Something hard flashes in Steve’s face. He says, ‘Remember how you told Breslin to take the recordings of Rory’s male KAs down to Stoneybatter? To see if the uniform could ID the guy who called it in?’

‘Yeah. The pompous bastard palmed it off on Gaffney—’ And I stop there.

Steve says, ‘I thought he was too important for scut work.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Me too.’

‘That’s what he wanted us thinking. It was nothing to do with that. He couldn’t risk the uniform hearing his voice.’

That movie-trailer voice. In a world . . . Even the thickest uniform would remember that voice. Unless, maybe, someone made sure he was bombarded with possibles till his memory smeared beyond recovering.

Breslin called this in. My mind jams on that like a needle stuck on a record, hitting it over and over. This isn’t just us playing imagination games. This happened. Breslin called it in.

I say, ‘No wonder the call didn’t come in to 999. He couldn’t have a recording floating around.’

‘And no wonder the secret boyfriend’s invisible. Breslin wouldn’t go leaving love notes, or sending Facebook messages. Unless there’s something solid in that computer folder, we’ve got nothing.’

‘We’ve got Lucy. She could confirm the relationship. Whether she’ll do it is a whole other question.’

‘Lucy.’ Steve’s head goes back as it hits him. ‘Jesus Christ. And we were wondering why she was so cagey. She was trying to figure out whether we were pals of Breslin’s.’

The whiskey tastes ferocious in my mouth, dangerous. I say, ‘Because she thinks he killed Aislinn.’

Silence, a small one this time. My heart beats strong and slow in my ears.

Steve says, ‘That doesn’t mean she’s right.’

‘She was afraid of us,’ I say. ‘“I don’t know anything about Ash’s secret fella, she told me nothing, we’re not that close . . .” She was terrified that we were the cleanup crew, and if we thought she knew anything . . .’

‘But she dropped the hint about the boyfriend all the same. If we were actually on the up-and-up, she wanted us looking around, not fixating on Rory.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Fair play to Lucy. She’s got guts.’

Steve takes a swallow of his drink like he needs it. ‘Yeah, but enough guts to come out and say what she knows? It’s been two days now, she hasn’t been in touch about giving her statement . . . She wants nothing to do with us.’

‘We need her. Without her, we’ve got fuck-all linking Aislinn to either Breslin or McCann. We can’t exactly go showing her photo around the job, ask if anyone remembers seeing her with either of them.’

‘The barman in Ganly’s? He saw Aislinn with her fella.’

‘He didn’t see them. He saw Aislinn, with some middle-aged guy vaguely in the background. He’ll never make the ID.’

‘There’s Rory,’ Steve says. ‘He’s hiding something: that half-hour when he got to Aislinn’s early, something happened there. Maybe he saw something, or she said something . . .’