the only place you’ll ever see that. We complained about the childcare place a load of times—that was one of the reasons we bought here, and then hello, nothing? It opened, in the end. Closed after a month ’cause there was only five kids going. Where the playground was supposed to be, that’s like something out of Baghdad; kids’d take their life in their hands playing there. The leisure center never even got built. We complained about that too, they put an exercise bike in an empty house and said there you go. Bike got robbed.”

“How about the shop?”

A humorless sniff of laughter. “Yeah, right. I’ve to go five miles to buy milk, to the petrol station on the motorway. We haven’t got streetlights. I’m afraid for my life to go out on me own after dark, there could be rapists or anything—there’s a load of non-nationals renting a house over in Ocean View Close. And if something happened to me, would yous lot come out and do anything about it? My husband rang yous a few months back, when there was a bunch of knackers having a party in one of them houses across the road. Yous didn’t show up till the morning. We could’ve been burnt out of it for all you’d care.”

In other words, getting anything out of Sinéad was always going to be this much fun. I said, “Do you know if the Spains had been having any similar problems—with the development company, with the partiers across the road, with anyone?”

Shrug. “Wouldn’t know. Like I said, we weren’t friendly, know what I mean? What happened to them, anyway? Are they dead, or what?”

Before long, the morgue boys were going to be bringing out the bodies. I said, “Maybe Jayden should wait in another room.”

Sinéad eyed him. “No point. He’ll only listen at the door.” Jayden nodded.

I said, “There’s been a violent attack. I’m not in a position to give you details, but the crime in question is murder.”

“Jaysus,” Sinéad breathed, swaying forward. Her mouth stayed open, wet and avid. “Who’s been kilt?”

“We can’t give you that information.”

“Did he go for her, did he?”