Sophie makes a noise like a shrug. ‘The black fibres on the vic’s body are consistent with your suspect’s coat, but that’s not as special as it sounds: they’re common as muck, they’d probably be consistent with half the black wool coats in this town. No match to his scarf. No blood on any of his stuff – meaning if he is your boy, those aren’t the gloves he was wearing when he did the job. Sorry.’

‘Them’s the breaks,’ I say. No surprise there: even Rory’s bright enough to spot a bin and dump bloody gloves in it. ‘We’ll keep looking. Anything new from the scene?’

‘Most of it you can read in the reports – a load of miscellaneous unidentified fibres, that kind of shite. We’ll cross-check them with fibres from your suspect’s place, in case of secondary transfer – a fibre from his carpet gets on his coat and from there onto her sofa, or wherever – and we’ll check your suspect’s stuff for fibres from the vic’s place, but we haven’t got to that yet. Dammit—’ Rustling and a thump: Sophie fighting with her roll of bubble wrap. ‘There’s just one thing that’s a little on the weird side. The place is clean.’

‘She was having her new fella over for dinner. She cleaned up.’

‘Not that kind of clean. I mean, that too; it looks to me like she was the housekeeping type to begin with – the top of the wardrobe’s got almost no dust on it, that kind of Stepford crap – and then she did a full blitz for her date with Romeo. But I’m talking about fingerprints. You know how Moran wanted me to check the places an ex might’ve touched? The headboard, under the toilet seat?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Nothing. No prints on the headboard, not even the vic’s – and it’s gloss paint, it should hold prints. The doorknobs, the bathroom sink, the toilet seat, the fridge door, the condom packet in her bedside table: nothing but smudges.’

I say, ‘Somebody wiped the place down.’ The ghostly gangster boyfriend is starting to cast a shadow. Gang boys know all about wiping a place down for prints. Rory, who’d never been in that house before, wouldn’t need to.

Sophie makes a noncommittal sound. ‘Maybe. Or maybe Ms Stepford was just hardcore about cleaning. Either one would fit. I figured you’d be interested anyway.’

‘I am,’ I say. ‘Any fluids on the bed?’