“Oh, that’s right. Bring this one in and you’ll be getting all the big fancy cases again, won’t you? Ah, that’d be great for you, so it would. Some of us”—to Richie—“some of us just want to solve murders, the media attention doesn’t matter to us, but our Kennedy’s a little different. He likes the spotlight.” Quigley waggled the newspaper: ANGELS BUTCHERED IN THEIR BEDS, a blurry holiday shot of the Spains laughing on some beach. “Well, nothing wrong with that, I suppose. As long as the job gets done.”

“You want to solve murders?” Richie asked, puzzled.

Quigley ignored that. To me: “Wouldn’t it be great altogether if you got this one right? Then maybe everyone would put that other time behind them.” He actually had a hand lifted to pat my arm, but I gave him a stare and he thought better of it. “Good luck, eh? We’ll all be hoping you’ve got the right fella.” He shot me a smirk and a little wave of his crossed fingers, and waddled off to try and bring down someone else’s morning.

Richie waved bye-bye with a manic cheesy grin, and watched him go out the door. He said, “What other time?”

The stack of reports and witness statements on my desk was shaping up nicely. I flicked through them. “One of my cases went pear-shaped, a couple of years back. I put my money on the wrong guy, ended up missing the collar. Quigley was talking shite, though: at this stage, no one except him even remembers that. He’s hanging on to it for dear life because it made his year.”

Richie nodded. He didn’t look one bit surprised. “The face on him, when you said that about showing him how it’s done: pure poison. Bit of history there, yeah?”

One of the floaters had a nasty habit of typing in all caps, which was going to have to go. “No history. Quigley is shit at his job, and he figures that’s everyone’s fault but his. I get cases he’ll never get, which makes it my fault he gets stuck with the dregs, and I take them down, which makes him look worse, which makes it my fault that he couldn’t solve a game of Cluedo.”

“Two more brain cells and he’d be a Brussels sprout,” Richie said. He was leaning back in his chair, biting a thumbnail and still watching the door where Quigley had gone out. “Good thing, too. He’d only love a chance to put the boot into you. If he wasn’t thick as pig shite, you’d be in trouble.”

I put the statement sheets down. “What’s Quigley been saying about me?”

Richie’s feet started a soft-shoe shuffle under his chair. “Just that. What you heard there.”

“And before that?” Richie tried to look blank, but his feet were still going. “Richie. This isn’t about my tender feelings. If he’s undermining our working relationship here, I need to know.”

“He’s not. I don’t even remember what he said. Nothing you could put your finger on.”