Sophie blows out air. ‘You sure? If you piss off my computer guy, he’s gonna send you a list of every single URL she ever visited. You’ll spend the rest of your lives checking out every page of every designer-outlet website in the universe.’

‘That’s why God invented floaters,’ I say. ‘Was that it for the laptop, yeah?’

‘Don’t rush me,’ Sophie says, through tape. ‘I’m getting to the good part. My guy went through her documents – the only mildly interesting thing in there is that she updated her CV a couple of months ago: looks like she was considering switching jobs. And he had a look at her photos. Most of them are the same stuff that’s on her phone, selfies in clubs; but there’s one folder that’s password-protected. It was created last September and it’s called “MORTGAGE”, but who the hell takes photos of her mortgage? And puts a password on them?’

I don’t even need coffee any more; I’m well awake. September: long before Aislinn met Rory, and not long after, according to Lucy, she hooked up with her secret squeeze. ‘Camouflage folder name,’ I say. ‘To turn off anyone who went looking through her stuff. How are you doing on getting in there?’

‘No joy yet. My guy’s thrown the dictionary at that folder, tried various combinations of Aislinn’s name and DOB, and nada.’

‘Did you try the password from her Facebook account?’

‘We haven’t got it. Facebook and her Gmail were both already open on her phone; we reset her passwords by answering her security question – her mother’s maiden name, for Christ’s sake – so we can get in on other machines if we want, but we don’t have the original passwords. And the providers won’t have them, either; they’re encrypted.’

‘Is your guy still working on it?’

‘Yeah, and he’s going to crack it. This chick wasn’t Jason Bourne; no chance she was up to my guy’s standards. I’m just telling you: she was at least a little bit serious about keeping this folder locked down.’

‘I’ve got faith in you and your guy,’ I say. The adrenaline is rising inside me again; no matter how hard I try to stamp it down, part of me is picturing Sophie’s guy cracking the password and coming up with both hands full of pics of Aislinn riding Cueball Lanigan, with Breslin counting cash in the background. ‘Let me know when you get in there, OK?’

‘As soon as.’ Sophie rips one more strip of tape and slaps it down. ‘That’ll have to do. I swear, this thing’s ugly enough, I kind of hope they do smash it. The world would be a better place.’