The search gives me nothing relevant. Your standard hiding places – packet of peas in the freezer, emptied-out canister in the spice rack, under the mattress, inside shoes – are blank. No love notes in the curly-wurly dressing table, no spare pair of morning-after boxers in the chest of drawers. In the wardrobe, no envelope of cash or package of brown waiting to be picked up; the best I come up with is a bunch of family photo albums shoved to the back of the top shelf, behind the spare duvet. I take a look, see if they give me any hints on where I saw Aislinn before, but no. She wasn’t a good-looking kid: chunky, with skinned-back plaits, a bumpy forehead and an uncomfortable smile. For someone who put this much gym time and celery and hair products into looking the way Aislinn looked, that would be plenty of reason to hide the albums. There’s no family pics up around the gaff, either; pukey fabric-prints of flowers and gingham chickens go on her walls, but her family goes at the back of the wardrobe. A shrink would love that – Aislinn wanted to bury her parents as revenge for abandoning her, or she had to bury her real self so she could reinvent herself as Dream Date Barbie – but all I care about is that no one else in any of the photos looks familiar. Wherever I saw Aislinn, her gaff isn’t gonna give me any hints.

The weird part is that I’m turning up nothing irrelevant, either. The search always has a surprise or two for you, because everyone’s got a couple of things they hide even from their nearest and dearest; the only question is whether the surprises have anything to do with the case. But there’s nothing here that Lucy didn’t give us – in fact, since I’ve found zero evidence of any secret boyfriend, there’s actually less here than Lucy gave us. No dodgy internet diet pills, no niche sex toys, I haven’t even found that copy of The Rules. The biggest revelation is that Aislinn sometimes wore padded bras.

‘Her paperwork’s in shite shape,’ Steve says, in the bedroom doorway. ‘Everything’s thrown together in a big box under the side table: bank statements, bills, receipts, the lot.’

I shove the albums back on the wardrobe shelf. ‘Gaffney’s pulling the financials; we’ll go through them that way. Bring back the box anyway. We need to check the receipts, in case the guy who delivered the sofa got a fixation. Anything interesting?’

‘Her will. DIY job, on a form printed off the internet. She left half of everything to Lucy, the other half to provide respite for child carers. Who knows if it’ll stand up to probate.’

‘Lucky for Lucy she’s got an alibi.’

‘Yeah,’ Steve says. ‘It’s dated two months ago.’