At this point, any money I spent was going to have to be my own. For now, I couldn’t run any of this as an expense through the office: I was suspended in all but name. And, for the same reason, I couldn’t seek payment of the expense from the Carneys either – if I wasn’t officially working, they weren’t really my clients. Yet, to move the case forward, I had to do the tests. Like I had all along with this case, I felt compelled.

But there was more to it than that. Getting the tests done contained an element of self-preservation. If the tests revealed what I expected then, even though I was still a long way from proving Gill’s culpability, arguably I would have objective justification for my work on the case. I would be able to show the partners at work that there was real substance to Sean Carney’s suspicions. And, even though this first set of results would be inadmissible in any court proceedings, they would give me the solid ground I needed to pursue the case officially, with the full backing of the partners and access to the firm’s funds and resources. If I could show Gill’s DNA and Deirdre’s on the same coaster, I had a plausible argument to make that I had been right all along. And I’d no longer be at risk of dismissal.

Looking at it that way, even though I couldn’t afford it, the huge financial investment was the easy part. If I was right, I’d get a refund of the costs so far from the firm. If I was wrong, I was out of a job, but at least I would have given the case everything I had. And nobody would ever know about the tests.

But, coming at it another way, I was edging close to being disbarred for misconduct by getting the tests done at all. Gill could argue that I had planted the DNA. He might be believed: taking DNA without his consent was unethical, procedurally faulty, and illegal. Lastly, and most importantly, it was unconstitutional, in breach of his fundamental rights, his rights to privacy and bodily integrity, to start with.

Though Gill hadn’t cared about Deirdre’s constitutional rights, or Rhona’s, hadn’t cared about anything except getting as much as he could from them, discarding them afterwards like broken dolls. I told myself that the circumstances were exceptional – and that exceptional measures were called for.

Which was exactly the argument used to justify torture and extraordinary rendition. And the death penalty.

What had possessed me to use a stupid pen to steal Gill’s DNA without his consent? What I had done was legally and morally wrong. I would have to wait, make a formal request for the DNA, and obtain it by court order. Going ahead with the tests now was absolutely not the right thing to do.