‘I’m asking you. Did she get off on the top-secret hush-hush vibe, yeah? Or did you get off on knowing she had to be ready for you to show up at any minute?’

‘She didn’t have to do anything. I wasn’t her boss.’

I say, picking my words carefully, ‘Would you not have been . . . angry, let’s say, if she hadn’t?’

McCann’s jaw clamps. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘What I said. You had Aislinn sitting at home, day in, day out, ready to jump whenever you decided to pull the strings. If you had pulled and she hadn’t jumped, what would have happened?’

‘Nothing. Most of the time I let her know I was coming; it was only now and then that I called round to her out of the blue. If I’d showed up and she hadn’t been there, or she’d been busy, I would’ve left and come back another time. End of story.’

I’m all sceptical. ‘You sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘You wouldn’t have given her the odd slap, no? Not to hurt her; just to teach her she couldn’t mess you about.’

McCann says, ‘I’ve never hit a woman in my life.’

‘Hmm,’ I say. ‘OK. You made Aislinn set her phone on swipe lock because you wanted to be able to read her texts. Right?’

His head flinches to the side, a fraction of an inch, before he catches it and faces us square again. He doesn’t like thinking about this. ‘I didn’t make her do anything.’

‘Asked her to. Let’s say that.’

‘I asked her, yeah. She could’ve told me to stick it. She didn’t.’

‘And did you read them?’ I’m hoping he didn’t, mainly out of professional pride. I like to hope that if a Murder D set up a plan to walk in on his bit on the side with her bit on the side, he would’ve made a better job of it than this mess.

McCann buries his face in his tea, but I catch the faint flush under the stubble. Out of all the options, this is what gets to him: the image of himself grubbing around in Aislinn’s text messages. He’s still holding on to how he loved her; in his mind, that snooping is the one thing he’s done to taint that. ‘A few times. Nothing worth seeing, and I felt like a twat. I stopped.’

I believe him. McCann knew nothing about Rory, not till Saturday night. Aislinn’s frantic plan to move things along did nothing at all. Lucy was right: she was miles out of her depth.

I ask, ‘Do you make your wife keep her phone on swipe lock?’