‘It drove me nuts that Dad didn’t give a shit about the shop. He’d sit around with his mates, playing cards, drinking, smoking, chewing the fat, while Mum worked her butt off behind the counter.’ He picked up a damp Rizla packet and a rusty can. ‘I wanted to help because the old man wouldn’t, but he couldn’t stand me “interfering”, as he called it.’

Even then Tomasz had identified a problem and taken matters into his own hands.

‘I saw the news.’ He was pulling at brambles again, wrenching at the tangles of thorny branches, using his foot as leverage to snap their lengths. ‘That boy set fire to the soup shop.’

‘Yes. It’s very sad. He made a dreadful mistake – we don’t quite know how yet – and ended up killing Simas and his female friend.’ I studied his tells. ‘What we don’t understand is why a ten-year-old kid would torch a shop.’

‘Is that why he was killed? For torching the shop?’ Tomasz’s voice was casual, as though he was having a chat with a pal in the pub. He suspended his handful of weeds mid-air while he waited for me to answer.

‘We believe so.’ Was I imagining it or had he flinched?

He knew that his mother’s shop was the intended arson target, and that we’d ruled him out as a suspect because, unlike his sister and brother-in-law, he wasn’t short of money. I shouldn’t have given him the information about Ali’s murder, but I’d planned what I needed to say, and my gut instinct told me that the human angle was key. The next bit wasn’t going to be easy. ‘Do you know someone called “Kenny Hayes” by any chance?’

‘I should imagine the whole country does. He’s been plastered over the news for the last few days.’ He carried on pulling up weeds. ‘Has he really been recruiting kids to crime?’

‘Yes.’ He’d taken the hook. ‘We’re fairly sure he’s responsible for the death of Patrick Ryan and Ali Kousa, the young boy, and we know he was involved in the arson at the soup shop.’

‘Really?’ Tomasz dropped the weeds on the pile and leaned against the fence.

I nodded. ‘Except, a bit like Ali, I can’t figure out what his motive could be.’

‘No idea, I’m afraid.’ He tried to make his voice sound detached. It was the sort of thing you might say if someone asked your opinion.