My head feels strange, weightless. All this time I’ve been thinking the whole squad’s out for my blood, the squad room is a curtain swelling with the enemy army behind it, I’m the lone fighter lifting her sword and knowing she’s going down. Except every time I pull back the curtain, all I find is the same one wanker.

The lads throwing slaggings my way: I took it for granted the edges were sharpened deliberately and smeared with poison, carefully constructed to slice till I dropped. It never occurred to me that it was just slagging, with a bit of extra edge because I don’t get on with most of them and because – ever since that first arse-slap off Roche, half of them watching, none of them saying a word – I haven’t tried. Fleas, hinting to see whether I fancied coming back to Undercover: I assumed it was because he knew I was crashing and burning in Murder, I never once thought it could be just that we were good together and he misses me. Steve, spinning his what-ifs and watching them whirl, considering all their glinting angles: I thought, for a few hours in there I actually believed, he was using them to lure me over a cliff-edge so he could watch me go splat and wave bye-bye from the top. I’m glad my skin means him and Crowley won’t see the blush.

I was doing exactly the same thing as Aislinn: getting lost so deep inside the story in my head, I couldn’t see past its walls to the outside world. I feel those walls shift and start to waver, with a rumble that shakes my bones from the inside out. I feel my face naked to the ice-flavoured air that pours through the cracks and keeps coming. A great shiver is building in my back.

Crowley and Steve are both watching me, waiting to see if I’m gonna let Crowley off the hook. Steve’s game is yelping for attention.

‘OK,’ I say. I want to walk out, but I’m not done here. I shove everything else to the back of my mind. ‘OK. We’ll go with that.’

Crowley says – the fear’s vanished; he’s straight back into hyena mode – ‘You mentioned having a bit of news for me.’

‘Oh yeah,’ I say. My focus is back; this is gonna be fun. ‘Have I got a scoop for you. You’re gonna love this.’

Crowley whips out his voice recorder, but I shake my head. ‘Nah. This is non-attributable. It comes from sources close to the investigation. Got it?’ ‘Sources close to the investigation’ means cops. I don’t want McCann and Breslin thinking Lucy’s been talking.

He gets pouty, but I sit back and have a watch of Steve jabbing manically at his phone screen. In the end Crowley sighs and puts the recorder away. ‘I suppose so.’