I almost cut him off right there, but he had been working this interview well, so far. And Sinéad was calming down, that avid look creeping back up under the fear. “Yeah. All right.”

“I’m gonna put it like this,” Richie said. He leaned closer. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of. If anyone dangerous is out there, and I’m only saying if, we’re doing everything that needs doing about it.” He left an impressive pause and did something meaningful with his eyebrows. “Do you get me, yeah?”

Confused silence. “Yeah,” Sinéad said, in the end. “Course.”

“You do, of course. Now remember: not a word.”

She said primly, “I wouldn’t.” She would tell everyone she knew, obviously, but she had shag-all to tell them: she would have to stick to a smug look and vague hints about secret info she couldn’t share. It was a cute little trick. Richie went up a rung on my ladder.

“And you’re not worried any more, sure you’re not? Now that you know.”

“Ah, no. I’m grand.”

The baby monitor let out a furious shriek. “For fuck’s sake,” said Jayden, hitting Play and turning up the zombie volume.

“Baby’s awake,” Sinéad said, without moving. “I’ve to go.”

I said, “Is there anything else you can tell us about the Spains? Anything at all?”

Another shrug. That flat face didn’t change, but something flickered in her eyes. We would be coming back to the Gogans.

On our way down the drive I said to Richie, “You want to talk about creepy? Take a look at that kid.”

“Yeah,” Richie said. He fingered his ear and glanced over his shoulder at the Gogans’. “Something he’s not telling us.”

“Him? The mother, sure. But the kid?”

“Definitely.”

“Right. When we come back to them, you can take a crack at him.”

“Yeah? Me?”

“You did a good job in there. Have a think about how you’re going to go about it.” I tucked my notebook into my pocket. “Meanwhile, who else do you want to ask about the Spains?”

Richie turned back to face me. “D’you know something?” he said. “I haven’t got a clue. Normally I’d say let’s talk to the families, the neighbors, the victims’ friends, the people they work with, the lads down the pub where he drinks, the people who saw them last. But they were both out of work. There’s no pub for him to go to. Nobody calls round, not even their families, not when it means coming all this way. It could’ve been weeks since anyone even saw them, except maybe at the school gates. And that’s the neighbors.”

He jerked his head backwards. Jayden was pressed up against the sitting-room window, controller in one hand, mouth still hanging open. He saw me catch him looking, but he didn’t even blink.

“The poor bastards,” Richie said softly. “They’d no one.”

5

The two sets of neighbors at the other end of the road were out, at work or wherever. Cooper was gone, presumably off to the hospital to have a look at whatever was left of Jenny Spain. The morgue van was gone: the bodies would be headed for the same hospital to wait their turn for Cooper’s attention, only a floor or two away from Jenny, if she had made it this far.