The Bureau team were still working hard. Larry flapped a hand at me from the kitchen. “Come here, you, young fella. Have a look at this.”

“This” was the baby-monitor viewers, five of them, neatly laid out in clear evidence bags on the counter, all covered in black print dust. “Found the fifth one in that corner over there, under a bunch of kiddie books,” Larry said triumphantly. “His Lordship wants video cameras, His Lordship gets video cameras. And they’re good ones, too. I’m no expert on the baby gear, but I’d say these are high-end. They pan, they zoom, they do color during the daytime and black and white on automatic infrared in the dark, they probably make you poached eggs in the morning …” He walked two fingers along the line of monitors, clicking his tongue happily to himself, picked one and pressed the power button through the bag. “Guess what that is. Go on, have a guess.”

The screen lit up in black and white: gray cylinders and rectangles crowding in at each side, floating white dust motes, a shapeless patch of darkness hovering in the middle. I said, “The Blob?”

“That’s what I was thinking myself. But then Declan—that’s Declan, over there; wave hello to the nice men, Declan—he noticed that this cupboard here was just a teeny crack open, so he took a look inside. And guess what he found?”

Larry flung open the cupboard with a flourish. “Lookie, lookie.”

A ring of sullen red lights stared up at us for a second, then faded and vanished. The camera was stuck to the inside of the cupboard door with what looked like a full roll of duct tape. The cereal boxes and tins of peas had been pushed to the sides of the shelves. Behind them, someone had bashed a plate-sized hole in the wall.

“What the hell,” I said.

“Hold your horses right there. Before you say anything, take a look at this.”

Another monitor. The same fuzzy shades of monochrome: slanting beams, paint tins, some spiky mechanical tangle I couldn’t make out. I said, “The attic?”

“The very spot. And that thing on the floor? It’s a trap. An animal trap. And not a sweet little mousey-catchey thingy, either. I’m not some kind of expert wilderness man, I wouldn’t know, but that thing looks like it could take down a puma.”

Richie asked, “Is there bait in it?”

“I like him,” Larry said, to me. “Smart young fella; goes straight to the heart of things. He’ll go far. No, Detective Curran, unfortunately no bait, so no way to guess what on earth they were trying to catch. There’s a hole under the eaves where something could have got in—now don’t get excited, Scorcher, we’re not looking at a person here. Maybe a fox on a diet could just about have squeezed through, but nothing that would need a bear trap. We checked the attic for paw prints and droppings, see if we could get a hint that way, but there’s nothing bigger than a spider’s poo. If your vics had vermin, they’re very, very discreet vermin.”