McCann leans back in his chair and stuffs his hands in his pockets, one corner of his mouth tugging upwards. He doesn’t bother trying to keep the triumph off his face. He thinks he’s seen everything we’ve got, held steady against it and blown it all away.

He says, ‘What do you think happens if the squad finds out you were only talking to me like this? Over nothing but a few shags?’

‘Ah, come on,’ Steve says. He’s practically begging. ‘You’re a witness. We had to talk to you. You know we did.’

‘I’m a witness to nothing.’

‘You knew the vic. You were sleeping with the vic. We couldn’t just—’

‘You ask me very nicely,’ McCann says, ‘and you don’t go trying to scupper my marriage, I’ll forget this ever happened.’

‘We won’t tell your wife about Aislinn. I swear.’

‘Good call,’ McCann says. He stretches, rolls his shoulders back. ‘We done here, yeah?’

Steve gives me a quick, uncertain glance. ‘No,’ I say stubbornly. ‘Seeing as we’re here, we might as well finish up.’

‘Five more minutes?’ Steve asks McCann. ‘Honest to God, it won’t take longer than that, we’ve just got a few more—’

McCann laughs and spreads his arms. ‘You want one last shot? Take it.’

‘Thanks,’ Steve says humbly. ‘I mean, no, we don’t – we just—’

I say, ‘I want to ask you about Aislinn. What was going on in her head.’

McCann snorts. ‘This psychological shite, Conway. Honest to God, you need to grow out of that. Rory Fallon got obsessed and lost the head. All the rest, what Aislinn was thinking, that’s not your problem. Nobody cares.’

‘Probably you’re right. Humour me anyway, yeah?’ McCann settles back into his chair on a long-suffering sigh. ‘You told us,’ I say, ‘just a few minutes ago: when someone who’s trying to get you into bed says they love you – like Aislinn said she loved you – chances are it’s bollix. They’ve got a hidden agenda. Right?’

‘Right. Only Aislinn wasn’t trying to get me into bed. That just happened.’

‘You ran her through the system, at the start. Because you thought she might have a hidden agenda. Right?’

‘Right. And she came up clean.’

‘She did, yeah. That was really enough to make you relax? You never wondered again, no? Girl like that, guy like you, and you genuinely figured she was on the up-and-up?’

‘Maybe he genuinely did,’ Steve says, examining McCann critically. ‘Hormones, man. Scramble the brain.’

‘Ah, he wondered,’ I say. ‘He wondered all the time. He hated himself for doing it, tried to stop – didn’t you, McCann? But he couldn’t. You know what I think? I think, deep down, he knew.’