I have a look in the fitted wardrobe. Plenty of clothes, mostly skirt suits and going-out dresses, all of it mid-range block-colour stuff with one sparkly detail, the type of stuff that gets showcased on morning talk shows alongside blood-type diets and skin-resurfacing treatments. Have a look in the curly white-and-gold bookcase: load of romances, load of old kids’ books, load of that godawful shite where the author enlightens you on the meaning of life through the story of a slum kid who learns to fly, few books about crime in Ireland – missing persons, gangland crime, murder; the irony – some urban fantasy stuff that actually looks OK. I flip through the books: the enlightenment shite and the true crime are covered with underlining, but no he-dun-it note falls out. I have a look in the bedside table: daisy-patterned box of tissues, laptop, chargers; six-pack of condoms, unopened. A look in the bin: nothing. A look under the bed: not even a dustball.

The vic’s home is your shot at getting a handle on this person you’re never going to meet. Even for their friends, people filter and spin, and then the friends filter all over again: they don’t want to speak ill of the dead, or they’re feeling maudlin about their poor lost pal, or they don’t want you to misunderstand that little quirk of his. But behind the door of home, those filters fall away. You go through that door and you go looking for what’s not deliberate: what would have been tidied up before anyone called round, what smells weird and what’s down the back of the sofa cushions. The slip-ups that the victim never wanted anyone to see.

This place is giving me nothing. Aislinn Murray is a picture in a glossy magazine. Everything in here is managed as carefully as if she was expecting some candid-camera show to burst in and splash her private life across the internet.

Paranoid? Control freak? Genuinely superhumanly boring?

But please couldn’t you just, don’t you understand how I—

She let more slip and was more vivid in that one moment than in every detail of her home. There was no way I could’ve known, not like she was wearing a sign that said Future Vic, but still: for once I looked a live murder victim in the eye, and I blew her off.

Once the techs finish up we’ll do a serious search, which might give us more, but from the looks of things, Aislinn’s personality – assuming she had one somewhere – doesn’t actually matter. If we can ID Lover Boy and make a solid case against him, we don’t need to give a damn who Aislinn was. It leaves me edgy all the same, hearing that high little-girl voice where there should be nothing.

‘Anything?’ Steve asks, in the doorway.

‘Bugger-all. If she wasn’t lying out there, I’d think she never actually existed. How about the kitchen?’

‘Couple of interesting things. Come look.’

‘Thank Jaysus,’ I say, following him. I’m expecting the kitchen to be chrome and fake granite, Celtic Tiger trendy done on the cheap; instead it’s over-carved pine, pink gingham oilcloth, framed prints of chickens wearing pink gingham aprons. Everything I find out about this woman leaves me with less of a handle on her. Out the back window is the same walled miniature patio I have, except Aislinn put a curly wooden bench on hers, so she could sit out there and enjoy the view of her wall. I check the back door: locked.