“We’ll find out. Talk to Fiona, talk to all their old mates—”

“Yeah, we will. We’ve got the little bastard now.” I wanted to grab Richie in a headlock, like we were a pair of idiot teenagers bonding by giving each other dead arms. “Richie, my friend, you just earned your whole year’s salary.”

Richie grinned, reddening. “Ah, no. We’d have worked it out sooner or later.”

“We would, yeah. But sooner is an awful lot better. We can take half a dozen floaters off trying to work out if Conor and Jenny bought petrol at the same station in 2008, and that gives us half a dozen extra chances at finding those clothes before a bin lorry takes them away … You’re the Man of the Match, my friend. Give yourself a big pat on the back.”

He shrugged, rubbing his nose to cover the blush. “’S just luck.”

“Bollix. There’s no such thing. Luck only comes in useful on the back of good solid detective work, and that’s exactly what you had there. You tell me: what do you want to do next?”

“Fiona Rafferty. Fast as we can.”

“Hell yes. You ring her; she liked you better than me.” Admitting it didn’t even sting. “See how soon you can get her to come in to HQ. Get her down there inside two hours, and lunch is on me.”

Fiona was at the hospital—in the background, that machine was steadily beeping away—and even her “Hello?” sounded exhausted to breaking point.

Richie said, “Ms. Rafferty, it’s Detective Curran. Have you got a minute?”

A second’s silence. “Hang on,” Fiona said. Muffled, through a hand over the phone: “I’ve got to take this. I’ll only be outside, OK? Call me if you want me.” The click of a door, and the beeping vanished. “Hello?”

Richie said, “Sorry to take you away from your sister. How’s she getting on?”

A moment’s silence. “Not great. Same as yesterday. That’s when you talked to her, right? Before we were even allowed in.”

There was an edge to Fiona’s voice. Richie said, calmly, “For a few minutes, yeah, we did. We didn’t want to tire her out too much.”

“Are you going to come back and keep asking her questions? Because don’t. She hasn’t got anything to tell you. She doesn’t remember anything. Mostly she can’t even talk. She just cries. All of us just cry.” Fiona’s voice was shaking. “Can you just … leave her alone? Please?”

Richie was learning: he didn’t answer that. He said, “I rang because we’ve got some news for you. It’ll be on the telly later, but we figured you’d rather hear this from us. We’re after arresting someone.”

Silence. Then: “It wasn’t Pat. I told you. I told you.”

Richie’s eyes met mine for a second. “Yeah, you did.”

“Who— Oh, God. Who is he? Why did he? Why?”

“We’re still working on that. We figured maybe you could give us a hand. Can you come into Dublin Castle, have a talk about it? We’ll give you the details there.”