I’m gonna be banging on her door tomorrow morning before she’s anywhere near hauling her hangover out of bed. I hope she tells me she made up Aislinn’s secret boyfriend to make sure the investigation was good and thorough. I hope that, as I step out of Lucy’s flat, Sophie rings me to tell me that Aislinn’s password-protected computer folder turned out to be full of pictures of Daddy, scanned to make them handier for sobbing over.

Me, praying my most interesting leads will crash and burn. It feels against nature, like some parasite has slid into my head and is eating bits of my brain. But Lucy, and that folder: they’re the last two stubborn unruly strands stopping me from tying everything into a neat bow, leaving it outside the door of O’Kelly’s office with my badge on top, and walking away.

Steve is at our desk, checking e-mails. I sit down next to him and start flicking through the piles of paper that materialised while I was away. The floaters try not to let me catch them glancing over, wondering when the mad bitch is gonna lose it again.

The thick sheet of silence between me and Steve is growing edges like ripped tin. I say, ‘So you saw Rory in there.’

‘A fair bit of it,’ Steve says, without looking up. ‘Good interview.’

It doesn’t sound like a compliment. ‘Thanks,’ I say. I catch Breslin’s knowing eye on us: You were never right for each other. ‘Where were you?’

‘I ran the mug books past the barman and Aislinn’s neighbours. No hits.’ He waits for me to say I told you so. When I don’t: ‘Then I went and had chats with a few of the lads who worked the Des Murray disappearance – don’t worry, I was subtle about it.’

‘I’m not worried.’

Steve throws me a quick sideways glance, trying to work out how I mean that. ‘Anyway,’ he says, after a second. The tone to his voice, neutral, precise, arm’s-length; I’ve heard it before, but to defence solicitors and slippery journalists, never to me. ‘According to them, McCann had a bit of a thing for Evelyn Murray, all right. He was the one who pushed to keep the investigation going; he got very eloquent about this poor fragile woman with her life in ruins – and McCann isn’t the eloquent type, so the lads remembered it. He even found her someone to buy Des’s taxi plate, and made sure she got top dollar for it, so she and Aislinn weren’t stuck for cash. But the lads are all positive it never went as far as an affair. Even back then, McCann was getting called Holy Joe; not a chance he was riding a subject’s missus. They laughed at me for even thinking it.’