The uniform at the door is just a kid, long wobbly-looking neck and big ears holding up a too-big hat. ‘Detectives,’ he says, snapping upright and trying to work out whether to salute. ‘Garda JP Dooley.’ Or something. His accent needs subtitles.

‘Detective Conway,’ I say, finding gloves and shoe covers in my bag. ‘And that’s Detective Moran. Seen anyone hanging around who shouldn’t be?’

‘Just them kids, like.’ The kids will need talking to, and so will their parents. The thing about old neighbourhoods: people still mind each other’s business. It doesn’t suit everyone, but it suits us. ‘We didn’t do any door-to-door yet; we thought ye might want it done your own way, like.’

‘Good call,’ Steve says, pulling on his gloves. ‘We’ll get someone onto it. What was that like when you got here?’

He nods at the cottage door, which is a harmless shade of blue, splintered where the uniforms bashed it in. ‘Closed,’ the uniform says promptly.

‘Well, yeah, I got that,’ Steve says, but with a grin that makes it a shared joke, not the smackdown I would have pulled out. ‘Closed how? Bolted, double-locked, on the latch?’

‘Oh, right, sorry, I—’ The uniform’s gone red. ‘There’s a Chubb lock and a Yale. ’Twasn’t double-locked, but. On the latch, only.’

Meaning if the killer left this way, he just pulled the door closed behind him; he didn’t need a key. ‘Alarm going off?’

‘No. Like, there is an alarm system, like’ – the uniform points at the box on the wall above us – ‘but it wasn’t set. It didn’t go off when we went in, even.’

‘Thanks,’ Steve says, giving him another grin. ‘That’s great.’ The uniform goes scarlet. Stevie has a fan.

The door swings open, and Sophie Miller sticks her head out. Sophie has big brown eyes and a ballerina build and makes a hooded white boiler suit look some kind of elegant, so a lot of people try to give her shit, but they only try once. She’s one of the best crime-scene techs we’ve got, plus the two of us like each other. Seeing her is more of a relief than it should be.

‘Hey,’ she says. ‘About time.’

‘Roadworks,’ I say. ‘Howya. What’ve we got?’

‘Looks like another lovers’ tiff to me. Have you called dibs on them, or what?’

‘Better than gangsters,’ I say. I feel Steve’s quick startled glance, throw him a cold one back: he knows me and Sophie are mates, but he should also know I’m not gonna go crying on my mate’s shoulder about squad business. ‘At least on domestics, you get the odd witness who’ll talk. Let’s have a look.’

The cottage is small: we walk straight into the sitting-slash-dining room. Three doors off it, and I already know which is what: bedroom off to the left, kitchen straight ahead, shower room to the right of that – the layout is the same as my place. The decor is nothing like, though. Purple rug on the laminate flooring, heavy purple curtains trying to look expensive, purple throw artistically arranged on the white leather sofa, forgettable canvas prints of purple flowers: the room looks like it was bought through some Decorate Your Home app where you plug in your budget and your favourite colours and the whole thing arrives in a van the next day.