Outside the window the sky was a rich winter black, and shadows were starting to pile up around the ragged stacks of files leaning in corners. The office felt like a place I had dreamed about once when I was a kid and spent years trying to find, a place whose every priceless detail I should have been hoarding in my memory; a place that was already dissolving through my fingers, already lost.

I moved in the doorway, and O’Kelly raised his head. For a split second he looked tired and sad. Then all that was wiped away and his face turned blank, utterly expressionless.

“Detective Kennedy,” he said, taking off his reading glasses. “Shut the door.”

I closed it behind me, stayed standing until O’Kelly pointed his pen at a chair. He said, “Quigley was in to me this morning.”

I said, “He should have left it to me.”

“That’s what I told him. He put on his nun-face and said he didn’t trust you to come clean.”

The little fuckwad. “Wanted to get his version in first, more like.”

“He couldn’t wait to drop you in the shite. Practically came in his kacks at the chance. Here’s the thing, though: Quigley’ll twist a story to suit himself, all right, but I’ve never known him make one up from scratch. Too careful of his own arse.”

I said, “He wasn’t making it up.” I found the evidence bag in my pocket—it felt like days since I had put it there—and laid it on O’Kelly’s desk.

He didn’t pick it up. He said, “Give me your version. I’ll need it in a written statement, but I want to hear it first.”

“Detective Curran found this in Conor Brennan’s flat, while I was outside making a phone call. The nail polish matches Jennifer Spain’s. The wool matches the pillow that was used to suffocate Emma Spain.”

O’Kelly whistled. “Sweet fuck. The mammy. Are you sure?”

“I spent the afternoon with her. She won’t confess under caution, but she gave me a full account off-the-record.”

“Which is bugger-all use to us, without this.” He nodded at the envelope. “How’d it get into Brennan’s flat, if he’s not our man?”

“He was at the scene. He’s the one who tried to finish off Jennifer Spain.”

“Thank Jaysus for that. At least you didn’t arrest a holy innocent. That’s one less lawsuit, anyway.” O’Kelly thought that over, grunted. “Go on. Curran finds this, clicks what it means. And then? Why the hell didn’t he hand it in?”

“He was in two minds. In his view, Jennifer Spain’s suffered enough, and no purpose would be served by her arrest: the best solution would be to release Conor Brennan and close the file, with the implication that Patrick Spain was the perpetrator.”

O’Kelly snorted. “Beautiful. That’s only beautiful. The fucking gobshite. So out he walks, cool as a cucumber, with this yoke in his pocket.”

“He was holding on to the evidence while he decided what to do with it. Last night, a woman who’s also known to me was at Detective Curran’s house. She spotted that envelope and thought it shouldn’t be there, so she took it away with her. She tried to hand it in to me this morning, but Quigley intercepted her.”