He went out, and presumably in, the back way. The back door was locked when we got there; Breslin must have had a key to give him.

‘Do you remember what he was wearing?’ Steve asks. Easily, like this is no big deal, nothing at all.

Rory shakes his head. ‘Not really. A dark coat. A light-coloured scarf, I think. The main thing I noticed was that he seemed . . . I thought he was on something. Coke, maybe, or . . . I mean, I don’t know enough about drugs to know what does what, but he jumped a lot harder than I did, and his eyes were . . .’ He flares his eyes into a wild, unfocused stare. ‘If he wasn’t on something, I thought he had to be . . . unbalanced. Either way, he was the last thing I wanted to deal with, right at that moment. I sped up and got away from him as fast as I could.’

‘How close were you?’

‘About from here to that door.’ Rory points to the back-room door. Five feet, maybe six. Close enough for an ID; far enough, with no light but the streetlamp, for a defence barrister to hammer it down.

‘Did he say anything? Do anything?’

‘There wasn’t really time. I was only looking at him for a second or two, before I got out of there. When I got to the corner of Astrid Road I looked back, in case he was following me, but he was going in the opposite direction. He was walking fast, with his head down, but I’m almost positive it was the same guy.’

‘And all this would’ve been around half-eight?’ Steve asks.

‘Just after. I texted Aislinn one last time at half-eight, and then I gave her five minutes to answer. When she didn’t, I left. So when I saw the man, that would’ve been between twenty-five to nine and twenty to.’

That gave McCann anywhere from thirty-five to fifty-five minutes inside the house. Rory had left the laneway and headed for Tesco around 7.40. Maybe McCann had seen him having his moment, watched and waited for him to leave; maybe he hadn’t shown up till Rory was already gone. But by eight o’clock, when Rory knocked on the door and Aislinn didn’t answer, McCann was in there.