‘It might be a while before you get this,’ he says, ‘but you two owe me big-time. I’m sure it doesn’t feel like it right now. But a few years down the road, when Rory Fallon gets locked and spills his guts to his new girlfriend, and you’re still here to make the collar, you’re going to realise I’m the best thing that ever happened to you. I’ll take my thank-yous then. If they come with a nice bottle of bourbon thrown in, it won’t go to waste.’

Before either of us can come up with a sensible response to that steaming heap, he gives us a nod and he’s gone, bang of the door and fast firm strides down the corridor, off to tell McCann that everything’s gonna be just fine.

After a few moments Steve bends to pick up the Murray family photo. He says, ‘I thought we had him there. McCann. When we brought this out. I really thought . . .’

‘Yeah, I did too. It was good, that. It should’ve worked.’ I let myself have five seconds to think about just how good that interview was; how good we were together, me and Steve. How it felt like we could read each other’s mind. I give myself those five seconds to understand what I’m losing.

‘“No comment,” ’ Steve says. He tucks the photo back into his jacket pocket, carefully, like it might matter again sometime.

I say, ‘We should have seen it.’

Way back at the very beginning, when Lucy turned squirrelly about Aislinn’s secret boyfriend, we should have seen it. Us running around chasing imaginary gangsters, whipping up drama about bent cops and shushing each other about complicated suspicions, when the obvious was jumping up and down in front of us, waving its arms for attention.

‘I’m a fucking eejit for leaving that search on my computer,’ Steve says. ‘No sleep, the gaffer called us in, I got rattled—’

‘No worse than me, trying to pump Breslin and making a balls of it. Don’t worry about it.’

‘If I hadn’t started us down the whole gang road—’

I say, ‘Even if you hadn’t. I don’t think we would’ve seen it.’