Obviously I was joking before and I don’t really think Marcus and his team ever whack up the dosages to make their lives a bit easier, but you certainly couldn’t blame them today. I mean, if ever there was a time that might have called for some creative medication . . .

Everyone does seem strangely subdued, though, and you don’t usually get that with all the patients at the same time.

All the patients and all the staff.

Nothing’s been arranged, there were no announcements or whatever, but while the arrest is being made the rest of us find ourselves hanging about like statues in the TV room. For once, the telly’s just a big dusty box in the corner and nobody seems to care very much. Nobody seems to know what to do or say or why we’re here at all.

It’s like everyone’s just . . . gathered. Cows in a field.

I’m happy enough to sit there and enjoy the stillness and the quiet, and it’s lovely to be ignored even if it’s only for a few minutes. To vanish. True to form, none of it lasts very long and it’s obvious that most of the people I’d stupidly thought were quietly contemplating the morning’s events were actually gagging to sound off about them.

As soon as the first one pipes up, the dam well and truly bursts.

‘You ask me, it was always on the cards.’

‘Yeah, course it was. There was always something very iffy about that one.’

‘Not just iffy. Dangerous . . .’

‘Dangerous, right. I always knew that.’

‘No, you did not,’ I say. ‘None of you knew anything.’ Heads turn and, just like that, I’m not invisible any more, but that’s all right because I no longer want to be.

It’s what always happens, isn’t it? As soon as a killer is discovered, they come pouring out of the woodwork: the ordinary gobshites who waste no time in letting everyone know – especially the papers who are usually paying for it – that they always knew there was something ‘off’ about their neighbour or workmate or acquaintance. I’ve never been able to abide that sort of cobblers, especially when I was one of those whose job it was to catch the killers in the first place.

To pick up the pieces afterwards.

‘If any of you really knew anything, why didn’t you tell the people who might have been able to do something about it?’ Suddenly, they’re all a bit less keen to share their opinions. ‘Don’t you think that might have been helpful? I mean, if you had, then maybe Debbie might still be alive. If you actually knew and you’ve kept quiet about it until now, then some people might say you’re partly to blame for her being killed.’

Now there’s some nodding, a few grunts of agreement.

It’s nice.