Steve types up our report for the gaffer while I go through the stuff the floaters brought back. They’re all competent enough, although Deasy can’t spell and Gaffney feels the need to share every detail of everything, relevant or not (‘Witness advised that she was taking her daughter Ava aged eight to visit her grandfather in St James’s Hospital after severe stroke and saw Murray getting out of car . . .’). Nothing particularly interesting in the door-to-door: Aislinn was friendly with her neighbours – no bad blood over noise or parking spaces, nothing like that – but not close to any of them; a few of them saw a woman matching Lucy’s description going into or out of her house now and then; none of them ever saw any other visitors. Aislinn never mentioned a boyfriend. They saw her going out semi-regularly in the evenings, all dolled up, but they weren’t on gossip-swapping terms and they have no idea where she was heading or what she did there. The old couple in Number 24 are half deaf and heard nothing last night; the young couple in Number 28 heard Aislinn blasting her Beyoncé, but they say she turned the music either down or off a little before eight – they could pinpoint it because eight is the baby’s bedtime, so they appreciated the volume control. After that, not a sound.

The old fella in Number 3 backs Rory’s story, or bits of it: he was heading out to walk his dog (a white male terrier named Harold, according to Gaffney) just before eight o’clock last night, and he saw a guy matching Rory’s description turning in to Viking Gardens. When he got back fifteen minutes later, the guy was still there, down at the bottom of the road, messing about with his phone. None of the other neighbours were outside in those fifteen minutes – Viking Gardens is mostly old people and a few young families, no one heading out on the Saturday-night batter – which means Rory could have been let into the house, killed Aislinn, and been back outside texting up a cover story by ten past eight; but I don’t buy it. The part that turned him twitchy was earlier, before the Tesco side-trip. None of the neighbours were out in the road then, to see him or not.

Steve is still typing. Breslin’s headed off for his chats with Rory’s brothers, taking Gaffney with him and dispensing wisdom all the way; Meehan has buttoned his overcoat to the neck and gone off to time himself wandering around Stoneybatter, Deasy’s having a laugh with his contact at the phone company, Stanton’s laying down the law to someone from the buses. Their voices wander around the high corners of the room, turning blurry at the edges from too much space. The windows are dark.

My phone rings. ‘Conway,’ I say.

O’Kelly says, ‘You and Moran, my office. I want an update.’