‘Don’t get smart with me. No, I fucking don’t.’ The shame puts a snap in his voice. ‘I wasn’t controlling Aislinn. I just didn’t want my wife finding out about us. That’s why I checked the texts: I needed to know Aislinn wasn’t telling her mates. That’s why I went in the back. That’s why I didn’t want her having my number. I liked her a lot, even trusted her more or less, but not enough to put my whole life in her hands. I wasn’t about to put myself in a position where, say she got too attached or had a bout of PMS or got ideas about blackmail, she could just take her phone down to my gaff and blow the whole thing wide open. Is that simple enough for you?’ Which is his biggest speech yet. Trying to shove that memory away made him talky.

‘So,’ Steve says dryly, ‘you’re saying you had no plans to leave your wife for Aislinn, no?’

McCann lets out a short harsh burst of laughter, just too loud. ‘Fuck that. Me and my wife, we have some hassles, but I love her. Love my kids even more. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.’

‘So what were you going to do? Just keep on climbing Aislinn’s back wall’ – I snort; McCann gives me a filthy look – ‘for the rest of your lives?’

‘I didn’t have plans. I was having a laugh, seeing how things went.’

‘Even if he was planning on leaving his wife,’ I point out to Steve, ‘he would have wanted to keep Aislinn on the downlow. No point in giving the missus ammo for the divorce settlement.’

‘Did you not hear me? There wasn’t going to be a divorce settlement. Myself and Aislinn were grand exactly the way we were.’

I lift an eyebrow. ‘Yeah? Did Aislinn think you were grand the way you were?’

McCann shrugs. ‘Far as I could tell. If she didn’t, she would’ve ended it.’

‘You’re having your cake and eating it, and she gets the crumbs. What kind of person’s OK with that?’

‘I wasn’t taking anything away from her. We agreed from the start that she could see other fellas. Only fair.’

Nice move. Not a chance it’s true. ‘And she took you up on it,’ I say. ‘When did you find out she was seeing someone else?’

A quick blink: McCann needs to be careful here. ‘After she died, only.’

Steve and I glance at each other and leave a silence. McCann’s too old a hand to fall for that. He flicks us a sardonic look and waits us out.

‘We’ll go with that for now,’ I say. ‘So how did that make you feel?’

McCann snorts. ‘What are you, my therapist?’

‘Do you go to a therapist?’

‘No, I don’t. Do you?’

‘Then you don’t need to save the good stuff for him. How’d you feel when you found out Aislinn had another guy on the go?’