I get in my car and check my messages – phones go on mute during interviews, or Sod’s Law says your ma will ring. Text from Sophie: Got DNA profile from fluids on mattress. Male, not in system. Get me sample from your suspect we’ll run comparison. Steve’s sent me an audio file of Breslin explaining to him how much potential he has and how he should be sure not to throw it away. Random Google Blonde has another four million depressing messages from the various dating sites. I delete her accounts.

I text Steve: Ring me. Then I sit there, running the heat to try and thaw my feet after Lucy’s flat, and watch the people going past. They make me edgy. Dozens and dozens of people, they just keep coming, and every single one of their heads is crammed with stories they believe and stories they want to believe and stories someone else has made them believe, and every story is battering against the thin walls of the person’s skull, drilling and gnawing for its chance to escape and attack someone else, bore its way in and feed off that mind too. Even the cute little student mincing along in her flowery dress, the shuffling old fella with his shuffling spaniel, they look Ebola-lethal. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. Maybe I’m getting the flu.

It’s eleven minutes of this before my phone lights up with Steve’s name. ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘Can you talk?’

‘Yeah. Not for long; I’m supposed to be talking to the staff in the newsagent. Breslin’s only across the road, in the bakery. You get the file?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Listen. Once I showed Lucy that note from Aislinn, it took her about a quarter of a second to ID the mystery boyfriend. Only it wasn’t Breslin.’

Before Steve can ask what the hell, it hits him. ‘Jesus. McCann?’

‘Bingo.’

‘What the . . . ? Why?’

I give him the fast version. At the end he says, after a moment of silence, ‘Oh Jesus.’ His voice sounds raw.

‘Yeah, we can do that part later. You got anything I should know?’

Steve says, ‘My guy at the mobile company e-mailed me. Full records on the phone that called it in.’

‘Anything to prove it’s Breslin’s?’

‘No. All the other numbers trace back to journalists. Including—’ I know what’s coming. I say it with him: ‘Crowley.’

Breslin, the little shit. He’s been top of the rat list from the get-go, but it still gives me a quick hit of anger. ‘Let me guess,’ I say. ‘Early Sunday morning.’

‘Quarter to seven.’