Beat of pain at the base of my throat and in the crooks of my elbows, places where veins run near the surface. I said, ‘That cuts two ways. If one of them confesses, doesn’t mean she did it.’

‘If they all go bloody Spartacus, I swear I’ll take them up on it. Arrest the fucking lot, let the prosecutors sort it out.’ Conway pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, like she didn’t want to see the corridor any more. We’d been there long enough that the place was starting to look familiar, in a glitchy way, something you saw in a stuttering DVD or when you were too hammered to see straight. She said, ‘We’ll go at the three of them as soon as we get those full texts. I want some clue what went down between Chris and Selena – the breakup, and after. See her face, when she looked at those records? The ones for just before the murder?’

I said, ‘Startled. Looked like the real thing to me.’

‘You think everything’s the real thing. How you got this far . . .’ She didn’t have the energy. ‘It did, but. She didn’t expect to see all those texts. She might’ve just flaked out and forgotten them; she’s spacy enough to start with, and she says herself she’s not too clear on those couple of weeks. Or else . . .’

‘Or else someone else knew about her phone. Used it to send some of those texts.’

Conway said, ‘Yeah. Joanne must’ve figured that Selena had a special Chris phone, same as she did. Julia must’ve, too, since she knew about Joanne’s. And did you see Selena clam up when I asked about finding the phone in the wrong position? Someone was at it, all right.’

I said, ‘We need those texts. Even if they’re not signed—’

‘They won’t be.’

‘Yeah, probably not. But there might be something that gives us a hint who wrote them.’

‘Yeah. And I want to ID the other girls Chris was texting, before he hooked up with Selena. If another one of our eight was in there, things are gonna get interesting – specially if she’s the one he was juggling with Joanne. Bet you anything the special phones were never registered, but we could get lucky, find a name somewhere in the texts – or there could be something in the photos they sent, if we can get them. Any girl with the brains of pet food would’ve cropped out her face, but I’m gonna bet on at least one idiot. And someone might have a mole on her tit, a scar, something identifiable.’

I said, ‘OK if I leave that part to you?’