Steve says, ‘I need to ask you, man. Is there anything else you’ve held back? Anything at all?’

Rory shakes his head vehemently. ‘No. That was it. I swear: there’s nothing.’

‘OK,’ Steve says. ‘If you think of anything else we should know, ring me straightaway. Meanwhile, all I can say is that we believe you saw this guy’ – I nod – ‘and we’re going to follow up on it very thoroughly. Yeah?’

‘Thanks,’ Rory says, confusedly, on a long breath out. ‘Thank you.’

I put my notebook away; Steve straightens the books that shifted when he leaned against them. ‘Um,’ Rory says, twisting his hands in the hem of that godawful jumper. ‘Can I say one thing?’

‘Sure,’ Steve says.

‘Me watching Aislinn. I know it sounds like . . . But remember when I said Aislinn didn’t mind being drawn into other people’s daydreams? And you didn’t believe me?’

He’s talking to me. ‘I remember you mentioning that, all right,’ I say.

‘When I watched her . . . I was trying to do the opposite of that. I was trying to feel what it was like to live there, be her. Trying to slip into that. Instead of doing it the other way round, like everyone else had.’

He’s wound himself into a tangle of jumper. ‘Does that . . . ? Does that make sense?’

It sounds like gold-plated self-justification bollix to me, but we need him on side, so I nod. ‘It does,’ Steve says gently. ‘We’ll keep it in mind.’

We leave Rory standing among his shelves, peering dazedly at us over the ranks of silhouetted badasses and spooky trees and women prancing in sundresses, like if we come back in a few hours they’ll have closed over his head and he’ll be gone.

Outside the door, I say, ‘What the hell was McCann at? Messing about in Stoneybatter weeks ago?’

‘Doing a recce, maybe,’ Steve says. ‘Getting the lie of the land, so that when it came time to do the job, he could get in and out without getting lost or getting spotted.’

‘Except he did get spotted. A bunch of times. That’s what Google Earth is for: so you can do your recce without getting your hands dirty.’

‘Yeah, but we can check what he’s been at on Google Earth. You can argue an ID; harder to argue with internet records.’

Deasy’s black Pajero is gone; two streetlamps down, there’s a white Nissan Qashqai that wasn’t there before. That was quick. I wonder if it’s Breslin in there, but I’m not about to check, not with Rory blinking behind the bookshop window. ‘Listen,’ I say, whipping around on Steve and pointing a finger in his face, ‘meet you in twenty minutes, in that park where we had breakfast Sunday. Make sure you’re not followed.’ I jab him in the shoulder. ‘Clear?’