Me and Steve go for the sofa with its back to the high sash window, leaving Lucy with the limp excuse for daylight hitting her face. I get out my notebook, but I sit forward, letting Steve know that I’m not gonna be sitting this one out altogether. O’Kelly was full of shite, Steve is great with witnesses – not as flashy with it as Breslin, but he can make just about anyone believe he’s on their side – but I used to be pretty good too, not all that long ago, and Lucy doesn’t seem like she’s gonna piss me off. This girl is no idiot.

‘Anyone else home?’ Steve asks. After this conversation, Lucy is going to want backup.

Lucy sits down on the other sofa and tries to look at both of us at once. ‘No. It’s just me. Why . . . ?’

Your basic witness-face is a mix of eager to help, dying to know the story and oh-God-I-hope-I’m-not-in-trouble. Your standard variation, in neighbourhoods where we’re not popular, is a sullen teen-style slouch-stare, including from people who are decades too old to pull off that shite. Lucy isn’t wearing either of those. She’s sitting up straight, feet planted like she’s ready to leap into action, and her eyes are too wide open. Lucy is scared, and she’s wary, and whatever she’s wary about is taking all her focus. There’s a green glass ashtray on the coffee table that she should have emptied before she let cops in. Me and Steve pretend we don’t see it.

‘I’ll just confirm a couple of things,’ Steve says, easily, giving her his best nonthreatening smile. ‘You’re Lucy Riordan, born the twelfth of April ’88, and you work at the Torch Theatre. That’s all correct, yeah?’

Lucy’s back is stiffening up. Nobody likes us knowing stuff they haven’t told us, but she’s liking it even less than most. ‘Yeah. I’m the technical manager.’

‘And you’re friends with Aislinn Murray. Close friends.’

‘We’ve known each other since we were kids. What’s happened?’

I say, ‘Aislinn’s dead.’

Which isn’t me being tactless. After the way she opened the door, I want her reaction neat.

Lucy stares at me. So many expressions collide on her face that I can’t read any of them. She’s not breathing.

I say, not bitchily, ‘Sorry to start your day off like this.’

Lucy grabs for a pack of Marlboro Lights on the coffee table and reefs one out without asking permission. Even her hands look active: strong wrists, short nails, scrapes and calluses. For a second the lighter flame jumps and wavers; then she gets it under control and draws hard on the smoke.

She asks, ‘How?’

Her head is down, that white-blond streak hiding her face. I say, ‘We don’t have any definitive answers yet, but we’re treating the death as suspicious.’

‘That means someone killed her. Right?’

‘Looks like it. Yeah.’

‘Shit,’ Lucy says, low – I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know she’s saying it. ‘Ah, shit. Ah, shit.’