I say, ‘Me and my partner, at first we wondered if Aislinn was going out with some gangster.’ The way Lucy’s face closes down would tell me, if I didn’t already know, how far off target that was. ‘It took us till last night to click. Aislinn’s married fella wasn’t a gangster. He was a cop.’

The silence stays. I’m better at leaving it than Lucy; more practice. In the end she moves. ‘Is that it?’

‘Yeah. Your turn.’

‘For what? I’ve got nothing to say.’

‘You do. I can see exactly why you’re scared’ – that blink again – ‘but if you wanted to keep your mouth shut, you would’ve. You told us Aislinn was seeing someone on the side because you wanted us to track him down. You didn’t want to get in too deep; you were hoping that, if you pointed us in the right direction, we’d get there on our own. And we have.’

Lucy’s eyes are still on her coffee. She says, ‘Then you don’t need me.’

‘If we didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I’m pretty sure I know who Aislinn was seeing. I’m pretty sure I know who killed her. But I can’t prove any of it.’

‘Or you’re saying that because you want to find out how much I know.’

I say, ‘You want to hear something I haven’t told anyone? We’ve got lockers, at work. A couple of months back, someone jimmied mine open and pissed in it. All over my running gear and half a dozen interviews’ worth of notes.’

Lucy doesn’t look up, but I catch the flick of her lashes: she’s listening. I say, ‘Here’s the part that matters. Murder works separate from the other squads; there’s no one else in our building. And the locker room has a combination lock on it. One of my own squad did that.’

She looks up then. ‘Why?’

‘Because they don’t like me. They want me out. That’s not important. The point is, this isn’t the telly, where cops are all blood brothers and anyone who gets on the wrong side of a cop ends up dead in a ditch while the rest of us lose the evidence. I don’t have any squad loyalty. I’m not here to clean up anyone’s mess. I’m just working my case. Anyone gets in my way, cop or not, I’ve got no problem running him down.’

‘That’s supposed to reassure me?’

‘If I was just here to shut your mouth, I would’ve done it by now. One way or another. I already know you know something; if I didn’t want it coming out, I wouldn’t need the details.’