“So maybe it was just a vendetta against Uncle Simon, after all.”
“Could be, but I don’t think so. I’m betting it’s more what you might call a scheduling conflict.” There was a grin in Sam’s voice: having something solid to go on had changed everything. “Sixteen of the reports give the time when the incident happened, and it’s always somewhere between half past eleven and one at night. That’s not coincidence. Whoever’s after Whitethorn House, that’s their window.”
“Pub closing time,” I said.
He laughed. “Great minds. I figure a lad or two out drinking, every now and then they’re on a bad buzz and the old Dutch courage is up, and when the pub throws them out it’s off to Whitethorn House with a couple of bricks or a can of spray paint or whatever they’ve got handy. Old Simon’s schedule suited them down to the ground: by half past eleven he was mostly either unconscious-those are the ones where the report doesn’t give the time of the incident, because he didn’t call it in till he sobered up the next morning-or at least too drunk to go after them. The first two times they broke in, he was home, slept through the whole thing. Lucky he’d a good lock on his bedroom door, or God knows what might have happened.”
“But then we moved in,” I said. A second too late, I heard myself-they had moved in, not we-but Sam didn’t seem to notice. “These days, between half past eleven and one, there’s five people wide awake and moving around the house. Wrecking the gaff doesn’t seem like so much fun when three big strong lads could catch you at it and beat the crap out of you.”
“And two big strong girls,” Sam said, and I caught the grin again. “I bet you and Abby would get a couple of punches in. That’s what almost happened with the rock through the window. They were all in the sitting room, just before midnight, when the rock came flying into the kitchen; as soon as they realized what had happened, the five of them legged it out the back door to go after your man. Because they weren’t in the room, though, it took them a minute to figure out what was going on, and by that time the guy was well gone. Lucky for him, Byrne said. It was forty-five minutes before they called the cops-they went through all the lanes first, looking for the guy-and even then, they were raging. Your man Rafe told Byrne that, if he ever caught this fella, his own mammy wouldn’t recognize him; Lexie said she was planning to, and I’m quoting, ‘kick him in the bollocks so hard he’d have to stick his hand down his throat if he wanted a wank.’ ”
“Good for her,” I said.
Sam laughed. “Yeah, I thought you’d enjoy that one. The others had better sense than to come out with anything like that in front of a cop, but Byrne says they were thinking it, all right. He gave them a lecture about not taking the law into their own hands, but he’s not sure how much of it went in.”
“I don’t blame them,” I said. “It’s not like the cops had been all that useful. What about the graffiti?”
“Lexie’s lot weren’t home. It was a Sunday night, and they’d gone to dinner and the pictures in town. They got home a little after midnight and there it was, across the front of the house. It was the first time they’d been out that late since they moved in. That could be coincidence, but I don’t think so. The thing with the rock put some respect on our vandal-or vandals-but either he was keeping an eye on the house, or he saw the car go through the village and not come back. He saw his chance, and he took it.”
“So you’re thinking it’s not a village-versus-Big-House thing, after all?” I said. “Just some guy with a grudge?”
Sam made a noncommittal sound. “Not exactly. Have you heard what happened when Lexie’s lot tried going into Regan’s?”
“Yeah, Abby said you’d talked to her about that. She mentioned something about them getting frozen out, but she didn’t go into details.”
“It was a couple of days after they moved in. The whole bunch of them go into the pub one evening, they find a table, Daniel goes up to the bar, and the barman doesn’t see him. For ten minutes, from four feet away, with only a handful of people in the pub and Daniel going, ‘Excuse me, can I have two pints of Guinness and…’ The barman just stands there, polishing a glass and watching the telly. Finally Daniel gives up, goes back to the others, they have a quiet chat and decide maybe old Simon got thrown out of here too many times and the Marches aren’t popular. So they send Abby up instead-they figure she’s a better bet than the English guy or the Northern boy. Same thing happens. Meanwhile, Lexie starts talking to the old fellas at the next table, trying to find out what the hell’s going on. Nobody answers her, nobody even looks at her; they all turn their backs and keep on with their own conversation.”
