Broken Harbour

were a foot long. The beam looked like it had been attacked by a jaguar. Tom said, “Those could come from claws, come from some kind of machine, come from a knife or like a piece of wood with nails stuck in it. Take your pick.”

The kid was pissing me off-the whoa-dude-chillax attitude to something that I personally wasn’t taking lightly, or maybe just the fact that everyone assigned to this case appeared to be fourteen and I had missed the memo that said we were recruiting at skateboard parks. I said, “You’re the expert here, old son. You’re the one who’s here to tell us what you think. Why don’t you take your pick.”

Tom shrugged. “If I had to bet, I’d go with an animal. No way I can tell you whether it was ever actually up here, though. The marks could’ve been made back when this was a building site and the beam was exposed, or lying around on the ground outside. That might make more sense, seeing as it’s just the one beam, yeah? If something made them up here, though: whoa. See the spaces between the marks?”

He tilted the torch beam to the gouges again. “They’re like an inch apart. That’s not a stoat or a mink. Something with fuck-off big paws did that. If that’s what your vic was hunting, then the trap size wasn’t overkill after all.”

The conversation was getting to me more than it should have. The hidden corners of the attic felt crammed, seething with near-inaudible ticking noises and pinpoint red eyes; all my instincts were prickle-backed and bare- toothed, coiled to fight. I said, “Is there anything else we need to see up here? Or can we finish this chat somewhere that won’t double my dry-cleaning bill every sixty seconds?”

Tom looked faintly surprised. He examined the front of his parka, which looked like he had been wrestling dust balls. “Oh,” he said. “Right. Nah, that’s all the good stuff: I had a look for scat, hairs, any signs of nesting activity, but no dice. We’ll head downstairs, yeah?”

I went down last, keeping my torch focused on the trap. Richie and I both leaned away from it, involuntarily, on our way through the hatch.

“So,” I said, on the landing, getting out a tissue and starting work on my coat-the dust was nasty stuff, brown and sticky, like some kind of toxic industrial by-product. “Tell me what we’re dealing with.”

Tom got comfortable with his arse propped on the stepladder, held up a hand and started ticking off fingers. “OK, so we’re going with the mustelids, yeah? There’s no weasels in Ireland. We’ve got stoats, but they’re tiny, like half a pound: I’m not sure they could make the kind of noise your guy talked about. Pine martens are heavier, and they’re big-time climbers, but there’s no woodland nearer than that hill down at the end of the bay, so he’d be kind of off his patch, and I couldn’t find any marten sightings around here anyway. A mink, though: a mink could work. They like living near water, so”-he tilted his chin towards the sea-“happy days, yeah? They’re surplus killers, they’re climbers, they’re not scared of anything including humans, and they stink.”

I said, “And they’re vicious little bastards. They’d attack a kid, no problem. If you had one in your house, you’d be bloody serious about getting rid of it. Am I right?”

Tom did something noncommittal with his head. “I guess, yeah. They’re crazy aggressive-I’ve heard of mink going for a fifty-pound lamb, eating straight through the eye socket into the brain, moving on to the next one, taking out a couple of dozen in one night. And when they’re cornered, they’ll take on anything. So yeah, you wouldn’t be too happy about one moving in. I’m not totally convinced that’s what we’ve got, though. They’re maybe the size of a big house cat, tops. No reason why they’d need to enlarge the entry hole, no way they could leave those claw marks, and no reason you’d need a trap that size to catch them.”

I said, “Those aren’t deal breakers. According to you, we can’t assume the animal in the attic was responsible for either the hole or the beam. As for the trap, our vic didn’t know what he was hunting, so he erred on the side of caution. A mink’s still in the running.”

Tom examined me with mild surprise, and I realized there had been a bite to my voice. “Well, yeah. I mean, I can’t even swear anything was ever in here, so nothing’s a deal breaker; it’s all hypothetical, yeah? I’m just saying which pieces could fit where.”

“Great. And plenty of them fit with a mink. Any other possibilities?”

“Your other maybe is an otter. The sea’s right there, and they’ve got massive territories, so one of them could live down on the beach and count this house as part of his range. They’re big buggers, too, like two or three feet long, maybe twenty pounds: an otter could’ve left those marks on the beam, and he might’ve needed to enlarge that access hole. And they can get kind of playful, so those rolling noises would make sense-if it found, like, one of those candleholders or those kiddie toys or something, and it was batting it around the attic floor…”

“Three feet, twenty pounds,” I said, to Richie. “Running around your home, right above your kids. That sounds like something that could get a reasonable, sane guy fairly worried. Am I right?”

“Whoa,” Tom said placidly, holding up his hands. “Slow down. It’s not, like, a perfect fit. Otters scent-mark, all right, but they do it with droppings, and your guy didn’t find any. I had a nose around, and I can’t see any either. None in the attic, none under the attic floor, none in the garden.”

Even outside the attic, the house felt restless, infested. The wall at my back, the thought of how thin the plaster was, made me itch. I said, “And I didn’t smell anything, either. Did you?” Richie and Tom shook their heads. “So maybe it wasn’t droppings that Pat smelled: it was the otter itself, and now it hasn’t been around in a while, so the scent’s faded.”

“Could be. They smell, all right. But… I don’t know, man.” Tom squinted off into the distance, working one finger in between the dreadlocks to scratch his scalp. “It’s not just the scent thing. This whole deal, this isn’t otter behavior. End of story. They’re seriously not climbers-I mean, I’ve heard of otters climbing, but that’s like headline news, you know what I mean? Even if it did, something that size going up and down the side of a house, you’ve gotta figure it’ll get seen. And they’re wild. They’re not like rats or foxes, the urbanized stuff that’s OK with living right up against humans. Otters stay away from us. If you’ve got an otter here, he’s a fucking weirdo. He’s the one that the other otters tell their cubs to stay out of his garden.”

Richie tilted his chin at the hole above the skirting board. “You’ve seen these, yeah?”

Tom nodded. “Freaky or what? The vics had the whole place this fancy, all their shit matched, but they were OK with massive holes in their walls? People are weird.”

“Could an otter have made those? Or a mink?”

Tom squatted on his haunches and examined the hole, cocking his head at different angles, like he had all week. “Maybe,” he said, in the end. “It’d help if we had some debris left, so we could at least tell whether these were made from inside the walls or outside, but your vics were serious about cleanup. Someone’s even sanded down the edges-see there?-so if there were claw marks or tooth marks, they’re gone. Like I said: weird.”

I said, “I’ll ask our next vics to be sure and live in a hovel. Meanwhile, work with what we’ve got.”

“No hassle,” Tom said cheerfully. “Mink, I’ve gotta say they couldn’t do it. They’re not really into digging, unless they have to, and with those little paws…” He waved his hands. “The plaster’s pretty thin, but still, it’d take them ages to get that kind of damage done. Otters dig, and they’re strong, so yeah, an otter could’ve done it, easy. Except somewhere along the way he’d get stuck inside the wall, or he’d chew on an electrical wire and bzzt, otter barbecue. So maybe yeah, but probably no. Does that help?”

“You’ve been a great help,” I said. “Thanks. We’ll let you know if any more info comes in.”

“Oh yeah,” Tom said, straightening and giving me a double thumbs-up and a big grin. “This is some mad shit, yeah? Love to see more.”

I said, “I’m delighted we could make your day. I’ll take that key, if you don’t have plans for it.”

I held out my hand. Tom pulled a tangle of crap out of his pocket, picked out the padlock key and dropped it into my palm. “Pleasure’s all mine,” he said cheerfully, and bounced off down the stairs, dreadlocks flapping.

At the gate, Richie said, “I’d say the uniforms left copies of that key at HQ for us, no?”

We were watching Tom slouch off to his car, which inevitably was a green VW camper van in urgent need of a coat of paint. “They probably did,” I said. “I didn’t want that little tosser bringing his mink-spotting mates on a tour of the scene. ‘Like, dude, how totally cool is that?’ This isn’t bloody entertainment.”

“Techs,” Richie said absently. “You know what they’re like. Larry’s the same, sure.”

“That’s different. A teenager is what this guy’s like. He needs to cop himself on and grow up. Or maybe I’m just not down with the kids these days.”

“So,” Richie said, digging his hands deep into his pockets. He wasn’t looking at me. “The holes, yeah? Not subsidence. And not any animal that your man can put his finger on.”

“That’s not what he said.”