His eyes close once, for a second, as he reads. When he finishes, he reaches out and puts the phone on the table in slow motion, like a drunk. He doesn’t look at us.

‘Recognise the handwriting?’ I ask.

Nod.

‘Whose is it?’

After a second: ‘Aislinn.’

‘Yeah. And the bad guy in the story? The one who fucked up her life, and now she’s planning on fucking up his? You know who that is, right?’

McCann says nothing. I can hear his breath, heavy puffs through his nose, in the thick overheated air.

When we know he’s not going to answer, I say, ‘That’s you, McCann. Do you get that?’

Nothing. His hands are over the photo, covering it, so he doesn’t have to see.

I lean in closer, tap the table in front of him. ‘Pay attention to this part. I want you to be very clear on exactly why all this happened.’

One flicker of his eyelids. He’s got blurry inklings, but not enough. He’s desperate to hear the rest.

‘Remember talking to Aislinn about her da’s case?’

McCann says, ‘I never named names.’

I laugh out loud. Out of all the things he could be worrying about, he picks that; God forbid we should think he was unprofessional. ‘You didn’t need to. She knew exactly who you were talking about; she’s the one who steered the conversation there to begin with. Do you remember what you told her?’

He shakes his head, trying to think. ‘How we tracked him all the way to England. How we found him with the bit on the . . . Aislinn never, she never said a word. Never batted an eyelid. Just kept listening, nodding . . .’

‘Aislinn was good,’ I say. ‘Aislinn was a whole lot better at this than you realised. Do you remember telling her how you talked to her da? How he asked you to tell Aislinn and her ma he was OK, and you decided to say nothing?’

McCann’s eyes have come up to me. ‘You didn’t meet Evelyn Murray. Delicate little thing, the shyest, sweetest – like someone out of an old book, the one who’d die at the end of consumption or one of them things, just because the world was too much for her. Made of glass, Evelyn was.’ To the spreading grin on my face: ‘Fuck you. I wasn’t shagging her. Never laid a finger on her, never would’ve.’

‘Whatever,’ I say. ‘If you cared that much about her, why not pass on the message?’

‘Because finding out her man had run off with a younger model, that would’ve killed her. Smashed her to bits. I wasn’t going to do that to her.’

I say, ‘But you had no problem taking over the rest of her life. Everything she ever did after you walked in her door, every thought that ever went through her head, it had your fingerprints all over it. And you knew it would.’