I clicked my tongue and wagged a finger at him. “I didn’t think so. Naughty, naughty: just because no one’s living there, son, that doesn’t mean you get to move in, bag and baggage. That’s still breaking and entering, you know. The law doesn’t take a day off just because you fancy a holiday home and no one else was using it.”
I was piling on the patronizing as thick as I could, and it was needling Conor out of his silence. “I didn’t break anything. Just walked in.”
“Why don’t we let the lawyers explain why that’s beside the point? If things go that far, of course, which”—I raised a finger—“they don’t need to. Because like I said, Conor, you’re a very lucky young man. Detective Curran and I aren’t actually that interested in a pissant B and E charge—not tonight. Let’s put it this way: when a couple of hunters go out for the night, they’re looking for big game. If a rabbit, say, is all they can find, they’ll take that; but if the rabbit puts them on the trail of a grizzly bear, they’re going to let the bunny hop along home while they go chasing the grizzly. Are you following me?”
That got me a disgusted glance. Plenty of people take me for a pompous git way too fond of the sound of his own voice, which is absolutely fine with me. Go ahead and dismiss me; go right ahead and drop your guard.
“What I’m saying, son, is that you are, metaphorically speaking, a bunny. If you can point us at something bigger, off you hop. Otherwise, your fuzzy little head’s going over our mantelpiece.”
“Point you at what?”
The flare of aggression in his voice would have told me, all on its own, that he didn’t need to ask. I ignored it. “We’re on the hunt for info, and you’re the very man to give it to us. Because when you were picking a house for your bit of breaking and entering, you struck it lucky. As I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed, your little nest looks straight down into the kitchen of Number Nine Ocean View Rise. Like you had your very own reality-show channel, playing twenty-four-seven.”
“World’s most boring reality-show channel,” Richie said. “Would you not have found, like, a strip club? Or a bunch of girls that go around topless?”
I pointed a finger at him. “We don’t know it was boring, now do we? That’s what we’re here to find out. Conor, my man, you tell us. The people who live at Number Nine: boring?”
Conor turned the question over, testing for dangers. In the end he said, “A family. Man and woman. Little girl and little boy.”
“Well, no shit, Sherlock, pardon my French. That much we’ve worked out for ourselves; there’s a reason they call us detectives. What are they like? How do they spend their time? Do they get on? Is it snuggles or screaming matches down there?”
“Not screaming matches. They used to . . .” That grief stirring again, dark and massive, under his voice. “They’d play games.”
“What kind of games? Like Monopoly?”
“Now I see why you picked them,” Richie said, rolling his eyes. “The excitement, yeah?”
“Like once they built a fort in that kitchen, cardboard boxes and blankets. Played cowboys and Indians, all four of them; kids climbing all over him, her lipstick for war paint. Evenings, him and her used to sit out in the garden, after the kids were in bed. Bottle of wine. She’d rub his back. They’d laugh.”
Which was the longest speech we’d heard him make. He was dying to talk about the Spains, gagging for the chance. I nodded away, pulled out my notebook and my pen and made squiggles that could have been notes. “This is good stuff, Conor my man. This is exactly what we’re after. Keep it coming. You’d say they’re happy? It’s a good marriage?”
Conor said quietly, “I’d say it was a beautiful marriage. Beautiful.”
Was. “Never saw him do anything nasty to her?”
That snapped his head round towards me. His eyes were gray and cold as water, amid the swollen red. “Like what?”
“You tell me.”
“He used to bring her presents all the time: small stuff, fancy chocolate, books, candles—she liked candles. They’d kiss when they passed in the kitchen. All those years together, and they were still mad about each other. He’d have died sooner than hurt her. OK?”
“Hey, fair enough,” I said, raising my hands. “A man’s got to ask.”
“There’s your answer.” He hadn’t blinked. Under the stubble his skin had a rough, windburned look, like he had spent too much time in cold sea air.
“And I appreciate it. That’s what we’re here for: to get the facts straight.” I made a careful note in my book. “The kids. What are they like?”
Conor said, “Her.” The grief surged in his voice, close to the surface. “Like a little doll, little girl in a book. Always in pink. She had wings she’d wear, fairy wings—”
“‘She’? Who’s ‘she’?”
“The little girl.”
“Oh, come on, fella, don’t play games. Of course you know their names. What, they never yelled to each other in the garden? The mum never called the kids in for dinner? Use their names, for God’s sake. I’m too old to keep all this him-her-she-he stuff straight.”
Conor said quietly, like he was being gentle with the name, “Emma.”
“That’s right. Go on about Emma.”
“Emma. She loved stuff around the house: putting on her little apron, making Rice Krispie buns. She had a little chalkboard; she’d line up her dolls in front of it and play teacher, teach them their letters. Tried to teach her brother, too, only he wouldn’t stay still long enough; knocked over the dolls and legged it. Peaceful, she was. Happy-natured.”
Was again. “And her brother? What’s he like?”
“Loud. Always laughing, shouting—not even words, just shouting to make noise, because that was so funny it creased him up. He—”
“His name.”
“Jack. He’d knock over Emma’s dolls, like I said, but then he’d come help her pick them back up, kiss them better. Give them sips of his juice. Once Emma was home sick, a cold or something: he brought her stuff all day long, his toys, his blanket. Sweet kids, both of them. Good kids. Great.”
Richie’s feet shifted, under the table: he was working hard to let that go by. I tapped my pen off my teeth and examined my notes. “Let me tell you something interesting that I’ve noticed, Conor. You keep saying ‘used to.’ They used to play family games, Pat used to bring Jenny presents . . . Did something change?”
Conor stared at his reflection in the one-way glass like he was measuring a stranger, volatile and dangerous. He said, “He lost his job. Pat.”
“How do you know?”
“He was there during the day.”
And so had Conor been, which didn’t exactly point to him being a productive little worker bee. “No more cowboys and Indians after that? No more cuddles in the garden?”
That cold gray flash again. “Being out of work wrecks people’s heads. Not just him. Plenty of people.”
The quick leap to the defense: I couldn’t tell whether that was on Pat’s behalf or his own. I nodded thoughtfully. “Is that how you’d describe him? Head-wrecked?”
“Maybe.” That sediment of wariness was starting to build up again, stiffening his back.
“What gave you that impression? Give us a few examples.”
A one-shouldered jerk that could have been a shrug. “Don’t remember.” The finality in his voice said he wasn’t planning to.
I leaned back in my chair and took leisurely fake notes, giving him time to settle. The air was heating up, pressing around us dense and scratchy as wool. Richie blew out air loudly and fanned himself with his top, but Conor didn’t seem to notice. The coat was staying on.
I said, “That’s going back a few months, Pat losing his job. When did you start spending time out at Ocean View?”