“Easy. After work the next day—the Friday—I went over to the Dalys’, we told her ma and da we were going to Rosie’s room to listen to her new Eurythmics album, all they said was for us to keep it down. We had it just loud enough that they wouldn’t hear Rosie packing.” There was a tiny slip of a smile nudging at one corner of Imelda’s mouth. Just for a second, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, smiling to herself through cigarette smoke, she looked like the quick-moving smart-mouthed girl I used to know. “Should’ve seen her, Francis. She was dancing round that room, she was singing in her hairbrush, she had these new knickers she was after buying so you wouldn’t see her manky old ones and she was waving them round her head . . . She had me dancing along and all; we must’ve looked like a right pair of eejits, laughing our arses off and trying to do it quiet enough that her ma wouldn’t come in and see what we were at. I think it was being able to say it to someone, after keeping it under wraps all that time. She was over the moon with herself.”

I slammed the door on that picture fast; it would keep for later. “Good,” I said. “That’s good to hear. So when she finished packing . . . ?”

The grin spread to both sides of Imelda’s mouth. “I just picked up the case and walked out. Swear to God. I had my jacket over it, but that wouldn’t have fooled anyone for a second, not if they’d been looking proper. I went out of the bedroom and Rosie said good-bye to me, nice and loud, and I shouted good-bye to Mr. Daly and Mrs. Daly—they were in the sitting room, watching the telly. He looked round when I went past the door, but he was only checking to make sure Rosie wasn’t going with me; he never even noticed the case. I just let meself out.”

“Fair play to the pair of yous,” I said, grinning back. “And you took it straight across to Number Sixteen?”