‘Oh yeah,’ Steve says. There’s a leap in his voice, like when you smell good food and you’re suddenly hungry. ‘He’s just punched out his girlfriend. He probably doesn’t even know whether she’s alive or dead, but he’s steady enough to think about smoke alarms and what’s in the cooker. If he’s a first-timer, he’s a natural.’

The smoke alarm is above our heads. I say, ‘Why not go ahead and let the food set off the alarm, but? If the place burns down, it’s gonna take a lot of evidence with it. If you get lucky, the body might even be too destroyed for us to tell it was murder.’

‘Something to do with his alibi, maybe. If the smoke alarm had gone off, someone would’ve been out here a lot sooner. Maybe he figured the longer it took us to find her, the less we could narrow down the time of death – and for whatever reason, he doesn’t want it narrowed down.’

‘Then why call it in, this morning? She could’ve stayed here another day, maybe more, before anyone came looking. By then, time of death would’ve been bollixed; we’d’ve been lucky to pin it down within twelve hours.’

Steve is rubbing rhythmically at the back of his head, rucking up the red hair in clumps. ‘Maybe he panicked.’

I make an unconvinced noise. Lover Boy is flicking back and forth like a hologram: pathetic wimp, cold thinker, wimp again. ‘He’s cool as ice at the actual scene, but a few hours later he’s freaking out? Badly enough to call us in?’

‘People are mad.’ Steve reaches up and pokes the tester button on the smoke alarm with the tip of his Biro. It beeps: working. ‘Or else the call wasn’t him.’

I try that on for size. ‘He runs to someone else: a mate, a brother, maybe his da. Tells him what’s after happening. The mate’s got a conscience: he doesn’t want to leave Aislinn lying here, when she might be still alive and doctors might be able to save her. Soon as he gets a moment on his own, he rings it in.’

‘If it’s that,’ Steve says, ‘we need the mate.’

‘Yeah.’ I’m already pulling my notebook out of my jacket pocket: Suspect KAs ASAP. As soon as we get an ID on Lover Boy, we’re gonna need a list of his known associates. A mate with a conscience is one of every detective’s favourite things.

‘Here’s the other thing,’ Steve says. ‘She hadn’t put the veg in to cook, hadn’t poured out the wine. Like we said before, he’d only just walked in the door.’

I shove my notebook back in my pocket and move around the kitchen. Cupboard full of delft with pretty pink flowers on, fridge empty except for low-fat yoghurt and pre-chopped carrot sticks and a twin-pack of M&S fruit tarts for dessert. Some people keep most of their personality in their kitchens, but not Aislinn. ‘Right. So?’

‘So how’d they have time to get in an argument? This isn’t a married couple who’ve been bickering for years, he forgets the milk and it blows up into a massive row. These two, they’re still at the fancy-dinner-date stage, everyone’s on their best behaviour. What are they going to fight about, the second he walks in?’