It’s very very important to show sensitivity to juvenile witnesses. We get workshops and all; PowerPoint presentations, if our luck’s really in. Me, I remember what it was like, being a kid. People forget that. A little dab of sensitive: lovely. A dab more, grand. A dab more, you’re daydreaming throat-punches.

I said, ‘Being a witness does suck. For anyone. You were better able for it than most.’

No sarcasm in the smile, this time. Other stuff, plenty, but not sarcasm. ‘Can you explain to them at school that I don’t think I’m a chicken?’ Holly asked the social worker, who was plastering on extra sensitive to hide the baffled. ‘Not even a little?’ And left.

One thing about me: I’ve got plans.

First thing I did, once I’d waved bye-bye to Holly and the social worker, I looked up the Harper case on the system.

Lead detective: Antoinette Conway.

A woman working Murder shouldn’t rate scandal, shouldn’t even rate a mention. But a lot of the old boys are old-school; a lot of the young ones, too. Equality is paper-deep, peel it away with a fingernail. The grapevine says Conway got the gig by shagging someone, says she got it by ticking the token boxes – something extra in there, something that’s not pasty potato-face Irish: sallow skin, strong sweeps to her nose and her cheekbones, blue-black shine on her hair. Shame she’s not in a wheelchair, the grapevine says, or she’d be commissioner by now.

I knew Conway, to see anyway, before she was famous. Back in training college, she was two years behind me. Tall girl, hair scraped back hard. Built like a runner, long limbs, long muscles. Chin always high, shoulders always back. A lot of guys buzzed round Conway, her first week: just trying to help her settle in, nice to be friendly, nice to be nice, just coincidence that the girls who didn’t look the same didn’t get the same. Whatever she said to the boys, after the first week they stopped giving her come-ons. They gave her shite instead.

Two years behind me, in training. Got out of uniform one year behind. Made Murder the same time I made Cold Cases.

Cold Cases is good. Very bleeding good for a guy like me: working-class Dub, first in my family to go for a Leaving Cert instead of an apprenticeship. I was out of uniform by twenty-six, out of the General Detective Unit and into Vice by twenty-eight – Holly’s da put in a word for me there. Into Cold Cases the week I turned thirty, hoping there was no word put in, scared there was. I’m thirty-two now. Time to keep moving on up.

Cold Cases is good. Murder is better.

Holly’s da can’t put in a word for me there, even if I wanted one. The Murder gaffer hates his guts. He’s not fond of mine, either.

That case when Holly was my witness: I took the collar. I gave the caution, I clicked the handcuffs, I signed my name on the arrest report. I was just a floater, should have handed over anything worthwhile that came my way; should have been back in the incident room, like a good boy, typing seen-nothing statements. I took the collar anyway. I had earned it.