He reached out a hand towards my elbow, but he had better sense than to touch me. I took one last look at Kevin’s face, that vacant wink and the black trickle of blood, and the little twist to his eyebrow that used to be the first thing I saw every morning, next to me on the pillow, when I was six years old. Then I said, “Right.” As I turned to leave, I heard the heavy ripping noise of the boys unzipping their body bag.

I don’t remember getting back into the house, or Scorcher guiding me up the stairs, out of the morgue boys’ way. Juvenile shite like punching walls wouldn’t touch this; I was so angry that for a minute I thought I had gone blind. When my eyes cleared we were on the top floor, in one of the back rooms that Kevin and I had checked out on Saturday. The room was brighter and colder than I remembered: someone had pushed up the bottom half of the filthy sash window, letting in a stream of icy light. Scorcher said, “Are you OK?”

I needed, like a drowning man needs air, to hear him talk to me cop-to-cop, box in this howling mess with neat flat preliminary-report words. I said, and my voice came out strange and tinny and distant, “What’ve we got?”

Regardless of all the many things that may be wrong with him, Scorcher is one of ours. I saw him get it. He nodded and leaned back against the wall, settling in for this. “Your brother was last seen at around twenty past eleven last night. He, your sister Jacinta, your brother Seamus, your sister Carmel and her family had had dinner at your parents’ place, as per routine—stop me if I’m telling you anything you already know.”

I shook my head. “Keep going.”