‘Yeah, he did. So what’s the rest of this shite?’ I nod at the cardboard box, which is still maybe a third full. This is where I would expect the file to end. Grown man, no reason to kill himself, no history of mental illness, no enemies, a pretty obvious goodbye to his kid: normally you would send one last press release to the media and assume he’s gone because he wants to be and he’ll come home in his own good time, or not.

Only Missing Persons didn’t stop there. They pulled Desmond’s mobile records – which took a few weeks: mobiles weren’t big back then, Ds didn’t have contacts in the phone companies, so they had to go through the official channels – and tracked down everyone he’d contacted in months. Most of the numbers turned out to be either his mates or his regular taxi customers, ringing Desmond direct instead of going through the dispatcher, and they were all able to account for their whereabouts at the time of his disappearance.

The question was why anyone had asked them to. Missing Persons is chronically short on manpower, same as every other squad; normally they put it into the custody-dispute toddler or the walkabout Alzheimer’s granny, not the midlife crisis. I say, ‘The way they worked it. Does that seem off to you?’

Steve says, ‘They were very bloody thorough.’

‘Yeah. Getting alibis off his customers? They worked this like they thought it was a murder.’

‘If Des Murray was on the radar for gang-related activity, even minor stuff, they would’ve pushed the case all the way. In case he was getting to be a liability, and someone gave him two in the back of the head and dumped him up the mountains.’

‘I haven’t found anything that points to gangs. You?’

Steve shakes his head. ‘Me neither. They might not have put it in the file, though.’

Which is true enough. If Feeney didn’t feel like handing over his case to Organised Crime, he would have kept any gang-related ideas to himself, same as we have. I say, ‘Keep reading.’

Des Murray’s cab showed up on a side street in Dún Laoghaire, which moved suicide a couple of notches up the list – Dún Laoghaire has nice long convenient piers – except that there was no note in the taxi. No signs of a struggle, either, and no robbery: there was thirty-four quid, which matched the afternoon’s fares on the meter, tucked down by the gearstick. If Des had done a runner, he had left his wife and kid every penny he could.