The floaters glance up and nod, too quickly, scared I’ll rip the throat out of anyone who makes eye contact. On my monitor, a blurry black-and-white Stoneybatter street moves in jumps – runner frozen in one corner of the screen, teleported to the opposite side in a blink; Alsatian caught in mid-piss, then vanished – till I hit Stop. The computers and the whiteboard and the floaters billow and shrink around the edges like thin fabric underwater, drifting farther away all the time.

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Rory is in even worse shape than he was on Sunday. His hair still has that plastered-down look, his eyes are bloodshot and his skin is a dry, clothy white. He smells of clothes left too long in the washing machine. A smile jerks up on his face when he sees us, but it’s a reflex, jittery and mechanical. We’re gonna have fun getting him chilled out enough to be useful.

We start by taking him to the nice interview room, the one for shaken-up witnesses and victims’ relatives. It’s cute: pastel-yellow paint, chairs that don’t hate you, a kettle and a hotel-style basket of tea bags and itty-bitty sachets of instant coffee. My First Interview Room, we call it. Even through his jitters, Rory feels the difference; he relaxes enough to take off his second-best coat and hang it tidily over the back of his chair. Underneath he has on jeans and a baggy beige jumper that’s twenty quid’s worth of knitted depression.

‘Let’s get through the paperwork first,’ Breslin says, sliding a rights sheet and a pen across the table. Since Chief Jock is the intimidating one, he’s armed with a big file bursting with everything that could come in useful, plus random paper for padding. Cool Girl is on Rory’s side, deep down, so I’ve got nothing but my notebook and my pen. ‘Sorry about this; I know you’ve already done it, but we need a new one of these every time. You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence. Just like last time. Is that all OK?’

Rory signs without reading. ‘Thanks,’ Breslin says, through a yawn and a pec-display stretch. ‘I need real coffee, not that instant rubbish. Rory? Antoinette? What’ll I get you?’

Normally I’d smack down the ‘Antoinette’ crap, but I know what he’s at. ‘Oh God, yeah, real coffee,’ I say. ‘Black, no sugar. And see if you can find a couple of biscuits, would you? I’m starving.’

‘I’ll raid O’Gorman’s stash,’ Breslin says, grinning. ‘He buys the good stuff; no Rich Tea nonsense there. Rory, what’ll you have?’

‘Um, I—’ A baffled blink while Rory tries to chase down the potential implications of hot drinks. ‘Tea would be— No, coffee. With a bit of milk. Please.’