What the fuck? ‘Take your time,’ I say. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m positive. None of these guys look anything like him. At all.’ Lucy almost shoves the card back at me. She’s gone wary again, wondering what I’m playing at. I’d swear it’s real.

In the moment as I bend to put the card back in my satchel – wondering wildly where the hell I go from here, wishing I’d brought Steve – it hits me.

I pull out the other photo array, the McCann one. ‘Try these guys,’ I say. ‘Do you recognise any of them?’

It takes less than a second: the scan, the quick burst of breath through her nose, the clamp of tension grabbing her whole body. ‘Him,’ Lucy says quietly, and her finger comes down on McCann. ‘That’s him.’

‘The man Aislinn was seeing.’

‘Yeah.’

‘How sure are you?’

‘A hundred per cent. That’s him.’

‘Write it down,’ I say, passing her a pen. ‘At the bottom of the sheet. Which number you recognise, and where you recognise him from. Sign and date it. Then initial beside the photo you’re identifying.’

She writes neatly, steadily; only the fast rise and fall of her chest and the slight huff of her breath give away that her adrenaline’s running wild. Mine is too. The big mystery about why McCann was hanging around Viking Gardens for weeks: gone. Aislinn’s neighbour thought the guy climbing the wall was fair-haired, but yellow half-light from a streetlamp would turn McCann’s grey streaks fair. The phone calls from McCann’s wife giving him grief about missing another dinner, the slump to his back while Breslin promised to get rid of me, the state of him the last few days, it all fits.

The only piece that still won’t drop into place is why the hell Aislinn wanted McCann; what the hell me and Steve have been missing, all along.

Lucy passes me back the photo array. ‘Is that OK?’

‘Yeah,’ I say, giving it a quick read. ‘Thanks. Now you can tell me the story.’

She takes a breath. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘All of it. Start from the beginning.’