What we need to do, just for starters, is pull Breslin’s and McCann’s financials, pull their phone records, and have someone turn their computers inside out to find out if they’ve been accessing anything they shouldn’t be. None of which is gonna happen. ‘Keep working our case. Keep talking to them. Keep our mouths shut.’ I wave to the guy who runs the car pool; he waves back and turns to look for the Kadett’s keys. ‘And I’m gonna see if I can make Breslin eat a bug.’

Aislinn’s gaff has been processed hard. When there’s someone coming home to a place, we try not to wreck it too badly – print dust gets wiped away, books go back on shelves – unless we actually want to shake people up; but when no one’s coming home, we don’t bother breaking out the sensitivity. Sophie’s lot covered half the house in black print dust and the other half in white, carved away a rough rectangle of carpet where Aislinn’s body was lying, sawed a long chunk out of the fireplace surround, stripped the bed and sliced gaping holes out of the mattress. In a cosy messy family home that stuff looks nightmarish, against nature, but Aislinn’s house barely looked like a real person’s gaff to start with; now it looks like a Tech Bureau teaching unit.

Steve takes the sitting room and the bathroom, I have the kitchen and the bedroom. It’s quiet. Steve whistles to himself, and the odd sound trickles in from the street outside – a bunch of old ones happily bitching their way past, a kid howling – but not a squeak or a bump out of the neighbours; these old walls are thick. Unless there was a blazing row or a scream, there’s no way the neighbours would have heard anything. A stealth boyfriend, one who’d been to her place before, he would’ve known that.