He makes it sound like the whole thing was as unthinking and cute as a smile, just Aislinn skipping along among the daisies scattering happy daydreams wherever she went. I’m not so sure. I think of her in Missing Persons that day, pelting me with everything that should have started my mind wandering off down stories: the mystery, the tears, the snippets of info about what her dad had been like, the scraps of childhood reminiscence. If I had bitten – and maybe I would have, if the Daddy crap hadn’t rubbed me up the wrong way – I would have been a lot more likely to give her what she was after: And then the genius detective solved the poor orphan girl’s problem, and they all lived happily ever after. It worked on Gary. Aislinn knew how to use her knack.

She didn’t get me. I raise a mental finger at her and say to Rory, ‘And you’re thinking that might have had something to do with what happened to her.’

Rory is nodding hard. ‘Yes. Yes. The thing about daydreams is that they don’t last. One brush up against reality, and that’s the end of them. I know I must sound ridiculously spacy to someone like you, but I do understand that much.’

A sudden slice to his voice, and a sharp flash of his eyes; gone almost too fast to catch, but I was watching. Rory isn’t fluffy clouds and adorable endings straight through; he’s got something solid and keen-edged at the centre. Just like Aislinn. That combination made the two of them a perfect match, and then it turned on them.

‘For someone like me,’ Rory says, ‘that’s not a problem. I spend half my time in my head anyway, always have. I realise that, too.’ That edge again. ‘So when I bang up against reality and it bursts my bubble, that’s not the end of the world. I’m used to it. Deep down, I was expecting it all the time.’

Which sounds a lot like a sideways explanation for why it couldn’t have been me, honest, Detective. You get them a lot. Mostly you get them from killers. I nod along, concentrating hard on all these valuable insights.

Rory says, ‘But a lot of people aren’t like that. It took me a while to realise, when I was younger: some people spend all their time focused on what’s actually happening.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I say. Confidentially: ‘You get a lot of cops like that. No imagination.’

That gets an automatic half-smile, but Rory’s too deep in his story to pay much attention to me. ‘So if a man like that were to run into Aislinn, he wouldn’t know how to prepare for the fact that his bubble was, almost definitely, going to burst. And when it did . . .’

‘I get you,’ I say, doing a little focused frown. ‘At least, I think I do. Tell me what you’re picturing. Specifics.’